I don't often write blog posts in response to another blog posts. And the number of blogs I do read can probably be counted on one hand. However a recent posting I read got me to thinking and I realized that I probably had enough thoughts & comments about this to warrant a blog posting of my own rather than just posting a few lines in response under the original.
As the author of the previously mentioned posting points out, it's been a rough economic year for everyone. This has brought some unique challenges and obstacles in my workplace that have probably culminated into a large scary monster of negative feelings & emotions within me that all too often carries over into my personal & family life. Since my office closed back in May, not only do I not get face time with my co-workers & manager who are going through the same career difficulties (absence of a regular quasi-support group), but I also don't have the commute time between work & home that would be roughly an hour or so to unwind and transition from work to family mode.
One of the quotes from the posting I wanted to comment on was this:
"We didn’t send out Christmas cards this year. We handed out few gifts to neighbors. We didn’t hang lights around our home. We didn’t give as much service as we had planned. Home and auto repairs seemed to drop out of nowhere. Our three oldest kids needed glasses and dental work done.
Nothing major. Just many small expenditures that add up over time during a year when my bonus was slashed."
That's kind of how it was around our house too. Normally I put up our 12ft tall Christmas tree with a 9ft diameter base in our front room with vaulted ceiling. This year, I only put up the top half. It still looked great at 6ft tall with the pre-lit white lights and the decorations my wife & kids put on but it felt like a representation of my Christmas spirit this year like it too was only half there. Our exterior Christmas lights were never put up, and the smaller tree helped hide the fact that there were a smaller number of presents under the tree this year.
As there were no bonuses or raises handed out this year, what we were able to put under the tree basically came from the income my wife was able to provide with the 5 hours a week she works, commission only, for a small non-profit organization. While I was thankful for that, at the same time I was left frustrated that I couldn't provide for my family like I wanted to...Like I felt like it was my obligation and responsibility to and regardless of how hard I worked through the challenges of layoffs, furlough time, increased issues of customer escalations and unhappy customers and still raising our customer satisfaction scores, there was no monetary thanks from the company. (Though they still had funds to acquire a portion of Nortel business solutions.) So we delay the dental work my wife & I need, see how long we can drive with that annoying blinking light on the dashboard of the car (we had it checked, it's minor & ok), and reschedule some of the plans we had slated for this year.
But after reading the blog post further, it made me reflect back on the year and remember some of the more positive highlights and that it's important to have and show gratitude for some of the more simple pleasures like time spent with family. I was able to take my family to Disneyland this year for a week. That was awesome. I spent a few days at the beach 4 times this year, twice in Seaside, OR and twice in Long Beach, WA. I made new friends working a temp job first at an event in Seattle and then later in the year at another event in Atlanta. While it was hot in Atlanta, I enjoyed the rare opportunity to visit there and work with such a great team of people. This year we also got an addition to the people in our home in the form of a college exchange student from Hong Kong and she has helped us learn and try new things that we probably otherwise would not have done. And possibly a blessing I keep overlooking is that while there have been stressful challenges at work, I am thankful I have the opportunity to tackle those challenges rather than the unemployment line and job hunting market.
These are only a few of the things that are unique to me this year that I have to be thankful for. While I'm glad that 2009 brought these wonderful experiences, I hope that 2010 brings better economic times for everyone. But until then, I hope I can continue to remember what's truly important and show gratitude for what I do have instead of misery & negative attitude I've been giving off for the focus I've been placing on all the things that just don't go right.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
My Hardest Job
I recently participated in a gospel discussion with missionaries from my church who were teaching a friend who is investigating the church and preparing to be baptized.
After the missionaries left we continued talking and since my 3 brothers and I each served on missions, the talk turned to what the life of a missionary is like. I commented that I probably got more sleep then because they're in bed from around 9pm to 6am whereas now I get to bed around the same time but I get up for work around 4am.
My Mom commented that being a missionary has got to be the most difficult job. I started thinking about the various responsibilities I've had during my life and decided that while I know my Mom was referring to a profession, being a full time Dad has definately been the the most challenging and demanding job of my life.
It makes me appreciate the help and support my wife has been in this monumentous task and awesome responsibility we have been blessed with.
When my Wife was recently out of town for a week, I gained a greater appreciation for all this when I worked half days from home then played Mr, Mom sarting at 8am. However the first day was Sunday and that afternoon after church we were to be hosting my sister in-law's son's birthday celebration. Well I woke at 5am with the 8 yr. old sick in the bathroom. I took care of her and we both went back to bed. So of course we couldn't go to church so we overslept and I missed the opportunity to inform my sister in-law about my sick child since they were already at church.
So around 10am or so my 6yr. old got sick but she did so leaving a trail from her bed to the bathroom that I had to clean up. Well I finished that task about 10 minutes before guests were to arrive at which time I was informed that my 6 yr. old made another deposit on the hardwood dining room floor downstairs. I was just finishing cleaning up that mess whe people started to arrive.
So. 2 of my 3 kids were confined to their room while guests were downstairs and I was glad that my 3 yr.old had not gotten sick too. I had just sat down with my plate of food and my 3 yr. old came to sit on my lap. I figured she would eat off my plate. Instead she added to my plate the contents of her stomach. So not only did I have 3 sick kids, another mess to clean up, and no wife to help, but I got my food last so the food was gone except for a few morsels left on the veggie tray.
So yes, fatherhood is the hardest job I'll ever have but it gives rewards that I could never get any other way and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod Touch
After the missionaries left we continued talking and since my 3 brothers and I each served on missions, the talk turned to what the life of a missionary is like. I commented that I probably got more sleep then because they're in bed from around 9pm to 6am whereas now I get to bed around the same time but I get up for work around 4am.
My Mom commented that being a missionary has got to be the most difficult job. I started thinking about the various responsibilities I've had during my life and decided that while I know my Mom was referring to a profession, being a full time Dad has definately been the the most challenging and demanding job of my life.
It makes me appreciate the help and support my wife has been in this monumentous task and awesome responsibility we have been blessed with.
When my Wife was recently out of town for a week, I gained a greater appreciation for all this when I worked half days from home then played Mr, Mom sarting at 8am. However the first day was Sunday and that afternoon after church we were to be hosting my sister in-law's son's birthday celebration. Well I woke at 5am with the 8 yr. old sick in the bathroom. I took care of her and we both went back to bed. So of course we couldn't go to church so we overslept and I missed the opportunity to inform my sister in-law about my sick child since they were already at church.
So around 10am or so my 6yr. old got sick but she did so leaving a trail from her bed to the bathroom that I had to clean up. Well I finished that task about 10 minutes before guests were to arrive at which time I was informed that my 6 yr. old made another deposit on the hardwood dining room floor downstairs. I was just finishing cleaning up that mess whe people started to arrive.
So. 2 of my 3 kids were confined to their room while guests were downstairs and I was glad that my 3 yr.old had not gotten sick too. I had just sat down with my plate of food and my 3 yr. old came to sit on my lap. I figured she would eat off my plate. Instead she added to my plate the contents of her stomach. So not only did I have 3 sick kids, another mess to clean up, and no wife to help, but I got my food last so the food was gone except for a few morsels left on the veggie tray.
So yes, fatherhood is the hardest job I'll ever have but it gives rewards that I could never get any other way and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPod Touch
Thursday, December 10, 2009
The price of technology
I realized some time ago that, despite my efforts, I'm not going to be able to stay current or up to date on all the technology advancements as I'd like to. I'm not going to be able to interact with new hardware that comes out for a variety of reasons. Some of the reasons are personal choices such as wanting to try to have a balance between attention given to "toys" and time spent with family, volunteering, etc. Or the personal choice regarding what line of work I'm in which has an impact on not only what technology I get to work with through my job but also how much I'm paid to do so. Sure, some people have jobs where they're paid to play with new stuff and then write a review on it or something but that's not the line of work I'm in currently (though that would be kind of cool) and I'm not certain I have the refined writing skills that someone would pay me for.
Which brings me to my main point which is that even if I did have time to interact with the technology that I'm interested in, I just don't have funds required to do so. And when I talk about technology, I'm not just talking about computers (though I've been wanting a Mac for some time now to replace my 4yr old Dell), other technology interests I have are related to multimedia as well. I'd love to be able to play with video editing which would also include some audio editing to add tracks to the video, record HD video onto flash media, photography related technology (I could use a SpeedLite flash for example), mobile technology such as Netbooks or smart phones, etc.
My current video camera is several years old and records to miniDV tapes and has a firewire port for transferring video to a computer. My Dell doesn't have a firewire port, my old computer that was given to the kids does and it currently doesn't work. Even firewire has become a slow technology compared to some other current options and it seems to be just about on its way out the door. I mean in order to transfer the video, I still have to play every minute of what I recorded because it's still a tape media and I can't just copy a digital file to a disk.
The Mac is probably the first and main big obstacle. I mean I don't want to shoot video anymore until I have a decent system for editing the video. I've refrained from doing too much with photo editing because my Dell only has 2gb of ram and has a 4gb limit. Sure I could put an inexpensive firewire card in there or upgrade the memory, but at this point it's like an old car to me and I just don't want to invest anymore money in it. Sure it works fine for what I use it for now (mostly internet stuff like e-mail & online social networking, etc). But I can't even play games on it anymore because the games today require technology that my current video card doesn't support and things like that. (I know, what a hardship I have that I'm not able to play video games on my computer. I guess that's why we have the Wii.)
(Warning: Abrupt segue to follow) Recently Verizon released the Droid phone which runs Google technologies natively. I'm a fan of Google because so much consumer product is free and it works as well, if not better than some consumer products that aren't free and since it's mainly developed to store / access all your data online, you can get to it from any internet enabled device that supports web pages. I got the Verizon LG Voyager phone when it first came out and in my opinion, until the Droid, there hasn't been a compelling reason for me to consider getting a different phone with Verizon. While the iPhone is indeed very nifty, fun to play with, and probably even very convenient, I can't bring myself to switch to a carrier that has worse coverage and customer support than what I've been having for the last 10+ years (rated highest by Consumer Reports surveys year after year too).
As I looked into the Droid phone more, I found that even with my "new every two" discount, the phone would still be $150, I'd be locked in to another 2 year agreement (hasn't really been an issue anyway), AND I'd have to get a mandatory data plan that would tack on another $30/mo. to my already outrageous cell bill which is only a 2 phone family share plan at 700 min./mo (and I added the $5 text messaging plan to my phone mostly for SMS data). I didn't really like the idea of investing more money in something that was going to increase my monthly bills and since I started working from home full time back in April, I'm finding that I don't even use my cell phone as much as I used to anyway. I figure I'm probably home 85% of my time anyway so I wouldn't even use the mobile features enough to make it worth it. The maps feature looked really cool but for the number of times I go somewhere where I'd need a map, I can usually get my directions before I leave home and even then if I get lost or the route changes because of traffic or road closures, etc, I can still activate my VZ Navigator for $3 for 24 hours or $10/mo. Even with the price of GPS devices coming down, I'd have to use the VZ Navigator for a full year to come close to the average low end price of what GPS devices are selling for. Plus my phone is typically always with me and I wouldn't have to carry another device.
Therefore I decided that as cool as the Droid is, and as much fun as it would be to have a GPS (which, unlike the Droid, typically doesn't have a monthly cost associated with it), given the amount of time I'm actually away from home, it probably wouldn't be a good investment. After sharing some of these thoughts with my Dad & brother who have similar tastes in technology as I do, my brother gave me the idea of the iPod Touch. It gives you just about all the features of an iPhone (without the actual phone features of course) and you only have to pay for the device once without a monthly bill. Given that I can use it with my (or any free wi-fi), I can still be away from the computer but still be at least somewhat connected to the technologies.
As I looked into the options for the iTouch, I found there's currently an 8gb which hasn't changed along with the newer 32 & 64gb 3GS models that apparently run about twice as fast. Anyway, since the 8gb model is being sold concurrently with the "3rd Generation" 32 & 64gb models, there were some who thought the 8gb model was also a 3rd gen. When I chatted online with the helpful Apple sales rep, they basically confirmed there's no difference except for a $5 software version upgrade. Armed with that knowledge I found that Amazon had two prices listed for the 8gb model. One was sold as a 2nd gen. product & the other a 3rd gen. with a $40 price difference between them. I opted of course for the 2nd gen. model then added the $5 upgrade.
So I can't afford the Mac yet, but the iTouch makes me feel like I kind of got a little closer and I don't have to walk away empty as it were or settle for something that both has an increased monthly fee and that'd only benefit from during that short time that I'm NOT at home. And a good portion of that time is while I'm at church which may not be the best place for me to be playing with my cell phone. However I've already downloaded scriptures and hymn book to the iTouch so it's already a winner.
(I recognize this posting was very materialistic in nature. Having said that, just know that I'm dealing with it and would like to promote that I am a fan of keeping a balanced life which includes having a focus on putting the family and people in general ahead of some screen to stare at or some other toy to play with. Perhaps that's something for another post. This one is already long enough as it is. I can't even keep the disclaimer note at the bottom short.)
Which brings me to my main point which is that even if I did have time to interact with the technology that I'm interested in, I just don't have funds required to do so. And when I talk about technology, I'm not just talking about computers (though I've been wanting a Mac for some time now to replace my 4yr old Dell), other technology interests I have are related to multimedia as well. I'd love to be able to play with video editing which would also include some audio editing to add tracks to the video, record HD video onto flash media, photography related technology (I could use a SpeedLite flash for example), mobile technology such as Netbooks or smart phones, etc.
My current video camera is several years old and records to miniDV tapes and has a firewire port for transferring video to a computer. My Dell doesn't have a firewire port, my old computer that was given to the kids does and it currently doesn't work. Even firewire has become a slow technology compared to some other current options and it seems to be just about on its way out the door. I mean in order to transfer the video, I still have to play every minute of what I recorded because it's still a tape media and I can't just copy a digital file to a disk.
The Mac is probably the first and main big obstacle. I mean I don't want to shoot video anymore until I have a decent system for editing the video. I've refrained from doing too much with photo editing because my Dell only has 2gb of ram and has a 4gb limit. Sure I could put an inexpensive firewire card in there or upgrade the memory, but at this point it's like an old car to me and I just don't want to invest anymore money in it. Sure it works fine for what I use it for now (mostly internet stuff like e-mail & online social networking, etc). But I can't even play games on it anymore because the games today require technology that my current video card doesn't support and things like that. (I know, what a hardship I have that I'm not able to play video games on my computer. I guess that's why we have the Wii.)
(Warning: Abrupt segue to follow) Recently Verizon released the Droid phone which runs Google technologies natively. I'm a fan of Google because so much consumer product is free and it works as well, if not better than some consumer products that aren't free and since it's mainly developed to store / access all your data online, you can get to it from any internet enabled device that supports web pages. I got the Verizon LG Voyager phone when it first came out and in my opinion, until the Droid, there hasn't been a compelling reason for me to consider getting a different phone with Verizon. While the iPhone is indeed very nifty, fun to play with, and probably even very convenient, I can't bring myself to switch to a carrier that has worse coverage and customer support than what I've been having for the last 10+ years (rated highest by Consumer Reports surveys year after year too).
As I looked into the Droid phone more, I found that even with my "new every two" discount, the phone would still be $150, I'd be locked in to another 2 year agreement (hasn't really been an issue anyway), AND I'd have to get a mandatory data plan that would tack on another $30/mo. to my already outrageous cell bill which is only a 2 phone family share plan at 700 min./mo (and I added the $5 text messaging plan to my phone mostly for SMS data). I didn't really like the idea of investing more money in something that was going to increase my monthly bills and since I started working from home full time back in April, I'm finding that I don't even use my cell phone as much as I used to anyway. I figure I'm probably home 85% of my time anyway so I wouldn't even use the mobile features enough to make it worth it. The maps feature looked really cool but for the number of times I go somewhere where I'd need a map, I can usually get my directions before I leave home and even then if I get lost or the route changes because of traffic or road closures, etc, I can still activate my VZ Navigator for $3 for 24 hours or $10/mo. Even with the price of GPS devices coming down, I'd have to use the VZ Navigator for a full year to come close to the average low end price of what GPS devices are selling for. Plus my phone is typically always with me and I wouldn't have to carry another device.
Therefore I decided that as cool as the Droid is, and as much fun as it would be to have a GPS (which, unlike the Droid, typically doesn't have a monthly cost associated with it), given the amount of time I'm actually away from home, it probably wouldn't be a good investment. After sharing some of these thoughts with my Dad & brother who have similar tastes in technology as I do, my brother gave me the idea of the iPod Touch. It gives you just about all the features of an iPhone (without the actual phone features of course) and you only have to pay for the device once without a monthly bill. Given that I can use it with my (or any free wi-fi), I can still be away from the computer but still be at least somewhat connected to the technologies.
As I looked into the options for the iTouch, I found there's currently an 8gb which hasn't changed along with the newer 32 & 64gb 3GS models that apparently run about twice as fast. Anyway, since the 8gb model is being sold concurrently with the "3rd Generation" 32 & 64gb models, there were some who thought the 8gb model was also a 3rd gen. When I chatted online with the helpful Apple sales rep, they basically confirmed there's no difference except for a $5 software version upgrade. Armed with that knowledge I found that Amazon had two prices listed for the 8gb model. One was sold as a 2nd gen. product & the other a 3rd gen. with a $40 price difference between them. I opted of course for the 2nd gen. model then added the $5 upgrade.
So I can't afford the Mac yet, but the iTouch makes me feel like I kind of got a little closer and I don't have to walk away empty as it were or settle for something that both has an increased monthly fee and that'd only benefit from during that short time that I'm NOT at home. And a good portion of that time is while I'm at church which may not be the best place for me to be playing with my cell phone. However I've already downloaded scriptures and hymn book to the iTouch so it's already a winner.
(I recognize this posting was very materialistic in nature. Having said that, just know that I'm dealing with it and would like to promote that I am a fan of keeping a balanced life which includes having a focus on putting the family and people in general ahead of some screen to stare at or some other toy to play with. Perhaps that's something for another post. This one is already long enough as it is. I can't even keep the disclaimer note at the bottom short.)
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