Brilla.org

What to say about 2009. In many ways, it was a year of stabilizing.

Life and Living

I started out jobless and broke, stuck with an expensive penthouse apartment in Belltown. I’d move twice; once to a cheap, lovable frat house in the ‘burbs, and finally to a pleasant, affordable apartment close to work downtown. This also solidified that I would be in Seattle for the long term. It set me free to focus on bigger things than vagabonding.

Work work work

I landed a short contract gig at Microsoft. My boredom and restlessness ran rampant there. Tired of flimsy contracts and drowning in corporate bloat, I got a new job. It’s a small company where I can have a close relationship with the customer, and a big impact on what we do.

And what I do is changing a lot. It began doing cookie-cutter web development work in XSL. But I quickly showed potential and interest in other areas. After mentioning to a colleague that my background is actually in business, I migrated over to Sales. I gave technical demos, and whipped up prototypes for potential customers (most notably, Seattle Public Library whom we just recently signed fist pump hell yes). It went really well, and I liked the aspect of talking to people, but money and sales ain’t everything.

I stumbled into a Training meeting one day, discussing our class offerings. We came up with the idea of offering training workshops to our clients. The idea is to teach something cool for half a day (maybe mobile web design, CSS3/HTML5, jQuery/AJAX, etc.), then use the other half of the day to put that to work on their sites. We loved it. Boss Man loved it. And next week, we are sending out a survey to size up which workshops our customers will be interested in. It might be in house in Seattle, or it might be on the road, but they’re going to have me leading a lot of them. I’ve said from the get-go that I want to be a teacher after I make my millions off the web, so I am super stoked to be dong this.

There’s other things in the works. Boss Man said outright, “Jon, I’ve got big plans for you in 2010.” I’m bout ready to cash in some of that ‘potential’ I’ve been dragging around for years now. Hell yes!

Et Cetera

I love karaoke. I’ve made an awesome group of very cool friends in the process.

I have a lovely girlfriend. I met her almost a year ago outside of one of those ritzy Belltown bars (thank you, overpriced penthouse!).

I am reading a lot a lot a lot. Mostly web related; design, IA, mobile. Some kinky literature thrown in there — I like my Hunter S. and my Palahniuk. Wonderful to be back, at any rate.

Life is generally pretty jolly, and I feel like I am just getting started.

Yayyy

Good things people. I’m like most everyone, looking forward to 2010 with unbridled optimism and enthusiasm! Eat drink be merry, then get back to work :D we’ve got building to do!

The last couple years have been about things cheap, fast, and accessible. Google and Wikipedia cemented themselves as de-facto brain extensions for anyone working on the web. Twitter became the 140 character venue for the A.D.D. blogger. Life hacks, lists of 46 best blanks to do blank. Even a broader sense of advertising: getting ripped in two weeks with one simple rule. Lose weight & get rich fast have been around for a while now, but you see what I’m getting at.

But there’s a new trend we’re seeing here. Lots of brilliant web thinkers (and even celebrities-turned-Twitter allstars) are turning a new leaf. Project52 insists we start blogging again and revive this mostly-dead medium. Guys like Anil, Merlin and Seth are beckoning us to reach a little deeper and put a lot of creative force and focus into what you produce. Derek dissects burnout beautifully. My buddy Jay has kindly asked all the hack get-rich-on-bullshit-content people to leave his internet alone. Rob Goodlatte preaches it. Even Mister Santa Maria’s new manifesto is fucking righteous.

I am thrilled to see a slow shift away from the hyper-multi-tasking life. From spreading ourselves so thin; we’ve done that. I feel like we as a small society of designers, developers and nerds, have proven to ourselves that we can juggle 528 things at once. But also, we’re going to start getting picky and turning away the 524 things we don’t want to do, and start focusing the handful of engaging projects where our passion lies.

THEN. Oh man. Big beautiful nasty things are going to start surfacing. Geeks being geeks for the sake of being geeks, and not just to fulfill a stakeholder’s wish or some bloated business objective, man. The Pictorys, and the Favrds (bless its little heart); the stuff EJS is talking about.

And, as I wrap up this post now, I see Jina writing on a very similar theme.

I have seen the future, people. It is lovely.

I recently got a first generation, 30gb white Zune. And I’m here to say, I love it.

My first impression was not a positive one. Installing & setting up Zune 3.0 software was a pain, and a familiar story for Microsoft software. But, four downloads, three installations and two restarts later, she was up and running. The wait was worth it.

Zune’s software is pretty and friendly. ‘Please wait’ is replaced with ‘Hang on.’ Gray backdrops and blue progress bars are now colorful and pink. Pictures of spontaneous youth wrestling and laughing remind me I should be out & about tonight.

The PC software is kind of useless & surely won’t usurp Winamp as my media player of choice, but it gets the job done for syncing files between gadget and computer. It also fills in missing MP3 tags and downloads album art automatically. My inner OCD sufferer is satisfied.

But when you fire up the Zune itself… man. The fun starts. It makes the iPod UI feel boring and plain Jane. Album art & photos of your choice serve as the backdrop. Text and content zip and saunter around your screen when you navigate.

I have to say a bit about the iPod’s trusty clickwheel. Many MP3 players tried to implement something similar or better, and fell incredibly short. Zune got it right. My 1st gen spin wheel thing looks like iPod’s, but functions more like a D-Pad on old video game controllers. Navigating up & down works as expected, but horizontal movement is where this setup shines.

Let’s say I’m listening to Foo Fighters, There is Nothing Left to Lose, when I decide that I really want to be jammin’ to The Colour and the Shape. In 99% of MP3 players ever, I would press Back, then scroll down to my album of choice, and press Enter. On the Zune, you hit Right once, and you’re there. Or maybe you’re window-shopping Foo albums and get a sudden hankerin’ for Foreigner. Hit Left, and you can power ballad awesome 80’s to your heart’s content. I’m the kind of dude who spends lots of time back-tracking through iPod menus, so this is super handy for me.

There’s many little ‘gotchas’ like this where small UI changes go a long way on the Zune. ‘Shuffle All’ is the very first option under Music. Great, but how about when you switch to album play afterward? Zune automatically turns off the Shuffle mode & plays your album straight through. Solid!

Physically, the Zune is lighter than it looks like it should be. Fits the palm nicely when in use, and travels comfortably in my back pocket. It’s very study, I suspect it could take a good deal of abuse from ultimate, parties, etc.

In the coming months, 30 gigs may prove to be a bit too cozy for my music library, but I am very pleased with my Zune so far. It’s the first Microsoft product I’ve been genuinely excited about in a long time. It does stand on the shoulders of tested giants, but it has some unique niceties that won over my affection and adoration. Hats off, Zune Team!

I’m learning a lot up here, gang. Microsoft’s teaching me plenty about all its latest whiz-bang technologies, and some precious insights on how to climb the corporate ladder—or take the escalator.

But this being on my own thing (or grown up, or whatever) has really been something awesome for me. For the first time, I’m starting to take a step back and evaluate my life. Things are far from bad right now, but I’m finding plenty of room for improvement.

Some of it’s simple… eat better & exercise more. You’ll feel better. Other things are painfully simple & obvious, and that’s why they went overlooked to begin with. Making time and putting forth the effort toward what really matters: people. Family. Friends. Hell, complete strangers. Your career, your success, your money and your fifty Bentleys in the West Indies mean nothing if you have no one to share it with.

So I’m working on being a better son. Brother. Friend. Fellow stranger. Along with this, giving GTD another stab. And, getting back into improv!

Yes, and…

I designed a web site. No kidding. It’s cliché and overdone and for the first time I’m happy with it and can’t wait to see this little bastard go live.

Also, going to be writing more.

It was two weeks ago I hopped in the car and drove from Crestwood, KY out to Seattle, WA. With 2400 miles, a bajillion hotels & one week at Microsoft under my belt, I’ve got plenty to share.

But first, a gracious thanks for all of your messages. Most of my access to the internet has been at work, which inhibits me from responding to them at my leisure. But I sincerely appreciate them and hope you might keep them coming :D

The trip itself was incredible. Pops road shotgun, and we toured ten states of three and a half days. A net 34 hours of driving time. Along the way, we stopped at lots of roadside diners, attractions, and landmarks. We saw things I’d probably never make the time to see, otherwise. Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, some ideal fishing spots for road trips later to come. I experienced just how much this country changes a few hundred miles up the road. The scenery is so different from where I’ve lived in the Southeast; absolutey gorgeous. I’ll post some photos once I get my machine up and running.

Last Thursday, we arrived in Seattle. We toured the city by car, and took a ferry across Puget Sound to get a glimpse of the city from the water. Such a lovely town. Everything is surrounded by dense forests of evergreens. Lakes, mountains everywhere. It’s cooler weather, for sure, but I’ve always been a cold-blooded animal. It’s been mostly sunny out, despite all the rumors of rainy days. But I’m sure that will change come October. People in this area seem so personable. There’s this awesome sense of community to this town that I love. People are friendly and helpful, but not really in that cheery, all smiles sort of way.

Living situations have sucked. I’ve been living out of hotels for about two weeks now. They’ve mostly been very nice, but having all of your worldly posessions in the back of your car has been irritating. Later this afternoon, I’ll be moving into my place downtown. It will make for a longer commute to work (Redmond is across the lake, up to 45-60 mins depending traffic), but I’m told the busses come packed with free Wi-Fi. More reason to finally buy a laptop, right?

Work has been absolutely grand. My team members are all talented and intelligent, and have lots of wisdom to bring to the table. Our team lead is a visionary, and very passionate about what he does. Everyone works long hours not out of obligation, but out of a creative desire to build more and do bigger and better things with our project. My first week was fairly light; I came in toward the end of this development cycle, so I’ve bigger tasks ahead on the horizon. The Microsoft environment (Visual Studio, C#, Volta, Silverlight, etc) has taken some time to adjust to, but I’m growing comfortable with it. Most of my work avoids the inner programming guts, anyhow.

For now, it’s time for me to move in and get settled, finally. I’ll be posting more once I get service to my apartment.

It was looking awful grim there, gang. This time, two weeks ago, the job hunt wasn’t going so smoothly. I had leads on jobs. Jobs I wanted in places that weren’t Louisville. Or Louisville-based jobs that weren’t for me. More emails to write, contacts to make, things to look into. Lots of maybes, not as many in the ‘yes’ column as a fresh college graduate might’ve been hoping for.

Until just this past Wednesday. I was offered a job at one of the biggest companies on the planet. They’ve summoned me out to their lab in Redmond, WA to help build their next generation web app (psst.. it’s even got a codename). I’ll be doing front-end development under the super sweet title Web Developer III, my voice booming like The Wizard of Oz.

Upon receiving this news, I jumped up and down until my heels began to swell. Never before have I made screaming expletives into such a jubilant spectacle. I am overcome with a feeling so terrifyingly exciting; a Molotov cocktail of adrenaline (which would be a stellar name for an energy drink, bro).

First day of work at Microsoft is on June 16th. My plan, then, is to skip town next Monday or Tuesday for a good ol’ fashioned road trip. Twenty-four hundred miles, split up by lots of stops and sights, and good conversation with hospitable strangers. Time to load up my portable media player of choice!

It’s a twelve-month contract gig. After that, well… we’ll see if any Louisville companies decide to take a chance on a guy with no .NET experience.

Pardon the dramatic pause; it seems there’s always more details to be worked out.

(continue reading…)

I am OFFICIALLY an Auburn University Alumnus — ain’t no way they’re ripping that diploma out of my hands now.

More importantly, big decision bout the future coming down by Tuesday. Watch this space, and try not to pee yourself with anticipation.

I recently switched to auto-pay with my ISP, Charter. Beloved Charter Communications sends me a letter, notifying me of my balance, and that it will be automatically paid out on the 28th. Perfect.

Two days later, I get a letter in the mail alerting me that my account has a balance due, and that I should pay to avoid service interruption. No worries, I’m slated for auto-pay; the letter even says so. Perfect.

Two days later, I receive a phone call from Charter Communcations. “No worries!” I crow, “I’m slated for auto-pay!” The kind lady responds, “Oh, perfect! I’ll mark your account for auto-pay!” Perfect.

Two days later I get another letter making mention of interrupted service if this thing doesn’t get paid. No worries; auto-pay! “Total Due via Auto EFTS:” it even says. Perfect?

Two days later — twenty minutes ago — my internet service is cut.

It’s not a huge deal. I spoke with Jack at Charter and he got it all squared away quickly. But it’s things like this that make me want to go into consulting. “It’s all automated by computers,” Jack explains. And it’s true that computers never make mistakes, per sé. But if we could expend just a little more effort here and there in telling computers exactly what to do, computers could better communicate with those of us who do have souls, reasoning skills, et cetera. Charter could save lots of money in wasted phone calls, paper, postage, billing, customer service…

And I could be at work, saving the world from other such tragedies.

I find it so difficult to do easy things. Never was particularly good at them. I always skipped the first chapter or two of my programming books. My mind’s hungry, folks. I’m not here for tapas, give me your 32oz sirloin.

Want to see me shine? Give me a challenge. Set Everest in front of me and ask me to move it six inches to the left. Better yet, tell me I can’t do it. I am ready to do incredible things — particularly if that first step involves learning how.

And logically of course, it can’t all be so glamorous. Heck, at least half of being a true web dude extraordinarie is quite the opposite. Mundane updates, maintenance on things you created months, if not years ago. Updating contact information of now former employees, catering to the design compulsions of nit picky clients, ‘fixing’ beautiful, clean code to work in broken browsers, or vice-versa.

But who wants to do that? There’s oceans, far away lands… worlds out there to explore. I can’t be bothered with this boring every day life you speak of. Momma said shoot for the stars, so I dreamed of being an astronaut. Now where’s my rocket ship?

I suppose the important lesson here is, keep dreaming. Goals are everything in life. Make absolutely sure that what you’re doing now is a) what you want to be doing, and b) going to get you where you want to be later on down the road.

Lately I’ve been refining those rough sketches of the future into something more detailed. And actionable. I had to say no to an incredible opportunity several months back, because it wasn’t aligned with what I want to do in life. My friends laugh, call me insane. My parents still joke about how sheepish I’ll be feeling if this or that doesn’t work out… I scratch my head now and again, but I have no regrets about it.

I’ll confess, this whole post came from me trying to justify studying for this silly little exam in the morning. Fighting those urges to focus on those big, shiny challenges in the sky. Sometimes the biggest battles are those small, painfully necessary bridges to cross, right in front of your face.