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Hape://Bertha.de [Jan. 9th, 2008|12:23 am]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ]
[Current Location |Elizabeth]
[mood | bouncy]
[music |PodFunk]

·      Hape://Bertha.de

o    BirthDay Funk

§      http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/PodOfFunk/~5/209000705/funkpod_30.mp3

§      I have some BirthDay funk, but it’s not like a down feeling. Actually, it’s like a great excitement. Tomorrow, I will be 34 years old. Because my birthday is so close to the New Year, I generally spend the nine days in between thinking of “resolution candidates”. When the deadline rolls around, I usually settle for what I think of as “recent improvements” in my behavior, as I have never been the type to improve my own behavior intentionally.

§      So what’s news?

·      Lots of news, a lot of it is great, and much of it is not for consumption by the general public. Nothing extra special, just not very interesting. For example:

o    Every year, I come up with a new budget and a plan to be debt free by the end of the year. It is usually not very realistic. This year, I actually make enough income to make it a remote possibility.

o    I am fully geeked out. I have two different bar code scanners. One is a light pen, and the other is the light gun type.

o    I just got a degree, and I am going back to school. It is an online college. The future looks bright, but the web sessions that pass for classes are not so exciting. The courses are easy, but the assignments are like an Easter egg hunt. The professors don’t put the assignments with due dates in the syllabus. You have to go looking around for them.

§      What would you want to be asked if you were being interviewed?

·      That is not a rhetorical question. I am actually writing this for my blog and to send to myself on http://FutureMe.org. I like to talk to people, but I can’t stand superficial conversation. When I say this, I mean, I can’t stand conversations about celebrities, or complaints about “the system” or “society”. Needless to say, I often find myself wishing I had better questions to get people to expand on what they think about life the universe, and everything. Thinking more on it, I should probably develop some questions. What would the future me want to be asked about? While I can’t think of anything good, I can put down what comes to mind. Actually, these come from the book “All about me” by Phillip Keel.

o    If you had no commitments to others, what would you do?

§      I would maximize my education and work experience. I would make my dwelling where ever I found the highest paying job. I think the online education thing is good for the lifestyle I live. It is also good for the lifestyle I would live in such circumstances. I would always keep putting in resumes with different firms. When I get a new job, I would stay for a year. This would be long enough to satisfy the apartment lease. When the lease is up, I would start the job hunt again. I would continue to take classes in the field as opposed to classed for a new degree. I would do this because the industry is always changing, and the moves would be costly to perform, no matter how paltry the new dwelling. I would live meagerly. I would not take huge apartments even if I could afford them. I would also not take anything without a washer and dryer. I would invest all I could in traditional investments, and in my own business, which would have a forwarding post office box, if necessary. For my “own business”, I would do application programming, which I have a lot of great ideas for, as opposed to service programming, with which I have a lot of experience.

o    What is a dream you have had more than once?

§      This is a bad question for me to ask, because I don’t have a real answer.

·      I dream often of climbing on something big and moving, like in “Shadow of the Colossus”.

·      I dream a lot about chasing something very small that moves very quickly. The recurrence is the fact that I always move very slowly, if at all.

·      I dream of being lost in a big place, with a series of closed off areas. There always seems to be a choice of which area to go to next, and each area seems more inappropriate than the last. It is not always the same setting. Sometimes, it is like a Wal*Mart, other times, it is like a hospital, other times, it is like a cave. In every instance, there is never any going back, and there are always multiple choices, and there is always someone calling me by name from an unknown direction.

o    List 5 things you would like to accomplish within the next year. This is my own question.

§      Debt Freedom

·      Credit cards are a real pain in the ass, especially when it is so easy to keep using them and paying them off than it is to simply cut them and pay them off. My mother recently told me about prepaid cards, which are not the same as the secured cards. A prepaid card can actually accept money from direct deposit. They look and work just like other credit cards, except for the fact that they appear to have no connection to your credit, and they extend you no credit. They are simply a spending mechanism, nothing more. I thought of this idea years ago. It is good to see that the rest of the world has caught up.

§      A good schedule

·      Many people try to avoid the 9 to 5 lifestyle. I aspire to it. I would like nothing more than to set a schedule, and follow it for two weeks in a row. I would be ecstatic if I could do the same for two months. Time and money are separate commodities, but time, like money is a highly valuable commodity. If you don’t know where it is going, it is easy to waste a lot of it. If you can not account for it, you can count on the fact that you are wasting it.

§      One (1) or zero (0) packs of cigarettes every month.

·      Currently, I smoke One (1) pack of cigarettes every week. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is so hard to not smoke any that I have been considering hypnosis as a method of elimination. If any readers have tried it, please feel free to offer your opinion on the matter.

§      Successful completion of all classes I am taking.

·      This is less of a hope and more of an expectation, as long as I don’t get the rigorous travel schedule I had last year at this time.

§      An initial release of one of my applications.

·      I have a lot of good ideas; some of them might even be considered good ideas. All of my applications are 75% complete, as far as a release is concerned. I write these applications for myself, and that 75% represents what I need them to be to be functional to myself. That last 25% would represent my confidence in the fact that others would find them useful, if I were to move them to completion.

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11.27.07 What's News? [Nov. 28th, 2007|12:02 am]
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[Current Location |Elizabeth]
[mood | confused]
[music |The Band : The Weight]

  • 11.27.07 What's News?

    • This was another of those great days where I went in early (the upside of insomnia), and left reluctantly. Fall and Winter are great times to be a workaholic. It is difficult to be like that during the Summer and in the Spring. I was thinking about what I wrote last night. It has been brought to my attention that it sounds like I'm doing shoddy work, and I am surprised my employer keeps me around. That's not the case. I work hard, I work smart, and I am surprised my employer keeps me around. One big catalyst for me getting serious about my Associates degree was the phrase “Don't be left at the end of the contract”. It means that our contracts represent periodic 'slimming' of the staff. In my case, not having a degree when the contract ends would be a great reason to “trim the fat” until the next contract comes along. There is no doubt that there would be others standing in line with 4 year degrees from respected schools to replace me. In a way, one could say that I got my degree to keep my job. It sounds stupid, but when they made the offer, I was thinking to myself, “F**k a paper degree, I have real world experience.” I go through periodic spurts of stupidity. At any rate, there have been several rounds of “Corporate Weight Loss” over the past 6 months. During one of these, I was transferred from one project, which was overstaffed, to another, which was understaffed. While I did not know most of the newly unemployed, the ones I did know all had more education than myself. I kind of feel like having lower education makes me more “keep able” in some ways, but I know from experience that having low education makes it harder to get on board in the first place. With that being the case, my one major question right now is as follows:

      • Should I postpone getting the bachelors degree in favor of a higher paying position, if the position is offered?

  • I have a strong feeling that the position will be offered. While I do value education, I also know the value of the money. As they say, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. I also know another saying, “Out of the kettle, ...”. Right now, I would consider myself as a person with a lot of “professional acquaintances”. Periodically, I keep in contact with people who actually know me, but for the most part, it's my family, and the people at work, many of whom don't even know any of my most charming attributes. Come to think of it, I don't even know my most charming attributes. Personal note: Find out what my most charming attributes are. The Yehuyans (Stratford Place) are good for talking about the same “fat shit” we have always talked about, but they, like myself, have always fumbled through the employment, rather than navigating through the career. Needless to say, I would never consider asking the “professional acquaintances” about any of this, but I wonder what they would do.

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NightHike [Jan. 4th, 2007|09:14 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , , , ]
[Current Location |Elizabeth]
[mood | cheerful]
[music |James Brown: September Song]

Last night, I went hiking with SteelHull and the ICrew. We left at 1900 and got back at 2300. I went fast-up, but I actually felt tired coming down-back. IBall's ex came along with the new Beau. He's from Chile. He's an Astronomer in Charlottesville. One of my new favorite bands is playing there, and he digs them, so we hit it off well. several other people tagged along, each bringing a dog. they were all off leashes and darting up down, and across the trails. It could have been a military exercise. At one point, we passed through this spot where the air was incredibly warm. I don't mean a few degrees warmer, I mean 10 or more. The full moon was brilliant, as it always is on cloudless nights, when one is in the middle of NowHere. I read a poem once about the moon, and how it was the jealous cousin of the sun. Sunlight gives plants what they need to survive, but I think I read somewhere that they actually do the growing at night. I would say the beautiful sister. Who can stand to look at the sun? Tonight, I met a couple of friends at an upscale new restaurant near my place. EMoney's girl suggested it. I walked down and met them for a Guinness. After that, she split, so me & E went to Calhoun's for an IPA. We talkied about resolutions, Dancing, Ghettos, travel, and language. It was a good time. I enjoy fast drinking and pontification, but there is something to be said for a slow brew good conversation. In other news, Class starts soon, and work is going great. I had better get some sleep, I have to go there tomorrow.
P.S. Someone once told me that if I ever took apart a 9Volt battery, I would immediately die a horrible, flaming death. Now, I see that it's not true.
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