The training is light and relaxed. I avoid wearing my name tag, but not the awkward round of introductions everyone has to make around the class. We finish early for the day, and I wonder if there’ll be a test at the end as part of my certification.

I vaguely remember that Dave Seah, my online mentor and personal coach, lives in New Hampshire. We met four years ago when I joined 9rules, and immediately developed a connection. His writing, ideas, and achievements have always inspired me, and he’s been the only person to make a guest post on my blog.

I call him, and as fate would have it, he lives 10 minutes from my hotel. For years, I’ve wondered if he had a New Hampshire accent, and I finally find out he speaks just like me.

Dave picks me up and whisks me away to Factory 99, an open artist studio converted from an old factory, to meet Sid. Sid is a photographer trying to turn his passion into his living. I see his photos, and pick his brain about off-camera flashes, exposure, post-processing, backdrops, and lighting for much longer than I should have. I can’t even explain how many questions he’s answered. I feel like I’ve been through a workshop, and leave with an urgency to try everything I’ve learned. It’s easy to see why Dave is such good friends with him, and the synergy continues.

From there we take a stroll to downtown and onto Main Street. It’s only sunset, and many stores are closed, a sign of the economic downturn. It’s a small city we’re in¹, and there’s almost nothing of note, save for the triangle manhole covers.

We make a quick stop at his house, nestled among evergreens and a cosy part of town, to check on a turkey he’s been slow cooking. I finally get a chance to see his studio in real life. I recognize the laptop he purchased for his project. I see his handwriting. His gun vault. His OLPC laptop. His cats. All the little details I’ve glimpsed from his photos are in front of me now.

We look for a place to have dinner, and decide on some Asian food. He takes us to a Korean/Japanese restaurant. I let him order everything for the both of us. Just from hearing him describe the unagi, I can tell he’s one of the few people who analyze and study and appreciate food the way I do.

Over our steaming bowls of rice and tea, we talk as if we’ve known each other our entire lives. I realize just how similar we are, how we’re at the same stage in life, both self-aware, emotionally intelligent, wondering the same things, figuring out the mysteries of life, and trying to sustain ourselves on what we love doing.

I don’t feel so alone anymore.

1. Compared to Ottawa, at least, at only one tenth the population [↑]

I pack light. A single lens, and only carry-on baggage.

This plane takes me to a more central airport. Every seat has a USB plug, a power outlet, and a video screen that lets you choose what you want to watch. I make a note to fly Air Canada from now on.

In stark contrast, my connecting flight has two propellers.

Continue reading

Day one

At security, I’m selected randomly for a screening. The guard asks my age. “Twenty…”, I begin, trying to remember if I’m 27, 28, or 29. “Twenty. Okay.”, he says, cutting me off. Somehow, he believes I look nearly a decade younger than I am. For two days, I’m packed light, with no checked baggage. In my rush, I forget to get some American money. This worries me.

Continue reading

Yep, there’s a turkey roaming around the parking lot at work. And in sub-zero temperatures, no less. People try to shoo him away, scared that he might get run over, but he just weaves in and out of the cars in circles. At one point, he even perched himself on the spoiler of one them. It was a lawyer’s car, so no one cared. Except the lawyer of course.

I remember an online buddy driving here to visiting me from Illinois back in 2002. It was his first time in Canada, and he remarked that the scenery was really nice, with lots of trees and wildlife, unlike the concrete jungle of American cities. I guess I take Canadian nature for granted.

It was one of those days at work. Things weren’t exactly going wrong per se, but it was stressful enough as it was. People were all over me, wanting this or that, undermining my decisions, interrupting my conversations, running around like their heads were cut off.

I kept reminding myself to breathe deeply (from the feet, as the Taoist sages are often described as doing) and calmly, kept thinking about the word tattooed on my wrist, and it worked for a while.

By 3:15, I had to get out of the building. It was supposed to be a three-song walk, but it ended up being nine. I didn’t even bring my coat; I was burning so much inside, that I didn’t need it. The winter slushed creeped up my jeans by six inches, but thankfully no one noticed.

Tyler was leaving as I was stepping back into the office. He invited me to an art show at Bablyon tomorrow¹. I told him that I’d think about it, knowing in my head that I wouldn’t go.

I had to stay late to work on the server. Fifteen minutes later, Tyler walked into my office (he must have walked part way, then turned around) and asked if I was alright. Admittedly, I’ve never been able to hide my moods very well, but I thought I was doing a decent job of it². He told me he could feel that my energy was low, so he asked if I wanted a hug. I politely declined, not because I didn’t appreciate the gesture, but because I didn’t think it would have helped. He gave me a firm pat on the back anyway and stepped out of my office.

And it helped more than I ever would have expected.

1. Which is strange, because the last thing I went to see at Babylon was a Dwarves concert [↑]
2. Something of an old habit of mine. Not being able to hide my moods is often a blessing in disguise for me, because it communicates to people that something is wrong. Otherwise, they’d never know, and it would never be fixed. [↑]

What an overwhelming experience.

There was barely any time to explore; we took one walk and pretty much stayed within a 10km radius. Too much reading, testing, and meeting to do anything else. It felt like the time went flying by, yet dragged on, the longer I was from home.

As an introvert, you fall back on memories and past experiences, and it drives reflection and re-evaluation.

I’d be lying if I said that it didn’t affect me. I learned more about myself in the last two weeks than I did in the last year, and I’ll be writing about it for weeks, if not months.

Continue reading

It’s difficult to sleep with so much on the mind, and even more difficult when you’re filled with anger about not being able to fall sleep. With my duvet wrapped around me last night, I turned my alarm off completely, deciding to get into work whenever I woke up, knowing that I’d need the rest to focus on a persistent network issue. After trying to fall asleep for an hour without success, and feeling like I’d waste the rest of the morning, I got up very frustrated. Those who know me, know that five hours is considered calamitous. I cooked a heavy breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast, knowing that I’d still have time to get to work early, a bit of sustenance to get me through the rest of the day.

The main problem I’ve been facing for the last week has been the setup of a VPN for a new out-of-office sales rep we recently hired. It was the perfect morning to get to work early, because I could work on the server for about an hour without having to worry about affecting any client computers. I traced the problem to an outdated version of the firmware, and crossed my fingers (after my last flashing disaster) as I burned the latest version. This was at 7:00 in the morning. I spent the next 13 hours trying to figure out why internet access stopped working within the range of internal IP addresses .1 to .36 (which makes absolutely no sense without being a power of two, and especially odd when we had no DHCP ranges set).

This meant carefully learning the existing structure of a network I didn’t set up and figuring out the Windows internet protocol. I’ve had no formal training in being an MCSE, so a lot of the day was spent reading through white papers and technical notes for a possible DNS/DHCP/IIS/firewall/RRA setting I may have looked over. Network service slowly degraded throughout the day as I began troubleshooting, including a simultaneous crash of the main custom software on every system, a loss of dynamic dns addressing (which brought our new online service down), until I couldn’t even find the network address of the router.

When you’re filled with angry perseverance, you get a lot done. If only other people could understand that. Wearing a face of determination means I don’t have time to be pleasant, or have a lunch, or listen to innane stories of your grandchildren.

On the walk to work, I had already decided that as soon as I got off, I was going to play some table tennis at one of the bi-weekly sessions, vision blurred, eyes drying, as tired as I was, and passing out after dinner. This obviously didn’t happen. I’d been seriously planning on going since last week, but things just kept getting in the way.

Until the last 15 minutes, the only thing I could think about was whether I’d have to pull an all-nighter, and whether or not I’d even be able to solve things if I did. That’s the risk of tech support; the solution can be as simple as it is elusive, and there can be no progress until the very last tweak. Halfway through the day, I already decided that I’d call an external network specialist to help if I didn’t get anywhere by tomorrow afternoon. I was too tired to worry about not getting the network up before the next business day, which would basically bring the company to a standstill, and too tired to be angry at everything that was going on. After figuring out our network structure, three calls to tech support, and learning internet protocol theory from the ground up, I finally figured out that all I needed to do was do a hard reset of the router, and configure everything from scratch.

It was probably the most difficult day I’ve had since I started the job, but I knew that if I could get through it and fix the problem, I’d be able to get through anything that could be thrown at me. Not only did I get the web connection working through the entire subnet, I also got the sales reps laptop to connect to the VPN through dial-up. Yesterday was a late night, getting a website done for a client friend. Tomorrow’s another 14 hour day, and even though I’ve known about it for a month, I don’t think it’ll make it any easier.

I realized that I only really feel lonely on days like these, when my body aches, my mind loses focus, and all I want to do is have someone else take care of me. To have someone else decide what to do, because I’m too tired to decide for myself.

Stepping outside, hungry and exhausted, I put on a wintery playlist for the walk home, since it was two hours past sunset and the fall nights are getting frigid. The first song that came on was Explode by the Cardigans. I’d been saving this song for months now, skipping it every time it came on so I wouldn’t get tired of it.

Today I finally deserved it.

Some things fall in my lap, others I actively seek out. It’s keeping track of everything that’s getting difficult.

Too busy to think. Too busy to write.

I have to remind myself that that’s what I wanted.

And here I am, turning over in my head the idea of moonlighting at a homely used book store that’s a five minute walk from my house. Stuck to the glass door is a notice for part-time help during the weekend, that I pass by every time I go grocery shopping. I walked in there once and bought a Penguin Classics copy of The Odyssey for $1.45, because I lost my old copy from high school long ago. I’ve always wanted to work at a coffee shop, but gave up on that idea after applying to one a few years ago and finding out that my résumé ended up in the garbage, was picked out because of a good word put in by a friend, and promptly placed back in the garbage again. In hindsight, I’m glad I wasn’t hired because I would have quit before the training was over. It was only something to hold me over until I could find something with a better career that’s more in line with my education, which is exactly what I found two weeks later. A bookstore seems like a good alternative.

Aaron and Shirley are both encouraging me to go for it. The former thinks that it’ll be a good change from the regular 9–5 that I do, and a job that I can use to relax. The latter is telling me it’ll be fun, and that she’ll pursue her own dream job as a waitress (moonlighting as well) if I apply to this one.

I’m still considering.

I left work about halfway through the day. A sharp pain was starting to develop on the sides of my head, and I was generally sore all over. Even while chewing or swallowing, there was a tremendous pressure from the head of my mandibular condyle to the inner ear. Most likely, I was starting to run myself down; the last time I felt like this was after an all-night shift at the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, and I ended up running a fever and missing two days of work there. Shirley convinced me to take an extra strength Tylenol (with codeine), which is something I rarely do. I’ve always believed in paying attention to the pain signals that the body gives off.

Trolley and I, with the assistance of Aaron, moved a significant portion of chattel through the week, translating into late nights and miserable days. Every previous night, I’d verbally consider sleeping in the next day knowing how hard it would be, and as Trolley noted, I’d never end up doing so. Even this morning I couldn’t sleep, so I got to work at ten past seven, more than half an hour early. It’s good to know that I was able to be stronger mentally than physically, something that has always been difficult for me to balance. Usually it feels like my body is giving out first, but afterwards, I realize that I could have handled more. This time, my body is actually telling me that I’m overworked. I think the key is convincing myself that physical discomfort is just a temporary feeling that can be ignored.

It’ll all be worth it once I’m settled down, which will most likely not be until I get my closet doors installed. I’m replacing my white ones with mirrors, and since the closet runs the entire width of the wall, they all need to be custom sized. It’s the last thing that’ll be done before I really feel like I’m in my own home. The mirrors should make the room look twice as big and appropriately darker. I got the quote today, and it’s just under two grand, tax in, including installation. I decided to go ahead with it, since it’s actually cheaper than I expected, so they should be arriving in 6 to 14 days.

Next week is haircut, getting custom-fitted venetian blinds, Christine’s birthday dinner, and a lot of unpacking.

Wow, it was a rough day. It started off well enough, because I was in what one would call a better-than-average mood before I had even arrived at work. Shirley had stopped at Timmies to get an everything bagel with herb and garlic cream cheese for breakfast, and decided to also buy me a large coffee, which I found, hot and steaming, on my desk this morning. It was the first coffee I had in weeks, and it sent my heart racing after the second sip.

I finalized a two-page ad for a local quarterly newsletter, due for publication at the end of the month. The only problem was that, for the last few years, we’ve had a reservation of only a single page. The middle two pages of this publication are reserved for the most important messages from the organization that runs the publication itself, and are most likely the first two pages looked at by its readers. My boss, besides being the best fucking boss in the world, was also ambitious enough to request the middle two pages (I think of Michael Corleone asking if his credit is good enough to buy out Moe Green). At his behest, I made a call to negotiate the booking of space. I had been prepping for this since Monday, being unsure of how to approach the person at the other end of the line in order to maximize my chances of getting the two most lucrative pages in the booklet. They didn’t know how old, or young, I was, because they couldn’t see me, and this was helpful. I believe that age has worked to my disadvantage in the past for tete-a-tete negotiations, because I can see in the faces of older people how hard it is for them to take me seriously. At the end, I offered to reserve two pages instead of one (something which they didn’t know we had every intention of doing, no matter what the result), in return for the middle of the booklet. I was able to get the middle for this month, but unfortunately not for any subsequent issues. We wanted to hit the local area hard with the energy in our latest marketing campaign, and being the first to take the middle of the publication, even if only for a single issue, was good enough. I told my boss, he shook my hand, and verbally congratulated me.

Then I quickly fixed up and finalized the mailout for this month, to be printed on our new cover stock, a great idea by Shirley, because the thickness and brightness of the stock make everything look fucking slick. By this time, the caffeine was making me jittery. I had slept alright the night before, but I was starting to feel tired, especially in the eyes.

I started to work on a one page flyer to go with a special invitation sent out to over 600 clients and potential clients across the city (which also ties in with the advertisement in the local publication mentioned above — fucking wicked). My boss gave me the material yesterday, and the problem was that it had to be approved by him before the end of the day, because he’s leaving the country on business tomorrow.

I worked through most of the day on the flyer while tons of other miscellaneous things-to-be-done popped up spontaneously, like label printing, printer fixing, and back-up troubleshooting. By this time, the caffeine had worn off, only to be replaced by what felt like exhaustion. Near the end of the day, after getting the flyer mostly done, while colour correcting and space adjusting, CorelDraw started to really, REALLY fuck up on me. If the printing companies we dealt with would actually spend some money on higher end vector graphics software, I wouldn’t have had any problems. Instead, I tried to print a file from CorelDraw, and it either spooled forever, or told me that there was not enough memory to print (with my 1 gig of DDR RAM). If I tried to save, it either gave me an error message about not having enough free space, or crashed, and in the process, made the current working space blank and saved it. CorelDraw seems to lose stability if any other programs are running, such as Outlook Express or Winamp, while there are graphics above 300 dpi in the workspace, and I had over a dozen. In the end, I got the flyer finished, but not before repeating an entire series of steps, several times, due to crashes while fine-tuning.

My nerves were shot by the time I stepped outside to walk to the bus stop. For the first time in months, I listened to my on-the-go playlist. I started working on it since the week of UPS crashes in November (which would bring the entire system down at work, including telephone access), for days just like this.

I was given the opportunity to purchase a new machine (with my choice of parts) at work and put it together from scratch, something I had never done before. I’ve dabbled in cases ever since I played games (the driving force behind much of my computer knowledge), but never actually assembled an entire box from parts.

It’s amazing to see how far along motherboards, and even cases, have come now. Overclocking can be done through software, as opposed to opening the case and fiddling with jumpers. Fan speed is automatically controlled for a balance of silence and cooling. Rail mounted drive bays make hardware configurations much simpler. Thumbscrews eliminate the need for screwdrivers for a simple dusting. Firewire ports, ethernet connections, video support, even 5.1 surround are all built onboard, for the option of extremely clean, roomy, and cool cases, even if they are rather simple.

I managed to put the system together without having to re-seat a card, clean a connection, or wiggle a power cable. My machine is now a P4 3.2E (I suppose all higher end Pentium chips now automatically come with hyper-threading), with a gig of DDR RAM, a 200 GB serial-ATA HDD, and a 128 MB ATI 800XT Pro video card. I also requested another 17″ flat panel, and received it the next day, so I can take advantage of the dual display goodness.

Work was good, but now it’s just better.

The days can go on with regularity over and over, one day indistinguishable from the next.

—Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver

Every day I think that I’ll catch up on sleep at night, but I never seem to get the chance. I have time here and there to write, but things don’t come out properly when I’m tired. Even on the weekends, when I expect to be able to sleep in, I’m always off somewhere, doing something. It’s such a change from how I was living last year; no school, no job, no girlfriend, with all my friends still attending university. I lost all sense of time.

I’m busier than ever at work, and it’s a great feeling to know that I’m responsible for so much…for meeting deadlines, for completing projects, for coming up with solutions to peoples’ problems. It’s a lot of stress, but it’s a great challenge. Being forced to work with a lack of sleep has made me more accustomed to thinking while fatigued, something that I never thought was possible. I used to need a proper eight hours a day to think, otherwise I could only operate at a basic level. Only one day in the last month have I felt rested. The fact that I’m still going and getting things done is a big deal to me. And now it feels like I’m finally working towards something, in my relationships, in my career, even in my equity and assets.

I remember Pat telling me to enjoy my unemployment, and I did exactly that. I appreciated every minute of it, and now I appreciate every moment that I have something to do. I appreciated the freedom of being single, and now I appreciate the comfort of being with someone.

I’m learning more things at work than I had ever imagined was possible. Now I understand things like the importance of making a budget, the loopholes to look out for on a lease, the difference between writing an asset off as an expense or depreciating it, or even something like the economic factors considered in setting monthly goals. There are also general work things I never knew about, like how to deal with salesmen, how to leave messages, what’s considered a good health plan, government regulations vs. union regulations, etc. I’ve even had to learn how to be a print production coordinator for marketing/PR materials. Then on top of all of this, I’m learning about the entire esoteric dental industry, from the personalities of dentists and denturists to the manufacturing process of everything from crowns to cast partial dentures to hawley retainers, just so I can understand the target audience and understand what I’m marketing.

I now run the IT department for a laboratory of about 45 people. I’m in charge of all installations, upgrades, maintenance, back-ups, and security for both hardware and software. I make the annual computer budget, decide if/when anything needs to be purchased, and am involved with any development projects that come up. I can design my own projects if I feel like they’ll help the company. I’m involved in marketing, designing ads for magazines, flyers, trade shows, and webpages.

I have a huge desk that covers three sides, and share an office (not a cubicle) with one other person. I have a health plan, two weeks paid vacation per year, and most of the time I make my own work instead of someone telling me what to do. The industry is growing, secure, and has little impact from government cutbacks.

My boss is a good man with a great vision. The company pays for any training or classes that I take. I can spend as much time as I need doing tutorials or reading

I’ve signed the contract. I’ve been given a timecard, a locker, and a set of keys to the office and storage room. The hours are flexible enough for me to finish courses for this term, at which point I’ll switch only to work.

As with all my previous jobs, the first paycheque goes to my grandmothers, the second paycheque I split with my friends, the third paycheque goes to my savings.

I’ve started the perfect, perfect, perfect career.