Great Name Tag

Originally uploaded by CC Chapman

from C.C. Chapman’s Flickr feed—”iPhone around his neck running his demo reel since he is in video production. Very cool idea.”

Before I begin the usual end-of-year retrospective, I thought you would enjoy sharing in my New Year’s moment at EPCOT Center in Walt Disney World.  I had planned to bring in the new year at Magic Kingdom, but by the time I got to Disney World at 9 PM the park was at capacity and they closed off the parking lots, sending everyone to EPCOT or Disney’s Hollywood Studios to ring in the new year.

I regret to write that this moment at EPCOT was one of very few high points of the past year. For a lot of us, myself included, 2008 was not a good year. So many of us ended the year on such a low note that the only direction we can go in 2009 is up, given that we end 2008 flat on our backs.

I lost everything in 2008—my home, my family, my job (twice), my savings (I had to withdraw my entire 401(k) account to live off of during the five months of this year that I was without work). Nearly all of my friends were in Celebrate Recovery®, so when I was forced by my work schedule to drop out of the program I also had to leave them behind. I look at the state of things at the beginning of the new year and realize that things will get worse before they get better, both personally and in the greater economy.  I do listen to Bloomberg Radio on a daily basis.

Vondalee & Me on Christmas Eve in CA

In the process, though, I gained a new and passionate relationship with the person I should have been after in the first place nearly twenty years ago.  I guess it takes that long sometimes, along with one or two broken relationships along the way, to learn the lessons we have to learn to be ready for the relationship we should have had in the first place.  I just wish it didn’t have to take place from 2,500 miles away.  Christmas week in California was one of the best holidays I’ve had in my life, and I can’t wait to go back “home” to where I grew up, in Orange County.

There is a lot of work to be done this coming year. The priority is finding a new job, as unemployment only pays for so much, while trying to preserve as much in resources as possible to make the move back to Southern California sometime in the coming year.  The path ahead will be rough and difficult to walk, but there is a light at the end of it that I can see all the way from here.

So here’s to the new year, and to its hopes, challenges, and potential rewards.

http://www.snopes.com

Snopes.com is an urban legend reference site. You know those e-mails you get from friends and/or family with some strange story or outrageous claim that is “supposedly” true, like the latest special dial code or the e-mail that is allegedly being tracked and will result in a huge payout if you send it to 25 people? Usually about 30 seconds on this site with a simple search will let you know if the story you’re about to send out is true or not.

Also, a request: If you have such a note that you’d like to send out to all your friends, please don’t send it to me. I do check them out, and if I find out from a simple search of snopes that it’s wrong I will send a “reply to all” with the snopes link, potentially causing you great embarrassment (in hopes that you won’t do it again without checking it out first).

If I get multiple such notes from people, I usually end up simply blocking their e-mail address, sending all their e-mail (legitimate or otherwise) directly to the spam bin. I’m that sick and tired of such notes in an already overflowing e-mail inbox.

From @akelaa, as usual.

This is what my calendar looks like right now. Nothing. The 19^th of December, my final paycheck from the job I lost on the 5^th. Then it’s living on $275 a week in unemployment assuming the State of Florida approves the application (they usually deny it if the applicant was fired, which was my case)—just over a quarter of what I was grossing before I was fired. The next item on my calendar is the first week of February when my folks and a very close sweetheart come down to central Florida to visit. At least there is something to look forward to.

Just because the calendar’s empty doesn’t mean I’m not busy. There are résumés and cover letters to send out, phone calls from potential employers to return (so far, only two, and one is for an opening in Pennsylvania (wonder which part of “I’m planning to relocate to California” they didn’t understand?)), and my weekend appointments with Uncle Walt (and sometimes a weeknight one when I’m really down in the dumps and frustrated with the job search). There are the visits to Universal and Busch Gardens sprinkled in there from time to time also.

Last year at this very same time I was looking at pretty much the same thing. An empty calendar, save for my group on Monday nights, which I was forced to drop out of later because of the demands of the new job I had started and the fact that it was heavily weighted toward Monday project deployments. The then-spouse and I were separated, and I haven’t seen my boy since.

So, just as I was at this time last year, I’m looking at this “blank canvas,” thinking about the possibilities of what it might be filled with in due course. There’s the new relationship with the love I should have gone after in the first place instead of marrying the wrong one; there’s the move back “home” to California; there’s the new job that’s bound to come along (if past is pattern it’ll be right about the time my financial resources run out).

So here’s to new things in 2009—new love, new life, new places—and good riddance to the year from hell.

Shiekra @ Busch Gardens (this picture is right-side-up)

In August 2005 I wiped out on my Yamaha Vino 125 on my way to a motorcycle event (note to self: grabbing a fist full of front brake is a very bad thing). In the process I torqued my left knee quite badly. While nothing was broken or seriously hurt (just bumps and scratches), it took a couple of months before I was walking without a limp again.

As a result—and I would guess that a tendon on the inside of the knee didn’t heal properly—my experience walking around various places can be pleasant or extremely painful depending on what I’m walking on.  I can walk around Walt Disney World all day without a problem, but spend five minutes inside Busch Gardens (where there are a lot more sloping and deep-textured surfaces), and I start looking for a wheelchair because the pain in the knee is nearly unbearable.  My main doctor has offered to do an MRI on the bad knee, but I figured as long as I wasn’t a cripple from it, it wasn’t worth it to me. I’ve learned to live with it.

On a hunch though, I dropped into the local Walmart for a knee stabilizer. It’s basically a black elastic sleeve that slides over the knee (with a convenient hole to expose the knee cap and also give me a good idea which way it’s to be worn) with some springy steel strips in each side.  The strips are designed to permit the knee to move only one direction at a time and prevent lateral movement.  It’s comfortable and discreet.

I visited Busch Gardens again for the first time in a number of months, and with the stabilizer on, I had zero pain for the entire day.

Now, maybe one of these days I’ll have the courage to ride Shiekra.

Tweetwasters – Hall of Fame – Wastin’ Time Tweetin’

Originally uploaded by swbuehler

I’ve apparently wasted five days of my life using Twitter. #34 in the TweetWaster’s Hall of Fame.

See http://tweetwasters.com/swbuehler.

Seems that all I write lately has been about losing parts of my life.  I’ve lost yet another one, but it may be to my benefit.

To make a long story short, folks found out why I never wanted to be a programmer. I discovered weeks too late and thousands of dollars against the company later that I had screwed up on two project deployments and then didn’t follow-up on them properly, which would have caught and corrected the error much sooner.

The end result was that my contract was terminated for cause yesterday. I was called into a quick meeting with the development lead and the recruiter, told the news, given time to pack my personals, and then escorted out of the building.  I had never before been fired from a job; I had always been able to leave under my own terms.

I deeply appreciate the support that the leadership of the dedicated carrier team showed for me in the meeting that was held earlier in the day about my fate (without me present), but the decision wasn’t theirs to make.  The decision was made by the CTO (who, ironically, is also a contractor).  He felt that contractors should be held to a higher standard than regular employees and that the mistakes I made were preventable (I agree with the latter part of that statement).  He made the decision he felt was in the best interest of the client relationship and I accept it.

One of my guiding principles has been to own up to my mistakes and accept responsibility for them, regardless of the consequences. Mistakes in my personal life cost me my house, my marriage and my family, and now a professional mistake has cost me a good paying job. Sometimes life sucks; we learn to deal with it.

So—next steps?

I’ve decided to go back “home” to Southern California, where I was born and raised. I’m packing up some clothes, my laptops, shipping a printer, and riding the scoot cross-country back home with what little financial resources I have left. I’m looking for a place I can stay while I look for a new job in California.

Basically, I’m starting over.  Florida was not kind to me; it took away everything I ever had. It’s time to go back home.

Every year I write a special holiday letter to friends and family. This year, I’m also sharing it with you.

Christmas Card 2008

For the second year in a row I won’t be celebrating a Thanksgiving, at least not formally.  Last year I was separated; this year I’ll have been divorced for nine months. Of course, I’ve been living by myself since April of 2007, so I should be used to this by now. I had thought of flying up to Michigan to spend it with my dad and his wife, but decided that it would be smarter to hang on to the money to pay down things, especially since I’ve been on three air trips already this year (Atlanta, which my employer paid for, in May; Boston, in July; and So. Cal. to visit my sweetheart, earlier this month).

The fact is that I’ve lost a lot this year. I started the year without a job, and while on the job hunt I lost my family and my home to a divorce process that seemed to pass like a blur. On January 6, she filed, and on February 21st, it was final. I walked away from everything that day. Lately, it’s all about money—the third of my net income that gets sent to the state every month for child support; the debts that I’m several months behind on in a few cases and are going into collection due to my being out of work for nine months and having to move out of the house on top of it, from which things never recovered.

That’s not say it’s totally depressing this holiday.  I do have things to be grateful for in the midst of such a stormy season.  I have a place to call home, even if it’s a small apartment in the middle of hickville. I have a job in spite of living in one of the worst IT job markets in the country when places are seeing layoffs in the thousands and tens of thousands, so at least my essential living expenses are getting paid. If the bank comes to repossess the little scoot, I still have the larger Burgman, paid in full, to get me from Point A to Point B. Most of all I’m incredibly grateful to have Vee in my life after so many years, and to be constantly overwhelmed and humbled by the love and passion she constantly lays on me across the miles. This last item alone has made life much more bearable and worth hanging on to.

So, let’s hear from you: What are you grateful for this year?