Well this will be my second time every flying my first time fly as you can imagine was a horrific experience, it was crowded, floor seating, no food, people were shooting at us and no flight attendants. Indeed it was 1979 and communist Vietnam was invading Cambodia, but I was happy to be on that C130 American Cargo plane. There are things in your life you tend to forget in time like birth dates, old phone number, and people’s names, however you never forget your horrific escape from the clutches of the Khmer Rouge so you can understand my anxiety about flying to anywhere.

~Those who forget the struggles repeat those same struggles- Kai

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So you sit down and create a great plan for a project by planning for the obstacles and watching your time to not go over budget and time, then reality sets in. Nothing executes correctly, you end up going over budget, time, and resources. Sounds familiar? Well what it sounds like is what I have been doing the last couple of weeks you think you hit a stride and anticipate all the problems and looked for all the right signs then BAM! “your grabbing at straws” so I’m asking myself “what happen” well I call this recalibration time.

A dear friend of mine told me he was feeling off centered, so I told him about change and how it’s the only constant. Of course he already knew that because it was his idea for the quote, ha! to be honest with you I don’t even know who Heraclitus is. To be honest when I first heard of that name it sounds like a female body part. Well back to my clarity rant, every project manager, web developer, etc etc at one point has to center themselves back to being ahead of the flood gate instead of behind it. We find that place in our minds that help us remember how truly different and unique we are to this world and this place is what either drivers us or drives us insane. The easier route is the insane route and the harder route is what pushes us to grab at those precious straws we so badly want.

“It’s not the empty straws we miss, but the opportunity at the grasp we desire” - Kai

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Today I had personal contact called me and asked me if I could consulate him on web technologies so I made an appointment to meet with him. During our meeting without any delay we dove right into what web 2.0 was about and internet marketing, he gave me scope and I gave him the tools he needed to consulate his client. Without going into too much detail due to a Non-Disclosure agreement after the meeting he asked me to produce a proposal by the end of next week and if that went well “it’s on”.

What worries me is not the work nor is it the growth in business it’s the age old problem of running a business. In the quest of making a living I understand that as web firms get to big they become to costly to hire and inefficient and days of the one guy sitting at his home designing, coding, and hosting a web site are gone. There is no room for either in this newly web future so I have my paradox of how much work can a team of five handle until our quality of work suffers and our human touch fades? The truth is if you do good work and if you have a reputation that goes beyond how we look on a computer screen, just like that quote from baseball “if you build it, they will come” well, they’ve came and I may have to either schedule them to the future or turn them away. However, I believe this balancing act will have to go on until our quality starts to suffer and then and only then will we consider turning our clients away.

“Death of a salesman” or in our terms “Death of a Computer Geek”

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Ok, the concept of twitter is for those who want to know what you are doing at every moment…..so then I ask myself “am I that self absorbed to think that people really want to know what I’m doing at anytime?” Also I just read that I am not in the Gen X category, but rather the Gen Y so I’m a bit mhph because I thought I was a Gen Xer.  What’s next nerds and geeks will be considered cool?

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Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not romantic at all in the stereotypical sense. I don’t bring my wife flowers..or write sappy love letters…or…I don’t know what else romantic guys do. In my defense, though, my wife doesn’t expect this, so I guess that’s good for me. Anyway, I’m getting to my point.

My wedding anniversary is coming up, so I had this brilliant idea that would make my wife really happy: since she likes it when I spend a lot of thought and time on something I figured I would make her an imovie of our memories from the six years we’ve been together (3 dating, 3 married). I did a test movie and showed it to her and the rest of the family and they loved it. I’m still playing around with it, but I already know when I finish everything this gift will mean more to her than anything else I’ve ever given her. Those are her words, not mine. So I started thinking that instead of just putting pics of us, it would be more memorable to put pics of our family, our childhoods, and some events that would remind us of how far we’ve come.

I think sometimes we forget about the past and take what we have for granted, especially the people we love the most. When the movie is done I want to show it to my whole family in hopes that this will remind everyone that without love nothing else matters, that people matter more than things.

So now I’m letting out my secret on how to use technology to bring people closer to each other. Feel free to copy my idea, but I have to warn you that if you do this and you’re a guy some beautiful woman in Bakersfield might come after you, or your family may think there’s a heart beating underneath that geek exterior after all. But I did warn you.

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