The Naked Green

I’m sure I must have written some goals at some point, but I can’t remember them. Electrical work has been very slow lately which led to a second installment of a long meeting. Our boss had us write a list of goals for the future and I thought I would list some of them here:

• Three year goals (January 2010)
  • Make $50,000 a year
  • Learn Spanish
  • Be a Journeyman electrician

Edit: Work hasn’t been slow lately, I just found this post in my drafts and couldn’t think of anything that needed to be added. For some reason, I thought it would post with the original date…silly me. It was written some time during the winter of ‘06-’07

What are you supposed to write in your blog after more than a year of inactivity?

I’ve been at my parents’ house working on harwoodcafe.com due to the lack of electrical work. I did my usual cringing check of my days work in IE and wouldn’t you know it, it was broken. You’re not surprised, are you? It seems that the good ol’ folks at “little software” decided to put out IE 7, a ridiculous attempt at mimicking Firefox. They also decided to fix some bugs while they were at it, which made my hacks not work. It wasn’t a horrible disaster because of conditional comments, but it was annoying. That, in case you’re wondering, is how I came to be staring at The Naked Green once again and had my Dad walk by and say, “Your last post was in September 2005.” Thanks for pointing that out!

There’s a lot that’s happened and lots of ideas and plans and maybe I’ll write some more in hear here to inform the awaiting masses and document the history of my interesting life, but it will have to wait.

I’ve decided to cancel our internet connection for a while. It’s hard for me to give up such a useful tool, but it seems to be sucking away my time and causing problems in my family. I won’t completely disappear from the world of ones and zeros, but the internet will be limited to once a week or so, to fulfill my commitment to my church. Other than that, I guess you’ll have to call or write snail mail to reach me, so get on it!

Here’s a quick update on what has been going on in my life and why I haven’t written here:

• Started my Algebra class (May 31)
• We bought a house and moved in the same day (June 1)!
• Interviewed for a job with a local electrician (June 6).
• Dropped Algebra class (June 8).
• Started work as an electrician! (June 13).

During all that, I was trying to get settled in a new house (still ongoing), read three of the Dune books and did homework while it lasted. Needless to say, I have had very brief spurts of internet usage and I still have no internet service at home which tends to put a damper on things.

Life is busy and life is good! More later, if I have time….

I just finished reading Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s writing is quite different and hard-to-follow at times. It is certainly well done, though. I must admit that my head was spinning and dreaming along with Gibreel and Saladin. I was captivated after the first section of the book in that must-get-back-to-sleep-to-finish-the-dream sort of way. It’s mezmerizing, thought provoking and insane which are great components of writing in my opinion.

The only problem is that I come away with not much. The dream has ended and it lingers in that morning melencholy, but fades quickly. That and my aversion to the work and tearing-apart which is “book review” leads me to talk of the experience of reading with no real explainations.

A friend of mine dogged me about reading the book for a while, which I ignored fairly well until he gave it for a birthday present. It was harder to ignore then, but I still avoided it. Couldn’t get rid of a gift book and couldn’t read it. It was the name that got to me as you may imagine. After reading, though, I say “thank you” to my friend for the gift. It’s hardly a read for children or those needing no encouragement toward immorality. Language, sex, blasphemy and I digress.

It’s when life gets busy and full of things to talk about that the blogging slows to a trickle. It’s sad that the best amateur writing is about the most boring things because there’s so much time to embellish. You have to have some pretty good material to make it interesting without embellishment and even that takes talent and time. I digress.

It’s official! Green Light Works, my business, now has a website and I’ve been littering the town with business cards. This is the time to try making money out of a hobby I love: web design. You laugh? Well, it’s also a time to help my Dad out with his flooring business. Add in a math class to meet the criteria for an electrician apprenticeship and you start to get the idea: I’m busy and my mind is working faster than it likes to. Emotions are…well…emotional.

I’m not at all saying that my life is somehow unbearable or “too busy”. Others work hard for that title and I have no intention of taking it away. There is a lot going on in my life for me personally, though. More than the volume, it’s the alien feeling I get doing such crazy things. I mean, living the “American Dream”…who would have thought?

It must have been a big practical joke or something that shut down the internet for at least my client and I. I spent most of the morning designing another logo. I guess I’m trying to make up for lack of skill with a multitude of ideas and attempts to find that “image” that defines my business. How many layers is a logo supposed to have, anyway?

I did get some work done, sticking my head [Wow! <opening>Just the other day I was wanting to search my bookmarks and was having a heck of a time figuring out how. I downloaded an extension to do it which was lost when I had to revert to an older version of my profile due to another extension that was causing weird bugs when I updated it. The problem was when I tried to install an old version, it didn’t work and then wouldn’t uninstall. So, I reverted to the old profile and copied my bookmarks over and wouldn’t you know it…I ended up with the old bookmarks some how. The latest is gone! I take my bookmarks seriously and that was frustrating! It put a kink in my work at any rate.</opening> I just hit some key that brought up a sidebar for searching bookmarks. I wonder what buttons I hit and why I didn’t find out how to due that in my search the other day.] into WordPress for another remarkably smooth transition of a design I just did into a theme. I love WordPress! The joking and fun seemed to pass me by unnoticed until recently…is what I was trying to say.

Yep, I guess the joke’s on me…or you for reading this far. Happy April Fool’s Day! I’m not even going to bother looking up the history, it was probably some sort of joke gone bad anyway. A curse to endless yearly mayhem or something.

Where in the great city of Juarez right now on a whim. Jamie had a three day weekend and we decided to head for the warmer country since she hasn’t been here before. Now we’re off for more adventures before my 30 minutos runs out.

Update 2005.03.28: What an adventure! We arrived in El Paso Friday night and found a Red Lobster to eat at. Having fulfilled Jamie’s craving for seafood, we went to hotel Wal-Mart for a night in the car. I personally would rather have set up my tent in the parking lot, but I did get some sleep and we didn’t have to worry about sleeping in too late the next morning.

Saturday morning the weather was cold and windy, but we prayed for a change and headed off in excitement to be going to Mexico. We parked in downtown El Paso and got all the way to the border when we realized we needed some extra cash. We wandered around looking for an ATM and soon found out that I didn’t know my pin number. I tried other cards…other pin numbers…called my bank…all to no avail. So we headed into Mexico with $20.

It wasn’t long befor I saw the beacon calling to me: “Internet”. That’s what I need, I thought! I logged on to my PayPal account (trying to be as secure as possible) and changed the pin on my PayPal debit card. A quick update for all my religious readers here and we were off to find an ATM. It took some time to figure a number between “insufficient funds” and 50 pesos on two ATMs and then we were off to the market to be assailed by vendors all inviting us into their stalls. Another crisis averted by the wonderful world of internet!

It was a fun and exhausting adventure visiting Mexico, seeing family friends and listening to some books on CD. Stay tuned for our next three day adventure when we hope to sail to Hawaii (or something)!

Goals or Ghouls? This whole post may be a hodge podge of points on a flat landscape due to this very question. Where do I stand? Am I just reacting or is there some sort of goal? I have an idea where I want to end up in the end and what I’m going to do next, but the path seems non-existent. It may be a fear of commitment or some other neurotic aversion, but I think the question deals with more than the spelling.

Starting a “web design” business has set me to questioning myself and what I’m doing. I love doing web design and believe I’m good enough to start charging money to do it. I know it’s very difficult to make a living at it, though, which leaves me in this sort of temporary state. How can I define the path and where am I headed? I design websites and install hardwood floors for Pete’s sake!

That’s where the whole “electrician thing” comes in. It makes sense: A trade that I can make a decent wage while I learn how to do it and then provide for my family…happily ever after. It’s not that I’m against the idea, either…it’s a good one. I go into it hoping that some day I can bring it around to computers, the internet, design…the things I love to do (for now). No problem. So what’s the big deal?

I’m just thinking at the expense of anyone who reads this blog, that’s all. I was in a particularly down mood about the whole thing this morning and just now, I read an article: My Web Professional Career. I feel like he does: Not confident, fearing failure, and lacking direction. It got me thinking and I decided to write…about goals. Where are they? Well, what the heck, here’s a few:

• I want my business and any work I do to have kingdom impact (God’s kingdom). That’s too vague though, isn’t it?
• I plan to be able to be the sole provider for my family within…let’s say two years (from next year).
• I will try to not delete these goals

I can’t even write them seriously! I suppose I can keep the last one, but why is it that I have such an aversion to being tied down? I think you could say I have effectively stepped out on the line quitting my job and starting a business. There’s really no risk, though. It’s more risky to commit to something…for the long haul.

That’s it for now. No closer to a solution, but I have a soup on the stove that needs stirring.

Only in Colorado does a geek ride his mountain bike up and down hills to get to the library only to pick up books on PHP & MySQL, take a drink from his Nalgene, ride back and actually enjoy it.

Soon, I hope to be designing database driven websites that are so simple to maintain, even the client can do it. Why I want to work myself out of a job, I don’t know. My new found knowledge will probably be used on my business website first. There is some serious learning to do before then, though, which explains why I picked up MySQL/PHP Database Applications. I hope to spend enough time with my head in the book to make some headway progress before I get busy again with two prospective jobs in April as well as some flooring.

Side note: Thanks to Simon Wheeler, creator of phpdev, who made it a breeze to get PHP MySQL and Apache running on my Win machine in minutes! I’m excited to get going and the last thing I need is to spend hours trying to configure programs.