Not sure how you screwed it up, but here in California at least, one can apply for unemployment on the internet.  My husband did that when he got laid off some time ago, and it was so easy - much better than having to go to the office.  We did it on a Sunday, which was convenient.

Good luck…

Yah, here in MO the same thing is true. Of course, this supposes that Michigan actually has such a site. I just did a search, found a link that was supposed to take me to Michigan’s unemployment website, only to get a 404 error. Hrm!

As for your comments, I must say that I am totally impressed with how you handle yourself. If I were in your shoes, I would either be banning the IP addresses of all these nut jobs, or nuken’em!

As all this Terri Schiavo stuff was coming to a head, I found http://www.blogsforterri.com and found that it had a huge list of blogs powered by Blogrolling. As I popped in on a bunch of them, I just kept getting more and more bewildered by the religious nuts that are out there.

I hadn’t seen the links that were mentioned by Lionheart before, and the one that talked about the T-Rex bones with soft tissue in them really cracked me up. Very reminiscent of Richard Hoagland and the whole Face on Mars/structures on the Moon thing. These people go to amazing lengths to try to prove their ridicules points.

I also love the way religious people keep telling us how scientists keep changing the facts when new facts are found, as if that is something that never happens on the religious side of things. I guess they don’t remember how the bible and its followers once believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. hehe

Les, you have every right to do and say what ever you want here. It’s your site, it’s your sounding board. If others don’t like it, well, “go tell it to the mountain” and fly away from this site.

Now that I have, for the first time, watched the time jump ahead an hour due to DST, I think I’ll hit the sack before I wind up being awake the entire night.

Good luck dude, I can’t say I know what you are going through, I was laid off for almost 8 months. However, I had 8 more months of savings to go through before I would have been in your shoes. I hope you find something very soon.

Hang in there Les, and “illegitimi non carborundum” (not classical, but worthwhile advice).

Hang in there, Les.  We’re with you.

Folks, don’t forget the Amazon and PayPal contribution buttons near the bottom left of this page.  Or buy something from the StupidEvilStore if you can.

Thanks for the good thoughts. I’m feeling a little better today.

Michigan has an online application for unemployment, which I used, but it requires that you register with Michigan Works before you can start collecting your checks. I did that online as well, but it turns out you have to go into their office the first time because there’s a part of the website that’s not accessible from your home Internet connection where you have to put in your SS#. So I eventually made it into their office and got that done.

The problem is they have an automated phone system you’re supposed to call into once every two weeks, but it’s a one hour period between 8AM and 9AM on Monday morning. WTF? It’s an automated system, but there’s a limit on when you can call?? Turns out if you miss it you can call during the day on Thursday or Friday, but I managed to completely forget about it until late Friday night and then it was too late. I’ve got no good excuses for forgetting so I’m pretty annoyed with myself.

Empathy here, Les.  I know exactly where you’re at.  In 43 years of paying through the nose I managed a single unemployment check.  The bureaucracy and regs are all up hill for many.

What kind of work do you want?

You know, I get the impression from the way that states treat unempolyed people that they consider the unemployed to be stupid or something. MO doesn’t have it’s unempolyed going through as many hoops as MI people, but sheesh! MO just had us going to an office once every 4 weeks. The other three, we were able to use a website that allowed us to enter the number of contacts. Plus, I was only required to enter 3 contacts a week. At first, I thought that would be no problem, but later I realized that it was going to be a big problem.

One of the most annoying parts of that experience was looking through MO’s job listing site. Each week, they had about 50 entries. Sounds pretty good right? Well 45 or so of them were for the same company and they reappeared each week. It was a consulting firm looking for people to file away for when the job glut went away. Not very helpful. I actually mentioned this to them at one point. Didn’t fix the problem, but I felt a little better.

I really felt that unemployment insurance was pretty much useless. For me, it came out to $250 a week. That amount just isn’t enough to cover our expenses. However, as I was told by my parents and others, it is enough to cover food and a few other expenses. So it helped by slowing down my draw of our savings during the “outage”.

Les, I check in here a few times a week, and I have been looking for it, but would you mind posting your resume here?  Are you open to your fanbase (me, etc.) for advice?  Where was your last job?  Are you willing to commute 30 miles each way to Detroit, or is staying out of that area important?  If a lot of American companies are outsourcing to India, have you considered relocating to New Delhi?  I’m serious.  My son is a consummate programmer in his second year at UWRF (U of Wis. at River Falls) and I actually suggested this idea to him.  Transfer credits to a New Delhi University such as Jawaharlal Nehru (http://www.jnu.ac.in/) and become “from” there in order to land a U.S. job.
Now go ahead and tell me how crazy I sound.  I can take it.  I still maintain you gotta think globally.  Post your resume prominently here, Les.

I thoroughly enjoy the occasional ass-kicking you dish out, and if I’m not mistaken your tips for commenters warns that might happen to dipshits who trot out the same old stuff without doing some background reading first.

Blony, I’m hoping to get back into some sort of tech support position like I was doing prior to my being forced into a planning position at my last contract.

Swatantra, you can grab a copy of my resume from this link here. I posted it online around about the time I was let go. I’m always open to advice and I’m willing to commute as long as the pay is decent. I’ve worked in Detroit before and I’d have no big aversion to doing so again. India is probably a bit further than I’d like to go, though. As much as I love Michigan I have given some consideration to moving elsewhere if need be, though the irony in that is I couldn’t afford to move right now even if I was sure I wanted to.

DOF, yeah I did put that in the guidelines, but much like the archives the guidelines appear to be just as unread.

Making you jump through hoops for unemployment benefit appears to be a global phenomenon. I had a friend whose benefit was stopped when she wasn’t at home the couple of times that people from the job centre came to check she wasn’t sneakily out working – she was actually on a volunteer course set up by the job centre! It took months to get all that sorted out, and her benefit started up again, by which time she’d been forced to move back in with her parents, because she couldn’t pay her rent.

But hang in there Les. It’s tough, but with all these well-wishers, there must be some kind of positive vibes out there, bringing you something good eventually (not that any of us actually believe in that…)

Hey Les,  I have a blog I have been struggling to migrate from PMachine to EE for over a year. I also am developing a community site (for my town) and have been struggling because I have limited time at the moment (an hour here and there).  Would you be interested in knocking this nail on the head for me?  Obviously I am prepared to pay market rates, but depending on what those are I may not want you to knock the nail in flush, just to help me on my way.  If you are interested let me know and I’ll drop you an email with more info.