Random Stuff

Most things that kids pick up along the way or show an interest in usually fade at some point. I wanted to stunt ride motorcycles when I was a kid. I also wanted to be an artist. I had a lot of skill with both. From time to time I still pick up a pencil and sketch, though now quite unpracticed. I still like to wheelie my motorcycle, though I’m not willing to launch and tabletop my current motorcycle in the air. But my real interest in those faded to nothing more than an occasional hobby.

My youngest has been pecking at keys on various pianos and toy electric keyboards since I can remember. But he never really showed anything other than what you hear from most kids when given a toy that makes noise. But for his 13th birthday last august, I gave him a nice electronic keyboard.

This keyboard has a lot of cool stuff on it. It’s big enough to require a stand, plays several hundred different instruments, has background beats, has a MIDI port and USB port to hook to a computer, and is has some very special features. It has built in lessons. Take any of the sample songs and it shows the notes and keys being played on a LCD screen. It has a mode where it won’t play a note if it’s not the correct note. It has record and playback.

One day shortly after giving him his keyboard, I jokingly asked if he could play Mozart yet. He couldn’t, of course. But a couple of months later he actually played a good bit of Mozart for me. Not just the first few notes, but a good long bit of it. He began playing other songs that he has picked up along the way, now he is teaching himself to read sheet music and is using both hands and all of his fingers. In just a few months. No lessons. And he plays good! Yesterday he played a tune that I don’t recognize, but I am just amazed at how good it is. It’s actually nice to sit and listen to him play around on his keyboard every night because it’s not just pecking, it’s playing. Listening to him play a little bit of a song, then a little bit more, then some more, to the point where I sometimes think it’s one of the built in songs I am listening to until he makes a mistake. Then he stops, pokes the right keys, then tries again.

I am going to be getting him lessons as soon as his grades stabilize a bit. But it would be wrong of me to let that talent be squandered because of lack of direction.

I bring this up because after a choir concert tonight, his choir teacher told me “He is very, very talented! He needs to keep singing and playing! Very talented!”

I have a feeling I am going to have to choose between one or the other. It can’t be both. No I’m not talking about girls. I am being courted by two different companies.

Both are very solid. Both seem to be great places to work. People I’ve talked to and met have had nothing but good words to say and have very low attrition rates.

One is on the bleeding edge of technology for technology itself. It will be technology that will be used throughout the industry. Fun and exciting stuff. Working across a multitude of operating systems and devices. When I saw what they had to offer I said “Wow! That’s Cool!” which hasn’t happened in a long time. Of a company of 100, 65 are engineers. Not managers.

The other is not in the technology industry, but would be giving me a lead position where I build their build process from the ground up and establishing policy. They are the leading competitor in their industry and their business model is outstanding. They are pre IPO and in the black(as the recruiter’s ad stated). The people I met there are great people.

But… 

The hi-tech company will probably get bought. Some major player will want it and buy it. This may not happen and is pure speculation, but I have seen this happen on a regular basis throughout the years. I could just imagine being sold back to Microsoft (is it weird that I had a dream about this once?). Either that or once their flagship product is out there, what do they do for an encore? Will I be looking for another job when the patents expire? Or when they are bought? It is a bit on the risky side.

The other company is not in the tech industry. They sell a service and the software I would be building is only for internal use. It’s no small product, but it’s no operating system either. Would I get bored because I’m not out there on the edge anymore? Not shipping a product to the world? Not working on a piece of software that I could point to on just about any given day and say “I had an impact on that!”

I think I already know the answer. But I need to wait and see.

Why am I entertaining these options? In addition to not being challenged where I am at, there are a number of other things that I see that I can’t talk about because of the NDA I signed with Microsoft as well as the NDA I signed with my current employer. My conscience is telling me to say something, but I can’t without legal repercussions. It’s a bad situation that I am in. As well as being bored.

World tour in 90 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGbOi5I_uQw

 And hopefully it will be stuck in your head the rest of the day

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6491255.stm

Taiwan will be closing down a mojor highway to allow for the safe migration of the purple milkweed butterfly.

I get headaches quite a bit. Sometimes they last an hour or two, other times they last for a few days coming and going. For the most part they are just an annoyance. I’ve been living with them all my life. I can connect them to diet, sleep, exhaust fumes, and stress. But every now and then I get a migraine that is so bad that it is disabling. It started yesterday and lasted through today. No amount of aspirin, sleep, or soaking my head in the shower helped. Right now it’s not bad. My head still hurts, but otherwise I’m doing OK. But today in general was a very bad day.

Hopefully I have a big change coming up. Can’t say anything right now because I don’t know for sure, but within the next couple of weeks I should be able to say something.

I’ve updated a link on my sidebar. It was “Just cat”, now it’s “Traveling Cat”, her travel blog. Cat is one of those people who inspired me to travel. Right now she is doing work in Africa. She posts regular updates and pictures of her travels on a regular basis.

New link on the sidebar. WhereTheHellIsMatt.com

I first stumbled on the first video Matt made and thought it was absolutely wonderful. I watched it and now his second video several times, and each time, it gets to me.

It fuels the travel bug in me and makes me want to get out and go somewhere right now. I start looking at all the places shown in the two videos and I start thinking about when I will see those same places.

It gives me hope. It’s a goofy dance he does, but he is doing it around the world. He is out there making a difference just by meeting people and being himself. In turn he is showing us just how great the world and it’s people can be.

He’s made an impact. Out of his first video and now his second, he has started a movement of sorts with other people doing similar videos in different places around the world.

Go check them out for yourself. I dare you not to smile.

On occasion my cell phone will not ring because of bad signal in my house. Last night at 9pm my phone suddenly decided to pick up just enough signal to let me know I had voice-mail. So I checked it to hear a recorded message stating that I needed to call this particular 800 number and it wasn’t a sales or political call.

“Bill collector” I thought. I got quite familiar with those calls when dealing with my ex’s debt. I called the number to find the offices of “Bay Area Credit Services” closed.

I called them again this morning.

“Bay area credit services, my I help you?”

“Yea, I received a voice-mail last night telling me to call you.”

“What was the phone number you received the voice-mail on?”

“425-xxx-xxxx”

“May I speak to Julia please?”

“Nope”

“This is an urgent matter regarded collection of funds owed by her.”

“I’m sorry but she’s been my ex wife for quite some time now.”

“How long?”

“Excuse me?!?”

“If you were still married when this debt occurred then you are responsible for it too.”

“We’ve been divorced for 4 years.”

“Oh, well, you need to tell me how to contact her.”

“Well, no I don’t need to tell you anything, and no, I don’t know how to contact her.”

“Very well then, good day.”

click.

At least I am well out of having to pay for anything like this that pops up. But I still hate getting calls like that.

I wanted a break from the level of work that I was getting at Microsoft. Everyday it was ten projects due. Minimum eight hours of work to get done per day but broken up with 5 hours of meetings. The deadlines and juggling of resources, unsupportive management, and a constant high stress environment.

Now I have nothing to do.

I am making work for myself as best I can, but it only goes so far. I’ve been given one assigned task in the last four months. I’ve done several projects that I created and brought to completion, but I’ve run out of things to do.

I’ve taken to learning new things, but they are largely unrelated to work. I’ve poked around with building web pages. I spend my time reading news and blogs. Trying to figure out just what this company I work for needs. I’m tired of inventing stuff to do and wondering if it is going to be used or seen as a waste of time.

It would help if those contracts that are supposed to be signed “any day now” since November would actually be signed. Then the projects I was hired to work on would keep me a bit more busy. But even then, the entire list of items that require the build department’s attention I used to do double by myself.

It would help if anyone communicated. All of the email that I have sent over the last couple of months has gone without response. I don’t know how I am doing. As far as I know I think I am doing ok. But no one says anything and when I ask I seem to get a canned answer.

Two glaring things come to mind.
1. I hate being bored.
2. They just don’t need me.

Either one of those things by itself is enough to make me want to move on.

Perhaps it is time for a little self evaluation of where I want to go and what I want to do. Being bored at work gives me time to plan, think, and consider just where I am at.

Call it a midlife crisis, being unsatisfied, or stagnate. It doesn’t matter. It’s time for me to start looking forward. But first I need to figure out which direction forward really is.

It’s not in my nature to be satisfied with being bored. I love to accomplish goals. I have a need to always be doing something or going somewhere. A prime example was how I spent Sunday. I get headaches. Sometimes due to stress, sometimes due to diet. Regardless, Sunday was one of those days where the headache would not go away. I spent most of it on the couch with the remote. But I still managed to wash my car because I just could not bring myself to let the day go by without some sort of accomplishment. I gotta do something.

Lately the accomplishment at work has fallen to zero. That is the hazard of working for a small company that only has a minimal amount of products after having done nearly a decade working on 5 projects at the same time. But it has allowed me time to think about if this is really what I want to do.

I don’t know. I need to write more to help me figure it out.