Ever since I received my degrees from this learning institution, my thoughts and feelings have changed about it, it was honestly one of those moments where a light bulb in your head suddenly turns on.

Gone were the days where I thought working here and learning here were noble pursuits, and they were replaced with an old friend from my past days, dread.  Now I am not saying that learning is not something wonderful, far from it actually.  What I am saying is that I dread this place in many respects now.  It’s not the place actually, and definitely not my co workers or even the students who sometimes ask stupifying questions, what I dread is me.

Or to put it more precisely, I dread my station in life.  All of my friends with either the same level of education or less are making more than me and also working more hours.  Now this is not an apples to apples comparison by any means, as they work in places I wouldn’t go nor would they be skilled to where my education would lead me, it is rather an observation that my current role in life is beneath where I should be and where I aspire to be.

This week I finally decided that instead of being the jerk who is constantly stating “I need to do…” I am actually going to take action.  I am actually going to take a weird first step, and open up a credit card account, and quite possibly make one more juvenile decision and buy an iPhone (that’s a blog post for another time).

Second, on the agenda is taking care of the lack of a drivers license, I don’t know why I don’t have one, it just seemed to be something I could put off, but if I want to improve on my job I certainly have to be able to get to a new one right?

Soon after that is hopefully finding wheels so I can get to an interview and then the ultimate goal of a new job.  What I need to tackle now though is the idea that I am not expected to be an expert at this stage in my life.  I have a lot to learn and I need experience to learn it.

I am not saying I will achieve all this in an instant but hopefully it won’t take long.

All of my code is written by myself except where specified, and all of my code is XHTML 1.0 and CSS compliant, but the same can not be said for the wordpress plug ins and various badges I have on this themes header and sidebar. I write my page with firefox in mind but it should work in all browsers, especially since I had to use a minor tweak to get things to appear right in internet explorer. If you run that browser please explore firefox, opera, safari, flock, or any other browser, your friendly neighborhood web designer will thank you.

plug ins & services

I use a number of different wordpress plug ins and javascript badges on my site as I already stated. In my header I use a hacked version of flickrRSS to bring my latest flickr posts to my site. Just below that I use twitter’s javascript badge to deliver my latest tweet to the site.

In my sidebar I use one of digg‘s javascript badges to bring the latest news that I find of interest over on digg, it is not a glimpse into what I find to be the most important news of the day but rather simply what has sparked my interest at digg lately.

To bring the latest tracks posted to my last.fm account I utilize the very well done wp audioscrobbler, lastly I use the cost of war javascript badge to present the current cost of the war in Iraq, and the irrepressible.info badge from amnesty international to present information that has been censored somewhere in the world.

I also use the well done ultimate tag warrior to provide folksonomy (tagging) on each of my blog entries, and wp lightbox to provide overlays not only for the hacked version of flickrRSS but also for any other graphics I decide as well.

Lastly I use the incredible askismet plug in to keep my comments spam free, gravatar to provide icons on my comments page and WillMayo.com to provide the cool speech bubbles around each comment post.

version history

Something inside of me has always been somewhat horrified of change, I was that way as a six year old and we got a new car, and on every detail in between.

That something inside is rearing its ugly head again right now and I want to find a way to fight it and defeat it.  Layed out in front of me is a real job, one that would mean a salary, more responsibility and who knows what else.

However my fear of change, of failure and even moreso of success is hampering that.  I am so damn scared of what could happen that I am paralyzed, and that has to stop.

It is these unfounded fears that are killing me.

I am the proud owner of two iPods (3g and 5g) and a ton of different accessories.  I wouldn’t switch for anything and to be honest I really wish I could get a macbook.  Furthermore, if the storage space ever gets beefed up enough I would love to get an iPhone, but on Verizon since there network is far from perfect, but the closest that we have to perfect.

So as you can tell I am no big time apple fan boy but I do love the company as they just seem to put a lot more effort into what they do.

However I do use iTunes everyday, for probably hours on end and in taking stock of how much I love apple I noticed one interesting little tidbit.

I bought three tracks the other day (The 13th Floor Elevators “You’re Gonna Miss Me”, Stevie Wonder “I Believe”, and Green Day “Working Class Hero”) and in doing so I reached the 4,000 tracks mark in iTunes.  If you’re wondering no that does not fill up my entire 30 gb iPod not by a long shot. It does however give me 9.2 days of music or 14gb.

Now that’s a lot.