The Online Rant

I don’t often have an occasion to haggle. And that’s probably a good thing, since I don’t do it very well. But yesterday I went to a local Bazaar. A place where haggling is the only way prices are set.
Now, I wasn’t really planning to buy anything, but as I browsed through the stalls, a few things caught my eye. Specifically a set of hand carved coasters and some marble chess sets.

As I was looking at the coasters, the stall owner came up to me and asked me how much they were worth. Since I had no idea, I told him so. Then he threw out an amount and asked me if I thought that was fair. It didn’t sound bad, and it was definitely less than I would have paid back in the US. So I ended up buying them. I was happy with what I paid, but I didn’t haggle over the price at all. Which means I paid way too much.

That was really driven home by my next experience. At a stall on the other side of the Bazaar, I found some really nice chess sets. Again, the stall owner saw me looking at them, and cornered me before I could leave. he started off telling me what a great deal he could give me on the chess set I was examining. He threw out a number($150) for the set I had in front of me. I wasn’t really sure I even wanted a chess set, and that number made up my mind for me. So I told him I wasn’t interested. But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. So he lowered the price. I had already made up my mind not to buy it, so the lower price didn’t phase me. But the more times I said no, the lower the price got. By the time I finally said yes, he had reduced the price to $40.

So by accident, I actually managed to do a decent job of haggling. Though I’m sure that if I tried to do the same thing again on purpose, I wouldn’t manage any where near as well. LOL

Today I was surprised by a rather nasty wakeup. I got up from my bed and stumbled over to the showers for my morning wakeup and cleanliness ritual. Now, I wasn’t really awake yet. So needless to say, I wasn’t very observant.

I turned on the shower and got undressed. Still not noticing anything out of the ordinary, I jumped into the shower and immediately became wide awake. Water was ice cold. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to suffer through a cold shower, but in this case, I wasn’t expecting it.

Needless to say, I took a very short shower this morning. So today I’m very thankful for little things. Things, like hot showers, that you take for granted right up until you don’t have them.

I was listening to a CD by Fort Minor the other day. (If you haven’t heard their music, you should check it out. They’re pretty good.) The last track on the CD is called “Out the Back.” One particular phrase from the track really caught my attention.
It goes like this,

“Slip out the back before they knew you were there, and at the worst you’ll see nobody cares.”

The reason it caught my attention was that it really fits my first reaction to any situation where I’m afraid of other people’s reactions. Especially when that fear is of rejection. It somehow seems better to discover that no one cared that I wasn’t there, than to be rejected.
But is it really better? How many opportunities have I missed because I was afraid of being rejected? Friends, jobs, relationships, the list goes on and on. Why is rejection from a stranger or a passing acquaintance such a big deal for me? Is my self worth so low that a rejection from a person or group that I will probably never see again really going to destroy me?
Sure rejection hurts, but it really isn’t going to hurt me that much long term. Certainly no worse than the discovery that no one cared like the song said.

The other day I was having one of those bad days. The kind of day where I get depressed about my life. When that happens, I start questioning everything about my daily activities. Why do I do the things I do? Do they really make me happy? What is the point of anything I do?

That kind of thinking usually pushes me into a deep depression. But this time I was trying to think positive. And as I was trying to pull out of the whole depression state, I remembered something I memorized as child.
It’s an excerpt from the Westminster Shorter catechism.

“Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

Am I glorifying God in my daily life? Maybe my frequent bouts of depression and dissatisfaction are actually because I keep losing focus and forgetting what I’m supposed to be doing here on earth.

I’ve been really thinking about how fortunate I am. Actually everyone from the US is incredibly blessed. Sure, we have poor people and rich people. We have homeless people and we have people who are in bad shape financially. The difference is that even the worst of us are better off than people from most of the nations in this world.

In this country anyone who wants has a chance to become wealthy. If you make good decisions and work hard there is no reason not to expect you will someday retire with considerable wealth. Furthermore, anyone can be whatever they want to be. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, or if you are born into a trade or not. If you want to become something, you can do it. There isn’t anything holding you back.

I’m not saying everyone makes it. And I’m not saying that coming from a wealthy family doesn’t help. All I’m saying is that we all have a chance and we know it.

What would it be like to grow up somewhere that that isn’t true? A place where if you are born poor, you have no hope of ever being anything but poor for the rest of your life. Where you can’t be anything you want. That’s what it’s like in most of the rest of the world.

At my current job, I work with a pretty good group of guys. Most of them are easy to get along with, and all of them work pretty hard. One guy in particular is an extremely hard worker. He does his job without being told, and will even go out of his way to find work to do when his normal duties are completed.

You’re probably thinking that this guy sounds like a model employee. Someone who works without supervision. An employee that goes above and beyond what is required. The thing is that he has one big glaring fault. A fault that negates most of the good qualities I mentioned above. He literally can’t work with anyone.

The reason he can’t work with anyone is that he always assumes the worst about his fellow employees. By that, I don’t mean that he thinks all of his fellow employees are evil. What I mean is that whenever something comes up (good or bad), he assumes the worst possible motives of those involved.

So advice or critiques of his work (which is actually pretty good) is taken as a personal attack by the person giving the advice. And praise for his work is taken as an attempt to suck up to him for some future gain. If one of us is falling behind, he automatically assumes that the person falling behind was slacking off and not working. Any mistakes other employees make are taken as evidence that that person is stupid or doesn’t listen to instructions. Even in normal conversation, he assumes attacks on him whenever something is said that offends him.

With an attitude like that, you can understand why he can’t work with anyone. He claims that everyone he has ever worked with has “stabbed him in the back” at some time. If you always assume the worst of everyone around you, then it has to seem that way. You end up angry at everyone around you all the time. Which can’t be fun or even healthy.

The thing is, that most of the time he is completely wrong about people’s motives. But because he always assumes the worst, he always feels let down. Wouldn’t it be better to assume the best of someone? At least until the person has proved you wrong several times.

There are plenty of bad people in the world, who do have bad motives for what they do. But there are plenty of people out there who are just normal and don’t have an ulterior motive. If you just give them the benefit of the doubt sometimes, you will be surprised at how often you are right. And in the end you’ll be a lot happier and have more friends.

Recently I’ve been overseas working at my new job. (By the way, the new job is for a governent contractor doing IT work) I’ve been over here for about a month now, and I have about two months to go before I get back home.
For the most part I haven’t minded being over here. There isn’t all that much to do, but while I’m here I work 12-14 hour days 7 days a week. So I really don’t have time to get bored or homesick. Even better is that I don’t have time to spend any of the money I’m making. And with my living expenses paid for by the company, I can save all the money I make.
About the only thing I really miss is regular church attendance. You wouldn’t think that church attendance would be the one thing that I would miss the most. After all I’m missing almost everything else that I have made a regular part of my life. But other than my church, most of the other stuff I hardly think about.
I tried to find a church around here, but I couldn’t really find anything except a Catholic Mass. There was a Protestant service, but it was basically a Unitarian service. So since I’m not Catholic, and Unitarian services are really nothing more than feel good clubs, I’m stuck with nothing in terms of church.
So anyway, when I get home I’ll be pretty excited to be back at my church.

(My church does have a podcast of it’s messages, but the Internet access here is pretty slow and blocks downloads. So I wasn’t able to download any of the messages. I’ll be sure to catch up on them when I get back though)

Well, yesterday was my last day at Silver Bullet Technology. I would have posted this yesterday, but I was so busy trying to wrap things up on my projects, that I just didn’t have time. I ended up working pretty late Friday trying to leave projects in a state where other programmers can pick them up, and writing emails to those same coworkers describing last minute things that I had forgotten to tell them.

When you work for a small company for any length of time, you end up becoming the expert at way too many different systems and projects. So when you leave, it becomes a huge effort to pass on that knowledge to others. Especially if you don’t have a replacement to train. So my last two weeks at Silver Bullet involved a lot of documentation and process writing, as well as a lot of coding to wrap up projects.

I’m sorry to go, but it really was time for a change in my life. So I’m moving on. I still stay in contact with everyone at Silver Bullet, and I’ll still be available to them all via email or phone. But they won’t see me already there early in the morning, with the coffee already brewed. And I’ll miss having those first of the day discussions with each of my coworkers as they walk past my office.

The above picture is one of my favorite demotivators. Mainly because it’s so true. We put off hard work that will lead to better things, in order to get immediate gratification.

I’ve been reading a book by John Maxwell called, Becoming a person of influence. The first chapter is on the importance of integrity. And one of the points in the chapter was that being reliable was an important aspect of integrity. And that’s something I’ve always worked towards. Having people count on me and know that I will do what I said I would, is really important to me.

But the book had an interesting quote that really struck me. It went like this, “Each day, do what you should do before what you want to do.” That is don’t procrastinate on your responsibilities. Finish what you need to do before playing.

Now being a person who cares a lot about accomplishing my responsibilities, I do put a lot of effort into making sure that I do things on time. If I told someone I was going to do something by a certain time or date, I do my best to have it done. But I have to say that procrastination is a serious problem with me. If I think I can put off working on something I don’t want to work on, I will. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still get it done on time, but I will wait until the last minute to do it.

And until reading that chapter, I never connected that tendency to procrastinate with integrity. But it really does fit. How can I be honest with myself about my responsibilities when I know I’m not working on them and should be? I’m only putting them off because I know I can get away with it. I know that no one will know that I didn’t work on the job until the last minute.

So my conclusion is that I’m going to put a lot more effort into finishing my responsibilities before the last minute. I’m going to try to not put things off that I know I can get away with doing just before they are required. I’m going to work on them when I should be.

I said last week that I was dealing with some changes. The changes are actually a shift in jobs.
I currently work for a company that writes banking software for check scanners. Mostly for remote deposit applications. My job consists of programming interfaces for the many different scanners on the market.
I’ve been doing it for almost three years, and I’ve really enjoyed working for the company and I’ve enjoyed the relationships that I’ve established with my coworkers and with the clients I deal with. But it’s time for a change.
So starting the 10th of March, I’ll be working for a new company. I can’t say a lot about the new job yet, but I can say it will involve a lot of travel and a lot less programming. So it will be a nice change from what I currently do.