LiveJournal Project - Q4 2008

Let's wrap this shit up, shall we?

Date: 2008-10-07 23:14
Subject: jobbity job job, t+1 month
So it's been a little over a month since I started the new job, and I'm not really sure what I think yet. There is a non-zero chance that I will quit before the end of the year which fluctuates rather wildly. It isn't that I don't like the work (hell, I haven't actually done any real work yet - I'm still in the shadowing phase where I go out with the more senior guys and learn from them), or the people, or even the corporate policies and procedures (so far nothing I've done has come back to bite me in the ass, so I don't have anything to complain about), and it's not even that I think I'm underpaid (those of you that read this blog with any sort of regularity know what they're paying me, and it's not a bad salary at all). In the last couple weeks, I've even learned quite a bit about MySQL internals and performance tuning that I didn't know before. Bonus!

So why am I considering my exit strategy, after only being here for a month? The travel. I suspect that I may end up hating it in a big hurry. Now, it's not like I didn't know that this was a big part of the job, so I can't say that they've sprung anything on me that I wasn't expecting, but what has been a surprise is my reaction to it. I figured that I'd start off thinking it was pretty cool that I get to go somewhere different every week, that I'd have downtime in the evenings to do other stuff, and that since I'm never going to be gone for more than 5 days at a time, it wouldn't really be that bad. So far this has not been the case. Last week, I spent 3 days in NJ at a large pharmaceutical company (I don't know if I'm allowed to say what companies we're working with or not, so I'll assume not and you can just guess) with another consultant doing what was supposed to be an A&D (architecture & design). There was no reason for us to be there for 3 days - we barely had one day's worth of work. This week I'm in San Jose at a large web company (no, not Google) again doing an A&D. They had a couple of wrinkles, but again, we finished everything up today, so tomorrow we're likely to be sitting on our butts (I go home tomorrow night). Next week I'm theoretically supposed to be in Connecticut for 4 days, but I haven't yet received confirmation that I can go ahead and book my tickets, and then the following week I'm back here for 3 days. In November, I have two 5-day gigs with one week still undetermined thus far.

Some people might say that this all sounds great - the job seems to be low stress (although I'm told by both consultants that I've shadowed so far that this is not usually the case) - but you know what? If you're going to make me get on a fucking plane and go be somewhere for 2-5 days, away from Cory and the cats and not doing the other things I could be doing, then fucking christ, give me some work to do to keep me occupied. Otherwise, what's the point? The clients don't really get their money's worth (they're paying for more days than they really need because that's what the sales guys sold them) and I'm sitting here with my thumb up my ass. Maybe it will be different once I start going out on engagements by myself -- but that will exacerbate the other part of this job that I don't really care for, and that's that this gig is pretty damn lonely. At least while shadowing, I have the other consultant to talk to during the day, or go out to dinner with, or whatever, but once that ends I don't know what I'll think. What's funny is about this is that I usually do not mind being alone at all. Of course, when I'm alone at home, I'm still not really alone, because I have the cats. This hotel room would suck a lot less with a cat in it. Too bad they don't travel well.

The other thing that I've noticed is that while I'm griping about both gigs I've been on so far, I seem have a lot less enmity for the shorter ones that are on the west coast. Last week I was pretty fucking unhappy. This week isn't as bad. Next week, well, we shall see. Maybe if they would work a little harder at regionalizing us so that we can avoid the cross-country travel, it would go a long way towards keeping people happy. They have a guy in Montreal, and a guy in Michigan - those two should be doing the bulk of the east coast gigs. They have a guy in Seattle, one in Cupertino, and me in Phoenix - we should be doing the west coast gigs. I've been told that this is their end goal, but I don't know if/when it will happen, because they have several positions to fill. It might never happen, because we don't control where the clients are and when they want services from us.

One last item I would like to bitch about - my social life is now nonexistent. It wasn't that lively before, but now in the last couple weeks I've missed a few events that I would have liked to gone to. Tomorrow is ultimate frisbee, resurrected - something that hasn't gone on in months - but because I don't get back until late, I can't go. Last week a friend of mine was back in the US visiting from Japan (he's teaching English over there) - but, again, couldn't go.

Maybe it will get better. Maybe it will get worse. Maybe the bottom line is that I made a mistake in accepting this job and that the demands of a weekly-travel work lifestyle and I are fundamentally incompatible. Maybe I just need to readjust my expectations. I really don't know yet. I don't say that with a sense of resignation, though -- I simply don't have the answer, and I am trying to collect more data. Right now, I'm re-evaluating it on a week-by-week basis, but I am going to try my best to stick it out until the end of the year. I still believe that it can be cool - the consultant I was with last week said that while there are a fair number of boring engagements, there are also the really interesting ones where you work on complex stuff that makes it all worthwhile. We shall see.

I have more to say about all of this, particularly when I start thinking about it philosophically and in the context of that infamous question of "what kind of work do I want to be doing?" -- but that will have to wait for another day, as I should probably pack up my shit and get some sleep. I will say this much, though: when viewed through an archetypal lens, this job is really no different from my last one, and that's not acceptable.

More to come.
Mood: contemplative

Date: 2008-10-18 19:24
Subject: More thoughts on jobs, life, etc.
As we've seen from my previous post, I'm generally unthrilled with the job, but I think I'm going to try to stick it out at least until the end of the year. Based on what's currently on my calendar, I only have two shitty weeks (I define a "shitty week" as a 4 or 5 day gig) between now and the end of December, plus about two weeks of vacation between Thanksgiving and Sun's winter break. So when I look at it strictly in terms of cost/benefit analysis, it's worth it to endure two shitty weeks in November for another 5 paychecks between now and January. And who knows, maybe things will get more interesting in the new year.

Going to San Jose/Cupertino on Monday, back on Wednesday, so if anyone in that part of the country (this means you, ioerror, artkiver, and/or malice_bd) wants to grab some sushi on Monday or Tuesday night after I get out of my training class, drop me a note. I know a great sushi place in Santa Clara that I will be hitting up, with or without any of you. :-P Then the following week it's back to Connecticut. One thing that I can say is a benefit of all of this travel; I've done the calculations, and I estimate that by the end of the year I will have made platinum status on US Airways for 2009. Hopefully I'll start getting some of those damn free first-class upgrades. =/

School is going well; I was hoping that I'd be able to watch my class (I'm taking a Ruby / Rails class online through Harvard) while I'm on the road, but I usually end up in places where the high-speed internet isn't high-enough-speed and it doesn't work out so well. Finished my second assignment yesterday with two more to go before the end of the semester, at which point I will officially be 20% done with my Masters degree. It would be nice to be able to take more than one class per semester; maybe I will give that a shot next semester if I can find two classes which don't have a significant programming component.

I took the time to watch part of the last debate, and this whole Joe-the-plumber business is just laughable. Small business owners that are generating over $250k in revenue yearly need to fucking incorporate as a "C" corp. Doing business as a sole proprietorship or even an "S" corporation when you're actually making good revenue is just stupid. There's not that much paperwork involved in incorporating, and there's not that much required to maintain it, so just pay the filing fee, get it done, and save yourself all kinds of headache. The tax advantages are worth it, it makes for easier accounting because you can keep your business expenses and personal expenses completely isolated with a minimum of effort, and it will also decrease your odds of getting audited, because the IRS just loves to fuck with schedule C self-employed people. I will give McCain a little credit, though -- he actually showed up for the last debate and brought a few brain cells with him, unlike in the previous two, but overall I considered it a draw. They should make the debates more like actual academic-debate-team-style debates; candidate A gives a spiel, candidate B gets to cross-examine him and give a rebuttal, and then they can go back and forth that way. I don't care if they do it Lincoln-Douglas or policy style, but please, no more of these dog-and-pony shows that are debates in name only.

Nick and I were talking about the election yesterday, and he thinks McCain is going to win. His comment was that it all looks just like it did in the last two elections, where the democratic candidate was ahead by a few points going into mid-October and then at the last minute, the republican pulls it off. I don't know, as I've said in the past, I'm not a cheerleader for Obama, but I really do not want Sarah Palin anywhere near the White House. Can you imagine her pulling that golly-gee-shucks bullshit sitting down at a negotiating table with Vladimir Putin? Well, y'know, Vlad - can I call you Vlad? - I can see you from my living room. wink Ugh. Y'know who I'd like to see run for president? Senator Russ Feingold. Granted, I'm not from Wisconsin, so there might be a lot about the guy I don't know, but from the issues that I've seen him involved in, he seems like a good guy that has sensible policies on the things that matter to me.

And then there's the economy. Certainly looks like a clusterfuck, but you know what they say - when there's blood in the streets, there's money to be made. I had originally thought that the bottom in the Dow would be around 10,000 - obviously I was pretty far off on that one. =/ I don't know if the worst is over, but I suspect that it is not, and we'll probably know more after the election. I don't think the bottom is very far below where we are now, though - I don't see Dow 6000 or anything ridiculous like that unless there's some unforeseen new development - but I do think that the recession is going to be longer and more painful than people would like to admit. We might have credit markets starting to thaw, but nobody has done anything to address problems in the housing market, and I'm starting to think that maybe it's because the so-called experts just don't have any ideas - or if they do, their proposed solutions are so foul in one way or another that they'd never fly.

puts on tinfoil hat - Makes you wonder, sometimes, whether or not all the hype about 2012 is real. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Date: 2008-10-20 06:45
Subject: Take that, Obama bashers!
In case you missed it, Colin Powell endorsed Obama on Meet the Press yesterday.

I was going to write some long spiel about this development, but really, I think it speaks for itself. I'll just say this much, because I know there are probably some people out there that have already written it: if anyone thinks that Powell is endorsing Obama because of race, you're fucking crazy. Watch the interview, you might learn something.

That is all.
Mood: content

Date: 2008-10-22 04:10
Subject: training, economics, and whatever
Went to the gym tonight for the first time in a few weeks. I've noticed a general tendency lately that I am becoming more of a fat slob, and that's just not acceptable. I haven't gained any weight over the last several weeks (although I've put on about 25 over the last year), but I notice a definitive loss of muscle definition pretty much all over. I'm flabtastic! Yeah, so, it's time to get serious about training again. Aside from lifting, I've decided to do the Couch to 5K running program, which is supposed to get me in shape to run a 5K after 9 weeks, with 3 runs per week. The first week's workouts are a 60s run followed by a 90s walk, repeated 8 times. Workout 1 down, 26 to go. I picked up a flyer at the gym for a 5k that's in mid-December, so that would be a perfect target to shoot for.

Watching Squawk Box on CNBC right now, and today's guest host (former chief investment officer for Neuberger Berman, which I believe was a part of Lehman Bros) has said that he's almost entirely in cash with the exception of a couple of speculative plays, and he made the observation that right now he'd rather be out of the market wishing he was in instead of in the market wishing he was out. If I've learned anything from watching all of these talking heads it's that none of them really know what the fuck is going on. It strikes me as interesting that whenever you read a mutual fund prospectus, they always say something like, "past performance is no guarantee of future results," and yet at the same time, people use history as their guide to say that stocks will rebound and move higher as they always have. If this is just another bump, albeit a large one, on the global financial road, then yeah, I think it's a safe bet that the market will eventually go up.

But what if it isn't? What if what we're in the process of living through is a global sea change, where the rules of the game are different now? Bollocks, you say? Don't be so quick to dismiss. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a crystal ball, but look at the fact that the US government is now injecting capital into banks by, in essence, buying stocks in those banks. In other cases, it has facilitated the takeover of failed or failing banks by other banks. The global regulatory structure that emerges from this, and the level of interconnection between government and, at the very least, the financial industry, is going to be very different from the way things used to be. If you believe that the worst is not yet behind us (I am not as pessimistic as Nouriel Roubini, who is predicting a 20-30 percent drop from where we are right now), then it's a reasonable conclusion to argue that this government-industry intermingling will only continue to solidify. Where might we end up - state-run corporations? Where else have we seen that in the modern world, kids? Whether or not this ends up being a good thing or a bad thing for you and me is too early to tell, but I do absolutely think that there will be an effect, and if I had to guess, a retarding effect, on future corporate profits and, by extension, stock prices. In the post-recession economy, it will be more difficult to sustain decent returns from year to year in the markets. It's going to be interesting.

In other news, there will be a moratorium on job-related posts until 2009.

Date: 2008-10-23: 01:03
Subject: how the mighty fall
A few months ago, it was all going so well. What the fuck did I do wrong?
Mood: distressed

Date: 2008-10-28 13:25
Subject: PEBCAT
What part of "You must connect to port 2222 if you don't have public key authentication configured" is so hard for people to understand? Blargh.

Date: 2008-10-30 16:33
Subject: procrastination time again

1. Go, Sun, Go! Bought some shares of Sun Microsystems (JAVA) back when it was at $4.60. Closed the day at $5.29 or something like that. Not too bad, although I'm looking for $6. If it drops back below 5 bucks, I'll probably back up the truck. Still waiting to see the Dow close above 9500 before I think the downtrend is over, though.

2. Finished the second workout in the Couch-to-5k program. Last week was supposed to be the first week, but it didn't quite work out that way, so I started over on Monday with workout #1. I picked up a pretty nifty heart-rate monitor that connects to the PC and graphs all kinds of cool shit, from the basic HR to calories burned, respiration, and the like. It'll be interesting to see my progress over the next two months in graphical form. There are add-on "pods" that you can get for running or biking which will measure speed and distance, but I'm not at the point where those things matter too much to me, so there's no point in spending the money. Right now it's just about getting back in decent shape and dropping some pounds.

3. If life is a story, have you ever wondered if maybe you're not one of the "good guys"? I suppose it's all relative to your perspective, but it makes for an interesting mental exercise. If you were one of the "bad guys" - who would you be trying to undermine? Would it mean that all of your friends and family were also on the dark side? Of course, this sort of assumes that life is a zero-sum game and that there inherently have to be good guys and bad guys, and that's a difficult assumption to accept, I think. I tend to believe that life is more like a three-quarter-sum game. 75% of humanity can win at any given time, at the expense of the other 25%. (Or maybe it's the other way around? Given the distribution of wealth and power throughout the world, that might be so.)

4. There's a constant struggle between believing that I need to do something meaningful during my time on this rock in order for my life to have been worthwhile and just saying "fuck it" and trying to make as money as I can and trying to lead the easiest, lowest-stress life possible. Some days I think that I'd just like to forget about trying to do something that has some sort of positive net impact on humanity and other days I feel like I'm just wasting space, like billions of other people on this planet. I don't really care to be remembered after I die, because, well, I'll be dead and it won't matter, but I think that I'd like to find a way to do something to advance the cause of human knowledge. Making money is easy, but discovering something new that nobody else has ever seen before, well, that's hard. I wonder how many people out there that are told when they're young that they have all of this potential and that they're really smart and can do anything and blah blah blah actually end up doing something legitimately worthwhile (yes, I know, that's subjective) and how many of them just fall into something and do it because they're good at it, it pays the bills, and they don't hate it.

Cory raised an interesting point regarding all of this; she said that filling kids with this crap about their potential (regardless of how true it may or may not be) is like a curse. We all get told that we can do anything, but how often do we actually get any guidance in one direction or another. Sometimes, having too many choices is worse than not having enough.

I don't think I'm going to be happy until I get a PhD. I should probably finish the Masters first, though, because I think, in the long run, it'll improve my chances of getting into the places I'd like to study.

Time to make the donuts.

Date: 2008-11-04 09:05
Subject: On the possibility of "President Obama"
If Obama wins, I only hope that he is half as good as people are expecting him to be. If he turns out to be just another loser assclown, as ms_tek believes him to be, then I think we will be hard-pressed to see another Democratic president in our lifetimes. Obamania has brought so many new people into the political process that never really gave a shit before, and if he ends up sucking balls, there's going to be one hell of a detachment from the political process.

Of course, with so many people so convinced that it's a foregone conclusion that Obama is going to win this election, it would not surprise me in the least if the gods put the smacketh down upon us and we see a repeat of 2000, where the winner of the election is not the same person that wins the popular vote. If McCain wins the electoral vote, but Obama wins the popular vote, things are going to get very interesting. I wouldn't be surprised to see a riot or two.

Time: 21:04
Subject: Dear Mr. Obama
Congratulations on making history. Don't fuck it up.

Date: 2008-11-05 16:54
Subject: This makes for interesting reading
http://www.newsweek.com/id/167581/page/1

I might have to go buy this week's issue of Newsweek to read the whole thing.

Date: 2008-12-15 21:49
Subject: Thoughts on 2009
So. Most of you know that I don't celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or any of the other over-commercialized bullshit holidays that roll around this time of year. I'm going to spare you all my annual rant on said overcommercialization and just say a few things about the year in review and the year to come.

Last year, when I was looking forward to 2008, I was pretty confident that it would be a good year. And, overall, it has not been too shabby. There have been some down points, as there always are, and I've made some mistakes and bad decisions, as I always do, but overall, it's been good. On the plus side: Cory and I got married, we took some fun trips, and we won a shit-ton of money in Vegas and will actually be finishing the year way, way ahead. My cats are healthy, although I'm convinced that Mika hates us and is secretly plotting our demise, and nobody close to me died this year.

I changed jobs in August, going from a director-level position at a small company to a consultant/architect position at a large company, and then proceeded to quit that job 6 weeks later. Working for Sun/MySQL ended up being potentially the right job but at the wrong time. If I were a single guy with no cats, then it would have been a fantastic job - great pay and benefits, travel, etc - but I'm not a single guy with no cats, and a job where I had to be away from home just wasn't the right fit. Also, the job itself just wasn't shaping up to be that interesting. Having worked there for 6 weeks, I learned enough about what they do and how they do it that I could go offer my own MySQL consulting services. So, if any of you know anyone that needs help with their MySQL installation and doesn't want to pay $250/hr, DeadBunny Enterprises can help you.

I don't know if I could have thought the whole thing through a little more and come to a different decision at some point along the way, either before deciding to leave rSmart or before deciding to leave Sun - but it is what it is. I guess it's like anything else - you don't really know how something is going to work out until you give it a shot. Otherwise, you just sit there wondering 'what if?' and you don't get anywhere.

So, I've done what I always said I was going to do after rSmart anyway; I've gone back to focusing full-time on my own consulting and development company. I've had some people say that this wasn't the smartest of moves given the current state of the economy, but it's always been my way (for better or for worse) to do things the way I think is best. After all, it's my life, and I think I know how it ought to be lived better than anyone else. I've got a few small clients and one big one, and enough work in the pipeline to keep me occupied for the next few months. My income has, of course, taken a big hit -- but two of the projects that I'm working on have tremendous potential (we're talking a return to the kind of money I was making in 2001-2003, or more). I just need to get them done.

I'm giving myself a $20k runway. If I burn through $20k of my savings, and at the time that day comes (if it comes at all) my income is not sufficient to meet my monthly expenses, then I'll give it up and just go back into the traditional workforce - but I don't think it will be in Arizona. Cory and I talk about moving out of Phoenix every year, and I think if DeadBunny goes tits up, it'll be time to go. There's so much more opportunity to do the kinds of things that I want to do in other parts of the country. Cory would prefer to go east, but I'm thinking Silicon Valley. We'll see.

School ended up not working out this semester; somehow I ran out of time and couldn't get my 3rd Ruby project done, so I had to drop the class. That's sort of embarrassing; I don't have a full-time job, and yet I couldn't make the time to finish my damn homework? Shame on me. I guess I just didn't make it enough of a priority. I don't know whether or not I'm going to try to take any classes next semester. It's not cheap ($1700-$2000 per class) and if I'm going to spend that money (which right now I really don't have anyway) then I damn well had better get my work done and get a fucking A. I had a 99% average in the class that I dropped - but not getting assignment 3 in on time would have meant that the best I could have done was a C, which won't cut it for grad school. Fuck me.

Time management. I've absolutely got to be better about that. If I'm not working a standard job, and I can modify my schedule at will, then there is absolutely no reason that I can't find the time to do all of the things that I want to do. I've slipped a few weeks on the Couch-to-5K running program, but I'm still at it, and I expect to finish week 9 this time next month. I've added lifting back into my workout schedule, too, and I'm doing Tai Chi with Nick once a week. Now I need to make sure that I've got time for learning, too.

Anyway, as I start to digress and ramble aimlessly, I'll just look forward to 2009 and say this: it will either be a spectacular year wherein everything comes together, I accomplish a lot of the things that I want to get done and have a great time doing it, or it will be absolute misery wherein everything unravels. I don't see any middle ground. Without risk, there is no reward. Fire the cannons!