- The Grease Monkey years. While I was in high school and college my family owned one of those oil change places like Jiffy Lube. I spent 6 years working under the hood of people’s cars. While this was some of the hardest work I have ever done, I would not give it up as it was one of the best learning experiences I have had. I learned real world managerial and customer service skills and debugging a problem in a car is not much different then debugging one in a computer program. But I don’t think that I would like to give up my nice air conditioned desk job any time soon.
- I once had a job for 4 hours. One summer I was looking for some work since my teacher’s assistant job was only during the school year. I applied a few places and only heard back from one. I began training one Monday morning and during lunch got a phone call from my current employer telling me that they wanted me to start there at twice the salary I was getting. After lunch I went back and told them what had happened and the supervisor asked if he could get a job there also.
- Netflix/Tivo/YouTube – at the end of the week when I think back to where all my free time has gone I can point to three things. The first being Netflix I get 3 DVD’s from them a week and for some reason I feel obligated to watch them ASAP and send them back. Then they send me 3 more. I go through about 200 movies a year. That is less than $1.50 per movie; well I guess we know why I feel compelled to watch them so fast, it is such a great deal. Now my Tivo is another story, well it is really not a Tivo is a Bright House DVR but nobody knows what that is and it is much easier to say Tivo and not have to explain it. That was supposed to give me more free time since I could fast forward through the commercials but I just find that I watch the same amount of TV but now I watch more shows. Then there is the time sink to end all time sinks, YouTube. This is how a typical afternoon goes. Step 1 get home from work and get comfortable. Step 2 get online to check email. Step 3 read email that contained YouTube link. Step 4 spend all night bouncing from video to video to video to video. . .
- A Gift for Teaching (http://www.agiftforteaching.org/) – I have been donating about 100 hours per year helping out at this organization. They do good work collecting and distributing school supplies to underprivileged children and schools in Central Florida.
- The Cat- Well usually it is the Bleeping Bleep Bleep Cat. While I have had this little fellow (if you can call him that since he has been neutered) for over a year now he never ceases to amaze me. Growing up all my live with dogs, hamsters and even a turtle, this cat is the strangest. One moment he is purring and happy you are petting him, the next he turns around and bytes you, and don’t you even dare to brush your teeth in the morning. While you are half awake he sneaks up behind you and pounces on the back of your legs with his claws out.
Well now you know 5 things about me that you never knew, and probably never wanted to know, but we will blame it all on David Silverlight (http://www.community-credit.com/cs/blogs/starbucks_is_my_home/archive/2007/01/29/5-things-I_2700_m-not-telling-you.aspx). Now it is my turn to obligate 5 of my colleagues to do this. . . and the winners are Joel (http://codecube.net/), Jessica (http://www.JessicaSterner.com), JT (http://www.bus.ucf.edu/jshim/), Ken (http://www.vb-tips.com/), Dennis (http://www.dennisbottjer.com/)