Blowing the dust off

Oh yeah. I have a blog.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and decided to use this space to rant in about it. If you feel so inclined, respond to your heart's content, but know that I am pretty much spewing into the ether without seeking any specific response.

So I got laid off in December from what might have been the best job I ever had. I was great at what I did, even if a lot of what I did was slack off. I lost the job and tumbled into the cracks of the recession with about a third of the Country's population. I've been collecting unemployment ever since whilst searching, sometimes frantically, sometimes weakly for other work. In the midst of this very real crisis of income, I started coming up with alternatives to another 9 to 5 job that I could feel comfortable and complacent in.

I mean fuck. I was supposed to take over the world, right? Corporate drone, even for a gaming company is still dying in obscurity, having made no impact on my environment.

So I started looking into school. Maybe another Bachelors Degree, maybe a Masters. I could get some basic skills retraining and pick up some computer science or administrative course work free of charge, thanks to the Worker Retraining Program (I think it's national. Go google that shit up). A bachelors or masters is beyond the scope of this 2 to 3 quarter program, but what are another $30,000 in loans among friends, right?

Anyway, I started doing research on my options - where I would go, how I would make ends meet, how would Athena and Emily fair having to deal with me doing homework again - the whole 9 yards. In my research, I started talking to people whose opinions I value greatly. Not everyone I consider wise, mind you, just a handful of folks I wanted to bounce ideas off of.

One of those people gave me a real knock on the head the other day. He told me that the retraining and masters programs I was looking into would probably be a waste of my time. A waste because I don't have the right mind for computer science - specifically programming. I got to thinking about that statement and I can't agree with him more. I don't have the head for tracking variables across equations or seeing the flaw in a buggy piece of code. There is no short term benefit to picking up these skills because even if I were to pass the courses, I would be a sub par programmer. Crappy code monkeys don't last too long around here and I wouldn't be taking a step up income or life-satisfaction wise.

So I looked back at my long term goals. Why did I want to pick up CS training anyway?

There is a doctorate program at the University of Washington where they are researching neurobiology and behavior. Some of the research coming out of the program has to do with human/machine interfaces - which has been my pet technolust for over a decade now.

I looked into the program and was told I'd need a solid background in biology, chemistry and computer science before I would be a strong candidate. The computer science portion was easy enough to manage (so I figured), I simply needed to take a handful of courses and learn some fundamentals.

Somewhere along the way, that blossomed into some crazy ass degree. Now, I am sitting here trying to decide between seeking one of those degrees or taking another lame ass job I'd be good at and feel complacent in. The shit of it is, at the end of the day, both options seem to push me farther away from the goal of entering this doctorate program. Either I get my ass back to the office or spend a year learning skills that will get me into different kind of office. Neither option gets me the chem and biology I truly need to get my shit together. Somehow I have backed myself into a corner where my only two options get me nowhere near my goal.

You know, I can't say I am surprised I am here. After all, if I made real progress towards polishing my eligibility for this doctorate program, I might end up face to face with a pile of rejection letters, or even worse, find myself unable to complete the prerequisite work so I could apply.

I have such high flying dreams, but at the end of the day I take the path of least resistance.

I need to provide for my family. I need to feel a sense of fulfillment with my life. I need to feel wanted and useful by those around me.

Do I put away childish things like big dreams of changing the world? Do I simply run the numbers on what choice will bring the greatest income to my family? Do I throw our fortunes to the wind and try to change the kind of person I am, change the way I think and process?

Or do I keep turning to others for solutions, waiting for something better to come up and taking the path of least resistance?

Somehow, I don't think this story ends with me in the White House or making some breakthrough that sparks Singularity. Some nights, I fear this story doesn't even end with a full life and caring family coming together to bid farewell to my corpse in 50 years.

I think I've directly fucked up my life and I'm out of do overs.

The best person in the world

Better late than never - here are the first pictures of my beautiful daughter, Emily Jade.

More to come.

And we're back!

Howdy folks... (Does anyone even check this thing any more?)
Been a while, I know. Life has changed a lot in the almost 2 years since my last post. The biggest and latest news first, hmm?
My girlfriend is pregnant, we are going to have a baby in September!
Heavy, I know. We were not expecting this, to say the least. After a lot of serious talking we have decided to move forward and make this happen, together. My girlfriend's name is Athena (yeah, her parents named her Athena) and we have been seeing each other since January. We met on the flight back from GenCon last year and became fast friends. In the 6 months that we have known each other, we have discovered a wonderful and ever growing list of the ideals, life views and interests we have in common.
We'll be moving in together here in House Prime next month. We'll be taking over the lower living room and converting it into a private space/living area. The room down there will be converted into a nursery. We'll be putting a door up at the bottom of the stairs and moving a bedroom set in, it'll all be very home-y.

Are you waiting for me to tell you it's all a joke? Keep waiting.

In other news, I quit my job at Overlake School in December after some bad stuff happened in my classroom and my bosses made some very bad calls. While I wont go into detail, I will say that one of my students assaulted another a number of times in a very serious fashion and the steps to protect the classroom were not taken. So, I left as to not be a part of a continued tragedy as it unfurled. I am currently engaged in trying to find a job as a beta-tester for Microsoft. I hope to hear something from them next week on this point.

There are a number of other life changes that have gone on in the house at this point, up to and including getting a dog named Ghengis (he rocks) and Joe and Sandy having a baby named Zoe (pronounced Zoh-ee) last month. The baby is healthy, eating, sleeping and grunting a lot. We are all looking forward to a second child joining the fracas in a few months.
Everything else will have to wait for another post, hopefully in a couple of week opposed to two years from now.

Hope to talk to every soon.

~Schwa
(Edited to fix the kind of mistakes you make at 2:30 am and don't catch til noon)

The New

Hey,
If any of you are on Google's new instant messenger, let me know so's I can add you to my as of yet empty contat list. They say it'll be compatible with Jabber messengers soon, which recently revealed that it was going to be compatible with AIM, which means that we can all use the google talk thingy and move one step closer to total desktop domination by the former "search engine only" barbarians that have now crossed the Rubicon to sack our proprietary city.
I think that little logic line is what they call "Webcest", at least the parts about various messengers.
Anyway, it's early. Off to work.
Later!

Or you know, now...

Well, I guess "later in the week" means 10 minutes later...
GenCon ruined my sleep schedule so here we go.
GenCon was, well, terrible. Horrible as all hell, filled with stupid drama and even stupider people. Details are unimportant as the people I'd be willing to discuss them with are already aware of what transpired.
Anyhow, here's a look at life in the Emerald City for yours truly right now.
Schwa's big list of random resolutions:
1. Limiting myself to 2 afternoons and part of 1 weekend day of WoW a week.
2. 1 guaranteed intensive outdoor experience a month. Examples include: paintball, rock climbing, full contact spelunking, urban hang gliding and inverted sea kayaking.
3. Seeing all the great friends I have in the area that I've been ignoring because I am an antisocial punkass.
4. Finding some new music to listen too. Any more techno and I'll need to start dropping E tabs to stay sane...

More on that list as it develops.
I'm also actually working on a long term project, developing a Role Playing Game system and Way to Sell It with a handful of trusted compatriots. As above, more on that as it develops.

Ok, enough for now.
Keep it real.

Word

Yo,
Welcome to my 2nd take at a blog. I'll try to keep this updated and post regularly so's I can keep in touch with folks and all that. Expect something of content and value by week's end.
Until then.