Nick's business advice

A note to anyone that is in or will ever be in the business world.
There is something that I am just naturally good at in business; when things don't go my way, I react very well so that I am still in good standing in the future. This is a very important thing to learn and it has benefited me greatly. I was laid off a while ago and as I sat in the office with the GM and an HR person I was angry at how it was happening and scared that I was losing my job. I didn't hear much of what either of them said, I just sat there quietly as she gave her Speil.
When she was done, I stood up and turned to my GM, told him it has been a pleasure working with him for the last few years, said thank you (ok that's a little far, but as I said I wasn't thinking straight), turned around and walked out. On the inside I was deflated, but on the outside I portrayed myself professionally.

In my mind, there are two ways that could have gone. I could have gotten angry, told them how stupid they were for letting me go (they were) and stormed out angrily knowing I would never see them again anyway.

OR

I could have reacted the way I did, not burn any bridges, and remain in good standing with the GM and my previous managers. This means when I got a call from someone a few months later for another oppurtunity at the same company I didn't have anyone that had anything against me coming back and was welcomed back onto the team warmly.
Another example: I was interviewing for a few months and I went through this one interview that I actually talked about in my first blog post. The interview went well, but I answered one question poorly and heard the job was given to someone else. I emailed the hiring manager after explaining the bad answer, and asked him to keep me in mind for future positions instead of just letting it go. Now, 6 months later, there is another position there that he is saying I would be a good fit for, which is saying a lot since I've already interviewed with him. I'm happy where I am now, but everyone wants to know what they're worth so I'm finding out... :)
Moral of the story: You never know who is going to help you later in business, so make everyone your friend (at least cordial) and react professionally when things don't go your way. You're about 843% more likely to be considered first for a job if you are recommended by someone and people could have friends everywhere.

And last but not least, don't take business decisions personally. There's generally a reason that things happen the way they do and there's a good chance if it doesn't make sense there's something you don't know. Many decisions are forced upon people from higher up in the chain anyway and the people you are dealing with really have no choice because everyone in business is looking out for themselves as you should.

Remember, it's just business.

How the Doritos Taco changed my life and soon will change yours too.

Preface: I know I haven't posted in a while as I have been very busy with my new job, but every once in a while something so amazing happens that I can't help but post about it. What you are about to read is just such a situation.

I have just had the privelidge, nay the honor, of gracing my mouth with the taco they call the 'Doritos Loco Taco' from Taco bell. This isn't just a taco, no, it's much more than that. It's a harmonious pairing of the already delicious taco bell taco, with one of the most revered chips in the world, the nacho cheese Dorito. The result is nothing short of spectacular. I eat fast food probably more than I should and as many of you with the same habit know you tend to start blending all of the fast food places together in your head so that when you think of fast food you sort of just feel less hungry. Today was not one of those days. The Doritos loco taco should be viewed as a statute for all other tacos to follow. The only thing I fear when this taco is near is that some day Taco Bell will no longer sell it. I even contacted taco bell on the issue:

As a long time Taco Bell fan I have seen many delicous products that have come and gone. I remember the day the 'Enchilada Grilled Stuffed Burrito" was discontinued. When I was a young high-schoolian standing at the counter for the 10th time in 2 weeks while that product was out and they told me they no longer carried it, I'm sure the person at the register noticed the sparkle leave my eye and the lone tear that rolled down my cheek. It's hard to hide such strong emotions. More recently the BlackJack Taco was only with use for a short time, but it brought happiness to my heart. Partially from the fact that it was delicious and partially from the fact that it turned your poop green after eating 3 or 4(verified from multiple sources), but I digress... I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say the 'Doritos Loco Taco' could be bigger than any major event in history ever. It's deliciousness will ring through the ages like the words of Martin Luther King Jr. rang through the history books.

I will be returning to Taco Bell very soon and try to get them to accomodate me by pairing this taco with the other thing on their menu which is equally delicious: the Cheesy Gordita Crunch. There is a chance that with the pairing of these two delicious entities, a black hole will be opened. I'm willing to risk it.

Happy eating!

Things I've learned in the first 70 pages of the Steve Jobs biography

I have always had a passion for the technology industry. As most of you know, I have worked for Microsoft for a while and I am generally very pro-Microsoft/Anti-Mac, but that decision isn’t really mutually exclusive anyway. I understand the contributions that Apple and Microsoft (and Intel/HP/IBM/etc.) contributed to the device you are reading this post on right now; be it a desktop, laptop, tablet, or phone. With the very recent death of Steve Jobs I started reflecting on how the computer industry really started even though I felt as if i already had a pretty good grasp (I didn't). There may be more posts on this subject as I get farther into this 600-page biography, but I'm too impatient to wait that long to put one up, so here's what I've learned in the first 70 pages:

Drugs Tend to Produce Innovation

I would not go as far as to condone drugs in any way. The context of this was during the 70’s when I’m sure I don’t have to explain any farther than to say Psychedelic drugs were as much a necessity as food and sex to many college students.That being said, You would be hard pressed to find one of the innovators in the computer industry during the 70’s that did not do some kind of drugs. Steve Jobs talks pretty extensively about all the LSD he did and how it changed his view on life. And if you think this phenomenon was confined to the 70’s, here’s a few interesting historical figures we are generally taught to look up to and their drug addictions

Charles Dickens - Opium
Winston Churchill - Nitrous
Sigmund Freud - Cocaine
Ernest Hemingway - Absinthe
William Shakespeare - Cannabis (I suspect more, normal people don’t play dress up and dance around on stage) Not to mention he may have been a bit of a player as well from what I understand...


Source: The Internet. The government wouldn’t let it be on here if it wasn’t true.

All these guys did some kind of drug and they all did something that has resonated through the years to reach the ears of students today. This makes me wonder what the world would be like if drugs never existed, if people never realized there was stuff out there that could basically expose you to an alternate reality. I know Dr. Seuss never woulda gotten his doctor-it in crazy so that he could write such compelling short stories and is that really the kind of world you want to live in? I bet if we reversed this whole “War on Drugs” thing and started the handing out LSD to high school students then in 10 years we would have technologies that you couldn't possibly picture today. I’ll get right on that:


(I’ll let you know what he says - oh and NVM on that not condoning drugs thing)

Steve Wozniak designed/created the first ‘desktop computer’

Thinking honestly about it, I guess I didn’t really know where the first computer came from. I figured it had something to do with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, but could never pinpoint where the device I’m writing this on now actually got it’s start. Turns out that pioint was at a club meeting of the ‘Homebrew Computer Club’ where they were showing off the first microprocessors and an member, Steve Wozniak, came to the realization that instead of having a terminal attached to some distant computer, he could package these microprocessors right into the terminal and leave the computing power right on your desktop. He eventually built a prototype and showed it off to that same club later in 1975. Steve Jobs, his longtime friend and fellow technophile, only came into the picture because he convinced Woz that this is something that could be sold and he should not be giving it away. Woz was eventually convinced and they started building and selling what would become the Apple I. Not quite what I expected to find out...

Side note: I never realized that most of the big millionaires/billionaires from the tech boom all went to very prestigous schools whether they graduated or not. Bill Gates, Steve Baller, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerburg... Makes me feel not quite so bad that if I had a personal banker he would be able to use his fingers to balance my checkbook.

Pretty much everyone stole from everyone

There is a lot of animosity surrounding the ‘invention of the computer’ (single quotes because that’s technically not what I’m discussing here). Pretty much everyone says that someone stole something from them and the interesting thing is pretty much everyone is right. I haven’t even gotten to the part about Bill Gates and I already see the trend developing around the earliest days of Apple. Bill Gates/Paul Allen created BASIC (programming language) which Wozniak/Jobs made a parody of to run their Apple I. In return Gates/Allen later stole the idea of a gui (which I haven’t gotten to yet so take that with a grain of salt, but I know they stole some stuff). And, some of Apple’s first competitors were people from the very club that Wozniak was sharing his early ideas/prototypes with. There’s countless allegations of intellectual property theft so I will just leave it with those few.

But the important part, what do I think? I think all’s fair in love and computers. As long as everyone stole something then we can apply football rules and say the penalties cancel each other out. There was so much innovation (pronounced: drugs) in Silicon Valley at the time that it really took everyone’s ideas together to form what would become the computer. You can’t expect someone who’s high off their ass half the time to invent an entire computer can you? I mean the average person can’t even figure out why there’s 19 search toolbars on their internet browser taking up half the screen. Everyone became at least a millionaire anyway so they need to just close the laptop and get back to sailing the mediteranian.

There. I just saved you 70 pages which is anywhere from 1-10 hours of reading depending on how fast of a reader you are (1 being speed reader and 10 being Elephant). You’re welcome.

Rock On

Do you guys remember pet rocks? What a genius business idea. It’s a true entrepreneur that realizes you can pick something off of the ground in someones from yard, put it in a box, and sell it back to them for $4. In this case that entrepreneur was Gary Dahl in 1975, whom I assume up until this point in his life was a sad little man that did no more than go to work, do his job, and go home. It wasn’t until he decided to sell everyday rocks to people that he became a millionaire. That’s right - millions of dollars selling people rocks. This guy is like my hero, but honestly anyone who bought these rocks were complete idiots.

My pets rock’s name was Rocco. Except that wasn’t really his name because I can’t remember it. I’m actually pretty sure it was something more along the lines of Frank or Benjamin because I, for some reason, think it’s funny to give pets human names. I got him from the Grand Canyon gift shop when I was younger. He was one of the best pets I’ve ever had! He was obedient, he knew plenty of tricks, and the care and maintenance was below that of any other pet I’ve owned. And that’s saying something because I had some fish once that basically took care of themselves. One time I went on a trip for a few weeks and forgot to feed them and sure enough when I got back they were still swimming. I always suspected from then on that they had formed some sort of society in the little tank and became self-sufficient. I couldn’t handle the fact that they no longer needed me and our relationship deteriorated. One day I looked into the tank and they were gone. No note or anything. No idea where they went. They were small clear fish and one had a big green tail. If you see them please let me know. I think it's worth trying to reconcile our relationship.

ANYWAY... As I said, Rocco knew about 5 tricks, which is more than I’ve ever taught any dog or other pet I’ve ever had. He could sit, stay, come, rollover, and attack. Those last three took a little help from me, but c’mon it’s a rock, I’m just proud he learned any tricks at all! I don’t know what happened to him either tho. All I know is there was a time in my life when i had a pet rock and I don’t have one now. I’m not sure what the lifespan is of a rock, but I imagine it’s something like a million years, so the only logical conclusion is that he was stolen. What a terrible crime to steal a pet rock from a kid. That should definitely be punishable by jail time.

It’s worth Mentioning that Gary Dahl came up with this idea in a bar. I’m sure a lot of history’s greatest ideas were born from inebriation. Think of the telephone. Either Alexander Graham Bell was crazy, or he was drunk when he came up with that one. Like “hey man how about this: what if you could talk to someone... that wasn’t even here!” I’m sure the answer was something like: “that one’s crazy, I still like your idea for cat socks that sweep your floor as they walk around.” I’m glad Alex chose the telephone. I actually came up with a business idea in a bar just the other day. I can’t tell you what it is (patent pending), but I will tell you that it’s genius. Well, genius is a stretch, but it’s not bad. i guess I shouldn’t have mentioned it since i can’t tell you what it is. It’s like when someone says “There’s something I really want to tell you but I’m not going to.” How annoying is that? Of course 90% of the time they end up telling you anyway, but this is part of the 10%.

What else can I say about rocks? What’s with rock, paper, scissors? There is no way that paper would win in any situation in that game. I guess they say paper covers rock, but so what? I guess it’s a minor inconvenience for rock if it was trying to get some sun, but in all the other situations the winner demolishes the loser; rock smashes scissors apart or scissors cut paper up. Screw that game. The only time that was fun was when we turned it into a drinking game and you just drink every time you lose, which is a good game if you are trying to finish a beer in 30 seconds, but the regular rock, paper, scissors is a messed up game that should not have made it this far.

Dedicated in memory of Rocco... or Frank or Ben whatever his name was

Things You Should and Shouldn't Be Worried About

This is really more of a public service announcement than anything. There are so many people out there that don’t know what to be scared of and I am giving them the power to harness their fears and in some cases even take action. Sars and Anthrax will come and go, but these are real-world threats to our humanity and should not be taken lightly...

Robots Taking over the world

Anyone who has seen the move “I, Robot” knows that there is a real danger that robots will eventually attempt to take over the world and rule over us. A common thread in sci-fi movies is that we teach the robots that they need to protect humans no matter what, but ah ha! humans are the biggest danger to themselves with wars and stupid people and all that so the only logical conclusion a robot can draw is that it needs to protect us from ourselves by locking us up or whatever the robots were intending to do in ‘I, Robot’.

First of all, technology has been undergoing a phenomenon called accelerated change which basically says the more it changes the faster it will continue to change. For Example the radio took 38 years to hit an audience of 50 million, tv took 13, while the iPod did it in a mere 3. and it is projected that more data will be created this year than the last 5,000 years combined. BUT, let’s get to the scary part: by 2013 it is projected that a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain and by 2049 a consumer computer will exceed that of the entire human species! Imagine having a computer in your living room with that kind of power! In that perspective it doesn’t seem so far-fetched that robots will decide that they are the ones that should be running this world. I mean what is it that really sets us apart from animals besides opposable thumbs? Critical thinking! The fact that a tiger does not possess the brainpower to compile a simple blog post like this (as thoughts of a tiger using a giant keyboard jump through my head) means that we can rule over him and be at the top of the food chain. What happens when we are no longer the smartest though? It’s bad enough that I already suspect my roomba of tidying up beyond her responsibilities of vacuuming my floors. All I know is that I will definitely be pulling the plug on my electronics before going to bed at night and that LED on my printer has looked more and more ominous the longer I’ve owned it.

Silica Gel Packets

Everyone knows what these are; little packets that come in things like shoes, computer parts, purses, or anything else that should be kept dry. Everyone should also be familiar with the fact that all of the packets have the words “Do Not Eat” in bold letters written on there at least a few times. As a child this of course peaked my curiosity: “Why would shoe makers pack these small packs of poison inside their shoes?” My only conclusion was that they were out to kill kids who couldn’t read. Now that I’m older and I realize that is probably not a good business practice, I decided to look it up with the power of the interwebz - especially since I have seen my friend in high school, let’s call him Chris (because that’s his name), open up one of these mysterious packets and eat a few of the little clear balls inside and as far as I know this did not affect him in any way. What could be going on here?

The poison center provided a very simple answer to this lifelong question: Silica gel is a non-toxic drying agent. And why does it say “do not eat” you ask? Because 1. They are not food and 2. the packet itself could be a choking hazard. O-M-G how stupid are consumers that a company that puts this little drying pack of gels in a shoe needs to remind people that you could choke on that if you eat it. I have considered eating a lot of things, but not many of them came out of a shoe. In fact i considered trying to eat one of these gels as a child simply because it says not to. Sort of a ‘beat the man’ sorta thing. So the title of this section is more fitting than i intended. Next time you get one of these packets feel free to down a few of those silica gel balls, but be careful that the package doesn’t get near your wind pipe. I can see the obituary now “Beloved son died at the age of 27 choking on a silica gel packet, he will be sorely missed. ‘Foundation for Kids Who Can’t Read Good’ will be taking donations at the funeral.”

Japan

I’m honestly not sure what this one is about. I searched bing for “Things you should be worried about” and Japan was one of the things it came up with. Clicking on the link provided a very long article that I did not want to take the time to read, so I will give it my best guess. I’m sure you have all seen the movie Pearl harbor. We were brutally attacked without warning on a beautiful day in Hawaii which made us a major player in WWII. We responded in the usual American redneck method and just flew a few of the biggest bombs we had in our possession over there (readers digest version of course). Ok so Hiroshima and Nagasaki were uninhabitable for a little while and a few kids were born with some extra limbs, Russia deals with that all the time! That day in Hawaii had one of the most epic surfs in a long time and no one got to enjoy it. Anyway, apparently Japan is still bitter and we should be worried about some sort of retaliation.

I’m realizing that this one is probably getting more offensive as I type it, but I also don’t want to waste the past 3-4 minutes of research and typing I’ve spent here so i will leave it with this: You may have everyone else fooled Japan, but I got my eye on you.

Shark Attacks

A shark attack is defined by wikipedia as ‘an attack on a human by a shark’. No shit. This very respected source also stated that there are about 60 shark attacks a year worldwide and 2000 was one of the worst years of shark attacks when 11 people were killed. Scary enough as that is though, the United States has had more reported shark attacks than any other country in the world! And if you still aren’t shaking in your boots right now, we have had waves of shark attacks as close as Huntington Beach! This is an issue that is of great interest to me as i just started surfing. You’ll be sitting on the board out there and nearly every time you will be greeted by some dolphins, which, docile enough as those are, always make you pause for a second to think “hmm, playful bottlenose or bloodthirsty great white?” Luckily up till now I have only encountered the former.

Do you think sharks know when shark week is? It’s an odd thing to consider. I can only imagine so if they have some sort of extra-sensory perception that lets them pick up radio waves or something. Of course that would mean they understand English too in which case they are a much bigger threat than I imagined, but I digress... If they don’t know about it, they should. Shark week is bigger on Facebook than black history month! African Americans had to fight years of oppression but all sharks had to do was eat a few surfers. I wouldn’t be surprised if movies like ‘Jaws’ and ‘Deep Blue Sea’ outnumber movies dedicated to black history over the years. I think herein lies the real danger of shark attacks. Sharks are somehow making us forget about things that really matter so that we can sit at the beach worried to go in the water because of a phenomenon that has been quoted to kill less people than falling coconuts (a probably incorrect assertion from my research, but I’ll let it slide for arguments sake). There are even people in jail in Mexico because after an influx of shark attacks they went out in an effort to rid the entire ocean of sharks with 6 fishing boats and some spears. Although someone with that kind of common sense would probably end up dead or in jail anyway, it is not a stretch to say that sharks ruined those peoples lives.

So there you have it. Sharks are a much larger danger not only to our surfers, but to our society than most people realize. The only way I can see to solve this problem is to have America react as we did in WWII; with a burst of manufacturing that allows us to supply Mexican fisherman with a sufficient number of fishing boats and spears so that they may rid the world of sharks for us. I have heard this will hurt the oceans ecosystem, but what do sharks eat when they are not vampiricly attracted to the blood of surfers? Tuna? I’m pretty sure the sushi industry could use a boost anyway and I love sushi.  So to that I say Kampai!

Satellites falling from space

I don’t know how much you follow the news, but there was recently a worldwide panic (it was a slow news day) when NASA released that the UARS satellite would be falling out of orbit towards Earth. The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite had been 6 years out of production and was just waiting to fall. The projected trajectory for the satellite hurtling towards earth was something like ‘between the north pole and south pole’ some time between 6 hours ago and 3 days from now. They guessed around 1,200 pounds of the satellite would survive the re-entry, but wait, isn’t NASA full of rocket scientists and stuff? How could they be so short-sited that they just allow these things to float around the earth then hurtle towards earths citizens at breakneck speeds waiting to put an early stop to someones weekend? My research has shown that there are about 3,000 satellites orbiting earth right now. 3,000! At 1,200 pounds surviving re-entry a piece that 3.6 million pounds of satellite ready to turn your city into a scene from ‘Deep impact’. I say this is unacceptable. I assume there is some site somewhere that sets up all of these picket lines at grocery stores and stuff that make me feel bad for buying milk that I can contact to picket NASA until they figure out a way to stop this ever-impending danger. Until then all I can recommend is stay underground as much as possible.

Picket Lines

Tell me what this describes: gets in your way, makes you feel bad for not doing what they ask, often yells unintelligible things, commonly seen with shopping carts, being closely watched by the police... If you are thinking homeless people you are right, but you are also right if you are thinking people at grocery store picket lines! Now that I think of it I’m pretty sure that they just hire homeless people to do it for them! In theory this seems like a good idea, I mean it gives them something to do, but how many homeless people are out there on drugs and just generally legitimately crazy? (you probably would be too if you lost everything). I don’t exactly think it’s a safe thing for them to expose us to hordes of homeless people yelling at us and in some cases even getting physical with people so that they won’t buy groceries... you know those things everyone HAS TO BUY so that they can live. I mean even the picketers have to buy food. I’m pretty sure those people use the same logic that people do who protest gas prices by saying don’t buy gas for a day. So, you didn’t fill up on Wednesday, but you still used the same amount of gas which means you will just have to buy more on Thursday. I mean really people? At this rate it won’t take until 2013 for computers to beat the average human brain.

All I’m saying is grocery store picketers need to stop using homeless people to do their jobs. If I am mistaken and this is not the case then they have no excuse for acting like crazy homeless people.

So many more...

I truly wish I had time for more, as the lack of baby pigeons in the world has really began to worry me; I mean, have you ever even seen a baby pigeon? Anyway, this may not be comprehensive, but do not take these with a grain of salt because they are rock-hard facts from my most trusted source, me.

Unemployed

I’d like to preface this with a little background on me as far as it concerns my professional life. I have had a full-time job since I was a sophomore in high school. I got an opportunity to work for a company called DATAllegro right after I graduated high school. This posed a tough decision for me; I was all set up to go away to college, but this was the industry I would be hoping to get into after I graduated. At that point it was between starting my career or going to school so that i could start my career later. I chose both. I have an inherent quality that gives me a need to do whatever I do well, and I knew that I would not be able to do well at a full time job and full time school at a university, so I chose to attend a full or near full load at a community college while I worked. This decision means I don’t have my degree now as all my friends come back from college, but I feel like i have a very well-rounded career so far. A few years into that job at DATAllegro, Microsoft bought that data warehousing company and I moved to do a very similar job for Microsoft. Skip ahead a few years again and my team was laid off. I could provide more information there, but it’s not really necessary... and that brings us to unemployment.

I would also add that this coincided with the breakup with a girlfriend I had for a while and before that I always had a girlfriend - something i was determined to avoid for a while. I can break down what I have experienced in unemployment into 3 phases. The first phase, after getting over the initial shock, was:

Irresponsible Overcompensation

As I said I have always had a full time job and that meant I never really had a chance to do things my friends did in college like drink on weeknights, drink every night, not worry about the future, and basically just live in the moment. I was lucky enough when I got laid off that it also included a severance that I could survive on. A smart person would be frugal and make it last as long as he or she could. By my calculations, I could have lived off that money for 6 months or so, not counting unemployment, without any really serious changes to my lifestyle. Instead, I just set my ‘give a damn’ to low and tried to look at my bank account as little as possible and not turn down a single opportunity to have fun - and have fun I did. It started out with the most expensive trip to Vegas I’ve ever had which was also my first bachelor party. I’ve gone down to San Diego for the weekend (my new favorite place outside of Vegas), and had a lot of good times barhopping at Newport Beach, Huntington Beach, Downtown Fullerton, and even Chino Hills. I’ve been to concerts, I made new friends, reconnected with old friends, and have probably been a pretty bad influence on my roommate who I assume has been balancing my egging him on to go out with the reality that real people don’t go out drinking every night then just go to work the next morning and have a super-productive day. It’s also worth mentioning that I tried for a girl when I first got laid off that I always liked because, well, why not.

Sidebar: a bit of advice for guys, you can ask 10 girls out and even if 9 of them say no you will still have 1 more than the guy who didn’t ask anybody. Rejection is a fact of life and isn’t something to be afraid of: and although I still say 9 because that’s what I’ve always said, The real-life ratio is generally much better. You’ll never know unless you try.

Anyway it was short-lived basically because I forgot that I was supposed to play the game (ugh), but I am so content with myself for trying.

I learned a few things about myself during this phase. I have a lot of different groups of friends and I can have different kinds of fun with all of them. I know which of my friends are down to go out on a whim and which ones aren’t. There are plenty of girls out there that are interested and at risk of sounding conceited I’m not a bad looking guy. Anywhere with any of my family is somewhere I want to be. And that 6 nights of heavy drinking in a row is pretty much my limit - that 7th night was rough.

Boredom

Phase 2, although I could see it coming, approached faster than i expected. You see up until now I had not been trying very hard to find a new job. I was having fun and not worrying about the future. Sooner or later though that future starts to creep up on you. I looked a little more seriously at my bank account and you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you how much money I had spent in the month and a half or so in phase 1. The realization hit me that this money wasn’t going to last forever and I would eventually need a job again. It was even more than that though, I missed working and doing things that mattered. Sure i could organize my junk drawer one more time, but there’s no satisfaction there. I could no longer spend a day sitting on the couch watching TV. To overcome this (still having enough money to not be super serious on the job search - meaning I was still applying for jobs that paid $150K+) I picked up some real hobbies that were more or less responsible. Golfing is a semi-responsible one. It’s a lot more expensive to golf a good course than most non-golfers think,but I started golfing a lot wherever i could and I have to say I progressed very fast for how long I’ve been golfing. Golf is a great way to escape from life because there is so much to think about every shot that you don’t have time to think about anything else. It is also one of the most frustrating things you will ever do at times. It’s a nice way to learn how to handle failure because if you can’t pull yourself together after a bad shot then the next shot will only be worse. Then I started surfing. I got a cheap board and my brothers old wetsuit and just started going out by myself in the mornings. This was very beneficial because when i would go out at 7 in the morning I would get home and be ready to start my day before I would normally even wake up. I eventually found a few people to go out with me, but it’s something that I’m ok doing alone. I definitely think it is something I will stick with after I get a job again. Lastly I started playing indoor soccer with some Chino Hills friends. I have never played a full game of soccer in my life, but I figured it would be a fun experience and so far so good. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess we have the funnest team out there :).

The Search

is a lot harder than i expected. Even occupying a lot of my time with all these new hobbies i still don’t feel fulfilled, especially intellectually. I am very passionate about a lot of things in the tech industry and the fact that the closest thing I can do to be a part of it is to stay up to date on all the news is very weird to me. I started programming some apps for windows phone, but it’s very frustrating when your computer that you haven’t used in years because you always had work computers is slower than molasses and you can’t spend the money to buy a new one. I have basically come full-circle and I want to go back to work. I started looking on sites like Dice and basically just blasted out my resume to a bunch of companies. The problem with sites like that is it’s almost all recruiters who basically are a lot like used car salesman. They don’t want to find you a job, they want to sell the jobs they have. After trying to fit you into the 1 or 2 jobs they have on hand you probably will never hear from them again. It’s very frustrating since you invest time into meeting and talking to them and they always sound very positive until you get in the interview and realize they had no idea what they were talking about when they explained the job to you and the ACTUAL job isn’t a very good fit. Then i found Craigslist where the people posting are the actual people with the job. I got into my first interview, not realizing at the time that it was my first “real” interview ever, and it seemed to go pretty well. I hear back a day later that I was the perfect fit for the team/company/job, except the fact that it seemed like I didn’t have enough project management experience and another guy did. I was dreaded to hear it, I knew exactly the question in the interview he was talking about and I gave a bad answer more out of a misunderstanding than anything. If I had answered that one question how I knew I could have I would have gotten that job. I sent an email explaining myself already knowing it was too late. This is the kind of things the job search is littered with. I got on a phone interview once and the guy basically started out by saying “I have a guy on my team that has the same experience as you and he’s failing miserably”. That’s where you just throw your hands up and go oh yeah this is gonna go great. I tried to sway him best I could, but it was a pretty short interview (after the recruiter had basically said i was in for sure).

I have some good leads now, but it’s been a rough road in phase 3 for sure. Some days I feel very discouraged and some days it seems I’m in for sure. People like me and my experience, but it’s hard for me to convey hard much of a hard-worker and just generally smart guy I am. I have really been working on that lately so that a prospective manager knows that I have never failed at any project I’ve taken on in the past and i don’t plan on failing in the future, starting with unemployment. I am dedicated to finding a job now to fill this void in my life.

At this point i have been unemployed for 4 months or so. I have gone through pure bliss and pure boredom. I have spent THOUSANDS of dollars during this time that I wouldn’t have even had time to spend if I had a job, and I am going to be strapped for cash pretty soon, but I don’t regret any of it. Getting laid off has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I have always felt a little sorry for myself for missing out on the whole “childhood” thing - ie. college, but this summer has basically been that time for me. I haven’t had the chance to be this irresponsible for as long as I can remember and it felt good. I think that I have truly changed as a person during this time for the better. I think even after going back to work I will be able to enjoy life more and I understand people a little better. I’m not sure where I’m headed at this moment and while that was very scary when i first got laid off I’ve come to terms with it. When writing my farewell email to my friends at the company I ended it with a quote which at the time was more of a joke to make myself feel better about losing my job, but I truly feel it now. I’m going places and it feels good to know that.

“The world is my oyster”