Sep
28

First Day At Work

So the journey started on Saturday morning. I started the journey a little later than I wanted to but still early enough to get to the Chicagoland area before five. After an afternoon of getting food and catching up with the family I got tons of sleep. Sunday was a day of rest and getting ready for the week ahead.

If you have never been to Chicago, the city is overwhelmingly huge… but the Chicagoland area now extends from Chicago to Winsconsin and pretty much all the way to Joliet and almost all the way to Rockford. Just look at a map.

I know a lot of the Chicagoland area as if I was a cabbie, however the north side and suburbs beyond are kind of a black hole in my map. Sure I know Glenview because a friend from college used to live there, but we did not hang out there too much, only went there for great family cooked dinners. So besides on main street and a couple of bowling excursions with my northsider friends I used to see it as the exits you pass to get to Six Flags Great America.

I knew an hour drive today was pretty much a given, so I double that to make sure I had plenty of time. Surprisingly I did the trip from where my sister lives to the office with enouth time to spot for an actual sit down breakfast. I had missed family restaurants like the one I got to enjoy this morning.

I am working now for a large corporation, and just like in the past I am not going to tell you were exactly. Lets just say that they are global and have at least 3 letters on their name.

I met my supervisor who was nice enough to take me for a little lunch excursion, you cannot be mad at paid lunch. We discussed a lot of information that I am still digesting, but the coolest is that I can probably just telecommute on Fridays if I chose to. He does not come to the office every day and most of my team is all over the world, so besides one other person in my team most of the interaction will be technology based. I am pretty used to this from my time in the consulting world and love that there is no micromanaging. You know what you have to get done, as long as it is done there are no issues.

I will have to adjust my pace to a big company, which moves a lot slower in some aspects; like I am probably not going to be able to VPN until Wednesday, but already lighnight speed on others; I am already part of a huge number of projects and getting tons of e-mails.

It is a nice to be back in the content management world and the Senior Analyst does have a good ring to it.

Sep
25

Sheep

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
- George S. Patton

A “yes man” annoys the crap out of me. Having hundreds of yes man in a congregation is great for a pastor, having thousands of yes man is great for a radio show talking head, having millions of yes man to a president is what we call a nation. Or do we?

During the early Bush years I was a yes man to the president. I remember having arguments with my now wife, back then just a fellow blogger, about how I believed Bush was doing the right thing. I believed that he had more information than I did, therefore he was making better decisions. That bubble quickly burst into a million little pieces like that Oprah book, when during Bush’s second term I started to see that no matter what information he had, what was being done by his administration was wrong. The war opened my eyes, talking to people that were coming back from over there truly painted a different picture. I had supported going there getting the bad guys and getting out… however, dropping a trillion dollars with the hope that it would turn into cheap oil for us was a massive FAIL. Then I started to realize how much politics is actually about ideology and beliefs, much like religion. My view of Bush was shattered because he worshiped the mighty more than his oath to serve the country. It was clear when legislation had turned into the playground of Bush’s “good old boy” as they started raking in dollars like that movie Casino.

A couple of months back I watched the movie “The Smartest Guys in the Room.” If you can stomach documentaries, it is not half bad, but in the end is pretty disappointing. We let the government deregulate everything so that profits could be made and years later we are looking at the result of the push for free market and capitalism. I became aware of what deregulation meant when I did a little research into credit cards some years ago. I am happy that new regulation on credit cards is finally happening and hope that people see the benefit of some regulation.

Recently the whole town hall meeting format seems to have turned into an spectacle. Believe it or not it makes me happy. People should question legislation and look at the facts. While I believe that some of those people are just there to cause havoc, it is making more people become interested in our legislative process. Knowledge is power, and we should all know what our representatives are doing for us. Hopefully people are reading more about the laws that are being passed and not simply being sheep to some organization trying to be disruptive.

When it comes to ideologies I still believe in personal responsability and success through hard work. Socialism and capitalism are both concepts that require people to believe on them for them to get started, but do either of them really work? Calling our current administration socialist its as naive as still wanting a free market after our economy almost tanked with our flavor of capitalism. What is even more amusing is that the government that free market is so against meddling in their kitchen is who bailed out the corporations that were “too big to fail.” I’ve heard over and over that they should have been allowed to collapse in true capitalist fashion, as well as people blaming our president for the whole bail out when it was not even his policy.

Sep
18

I HAZ XBoX

The wife went ahead and bought me an xbox elite since they went down in price and my BFF has one. Now I join the legions of minions that have adquired one. Before a fanboy goes ahead and tells me that PS3 is better, I would have to agree… but I refuse to buy a blue ray player because I am not looking forward to replacing my DVD collection. I thought I would not become HD sobby, but sure enough, I dislike watching regular channels now and pretty much stay on the HD ones.

GAMERTAG is logtarDOTcom Click bellow to add me.


So in any case, go ahead and add me to your XBox friend list. I have Bioshock, Street Fighter and Prince of Persia so far… BF1943 and CoD WaW are what others are wanting me to play, but I might stay away from FPS action since I tried it and I did get some motion sickness… it might be because I have not played FPSs in a while.

In other gaming news we also picked up the Beatles Rockband for the Wii and enjoyed every second of pretending to be the Fab 4. Great game.

Sep
16

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLD FART!!!

This has been a tough freaking week, having people be a mixture of happy for me and at the same time pissed off that I took a job back in Chicago. One of the people that I will miss the most is XO. I could spend a whole post on him and eventually I will, but today I just direct you to what the community put together for his birthday and KUDOS to Emawkc for getting everyone together to roast the old fart… is that the first step towards carbon dating?

Sep
15

Sh!thole Cowtown

That Tony not only reads this blog, but that he actually links my sometimes opposite views on his tabloid news site has been flattering. He is one of the people that I looked forward to meeting because I wanted to know the person behind the satirical blog, but I wanted to dig deeper. I hope someday he lets me actually interview him, not because people will like him afterward, he never set out to be popular, but because there is probably a lot more about that crazy local personality in the blog sphere that what is portrayed in his writings.

He was nice enough to post a link to our departure post, and his first commenter was nice enough to inspire this post. He called KC a “sh!thole cowtown.”

I have lived in 3 US cities now, and let me tell you that even though Chicago is a great town, KC is really not that far behind. I actually think that KC is ahead in many levels.

When it comes to great food Chicago might have more food choices, but in all reality you pay a lot more for them. For 15 bucks you can have an excellent meal in KC, in Chicago you have to pay over 25 to get the similar quality. There is defiantly more high end places and choices in KC, but with resources like KC lunch spots there are many things that I am sure you still have not tried.

The airport here is AWESOME. It has a very simple design, you can find parking easily. You get in and out in no time, try to do that in O’hare or even Midway, I dare ya.

Traffic. I laugh when people think that there is traffic in KC. They don’t know what a 2 hour work commute looks like. Sure Chicago has the train system and it works great, but try to get anywhere near downtown even at 4 AM and you WILL hit traffic in Chicago.

Accessible Art and Music scene. You can find a lot more art in Chicago and their museums are excellent but they are both super expensive and horrible to get to. You park and you walk forever, here you can make it an afternoon trip and have dinner and see some good art. Add to this that artist here in town are people you can interact with, if you have not done so you are missing out. The music scene here is the same way, you can hear some good music and not have to pay a prohibitive entry price at the door. In Chicago there is a lot of stuff, but when it comes to being able to actually get to meet an artist it cannot touch First Fridays.

Air quality. You have no idea what pollution can do to your body until you have lived it. Be thankful for the great air and plenty of trees that you have around. Concrete jungle might look pretty but air quality truly sucks.

Winter… you guys don’t have winter here… enough said.

Pace of life. It is a lot more relaxed here, it will take Bea and I a bit to go back to big city mode even though she lived in a city about the same size as Chicago (Montreal). People yell a lot more, and more crunched for time, there is a lot more running… the rat race is just something I don’t really look forward to and hope I can keep as slow as it is here.

The thing that hands down is great about this city is its people. There are nice people here, from the waitres that actually has a conversation with you and knows you by name, from the people that still hold doors for you. The a$$wh0l3 ratio is a lot lower here. I am not looking forward to fighting for a parking spot all the time or have people hunk on their horns like they just bought a new la cucaracha ring tone for their rice burner.

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