As L & D Ends....

I am very excited to finish this L and D phase. We all worked hard to get to this point and an internship is right around the corner. I want to share all of my tech skills during this phase for the soul purpose of hunting for feedback. I want to be the best I.T. specialist I can be and I have a lot to learn to get there. I see this internship as a major step up to this goal. I want to work in a casual office environment. I noticed that formal environments usually have no room for innovation from the population. They tend to leave the inventing and creationism to a select few. I want to be able to collaborate with my co-workers and managers. I want to really feel like my contribution to the company matters. I feel expendable in a formal work environment because these types of offices enforce that thought into their workforce.
I am scared of working in a formal work environment. I can be respectful and well-mannered but I am very uncomfortable feeling like a replaceable piece of the corporate machine. I want my individuality to shine and grow to be recognized as an asset to a company. My style, intelligence and sense of humor got me through the door in Year Up, Inc. and my persistence got me my seat. I want to be free to do the same thing in my internship. I want to stand out by being comfortable with being myself at work.

After this internship I plan to hunt for work. All I want is a job.

My Geeky Winter Break

Over the winter break I have gotten plenty of rest. It felt very nice to catch up on rest that I have lost over time. I feel like a brand new man and I am full of energy. In a previous blog I wrote about how I would take advantage of my downtime for what it was. I definitely feel positive results from this. Apart from sleeping until my heart is content, I caught up on my favorite T.V. shows, did homework, clean installed windows on my sister’s computer and did a lot of web surfing. When my sister was away from home at work, I did a ton of machine maintenance and installed anti-virus. I discovered that there are viruses that install themselves into your web browser and I had to remove one shortly after the clean install. The virus came from a download that was installed in the machine. From this I learned that when you install something from the web, even if you run a customized install, you never actually know what you are allowing into your machine. After removing the malware virus, I discovered www.codeschool.com. I noticed before I went on my break that the LCC students at my school were using this web application to learn web scripting languages. The website offered free easy to understand courses where I get to practice my scripts and see what the results are from my writing. I haven’t finished any of the courses yet but I definitely will be using this website during most of my downtime from now on until I finish all of them. I am excited to get back to school and finish my third module. There isn’t much time left in Year Up’s learning and development phase. While this course has been one of the most challenging I have taken yet, it seems to me that it went by very quickly. I think I am having fun with this.

Hope

I lay in my bed dreaming of ruby on rails codes when the light turned on and my sleep was disturbed. It was New Year’s Eve and the sun was rising. My breath smelled horrible as it does when I first wake up, and the urge to grab some coffee overcomes me. Staring at the window, drinking my coffee, it dawns on me, I am still unemployed. Since my informal emancipation from my parents at the age of 16, I have had a few jobs but lately I haven’t been working. I am broke, beyond the economic jargon, and it is through this experience that I realize that in this life, it’s never what you know and always who you know. Whether or not that statement is a fact really does not matter to me. This is my personal experience and observation. Even today I am challenging this idea. I am told from family, friends, mentors and public figures, “Get a good education, work hard and you will get a good job”. Since this is one thing I have yet to achieve I decided to study computer sciences. Not only because this is a subject have I had a passion for but also because it is challenging and evolving. It takes a very smart individual to get a certificate in this subject. I want to prove to myself whether or not education trumps network. I am extremely frustrated with the infinite job hunt and getting shot down repeatedly. If there are people out there truly willing to help people like me I want to meet them.

Steam Punks

The steam punk aesthetic and culture has drawn my attention over the past few months. This is a culture inspired by science fiction writers and the timey Victorian era. Authors like H.G. Wells and K.W. Jeter have inspired the use of most technologies we have today in their own times. It is through the scenarios in their books the steam punk culture is born. The clothes, the technology, the music, and the fantasy mindset of re-writing the history of technology from a Neo-Victorian perspective are amazing to me. The style challenges individuals of this culture to manufacture technologies that are timeless and fashionable. A perfect blend of effort and delusion cultivates the mad scientist mentality of the steam punk culture. By rein visioning the past and including today’s technology into it, you can create the wares and wonders of a steam punk. Reinvention from the root of a product allows us not only to grovel over how awesome something appears, when it has an old-timey style, but also allows us to make improvements of our technology by editing the chronology of its existence. Inventing through a hypothetical time machine is what I will call it. My favorite invention of the steam punk culture is the analog desktop computer. As I look at this device I wonder what could have been and how far we can advance our technology if we put more focus on the impossible now. The Steam Punk fantasy world, that its creations inspire, pushes every person of this culture toward a magnificent tomorrow. I know that nothing is impossible thanks to the laws of physics, the science of experimentation and the steam punk culture.

Internship Readiness

There are many qualities to an internship ready student. The most important of these to me are dependability, consistency, obedience and open mindedness. The internship phase for a Year Up student comes with two objectives. The first is obtaining work experience and learning as much about an I.T. career as possible. The second is remaining professional to prove yourself as a worthy candidate and asset to a company. I believe that by combining all my effort into training these four qualities, I can make a great impression on the company I intern with and create opportunities for new Year Up students.
I plan to demonstrate my internship readiness by improving my dependability, keeping my opinion to myself, enhancing communication skills and remaining consistent. In order to improve my dependability, I will be establishing residence with family members, turn assignments in by the deadline and researching resources. I will review my time management daily to help counter unpredicted events that might hinder me from my responsibilities.
My attitude has a major effect on my performance and my work environment. For module 3 I plan to improve my attitude through taking advantage of my downtime. I am a person that chooses to stay busy and even though this can be a plus professionally, the long term effect can become negative. I, like most people, burn out through constant work and without using a break for what it is I can become crabby and openly express a negative attitude. This is why I must relax when I am supposed to.

Deep Rootz Tea House

My first and favorite job to date was working as a team member in a tea house. I got my job when the owner noticed that I was the only kid in my age group going there and she noticed I was doing homework every time I went. I would speak to the owner about how school was and herbalism.I was 15 when I got the job and I stuck with it a whole year. The business was sold a week before I finished working there. I loved my job because I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted in the tea house. This meant that I can hold any position at any moment and there was no reason for me not to be busy. When I felt social I would prepare and serve tea with food, cashier, and recite poetry for the customers. When I was feeling down I would occupy my time with duties that didn't require social interaction like cleaning the tea house property inside and out. It was a job that welcomed my personality and was a home away from home. I can't think of a single job out there that is 100% stress free other than this one. The only thing I didn't like about this job was losing it. When I found out that the business was sold I was highly upset for two reasons, the tea house lost all of their customers due to new policies from the new owner and I was robbed of my sanctuary. I am still friends with the owner and we still have our tea and art. I learned from working in this tea house that some work environments value their employees as much as their customers. Work doesn't have to be a dread if you like what you are doing as work. Working in the tea house has given me the drive to move forward to pursue my passion. The wisest thing I have ever heard in my life came from that tea house "work in something you enjoy and you will never work a day in your life".

Diegoccupy

Diego Rivera's "Frozen Assets" mural has a few parallel statements to that of today’s Occupy movement. Rivera made this mural around 1931 when the United States was experiencing an economic decline. He depicted a massive growth at the expense of a majority of the population. Each part of his mural represented an inequity caused by the wealthy and, to add to the mood of his artistic expression, included a glum color theme.

The Occupy movement was initiated on September 17th, 2011. For a few years our country has experienced an economic decline. While our country's economy has been in crisis, there has been massive growth at the expense of the majority population. For example, gentrification forcing many low income communities out of their neighborhoods due to a sudden rise in rent and or local tax. While landlords make more money on properties, most of the population is no longer housed and less people live in these neighborhoods. Much like Rivera's mural, the issue has been addressed. People from all backgrounds, countries, colors, and creeds flooded Wall Street in protest of this economic equality.

In Rivera's painting there is a warehouse filled with poverty stricken people sleeping in the heart of the area where they once worked. Today many protesters in the occupy movement, even though they aren't housed, are sleeping at the heart of where they once worked. Rivera painted below the poor people in his mural a highly secured bank with only a handful of people waiting to either collect or deposit. Today our Occupy movement reminds us how only a handful of people in our communities hoard money despite the fact that they have enough for a few lifetimes.

The statements made by Rivera's mural and the Occupy movement are often mistaken for opinion. While the way their statements are delivered may be an opinion, I believe there are facts and truth behind their meaning. In times of economic crisis money, work, and welfare are subjects that aren't taken lightly. This makes communicating the issues surrounding these topics difficult. I do not know how long we will be stuck in this situation as a nation but I believe as long as people like Rivera and the Occupy protesters continue making their statements on the problem at hand, some action will take place. Inequality is a civil issue no matter what type it is. Instead of arguing about it, let's do something peaceful and productive about it. Like Rivera and the Occupy movement.