A lot of you might not want to hear this, but I’ve finally given up. No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to extract enough money from the web, and I find it draining to constantly have to think of things to work on. It has taken almost a year, but I finally want someone else to tell me what to work on for a change. I’m tired of having to work on things all day that are interesting but not profitable. I want to have a slow day, and drink coffee while avoiding the boss. I want to take long lunches and shake hands with people who can advance my career.

Call me a sell out if you want, but I accepted an offer for a mid-level management job at a local institutional investment company.

No more hobo life. No more rebellion. No more avoiding people in nice suits just because they seem as if they’re dead from the neck up. I’m older and I know the rules of the game. You dress nice, you play nice, you get ahead. You work hard, you get more hard work. That’s just the way it is. If kissing ass and wearing a tie is going to get me a better title and a little more money, that’s what’s going to happen.

Unfortunately, this means that this is pretty much the end of the road for this blog. It was a difficult decision, but I have to call it quits because this blogging thing has the potential to come back to bite me in the ass when I least expect it.

Thanks for reading along for the last six years and I wish you all the best of luck.

-Jon

Because I want people to know that I’m still sensitive to the plight of the corporate drone, I sent this e-mail to a former co-worker who is dealing with the realities of corporate life. I wanted him to know that even though it seems pimptastic, life on the outside ain’t all bitches and Hennessey.

Dear XXXXXXX,

I heard things are tough around there, but life within the corporate fortress can’t be as bad as it is out here.

Since I quit, I have absolutely no structure because there’s no one here to tell me what to do. Do you think it’s easy to think of things to do on my own? If it was summer, I’d just go to the beach, but it’s the dead of winter, bro. What do I do inside? Read a book? Write? E-mail people? Surf the web? Sip my coffee and ponder the universe like some unemployed Carl Sagan wannabe?

I have no idea because there’s no one here to tell me.

Continue Reading…

Back when I had a corporate job, even though I enjoyed the benefits of health insurance and being able to afford food that is not Ramen-based, I would sometimes think that the time that I spent filling out duplicate status reports could be better spent on more interesting pursuits.

I used to think that people in the corporate world made me chase my tail for their own personal entertainment, but towards the end, I started entertaining the possibility that they might not even realize what they were doing because their behavior was considered so normal within the corporate structure.

The minute when a lot of people swipe their ID to enter the building, they become resources. They become managers of resources. They leave the informal humanity that makes them normal right in that oversized cup holder in their overpriced BMW.

After a moment of reminiscing about the robotic anonymity of my old grey cube, I felt a little guilty that you had to be in that office while I sat out in my beach chair. Although I can’t join you in fluorescence, I thought I’d join you in spirit.

I wish I had tacked up a TPS report to the wall of my virtual cube, but I just don’t have the skills.

Know what kicks ass? Finding out that a consultant slated to replace you could end up costing the company more per day than you make in a week. Know what kicks more ass? Being asked to write that overpaid person’s requirements.

In my 30 point list, I covered technical skills, soft skills, and regulatory requirements, but I couldn’t resist throwing in a few lines to make sure that the mail wasn’t blindly forwarded up the chain.

Hidden among the real requirements were:

• Genius level IQ, good looks a plus.
• Monkey-driven rocket car a plus.
• Must know the correct pronunciation of Deutsche Bank*

and of course

• Does not own a firearm or cry randomly.

(You’d be surprised at how many people incorrectly opt for “doush-y” over “doich-ah”.)

Last week, while I was standing around talking to Sneezy P, a coworker called him over to his desk. The coworker saw him approaching and turned away to face his monitor. Pete walked up behind him, cracked open the guy’s brand new vitamin water and took a long swig of it. I think I actually saw a glimmer of pride cross his face after the initial swig, because the guy still hadn’t even noticed. He then made the fatal mistake of looking over at a coworker and me who had been watching the whole scenario.

My jaw must’ve been on the floor, because when he caught my expression, he burst out laughing and spit the drink all over the place, erupting into a high pitched laugh that disturbed all conference calls within thirty feet.

The real beauty of the situation was that the guy who owned the drink barely even turned around while saying, “I do not want that back.”

Unless I take up the suggestions of “babysitting” or “volunteering with old people”, I can’t see situations like this ever recurring in my professional life.

And that, my friends, is a damned shame.

Since I announced my resignation, I’ve been pretty surprised by the number of people who seem disappointed that I’m leaving or that have offered to help place me in their groups. Some congratulate me like I’m being paroled. Some asked for a job when I land. Others echo my feelings of having no possibility of advancement.

In general, most seem to be shocked that I’m leaving, and even a little dismayed when they find out that even though there isn’t a person with my particular skill set available in the entire company, there hasn’t been any real attempt to retain me. There are stunned silences or head shakes, which shouldn’t feel good, but do.

That’s not to say that I’m the least bit bitter, though. I resigned in a good space. I liked both my job and the people that I had the opportunity to work with. I worked in the same tight knit area for ten years, which is unheard of in today’s job market. Somehow I’ve been lucky enough to work with bright, hard-working folks who do more with less every day, and I would recommend them in a second. I want them all to succeed, but the opportunity just hasn’t been there for any of us. The guys with the ties get the prize, while the people who work for a living usually end up with more work.

I’m not a class warrior, and I don’t have that “they’ll fail without me” attitude. I’m doing the best I can to ensure that they can absorb my responsibilities because I want them all to succeed after I’m gone. Hell, I hope management throws money and promotions at them to stem the outgoing tide because I think they all deserve it for all the years of unsung effort and inspired solutions that they’ve come up with to keep things secure and running smoothly.

Unfortunately, as much as I will root for the underdog, I just don’t think that there’s a very large chance of that happening.

I’m the fourth person in the last month or so to leave my group, and the word on the street is that I won’t be the last. When considering the talent and high caliber of people that I have had the opportunity to work with, I find myself feeling bad that they can’t all join me on the beach this summer. And I feel worse that any of them should feel the need to leave at all.

Even though I’m excited to move on, I’m finding that there is a little more to leaving behind a group of people that I’ve seen every day for over a decade.

Over the last decade, I built and ran a virus protection system for nearly 20,000 servers and desktops on a global scale for my company. Unfortunately, I just got to the point where no matter how perfect or expansive I made the system, no one cared. And that’s motivationally crippling.

So, I resigned.

Coincidentally, it was also Mr. T’s birthday.

My resignation has been a pretty big shock to everyone, and in two days I’ve gotten two unprompted recommendations, two job offers in foreign countries, and a lot of people worldwide who seem to genuinely think it’s a loss for the company.

And the people here are the reason that I’m going to miss this place.

My favorite quotes in the last couple of days have been:

“You’ll be surprised at how much time doing nothing takes up.”

“Who am I going to race to work now?”

“They should offer you anything you want to get you to stay.”

“Don’t do this to me.”

“Congratulations. Do you have a job for me?”

“You don’t have a full time job lined up? You’re a nut. You did it kamakaze style, and I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“You’re like Jerry Macguire. Inside everyone’s giving you the slow clap, but no one is going with you. You’re just going to walk out of here with your goldfish.”

“Call me and tell me if Vista runs on Nantasket.”

Out of the blue today, someone at work yelled out,

“Mr. Fuji’s got the salt!”

It was such a random, old reference that I wanted keep it alive, but it died on the table. Hopefully you will be able to revive it.

I had a dream that I was in an office sitting at a desk. The second that I finished the thought, “This place is such a joke,” an explosion went off outside the window. Confused, my coworkers and I walked to the window to see what was going on. When we got within a step of the window, the tentative silence was split with bursts of gunfire. A few of my co-workers took off, but I stood for a few seconds trying to process what was happening.

As I backed away from the windows the gunfire started sounding like it was coming from the stairwells. I turned to run, and ducked down a back hall. Instantly, I realized that I was heading into, rather than away from, the gunfire. I looked to the right and saw two executives in a conference room. Knowing that the danger in the stairwell just ahead was close at hand, they looked at me and quietly closed the door. In a split second decision, I hit the ground flat, hoping that whoever came out of the stairwell in front of me wouldn’t notice, and I could run down it once they had turned down the main hall.

It was then that I felt a pistol at the back of my head.

“Not so funny now, is it funny man?”

It was more of a statement than a question.

Before I could get through the thought, “How can I possibly get out of th…”, I heard the shot.

I knew it was at my head. “Oh Shit,” I thought, “this is it.”

And everything went black.

A few moments later, I was approaching my desk, and everyone was asking me how I was. I was a little confused until I heard someone say I that had been in the hospital a long time. I reached up with my right hand and felt the bandages on my head. “Did anyone die?” I asked. “Yes, lots of people. But, you’re here.”

I sat down at my desk confused about how I had survived a shot that should’ve taken my head apart. And why couldn’t I remember anything about the hospital? I reached up with my left hand and touched the soft, round, scar tissue above my left eye. In a fit of anger, and confusion, I screamed, “FUCK!” and threw something stupid like a pencil against the wall and headed for the stairway. I had no idea why I had come back, but I wasn’t about to stay.

Walking down the stairs, I met a strange woman who didn’t seem sympathetic to me getting shot in the head, but her relaxing smile indicated that she liked being around me. She walked with me down to the lobby where I sat with her mixed crowd of friends. One took my bandage off because I wanted to see my head, but no one knew how to get it back on.

It was at that point that I started getting concerned that my head might fall apart.

I woke up touching my temple, relieved that I had a second chance, and concerned that I might be wasting my life.

A couple of weeks ago on a Friday afternoon, a co-worker and I turned down a hallway, just as a young woman approached from the opposite direction. On first glance, I couldn’t say that there was anything unusual enough about her that I’d be able to pick her out of a lineup of young college grads working in the financial industry.

As she approached, she gave me a sideways glance. A few seconds later, another. As a six foot tall, 210 pound guy with an accidentally angry face and a big, sloppy beard, I wish that I could claim this was unusual, but I’d be lying if I say that I was surprised. What did surprise me though, was that when she got within a foot of me, she burst into song. It wasn’t like singing to yourself singing, either.

It was “singing by yourself while vacuuming the living room with a Walkman on” singing.

Yea. There was no Walkman, there was no vacuum, and there certainly was no living room. To add to the insanity, even though there was plenty of volume, I could not figure out if the lyrics of her song were made up of actual words.

You know when you pass by someone who suddenly seems batshit crazy and you want to ask the people you’re with “What the fuck?” but you know that the minute you go once decibel above mouthing the words there is a pretty good possibility that you’ll end up in the middle of a shitstorm of insanity? Because I had made it through the whole week without a shank in the neck, I kept my mouth shut until we were safely out of earshot.

Once safely back within the confines of nerd village, I related the story to several coworkers. None of them could come up with a reasonable explanation for the young woman’s behavior until someone chimed in,

“Maybe she thought that singing was the recommended defense against the Sasquatch.”

Sunufa.

While Macophiles are poking fun at Microsoft’s latest bloatware by posting Apple TV spots that make PC users look like the tucked-in shirt wearing, non-itunes using, “who the fuck is My Chemical Romance” wondering, fashion unconscious, back-office nerds that we are, PC folks like myself are being bestowed with greater powers than the Mac Community can wrap their little iMinds around.

Today, while trying to manage a windows machine, the following message popped up:

“Computer \\Lazarus cannot be managed because the computer was not found on the network. It may be powered down or otherwise not connected. Would you like to manage it anyway? Yes/No”

I sat for a moment staring at the screen before whispering “Yea, fuck logic. Let’s do this thing.” After giving thanks that Windows would deem me worthy of the power to pull this dead, unmanageable machine right out of the ether, I spent a few moments contemplating the plethora of other items I would soon be producing out of thin air.

At some point between “Chai Siu Bau” and “Beard-Loving Strippers”, I decided against clicking “Yes”, and closed the window. If I was going to inherit godlike powers or possibly be possessed by Vinz Clortho, Keymaster of Gozer, it was not going to happen in my tiny cubicle on a Thursday morning. No, I would save this power for a time when it would be most momentous. Like perhaps around Y2k V.2.*

Who’s cool now, Mac-holes?

Ok, Ok, but who gets ahead on his polished corporate charm and finely honed business sense?

Right, fine, but who will soon be surrounded by a plethora of Chinese food and strippers?

Screw you guys, if that window comes up again, I’m clicking “Yes” twice.

All Hail The Keymaster of Gozer.

*Corrected per Peter

When you walk up behind your headphone-wearing coworker and say rather loudly in your best 80’s heavy-metal singer voice, “ARE YOU READY FOR LUNCHAAAAAAA!”, your smile is going to fall away faster than Cinderella’s position on the Billboard charts when he turns around and you realize:

A. The headphones are actually a headset connecting said coworker to a conference call with a large client.
B. The phone is not on mute.

After mouthing an apology, you are then free to mentally blame said coworker for leaving said phone unmuted with certified rockstars like yourself freely roaming the halls.

No, seriously.

(If you suddenly feel the need to hear Cinderella’s cowbell rich “Shake Me”, as featured in Cowbell++ Vol. 3: Rockin’ Without Dokken), the video is presented below.)

You know when you’re really excited about what you think is a great idea and people just look at you with that “And where’s the punchline” look? That’s how I felt getting up today. I spent so much time on my Top 10 Driving Albums post that I expected that it would be more of a hit than it was. I really put about a weeks worth of time into picking that music, and even convinced poor Tankboy to get into the action, and it generated slightly more than no interest.

It was sort of a let down.

I admit that I still haven’t got a clue where traffic comes from on the net, and I honestly don’t know how some sites generate a high number of visitors and commentors. On a basic level, I shrug it off on the premise that you have to network to get readers, and I suck at networking. On a deeper level, though, I know that content is king. And when I think about my content being the problem, I start to feel bad. I’m much more comfortable with the idea of generating gems that no one sees, than I am with generating a bunch of shit that isn’t useful to anyone. The first idea means that I’m simply undiscovered. The second means I’m deservedly ignored.

When someone like Dooce can write about every poop her kid takes and get world famous, and I can spend years putting out post after post without being famous among dozens, I found myself having to consider the less appealing view as a possibility. The numbers don’t lie, and the truth is sometimes a little ugly.

To distract myself, I spent some time looking up average salaries for jobs that had similar descriptions to mine. I really tried to pick job descriptions that were very closely tied to mine while avoiding those that sounded like they were obviously steps above me. Not considering myself an average employee (who does, really?), I was surprised to find that I was pretty average in terms of salary. To prove to myself that I was at least on the high side of average, I took one of my checks and calculated my exact salary. I was hoping to be at least slightly above average, just to feel better about something.

After doing the math on my gross pay for the second time in a row, I confirmed that I was not only below average, but I was actually earning less than I thought I was. Once again the numbers were ruining my happy little illusions.

I started dwelling on my job and finally admitted to myself that after 13 years with the same company, it’s not that I don’t want to play the corporate game to get ahead. The real deal is that I have no fucking idea what game is even being played. While people are steadily moving their pieces around the board, I’ve been setting up a perfect, four move checkmate on the pop-o-matic using only my queen, my bishop, and Cobra commander.

So, there I was, without a clue as to how to excel at my job or my hobbies, faced with the mounting evidence that I’m average, if not below average, on the things that eat most of my waking hours. Everyone wants to feel like they are above average, but if you look at the evidence facing you, and it says otherwise, do you ignore it and cling to your illusions, or face the facts and accept the reality of your situation?

In my haste to avoid any actual writing by cramming this blog full of crappy video links, I failed to mention a few things recently…

One: MABeGroMo

I failed to mention the start of MaBeGroMo on December 1. I started on November 7th to beat the holiday rush. Like women synching their menstrual cycles, Team Beardo at work started around the same time without discussion or provocation. My beard is now two months old. How’s yours?

Co-worker 1: Hey did you see Armed and Famous last night?
Co-worker 2: What’s that?
Co-worker 1: Oh, these TV stars are sworn in as cops in India.
Co-worker 2: Indiana?
Co-worker 1: No. Muncie, India.
Co-worker 2: Are you sure?
Co-worker 1: Yes.
Co-worker 2: Not Indiana?
Co-worker 1: No.
Co-worker 2: The continent? India?*
Co-worker 1: Yes, the continent. IN-D-IA.
Co-worker 2: That’s weird. Were they pulling over elephants or something?
Co-worker 1: No, it was normal.
Co-worker 2: Were there any Indian people on the show?
Co-worker 1: Well, no.
Co-worker 2: So, it’s all white people, but it’s in India.
Co-worker 1: Yea. It said right on the police station ‘India’.
Co-worker 2: Not, Indiana?
Co-worker 1: No. It was India.
Co-worker 2: Oh that’s it. I’m putting a call into Mr. Google.
Co-worker 1: [click tack click tack] Here we go: ‘Armed & Famous: The series follows five celebrities as they train to become reserve police officers for the Muncie, Indiana police department’.
All: Laughter.
Co-worker 1: I thought it was weird when they showed a Trailer park…
All: Laughter.
Co-worker 2: Were you drinking last night?
Co-worker 1: No, not at all.

*It should be also noted that India has not recently been promoted to continent

I feel like I’m plowing through days to get to the next, and then when I get to the next day, I plow through that, too.

I’m playing the same CDs while driving back and forth to my job, and I can’t seem to find anything that is getting through to me except metal. My job is boring the crap out of me, which is pretty typical for employees of financial institutions toward the end of the year when the budgets dry up and annual maintenance tasks loom. At home, I’ve been wasting my time on weird projects like trying to build my own speakers out of magnets and shopping bags, or baking batch after batch of biscotti.

On the web, I have a billion half-written posts that I haven’t been able to really sink my teeth into and get completed.

Maybe it’s the change in season, but I’m restless as hell. I need a good project. I think I have this need to contribute, but not in the “do something meaningful for someone” kind of way. I have a general need to find, fix, or create something that, in essence is fun, and total waste of time.

And I’m stuck. If anyone has the ideas, I have the energy. If anyone needs me, I’ll be the half-bearded guy walking around Lowe’s picking up and staring at seemingly random items.

*While playing with a Fresnel lens I had stashed away, I found 2 bags full of resistors, diodes, a soldering iron, and a laser pointer. For some reason, I think it was part of a project to run sound over laser that I meant to start when this same feeling hit last year.

A couple of weeks ago, we drove by an open house that had been on the market for quite a long time. The first time we came across this particular place, it had been for sale by owner, and the owner happened to be in the yard. I pulled up and asked as politely and unobtrusively as I could how much he was looking to sell it for. He asked me what I wanted to pay. Trying not to press him, I asked him for at least a ballpark figure of what he was looking for. He then actually quoted me “a million dollars”. Because I know the market in my area pretty well, I laughed and drove off, assuming that he either wasn’t really serious about selling or was completely out of his mind.

Months later, when the house hadn’t sold, the guy partnered with a broker to try for $700k, which was just about as ridiculous as asking a million. When I made an appointment to actually see the inside of the house during that period, I found the guy arguing with my broker in the street when I drove up. Because my broker is a sweetheart, it was at that point that I realized that the guy wasn’t crazy. This guy was of the classification “Assholis Majoris”.

As we went through, our suspicions of the asking price being overly inflated for a three bedroom, one bath bungalow were confirmed. We politely held back our chuckles and shared wide-eyed expressions as the seller walked us through pointing out the “features” of the house. When we saw that the seller had pretty much torn apart the kitchen in a failed renovation attempt, he actually told us, very matter-of-factly, “The price is $700 now. You want me to fix all this, the price is going up.”

We did all we could to be polite, but all three of us actually all burst out laughing.

Since then, the house has been sitting on the market and slowly dropping in price. We hadn’t seen it months, and because it was under a new broker, we figured we’d drop in and refresh our memory. When we pulled up, we saw the seller standing on the front porch. It was then that we realized that the guy had merely partnered with a broker and was still trying to sell the house himself. I can tell you that I had to actually spend time convincing #1GF! that going into the house would be worth dealing with its biggest flaw again. She agreed on the condition that we wait for another couple to walk in and distract the seller.

Shortly, another couple caught the seller’s attention, leaving us free to look at the house unmolested. We actually entered the house, looked at the whole thing, and left without the guy even knowing that we were there. Like suburban ninjas, we would just listen for his fat, blathering mouth and quietly move opposite it. And like every good ninja, #1GF! even left a mysterious calling card by taking the time to sign the guest book as “Debbie Doobey” before we made our exit.

While our tactics made what would’ve been a potentially bad experience a little more fun, I did find it a little amazing that a couple of non-criminal types could enter and exit a small house in the middle of the day unseen. When I consider that we weren’t trying all that hard to be stealthy, yet three other people roaming the house had no idea that we were there, I’m seriously considering giving up my technology lifestyle in favor of an investment in smoke bombs and black suits, because how hard could being a ninja be?

While reading another article about dirty keyboards…

“If a researcher puts out an article that claims that something (keyboard, cell phone, etc.) is dirtier than a toilet seat, they should be forced to lick either a toilet seat or the item they claim is dirtier. If they lick the toilet seat, the article gets published. If not, they are told to go back into the lab, suck down a tall beaker of shut the fuck up, and do some real research for a change.”

While doing the daily puzzle…

Co-worker 1: I need a Seven letter word for Satan.
Co-worker 2: J-o-n-D-y-e-r

While Walking down the beach…

Old man: [to woman] Alcohol is like an aphrodisiac to me. Oh, it makes me so Hoahny”

While talking to a 21 yr. old…

34 YO: Yea. All that emo stuff? I can’t get into it. I grew up on SSD, Minor Threat, The Misfits, and Slayer. The whining usually just ends up pissing me off.
21 YO: You know skaters don’t even wear big shorts anymore?
34 YO: What?
21 YO: Yea, they all wear tight pants and have bad haircuts like Emo kids.
34 YO: WHAT?
21 YO: Yup.
34 YO: How do they do tricks in tight pants?
21 YO: I don’t know.
34 YO: Oh, that’s just wrong.

While getting ready for work…

#1GF!: How do you like the new Slayer?
Me: Awesome.
#1GF!: That stuff seems like it’d be easy to play.
Me: (The comment caught me so off guard that all I could do was give a confused, “No,” pretend to play air guitar, and say “fast.”)

While trying to get some work done…

Person 1: Hey, what do those guys say before they die?
Person 2: What are you talking about?
Person 1: Akabaka?
Person 2: [Thinks for a minute] Oh my god. You need to retake diversity training.
Person 1: What?! Nobody knows it!
Person 2: It’s Allahu Akbar. And you need to get to diversity training now.
Person 1: What is it again? Abakaba?
Person 2: Oh man. Allahu Akbar.

While listening to music…

Co-worker 1: I was just listening to a nice death metal song, and the singer ruins it by screaming, “IIIII. IIIIII Flushhh my soooouuul down the draaaiiiin.”
Co-worker 2: Did you say “nice death metal?”
Co-worker 1: Yea. It was going good, too. When I listen to a song, I want enough screaming that I can’t possibly decipher how retarded the lyrics are.
Co-worker 2: I hear that.
Co-worker 1: That line just made me picture some guy in black clothes trying to clean his bathroom with Evil.
Co-worker 2: If he was really evil, he would’ve crapped his soul right on the floor for someone else to clean up.

Co-worker 1: “How was your day off?”
Co-worker 2: “It was good. I didn’t drink at all.”
Co-worker 1: “That’s cool.”
Co-worker 2: “I only had three beers.”
Co-worker 1: “I thought you said you didn’t drink at all?”
Co-worker 2: “I didn’t.”
Co-worker 3: “Wait. Didn’t you just finish saying that you had a couple of bottles of wine last night?”
Co-worker 1: “Oh well, sure, wine, but that’s not drinking.”