What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

[Forlorn Drifter]

Today is a day that makes me wish I still lived away from my parents so I could get blackout drunk without an argument...

[Jagosaurus]

Thanks Samson! Appreciate the support man. Been a ride so far. It was time for a new challenge . I think this IT firm's overall solution stack/product set, technical personnel skill set, go to market strategy, & focus is better positioned for the future.

Met with my finance guy yesterday and moved over my previous 401K (5 years in) into an IRA. No lie. I felt old...

:? Today is a day that makes me wish I still lived away from my parents so I could get blackout drunk without an argument...

That's what friend's couches are for bud .

Will probably drink a few cold beers tonight after a full week. Probably Saint Arnold's or Karbach.

Maybe even boot up some games for the first time in well over a month.

[jp1]

I've been feeling my age in full force this past year and a half or so. Of my three kids, all have reached "adulthood" except the youngest who is sixteen now. There has been a real disconnect/generational gap to deal with on all three fronts. I've had the first death of a close family relative, bittersweet because she was 100 and suffering...but also happened to be my favorite person in the world. I've switched focus on my career because of serious considerations for my mental health if I continued the path I was on, fell out with some friends due to this as well. Lastly, I've been kind of aimless about where I want to steer the ship going forward. I've considered going back to school to switch fields entirely, but feel like it would be so awkward and out of place.

On the bright side, I saw a lot of this coming and prepared financially, so no struggle on that front at the moment. I've been blessed with plenty of opportunity and chance to explore new options which isn't all too common in my area. I've learned what I definitely don't want out of life, and hopefully have managed to figure it out in time to still make a change and stay mostly whole.

My kids have all proven to be miraculous in different ways. Bias aside they really surprise me sometimes, one is getting through college without costing me a dime since he has secured scholarships and held a job while maintaining an impressive GPA, one is a brilliant creative writer who legitimately has a shot at a career in that field, one has had to overcome some obstacles that have crushed and ruined many peoples lives and has proven to be an incredibly resilient person capable of amazing personal insight. Really, so glad I didn't see karma come around and give me a kid like I was.

I've also had a lot of personal growth as I close in on forty. You would think I'd have it figured out by now, but I have had the opportunity to learn some priceless lessons and really examine myself and find ways to continue to grow, which is important to me. It's still a process, but opening new doors has made that journey all the more interesting and hopeful.

That's my summation of my absence in a vague nutshell. What's been up with you lovely people?

[prfsnl_gmr]

Glad to hear about the change, jp1. I changed jobs almost four years ago, taking an almost 35% pay cut. I left the old job because of the stress. I was completely burnt out, had been for years, and only realized it when the stress started manifesting itself physically in more obvious ways. My current job is drastically better. I am much happier, much healthier, more contented, and after a few years, earning a bit more than I was at my previous job. (It’s amazing how motivated you are to do good work when you don’t dread going to work each day!)

Frankly, life is just too short to spend slaving away in a job you hate. Unless you have to do it to survive, it just isn’t worth it, and I think, ultimately, you’ll view this as a good decision. If “friends” abandon you over a decision like this, they weren’t really your friends at all.

Also, it’s great to hear about your kids. One are only 10 and 8; so, I’ve got a few years until I get there, but I am happy to hear yours have turned out so well. You sound like a great dad, and I know you are so proud of them.

[SamuraiMegas]

Been working with the rapper MF GRIMM lately (I think i mentioned it a few times on here). Helped him do an AMA on hiphopheads on Reddit, and ran a freestyle competition on makinghiphop. Now he's trying to hook me up with backstage passes to the Wu Tang show that's coming to Dallas. My girlfriend got me the tickets a while ago as a (very early) birthday present, so I'm hoping to surprise her with taking her backstage when we get there

He's also eventually going to get me in contact with a few other rappers he knows, such as Kurious. I'm taking some classes this semester for business, and I'm going to try and get a degree for PR/marketing if Law doesn't work out. Already got some contacts to get the ball rolling if I go down the PR route now

It's kind of weird having all this happen- I literally just contacted Grimm on Facebook two years ago and now I'm friends with him and working with him. Guess it shows that you can take those weird moments and opportunities in life and make them into something.

[jp1]

Glad to hear about the change, jp1. I changed jobs almost four years ago, taking an almost 35% pay cut. I left the old job because of the stress. I was completely burnt out, had been for years, and only realized it when the stress started manifesting itself physically in more obvious ways. My current job is drastically better. I am much happier, much healthier, more contented, and after a few years, earning a bit more than I was at my previous job. (It’s amazing how motivated you are to do good work when you don’t dread going to work each day!)

Frankly, life is just too short to spend slaving away in a job you hate. Unless you have to do it to survive, it just isn’t worth it, and I think, ultimately, you’ll view this as a good decision. If “friends” abandon you over a decision like this, they weren’t really your friends at all.

Also, it’s great to hear about your kids. One are only 10 and 8; so, I’ve got a few years until I get there, but I am happy to hear yours have turned out so well. You sound like a great dad, and I know you are so proud of them.

Thanks man, glad to hear things are going well for you as well.

I guess tbh they were more acquaintances than friends, you know "work friends". Some of them couldn't understand since I was seeing promotions and such, but without the time spent together at work we just kind of fell off. It's a shame, but it happens.

[REPO Man]

Someone slashed my bike tire again! Worse is that it wasn't my bike, but rather a loaner since my bike's back tire popped.

[Jagosaurus]

@JP, happy to hear about the career change! I left a toxic environment about 6 years ago. Best decision I ever made. Took a leap of faith.

@REPO, Can you bring your bike inside? Man... sucks. I had 1 bike stolen in college. They cut the lock. Started storing it inside my SUV (seat folded down). My roommate put his inside the house at night.

SMILE this week I became a Nimble Storage Administrator. This is Hewlett Packard's (HPE) most prevalent datacenter storage/backup/recovery platform in my market. 1 certification down! In my role, I won't be installing this at all but the back end knowledge really helps me to know the nitty gritty when talking to clients about it and uncovering needs or qualifying on the front end.

It gets better... training was at a favorite local brewery of mine. 7 hours at a brewery, working on real virtual labs... what could go wrong

Proof or it didn't happen!!!

Hopadillo IPA is my favorite. Crawford Bock is second. Any big baseball fans will notice the play on words for the Astros left field stands.




Nerd street credit! Datacenter storage array provisioned. This was an acutal VM lab, versus baked software program. Had some fun.

[funk_Farmer]

Oh geez, it's been over a year since I posted here and I'm coming back complaining. A couple of months ago something happened that changed my life for the better. For the past 5 years I felt like absolute crap off and on. My joints would hurt, especially my knees and hips, and the last 3 years my blood pressure got wildly out of control. I'm 32 years old and in pretty decent shape if I do say so myself. In 5 years I had only been to the Dr. a handful of times because I'm a man and endure pain and suffering for as long as possible and wait until things get really bad until I seek help just like a real man should, a real dumb man. But each time I went they couldn't find anything wrong with me. Blood work was fine and all that jazz. I'm a farmer/rancher and spend most of my time outside. I always had this nagging suspicion that I had Lyme disease because I have a tick on me every other day but my two Lyme tests both came back negative. Finally, when I woke up one morning and could barely make it down the hallway, out of breath, knees aching, heart racing, I did one more dive into webMD and decided that Lyme was the only thing that made sense. I made an appointment at the clinic, went in and just straight up asked the Dr. to give me the antibiotics for Lyme. He did. Four weeks of antibiotics and now 2 months later I don't have a single problem. It was mother f-ing Lyme disease the whole time. Kind of my fault because I didn't go to the Dr. as much as I should have but I got kind of embarrassed when my tests came back negative and they couldn't find anything wrong. Thought maybe it was all in my head. But, like I said, I had suspected Lyme from the get go and I should've been more real with the Dr. about how bad it actually was. I can't believe I went five years just thinking that's how my life was now. The aches and pains, the crazy blood pressure, the brain fog ( come to think of it the brain fog could've been a pre-existing condition but it got pretty bad sometimes and I couldn't focus on jack and even got a little confused as to what I was doing sometimes), and just the shittiness of life in general. I don't want to sound like a drama queen but, I almost gave up. It's just my wife, our seven year old son, and me out here on the farm and I had fallen so far behind in work and family life because of Lyme that I thought I was going to have to give it all up. Now I'm back.
Plenty to be grateful for though. The weather has screwed up farming big time for lots of folks all over the country. Floods, damaging winds, just plain wet soil that can't be farmed. My family's farm has been fortunate. Had to change plans and cut corners but we're still way better off than most people. Farmers are not in a good position even before the bad weather hit. The majority of farmers are in perpetual debt. I'm talking hundreds of thousands to even over a million dollars of debt. They keep getting consolidated and absorbed by wealthy people and entities. And they show no signs of getting off that course. I'm very fortunate to just be a 'little guy'. My father and grandfather may have gotten crapped on and looked down by other farmers for not upgrading their equipment and renting or buying more land but the next couple of years will be a big dump on their heads if things don't change. The majority won't be able to pay back even a fraction of their operating loans and they'll need more money next year. Farm ground is being reclaimed by water. One of my big worries is that all the flooding will taint our drinking water. All the chemicals and even all the dead cows that got washed away will seep into our underground reservoirs. I've been thinking for a couple of years of getting a new water cistern since the old one on the house cracked 20 years ago and won't hold water. Harvesting rain water and trying to make it drinkable might be the only option a person has if the Oglala reservoir gets infected.
I feel physically and emotionally better than I have for the last 5 years but I still don't really know how I feel in general. Times have to change but I don't want to see my neighbors or even anybody else in the world have to suffer. We have been warned of this change for some time now and spent our time arguing about whether or not it's happening, how it's happening, and how to stop it. We should have been preparing for it.
I also recently got a smartphone, living in the 21st century now! Started playing Phantasy Star 4 again since I never finished it before. The whole thing with the climate control systems built by an advanced ancient civilization going totally out of whack and threatening life on the planet just rings a bell for our time and place. If only it were as easy to fix as assembling a 5 man team and whooping ass across the solar system.
Good to be back in good health though. I'd like to take this time to encourage everyone to grow their own food inside greenhouses or wherever they can. Our world needs to conform to Nature, not to man.

[marurun]

Wow, epic recap. So glad you were able to find out what ailed you. I'm also glad you're managing to hold steady farming. Yeah, farming is a life for very few people these days. A lot of smaller farmers here in Ohio get by supplying farm shares and going to farmers markets, but they're also close enough to a well-populated city to do that. Either way, welcome back and good luck!