Roadtrip!

If you've wondered why I've been so quiet this week, it's because I haven't actually been at home for the last week.

We headed down last weekend to San Antonio because my mom was in town for a conference. My dad drove down from Dallas and we all stayed downtown. It was in a hotel right by the Riverwalk. We got to walk down along the river, see the Alamo, and visit with the family.

Then, on Monday morning, I boarded a plane and flew to Detroit. Yep, up to Michigan. It was my first time in the state. I meet up with my friends and we began the Innovator's Roadtrip down to Austin.

We've spend the entire week driving and interviewing companies through the middle of America that are innovating in their fields. I've gotten to see some amazing things this week that I'd never have seen in my life otherwise.

You can see all of the action over at http://www.innovatorsroadtrip.com

Ode to Unemployment

I was on the bus yesterday coming home from Austin. And I started thinking, how would I write a poem about being unemployed. This was the result.

William Tell watched the stars
and in them he found peace.

"My life is in shambles,"
he told me one bright morning.
He had recently lost his wife
to divorce and his job
to India.

We sat on a park bench
sipping coffee from paper cups
with paper sleeves
with plastic lids.

"I feel disposable," he said.
He was unshaven, unkempt.

"I laid here last night," he told me.
"I laid here on this bench
and watched the stars
and went to sleep."

Not Again

As Mia and I have already discussed, twice only makes a coincidence. (Three times makes a pattern and we're really hoping not to find that out.)

What am I talking about? Why, moving to a new place and losing my job.

When we moved to Boston, I got a job at a PR agency and was laid off after 9 months.

When we moved to Austin, I got a job at a Marketing agency and was laid off after 6 months.

We've also very clearly decided that I'm never going to work in an agency-style setting again. Too many differences between agency culture and how I work. It's not a good fit and when I try... well, like I said, we're not going to find out if it's a pattern.

Thanks to everyone who's already been so supportive. We really appreciate everything that people have done for us so far. It's been very uplifting for us to know that we have a support network of friends and family even in this stressful and discouraging time.

Slumdog Millionaire - Thoughts

Mia and I finally got the chance to see Slumdog Millionaire. (Thanks to Mom and Monica for letting us get a night out.)

The scenes of the extreme poverty in India was very sobering. Especially in America that kind of poverty is practically unimaginable. While they use real shots of Mumbai and India, it's seems more like a movie set. Like some scenery they built for the backstory they were creating. 

It's practically unimaginable that people could live in those conditions and still find any happiness. 

I served my mission in the Philippines. I witnessed first-hand this kind of extreme poverty. I was invited into homes bamboo walls and corregated aluminum rooves. I watched children, wearing ragged t-shirts and shorts, playing games with their flip-flops (tsinillas). I served people who would sometimes have only rice and salt to eat.

And yet, I can't even really understand what that life must be like. But I can understand how, even under the worst conditions, they manage to find happiness. 

I wish that I could explain it to you.

Customized

Inspired by Mia's changes at the bottom of her posts, I've just updated what my posts say in the footer. Enjoy.

2009

Well, another year closer to death.

Happy New Year everyone!

Fro-Go

I have had a few observations from the family on my goatee recently.

Mia told me that my goatee is "like a fro-goatee" because it's getting a little bushy and needs to be trimmed.  I've dubbed it a 'fro-go'.

Then, today she pointed out that "With your goatee like that, you notice your face." I wasn't sure if that was a compliment or what. So I asked for some clarification. It got complicated and went something like this:

Mia: "I don't know, you just don't notice your face when it's shorter."

John: "What? Like you don't see me at all, or my face is just too hideous to look at directly?"

Mia: "No! It's just that... the goatee doesn't seem out of place"

Which was actually the heart of it. She's gotten used to the goatee that it's not a separate feature of my face. But when it gets long, then it's like a chunk of hair stuck to the bottom of my face and you do notice it.

Following that conversation Ethan said: "You have a hairstyle on your chin Daddy."

My family is hilarious.

Isolated

We've done it. We have joined the time-shifting revolution. But... not with TiVO.

Nope, we did something even more drastic. We un-hooked our television set from the cable in the wall. It's now in our front-room where there are no wires to give it content-rich nourishment.  Now, unfortunately, the arrangement of our furniture hasn't altered our lives in any dramatic fashion. Mia and I are still both sitting on the couches with our laptops doing some blogging, uploading pictures, and watching TV.

Wait... what? This is where we come back around to time-shifting. We haven't completely given up on TV shows. Now we just watch them on Hulu.com.  In fact, we'll often be watching different shows while sitting in the same room.  We try not to turn up the volume in an audio version of mutually-assured destruction (though sometimes I'm tempted).  

Oddly, when I'm watching shows on my laptop, I feel more able to get other things done. I put the player window down in one corner and keep my other apps or sites open around it. Of course, it would be even better if I tore myself away from a screen of any variety and started going to the gym.

I wonder if there's a wire for that.

Bite-sized Love

Mia loves me. She went shopping yesterday and picked up a bunch of snacks for me to take to work. I've not been eating so well, so having these makes me feel happy.

It's the little things in life that keep us going.

William Tell was a rocket scientist

Yes, it's another poem post. I know that I had one not too long ago but I'm going ahead with another one. Hopefully, if you know me, you are the kind of person that will appreciate my odd style of creative writing as well.

But, more importantly, this poem was a good exercise in reminding me that I've got at least a little bit of skill as a writer. I follow some pretty great blogs online and read some pieces that are very well crafted. When I do, it makes me wish I could dedicate more time to my own writing and improve my skills.

So, I'm going to run you through some of what I did yesterday working on this poem. Here's the draft I had after some tinkering. I felt that it was in reasonably good shape but something was missing. See if you can spot where.

William Tell was a rocket scientist.

He aimed for the stars.

For the moon.

"One day," he told me, "I will get

to the moon." And he would look

up into the night sky as he walked.

He always walked at night. Watching

the moon, measuring, calculating.

563,009 miles; 3409 minutes; 898,008,023

gallons of rocket fuel; 1 lifetime.

I walked with him by the river, at night.

"I'm so close," he would say and stretch his hand

to the sky.

In front of us, along the river, a boy stretched

out his hand to the girl next to him. They're eyes

looking down at the river, at the reflection

of the moon.

When I read through this version to Mia, she agreed that something was missing but couldn't put her finger on where. What I saw as I was writing and tweaking was that I needed something at the end of the 4th stanza to tie William Tell's connection to the moon into the connection between the young couple. With some help from Mia, this is what I came up with.

William Tell was a rocket scientist.

He aimed for the stars.

For the moon.

"One day," he told me, "I will get

to the moon." And he would look

up into the night sky as he walked.

He always walked at night. Watching

the moon, measuring, calculating.

238,900 miles; 4,549 minutes; 500,000

gallons of rocket fuel; 1 lifetime.

I walked with him by the river, at night.

"I'm so close," he would say and stretch out

his hand like he could bring the moon

to him.

In front of us, along the river, a boy stretched

out his hand to the girl next to him. They're eyes

looking down at the water, at the reflection

of the moon.

Now, if you want to look a little deeper into my mind, I'll explain a little more of my thoughts. I don't really write love poems. The kind of stuff that just gushes mushy metaphors and lacks any deeper meaning. But, I like to write poems about love. Something that lets me explore the condition of love in a way that is meaningful to me.

In this case, I'm exploring the pursuit of achievement that the protagonist (William Tell) is seeking by his quest for the moon. In that pursuit, we see that he's lost sight of everything else in the world, and developed an unrequited infatuation with the moon.

In contrast, the young couple walking along the river not only have each other but through their connection, they are able to appreciate the moon that is nearer to them in the river's reflection. Their sight is aimed in a different direction and yet it brings them closer (metaphorically) to the goal that William Tell is pursuing (but since the moon itself is a symbol the metaphor works).

Anyway, that's what I was trying to put into the piece, I hope that's what you got out of it as well.

One week down

I've finished my first week of school er... work. The timing of this job felt a lot like school, and since the dress code is different (Snowbound was business casual, Bulldog is "No Swimsuits") I had to do some back-to-work clothes shopping. We did this as a family last week, just cruised up to the Round Rock Outlets. Mia and I were both in need of some new athletic and everyday shoes (and have been for a while) and I needed more than one pair of jeans that really fit.
We ended up getting new shoes, some Nike's for both of us -- which we are breaking in now for our trip to Disney -- and some everyday work shoes (that aren't athletic shoes) for me. Mia and I both got some pants as well, and Ethan got a Buzz Lightyear costume for Halloween.

In the end, shopping for clothes is always expensive but we did better at the outlets than we would have anywhere else so we can't complain. They are all things we've been putting off buying for a while, it's our own fault for not spreading out the purchases.

But, enough of the boring stuff. Let's talk about my job.

While my official title is Campaign Manager, that's a fancy title for Project Manager. I keep the pieces moving, preparing for the inevitable launch and trying to make sure that we have as much done as possible before our clients open them up to the world. This is a role I've had before. The daily insanity is similar to what I remember. However, I do have two distinct advantages coming into this role.

1. I understand the marketing. I get what we do, the messaging, the landing pages, the automation, the emails, the marketing side of things I've been doing at Snowbound for 3.5 years. (Also, I really enjoy this kind of stuff.)

2. I understand the chaos. I'm not trying to figure out what Bulldog does while also trying to learn how to juggle projects and keep clients happy. I have a foundation for both of these as well.

But, like I said, this is just a foundation. I still have to learn the intracacies of how Bulldog goes about their process. I still have to learn how to handle my particular clients, and I have plenty to learn about Webinars.

Actually, part of why I took this job (besides not getting an offer for the other one :p ) was so that I could learn more about Webinars. Video is exploding as an online medium and I want to try and get ahead of that wave. This knowledge will definitely be useful to me in future positions.

Bulldog is still a small company. Which means they face an interesting challenge. Any loss of staff makes a big impact on the allocation of resources and work. But, they are also growing so hiring new people means getting them up to speed. Typically for a Campaign Manager they spend a month in training/shadowing on the accounts that will become their clients before getting introduced and taking over the work.

On my first day I was introduced to a client that I'll be taking from one of the CMs that is leaving (I'm pretty much replacing her spot, though they have hired 1 more CM so net gain of 1). In the first week, I have been introduced to 2 more clients, and will be in the kick-off meeting for a brand-spanking-new client next week.  In other words, my training period has been cut a little short. While that makes me a bit nervous, I'm also glad they have confidence that I am able to jump right in and start contributing. This is smart because asking the experienced campaign managers to shoulder too much work will only serve to burn them out, leaving more holes.  (Which no one wants.)

I'll keep you posted on how things progress at Bulldog. But, at the moment, I'm confident that I've found a good place for me to be here in Austin.

William Tell Had a Poker Face

And, in case you want to read the text, I'm providing it below too.

William Tell had a poker face. 

I never looked into his eyes. 

You could get lost in his eyes.

"Fold," I said and laid my cards on the table. 

William smiled, halfway, or rather with only

one side of his mouth. I looked down at his

hands. He flipped over his cards. Two of diamonds

and ace of hearts. He had a pair,

on the the River,

on the two.

"Poker is like love," he said flipping $100 chips

at each of us. "You play the player, not the game."

I smiled, halfway, or rather I felt smug inside

without moving my mouth. "Tell us," I said,

"about love."

William Tell looked at his cards then flipped the dealer $100.

"Deal," he said.

Edit: My wife thinks I'm boring, so I cut out the bit of me talking and just jumped right to the point of the video. ;-)

Job Description

I'm finishing up my full-time work at Snowbound and realized that my job title shouldn't be "Internet Marketer" but instead should be "Problem Solver." We are implementing a new marketing system and as Mia pointed out, pretty much my last 2 weeks have been dealing with getting it set up.

I've figured out a lot of issues, done a lot of back-end work, and started looking into what we need to do from a process standpoint to keep moving forward. As I was telling Mia, this isn't just a Snowbound skill. Even back at Protocol I was a problem solver. Keeping direct mail going is a huge juggling act and if any of the balls stop moving, it all comes crashing down.

With my experience on the back-end of Websites, front end of writing copy, project management in direct mail, and constant problem-solving throughout, I think I'm going to handle my new job just fine. (For those that aren't as familiar with the role as I am, it involves all those things I just listed.)

Real Haircut, Real Job

Ok, I admit that I got the haircut after the job but I don't think the order is important in this case. Let me tell you a little about my new job. I'm going to be a Campaign Manager at a company called Bulldog Solutions. They are a Lead Generation service company. Which means that I'll be managing marketing campaigns that Bulldog executes for our clients to generate more leads.  

This is similar to what I'm doing now at Snowbound. I'm responsible for a lot of our lead generation and do all the execution for them.  So this is going to be a change of pace for me since I'll be doing it for multiple clients instead of just one company.

But, it's also a small company so I will hopefully continue to have opportunities to expand my skills and experiment with other things.

I start on Monday. It's getting exciting to think about but also makes me a bit apprehensive about going back to an office job. Fortunately, I've been down to the office a few times and the people are great. I think that I'm going to fit in well.  I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Reading (People)

I have done some reading recently (YAY!) but this post isn't about books. It's about reading people. I have been doing some interviews recently.

In one of them, I got a skills test. Analyze a 14,000 record data set and do an hour-long presentation about the results. Well, this was a little outside the realm of what I've been doing with our Web Analytics and search analytics at Snowbound. But, it was an interesting experiment to see what I could do.

The presentation went well, but when it was over I came home and told Mia that if I didn't get the job it wouldn't be because I wasn't competent but because they needed someone with more experience than I had.

I got a call from the HR person I'd been working with later that afternoon telling me almost that exact thing. I have to admit being a little disappointed but also grateful for the chance to expand my horizons and give me something to work on personally.

Fortunately, one of my other interviews that also went extremely well ended in a job offer. More on that soon. ;)

Technical Prowess

This post is coming to you from my new laptop. We decided that we weren't going to take our desktop when we move. But, since I'll be a contractor I'm going to need my own computer pretty much every day. And Mia didn't want to be left without anything to help her find things in our new location, check the weather, pay the bills, and do things during the day.

The downside is that I got a computer with MS Vista. We flirted with the idea of getting a Mac but the price was just a little more than we wanted to spend at this moment.

The real technical accomplishment though was that I had to re-configure our wireless network so I could connect this computer. This may also solve the problems that Mom runs into when she tries to connect at our house during the summers. I thought it would be difficult but it turned out to be fairly simple.

I'm rather impressed with myself. Now I'll have to see if I can get the printer to work wirelessly as well. Yikes!

In Sickness and in Health

Mia got the flu last week. She got it hard: headaches, runny nose, fever, chills, fatigue. We were fortunate that Ethan was vacationing in Albany. Unfortunately, we didn't get nearly as much done around the house has we hoped because Edward screamed like a banshee.

Finally Mia broke down and bought a swing. It was amazing. Edward loves to be in the swing and will immediately calm down no matter how loud he is being. In fact... we are starting to think he likes swinging more than being held. Yikes!

At the end of last week, I got the flu. Mostly it was just a runny nose (I went through an entire box of tissues on Sunday) but when I get sick, I get hit hard with fatigue. I went to work on Monday and felt exhausted when I came home.

Fortunately, my mom has been in town so she's taken very good care of us. We've really gotten more sleep that we would otherwise with an extra set of hands around.

But, as I was telling Mia the other night, when I'm sick I realize how much I appreciate her and all the things she does. Maybe I just notice them more because I can't do them for myself. Whatever it is, when I'm sick it's more obvious to me how much I love having her in my life.

And now... more sleep.

Only Smaller

Ethan and I went to the mall on Saturday for some Dad/Son time. He's been getting kind of pushed aside lately because of Edward. Not that we want to push him aside but we can't be as active as he wants when trying to get baby Edward to sleep.

We stopped by Circuit City first, so I could browse around and try to spend my gift card. Ethan immediately wanted to go over to the fake living room areas. With the nice couches and the big TVs. He climbed up on a leather couch (and since it had been snowing) I told him "no shoes on the couch." He made it easy by just taking his shoes off entirely. Then he was able to climb around, and move between the different set-ups. He would have stayed there all night, I think.

But, we had to move on. In the mall, Ethan loves to run along the wide corridors, ride the escalator, and go into toy stores. He also asked if we could get ice cream after he saw some people eating some. Which we did before leaving.

One of the insights that I had while walking around was that tweens are like miniature horses. They look just like the real thing, only smaller.

Passing of a prophet

I was very sad to hear this morning that President Hinckley had died. I don't have time to write up all my feelings but he really was a defining influence in my life and in the growth of my faith.

He was the prophet that signed by mission call. As well as being the prophet that I really started paying attention to as someone revealing God's will to his children. I will miss him greatly.

Memories of sleep

I know that it's been a while and I apologize. Unfortunately, my schedule has been extremely erratic lately for a few factors.

1. Edward. He sometimes sleeps well at night and sometimes doesn't. It's kind of a craps shoot. Last night he was up at midnight until 2am. Then he woke up again at 4am :(

2. Laptop. The power cord on my laptop broke, right near where it connects to the computer. This has made getting online to update my blog (or anything) much more difficult. I can't sneak in a few minutes before bedtime and the office computer is slowly dying.

3. Sleep. I fell asleep at 8pm on Saturday. That's how tired I was. This is not an entirely uncommon occurrence for the last few weeks. Some days we'll stay up late anticipating a rough evening with Edward, some days we'll go to be early anticipating middle-of-the-night troubles. Sometimes we guess right and sometimes we don't.

So, those are my pathetic excuses. I'll be getting up and running again soon (should have a new power cord in tomorrow and only 2 more weeks till Edward should start sleeping better). We do have some cute stories, pictures, and videos of the kids to show, please be patient and I'll get them up.