Well, I guess I'll start from the beginning.
Following my update in August of last year, I ended up succeeding at buying a house (picasaweb.google.com). I now live by myself, midtown Anchorage, near a mega-church, two top-soil plants, and Sara's Sandwich Shop. Living here now nearly a year, I'm still enjoying it quite a bit. With a lot of help from friends and family, I'm slowly making the place into a normal home, and not just walls and surfaces with peeling paint and silly electronics.
As mentioned previously, my sister had a son in November: Khalil Makai (picasaweb.google.com), and married (picasaweb.google.com) his father, Dante, in December. Khalil's a happy baby despite having more allergies than I can count, and looked a little bit like one of the alien characters in Star Wars when he was first born. My sister didn't appreciate me informing her of the latter fact.
I tried this last winter to get outside as much as I could. In addition to family snowmachine trips, I played a weekly outdoor pickup hockey game, and further bullied others (picasaweb.google.com) to try it as well. I kept busy otherwise with weekly movie nights and book clubs and a short-lived indoor soccer season. I think at some point I even went to a dinner theater in Eagle River. Sometimes you just have to get out.
In May, I went down to North Carolina to see my friend Paul Kukes get married (picasaweb.google.com). He married his now-wife Abby on May 1st on the Biltmore Estate near Asheville, NC. It was my first time being to any Carolina, and I would definitely recommend visiting the North one if you have the opportunity. It was also my first time being in a wedding. Being a groomsman isn't so bad. Just be nice to the bride's dog, and move anything they ask you to. It's cake besides that.
This summer has been pretty standard. Ultimate frisbee a few evenings a week and biking around town (466 miles so far this summer). Just returned from a trip to my family's cabin, taking friends along with the grim purpose of fixing the cabin's failing foundation. We managed to fix it (picasaweb.google.com).
The common denominator of all these events has, of course, been work. I'm still employed, and employed at AT&T. Working for a big corporation is pretty consistently strange, and I'll leave it at that. In my dwindling free time (after I started rewriting idkfa), I also started a personal business (intersectionthereof.com) doing computer / programming for folks around town. So far, I've had one customer. I'll have to get back to you on that.
I can say, however, that rebuilding idkfa has at least reminded me that I do still have a passion for new and interesting projects, even if they're old ideas. It is good to know that I can still program recreationally and not be burnt out by having to work at the same time.
I'm not sure how I feel about this last year. I feel like I've done and accomplished a lot, but that I haven't really solved very much. I'm not sure what problem I should be solving, but it weighs on me just the same. I try to place importance on the normal things in life, things that seem to bring others happiness, and while I can appreciate them, I can't suspend my own disbelief. There's just too much about life I don't understand. And probably too much I've forgotten about while I was putting my life into systems.
I don't know what I'll be up to this next year. I'll venture a guess that home improvement will probably be part of it.
Shwooooops, missed the whole 'archiving' thing and whatnot... anyhow, let's reflect, shall we?
This last year has been pretty interesting. And by interesting, I mean much different than prior years. It seems like I have been through many transitory periods since graduating from college. Let's recall them:
1) Went back to Alaska, and applied for jobs. MANY jobs. And finally ended up doing corrosion testing on the slope (read: manual labor), which was soul eroding. Perspective changed to ideals, as I quit and decided to apply to grad school, and got in. Also worked a summer for big oil, which was fun.
2) Grad school. Very much intellectually stimulating, but soul eroding in another fashion. Decided real life was better than try to live through my ideals. Came back to Alaska.
3) Environmental science for Nana after applying for many jobs. For a whole year now, almost (!).
This last year has been great. Being close to family, friends, and Libby, and earning a decent wage while having variety in my work. And I have time for hobbies! Of course, living without having to worry about money is pretty awesome, and that's been the main change. Security. But in a big dumb life. I still somewhat miss the great PhD endeavor, but that just means I'll have to do something else to give back to humanity (working to remediate the environment is pretty cool, though, I must admit). The variety that my current has given me has kept me from trying to transition to yet another stage... but we'll see where the future leads.
I was recently reminded of a past era of my life, because I got rejected from 5 jobs I applied for in August 2009 about a week ago. Thanks for the timely response, State of Alaska. It was just interesting to think of that time, rather, those times in my life where everything was dangling by a thread. I know I don't ever want to go back to that. I guess I'm fortunate in a way, to have failed and picked myself back up through reinvention, so hopefully I've learned from everything that I've done wrong in the past. When times are good, it's so easy to forget about when things were less then ideal, and over this past year, I've been trying to fight getting too complacent with my position. For that reason, I've definitely been considering going for some further education (maybe a master's this time instead...), or at least trying to challenge myself so that I keep growing.
I'm rambling now, but I guess my summation is: life is good. But I don't want it to get too good.
I'll take the honor of leading off - somewhat ironic in that not only has little changed in the past year, I could generally describe life in much the same way I did decades ago when IDKFA was in its heyday.
I still go to Goldenview every workday (and a few others). For the past 4 years I've been "out of the classroom" and focused on making the technology work. This fall I ease back in with a single computer class - the direct descendant of the class a few of you might have taken back in before the day.
I would be curious if an GV alumni return, as, once you've gone to high school, most people forget their middle school. But a few do not.....
where to start....
This time last year I had just come off a horrible job assignment on a construction site. I was worried about my job.
So, in March I jumped ship and left CH M H LL. I was able to finagle it so that I was done with them on the day before I left for a weeklong vacation with the family to Kauai, which was amazing. My first day back from vacation was my first day starting at C ffman Eng neers.
It's been an awesome ride. I've been busy, nonstop, since I joined them. I've lost track of how many projects I've worked on. Every time I finish a project, a new one is there to pick up. It's one of the best decisions I've made in my life.
This past year I was part of the Leadership Anchorage program, put on by the Alaska Humanities Forum. It was a 10 month long intensive leadership development program. I was able to have a state legislator as a mentor, and we were able to meet for breakfast for several months. Totally sweet insight into Alaska politics and the sorts of things that happen in the State Legislature. I was also part of a community service project group, and we helped a local nonprofit come up with a marketing plan for a recent program expansion. We also had some larger sessions with the full class where we would hear from a leader in the community on a topic of leadership and also do some group development activities. It was a great experience, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I'd also highly recommend it to anyone here.
It was also another year of soccer. I finally got Josh and Lee to try it out. Hopefully they didn't hate it so much that they won't play again.
It's also been another year of classes. Last fall I took Alaska Native Politics, and learned many (more) intracacies of Alaska Native Corporations, 8(a) eligibility and corporations, and history about the state through the eyes of ANCSA and ANILCA.
Then, I had the bright idea that, since I've been taking all these classes at UAA anyways, I'd do it "for serial!" So, last semester I took a prerequisite for the MBA program and learned all about Fundamentals of Finance, and that not many people in the class can understand addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
Over the summer I took the GMAT, which is a test tailored for MBA students. I was very happy to read my test scores, where I got 90% correct on the math, and 75% on the verbal. Then, I kept reading my test report, and my heart fell when I found out that I was in the top 25% of test takers with my verbal score, and the bottom 25% of test takers on the math score. The numbers are so skewed because most of the examinees are Indian engineers, who have a limited idea what English is, but ace a math exam in their sleep.
Just this week I started my first two for serial classes. One of them, Intermediate Finance, is taught by an Indian professor whose classroom student behavior requirements make me feel like I'm living in my college's classes again, what with all my Indian professors there and the caste system they had set up there. Oh yeah.
I'm already thinking about the PE exam, which I take next fall. October 2011. I won't be taking classes that semester. Right now my plan between now and then is take this semester of classes, take spring semester classes, and then once spring classes get out, immediately start studying for the exam, all the way up until exam day. So, I've got an interesting year to look forward to.
Anyways, that's all I have time for to write. I leave for Seattle tonight to be a best man for one of my college roommates. I'm coming down with a cold today! It sucks! Right before the wedding!
For fear of this section closing I figure I ought to go ahead and do this now. It’ll be easy actually.
Since I can’t really remember where I left off last year I might as well start somewhere around last fall. The only major thing to happen really was that I did in fact take the entrance exam and fill out applications for dental school. I was slowly but surely rejected from all of my school choices, and in the case of UW apparently forgotten about entirely until the day before my birthday at which point they finally remembered to send me the rejection notice. I think this was equal parts not having stellar grades and also not spending a huge amount of time observing a dentist.
It’s not that I found the rejection discouraging, I just really wanted to take time again to prepare and also do something fun. So I decided not to try and apply again this year. Instead I’ve been getting ready to do some real mountain climbing. In June my dad and I took a week long class in the north cascades that taught us proper packing, good gear lists, crevasse rescue and general glacier and mountain skills. Out of this I thought I learned how to hike, backpack and camp better in general. And now when I look at mountains I feel like I could actually go out and climb about any one safely. The pinnacle of all this work was climbing Mt Rainier two weekends ago, the pictures are linked somewhere else on idkfa. 14,412 feet of mountain with my dad, though only about 9000 feet that I personally had to walk. Dad was a little worried he wouldn’t be able to make it, and a couple of times it was hard to get him up and walking towards the summit again, but we did it in good time and aren’t much worse for the wear of it. Now I’m looking to do some more summits and maybe even take on Rainier again with another climbing partner.
Job wise I’m doing the same thing. Earlier this year my old boss quit right about the same time as I had been discussing moving to another scientists group, which was a little awkward. My old boss caught wind of my move to a different group and was a little unhappy about it, since I initiated the move before I knew she was leaving. Anyway I work on leprosy vaccines now though I still moonlight with TB and generally am an all around kind of guy. I did finally learn how to do flow cytometry and intracellular cytokine staining. Kinda still slow on it and I get confused by the intricacies of the flow machine program, but basically not much has changed for me at work.
I just finished captaining my second season of corporate ultimate Frisbee league with a perfect record for our team. And by perfect record I mean 0-10 all losses. Still we had the most fun of any team out there and were awarded for most team spirit… tied with REI corporate actually. In a few weeks I’ll be starting a fall league and also riding 160 miles in a MS fundraiser.
At home things are pretty much the same. John is going into the second grade at a new school. We really couldn’t handle the Christian school anymore, with any and all of John behavior problems there being blamed on Katy having a job that did not include popping out babies like the Dugger family. That and the final straw for me was when John told me that only god/jesus can cure leprosy, and did not believe me when I said that there were pretty good antibiotics out there… I really don’t need John telling his teacher even in a misguided way that I’m trying to cure people like jesus.
That is pretty much it, more than that really. It’s not like much has happened in a year, I just have a slow afternoon at work today.
Tonight I DJ at Valhalla in Pullman, WA for those of you who went to WSU you should know the place. Wish me luck.
other than that, I'm still pursuing my degree in Architecture and Fine Arts here and enjoying the simple life.
An incredible amount has happened to me in just the past few weeks. A few months ago I figured out that I really missed college. Getting an MBA was always in the back in my mind, but I figured now was the absolutely best time to do so while I'm still young. I decided to attend Washington University in St Louis (which is going to get really confusing on the resuming since I graduated from Washington State) and I have been here about 4 days now. It has been really amazing stepping into an environment where everyone is really collegial and interested in learning again, though I do miss stepping out of the working world a bit. Everyone here is amazingly brilliant, so I've had to step up my game a little bit, but it definitely isn't anything I can't handle.
In the process of moving, I lost my best friend in Charlotte, which was a sad occurance. Besides him, I did establish a really good group of friends for myself which was really tough to leave and I hate the fact I have to start all over again. Currently renting out my condo in downtown Charlotte for (about) my mortgage. Had a girlfriend for a while, but obviously that didn't last when I moved.
But honestly, I'm absolutely loving St Louis. It's really an amazing city and one that I didn't know much about or even knew existed. I'm already in a kickball league with one of my friends from Wazzu, which is amazing. Still (tentatively) planning to move back to Charlotte when I graduate, though that will greatly depend on the job opportunities at the time. I am a lot more focused in what I want to do now, instead of following the bandwagon on what everyone else thinks I should do, which is something I should've realized a long time ago.
Since last year, wow, a lot has happened but it feels like nothing has happened all at the same time.
I moved into a bigger place in Oklahoma. Twice the size of my old apartment. It's a cute duplex with a big backyard. I like that it backs up to a green belt and thus I only see green when I look out my dining room and kitchen windows. Norman has no mountains but the view of all the green + a stormy sky almost makes up for the lack, sometimes.
There was a family reunion this year for my mom's side of the family. I was ragged on for not having a bf or husband or children. I think I said 10 words during the whole dinner. It was fun to study the people who are linked genetically to me for a few hours while eating cake and tasty bbq. I made note that I was outnumbered by Oklahoma State University fans, I tried not to feel hunted.
The biggest news this year is I've decided that the PhD program isn't for me anymore. I've started applying for 9-5 jobs and am keeping my fingers crossed. Academia has been a learning experience but I don't think I've learned what the professors wanted me to. I do believe that I've learned what I needed to and that's enough for me, at least right now.
