Perseverance Does Pay Off

On October 3, 2010, I packed as much of my stuff as I could fit into my 2004 Saturn Ion (just the essentials, mind you) and made the trek from Fayetteville, NC to Atlanta, GA. For several years, my best friend, Robert, had been after me to do it, and I always had some piss poor excuse not to. I guess I had finally just gotten to the point that knowing that Fayetteville had nothing to offer me, career wise, except for crappy retail jobs that even the apprehension of leaving my loved ones just wasn't enough to keep me from taking the gamble of heading to a large metro area and trying to stake a claim on having a career and a life.

My first week in Atlanta I found a job, albeit not one any better than I could have found in Fayetteville. For about six months I hammered away working a part time, minimum wage gig at an office supply store for a control freak of a boss while putting my resume on almost every job site I could find. By Thanksgiving I had had one interview with a place that offered the opportunity to have a “real job” but was told my tech skills weren't strong enough yet. By January 2011 I had made a tentative decision to go back to North Carolina if I didn't have anything better than the retail job I had by the end of March. I even told my boss as much – that either by then I'd be shown that I had a future at the office store, have found something better here in the ATL, or I was going home. At that point I had decided that if I was going to be stuck in a crappy, minimum wage, retail job, I might as well go home and do that and at least then I could be with my fiancée everyday and maybe even see my Gramma, Mom, Sister and Niece on a regular basis.

But it's amazing what friendship can do for you. I have been really blessed in that coming to Atlanta has scored a great group of friends even beyond Robert, who already lived here. So my gaming buddy, Jeff, made me an offer. He needed a new roommate, and I needed to move out of Robert's house (that's a long story that I won't get into here, but it had nothing to do with anything bad between Rob and I – he's still my best friend, and lives less than two miles away from me). Anyway, Jeff offered to get an apartment with me – one which he could afford by himself if needs be, and that he was going to rent regardless of me being his roommate or not. The deal was that I could help out with what I could when I could until I found that “real job” I had been hunting. In fact, I was waiting to hear back from a job I had interviewed for that would have meant I could afford half the bills. So, I decided to stay, and even signed a twelve month lease that began March 1, 2011.

So for a month I continued working at the office store, thinking that maybe I had made a mistake in staying. Then one I day I got a phone call that would set in motion flood of career opportunity. The call came from a staffing agency (aka, temp agency, “head hunter”, whatever you want to call them). It was a chance to work, “temp-to-hire”, for $13 per hour, and it was even in the technology field. Finally, after months of rejection, or just plain no replies, I was being offered a “real job”. I started that job on April 26, went through six weeks of training and, at the risk of being a bit arrogant, had become one of the top two or three members of the customer service specialists on my team. I not only had a job that paid a decent wage but at which I knew I was respected, trusted and likely being groomed for advancement at.

Then the damnedest thing happened. I got a message on Facebook from an acquaintance that I knew through Robert, named Keith. He told me his company was hiring for their Technical Support team. I hesitant at first, for a few reasons. First of all, the place I was already working had already started the proceedings of switching me from being a temporary contract employee to permanent employee. Secondly, I knew I had a future where I was working (I had been directly told by my manager that once permanent I was in the running to be promoted to Tier 2 support). And thirdly, I had interviewed with this other company before, back in 2005, before it had been acquired by a larger company and was told my Unix/Linux skills weren't up to par for them to take the gamble on hiring me. Oh yeah, and they had just laid off Robert back in January because his job was duplicated overseas. So, I was a little apprehensive about even trying. I've been running Linux on my personal computer for a few months now, but still, my skills in Unix/Linux are still pretty rudimentary, in my opinion. Robert said I should go for it, so I said “fuck it” and sent my resume to Keith. I got a phone call from an HR Recruiter and had a preliminary “interview” over the phone a few days later. I figured that's that, and went to work that afternoon. Low and behold, I was called by the recruiter again to set up a phone interview one Friday with the team managers/leads here in Atlanta (Alpharetta, actually, but it's still the Metro-Atlanta area).

I honestly thought I had blown that phone interview. I started off pretty strong, but then they started asking about things that I was only vaguely familiar with and really couldn't answer the questions specifically, Again I thought “well, that's that” and went back to work on my next scheduled day. Imagine my surprise when I got a call that following Monday telling me that they wanted to do an on-site interview! Cool. I'll go and let them meet me face-to-face, I thought. I'll show them what I do know and hope it's enough, but I had a feeling they'd, once again, tell me that they needed someone with more Unix knowledge and experience than I had and really didn't have the time and resources to train and teach me. So, on a Friday morning, I got up at 6am, showered, shaved and put on my favorite suit and drove from Decatur to Alpharetta (it was the Friday before Labor Day in fact, so I ended up being way early because I had overestimated how bad traffic would be that morning). I met with four different people, two at at time, for a little over an hour. We talked about basic Unix commands, networking, I was even asked to view a couple of log files to test my ability to read them. Personality wise, I got along great with everyone I spoke with, but again I thought, on the technology portion of the interview I had fumbled. So I drove back to Decatur, changed clothes and proceeded to go about my normal Friday errands and such (Friday being one of my regular days off from the current job). Two hours later, my phone rang – it was the HR Recruiter. Naturally I thought, “Well, if this was good news, they wouldn't be calling me only two hours later.” I was WRONG! She was calling to offer me the job! Holy Shit! I couldn't believe it! It was all I could do to contain myself lest I wreck my car, since I was pulling out of a McDonald's drive through at the time.

So here I am, almost a year after coming down here, preparing to start a job that pays substantially more than I was making tomorrow morning. Leaving the job I was at was bitter-sweat. I really liked and respected my manager. I really got along with my team, and pretty much everyone did their job and we all worked really well together and, as I said before, I knew I was in line for moving up the ladder there. But when you get an offer for a job that's in a field you've been hoping to break into as long as I have, and it pays more per year than you're already making, you don't say “no”.

It's been a crazy twelve months, but it's obviously paid off. I've fallen in love with this city and all the awesome things there are to see and do here. I've found a great core group of friends. And now I finally have landed in the career that I've been hoping for for years. The only thing left is to move my beloved down here with me, and that will happen soon.

So if you're feeling down or like life's dumping on you, just hang in there. It may not be tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or even next year, but good things really do happen to those who don't give up.

"Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him." - James 1:12 NASB

"Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." - Winston Churchill, (29 October 1941)

~ JC

The Art of Mastering the Game

I've been playing role playing games, in one form or another, for about 26+ years (I started playing Dungeons & Dragons ™ when I was 13; I'm now 39 – do the math). Which means, I've been playing these types of games for longer than some of the members of my current gaming group have even been alive (holy shit, I'm old!). There are a couple of things that make these games fun; for me anyway. There's the social interaction, for one, but mostly it's just fun to be able to vent frustrations by portraying a character that can do things that I can't – either because I don't have the skills, or because in the real world, I'd be in jail if I did many of things my characters have done in game. There's also the fact that by participating in a role playing game, I get the feeling that I'm one among a group of authors who are collaborating to “write” an open ended story. I've always wanted to write a novel, but anytime I get an idea and start writing, I realize that I'm just rehashing typical fantasy stories, or my idea is to much like some author's work, and I really don't want to get sued, so I stop writing. Playing an RPG helps to satiate my desire to write.

The balancing act of keeping the game fun and interesting falls squarely in the lap of the Game Master (aka, Dungeon Master, Storyteller, Weaver, referee, etc.). The GM, has the job of coming up with the setting and plot of this open ended story – sometimes using published works specifically written for the game, sometimes coming up with their own (or, in the case of games I have run as GM, a combination of both). The players, portraying various characters within the setting, collaborate with the GM to unfold a dynamic story.

The challenge any GM has is to not only come up with a story arc that is compelling and draws the players in, but to also keep a balance withing the mechanics of the game. Almost every RPG uses statistics and dice to help determine outcomes. It's all well and good for me to announce that my player performs a certain action, but, as in real life, success is not a foregone conclusion, so dice are rolled and compared to the character's abilities and skills versus how difficult the task is, or versus another character's ability to out maneuver or out smart the player's character. For example, a decide that my character wants to climb a wall and he has a climbing skill of, let's say +2. I roll a twenty sided die (d20), and add my +2 climbing skill to the die roll. The GM then has to decide just how difficult this particular wall is to climb; is it smooth, or does it have spots that jut out that could be used for hand and foot holds? He/she sets a target number that the character has to meet to succeed. So, for this example, we'll say that it's not a terribly high wall, and has places to grab, so the GM sets the target number at 10. I roll a 9 on the d20, adding my +2 for my climbing skill for a total of 11. My character succeeds in climbing the wall. The trick is, the GM has keep mechanics like this balanced – and by balanced I mean both fair and challenging. Sometimes, a task is very simple, sometimes it's challenging, and sometimes it's downright heroic or epic in scope. If the GM sets the target numbers to low, the games not challenging enough. If he sets them to high, then players get upset that there's no way to succeed (player characters, for the record, tend to be better than average in certain skills by design – that's kind of the point, the players are portraying characters intended to be heroes in the story). ⁽¹⁾

There are good GM's, there are great GM's, and unfortunately there are also bad GM's. Some people just can't tell a good story. Others have a GM vs the Players attitude. Some give the players to much, others don't give the players enough. As I said, it's a balancing act, and the truth is, not everyone who plays RPGs is capable of being a GM. And that's all I have to say about that.

~ JC

(1) this example happens to be from the d20 System – there are systems that utilize 10-sided dice or 6-sided dice. My example in no way is intended to, necessarily, advocate that the d20 system is any better or worse... blah, blah, blah... disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. :-P

Turning My Tooth Blue Again with an Incredible Droid

Upgrading from Droid to Droid

Nearly two years ago I obtained my first Android based mobile phone, the Motorola Droid, from Verizon Wireless. Last week, I upgraded to a new device. After a lot of researching and comparison, I finally decided on the HTC Droid Incredible 2, also from Verizon Wireless. It is safe to say that I'm sold on the Android platform and highly doubt that any future devices will be anything but Android. After only a week of having the Incredible 2, I have to say that I love it! There's a noticeable difference in overall performance, and even a slightly better difference in signal strength between the Droid and the Incredible 2. Then again, I suppose going from a 550MHz processor with 256MB of RAM to a device with a 1Ghz processor with 768MB of RAM. So, let's just quickly compare the two with a handy dandy table, shall we?

	Motorola Droid	HTC Droid Incredible 2
Operating System	Android 2.0, upgraded to 2.2.2	Android 2.3.3 (pretty sure it came with 2.2, but it updated the very day I bought it)
Processor	Arm Cortex A8 550 MHz Processor	1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon
RAM	Not listed on Android Central, but I believe it's 256MB	768MB
Dimensions	2.4 x 4.6 x.5 inches	4.7 inches x 2.5 inches x 0.48 inches
Weight	6 ounces	4.8 ounces
Screen Size	3.7-inch WVGA (854x480), 16:9 touchscreen	4-inch WVGA TFT display
Internal Storage	Not listed on Android Central, but I think it's only 256MB	1GB
Removable Storage	Supports up to a 32GB microSD, came with a 16GB microSD	Supports up to a 32GB microSD, came with a 16GB microSD
Camera	5 Mega Pixel w/Flash	8 Mega Pixel w/Flash + 1.3 MP front facing for video conferencing
Source	http://www.androidcentral.com/official-specs-motorola-droid	http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-incredible-2-specs

Additionally, both devices are Wi-Fi capable with the Droid supporting types b/g, while the Incredible 2 supports b/g/n. The larger screen on the HTC is a bonus as I have started experimenting with e-books, plus I'm myopic as hell (that means I'm near sighted and blind as a bat without my glasses).

My personal review of the Incredible 2 is simply that I am very happy with the upgrade. I loved my Moto Droid, but it was finally getting to the point of just being to slow and the memory was getting full. I still use the Droid; it now sits on my desk connected to the Wi-Fi and a set of portable speakers playing Slacker Radio. The decision to go with HTC vs staying with Motorola (I had considered the Droid X2, in fact) is primarily that HTC just gets great reviews on most of, if not all, of their devices. The fact that Apple has sued HTC for patent infringement further endears me to HTC because I really hate Apple, and if Apple feels that threatened by HTC that they have to seek lawsuits against them, then they must be doing something right.

My Tooth is Blue Again

A phone upgrade isn't complete without new accessories, right? Naturally, when I got the Incredible 2, I went with an accessory package from the Verizon store that included a case/clip combo, car charger and screen protectors. Being that I already owned a Bluetooth headset, I figured on continuing to use it, hoping that the connectivity issues it was having with the Droid would be overcome by the Incredible 2. Alas, I was mistaken, and came to find out that the BlueAnt Z9 has known software issues with Android based devices for which there isn't a likely solution since the Z9 isn't really supported any longer by BlueAnt. So, not only did I upgrade to a new phone, but I upgraded to a new Bluetooth headset as well.

Having a device that is practically a complete mobile solution for phone calls, email, internet and entertainment (including books, music and videos), I decided to go with a headset that would support stereo audio as well as standard mono sound. I found the perfect solution in the Samsung Modus 3500. At only $40, it's very impressive for its price range. I am used to paying up to $100 or more for a Bluetooth that has sound quality worth fooling with. The Modus sound really good, and others have reported that they can hear me quite clearly as well. The bonus part of the Modus is that, not only is it the typical ear bug that everyone is used to seeing for Bluetooth devices, but it also comes with a set of stereo ear buds that plug into the main headset's micro USB port to provide stereos quality sound while listening to music.

This is a great solution for me, as I tend to listen to music while sitting in my cubicle at work. With the Modus I can set my phone on my desk and listen to music without having to disturb my coworkers or getting tangled up in a long audio cable. Granted, the sound quality isn't quite as good as my Skull Candy earbuds, but it's damn close! And, the Modus came with an adapter for the micro USB to accommodate standard 3.5mm headphones/earbuds, so I can use my Skull Candy earbuds with it if I so choose. Good job, Samsung!

~ JC

Reference Blogs:

“This is the DROID I've Been Looking For” (http://jecarlisle.blogspot.com/2009/11/this-is-droid-ive-been-looking-for.html) – Sunday, November 9, 2009

“Droid Part 2” (http://jecarlisle.blogspot.com/2009/12/droid-part-2.html) – Sunday, December 20, 2009 

All is Well

My friend, Jimmy was right, I think. He once commented, several years ago, that he knew that everything was going well for me because I hadn't updated my blog in awhile. He observed that I only tended to write when I had something that I needed to vent about. Over the years I've used this blog as my soapbox, my sounding board, my creative outlet. Even when I wasn't necessarily ranting about something but writing about hobbies and interests, the blog as still very cathartic. It has now been exactly one month to the day since I last wrote anything. Some of that is because I was working retail again and didn't have my usual Sunday morning solitude in which to write and drink my coffee. But mostly it has been because I just didn't have anything much to write about. Yep, Jimmy was right – unless I'm stressed, I can't really seem to come up with blog topics, at least not good ones, which is why this one is a bit disjointed and has no real topic. In short, I don't have anything to bitch about anymore since landing a real job making a decent wage (by decent, I mean one I can actually live on). I've got a great group of friends. I have several places to hang out at and play games, shoot pool, throw darts, etc. I really have nothing to complain about. I just hope that doesn't mean that I'm tapped for blog ideas, because frankly, I really love to write.

~ JC