Disclaimer: I am not a hippie

You may say that I have been on the verge of it a few times, but no, I’m not. Hell, you even look at my music choices and some of my political choices, but no, I’m not. Not saying hippies are bad people, I just think they lack some action on their admittedly good ideas, and that’s what I’m going for with all this. I want to define actions I want to take for my career.

So I had a dream last night about Barack Obama.

No, not that kind of dream sicko.

The dream was that there was a debate between Obama, Clinton and some new lady who entered the race. During the debate Obama gave some rousing speech and then actually began to cry at the end of his speech. My first thought was “Oh crap, now we people will make fun of him for that”, but that really wasn’t the focus of the dream. Then at the end of the debate, the third candidate lady decided to withdraw from the race, at which point Obama immediately announced that he would have her as his running mate. And I remember thinking “wow, that’s a killer team”. But this STILL wasn’t the focus of the dream. Next, I was in a different part of town and I spilled some of my drink on my shirt. So then I went down to my basement and started scrubbing my shirt trying to get the drink off of it. I woke up still scrubbing when my dog started pacing around my room, wanting to be let out to go to the bathroom.

I hadn’t lifted free weights in about 1.5 years.

Ouch.

However, I’ve done this before. As a full disclosure, I once almost hit 180 pounds. I wasn’t exactly rippling, and beer had given me that inertial advantage, but still I almost hit 180. Now the story is a little different. Due to working night shift at my last job, stress in my personal life and other factors (mostly lack of grocery shopping), I dropped to under 150 for the first time since high school. It wasn’t pretty and I’m not too proud of myself for letting it happen. However, all of that has changed, hopefully for good. I’m back up to a healthy weight at least (well, for my body type and historical weight).

So I don’t mean to complain…but well let’s be serious, that’s what blogs are all about, right?

Ok, so I won’t complain per se, but wow, moving is not how I remember it. I’ve even made the same move in the opposite direction. Granted, last time I did not have a dog nor a girlfriend moving with me (having Jess there actually made it easier), but I think I actually had more stuff back then (somehow). In reality, I’ve had it really easy. Here’s some of the stuff that made it easier on me:

I haven’t posted for a while, obviously.

But in the interim, good things have been happening. The number 1 thing being: I got a new job!

I will be working for Keithley Instruments, located in Solon, OH. My position will be Manufacturing Design Engineer, and I will be working directly with my good friend Dave Young. I am really excited about this opportunity and company. Here’s some of the highlights:

I’m not one to make resolutions. Personally, I think many times people are setting themselves up for failure when they pick a random day to start doing everything they meant to in life, especially the big broad goals. However, in the spirit of the season, I’m going to throw everything I just mentioned out the window and list some stuff I want to do this year, mostly so I have these things recorded somewhere I’ll view them again.

I worked Christmas Eve at Samsung.

This was and is an unfortunate side effect of having an odd schedule, and even more so of being scheduled to work Tuesdays when holidays happen to fall on said Tuesdays. Regardless, I could not take off work because when we were scheduling the holiday season I was working by myself and had to be there. Fine, no problem. My counterpart on the opposite end of the week was kind enough to cover for me on the evening of the 25th, so I got to go home on Christmas morning after work.

Hello everyone. I figured for a first post, it would be useful to explain why I decided to start a namesake site and subsequently begin blogging (again). The site is for three things:

1. To create a personal brand, mostly for my professional life. This does not mean that I will speak and post only about work and work related issues, but more so that I will keep this blog and site clean of vulgar and incriminating content.
2. My ego. Everyone has one, and I’m no exception.
3. People are going to find information on you no matter where they look, why not put it all in one place and help them out?

So who are you?