Game One Recap
We played our first game last night, and even though we didn’t win, I thought it went pretty well. For a team that hadn’t practiced together ever, this was quite the learning experience for my teammates and I. (more…)
Back to the Field
After a few months off from playing, I’m happy to report that I’m finally going to return to Twin Creeks as part of a new corporate team! (more…)
Jumping Tracks
Hey, I changed my blog’s layout. What do you think?
The most recent news I have for everyone is that I switched jobs over two months ago. I’d been at my last place for two years and two months, and I resigned when I got an offer.
Now, to tell this story, it’s important to kind of go through what happened. Because I wasn’t actually looking for a new job at all when I got a bunch of phone calls. So, I was helping my buddy out with updating his resume and using HotJobs to kind of demonstrate how you can use their resume builder to make your resume look really good. It works for me. But whenever you update your resume anywhere, it sets off like a big alarm all over the Internet. My cell phone rang about three weeks straight from companies all over the Bay Area, and some not so close to the Bay Area. There was a time when I was getting kind of pissed off at all the interruptions during the day.
Here, have a little shot of an unemployed Stormtrooper that I found online and thought was funny.
Perspective is king. I remember when I was unemployed for six months… phone calls from recruiters were like food to this starving man. When you have a job, though, it’s just annoying as shit to get personal calls in the middle of the day to an incessant level. And these were calls from the big companies: eBay, Yahoo, EMC. I tried very hard to shove them to the end of the day. I loved hearing some of them sound more than a little quizzical when I said I couldn’t talk right then. I think they were mostly used to people who’d been out of work for months and would do anything and take anything for a chance at employment. My father and mother always said that it’s much easier to find a job when you have a job. I always felt like it was a circular argument, in the same way that it takes money to make money. Despite the circular nature, it’s still very true.
Anyway, things at my then-current job weren’t getting any better. I won’t go into it, here. Suffice to say that the barrage of calls and some gentle urging from my wife made me reconsider leaving for another position. As much as I liked my manager and some of my co-workers, I pursued a number of interviews with some interest. Some not so much. I really attacked this with a ‘come-as-you-are’ mentality. I wore t-shirts and shorts to all my interviews. I wore my Giants cap. I brought my iPad and took a lot of notes.
One place said I was dressed too casual, but said nothing about my abilities. They told me that next time I needed to dress the part. Yeah, uh… the ‘part’ was phone support. I don’t see customers at all. Whatever, they were stuffy and a little too east-coast business for me, anyway. I wasn’t really all too enthused about the position, either. Oh, wait, the laughable part is that I asked about career movement within the company and they took that to mean that I wasn’t serious about the position. Hi, surely you didn’t think I’d want to be level one support for the rest of my life, right?
I got an offer from a shop not too far away from my old shop. Good place. Professional. Going places and doing things. I liked the manager, I liked everyone I met there, too. I would’ve jumped for lateral pay, but they offered me a generous bump and it just made it that much easier.
The hardest part? Telling my old boss about it. Damn, that sucked. After two years of working with him, I thought we worked really well together and had gotten to know each other. When I told him that I was resigning, I knew he was hurt by that and damned if it didn’t feel like a break-up. There was a bit of a cold shoulder at first, but afterward, he told me he understood. We had a final lunch, we shook hands, I told him that I’d be happy to work for him and that if he ever needed a reference from a subordinate, I’m there. And then those two weeks were up and I was out of there for good.
So far, so good. I’m enjoying my time there, and I’m learning a lot. The team is very nurturing, strong, and close-knit. Not to mention very welcoming and warm. I hope that I kind move out of that stage of not knowing much to making substantive contributions to the team.
And with that, I’m tired. More tomorrow.
Fighting to Stay Awake
Today was a pretty busy day at work, and I started feeling a little tired at around 3pm. I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night, for some reason. I’m not sure if my fatigue was due to not enough sleep, too much work, one meal so far that day, or perhaps a combination of all three. In any case, I was really fighting to stay awake on the drive home and even conversation wasn’t helping me remain conscious. So I thumbed through my iPod and found Metric’s Black Sheep, and just played that at a really high volume. Of course, now the damn song is stuck in my head.
Here, have some Metric (and Brie Larson), singing Black Sheep from the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack:
Anyway, now that I’m finally conscious enough to write blog posts, I figured I would at least say something substantial.
I really miss playing softball. Maybe not the team itself, but I loved being out on the field again. Since I left my last company, I haven’t had any kind of activity to take its place, so I’m looking for something that’ll help me get back into the swing of being active on a weekly basis. But something with enough of an impact to really wear me out. I might wait until next year to go do pick-up games, but I would love to get a real team together again. I wonder if I could rustle up enough people to field a team in time for the spring season? I hope so.
Workout Update
So far, it looks like I might be falling behind on the working out thing. With relation to my sleep schedule, last night I went to sleep way early because I kept nodding off in my desk chair. Not to mention that throughout the day, I was trying really hard not to nod off at my desk. I need to find a way to elevate my desk so I can stand up and use it with a tall chair or something, because standing up I am totally unable to fall asleep. Better yet, I really wish I had that auto-lifter for my desk back when I worked at Yahoo. I had this desk at Yahoo that had a motorized lift on it. If I wanted to stand for a few minutes and work that way so I wasn’t sitting down all day without a break, I hit this button on it and let it rise up until it was at the proper height, and then I would stand and continue to work. I used it once every hour, every fifty minutes I would be standing for ten minutes, and then I would sit back down and lower the desk to the proper sitting height. It ruled.
Anyway, because I fell asleep early, I didn’t do my sit-ups and push-ups like I had planned to. So I got it done tonight, instead. I did 113 reps of sit-ups, and 30+ push-ups. Then I did thirty minutes of cardio. That’s pretty much my every-other-day workout right now. Cardio’s important, but I like how my abs feel after a hard sit-up workout. I’m using the 200 situps and 100 pushups program right now. For cardio, I’m using a combination of recumbent stationary bicycle, swimming, and my Dance Dance Revolution pad. Swimming is probably one of my harder workouts, because I use my twitch muscles and keep them confused. The bike is obviously a good leg workout, because I’m constantly keeping them moving. DDR is also a leg-heavy workout and its fun, because I have like 17 gigs of music to work out to, but it’s kind of hard on my knees for the jumps and the twisting around (when I want to show off to no one and get fancy). But in all three cases, I really work up a good sweat and have some water to cool down.
I try to stretch out as much as possible, but I’m still kind of sore from the softball game on Tuesday night. I was really feeling my quadriceps burning when I stretched them out, and my shins were also sore. My calves are tanks; I never feel sore there. I think for my next cardio, I’ll do swimming. The weather’s perfect for it, now. Not so much in the winter, with the rain and the cold weather and plus they don’t heat the pool. I’m sure I’ll catch pneumonia swimming out there from November to March. April, when it starts to heat up a little more, is a good month to start swimming.
I’m determined to lose weight. I need to be able to run faster for softball. And I want to start pulling the ball farther than short to mid center. I want to slap softballs against the outfield fence!
