Archive for the ‘Work’ Category
Saturday, August 28th, 2004
So for the past week, I’ve talked to at least half a dozen different companies about finding a position.
Surprisingly, about 90% of them were actually seeking to fill in a position that I was looking for… All of them thought that I was qualified for the position.
The problem: I can’t find a position that is mostly part-time (20-30 hours per week focusing on weekends). Two different companies asked me if I would relocate and of course, I had to tell them of my requirement to stay in Atlanta for at most another two years. All the others (minus the one that wasn’t hiring), all had different scheduling in mind for me which are not going to work out.
I’m not pressed for money (yet) but I do have a credit card that’s close to the limit after paying this semester’s tuition, books, and other necessities/needs. I got two more checks coming in within the next two weeks which should be sufficient for at least another month’s time. I just hope I can find a job during that time.
If worst comes to worst, I’ll probably take that job that requires 12 hour shifts on Saturday Sunday here in Atlanta. That’ll be tough but I think the pay will be okay and some of the people I worked with at BN thought the company has a great reputation (they do).
Anyway, I think my parents and sisters are worried about my money situation. They kept asking me if I needed money and if I did, all I had to do was ask. 
My guess is if I do ask for money, they’re going to worry even more.
Anyway, I’m sure I can find a job somewhere fairly soon. The question is… will it be a good job or not 
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Wednesday, February 25th, 2004
Yea, surprise surprise… my last 2 paychecks (minimally) are late again. It’s okay, time to fire up another email, and wait. I’m too used to it anyways.
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Friday, February 6th, 2004
Believe it or not, I used to do loads of design work for the web. This was, of course, prior to my webdev and sysadmin days… I think it really started back in the days when I started to work with MS Visual Basic 3. I’d spend so much time on making a gui for a program – making sure everything is perfectly aligned and well organized. I’d spend days on end, just sketching out a graphical interface; implement it – then stop working on the program itself. I remember working on this one email client – the GUI was beautiful. It was about 75% coded as well and major aspects of the program were beta’d to Mars and back! Again though, I never finished it but stored away the *.frm’s and *.bas’s I wish I still had those programs, I’ve never shown them to anyone except maybe when my sisters passed by me working on it… but they probably had no idea and no interest in it.
Anyways, got into HTML through Geocities. I saw someone have a web page and I thought: “Cool, I want one of those!” and made one in Freshmen year of high school. Then I realized my first web page (which sucked by the way), was just text placed in different colors and sizes. That was boring so I saw these graphically intense web sites and was like WOW. This is where Photoshop came in… tutorials and whatnot. Sitting and experimenting with photoshop – learning it’s powerful features that allowed me to create graphics.
Next logical step was… make pages for other people. Webmaster’d high school web site for couple of years. Between the Sophomore year I started and Senior year… my designing ability quadrupled. You should see the crappy web site I made for Myers Park High; they thought it was good and I even got some kind of award from Char-Meck Schools. Anyways, senior year, I realized how crappy my own creation was… so I made another design. I’ve worked on it on and off for a month or so… but Senior year got SO BUSY with IB orals & exams, college apps… blah! Not only that but I was helping a friend start a company earlier… which turned out to be a bad idea because he just ditched me (thanks alot, I learned a lot) with the non-profitting company with 4 employees. I was able to sell the remnants of the company for a very very minimal profit though (go me!)
Yes, so the new MPHS design you will see below was NEVER released or seen by anyone who would’ve motivated me to work on it for the benefit of my work and also the benefit of the school. The teacher who was in charge of my work as a webmaster would’ve been thrilled but I just never had the time to get it finished.
1) Some conceptual 3D work I did when I JUST started realizing pseudo-3D with photoshop was boring… shadows and highlights is overused so you need to either go with a completely 2D graphic or go all in into 3D. Don’t try mixing 3D with 2D unless you know what you are looking to get – I hated this combination because it was so… corny. Like I said, this 3D attempt was corny.
2) The Myers Park high school design I was talking about… the ‘design’ prior to this that I worked on as a Sophomore… hehe, was SO CRAPPY. But I got so many compliments for some reason… at least some of my friends were honest and told me it sucked. I actually think my OLD OLD design is more aesthetically pleasing then the current web site 
3) TruePixel was a web development firm that I founded back in Freshmen year of high school. This site lasted… what… oh let’s say about 6 months before I got swamped by Tech. I’ve shut it down obviously but I did get quote requests and completed couple of designs under the TruePixel brand. I am hoping I can get this back up and running again… maybe hire couple of freelance developers to take on the work while I do some of everything else that needs to be done.
4) Six different logos that I worked on for 6 different clients. Of course, I started by doing volunteer work… then I started doing design contests on online communities. The first contest I won was a $50 amazon.com gift certificate which I bought a book with and still use today
Oh well, just thought I’d share what I used to do. I am really hoping I can get back into this whole designing thing. I used to enjoy working with pleasant clients… although there were a couple that were just downright rude/annoying. I still would like to take some classes on color theory and graphics design coures so I can learn some of the graphical techniques properly.
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Tuesday, September 23rd, 2003
read the last couple of entries here and realized that none of them have any real substance in terms of what I’ve been doing, what I am thinking, and what I am going through.
Well, to answer some of that – my mind seem to be exhausted from last week. The problem now is, though – the work I thought would be left behind last week has started to spill over into this week. I thought this week would be ‘take a breather, john’ week but nope – it has turned into a ‘quickly catch up, john’ week.
I’ve been working on design ideas for GT ECE Department’s Digital Media Lab – ugh – I must be a bit out of the whole designing/creativity deal because I haven’t been able to get out a single good design. Talk about designer’s block! <insert me being physically erratic here>
Eek – I’m supposed to be working on the design for the GT ECE department next! How am I going to do that if I can’t even get a good design layout going for the DML site? =/
Related to school news: Oooh, I’ve screwed up couple classes of mine already. It’s not even october yet and I’ve screwed myself over. Figures.
For some good news – I’m still satisfied overall, I mean, I am always going to have negative feelings about academics. But compared to last spring where I was depressed for no good reason every single day, things have been a lot better and my mind is relatively clear and not so clouded anymore.
Sleepy time. G’nite.
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Wednesday, May 14th, 2003
Yes yes, I do apologize for the lack of updated blogs on this site… but frankly, there is nothing really to update on.
I have been working over time late into last weekend because 1) No internet access except crappy dialup until Thursday so couldn’t do any work 2) I was in Chapel Hill until Wednesday afternoon.
Anywho, took my dog to the vet last Friday because we decided that it was a good time to get his dental cleaning. He came back a bit groggy because he was under general anaesthesia during the procedure… vet told me that three of his teeth just fell out with just a bit of tugging. Buddy also had an annual check up the week prior… and with a blood test, we found out that Buddy is … ‘overweight’ in terms of… just being fat. So he’s been on a stricter diet from that point on.
So went to Chapel Hill last week – I didn’t do that much, I just went over there to chill with my sisters and also get screened for a dental exam that my sister will have to take soon. She will have to perform dental care stuff on people that she’s screened and qualified for the dental care examination. She’ll do exceptionally well- of course she will – I have no doubt
I also found out at Chapel Hill that I passed all my classes… some with flying colors and some others not so much although I was still thrilled to have passed the course (yes ladies and gentlemen, I have passes CS2130 and will not have to take any more frickin’ Computer ‘Kill all GT Students’ Science courses at Tech- WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOO). So screw my former backup major as a CS major- I’m keeping on with my CompE degree with EE as my backup although… at this point there’s really no real reason for me to switch to EE since they are the same majors with only 3-4 different classes… ah screw it, I’ll just stick to my CompE thing. I’ve wasted too much time with the PreReq’s building up to this point to quit now.
Work has been slow… especially because the network is rock solid now (they hired a new network engineer that spent about 3 days tweaking the network). The ping time to my new server increased slightly – but no bid deal, it’s at 39ms now going through the Level3 line. I’ve decided to name this server Spring. This is the first server that I will completely own to myself and I won’t have any restriction on running what and when and how etc. I named it spring because I like the names of the four seasons: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Who knows where Summer, Autumn, and Winter are going to be placed – hopefully I can have them hosted in different data centers so I can make them all quadruply redundant or at least doubly redundant. If not, I’ll just run different stuff on each server. Let me know if you want to be hosted on Spring, it’s a rather high-spec server; definitely better than my desktop 
I am also looking for a laptop- I was thinking of just getting one of those dell cheapo deals but then I think I might invest some more money into it and make it my primary computer while using my desktop as a backup. But then again, since I don’t really like laptops much – I’ll just invest little in it and use it for wireless purposes around the GT campus. By the way, they finally laid out the grass on the park that they made out of the old Hightower building – took them the whole year to do this… So, I am looking at Dell, HP, Toshiba, Vaio, and Sager brands. If you have any particular suggestions – do comment.
Anyhow – just a itty bitty update. No promise as to when I will update this next but hopefully soon.
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Monday, February 24th, 2003
Feeling a bit better after I did a whole lot of nothing during the weekend except go to SAC saturday and watch couple movies thereafter and attempt a lab which I didn’t feel like doing.
Anyways, you know what I found out helps me feel better about any situation? To think about something that I can have complete control over… that’s probably the reason why I like working on stuff on the web because in most cases, I will have COMPLETE control. I will work on it whatever way I feel would be best, I will be running my own thing and no one will be able to interrupt it!
Right now, I am working on two different ideas – I am definitely going to be working on one of the ideas starting now for work during the summer but I don’t know about the other because it would be basically be run for fun and because of an interest to create a popular site that has a chance of becoming a large community. I will definitely be needing a ton of help from people who are interested in helping me get this ‘interest’ site started but I definitely want to take the time to work on it
Anyways, like always, I will keep the summer work idea a complete secret – even after it opens because like I said, I hate intermingling personal interests with interests for work.
hmm, I’m excited about it… finally something else that grabbed my interest although the other thing(s) will still occupy my mind, I will try to focus on these as they might be more successful and again, I will have complete control over it – so the success of my ideas will depend on myself only.
So, 5 more days and we will be off to Miami for Spring Break! I’m excited – it’ll be fun – it’ll be helluva memorable break I’ll take my digital camera with me so hopefully, I’ll bring back a crapload of pictures
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