Category Archives: About Me - Page 27

The Same And Different

Posted by on March 21, 2015 No comments

Last night, I got the strange urge to play the keyboard.  Although my posts make me sound like it’s something I do all the time or it’s something that I’m constantly re-inspiring myself to do, the truth is, I don’t play all that much.

So, when I sat down, I kind of bopped around wondering what I should play and if there was anything I could still remember.  Then it started coming back to me again.  And I played and I kept on playing.  As would be expected, my stamina wasn’t all that great and my accuracy on the notes was a little faulty, but for the most part, my hands went where they should have.

Today, I played a little more.  I guess my hands got a little sore from the workout last night because I couldn’t play as much.  But while I was playing, I did my little daydreaming about being a rock star (or some kind of star).  I thought about how my technique was crap and how I may get criticism for how “poorly” I play.

But then the realization dawned on me that some of the most innovative players were not formally trained and had a style of playing that was unconventional.  Why should I be any different.  In fact, I might say that it would require a personal technique in order to play in an unheard fashion.  And it would make it harder for someone to imitate you.  You would have your unique sound because it’s done with a playing style only you know.

And that naturally made me think outside the world of music at how having your own style for everything is important.  It’s not good to be exactly like the crowd, but you do need to have some “accessibility.”  I’ve heard a lot of music that doesn’t sit right with me and I’ve seen a lot of people that just don’t sit right with me as well.  Maybe people should strive to be unique and accessible.  Although lately, I think that some people are taking the individualism stuff a little too far.

And, as an off-topic aside, playing keyboards yesterday and today made a significant change in my typing: faster and more accurate.  I had been lamenting lately how bad my typing was becoming because I could barely type a sentence without having a typo.  I’d be constantly stopping and correcting things and it was slowing me down drastically.  I think I may have just found a solution for this.  That’s a happy discovery.

Time and Money and Pots and Trees

Posted by on March 18, 2015 No comments

So the last few months have been spent in what I’ve been calling “austerity.”  The trick is, you give something a somewhat clever name and you will get more enticed to see it succeed.

But the end result has been positive.  Prior to starting this exercise, I was blowing my budget on my credit card spending.  Usually, that’s not bad because the budget isn’t the full amount I have available.  Then I started blowing through that buffer and had to start drawing from savings.  That wasn’t as bad as it could be because I had some silent transfers into the savings account.  But it was bad.  My savings account balance was about cut in half and I began to get worried.

However, at the same time, I paid off the car loan and did a refinance on my second mortgage, so that was two monthly payments that immediately went into savings.  Then I went hard-core and eliminated all extra spending except for food and gas.  That has been very productive.  I’ve been slowly draining my savings account for probably a couple of years now, and even with the replenishment I’ve been doing lately, it’s still at only 50% of its peak value.

Right now, I can see the future balance forecasts and they look great.  I look at the amounts being deposited and I think, “I could be buying (this gadget) every paycheck with that money.”  And somehow, that really puts things in a sad perspective.  Every paycheck, I could be buying some neat new toy.  One thing, for all that money.  That makes it seem like I’m not saving that much at all.  Then you all all those together and it’s like, “that’s really not a lot of money at all.”

Wait a minute.  I had a spending problem where I persuaded myself that I wasn’t spending a lot of money, now I have a savings problem where I feel like I’m not saving a lot of money.  What a mental mess this is.  So let’s look at it from another perspective.

They say you should have 6 (used to be 1, then 3, now 6) months worth of income saved for emergencies.  So right now, I’m at almost 3 months. To get to 6 months savings, it’s going to take maybe another 4-5 months of my current effort.  What’s that say?  I’m saving 33% of my pay by “hiding money” and another 14% in voluntary savings.  My fixed expenses are about 25% of my net pay a month.  Almost half my pay is being saved.  I shouldn’t feel bad about that at all.

So why do I feel bad?  Is it the watched pot never boiling?  Is it a case where I can’t see the forest for the trees?  Is it a psychosis like washing your hands over and over and never believing they’re clean?  That’s what I’m worried about.  I have to keep reminding myself things are good and I’m on track.  But does that mean I can give myself permission to spend?  And then what?  Will I fall back into my over-spending habits?  I have a big list of things I want.  I don’t need any of them.

We’ll revisit this in a couple of months.

Revamp

Posted by on March 12, 2015 No comments

In the continuing theme of rebuild and reinvent this year, I took the sledgehammer to my website.  It’s something that has been needing torn down for many years.  The idea of a website going without an update for… 10 years (?!) is unheard of.  Unless the site is truly dead.

But I’m not dead yet.  And I decided to redo the website in a much simplified version.  Gone is the whole “About Us” page, making me seem like some big firm of developers.  Gone are the Software and Support sections that really only had a couple of items in them.  Who was I trying to impress?

Back when I started, there was this pressure to always seem like a consummate professional and always like a huge organization, because no one would take you seriously otherwise.  As time and experience went on, I realized, I didn’t need any of that validation.

Now I’m down to two whole pages, but I have links to other whole websites I’m doing, so that makes my site more what it should be: a portal to my other work.

And part of that website is another blog, so maybe that will get revived as well.  Let’s see last post was…October 2012.  Sigh.

Get To The Point

Posted by on March 4, 2015 No comments

It’s somewhat shocking to me to see the way I’ve changed as I’ve aged.  One thing that recently struck me is the way I write.  I wandered onto another person’s blog and this person fancied himself a writer.  Every sentence had a level of pomposity that even the word pomposity doesn’t even express.  By that, I mean his writing was excessively flowery.  I thought, geez, I used to write like that.

I have no idea why I used to do it or why I stopped.  I must assume, like with many things as I got older, the question became, “Who am I trying to impress, here?”  The answer most every time was, it doesn’t matter.

But, I could still write like that if I wanted to.  But when I read stuff like that after writing, it sounds overdone.  If you can’t get the point across in normal language, advanced vocabulary isn’t going to help you.  Maybe it’s because I now write much more factual content and less fiction.  Fiction is a place where descriptive, verbose, and picturesque language should be used – to transport the reader.  When you are writing instructions, you don’t want to transport the reader anywhere. You want to get shit done.

Ah, romance.  That fleeting, etheric sensation that compels a man to remove himself from his left-brained, analytical prison and dash madly to the fountain of life.  To drink deeply of the youth and vigor that had previously been tucked away in the recesses of his being, like a book scorned and discarded as too childish and fantastical for the adult he wished to be.  Unhand that child, villain!

That’s how it reads to me.  A bunch of independent words that each strike an emotional note and end up as a cacophonic disaster.  Sure, some people do it better than others, and some even do it worse than that contrived mish-mash I spit up.

And the reason I wrote this is because I found an old archive disk with documents – old documents – on it and I’m deathly afraid to open them.  On the other hand, maybe writing a story parodying that style would be good for me.  The whole, “so bad, it’s good” could be something I excel at.  I mean, what the hell, Fifty Shades of Grey exists, right?

Me And My Blog

Posted by on February 27, 2015 No comments

I just finished reading a blog post about blogging.  The main content of the post seemed geared to doing blogging as a profession and as a way to make money.  It got me wondering when things changed?

No, I’m not really that dumb.  I know blogging, once it became mainstream, was a critical marketing and sales tool.  I guess at this point, my thoughts are, why is it still considered the way to do things?  And, like many cases where I read something that insists I need to do something differently to do it correctly, I question myself.

I made a milestone post a while ago describing my relationship with my blog.  It’s a personal journal, like me just talking to myself or to no one in specific.  And just right there, I violated another recommendation.  I didn’t link to the post where I mentioned that.  I do internal links extremely infrequently, which is considered bad.  I actually do very few links of any kind.  Why?  Because I think a link encourages distraction.  Someone has probably done some study of the pros and cons of hyperlinks vs. footnotes.  One providing instant additional information but possibly containing other information that hasn’t been covered yet, and the other allowing you to absorb the entire document before seeking additional info.

So let me explain my relationship with my blog, contrasted with other social media options.  This is a journal, first and foremost.  I can use it to search and remember what life was like for me at that time.  This blog does have some pretty low points in its records.  Although I could accomplish the same thing in Facebook, there’s a significant difference.  On FB, if I’m bitching, gloating, bragging, or whining, I’m doing it in front of my chosen audience.  Likewise, people are doing it to me when I am in their chosen audience.  But in my blog, even if the reader knows who I am, the blog is not directly attributable to my name. 

Here’s another way to put it.  Making a post on FB is saying, “I want everyone who is friends with me to know I said this.”  Making a post on my blog is saying, “I want anyone who cares to know this.”  See the difference?  The blog doesn’t directly attribute a statement to me.  It’s the same reason I don’t watermark any photographs.  I may not get credit for cool stuff, but I won’t get flack for bad stuff either.

Welcome To The Jungle Gym

Posted by on February 18, 2015 No comments

I’ve had a very strong feeling that 2015 is going to be a good year.  And the proof just keeps mounting.  One of the things you have to always manage is a sense of gratitude for what you have.  You have to stay realistic and remember that not everyone is successful – for a multitude of reasons.

The reason for this post is that my girlfriend recently entered the white-collar world for the first time.  She got the job for two reasons, both of which are very important for seekers.  First, she made it a priority to know more than anyone else in her desired profession.  I encouraged professional certifications instead of a generic college degree.  Second, she networked heavily.  She volunteered when she could and offered assistance for whatever event she was available.  To tweak an oft-used bemoaning, it is both what you know and who you know.

I went through the same stuff many years ago, but at the time, I didn’t have the same perspective that I have now.  I am able to look at my girlfriend’s situation and see how crazy it is when you become a professional.  I mean, everything changes.  One day you’re wondering what days you’ll be working next week and then, bam, you have a solid work schedule.  You used to share a break room with all your co-workers, now, here’s your office.  You used to pore over offerings from ObamaCare trying to find one that was good enough for what you could afford, now, here’s your company health plan.  And here’s membership to a credit union, and here’s your vehicle you’ll use during work, and here’s enough money to live on.

It’s probably overwhelming for anyone that’s in that transition, and for an outside observer, it can be shocking to a degree as well.  What got me was that it was almost like winning a lottery.  Don’t get me wrong, there was no luck involved here.  It was earned through a lot of study and honest self-promotion.  My background thought was for all the others that haven’t gotten there yet.  Maybe they don’t know enough yet, maybe they don’t know or haven’t impressed the right people to fight on their behalf.  You just can’t show up and say, “I’ll take that job.”

So to everyone that is searching, know what you want, know it inside and out, and find the people who can get you there.

2014 In Spam

Posted by on January 27, 2015 No comments

It was in April of 2013 that I made a change to the way I use my email.  Unlike most people, I don’t just have an email address, I have an email domain.  And I use that entire domain namespace by creating a specific email address for every business I deal with.

My email server processes the emails against a blacklist instead of a whitelist.  That means that I can create any email address I want, and it will get delivered to me unless I put it on a list to be blocked.  That reduces the amount of administrative headache I have.

The purpose of this is so that I can tell where my emails are being lost, stolen, or sold.  The instances of this in 2014 were pretty low.  Someone got my paypal email from someone I did business with, some political spammer used a public records request to get my electric company email, and one website’s user database got hacked (and they won’t admit to it).

What I was a little fearful of when creating this wildcard email account was that some automated script would hit my mail server and try a whole slew of predictable emails, like admin@, webmaster@, accounting@, president@, etc.  My wildcard account would catch these and I’d get inundated with mail.  However, this hasn’t happened yet.  I did get some spam by someone who guessed an email address using the firstname.lastname@ structure, so that email was then blocked.

My blacklist only has 6 entries, which I think is pretty good.  And to not have any spam is plenty wonderful.  I just did some checking and it seems my mail server software is rather old.  I think an upgrade will be in order sometime this year.

Ask No Questions, Get No Answers

Posted by on December 30, 2014 No comments

I performed a brief social experiment today that gave me some surprising, and yet unsurprising, results.

At work, our break room has a TV.  And during break time, invariably, someone wants the TV to be going.  Sometimes, it’s HGTV, or sometimes sports, and one time, it was Jerry Springer.  Since I’m not a fan of TV in general, I’m annoyed.

Today, with no one around, I changed the TV to a dead channel.  I thought that would annoy other people.  I speculated that someone would immediately grab the remote and change the channel.  Instead, people just assumed the cable was out and didn’t even try to change it.  Some people were mocking the cable company, some people speculated that it was the weather.  No one ever looked to see if any other channels worked.

I like this and may do it often in the future.

Hard Drives

Posted by on December 22, 2014 No comments

If there’s one thing that’s true about me it’s that I drive a lot.  I drive a lot. Like on the order of at least 30k miles a year.  So cars and driving have always been part of what I do.  I have no issue driving an hour to get some food.  Lately, I’ve been evaluating how much time a day I might be losing to driving, but that’s for a different post.

It was in May, 2010 that I got my roadster and it didn’t change my driving frequency at all.  I still drove all over the place; I just enjoyed it more.  But the car did open up a few different doors.  It introduced me to the social aspects of having a specialized car.

The first thing I got involved with was an enthusiast club.  People who all owned the same make of car and just got together to hang out and talk car stuff.  I’m not exactly a social person, but I tried for a few months.  I’m also not really a gearhead, so I couldn’t really get into the conversation topics they liked.  So eventually, I drifted off.

One of the things they did discuss at the club meetings was racing.  And those discussions introduced me to autocrossing, which is a timed solo race on a closed track.  Autocross is less about speed and more about technical precision.  So I got involved in that and performed averagely.  One of the biggest things it did for me is allow me to answer “yes” when someone asks me about my car and asks if I race it.  That usually isn’t what they expect to hear.  It also educated me on the limits of my car’s ability, which proved to be far above what I would have imagined.

While participating in Autocross, another idea was tossed around – the road rally.  And this weekend, I was finally able to participate in one.  The rally wasn’t like what you see glamorized through insane photos of cars in midair or bashing through the countryside; it was simply a scavenger hunt done through vehicles.  Now of course, having a nimble sports car will help you when you need to stop immediately or do a quick 180 to go back and get a required photo, which did happen.  But yes, it did also happen that at one point we were driving 68mph on a 2-lane back road and another that we were driving 87mph and got passed by another team who was behind on time.  In the end, it was a rollercoaster experience, thinking we were most likely going to finish last in points and ended up coming in first with a 100 point lead.

So now I can say “yes” with even more confidence when asked about racing.

Dream Log

Posted by on December 15, 2014 No comments

Had a weird dream a few nights ago.  So weird, I had to keep reminding myself about it so I wouldn’t forget it like most dreams.

I was on this trip or tour or excursion with a bunch of people to a massive art project.  It was in a huge, multi-story building and the project was by David Byrne of Talking Heads fame.  The building was probably 12 stories high, but for whatever reason, we were going to start at level 9.  The idea was to work your way down to the bottom while taking in the sights.

The sights, as designed by the artist, were simply rooms presenting a different scene.  These scenes represented the gamut of emotional responses, from boring, to humorous, to shocking, to familiar, and on and on.  Very much something David Byrne would come up with.

The thing about the exhibit is that it was such a massive building, you couldn’t see all the scenes in one visit and that was how it was designed.  You would be on a guided tour and maybe the guide was showing you scenes in a particular order to create the expected emotional responses, not unlike how a song evokes emotions, or in longer form, a concert.  Still, very Byrne-esqe.

One of the ridiculous, obviously-a-dream details is that because there was no defined path through the building and you couldn’t tell your way around from room to room, a path was created with mud that had the consistency of chocolate pudding.  You would just walk through the muddy path, following the guide.

Well, another tourist and I decided that we didn’t want to miss out on any of the rooms in the exhibit, so we were going to break from the pack and see as much as we could.  It was understood that this behavior wasn’t discouraged, so we did it.  After seeing a couple of other rooms, we wondered how we were going to keep track of which rooms we’d seen already.  I had the idea of smearing some of the guide path mud on the door so we could identify which we’d seen already.  It was a good idea and we continued, eventually lagging behind and losing our group.

Now alone, I started to get a little concerned about being in this huge building where the rooms connected without any sense and some looked very similar to others so you couldn’t exactly make your way through it with memory.  Then I noticed that the group’s muddy trail was drying up and disappearing…

As that fear was building in me, I turned to my companion and asked if the desk we were at was the same one we had seen just a little bit ago.  I looked closely at it but couldn’t tell if I had smeared some mud on it or not.  And it this point, I kind of knew we were lost.

I woke up shortly after that.  As I kept reminding myself of some of the details, I started coming up with more things that could have happened, but I think those were probably influenced memories.