Sip of Water

May

Time to get back to work.

It’s coming time to do a blog/site shuffle and for me to get back to working on my websites again. I have been on parental leave now since my son was born on September 29th and my leave thru EI is soon coming to an end - I have this week left.

This domain has always been slated for a business website and I will be slowly but surely turning this domain into that over the next couple of months. I will be touching up posts from here and re-posting them onto my purpleorange.ca website where I plan to talk about business and technology, and phpark.com where I plan to talk about programming and PHP. It is my intention to split the two sites into technical and non-technical.

It has been nice being able to clear my head about what it is I want to do with my career. I have come to realize over the last few months while meeting other Internet and open-source enthusiasts, that I do enjoy what I’m doing - just not in the environments I have been exposed to. It has helped me come to terms with the fact that I’m an entrepreneur that just does NOT have the capacity to deal with the “enterprise” and culture of the corporate world. I am about win/win situations, helping others solve their problems, being supportive rather then oppressive and view “competitors” and co-workers as resources rather then the enemy.

I am mostly interested in working on my own projects while tending to my son during my partners school hours at UBC Okanagan. I have enough money to get me through to the Fall and if I can’t make a living with my projects, I will have to get a part-time job. The heat is being turned up on me to start cranking out these ideas I have to see which of them will fail, which will be successful and learning from both cases.

The time is fastly approaching for our upcoming relocation to Kelowna on May 29th. We have been crammed in our one-bedroom apartment here in East Vancouver since our son was born which leaves me with little to no productivity. I have always been one that at the end of the work day, would clean up my desk before leaving for home and rarely had anything other then a notepad and pen on my desk. My creativity cannot flow when I am working in clutter.

I am really looking forward to getting moved and settled into my new office so that I can get some long overdue work completed.

By jake 0 Commentson Time to get back to work.

Categories: Web Entrepreneur Tags: No Tags.

Feb

Where did you come from today?

In meeting with other social marketing enthusiasts from Vancouver, I have been reminded that not all of us have the same backgrounds and have all found our own unique path to where we are today. I tend not to think I take for granted the knowledge I have acquired since first exploring computers in the early 1990s but in speaking with others, it gently reminds me that we are all coming from different places and that I still need to keep that “lowest common denomination” in language when speaking with other people - especially if I have not yet had a chance to learn more about who they are and what their history is.

For someone looking for topics to blog about, this is great news! Up until recently, I have stopped myself short of trying to establish myself as an expert because I recognize that I am yet to stop learning about computers and have ~~something~~ LOTS to say about them! A computer geek friend of my Dad’s gave me a 286 computer in 1991 that came loaded with DOS and FirstChoice - and of course, no manuals leaving me to learn both on my own. It was during this time that I learned how “format C:” can be a very, very bad DOS command when you don’t have installation diskettes (that’s, 5.25″ diskettes, not DVDs!) and get your drive letters mixed up!

Since quitting my corporate desk job where I was beaten up by Micro$oft devotees on a daily basis, I began meeting others like myself who also aren’t necessarily Micro$oft haters, but non-M$ technology enthusiasts who see the role enterprise software plays and why it maintains the market share it does. Because we are not at desk jobs in the corporate world reporting to a Manager or Director that wants accountability (to someone other then themselves), we don’t need the “benefit” of high priced M$ “support” to have someone to yell at when something breaks and need somewhere to point the finger.

But alas, I digress. With oppression comes suppression and with that environment removed from my life, I can get off of defending my choices of technology against crappy marketing slogans, build up open-source community support around me, and get back to telling the world why open-source software is so damn groovy! (Not to mention free up a lot of hard drive space from uninstalling over bloated software and making more room on my bookshelf for my new PHP books).

If you are new to the Internet (really, we all are in some aspects), looking for alternatives to enterprise software, or looking for some new technology tips and tricks, please subscribe to our feed or stay posted for upcoming articles!

In the meantime, I am always curious to find out peoples backgrounds and how they have gotten to where they are today in their careers - especially when the current career has to do with the Internet. Computers are my first career choice coming out of high school where I was a band geek, jock, and an air cadet that loved backpacking and going to our outdoor rifle range. Most of my formal training from college is in Internet programming and scripting, networking wide area technologies, operating systems, project management, and systems analysis and design. I wanted a Bachelors of Classical Music, at one point wanted to be a cartoonist, still ponder becoming a dietician or something health and wellness related, and hope to go back to school at some point for a degree in psychology. I also love sports, collect sports cards, board games, and brisk walks.

From where does your current career choice hail? What was your background leading into your career on the Internet?

By jake 3 Commentson Where did you come from today?

Categories: Business Tags: computer geek, format c, learning about computers.

Feb

Starbucks Explosion in Vancouver at Broadway near Cambie Street

I woke up this morning to watch CityTV’s Breakfast Television from 7-10 am after hearing that our midwifery clinic would be featured through the morning. We used Pomegranate Midwives East Hastings for the birth of our son.

We were shocked to also see on the news that there was a giant explosion at 2:30 this morning in the building I used to work out of at Cambie and Broadway between Ash and Willow. We moved offices across the street in the crocked building besides London Drugs a while ago. They are saying the explosion occurred in the Taco Del Mar (which is to the left of Starbucks) and damaged several businesses.