Crazy RainFall

I have recently moved to Waldo from the northland with hopes to save some money, live closer to work, and to soak in the suburb. The area is such a great area. The houses are old but well kept. A good amount of families are out here. It is seriously a great place for a starter family.

The only horrible thing about this living arrangement is the house itself. The basement floods; which have come to realize is normal. I am happy that most of my boxes are raised. I will be going to Home Depot soon to build another platform.

Its alive!

Wires to sense the world

Had to run out to Radio Shack today to find 22-gauge wire for the Arduino board.  Once all the sensors and wires were finally soldered together, it was amazing to turn on the “system”.  I am utterly amazed by all the values being collected by the four sensors.  This is really geeky, but I was able to burn an afternoon.

Building to discover

Yesterday my supplies for Throwies just came in the mail.  Now armed with 100 rare-earth magnets, 100 LEDs and 100 batteries I am so ready to assemble my “For Shitz and Grins” project.  Still do not have secure location to throw and entertain crowds with such mentioned Throwies.

Later on the night, I started assembling/building my multi-touch panel.  The first step thus far has been to polish an acyclic pane of glass.  After sanding for about 30 mins, I assumed the edges were nice and polished, so I proceeded to take about 25 IR LEDs and 25 batteries from the Throwie project to test out the polishing.  Let say the results were less than pleasing.

Reaching the Breaking Point

If you don’t know, I have been out of the country for a good 5 months of my life.  During that time I worked a crazy amount of hours that generated a total sum of 625 hours for the first quarter.  That means many hours of personal time was spent as an employee.  After working so many hours, I have come to the realization that I can do a whole lot more than just programing in an obscure language.  With my two year mark coming up and my experiences it will make the decision to move on a different career easy.

Since I have been back in the States, I feel I am growing more into myself.  These past few weeks a boat load of money was spent on electronic parts and books.  I am happy and proud to say that I am a geek, a creative geek who needs to express himself through projects and art work.  My anger is constantly bottled up that without an outlet, my emotions are so depressing.

Well, that is just a sort brief on my life so far.  Tomorrow I will be working in the normal office.  Lets see what this weekend brings–who has meetings on Saturdays?

Techcocktail… hmm hmm goose beer

Lunch with my team’s VP when rather well.  We discuss my career goals and aspirations.  After the conversation he arranged a lunch meeting between myself and another manager of his–which also when rather well.  Looking back, I still do not know what I what out of a career.  I can discuss about my dreams all I want, but at the end of the day the thing that matters the most is my actions.  And so far my actions has been mediocre.

 The single thing that amazes me the most is luck.  Seriously luck.  Luck because of the random decisions that has given me opportunity.  For example… Nov 15th, Thursday morning, I hopped on an airplane and was magically transported to Chicago for a two day trip.  The overall goal was to attend a cocktail event (google tech cocktail) and hopefully gather information for creating a cocktail event in KC for techies too.

 So it was 6:30 and there I was with my friend Dan, who by the way is also from KC, we were the probably the only few participants that were from out of town.  And gosh, I have to tell you it was an exciting experience.  Going up to random people and asking them the simple question of “What do you do for a living?”  Then from that simple question an array of answers.  Answers ranging from small oohh and ahhs to hey I know someone who is looking for a job.   Seriously, I met this girl Caroline who organizes PR events for Hollywood clients.  She started as a volunteer writing down name tags, etc but eventually through that contact was given a job as an event planner.  Simply Amazing.

 So to sum up my experience.  Learn how to use Linkedin to track and visualize your network.  Have a stack of business cards on hand.  Not only are they good for handing out your contact info to other people, they are your raffle ticket to free stuff.