Live without excuses
3 October 2007So often, we focus all of our attention on the obstacles that lay before us. Why? Because it’s easier to accept that you can’t obtain our goals if it is due to circumstances beyond our control. It’s someone else’s fault. Here are some real examples I’ve heard recently:
- I won’t ever leave this small town because in order to do that, I’d have to get a good job. In order to get a good job, I’d have to go to school, and I can’t work and go to school at the same time, so I guess I’ll just stay in this town.
- I can’t ever get custody of my daughter because the mother will hire expensive lawyers.
- I can’t go do this new job because I might screw up, and then that would let my friend down.
- We can’t leave this small town because the rents are too expensive in other parts of California.
Sometimes, the excuses are noble.
- I can’t leave this small town for a better life because my sister needs me to take care of her kids.
- I can’t travel right now because I have to take care of my mom.
What "I can’t" really means is:
"Rather than pro-actively dealing with the obstacle, I am choosing to place the blame on something else so that I don’t have to deal with it. I’d also like you to feel sorry for me, can you lather on the pity please?"
If a 5′3″ man can be in the NBA, and a one-armed man can be in the MLB, and if a high school dropout can work at Yahoo!, then there is no such thing as an excuse, there are choices that we make, and positions we put ourselves in. In the end, it’s our responsibility; we choose our path through life
You are where you are in life because of the choices you’ve made.
I have accepted complete responsibility for my life. If anything good happens to me, I made it happen. If anything bad happens to me, I shouldn’t have put myself in that position.
Once you accept this level of responsibility for your life, it’s tremendously empowering, it will makes you want to flex your universe.
I am a high school dropout
15 September 2007That’s right. I am a high school dropout. It’s not a path I recommend, but it is the one I’ve chosen. Here is the story of how I got into the computer industry.
When I was at Fruita Monument High School, my girlfriend and I got pregnant. I was 17, and I needed a speech credit to graduate. I was faced with a decision: A) Start working and providing for my sprouting family, or B) continue high school for the diploma.
I’ll never regret my decision.
I started working at a local grocery store in Grand Junction, CO called City Market. Yes — "Paper or Plastic?" was the question that I had to pretend to be interested in, and the high point of my day was cart duty.
One day I met a man named Chris Griener, I loaded his groceries into the back of his Window-ology van. Window-ology is a company that sells and installs window coverings. You know — Blinds, shades, shutters and more… ©. Something caught the eye of Chris Greiner, and he gave me a job as a window covering installer.
After some hard work and a little luck, 4 months later, I owned Window-ology of Grand Junction, which was a franchise. I still needed the benefits and stability of the full time job from City Market (I had a new baby on the way!), so I worked nights at City Market and days for Window-ology. For the next 4 months, I slept 1-2 hours a day and on the weekends. A family man hasn’t lived until he’s come home from one job, showered, and gone to the next. Most people think I’m exaggerating this part of the story, but I’m not. 12-20 hours of sleep per week.
The business in Colorado did well. I worked my ass off. At it’s peak, I sold it to move to Arizona to start another Window-ology. Bigger, better territory. More money. Or so I thought.
Thankfully, the Window-ology in Arizona failed miserably. Because I was a loser. That’s right, I said thankfully. The Window-ology in Arizona failed miserably because I was a loser. There. I said it.
When I say it failed miserably, I mean it. I was $75,000 in debt, running from creditors, facing bankruptcy, and had no money coming in the door. Why? Because I played online games all day instead of working. I was addicted to Descent II. I was amazing at dodging Earthshaker Missiles. I had lots of online friends, but severely neglected my responsibilities, my wife, and my new family.
Did I mention I was a loser? Why did I need to hit bottom to learn?
We didn’t have health insurance, and my second son was on the way. We couldn’t afford to pay for the birth, so I sent my pregnant wife back home to Colorado to have the baby on a welfare program. What a f*!king schlameil I was.
At the lowest of the low, I had to borrow $20 from my neighbors to buy milk and diapers for my new son, Conor. This was the most humiliating experience of my life. I threatened suicide and my wife Chara called the police.
I had hit bottom. Why is it that we must do this before we learn? Can’t we figure this out ahead of time? Can’t we learn from our more gentle lessons? Apparently not, and pain is the best teacher.
Here’s where the story gets good. Alan Robinette, the President of the Window-ology franchises, capitalized on my humility and state of eagerness to improve. He helped me through this point in my life, and I am eternally grateful. He is now my mentor.
My wife and I, and two sons moved back home with my mom in Colorado. There I worked as an assembler for a few months, before agreeing to move to Pleasanton, CA and work for the Window-ology corporate office.
I did this for a few months, and while I was there I built the Window-ology.com website. I taught myself HTML. Man that site was ugly! Java Applets were all the rage, and so were unnecessary cheezy graphics. You can still see it on the webarchives for Window-ology.com. I remember dreaming to myself — wow, what would it be like to work at Yahoo!. But without a high school degree, this was going to be quite a challenge.
I got a job as a copy/paste data entry clerk at Westech, a virtual job fair company that had an online employment website. There were two key characteristics of this job that allowed for me to be successful.
- After my normal work was done, I could teach myself programming.
- Unlimited overtime. That’s right. I could work as much as I wanted to. With two kids and an insatiable appetite for provision, a job where I could earn as much as I could work — was a dream come true.
This was 1999, and the Silicon Valley job market was insane. After 4 months, I was the lead developer, mostly through attrition. I taught myself Vortex, Texis, and a little bit of Oracle. I also pissed a lot of people off with my brash attitude. I was young and dumb and didn’t understand the value of a team.
Apparently I made some favorable impressions on my bosses through my hard work, and that has lead to career opportunities elsewhere. The knowledge that I gained helped jump-start my career.
This is how it all started. Should you do it the way that I did? I can’t tell you to do it. It’s definitely the hard way. Would I do it all over again?
Absolutely.
Pain is the best teacher
14 September 2007Why is it that we, as people, must suffer through serious pain before we learn?
I know that my best learning experiences have come from the times that were the most difficult for me. A preacher once told me that we don’t pray when times are good. Oh how true. We only reflect and try to learn when there is pain. The more pain, the more we reflect. The more we try to make sure that situation is avoided.
Humans learn through pain. Most people spend their life bouncing from one bit of pain to another. They don’t lead their life, they just go from one painful situation to the next less painful situation.
A few of the smart ones figure out that painful situations can be avoided by making sure that you aren’t put in situations that can cause you pain. They choose paths that protect yourself. They avoid painful situations. They Flex Their Universe and craft situations so that they work out well for them.
But most of us are dumb. We need to have pain in our life to teach us lessons.
-Nick
Teach your kids web development
14 September 2007It’s been a fun experience teaching Conor, my oldest son, about HTML. He’s 11 years old. He’s excited, and I have to admit that I am too. There are some thought provoking questions that come up when you start teaching your children your trade. You wind up questioning your own career. Is this what’s write for him? Do I really want him to be me? You see, workaholism is a blessing, but it’s also a disease. Shoudn’t he be allowed to just be a kid?
Well, I’ve wrestled enough with that moral quandry enough for now. Hell, I am not paying for his college education, so the boy needs to learn. My focus has become how to teach him web development. Where to start with web development?
My first mantra was that he needs to understand vi[m]. F**k WYSIWIG editors. He’s going to learn the right way, right from the start, with no crutches. Conor. Repeat after me. "WYSIWIG editors are for pussies".
This means he also needs to learn SSH. I recently ought him a little iBook. Did you know that there is a school program for kids with laptops? Amazing! Imagine if Einstein would have had access to e-mail from the time he was 11. He wouldn’t have come up with the theory of relativity, but I bet we’d have some revolutionary ways to view porn.
The first day was motly unix basics. Vi, ssh, cd, creating accounts, terminal on OSX. He learned the basics of file systems: cp, mv, rm. He learned when [not] to use sudo. He learned when to STOP and ask, and when it was ok to experiment. So many people stunt their learning because they don’t know when it’s ok to mess around.
He learned how to make a change with vi over an SSH terminal, then view it in a browser. Surprisingly, he picked up vi pretty well — although he uses the arrow keys instead of j/k/l/m. Damn vim. It spoils new-comers. When I was his age… I used vi, which forced you to use j/k/l/m for up/down/left/right.
The second day he learned the basic structure of HTML, bold, center, italic, img, anchor tags. Rather uneventful, he learned very quickly. The light bulbs started going off when I told him that he could create a web page for his little brothers and sisters.
The third day we worked on HTML tables. This was interesting exercise. Should I even teach him tables, or should I just leap frog tables and go straight to CSS? I decided it was best for him to learn tables, to know what they are, and I still think that they are the best way for tabular data to be represented, even though I haven’t updated my resume to use table-less layout. Someday…
On the fourth day we sat down, and I created a diagram of an HTML page using Omnigraffle (diagram tool for Mac), and then had Conor recreate this using html. He learned all about tables, rows, columns, alignment, colspan, and background color.
Then, I showed him divs had him recreate the same table using no tables. Now he’s working on updating my resume to use a tableless layout. Look at that, he’s already being productive. I hope he knows what he’s in for.
What’s up next? PHP? Javascript? I’m not sure he’s ready. We will let him get good with HTML and CSS first.
-Nick
How to get started in computers
14 September 2007Every accomplished computer geek has had someone come up to them and ask them how they get started in computers. Sometimes it’s an awkward conversation, because the person obviously isn’t qualified. It usually goes something like this.
Jimmy: "So what is it that you do for a living?"
(thinking to myself): So you mean you can’t tell by the glasses and the bad choice in clothes?
Me: "I’m a computer geek."
(Jimmy gets excited)
Jimmy: "Where do you work?"
(thinking to myself): I shouldn’t tell him, he’ll be following me around all night.
Me: "I work for Yahoo!"
Jimmy: "Oh wow! I use Yahoo! Mail. But didn’t Google buy them?"
Me: Sigh. "No. Yahoo! and Google are completely separate companies. Google does very well with search. Yahoo! does other things very well." (comparison)
Jimmy: "You know, I’ve been wanting to get started in computers. All the people around me are afraid of ‘em, but not me. I got e-mail and youtube and everything."
Me: "Huh. Yeah. E-mail is pretty cool. And did you seen the fire fart video on Youtube?"
(thinking to myself): Hopefully the firefart video will distract him.
Jimmy: "So do you think you can get me a job at Yahoo! doing computer stuff?"
Me: "Maybe in a few years. Just keep surfing around and teach yourself. That’s all I did."
When people talk to me, they are often amazed that I’m self-taught. "You mean you didn’t go to school for this stuff?" They always want to know how I got started. That’s a whole ‘nother story.
