I believe they're doing that remotely too...... :eek:

Hello friends.

Here's an update.

As I posted previously, I have a contingent offer in hand, good for another 5 months. In the meantime, I have been tasked with completing two requests. Provide citizenship verification, which I have done. I turned the house inside out looking for my damn birth certificate and did not find it. Let me offer all of you the benefit of my experience here. If you need to communicate with some distant public health agency for a document like this, do not click on the top search result when you ask the Google to help you. That link will take you to a very official looking site, ask you all the right questions, take your money after you confirm you've read the Terms and Conditions, and send you an email indicating they'll send the one paper page of info you just input via the mail to the public health department in question. In this email, they're very clear that you already clicked the box that you understood the T&C and that a refund will not be forthcoming. At this point, I called the office in question, and the nice lady said *this* is the one we use, the only one, you can rely on them to convey the data you input to our office electronically and that they'll probably have it out the door within the hour. Here's what you need to know, the real site, the good site, it's not at the top of the search results, and it has a kind of funny spelling. Use this one:

https://www.vitalchek.com/

C H E K, got it?

Not vitalrec or vitalcheck or vitalrecordsonline or yourvitalrecords or vitalrecordscertificates or anything like that. Just the one in the link above. As a sanity check look for the name "A LexisNexis (R) Risk Solutions Company". One sixth the price, one hour (to the health dept) instead of mailing the paper to me to be mailed to the health department for six times the price.

My money and time, your lesson.

And complete the Questionnaire for National Security Positions Standard Form 86 (SF 86). This is a non-trivial form, the quick reference guide for which runs 44 pages. I have seven days to complete it. It is pretty exhaustive and I've taken four pages of notes just on the quick reference guide to know what to expect. I'm trying to avoid having the form open in one tab and using my computer and phone elsewhere to get the answer only to have the form tab timeout, or some other technical setback.

I have my notes, I'm going to flesh out what I know will be asked for (it's like an open book test, I'm getting my book well bookmarked before the test) so I can git-er done. Optimistically, the quick reference guide suggests that the public burden for this collection of information is estimated to be 150 minutes.

bwwaaaahahahahahahhaha!

I'll check in again in 150 minutes. Bye for now!

149 minutes having elapsed, I'm here again.

*whew*

I've completed the 136 page form. I still need to resolve fourteen errors, then validate, sign, download, and submit, but that will all happen tonight. This just happens to be a natural stopping point and we just finished dinner.

OK!

See you all in one minute, right?

TIME!

Good night all!

Good Lord what a PIA. Nobody has clearance in the Executive Branch, can't we just open the flood gates? I guess that would spread out the Russian money too thin like UBI.

An update:

There have been a couple messages back and forth on this subject. One was a note indicating that an interim clearance would not be issued--not uncommon and not alarming. The other was a signed letter of intent to join their outfit in September--somewhat uncommon and somewhat reassuring.

Today I got an echo back from an investigator but no more breaking news than that. Good to know they're still working on it--still encouraged and still nervous.

!!!

I've just taken a call from the Special Agent and we have scheduled a videoconference for tomorrow at midday.

SO STOKED!

good luck!

Huzzah!

sweet!

Good Luck V.

And then... and then???

Hey everybody!

The interview has finally concluded.

I feel good about it (now). Yesterday was an epic failure. The DoD and subsidiary agencies are operating remotely in many instances as are we all due to the current COVID-19 crisis. This includes the agency conducting my background investigation. I received notice and invitation to a videoconference meeting via Microsoft Teams. Yesterday the Special Agent and I spent almost an hour trying to get me connected using the instructions and invitations (plural) she generated for our meeting, all to no avail. It was very discouraging.

We decided to try again today, but with the appointment booked as the last one on her schedule for the day in case we needed to hammer out the problems we encountered yesterday. This turned out to be a good idea. I won't go into / speculate why it didn't work. Well, not much. I used to be the mercenary admin for several companies that needed this work done but had no interest in doing the necessaries themselves. I had some thoughts on the matter.

But I did not think it was appropriate to barge in and mansplain to this person what she was doing wrong. That seemed very, very inappropriate. We worked together, me taking her lead, try, try, trying again and again to get the systems to connect using the instructions.... computer says not no hell no.

Finally, today, we/she got to the end of her rope after the better part of an hour trying to make it work. She said she'd contacted her tech support people and their first opening for assistance was tomorrow at 10am. Turns out I had some undeployed rope of my own. I explained that I have done this work for a living, that this was the work I was applying to do, etc, etc. and that I had some suggestions. I told her I'd done some research on the error messages displayed on my machine, found a useful FAQ from the Coast Guard related to this issue, and let's try something different. OK!

Well, we tried what I suggested and it worked. I believe there is some kind of misconfiguration in the template that she is using to generate the emailed invitation--that one never worked and we tried repeatedly. The instructions clearly state, and I quote:

Narp.

Her workflow produced two messages per invitation and I copied the contents of a link in the preceding message from her and was able to make it work. We finally got our respective computers to each display the camera feed of the other, audio worked, all was great! The interview was an anticlimax after that struggle, even if it did take more than an hour recovering ground I'd covered in the original *very* extensive background form.

We concluded the interview both glad to have finally succeeded. She said it had to go to a reviewer then to an adjudicator and then god knows where, but it seemed to be moving expeditiously. Spoken like an employed person, I said to myself.

Anyhow, back to waiting for the email to ring.

IRONICALLY


As I said, I am "working" from home, and she is also working remotely. During our non-video calls, my cat Cleo meowed and I (eyes rolling) said that's my cat, she wants on my lap since I'm sitting at the computer. She said she has a furry friend too, implying that she was not in her office.

Once we got connected the conversation got round to my address and she said, "XXXX Road?, I'm just off XXXX Road." Turns out we're neighbors.

Close neighbors. How close? Later in the interview someone exploded their last Fourth of July firework and we both jumped. I said "OH! Did you hear that through my computer mic?" She said "No, I heard it through my window!" Our houses are close enough that we're both hearing the same idiots blasting fireworks in the middle of the afternoon.

Later I thought, wtf, we could have just met up at freakin Starbucks.

Ha! Looks like people are falling into a new trap with all this video.