From a kitten to dying peacefully, Scotty lived here his entire life and died this morning at 14.
He was a good boy, loved by his family and gave back more love than he needed.
My 2,800th post is in honor of Scotty. Rest in Peace Scotty.
Do pets go to Heaven?
There is a wonderful sermon by Derek Thomas from the Ligonier conference in which he addresses this.
https://youtu.be/qBgeJKyxhvA?si=I42yW9I0dpL_BDzc
One of the best I’ve heard and has so much love and grace in this sermon.
I'm on fall break. Last week was the end of the first nine weeks and we had our first parent-teacher conferences. I had a handful of people, mostly the kids that have parents that are involved in their kids' lives. I was told I'd rarely get to see a kid that needs it.
So last weekend the world woke up on the doorstep of World War 3 as Hamas decided to attack Israel. It's a mess over there. A lot of YouTube channels are going full-blown PreTrib Millenial out there. All kinds of Bible prophecies are quoted. It's crazy.
I'm not dogmatic about it. I tend to believe in a Partial Preterist view that says most of the prophecies in scripture were talking about the end of an age that was punctuated by the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans.
Who knows what will happen but it's scary. We've got two carrier groups over there now, rumors about Iran and if they will or won't enter the conflict. Give the Dimocrats the reigns and boom! Wars, rumors of wars, destruction, inflation, and the elites prosper as they drive our country into financing one war and threatening another.
They won't be happy until they've wrecked every vestige of a once great country.
Yesterday was payday. That was really the start of an official day one for this new encore career.
It put things into perspective. Clarified the pathway I suppose. I got things paid up and on the first it's pension day! So I'll be in great shape for the foreseeable future. Like did a Dave Ramsay projection and down to living on my pension alone and be comfortable. And that's with an extra $500 kicked into retirement every month and driving when I want to. Which is pretty nice. I can count on about 100 every time I go out.
How cool is that?
I kind of played a cool card with a few of the kids today. I impressed a few with my knowledge of anime. Then I topped that with Thing 2's foreign exchange experience and her love of anime too. It's only because I promised Thing 1 that I wouldn't play the My Oldest Daughter is a badass roadie and does set changes at festivals! She's loving her life as much as any 29 year old would!
How cool is that, that me, just this average guy trying to keep my head above water most of his life has been this amazingly blessed as I've documented over the course of these 20+ years.
I've learned sometimes things are the same even though you're in a different career. I've had a lot of ridiculous professional development-style classes before school even started. I'm not a rah-rah-rah kind of guy. In fact I needed that valuable time and if I had been hired a week before I'd have been able to learn that in my printing lab all but four printers don't work or need serious maintenance.
So...that's how this started.
It also has had only one small blip so far, a mild trouble maker kept pushing the wrong button. A brief loud voice later and he chilled out and then transferred out. Since then this job has been a fun job almost. I mean other than the ridiculous stuff I don't care about.
I've got two classes making their own board games. I don't know how to teach what the other teacher was teaching. He just had a course set up to teach via YouTube. While it is a necessary and usually really efficient way to learn the basics, he kept it up with more and more of them on worthless projects the kids would have to leave at school ultimately.
Nahhhh son, That's not what I do. I got a damn master's degree because I liked the creative aspects of commercials and was interested in how certain types of stimulus triggers a buying response. Basically I broke down complex situations into simple bites.
Bite one. Get rid of old curriculum after I figured out old boy there was lazy. His courses were designed for him to stay behind the desk. So that had to go. I wanted to see their progress and challenge what they were doing in an engaging way.
So for the start of the class we are doing tutorials until they catch onto how Blender works. Then after that I am going to guide them into making things they want to make and then teaching them how to make it into a .stl file and we will print it and they can paint it. They will have two things out of this course.
Uuuuummm...(a) maybe? They'll have tangible proof they can make something.
(b) They will be reminded all year long they can use the skill they are learning now and turn it into a marketable skill, in which they can create and sell their own works. Because I'll remind them. I want them to be able to learn something in high school that is only limited by their creativity but can be lucrative for them if they really work at it.
Bite C. The Game Design course is my favorite course really. Teach it twice. I ditched the old "sit behind the desk" curriculum and made up my own. We are treating this like a business in the early stages. We will have a working prototype by end of semester and then play test, balance, and prepare for market in the second semester. And perhaps, yes we might be able to market it. To be figured out at a later date. This was the trouble maker's class and I had a hard time getting through to anyone but a few. Then boom, the clouds parted, the angels sang, and we had a really good time ever since! Everyone has bought in!
Basically because of the same situation as the design class. We are in reality making templates and developing skills to use and edit those templates into a proud creation of their own that they can market and maybe make some extra money off of or maybe invent a new genre of game altogether! I want them to be prepared for the workforce and maybe have a bit more opportunity in their lives.
The print lab is a wreck. I've got 4 reliable printers. So I spent my entire year's budget on five brand new printers like I have. They are so simple so we will be able to focus on making stuff instead of failed prints. And that's about it. I got some wash stations and some resin and isopropyl alcohol. Whole budget is gone now for the year.
But we'll have really good printers now and hopefully if any money comes in or is donated to the program or something I want to add in ten more. As old as this equipment is in the lab now, the new resin printers can cut that time a dozen times over for one print. So we won't need as many as the lab has. And then I really don't have a marketing idea for this class other than the same in the other two classes. Learn the technology and find a niche you can market. It's not rocket surgery.
So to boil it down, so far if the year keeps going like this, I might return for a second year.
I'll keep you informed.
If you haven't heard of Oliver Anthony, you're missing out on the biggest earthquake in modern music. Two weeks ago Mr. Anthony put out a song called "The Rich Men North of Richmond" and it touched such a chord with everyone that works hard for a living.
He had five million views in four days. As of right now he's at eleven days and twenty-six million views. He went from one of us to the voice of us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro
This is the link to the most brilliant masterpiece of the working man since the "Take This Job and Shove It!" explosion of the 70's blue-collar era. This work is crazy, everything is upside down now.
The government gives illegals better care than our own veterans. And they invite more. They are bent on destroying everything they can as fast as they can because a Uniparty is in power. The GOP is just Dimocrat Lite. They agree with everything the other party wants so who cares anymore.
Mr. Oliver Anthony, I salute you sir! I pray for you and for His blessings as you've been chosen to deliver a message to us. This song brings people together! If you don't believe me, I invite you to check out any one of a thousand reaction videos to this modern anthem. I haven't seen a bad one yet!
Love you my Brother in Christ!
A funny thing happened last week. A fellow gig driver that works for the school told me to apply for an opening that they just posted. It's for an art teaching job. Yeah, I know. Art, weird right? Especially considering my degrees are in marketing.
Well, then she told me it was for teaching 3D printing, which I happen to be pretty good at!
I thought, what the heck, I applied for the job around 8:30ish that night. At 11:32 that night I got an email from the principal asking me to come to the school at 10 the next morning to interview. It was the best interview I think I've had and pretty much walked out with the job even though they had another candidate to interview.
I showed them my printing and painting work and they were impressed. I took a tour with the interview team and saw my classroom and 3D printing laboratory! I have an actual lab now! Who can say that? Now you all know I've never been a teacher as my life has been pretty mapped out over this blog.
I'm nervous, I'm excited, I'm terrified, I'm anxious to get started.
Yeah, I thought I was going to have a marketing job by now. Turns out Bidenomics isn't working for me. I've applied for over 300 jobs and I've had a total of 7 interviews and 2 of them were for DHS, which everyone told me I'd hate and I knew that going in.
As a gig driver, I've had a lot of fun and it's really the perfect job for enjoying my freedom from my first career. I've enjoyed the heck out of it, met a lot of great people, and helped a lot of people with their groceries that otherwise might not have been able to easily get them or at all. The gig has kept me the peace I was really needing and it's hard to explain past that alone unless you lived it.
Well, gas has gone up a LOT, groceries have gone up a LOT, and our gig pay has decreased at the same time. It was harder and harder for me to make ends meet comfortably. With me not driving 7 days a week my driver friends won't be competing as much for orders. There will be at least 5 extra orders per day that I'm not taking that they can have now. It'll make their days a bit easier and they can earn a bit more.
I didn't write about this until today because it became official just a little bit ago. I've finished most of my paperwork and need to sign things in the morning.
I'm going to be a high school teacher.
You long-time readers know that once in a while I'll write about something perfect. Cannot be improved upon, even in the smallest way. I wrote about the perfect trilogy called 30 Perfect Rounds describing the "Irish" Micky Ward and Arturo "Thunder" Gatti fights. You could argue that the Ali-Frazier trilogy was perfect but for me and my time and what I witnessed in real-time, you cannot touch Ward-Gatti.
Well, I found the perfect concert album. I must confess I only roughly knew of this man and to my shame dismissed him as a Bro-Country hack. It was out of my own ignorance as I did not do my homework on him even though what I had heard was really really good. Later I learned he was not played on the radio, if he was it was usually by request and even then it is iffy.
He reminds me of Metallica. They were the best band on the planet years before they got airplay which came with their very first video which was introduced in their fourth studio album, "...And Justice For All." When One was released they started to explode in popularity and started gaining mainstream attention. Then the Black album and the rest is history.
This man is that. He's the absolute best artist on the planet right now. He's a lyrical genius, he's Hemmingway in how he can turn a simple phrase and make it deep and esoteric. He's from Oklahoma and he's pure Red Dirt. He's the antidote to Bro-Country that has infested the radio for going on twenty years. Instead of lake-side hijinks, he writes things that I can easily relate to as I grew up in a town that was maybe a bit smaller than Oologah in the 80s. I understand where this man is coming from, lived it too with my friends.
He writes about heartbreak, loss, fun, triumph, and everything in between those four points. His albums are sparse, mostly him and his guitar only with the occasional bass drum or straining fiddle. He started to get noticed while he was in the Navy when he started posting original songs while dressed in his work greens. Before long he was getting millions of streams and after that, the Navy wanted to have a chat with him. Legend says he earned an Honorable Discharge and went on tour.
Zach Bryan is the best new Country artist in the world right now as I said, there are some that are every bit as good as him but have been around a few years and have really grown as artists like Cody Jinks, Ray Wylie Hubbard (a legend that's been around for a very long time), groups like Whiskey Myers, all of them have heart and speak to my like Mr. Bryan's music does but he's different at the same time. When you hear him, you'll understand what I mean.
In November of last year, he played a concert at Red Rocks. With a snow storm and freezing cold as the backdrop, Zach Bryan along with the fans created the absolute perfect concert. I've seen the Stones, Metallica, GnR in their prime, and Elton John on his last tour and many many more. This is better than all of that combined to me. This show is the epitome of how an artist loves the people and the love they give back to the artist while on stage that is just amplified and given back into an infinite loop. This show is a love story between the two and the dance that unfolds over an hour and a half.
It's an experience and it isn't diminished in the least tiny bit if you're unfamiliar with his art. If anything once you're familiar with his songs then this show gets better. I honestly don't have the words to accurately describe this other than it is perfect. I don't even want to run down the tracklist, if you haven't experienced it, I ask you to get relaxed, find a place where you won't be disturbed for a while, and enjoy this absolute masterpiece. You can stream it on any service or watch a stitched-together concert with fan footage timed up to the actual concert audio on YouTube.
June 15, 1992. My first day at the job that would turn into a 30-year journey. A job I thought would last maybe five years. I survived numerous layoffs, and I was at the bottom of the totem pole several times in seniority. My buddy that was hired a few months after me, was laid off. He got transferred to another job and after a few years wound up back where he started. He's still there!
We went through a lot out there together! Now I'm here and he's loving life there! All is good!
In two days Thing 2 turns 27! Amazing!
I can tell you that being a parent is one of the most terrible experiences in the world, and one of the best. Thing 2 is visiting South Korea, her BF is stationed there. She's planning on moving to Japan in roughly a year to get her grad degree while her BF is there for two years.
Loving your kids is wonderful and hurtful at the same time. You appreciate the time you get to spend with them as adults and long for them when you can't see them and spend time with them. You sacrifice, pray, hope, and cross your fingers that they have a better life than you, and when they succeed you can't be prouder of them! You hope you raised them to where they can be independent, and self-sufficient, and have equipped them with some skills that will benefit them as an adult.
You shouldn't be shocked when they utilize those skills in living their lives but still, sometimes your heart and soul hurt when you aren't able to spend time with them and bond as adults. I always wanted a road trip with them, just the three of us driving to something (doesn't matter what) but the point was just to show them something you three want to see and experience.
Dreams tend to fade over time, ambitions lose their drive, and life moves on. New people come into your life, beloved people can disappear, and you make what you can with what you have. Childhood memories will fade but for some reason, some don't. Some things stick with you.
People, situations, good and bad, everything changes over time. You grow up and you begin the task of putting your childhood behind you. Age takes its toll and my girls will go through what I'm going through. They'll become reflective and look back and what I or any parent hopes are the good times the family went through together. The journey begins again and then again, over and over as time keeps it's pace.
That journey all started on this day, 31 years ago!
So, this isn't really capable of happening now but I do believe the seeds are planted. Imagine a time with the right device, probably even as powerful as the iPhone of 2026 you can pull up an AI app and tell it to create three custom episodes for the evening's entertainment.
Say you want three X-Files episodes. You want them to be with the third season look and feel. You want a two-part episode and one mythology episode. You'd like a couple of jokes, a snide remark, and Gillian Anderson to be prime Scully with a love scene. Maybe a brand new late-night genuine Columbo mystery while going to bed.
The AI has it done in a few minutes and is ready by the time the popcorn is finished.
The next night you want three episodes from the Star Trek universe advancing the storyline past the Deep Space Nine timeline. You want a new Enterprise from the next century. You want it to go into the fourth season of a series you had going last year.
AI could be a very good thing. It could also be a very bad thing. I mean what happens when an industry like the Hollywood factory is suddenly irrelevant? Not just the actors but the writers, the directors, the editors. All the way to the guy that sweeps up the floors. Gone.
The music industry is gone.
YouTube itself could be a platform for this very thing.
The Intellectual Property industry would explode.
The sports industry could be iffy though. If you could have a custom league made and compete with other people in the AI league. Other people like me and you. We all get together and have a baseball/basketball/football/hockey/NASCAR team franchise each with agreed-upon parameters and watch live as other teams in our custom AI league compete on a nightly basis. Maybe you have an MMA league and the amount of exercise you do during the day is directly related to the evening's results.
All are available to the power of AI.
The downside?
A lot of people are out of work. A lot of people will need a way to make a living.
Right now AI can do a pizza commercial now that's funny but close to the feel of a commercial. A real pizza commercial from the 1980s. With the rate it is advancing now, I think the three to five-year range is believable.
What then? What will society look like? This technology is going to be the best and worst thing to happen.
I don't go telling everyone about when it is, in fact mostly I hide it. I'm just evaluating where I was a year ago and what progress, if any, I've come to.
1. I was a student last year at this time, struggling through my final course. The capstone. The hardest assignment I've ever had and wanted to drop out of college about midway through. Even had the email typed out. But I contacted the professor and he really told me I was on the right track and was further along than I thought I was. Passed with an A but I was hating life.
2. A job interview is hard to come by. I apply for jobs almost daily. I can't even fall into an interview right now. Well then there now, let me rephrase, I can get a job if I move. I don't want to move. So...
3. I'm a really good gig driver. With my retirement, my bills are paid. With gig money, I can live better. I listen to audiobooks. I don't know if I've covered this in a previous post or not, I'm not reviewing to find out. Right now my favorite is Expeditionary Force and Wandering Inn is tied for the top spot. Sadly the Expeditionary Force series has come to an end. I'm listening to Book 15 now, just started this morning. The next Wandering Inn book will be out later this month and I've got it preordered.
4. While I live well, there's little margin for error right now. As long as I do what I'm doing, I'm good. I'm definitely happier.
5. The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman. If I haven't posted it before or written about it, then go look it up. It's brilliant and I wrote about it in an assignment before. The gist is that I've achieved what I want to have a happy life. I've got a good balance going on right now. It'll also get easier over time and eventually I will get a good break and a new job will pop up. But for now, I'm good.
What's next? I don't know. I'm just being still for now.
2023 is about an hour and half away and 2022 has been really weird. Post pandemic Earth is weird. I'm trying to figure out things on my own. I am drifting right now. I do gig driving to make hobby money and all to supplement my pension income. I don't have much happening and that's the feeling I never wanted.
Really since graduating this past spring I've kind of been living in a holding pattern. I've got nothing to really work towards and therefore no purpose to work within or goals to work towards. I've been applying for jobs within my degrees and can barely rate an interview. Which is odd, I've got one heck of a work ethic. I always come to work, I always do my job. That used to mean something.
Regardless I've started towards a direction. It's not a purpose yet, in fact it might not be more than a hobby but it'll be fulfilling while I job hunt and gig drive. I'm not hurting, all my bills are paid, and I'm well fed. I may not make a lot of headway in paying bills off faster but for now I'm comfy.
So here's what I'm going to do to break out of this holding pattern. I'm going to have themed dioramas made in 3D stl files. Then I'm going to obviously print them and then utilize a skill set I've built up since 1986 when I first went to school to study autobody repair and I picked up my first paint gun.
I'm going to paint these custom dioramas. Also I'm going to film them on a time lapse and start my own youtube channel with that content. Basically it's going to scratch some creative itches and will be unique enough to capture a really small, micro niche. I've got to find my purpose again. I might as well utilize my skills while I'm trying to find someone to pay me for utilizing my skills.
I wrote an email to Chianti last night. It really summed up what I was feeling about today as right now, one year ago I was cleaning out my locker and preparing to leave where I had worked since 1992. This really seemed to say everything I wanted it to say.
I realize you won’t read this until tomorrow but it’s 1 year. One weird, wonderful, terrifying and scary, but much needed year of change and growth.
I feel I’ve come to terms with a lot, went and tied up a lot of loose ends. Still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up other than content. Maybe that’s one of the hardest things to learn and articulate. Friday night at the blue note one of my former coworkers came and had beer with me.
I was telling him about actually being happy and at peace. He was telling me about how much more money he needed and content wasn’t enough for him. He’s about ten years older than me and has had a lot of health problems. He is the one that over bought a house after his wife divorced him for cheating. But he’s a good guy, just has different wants in life. Trying to tell someone that life isn’t all about money and material possessions to someone that judges himself to others by how nice his stuff is compared to others is just a weird conversation.
For example after I showed him how to make a budget, I told him the house was more than he could afford. A house payment was one of his paychecks when he bought it. But he continued to want a new truck because the other guys in the shop had one. So he wanted one too.
So he tortured himself with new car ads. He literally bought a $5k TV because it was the best he could get and then wasn’t able to watch anything on it because he couldn’t afford cable for a year.
Me telling him about contentment in life wasn’t based on finances was like explaining Astrophysics to a chipmunk. Not that I understand astrophysics but I do understand happiness now, at least my version of it. He still has over 3 years left before he can get social security at 67 and get his pension.
My new goal is really simple. Pay off everything (which is nearly always my goal it seems) and be capable of living on my pension alone. Well and continue to write this novel I’m working on and hire it to be narrated by a really good professional narrator. I think it’ll be interesting and I can possibly finish it by spring! I flesh out more of the characters every day whether I feel like it or not. I get a lot of gold nuggets out of just writing character situations and add depth to them.
I know, I’m rambling. I’m sorry. Tomorrow, the 12th, is going to be an emotional day. I know you and I reflect a lot on our lives. We’ve talked about it a lot. I think what this year has shown me is stop being a spectator of your life like I was for 30 years, and participate in it. That probably doesn’t make sense. Didn’t make sense as I wrote it. Seems apt though.
I find coincidences in life fascinating! Check out this small series I have had today and tomorrow:
I did my 1,000th Spark Delivery today and have a 5.0 customer rating!
My car hit 29,000 miles EXACTLY when I was a couple of blocks away from getting the oil changed so the tag reads 34,000 EXACTLY.
Tomorrow I will have been retired for 1 year.
Had lunch with TeeHee today, always a great pleasure!
So it's not much really but it's just weird little things at one time, enough so I bought a lottery ticket, which to be honest I'd have bought anyway.
1 year though, that's crazy to think back on one full year of doing what I want basically. I may or may not have more thoughts about that tomorrow, we'll see.
For years while I was working my full time job, I'd find a hobby, diversion, something to dive headlong into. Guns, binge watching DVD TV series (before binge watching was a thing) scotch, films, MMORPGs, cigars, the theatre, anything really to distract me from the reality of the soul grinding job I had. After a while, sometimes years, I'd move onto something else.
Read the blog, you'll see this pattern.
Now I don't have that need. I bought some hobby things but I don't feel the need to escape into them anymore. I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing but it is something I'm very aware of. I mean I was constantly doing stuff to keep me from being unhappy with reality. I know I've written about this lots, I'm not going to go through all of these posts but I'm sure of it.
Even college was a huge distraction. Thankfully things turned into a great unexpected blessing! Then I had no idea the union would pull this stunt with the pension. No one did. But it happened and I was not only able to take advantage of it but I had also set myself up for a new set of skills (along with two degrees) to provide myself a nice income should I ever decide to take advantage of it. I mean I planned on retiring early with degrees BUT the difference was the union moved up my time table by years. I wanted a degree and then dabble in transitioning to a new income and then retire on my terms.
Life happens so adapt, be adaptable, improvise, overcome. (Gunny Highway reference)
I'm still driving Spark but honestly I think the easier days will be coming to a close sooner rather than later. Biden drove the gas pries sky high as he sets about destroying this country. So a recession is coming quickly while everything is more expensive and there are less orders coming in each day. The ones that do aren't tipping much, if at all. I might have to utilize my new skills to supplement my supplemental income to my retirement income, lol!
I'm not worried, all will be fine.
Just a couple of short hours ago I got my grade back on my final capstone project. A! I have earned a master's degree from SNHU! This journey has been so difficult and long! I've gone through all the details as they all happened so I'm not going to rehash but just want to say how honored I am, how grateful I am, and how humbled I am now.
2015 was a long time ago and now on May 24th, 2022 my last step was completed. What a ride this has been and what a future I have now. Future Grandkids, let me tell you something, if someone like me can do something like this at my age, then you can do something amazing too.
This has been something amazing!
I just wrapped up my discussion posts which was the dot on the "I" and the crossed "T" which means I'm only waiting on grades now. My academic career has come to a conclusion with no more work for me to do in any course, at any school, for any reason.
Now I've got freedom. The freedom I never thought I'd have this side of 67!!!
What's next? I don't know yet but when I do, I'll be here to tell you.
With this free time it might be time to blog on a regular basis! Might write another novel. Might not do anything.
This journey started in 2015. I've talked about it a lot. After retiring in October I've gone through a lot of changes.
Last night I turned in my final for my master's degree. What started with insomnia turned into planning for a future, which turned into a choice I had to make, which turned into freedom.
I've talked about all of that but now, now I've got 7 days remaining in school, technically. I'm waiting on my grades now and waiting on peer reviews of my work and work that I can review this week.
Officially, for the first time since I was barely a teen, I won't have any professional or academic responsibilities. That's a big deal. I've never had that....freedom. While most of my fellow students will be searching for a career next week, I'll start where they want to be. Retired and free.
There is a real chance I won't pass. I don't feel good about my final but it is what it is. My professor says I'm doing good but I don't feel that way.
So, what does the next few weeks hold?
We'll see! It's exciting, freeing, and an amazing time!
Orkut was a Google product that gained in popularity mainly in Brazil where "with 90% of page views in Orkut accessed by users in Brazil (Feigenbaum, 2014)." Orkut appeared to be famous because it encouraged ranking your friends on different levels of sexy, cool, or trustworthy you found them to be.
The article states that, "In order for brands to be successful in Brazil, they must allow users to blog, engage through social gaming, and incorporate online video into marketing campaigns (Translate Media, 2015). Brazilians are especially responsive to brand strategies that include online video, something that was difficult through Orkut." While I don't believe this strategy is exclusive to Brazil, catch all applications are popular around the world. We just did the one about Weixin, the Chinese spyware app which was a catchall app.
The case study is about how a multitool platform worked in Brazil and "Early users were eager to try Orkut because of Google's strong reputation. Orkut also carried a high prestige factor due to its invite-only membership list." By creating an element of exclusivity, Google helped create buzz around their platform. However as with most Google products, privacy was a concern. "In Orkut, the user privacy concerns were neglected and stagnant. The platform allowed anyone to view anyone’s profile and his contact information (if it was added by the user), unless the person was on a person’s ignore list(Singh & Shreya Singh, 2020)."
While privacy wasn't the only issue plaguing Orkut, Google continually redesigned several features leaving users confused about what worked and what didn't work. Performance issues with slow loading pages were a constant hinderance as well that contributed to the failure.
Multitool platforms are great, when you can do more in one place in a convenient way, that's the dream. That's why old fashioned department stores went away in favor of large scale WalMart style stores where you can do a lot of things in one place. When you can combine video, audio, chat features, and make it easy to find your friends then you have a good idea going.
Feigenbaum, G. (2014) Brazil to Google: please don't close our beloved Orkut. Available at http://www.vocativ.com/tech/internet/brazil-google-please-dont-close-beloved-orkut/ (accessed February 22, 2022).
Singh, S., & Shreya SinghBio-Statistician by day writer by night. If i am not writing then find me singing tonight. (2020, June 9). 7 reasons why orkut failed. Feedough. Retrieved February 22, 2022, from https://www.feedough.com/why-did-orkut-fail/
Ok, when you get older you can get grumpier. It's a fact of life. Yes I would resist the urge to yell at kids to get off my lawn if I lived in a neighborhood where that was a thing.
You are young, you can operate faster than the world does and nothing is a big deal.
Then you get a bit older, you realize you don't know as much as you think and you start to accept some limitations.
A bit older still and you just want a good night's sleep.
Then one day you realize the world is moving one mph faster than you can and that's when you start to realize you're getting old and things are passing you by now.
That's where I find myself with Weixin. It's a nightmare of an app used in China that combines the functions of several social media platforms. I can't find anything good about it.
"For those of you who don’t know, WeChat is the most popular messaging app in China with well over 600 million users. It’s an alternative to services like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, a lot of which are actually blocked in the country. The Chinese government is doing everything it can to get rid of foreign services in an effort to control online activities and get access to as much sensitive data from local companies as possible."
I think that says enough about Weixin and why it's evil.
WeChat accused of sharing users' personal data with Chinese authorities [update: WhatsApp now blocked in China]. Android Authority. (2017, September 28). Retrieved February 9, 2022, from https://www.androidauthority.com/wechat-sharing-personal-data-chinese-authorities-802548/
You still have thought patterns that you have to get over. Priorities that were engrained over three decades can be purged now because they no longer have any bearing over your life. Also retirement income goes quicker than you think it does so for you young readers, kick into your 401k at a higher amount.
You'll be grateful you did later! You're doing your future self a massive favor by giving them the resources they need to enjoy the life you want them to.
Priorities change and that's what you start to understand. Everything that your professional life was structured around has changed, I mean academically you realize retirement brings change but you don't realize what that means until you experience it.
A weekend is fine, two days off but you know that you are going back in to the same job.
A vacation is the same, just extended a few more days.
Leaving the job is vastly different because there is a defined ending and after that is the wide open promise of opportunity.
So kiddos, if you get a matching 401k as a job benefit, kick in as much as they match. That's going to benefit you so much later on! You'll thank yourself so much and curse yourself so much if you don't.
