This email is optional reading, kind of a blog. I wouldn't normally send this, but you're all loved ones, and I'm very concerned about why I'm not in college and not progressing all that much toward computer programming. I'm asking for advice. Many of you don't have much free time right now, which is fine. Don't read this email unless you're in the mood to read a novel. :)
- Royce
This is me wondering, planning, researching, and somewhat stalling, before leaping into a career decision. Again, this is totally optional reading, and doesn't require a response at all unless you're feeling up to it.
If you folks have any input about the following, please feel free to let me know. I've been pondering some career ideas for going on four years, and still not taken any major action.
I'm seeking a Christian "computer programmer" mentor, perhaps in North Fresno, who can show me some possibilities to establishing a career in developing a cultured software program such as GoogleEarth, GoogleMaps, Bible Study software, etc. Something unique, diverse, and useful. Something highly professional and elegant. Nothing specific, just something interactive and multipurpose. I think I might really get into that long-term. I suspect the mentor(s) I find will greatly shape what I end up doing. If I can finally see my goal, it'll feel much more realistic and possible to achieve. That might eventually give me the glorious freedom of being self employed. I dream of a large scale project to be proud of, and to hopefully incorporate Christian ministries right off the bat, or at least eventually. I don't care what platform (Windows, Linux, Playstation3, Phones, Other), nor the programing languages (c++, the new html5, ajax, flash, silverlight, etc). I want a career I can really enjoy and get involved in. I want to know what's out there, but not by the normal channels/routes most folks take. I want to love my career and look forward to it, which is really rare. I'm not going to be the typical office typist, although for many that is ideal. I've considered selling insurance such as Jim Booze does, but am I social enough? Would I be able to keep a smile when I'm feeling depressed and trapped as I often do?
I only have a high school diploma and misc technical/sales training, but I don't think having some major degree is an issue when starting up in programming. I need training and experience, but without a laser-focused long-term goal, training seems painfully long and foggy. Focusing on learning, without a solid goal, doesn't seem like something I would actively pursue. I'm trying to overcome some personal obstacles, too. Mainly memory and mathematics. I thought the Stock Market to be a fascinating career, and ultimately the international stock market, but I think first I need something safer and stable. I don't even like money, so I'm not taking pay into account. As long as I'm alive, I could work for free, that's not something I technically stress about. Those who know me personally know my situation, and know that I'm stingy but not money focused in the least.
The Lord will guide my career, and I want to start to find out what that is. I'll of course continue to be Kirk's "Single Christian Ministries" assistant at the same time, as he's a life-long friend, but I want to have my own house and decisions some day. I want Kirk to be a friend and not always think of him as my employer. I like living in Yosemite Lakes Parkway with Kirk, but I need a place of employment away from the house, such as an office somewhere in Coursegold or North Fresno. Maybe I'll temporary work at a computer repair shop, and I have done that part time in the past. Maybe I'll open one, except I'm too unsocial to do so. I need to get out of the house more to vent some major anxiety, and not just a weekly book club or another Bible Study. Meeting numerous peers my age (25) would be really fun, and a computer shop might provide that. I might teach a technical course at Fresno State, but don't know how to go about that without any teaching degrees. I desire something worth doing the right way, the moral way, and society-changing to some degree. I'm ready to start at the bottom, that's no problem, I've been doing that for years. I want to move on to a more creative and technical line of work. If that takes college, even a Computer Science PhD, that's fine. God provides all we need. I know to be content with what I have, but I feel as though I'm wasting a lot of my resources right now.
I want to know my career in advance, witch isn't the natural course of action, but I'm far more organized and wanting to be prepared/productive than a lot of people. When the Lord shows me the right time to leap into a technical job or volunteering opportunity, I hope I act on it. Historically I think about it endlessly until it's not possible, out of concern that it's not productive enough.
It's off subject, but perhaps working at the Palm Avenue Community Church office would feel right. I don't know, and I don't think they are in the situation to hire on new folks, especially with fairly limited congregation/business experience. NorthSide is too big and complicated, as I've learned in recent years of attending and trying to get involved. They have Hollywood lighting effects and incredible music, but they aren't half as loving and caring to the individual that Palm Ave is. I attend both churches, love them both, but Palm Ave's outreach projects have provided something awesome to look forward to.
I just don't know what steps to take first. I might as well flip a coin, because there are so many choices out there. Is that responsible? I can't even imagine leaving a career to chance, but at the same time, Jesus will lead me where I need to be. I think anxiety is holding me back from exploring all sorts of projects and careers, and maybe that's good in some way, that I've been able to work for Kirk for years and not get in over my head with some overly-technical career I wouldn't fully enjoy. Robotics for example, used to be fascinating to me, but now I feel as though they aren't as creative as the idea of math and programming. Math has no limits.
Fresno State, Fresno Pacific, City College, and others, have great professors and counselors, but I've talked with some of them and I guess I want a nice diverse spectrum of advice before leaping into an insanely long education or training course. Many people don't USE their PhD, and that is a huge fear of mine. I don't want a normal career...and I know it's not entirely up to me, but I'm open to hear advice in a big way.
My father has a great technical/science/audio/A.I. career going at an international microchip company, but I haven't the slightest idea where to even begin getting integrated in all that. The best I could do is sign up for college and just find out where the wind takes me, which doesn't reassure me in the least. I might go crosseyed just thinking about it.
Any ideas off the top of your head? Ideas that don't involve going to career fairs and pretending to be interested in strangers, hopefully. I know I'm worrying too much, so please help me turn that into something useful. I'll consider everything and not be offended. You all have a lot of experience and varying perspectives. You don't need to know anything about tech/computers/math to offer ideas. :)
Thanks for reading all this. :)
God Bless,
Royce Barber
Technical Admin
Single Christian Ministries
H A S
N O
M A I L
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http://www.deviantart.com/view/1127
you can set it as your desktop if you get a program to set swf as desktop.
and if you have not seen LAIN, you are really missing out on the most inspirational anime of all time.
All Reset.
Return.
Open the nExt.
do you see
i wonder if sina will see this entry lol
* Doug’s cookout was good, my tummy feels great, saw Scott for first time in weeks, talked about different places we’ve been, shared photos, and watched some movies. Its always entertaining watching a movie with Scott, he laughs at everything and it just makes the movie more fun.
* I don’t know if I wrote about this yet, I went to the Fresno water park and forgot to bring the key to my steering wheel lock… Doug rescued me, and then we went to an Italian place to laugh at those kinds of situations.
* The ‘rents decided not to buy the dome house; they found somewhere more modern, with more land.
* Sis (
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
futoku) is actually getting saxophone lessons; I’ve waited years for her to be able to do that.* There are still ants crawling all over my room.
* Jeannette (whose mother Doug and I are driving home from church recently) sent a nice letter talking about her trip to Russia. She’s doing missionary work there for a few weeks. She found a 350 year old city (St. Petersburg) with beautiful buildings and a hummer or two driving down the streets. Russia seems to have quite a few upscale parts. St. Petersburg is currently experiencing “White Nights”, that means its daylight 24/7. Everyone please pray for Jeannette to reach many people and to have a safe journey!
* My LiveJournal needs some excitement, perhaps I’ll write an insane musical or something. I guess I could post photos of silly people..?
* People are not giving me many comments recently, whats wrong with you people. 0.o Do I have to sing and dance or something...
* I told Sina we could print out pictures of people we know and paste the faces on silly drawings. So maybe her and I might start doing art related stuff together..? She said she has paint, but wouldnt say what kind.
(I actually made many of these.)
* Your fridge reminds you to pick up milk sponsored by target, and your japanese toilet schedules regular doctor checkups for you as it plays mp3's and asks you what tempature you would like the seat to be.
* Your car GPS whines at you when you miss a turn, and rerouts you through another town.
* You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
* You call someone a pedophile, if they talk to your kid, and they agree with you.
* Some punks car sterio sets off a chain of car alarms at 1am.
* You call 911 to ask if you can put shock collars on your children.
* You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.
* Dilbert is in your photo album.
* Your computer is reading this text to you.
* You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
* You find out your doctor has been selling your xrays on a porn site.
* You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
* You have 14 remote controlls, audio beepers on each one, with the batteries dead.
* You haven't payed for your software/music/movies in three years, yet you whine about your O.S. while downloading another one.
* Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.
* You go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.
* Everything you see was made in China.
* Your car took six year to pay off.
* Moving your TV means sifting through a mountain of cables and labeling them on grid paper.
* You make phone calls from home, you accidentally dial "9" to get an outside line.
* You've sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.
* Your mouse can blind you.
* You have no idea what the company you work for actually does.
* Your boss doesn't have the ability to do your job.
* You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home.
* Every commercial on television has a website at the bottom of the screen.
* Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.
* You get up in the morning and go online before getting your coffee.
* You parents read your website to find out what you've been up to.
* You dont care who the president is nowadays.
* You pay off credit cards with bank loans and spend four hours a week shredding junk mail.
* You sleep with your mobile phone -- and your laptop!
* You're down with HTTP.
* You and your roommate sit in the livingroom and IM each other fun links.
* You know what a Blog is, you update yours every five minutes, and now youre adding Moblog and VideoBlogging to the list.
* You know your "Hot or Not" ranking.
* Your commute to work takes four hours in traffic so you have your meetings via conference calls.
* You get paranoid when youre not multitasking and hearing the soothing hum of the computer.
* You feel sick and disoriented when you cant access Google.
* Your neighbor the programmer geek actually gets all the girls.
* You have one floppy disk, in a glass case covered with dust, with the words "one small step for man" etched into its golden sticker.
-
myownrendition
oh man i want that robot dog. i am so just like gabe. in good ways. pacman and i will get married...
in other news, yesterday i bought the 3rd(and final) invader zim dvd. radioactive rubber pants! so i downloaded windvd6, what a cool program, and i dont have to pay for it. *wink*. but i DID pay for zim, zimmity zimmy zim WHY IS THERE BACON IN THE SOAP!?!?!
oh that snake. those were the days. when i needed twenty memory cards to beat one friggen huge game.
Tonight walked the "Christmas tree lane", 2 miles of houses with many Christmas lights and decorations. Found out about it from my friend Kirk who allowed me to join him and Kim and some other friends on the 2 miles. There were multiple thousands of people out on that road tonight. i took many pictures, some of them I have posted, you can click the link at the bottom of this entry to see the images, you'll get a small glance at the billions of lights i saw tonight. i must say, it was thrilling and somewhat emotionally moving to see so many people out at night celebrating Christmas. Some of those people have certain motives, and most of them are not even Christian, but i like to think that for those two miles i was in good company. and I was, Kirk and his friends were wonderful, they are all so sweet. Sweet to a degree that set off my paranoia alarm. There are three core reasons i was in a state of paranoia. First, I booked a plane ticket today and i really hope to see my friends in Washington. My little sister, and Jacob, and Edite… and possibly Anna and Cory. at one time i was in love with Edite, but i know its not something to mention, her and i are only friends, even if my heart used to scream out for more. Back to the Christmas walk. the second reason I’m in paranoia is i had what would equal a bit more than 4 or 5 cups of coffee, and my tummy doesn’t like foreign chemicals, i get sick rather easily. Perhaps my body ph is leaning on acidic, i hear that makes one susceptible to immune system weakness. Third reason I’m on alert, is something a very nice girl said to me tonight. i should say woman, but i don’t know her age nor much about her. She’s one of kirks good friends, so i naturally trust her with my life. Trusting I may be, I’m also curious to know what she meant by something she said in my absence of saying anything directly to her the whole time. She told me she liked my clothing, my look, how i matched, and my overall style. she made sure i knew she was complimenting me. Deep down i know it was a harmless remark, very social and kind of her to say something nice to a friend of a friend. i said thank you, as to not invoke simulated conversation. I’m sure she would have all kinds of great things to say, but I’m not one for paying attention. I’m fond of her, very much so, but i have some problems in the area of on-the-spot communication. Where was i, did i mention i get off track faster than the polar express on ice. What a cool movie...as you all know, I’m a fan of cg and movies with holiday spirit. I’m also a fan of fashion design, and that brings us right back on track! You see, Kim is very fashionable. When i first saw her, she was wearing all white and drove a white car. Her parents want her to get a new car, the window stopped working tonight for some reason. she seemed a little nervous about the whole night. maybe its just brain grimlins messing with my mind, but i sensed a lot of nervous traits in Kim. i have many insecurities, many emotional fluctuations, sporadic emotional instability... all of this i can appear to control, and seem perfectly normal, at least I’m told so by friends. i trust my friends and their ability to make quality friends, so i in turn trust Kim’s sincerity. Note my bad spelling, i here by copyright every misspelled word, and I’m going to open up a pay pall account to collect on spelling errors of livejournal. That was the lamest joke ever. Also note how I’m avoiding talking about why Kim threw me into paranoia. Perhaps I’m stalling, at a lack of insight into her world to properly speak of someone i don’t know. well i know her name, but faces I’m not so good with, and she does have a pretty face, but will that inspire my memory to function properly for once? i noticed she is highly fashionable, and she commented on my half hearted attempt at fashion. Remember i was talking about those, paragraphs ago. Ok, so when someone comments on what i wear, i get paranoid. When they actually mean it, i become hyper paranoid. i start to question so many things about myself that I start to wonder why I exist. i already know why, I’m here to play out my roll as whoever I am in whatever world i get dumped into. That can be misread. I’m a humble Christian here to do whatever god has planned for me. There, that makes sense. Ok, so Kim and I seem to get along, and she seems to be a nice person. Kirk said she wants to be a fashion designer, and i love fashion design. So I was wondering if I would be out of line thinking that I could get Kim to start a deviantart account so she could gain fashion experience through the resources of the internet/google/stockdeviantart. I tried to get Scott to start an account, i even uploaded his art, but i think he forgot about it. One time I tried to get Edite to use deviantart, it took her forever but she came around eventually and now she doesn’t have a day without it. I made Edite a livejournal one time, I did the graphics and everything, but she obviously had no need to tell the world about her adventures in the middle of nowhere. Edite has a fascinating mind; I think that’s a huge factor when I meet people. That sometimes leads me to meet people who I later find out have some deep problem that gives me reason to fear them. I don’t fear any of my friends, but I tend to avoid EVERYONE just in case something unpleasant might arise from learning things I didn’t want to know about anyone. I’m not going anywhere with this, I bet it doesn’t even make sense to most of you. The espresso and coffee in my system should have been absorbed into my full tummy, but apparently some escaped into my blood stream. Yippee. So I drank a lot of water, I do like water; I know the advantages of drinking lots of liquids. And, vitamins. If I could ask for one miracle right now, it would be that my little sister Jaimie would take vitamins. This morning I was thinking about Edite, but tonight I’m thinking about Christmas lane and why everyone in that neighborhood had their houses and lawns completely filled with lights and decorations. And I’m still wondering where Kim’s career in the fashion industry will go. I was wearing all black, which is something i don’t like to do, and it was at night, which is a fashion don’t. i say its a fashion don’t, mostly 'cause i don’t think wearing black is a nice way to introduce yourself to the world. to me, its just not cherry. its not peppy. call me a powerpuff girls fan, but i think bright colors are the way to go. so anyway, I was wearing black as a result of my beanie/jacket/pants/shoes/necklace/sox/m
http://zumiez.textamerica.com/
God Bless,
Royce
http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/P3/movies/
http://world.honda.com/ASIMO/movies/
sony robotic dog:
http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSH
http://www.jp.aibo.com/products/ers
sony biped
http://news.sel.sony.com/pressroom/digi
http://www.inel.gov/adaptiverobotics/hu
robosapien(is junk):
http://www.robosapienonline.com/
one of nasa's many lame robots
http://ehw.jpl.nasa.gov/humanoid/pictur
other robotic stuff:
http://www.androidworld.com/Head110
http://www.androidworld.com/android
http://www.shadow.org.uk/products/newha
http://www.sarcos.com/highperf_videos.h
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/200304
http://www.banryu.jp/press/gallery/inde
http://www.banryu.jp/index_e.html
http://www.geology.smu.edu/~dpa-www/rob
http://www.androidworld.com/wakamaru.jp
cg image- http://www.androidworld.com/NS5.jp
cg movie- http://www.irobotmovie.com/ (not a great site).
cg movie- http://aimovie.warnerbros.com/ (has an a.i. chat bot!!)
robocop costume- http://perso.wanadoo.fr/lmds/images/rob
the above is hours of google searching and no sleep. its nearly 7am... :|
