A post

Having a real job complicates what I can put on the internet and it is sort of annoying. I like being able to just write what's on my mind. [Insert joke about the NSA].  Life is going surprisingly well, but I still feel kind of anxious about a few things.

I have more or less settled into Kansas City. I have a routine of work, gym, rinse, side-projects, sleep, rinse, repeat. I still haven't managed to finish anything though. A lot of the side-project time gets used doing... you know... not side-projects. I got my diploma in the mail:

I'm not going to lie, that's a pretty good feeling. I'll probably order a frame in the next week or so. Although, I really don't like the idea of it staring at me while I work; maybe I'll hang it in my bedroom. It is pretty though. I have a list of shit I need to do on my whiteboard on my wall, but I literally do what I just did while writing this in my day-to-day, all the time. What I mean to say is: I get side tracked very easily.

I've been having some very annoying dreams lately. There are people I would like the respect of in my dreams taunting me. I think it's because I don't feel like I am living up to my own expectations. I feel like I am disappointing people around me. I had hoped to go to The Pitchfork Music Festival with Devon in Chicago. Unfortunately because I sort of decided on (maybe) doing it so late I'm not going to be able to. It would run me about a grand and I just don't feel like spending that kind of money on a 3 day weekend. However, I did get tickets for the end of the July to the see The Postal Service at a venue that I can walk to from my place. I'm incredibly happy about that; they are definitely on my list of  bands to see before I die.

I have the opportunity to go see John Mayer this Wednesday but, I think I'm going to pass on it. I do want to go but, I know the set list will be 90% Born and Raised (it is the Born and Raised tour, haha). I just don't really like the album. On the other hand, he recently released the single Paper Doll. It's not old John, but it is MUCH better than Born and Raised in my opinion. I have been on a crazy indie-hipster music kick the past six months and I have an incredible playlist to show for it. I'm going to start another for the second half of the year.

I've made some friends at work and even went out to the bar this last weekend with them. I like them, they're pretty fun. They joked that they're the Garmin singles club because so many of our co-workers are married. A new guy just started and it seems like him and I are going to get along, we have not knowing anyone in common and that seems to be a pretty good glue. I'm tired and I think my weird tone in my writing reflects that.

I got some furniture delivered today. I now have a couch, coffee table, and ottoman/trunk type thing:

The ottoman/trunk type thing opens up if that wasn't obvious from me calling it a trunk. I need to buy a rug to actually bring my living room "together". I'm really happy with my place, but... In a very willie-esque fashion I hear John Mayer in my head a lot when I buy stuff for my place: "I rent a room and fill the spaces with wood in places to make it feel like home." I'm not sure how to feel about it, I suppose I'll get used to it slowly. I'm slightly further from Oklahoma and my siblings than I thought. Definitely closer than I was but still further than I thought. I'm considering spending some of the money I would have spent to go to Chicago to buy Season tickets to the Sooners home games so I can go with my brother. They're pretty expensive though and that's me committing to a five hour drive down there for six weekends this Fall. I suppose I could sell the tickets online if I couldn't make a game. I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

I suppose that's enough of a brain dump for now. (That's a real thing, there's a Wikipedia page.)

Fold a scarf, Moroccan red, And tie your hair behind your head

Strap into some heels that hurt, You should’ve kept my undershirt

You’re like twenty-two girls in one, And none of them know what they’re runnin’ from

Was it just too far to fall? For a little paper doll

Started From The Bottom

Now we're here.

Heard that song for the first time today, repetitive, but I'm a Drake fan. Points for them smoking hookah randomly through out the music video too haha.

Basically as soon as I thought I was going to have time to read books and post on here and do side projects... everything I had to do came down in a rush and lasted 3 months.

I ended up being contracted to build two websites through out the semester. One of them is mostly done, but I have a few things to update on it. I guess it's really a short to-do list of things I want to do for it that I don't necessarily have to, but it reflects on me, you know? It's BridgeIQ+. The other isn't complete. I've gone through a few iterations of the design, but the application the website is marketing for hasn't been completed so I haven't been able to do anything too concrete, it does look really good though.

I finished with decent grades. They kind of reflected my post at the beginning of the semester, the part where I was describing the classes.

I don't really feel like writing so this might come out as one of those broken flow / archiving life event / museum cold posts.

I did so much this semester. I was so busy; coding basically non-stop.  And the funny thing is, I enjoyed it so much. You would think the lack of social time would have been really annoying but... it wasn't. My friends thought I was a ghost sometimes still, but I managed to balance being social and all my work alright, it turned out great actually.

I am still working with those Biomedical engineers on our startup. We won $5000 dollars from a venture fund competition at UT for the idea, and we're in the middle of another one that is Knoxville wide. If we win that one it's another $10000, it ends June 20th.

I really wanted to stay in Knoxville and take the job that was offered to me here, which was the part time job I had my last two semesters. It was a pretty huge pay cut from Garmin, not really in terms of money, but in terms of no benefits being offered. My idea was I would take that job and work 40 hours a week for pretty decent pay and spend all my free time working on our startup. If it takes off obviously it could be worth a lot of money.

I like the idea, it solves a real problem and that makes me happy... but it is kind of boring to code for something that isn't technically challenging.

My mom of course hated the idea of me not going to Garmin and was very upset with me. She had my family working against me on this. I ended up getting wind of one more possibility, a doctor friend of the doctor we did (are doing..) our senior design project with, looking for someone to make an iPad app for his clinic. It could have been huge but I think he kind of flaked out. If that had come through I would have definitely stayed. I decided to go to Garmin.

I am moving to Kansas City in less than 10 days. I had found an awesome two bedroom two bath condo right on the river in the area I want to live, but right before I could complete all the paper work I got an email from the owners saying they found someone who wanted to buy it and they decided to take the offer. :(

That's ok though, because in the week that passed with that happening, one of the original condos I found when looking opened up, so I swooped on it. It's a 1 bedroom 1 bath in the Library District of Kansas City. It's pretty awesome, I put some photos in this Dropbox folder: Condo Pictures.

Everything is exactly how it looks in the place, except that the bedroom is actually 14x10, which is about the size of my bedroom right now, which is awesome. It isn't furnished, but I'll be decorating how I like, minimal, modern.

I've come to realize I have an insane appreciation for design. I started looking for furniture and 4 hours later realized that I was using intricate queries and looking up the correct words to describe different pieces of furniture. I eventually decided that I have to learn how to design furniture. Add it to my list.

I want to be able to...

I stopped writing for a minute and came back to "I want to be able to". I don't know what I was going to say, could have been anything.

I started writing a To-Do list app in my free time, it looks really great, I hope to have it in the app store by the end of June. Speaking of which, there is a hackathon in Kansas City the weekend after I start my Job at Garmin and I'm really excited for it. I want to network and I think it will be an awesome chance. The condo's I'm going to live in are right next door to the Kansas City Club, which is basically a country club, I'm going to join. They have awesome gym facilities, a pool, and a hot tub and they are literally right next store. The networking opportunities there will be pretty awesome as well. I'm excited for that.

I think this summer I'm going to spend part of my time studying for the GRE. Then starting Fall of 2014 I'll pursue my masters in CS at the University of Missouri Kansas City, unless something else comes up; Garmin pays for it so I might as well take advantage of that. I might start taking Japanese classes even sooner at a local community college or somewhere. I really want to start learning it well. Also, piano, I'm still just ok. Definitely going to pay for lessons after I settle.

I have 309 Quora notifications right now, a new personal record. I'll probably spend a couple hours sometime soon clearing them out and absorbing all the information. Sometimes Quora can be exhausting because it is so much information at once, but I still love it. I never applied there, I don't know why not, I guess I just didn't have time. I might still, in a while.

I've grown so much in the last 6 years. I really can't believe it. 6 years is a really long time though, I'm just sort of now realizing it. Life is extremely fleeting. I feel like watching 5 centimeters per second now.

It's 1 am and I have to be up for work. I'll be back sometime soon. I want to start writing about technical things, but I think I should probably start another blog for that. This one might fall by the wayside (that idiom comes from the bible) if that happens, but I can't be sure, I like introspection too much. 

Would you love me twice

Also, this song feels so good. 

Jhameel – Love Me Twice

Reading List for February

Like I said I'm going to start reading a lot again. I've already finished one book in February so we're off to a good start. I have a list of 41 books I want to finish this year (doesn't seem too unreasonable at all and hopefully I'll knock them all out). I've decided to further break this list down into 5 books I want to read every month. I'm not counting the book I've already read this month so hopefully this month I'll finish six. These are in the order I want to read them:

• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (656pp)
• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (928pp)
• While Mortals Sleep by Kurt Vonnegut (272pp)
• Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace (343pp)
• American Gods by Neil Gaiman (480pp)
• The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman (230pp)

Only 2679 2023 1751 pages to go.
The Visible Man was a book I read halfway through once but I restarted from the beginning and knocked it out in two days. It will be the same with 1Q84. I have read almost the entire book but I will be restarting from the beginning because I didn't finish and that was so long ago.

I have a really awesome mix of non-fiction and fiction this month and I'm looking forward to reading all of it. I'm so excited about this I'm going to have a hard time waiting until March to make the list for that month (motivation to finish early). 

Interesting aside, the reason "pp" is used as the acronym for "pages" is because in some languages double letters are used for acronyms that are plural. Like "EE. UU." for Estados Unidos (United States) in Spanish. Here it's Latin, the plural for page being paginae. 

Update: 2/23/2013
So I've finished Steve Jobs and While Mortals Sleep and I've started Consider the Lobster. However, I've been side tracked by a new addition to the list.  

• Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki (138pp) 

I'll probably finish that this afternoon and then continue reading Consider the Lobster. Hopefully I can finish both books at the latest by the end of the weekend.  Unfortunately that would only leave me 5 days to read 1408 pages or like 280 pages a day. Not sure I can swing that. But, I will have finished 5 books in February once I finish the two I'm reading, so we'll just have some roll over books into March. Maybe I'll write up short reviews about what I thought of each book at the end of the month.

State of the Willie

I know you feel neglected but, I've actually written a couple times and not posted. I guess that's just teasing though.

I am doing ok. The semester is off to a smooth start. I've been doing yoga regularly. Nick Jones moved into Colors so I have a consistent companion, which is really nice.

I realize I'm a lonely guy. Maybe that's the wrong way to describe it.
I just struggle a lot internally between my lone wolf mentality and my extroverted personality. Separating my mentality and personality is actually a good way to describe the disconnect I was feeling a post or two ago. I know it doesn't completely make sense but, neither does the feeling.

I like the idea of formatting my writing so that when I digress I can return to the starting train of thought a little more easily.

I'm currently taking Senior Design, Mobile Applications Development, Systems Programming, Linear Algebra, and an online course to prepare me for the FE exam, which is the state exams to be a licensed engineer. I feel like talking about school because I'm doing some interesting stuff and because it's been my number one distraction lately.

Why do I always need a distraction? What am I being distracted from?

I have a serious love/hate relationship with my Senior Design course. The teacher is annoying and assigns annoying assignments, e.g, watch this 11 minute video and here are 100 questions about it, but the questions are really stupid. "What did he mean when he said, per se?" and "Who is this person of no relevance?" and "What does vernacular mean?". It's annoying. I admit I've learned a lot, but it's all random useless information. I will continue to grow as an excellent conversationalist I suppose. Or I'll just sound like a douche bag.
The reason I love the class though, really makes up for it. I'm working with 3 other students and we're building a medical records system for teams of doctors to take with them to Ecuador so they can streamline their process when seeing patients, from triage to discharge. We're designing an awesome system that uses their iPads on a LAN (because they have power but not internet). I'll probably post some pictures of the final product in May.

In my Mobile Application Development course, I'm working in a team of 3 to build an iPad application for some Biomedical Engineering students. They have an idea that is pretty cool, but I can't tell you about it because I had to sign an NDA. I'm excited to be working on that too.

My other classes are pretty simple, learning a lot, of course. I hate the online course, because it's a bunch of physics I'm not familiar with (which means it's a lot of work) and I'm not even taking the exam. I have no desire to be any sort of engineer in Tennessee that requires licensing.

Because of all of the work with iPads I went ahead and bought one so I could develop on it instead of using the simulator. My mac has a hard enough time without trying to run that. I think I'm going to sell my PC after I back up everything that's on it right now. Maybe I'll sell my MBP and put that and the PC money toward a new MBP. I can dream haha.

I've been listening to Ludovico Einaudi, this Italian pianist, and I'm really in love with his music. You should check out his album I Giorni, it's hard to choose a favorite song but, Andare is definitely in the top somewhere.I hope I can play piano like this one day. I'm getting a little better but it's a slow process. I have a feeling that when I get to a place where I can pay a teacher for lessons, they're going to want me to forget everything I've done haha.

I got a new pair of glasses. I haven't put a picture anywhere yet because one hasn't been taken. It will probably happen sooner rather than later. They're nice, I like them. They are a change of pace from my last pair and feel slightly more adult like, whatever that means. They're kind of ironic, too. haha.

I was contracted by this guy to build him a website for a product he's trying to sell, so I have that in the works too and I'm getting paid a pretty decent amount so that's awesome. I'm also working on www.williamflaherty.com but I haven't really gotten anywhere, been busy programming for more important things. Oh, and watching The League. I just finished the third season and I really like it. It's kind of boring sometimes, but I think it's more my mood projecting onto the show. It has a lot of really funny moments. Although, as with everything in media sometimes they're a little annoyingly misogynistic or homophobic with their jokes. It's pretty clean most of the time though. 

I've been spending a lot of time on Quora, probably even more than I used to. My friends have taken to teasing me about it, but, I don't really have a reason to keep my phone on me anymore, so I leave it around a lot and that helps curb my addiction to reading Quora obsessively. I really need to finish up their puzzle and submit it, just another thing that's taken a seat on the back burner for now. Maybe I'll do that this weekend.

I can't sleep like normal Willie anymore. I sleep very lightly and I dream a lot. I was having this dream the other night and I woke up to me literally slapping myself in the face. Because I was doing it in the dream and this emotion transferred over. That's pretty powerful, and ridiculous. I haven't been eating before bed time or anything like that, and I've been getting to bed relatively early, ~10 usually.

Alright, I have to run to class, I've officially done a pretty exhaustive update for the start of 2013. Three more months and I'll have a Bachelors degree. Four more months and I'll be in Kansas City (probably).

Oh, I've decided that from now on I'll be finishing a book a week. I have a very long list and I'm looking forward to a voracious consumption of my very first love.


I miss you.