My Wet Coast Life

Tick, tick, tick...I open my eyes. As they come into focus, the alarm clock glows a LED numbers at me, 4:28AM. Tick, tick, tick....what the hell was ticking?? As my brain starts to boot up, possibilities of what it is are quickly eliminated until it clicks. I forgot to leave my Swatch Irony watch outside my room. Crap. This watch I have had since it was released in the early '90's and it has one of the loudest movements of any of my watches. You can hear it a room away if it is quiet. I usually leave it in our kitchen or bathroom due to the loud ticking's disruptive nature on sleep. In a quiet room, it can start driving you nuts with the tick, tick, tick to the point it feels like time itself is slowing down. On top of that, there is no real way to silence it. The problem with the watch is Swatch decided to encase the movement completely in stainless steel so the only servicing that can be done is to change the battery or polish the plastic-like crystal to smooth out any scratches. Waking up early to this ticking did not help my internal clock as it now clicked in my brain I was awake so I should get up. D'oh!

With nothing really exciting happening so far this weekend such as saving the universe from alien invaders or winning the lottery. I feel like some random topics with some useful and useless knowledge thrown in. This way you can say you've learned something new this weekend based on the mundane stuff that did happen so far to me indirectly educating you by reading this article. Hopefully you do learn something, no matter how trivial it may be. Also, because it is the weekend, I've also decided to combine the 2 days worth of posts into 1. Why would I do that? I was caught up making a Lego 4X4 house that can be driven around. It was awesome.

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Rolling into day 3 of being unemployed and starting to notice the psychological effects on me for not being employed. I enjoy working. I've been working since i was young and so used to it, my wife forces me to leave any and all work at home when we go on vacation. What I have noticed is 2 mains things so far. Firstly, I am sleeping a lot less and waking up almost every hour. Last night would be described as a Casino slot machine night in my opinion. I saw 3:33, 4:44 and 5:55 on the clock before giving up on sleep and getting up. Would have been a big winner at the casino but instead I lost big on the sleep factor.

The other thing I have noticed, is being so focused on researching my future options, finding a new job and re-educating myself on the art of resume writing and applying for a job, I am forgetting to eat. I have a high metabolism and tend to eat a lot. My body promptly tells me when it is in need of substance. In the last couple days, I have missed eating lunch twice and eating dinners after 830pm. My stomach is also not doing the vocal growl demanding food which it normally does when neglected. I am not even gonna consider weighing myself as I know I've lost more weight and that will just make it worse knowing how much weight I've shed and need to put back on. Whether it is stress or distractions causing me not to eat or just the mental aspect of checking a couple more jobs before taking a break or just the stress of it all causing this, one can only guess. I've noticed before taking a break, I'll tell myself to check a couple more jobs before breaking, only to realize an hour later I didn't take a break. I then tell myself a couple more jobs and then a break. 1 hour later, the cycle repeats itself again. Next thing lunch and dinner have passed and still no substance in my stomach.

Hopefully today, i will try and break that cycle and have gone to the extent of setting reminders to eat. I used to joke back in my support days when logging into someone's account and seeing their calendar and laughing. Why did I laugh? These people planned there day out to almost the minute. One guy's schedule showed when he was to get dressed, eat, brush teeth and even go to the bathroom! Maybe it was OCD (or CDO for the OCD's) or just being real good with time management but for each person, we all have our own way of managing ourselves and our time.

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Reality started to sink in yesterday after going cross eyed from reviewing so many jobs on various job boards. I have come to the realization this might not be too easy as it appears as I am on the cusp for the jobs I am interested in. Based on my experience, I tend to meet 99%-100% of the requirements but seem to be missing on key programming language. If I am not missing the required languages for the position, I then don't have enough experience or years in one certain language that would be key to performing well in the position. I am a very fast learner and tend to pick up concepts quickly. If i don't know it, i will take the time, on my own, to learn it and become a future guru in that discipline. Problem is, in the real world, you need experience as well. I prefer not to apply for a job where I am not confident enough to state I can actively code well in a working environment for a certain language when I cannot. Some languages, i know inside and out and can write with my eyes closed. Others i am still improving my knowledge and expertise in being a clean, efficient coder. In my opinion, employers will quickly realize I BS'd my resume and now both of our time has been wasted. I will not do that.

From my experience, I find there are three kinds of techs in this world. The first ones know there stuff and actively demonstrate their skills in real world situations. The second type is what I refer to as "paper techs". They have the certificates, diplomas, etc to say they know their stuff but throw them in a real world situation and they go brain dead. They appear with a deer in headlights look and based on facial expression, assume they are thinking "that wasn't in my books nor can i find the answer on Google, hmmmm...". The last one is the most dangerous in my opinion, I refer to them as the "weekend warrior coder/fixer". These are the ones that read one or two online help sites on how to make a website or fix a PC and now know just enough to be dangerous. If it is a website, they dive head first into making the site end up with a not-so-eye-pleasing, hard to navigate site that gives you seizures based on the number of animated GIFs. If it is a PC fix, they tend to do more harm than good and usually end up with an expensive paper weight. If you are one of these people, thank you for being proactive but at the bare minimum, PLEASE stop using so many animated GIFs and if you don't know what you are doing for either coding or PC repairs, STOP and ask for help. The later will save you so much time in the end for fixing the damage you have done and then fixing the original issue. Trust me, your tech and wallet will thank you for it.

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Alarm clock shows 4:30AM and confirms my internal alarm clock did not switch off. Fell back asleep only for the internal snooze alarm to go off every 30 minutes thereafter. 5AM, 5:30AM, 6AM...by 7AM, i had enough and got out of bed. Very odd feeling knowing i do not need to rush and get to work. Why was I in no rush?

After 5+ years working for Top Producer System Inc., they decided to lay me off yesterday. This was totally unexpected and caught me completely off guard. I went into work yesterday and was working on my projects and after 3 hours, my boss called me in for a meeting. 5 minutes prior, we were filling up our coffees in the staff room talking about upcoming fixes. I thought nothing of it as we have an open door policy and we met all the time to go over issues, defects and build related items. The second i walked over, i knew something was off as one of our HR staff was present. Short and sweet of it was I was laid off due to budget cuts. I accept that as it is business and they had the ungrateful task of relaying that info. What saddens me is this occurred right before Christmas when i have a family to support. What has shocked me is our company was in the process of a technology hiring blitz. They were also doing layoffs in other departments but our group assumed we were OK as my group is only 3 people. We have been down 1 staff member for over a year and swamped with work so it would be more detrimental than beneficial to cut another person. I guess i was wrong...

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Losing a friend or family member is never a joyful experience. Losing them to a preventable accident is even worse. It has taken me awhile just to wrap my head around the facts that have arisen in regards to my friend Jayna Haddock being killed by a drunk driver on April 12, 2008 and what i have learned in the last week or so.

I grew up with Jayna living down the road in what i would describe as a small micro-community where there is one main road in and most of the neighbors know each other and all the kids are welcome at each other's house. This almost guaranteed anyone in that area always had someone around the same age to play with. Even though most of us from that time frame have grown up, moved out, married and lost some contact, we all still try to meet when we can to reminisce about those days and the fun we had. Sadly, we have had one less friend that can join us for the last 2 years.

Up to this point, I've tried to avoid learning more about the trial and events of that night. I sum it up to my friend was killed by a drunk driver, they caught the guy but he still denies it, trial will be awhile but he should be found guilty. So i continued on in life and every so often remember Jayna and then kick myself again because she died 2 weeks before we had planned to meet up. 2 weeks. 1 pay check. We had not spoken in over 10 years due to me traveling and moving to different cities. We recently started chatting again thanks to Facebook (it does do some good every-so-often). I even wrote about it, 1 year after Jayna died, when British Columbia first announced the new proposed, now implemented, drinking and driving laws, still not knowing anything more at that time other than my friend was killed by a drunk driver.

Well, this all changed this week for me as he was just sentenced. 2 and a half years after it happened, I decided now I wanted to know more and was shocked at to what i found. Just shocked. So many emotions come back to mind and a lot tend to head towards anger, rage and frustration as well as sadness. Some of this info was available earlier but to me, this was new and changed everything for me. For those that want to stay in the little bubble like I did, stop reading now.

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