my digitized life // john hwang

Goodbye 2007.

Farewell, 2007. It was a good and honorable year. I hope everyone had a spectacular year as well in 2007. I am very much excited about 2008 although I don’t really know why. There were a lot of resolutions (and expectations) I made a year ago that I have yet to fulfill. Shamefully, I would have to admit that 90% of it was purely because I was being lazy and have not correctly prioritize everything that I wanted to accomplish. Briefly reflecting upon my previous year’s goals, it seems to me that there are three major reasons why I can’t seem to complete some of my goals:

• Not making myself accountable
• Too many segregated goals (ie. Seven Projects)
• Lack of continuity

The first two reasons are pretty much self-explanatory. I’ll need to figure out a way to make myself accountable to failing to work on some of my goals somehow but the problem is that since these are personal goals, there are no negative consequences except for maybe personal shame. I could use some ideas on this one. Second reason is that maybe I put too many things on my plate and that just overwhelms me to the point where I don’t want to work on any of it. One way I can think to fix this is to prioritize my goals carefully and work on them bottom-up. The third reason may need some more elaboration. I currently have what I consider to be a good full-time job that I consider to be rewarding in a multitude of ways and also necessary. I also have a great hobby in photography that I delve into as much as possible but not really necessary but very fun and interesting. My goals are in between these two things and I consider it rather difficult to “shift gears” between each and keep the continuity of the things I am working on.

So my initial thoughts are NOT make the same mistake I did just last year by listing out all the things I want to work on but to just keep it simple and work on goals one at a time so that at the end of 2008, I can write a totally different type of blog post that will reflect back upon things that I was able to complete instead of focusing on the things that I wasn’t.

There, I am very much looking forward to 2008.

Posted in Hobbies, My Life, Work | No Comments »

65/35.

I just realized this morning that I have forgotten a lot about my life in high school. How generic it was. How trustworthy it was. It was always there; I woke up at 6:25 every morning and got to school by 7:15.  School got out promptly at 2:20.

It is certainly strange to think that I graduated in 2001 and it is now 2006. All I really remember from high school was wanting to go to college and get away from it all… start anew. Then, in college, all I really wanted to do was get away from it and get into a working life. For this reason, I had several part-time jobs during my college years which I simply used as an ‘out’ from school. Of course there was the financial necessity but it also gave me an excuse to focus on something I liked doing. Ironically, from my best guess, it were these part-time jobs that attracted job offers my way. That and most likely the fact that I went to Georgia Tech… not really what I studied, how well I did, or what I learned.

Fortunately, I can now finally say that I am happy without feeling the guilt of wearing a fake smile on my face. Well, let’s just say that I’m 65% happy about the way everything is going in my life and most of this happiness attributes to my job. I like being in a professional environment; working toward a professional initiative.  While I am out of school, I know there are more than enough things that I’ll need to learn about life so I’ll never pretend to know everything and hope that I can rely on my professional and social peers for sound and trustworthy advice if in need.

The other 35% are some things I’ll need to work on to improve albeit not know exactly how to deal with them yet.  As far as I can remember, I’ve always had objectives to complete.  I don’t know what caused me to make those objectives but I’ve always sought out those objectives to the end, regardless of whether or not I would succeed or fail.  Until I entered the workforce, these objectives were always academically driven.  Now, my personal life objectives broadened and now it is all about improving the quality of my life and the life of others (especially those that I am close to).  My objective for now would be to overturn those 35% and merge it with the reasons why I am happy at the moment.  It can’t and won’t be done overnight and I know those numbers shift dramatically on a minutely basis but at least I now know my personal objectives.

Posted in Faith/Spirit, My Life, Work | No Comments »

Post 5-Weeks; The Aftermath.

A bit over five weeks ago, I was about 50% excited about going up to NYC and the other 50% dreading it. It was difficult for me to think that I finally got accustomed to my first full-time job but now I needed to temporarily settle down in another location for something totally different. I can’t say I knew what to expect.

Yet here I am, five weeks later, I keep thinking of all the fun I’ve had and all I’ve learned. While I don’t believe in the idea of fate, I can’t help but think that I was meant to be there at those times. As if all the choices that I’ve made in my life has led me to this point and my experience there was simply a confirmation. Tell me, is it too weird to think that?

It didn’t have to be NYC. I honestly think it could have been anywhere and anytime. It was the people. However crazy this may sound, even though at first they were complete strangers, I felt an affinity with a lot of the people I’ve met there after the first week. And it only took a week.

They are all coming down to Charlotte in a few months; however, I am not naive enough to say that we’ll all keep in touch afterwards. I know we won’t. I will certainly try to keep in touch with everyone but I know I am not very good at it.

Thanks.

Posted in Faith/Spirit, My Life, Time Out!, Work | No Comments »

10-months ago.

10-months ago, almost every Sunday night, I would sit down in front of my dorm PC or a PC in a lab and work on VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) lab assignment which was due by the next day at 4:30pm. I also worked 8-hour shifts Saturday and Sunday for an Internet company to make ends meet for myself financially. So in general, I’d be able to get started on these labs at around 10pm. The labs took approximately 8-12 hours to do; take away all my being distracted (and having episodes of Scrubs on my laptop) and it would probably have saved me an extra hour or two for each lab. From what I can remember, I remember absolutely hating every single minute of those hours and dreading it all weeklong. It was almost to a point where… my entire week was ruined because of that one assignment that I either 1) didn’t have time to do during the week or 2) procrastination got the better of me. I hated the lab so badly that I was wondering why I chose my major; this was my graduating semester. What scary thought that was…

Get back to current time. I am part of one of the most profitable companies on Earth. I am temporarily in NYC and my company is helping me get a good start on my career by arranging a training session (the training is pretty new to me since I have a strong technology background). I am networking and befriending people that simply amaze me beyond belief. I like my job.

What a turn of events in such a short period of time. I consider myself extremely blessed.

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Interesting day.

So I woke up today around 6am because of tapping sound outside my window. I look through the blinds and it was Winterland – everything was covered in white. Since there was no way I could’ve made it out of campus without issues, I had to wait until the roads were more travelled on.

Around 11am, I thought the road off of the parking deck was clear enough to drive through. I get outside the apartment and was amazed at an almost-smooth layer of ice on the sidewalks that was about half an inch thick. I normally wear my old tennis shoes to work but if I had done that today, I would’ve falled on my ass at least 5 times on the way to my car. Fortunately, I wore my boots and surprisingly, I could walk at a normal pace without feeling any slippage.

Anyway, on Marietta Street. there was an inch or two of ice/snow in the middle of the lane so I thought it was safe to assume that the outer part of the lanes were safer. Well, apparently, although it looked like wet ground, it was actually thin layer of ice.

Glad the building had a parking garage, otherwise, I wouldn’t have dared to have taken my car but rather walked to the Marta station.

Hopefully, it won’t rain anymore tonight and it will get warm enough for the ice to melt into slush or something.

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Job.

My estimate about finding a job within about a month of being laid off by my previous employer was right.

Went into the office to interview on Wednesday and by Friday, everything has been decided and I told them I’ll be working for them. The pay is okay but a little below what I expected… but maybe I had high expectations.

I’ll be working in downtown Atlanta, like maybe a five minute walk from the Omni Hotel and CNN center but like 10 minute drive from school. I’m rather excited about working again, it’s similar to the job I had before except I actually work at the office during the weekends and work couple hours everyday during the weekday from my apartment. I love this kind of work, especially because of my interest with linux servers and my wanting to learn more and more about them. Of course, this isn’t the kind of job that people expect a computer engineering student to go into… but then again, I’ve never wanted to work for companies that we are expected to want to work for. Actually, I’ve mentioned this before, but I want to either work for a small firm or start up my own.

So there are multiple reasons why I decided to accept this job:

1) Money – I need the money or else, I’ll be broke in about another month.
2) Tuition – Yea so, there seems to be a high possibility of a tuition hike for the spring semester and the following fall semester.
3) Experience – The 1.5 years I’ve worked my previous job, it seems to have given me a fair share of experience in this industry but there are still more than enough things to learn.
4) School – I get so sick of thinking about school and grades that I need a break from school. If I wasn’t doing anything during the weekends, I’d certainly have school in the back of my mind all the time. I’d hate it. Working a peaceful job during the weekend gives me a break from Tech.

Posted in Work | No Comments »