This one was telegraphed since last summer. Shitty review where the manager couldn't even find ONE positive thing to say about me, then two months ago they regurgitated it. Sad thing is that my resume has been out on major job boards with almost no calls whatsoever. And every recruiter I have called to notify them of the situation are still saying that there's nothing out there right now.

Getting a little depressed. If I can't put 19 years of Tandem experience to work, since I've been off it for 2 years now, and if 7 years of VB/SQL programming doesn't mean squat since it doesn't come with job experience in ASP, HTML, XML, etc., will getting certified as a MS DBA get my foot in the door somewhere? I've been doing that kind of work for years now, except for officially managing users. I've designed and created tables, manipulated data, dropped tables, wrote stored procedures and triggers, worked with catalogs (for Tandem NonStop SQL databases), etc.

Thank God that the wife just started a part time job at Blockbuster as an assistant shift manager. In 90 days she can apply for health benefits for her and the kids. Based upon her manager's suggested work week, her hours added up for a 2000 hour work year would cover the principal and interest on the mortgage payment. Everything else comes from savings.