Oh to be an Apple employee

As you can tell by this link to The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW for those who are Apple fans), Tulsa - my hometown - is finally getting an Apple Store!

For about 2 years ifoApplestore (the absolute source for all things about Apple's retail efforts) it has stated that Tulsa would have an Apple store at Woodland Hills Mall, Oklahoma's largest mall, sometime in 2007. But this hadn't been corroborated by any other site, until now.

Even the local paper (Tulsa World) had a business briefing about it in Sunday's edition (3/25)!

Finally!

For many, many years I have wanted to be an Apple Computer employee. I appreciate their products, and have long been an evangelist for Apple's MacOS in my sphere of influence. Heck, I was even a network admin/service tech for 35 Macs at a publisher I worked for!

Even though I haven't been able to purchase the latest and greatest Apple products, I still have 4 Macs and 4 iPods in my family. I was even one of the early adopters of the iPod, purchasing a 1st generation iPod BEFORE it was Windows compatible!

And now Apple is coming to Tulsa!

Time to get that resume together and see if I have what it takes to even make the first cut. I have a theory that someone who confesses to being an Apple evangelist in public won't be touched by the company as an employee. Too much publicity about an individual for a company so notoriously secretive.

Time to put it to the test! Going to Apple.com/jobs right away!

Choices, choices

Why does it seem that many times in life you either have no options, or too many?

Now, I will agree that having options is a good thing. A very good thing. But why do they have to all arrive at once? But I whine.

Just as I made the decision to back off on the 2-job situation and give my notice, I am presented with the opportunity that I had sought for so long -- to ditch the "day job" for a career with my night job. Sigh.

Mentally, I don't know if I have the energy to handle a decision of this magnitude. I am tired in many ways of "worrying about my future," and that opens my eyes to a huge failing on my part.

I lack the fortitude to consistently allow God to hold sway in my life.

As I am faced with a huge decision as this, I must stop and willfully walk into His peace. Put this on Him and trust that I can make a decision using godly wisdom and discernment.

I'll be back and let you know. For now, I'm seeking and praying.

Growing up?

I've grown used to being tired and not having enough sleep due to other factors that I don't really control (2 jobs, family obligations, etc.). But when I lose sleep due to my own folly, it really burns my britches.

Last night, I had some free time at home. Instead of reading a book, watching TV with my family or playing a game with my kids, I started playing Ages of Empire II. Yes, I know its very old school, but I still love it. The command-and-conquer theme is just what I need as a 40 year old man. :)

But I stayed up to freakin' 1:30!

That's late, especially when I have to be at my day job by 8:00 at the latest. Sigh. Tired on the job. Yawn.

And today is the day that I get to go have lunch at Cherokee Casino (and hopefully drop some coins into the slots!). Bummer that I have to go in a half-awake state. Not very smart.

I think eventually I will get this all figured out. Maybe. Sort of.

Feeling Old

Woke up late this morning, rushed to get in the shower and dressed and out the door. Put a pair of shoes on that looked okay, felt okay and were a change from my everyday footwear.

Then I got to work and had to walk to my building from the parking lot.

A short story about my parking lot - it is actually a street with angle
parking. I am way too cheap to pay for parking. I may have to ride the
shuttle bus or walk half-a-mile, but at least I'm not paying for asphalt
privileges.

So once I started walking to the office, the "change of pace" shoes started rubbing my feet in odd spots. That's when I really started to feel old. My feet hurt and it was 7:45 in the morning.

Once I finally made it to the office, and took off my shoes, my feet started to feel better.

See - that makes me feel old. Hope this day gets better.

Working the weekend

Being a married father of 4 kids leaves little time to do much other than what needs to be done.

What does that mean? That means, as a person committed to a viable marriage and rearing four children into responsible adults, one is left with little unoccupied time, other than time set aside for sleep.

Now before anyone reads this and thinks that I am going to go on a rant about not having any time "for myself" let me stop you before you leave. I am NOT going to do that.

I'm just going to talk about what life is like being busy from waking up 'til going to sleep.

Also, I am very aware that my life is not unusual.

I am blessed to have a wife who is more than helpful with our parenting responsibilities. So, its not as if I am a single parent. Single parents deserve any extra blessing that comes their way. I can barely make it happen as a married parent.

All of that said - holy smokes! What a weekend. Busy, busy, busy. Friday night - work function, followed by softball practice. Saturday - work in the garage, work the second job, concert & babysit. Sunday - worship, NAP!, work in the garage (some more), feed the frenzy.

Now, I doubt I was as efficient as could be. But that's beside the point. It's remarkable how much we try to cram into our lives. And it's not even soccer season or basketball season! Yikes.

But, hey, I did get to watch some of the NCAA tournament, view the last 39 laps of the Nascar race on Sunday and assisted while my wife made some serious progress in organizing our storage room, errr, garage. So it was productive.

And that's my point. Are we allowed to complain if our time "off" is productive? Or is that whining?

I'm sensitive to whining. I don't like it. Don't want to be perceived as whining.

So I guess I'll just shut up.

Have a great week.

What a dad does...

To start, full disclosure - I am an Apple diehard. Began using the Mac in the late 80's at a publishing house, and fought through the bleak "Apple is dead" days of the mid-90's. I raised a family of knowledgeable Apple fans. Not Apple zealots, but the kind that can have a reasonable conversation about why the like the Mac and where Windows' strength and weakness lay.

I have thoroughly enjoyed the success that Apple has enjoyed the last few years. It's been gratifying to see that quality does have a place in the market. The iPod has been big in my family. We own all types, from a first-gen to a new, 2nd-gen Shuffle. We love them.

BUT, I absolutely despise the silence that Apple has taken towards some iPod issues. What's wrong with admitting a problem, and presenting ways of correcting them? Not everyone with an iPod expects Apple to pay for every little problem - people just want to know that the "mothership" hears their complaints and is working on a solution.

All that said, my oldest son's (Ethan) 4th-gen iPod began experiencing the dreaded hard drive "click-of-death" recently. He first went to Apple.com and other related sites for help. He tried the "5 R's" and restoring the iPod. That didn't work at all. Then he brought it to me and asked for helping in buying a new one.

I smiled and spent the next 4 hours trying many a different trick found on various websites and Apple forum discussions on fixing. Staying up 'til 2:30 am killed my next day at the job. Sigh.

Then, acting on something Ethan mouthed off about, "some guy even dropped his off his deck and it started working again" I Googled "dropping my iPod on the floor."

Amazingly, 8 pages of hits came back! Yikes! Serious iPod troubleshooting and apparent rage.

Digging throught the results, I found the one linked above from Crunchgear on "how to fix an iPod that won't boot" with the hard drive click of death. This guy figured that if he put some paper or cardboard about 1/16th of an inch thick in between the iPod's HD and the metal case, it forced the HD to begin spinning again due to the added pressure on the HD's case. Amazing.

So, in my better judgement, but attempting to give my kid back his music - I followed the steps on the posting. AND IT WORKED!

What a dad does for his kids. I lost many hours of sleep, but ultimately got the iPod to work and made my kid smile. That's why you do it, right?

Needless to say, much love goes out to Crunchgear for their great tip.

Why doesn't my team ever win?

Just finished watching my team lose their 1st round game in the NCAA Men's Championship Tournament. How frustrating!

While being the lower seed, they lost to a team that played boring, slow-it-down-because-we-can't-score basketball. I don't care if they are in a "BCS" power conference. It was still amazingly boring.

Yes, they should have done more to win and didn't. Yes, they lead at halftime and could've played better.

But just because a team can hold on to the ball until after 25+ seconds has ticked off the shot clock doesn't mean they're actually that much better. Just wait until the second round.

Sigh.

Is it really that hard?

Every day for some people is a grind. Many days, lately, "some people" has been me. Working 2 jobs has been no fun, and the money never seems to go far enough. No time to spend with my family. Cars breaking down, appliances to fix.

And that's when I ask - is it really that hard? Daylight savings time screwed many things up, and not just my computers. But the sleep schedule and the morning routine and the night routine. It's Wednesday, and I am still sleepy. Sigh.

It's at this point when my traditional upbringing starts playing the voice recording, "Only things that are hard are worth having" - or something like that. And when I think of all the stuff going on, I think that my life is hard.

But then I realize that I am healthy, my wife and kids are healthy and we all like each other (most of the time). We have a reasonable lifestyle, and rarely go without what we want for long. Do we take big vacations - no. But we do have 4 kids in a good private school and live in a nice neighborhood.

Compared to many here in my hometown, much less those in third world countries, it's not that hard.

It's actually really easy.

8/31/1966

Turning 40 is an odd thing. I fought it for the last few years. My wife is about 18 months older than I am, and hit the big 4-0 before me. So did most of my friends. I talked trash and gave them plenty of "old people" jokes. Oops.

Yesterday I turned 40. It came and went. Not scary. Just calm and good things. And of course lots of "old man" jokes from my family and friends.

Its good. Real good. I can dish it and I can take it. Moving on.

I think what I know now about 40 (as if this is some great revelation) is that it doesn’t mean I’m old, or past my prime. It means that I finally have the self-confidence to do things that I have always thought I could, but didn’t because I wasn’t…cool enough, smart enough, out-going enough.

This has been building in me for some time. The sense that I have finally grown up, and am fully accountable for my actions, my life and "what I want to be when I grow up."

So being 40 (for all of 1 day) is a sense of coming into a time when I know who I am, know what I believe, and know that other people shouldn’t have so much influence in my life unless I want them to.

Day by day, walking it out. Taking risks and not being scared.

Being 40.

turning 40 years old

Taking a leap of faith

Okay…so the new opportunity opened up wide. And I’m taking it. Now, after turning 40, its time for me to run in a different (yet related) career path. That’s very exciting, even if it is unsettling to be starting over in many ways.

But this is good. This opportunity will allow me to answer many questions about myself: was I a “one-hit wonder?,” am I destined to look back at my twenties and early thirties as “the good ol’ days?,” or can I really excel, perform and pull that high-level of work product out of me again?

We’re going to find out.

Just be thankful you have options...

So I was whining, err…writing about career choices and whether your full-time work position is your passion, and if it isn’t, should you quit and run after what is your passion? And then what do you do if you don’t know what your passion is? Then you’re really cooked, aren’t you?

Now, if my current employer happens upon this post, let me say that I am happy
doing what I am doing. I like the work and the people. It’s just not as
financially satisfying as I hoped, which makes me feel as if maybe I have
“missed the boat” somehow. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to quit and walk
away. I’ve been unemployed. It’s not something that I, my wonderful and
understanding wife, and my four kids enjoyed.

Of course, just as I opened the question of “shouldn’t my job be more than just a paycheck?”, then I get a phone message stating that a potential opportunity still awaits for me in a different (yet related) field than where I have spent 15 of the 17 years of my professional life. Hmmm.

It makes me tired, all of these “options.”

I have a very strong Christian faith. I’m not your run-of-the-mill reactionary Christian. I question things. I don’t swallow everything that Christian leaders say just because they say it.

But my faith is unshakable. I believe in God. I accept that the only true way to heaven is through a belief in the death, resurrection and ascension of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ.

I thought, however, that life’s decisions were supposed to be easier to decode. How do I decide between 2 good opportunities? Both have risks and rewards. Aren’t I supposed to see a spotlight on the one that God has prepared for me? And if I can’t figure out which is the “right” one, does that mean that my faith is weak? But wait, can’t God take any situation and turn it for good?

It was supposed to be easier than this, right?

igmo

Is this all there is to my career? It's just work?!?

You know, there are many times in my life when I’ve stopped to ask, “what the heck am I doing with my life?”

Now, as a happily married father of four (and I really mean that in the sense that I know that marriage is NOT what you see in the movies, it’s a lot of f’ing hard work), I don’t question my role in a human sense. I don't sit around asking questions or making statements such as:

“Why do I exist?"
"Is there a God?"
"The world is a scary place! Why would I bring children into it?"
"I could never love any one person for my whole life.”

What do I mean when I ask “what the heck am I doing with my life?” I mean it in the sense that I have little, or no, true career/professional direction. I’m 40 years old, have spent nearly seventeen years in the “career” workforce – fifteen in the same field – and have learned that I don’t necessarily like what I do.

Thing is, I'm not passionate about anything that I’ve done; publishing, foodservice management, executive assistant, etc. What I want to do is, um, err, uhhh – crap, I don’t know! I realize that life's greatest satisfaction can't come from a job. It's the tangible, important things that matter - my relationship with my wife, my relationship as a father to my kids. But aren't I allowed to enjoy my work?

It’s not as if I’m one of those people that hate his job. I work with reasonable people making a fairly reasonable wage. Its just that I find myself spending time thinking, “is this all there is for me in my work life?”

I realize the overwhelming majority of people never reach a point where their work is enjoyably satisfying. It wouldn’t be called work otherwise. And if you wanted to do it anyway, why would you be paid to do it?

All of this takes me back to the slow-to-accept belief that I won’t be happy at my job for as long as I need money. How utterly disappointing. Since the average American spends more time at work than many of our Western society counterparts, I would hope that I could work doing something that I enjoyed – not just for money.

But that seems to be lost in the reality of life. So, as I spend my days helping other people accomplish what they want, and earning retirement income for the owners of the company I work for, I also spend quite a bit of time hoping, praying and attempting to find out what I really want to do with my life.

Where to from here? Hmm.

It's not what you call yourself, it's how you live your life

“The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today, is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips, and walk out the door and deny him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

-- dcTalk
"What If I Stumble"
Jesus Freak, 1995

Being a “red state radical” to me doesn’t mean that I’m a conservative zealot or a left-wing lunatic; rather, it means that I don’t see myself as someone who doesn’t quite fit in a nice, neat, old media stereotype.

It means that I’m tired of having to people attempt to lazily peg others with these labels so they can go on and not think about what they are saying. This goes both ways – conservative and liberal. Its not about debunking one ideology or lifestyle, its about listening and learning that we (though smart and clever) are not necessarily the end-all, be-all that we think we are.

I’m beginning to see it more often (purplethink.com), but then I get whacked with stupid articles like this tired, hard-to-believe Charlie Sheen interview. Its not that I’m not confident about what I believe, I just get worn out by having to think that the “other side” is ALWAYS WRONG.

Enough feel-good preaching.

Was walking into church this past Sunday (lifechurch.tv), and the music playing was something that amazed me. Not for the lyrics or the music itself, but rather that it wasn’t a canned-music Christian song. No, it was “Why Georgia” by John Mayer. Reminded me of the music before the message last year during the Easter experience – all U2 songs! Amazing.

This is a group of “Christ-followers” who understand that playing church just won’t do it anymore. It’s all about living what Jesus taught, not a social club that is the Christian’s replacement for the local pub or fraternal order of whatever animal you want to name.

When I was pursuing my college degree at the university of the human trinity (fellow alumni, you know what I’m talking about), I was blessed to spend four years living with the Christian college equivalent to a fraternity – Am Herratz. (Am Herratz is a bad Hebrew translation of what we thought meant “scum of the earth;” we reveled in being called “Ratzers.” )

Ratzers are a bunch of guys who shared a dorm wing and followed Jesus. We knew how to kick butt on the playing fields, and the dating arena, but we absolutely weren’t afraid of being known as Christians. We knew, and understood to our core, that being a follower of Christ meant living as Jesus lived, not simply parroting with our mouths what we had learned through years of being in church.

And that’s what I’m trying to do. Live as Jesus lived. Act out the love of God. I screw up, frequently. I’ve failed many times. But that doesn’t mean my faith is weak, or that I am destined “to live in a smaller mansion in heaven.” It just means that I’m human.

Red state radical. That’s what I am; a frustrated conservative who isn’t afraid to agree with liberals when it makes sense. Finding the middle ground isn’t compromising my beliefs. Its actually reinforcing them.


dcTalk
Red states
Christian
am herratz

The start of the Red State Radical

“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing…”

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787

There are many days that I sit at work, home, wherever, and think, “Does anyone ever listen to what they’re saying?”

With all the punditry, blogging and overall editorializing by anyone with a camera, keyboard or microphone, I find it hard to believe that everyone stops to listen to what comes out of their mouths.

We have conservative radio hosts, blogs, websites, and even television news channels, all attempting to reverse what is seen as years of “objective” reporting on the major networks. This has been countered by liberals with their own radio network, a Liberal Blog network and the increased polarization of members of the national media.

What is all this? And is this just for the few (percentage-wise) who care about politics?

Whatever happened to the America that had a middle ground? Did it ever exist? As a child of the Reagan Revolution, I have never known such a time. For years it was conservatives fighting back at liberals in the media, then came the liberals turn to fight back against conservatives who proved adept at working the radio airwaves and new technology. Now we have a bit of chaos, with both sides screaming that the other side is wrong. Stuck in the middle are the “regular” people who are trying to make a living and raise their families.

My guess is that we’ve never really had middle ground, but we did have the capacity to LISTEN to the other side and consider if maybe our side was wrong.

Then came the baby boomers who were so big in numbers that they insisted like the self-centered lot that they are that they be paid attention…and they didn’t like the war in Vietnam, or their parent’s views on sex, or anything that stood in their way of “being themselves.” And with 79 million of them, who could ignore this group?

Ah, yes, the baby boomers. Those of us not “fortunate” enough to have been born from 1946-64 certainly know all about them. It is the excesses of the baby boomers that have brought us the sexual revolution of the 70’s (and the 80’s onslaught of AIDS), the disappearance of the national savings rate, and (how could I forget) the now-dominant Clintonian definition of “sex.” If it’s not intercourse, then its not really sex, right? Hmmm.

I don’t wish to blame everything on the baby boomers, but it is so easy.

Of course, there are many things this generation has overseen that have made life better. A good example of the baby boomers improving life is application of technology. Many of the things we take for granted (the Internet, cable television, etc.) weren’t fully developed until enterprising boomers pushed them to their current state.

That’s enough about baby boomers. The point of it all is that we used to be able to talk and discuss, I think, and now I wonder if we will ever have that again. When someone, on either side of the issue, makes a statement, they are quickly met with rebuttal rhetoric about how wrong the statement is. Why? Can’t we truly respect what others have to say, and agree to disagree without proving that our antagonizer is a fool?

That’s why I’m writing today. As a “red state” resident, I am not some stereotype. Just as all people from Berkeley aren’t granola-eating-absolutely-pacifist liberals, not all people who live in the so-called red states are gravy-loving-homophobic-gun-owning conservatives.

I stand for something that’s not easily defined. I have values, and I know why I believe what I believe. I’m tired of having to defend what I believe to the television reporter, or radio show host, or newspaper columnist. I get tired and numb from both sides of this culture war (hate that term). I’m not always right, and neither is anyone else. Quit telling me that you are.

Did you know that it really is possible to be a “compassionate conservative”?

Did you know that it really is possible to be a “hawkish liberal”?

It’s what used to be called a moderate.