Words On Wednesday

I’m not typically a huge fan of cider, but I’ll try just about anything once, and I’m a sucker for limited availability stuff, and I do love supporting small, local businesses. Hence, I had to get some of the hard cider that Sky Top orchard produces. Let me just point out that Sky Top is awesome. It’s been a fall tradition in my family for the past few years. They have tons of varieties of apples available, and they have awesome apple cider and apple cider donuts. In case you missed it, here it is again: apple cider donuts. One more time. Apple. Cider. Donuts. Anyway, moving on. We noticed last year that they have a hard apple cider, in addition to their jugs of just normal cider. I’m weird in that I love a good quality non-alcoholic apple cider, but hard cider just isn’t my thing. I can’t place why. My wife, however, loves cider. Hence, we’ll get new ciders for her to try on occasion, and I’ll finish them off if she doesn’t like them. Otherwise, I steer clear. But again, Sky Top orcha...

A condition of my new lease on life  is that I continue making myself better: socially, personally, and professionally. One way I’m engaging that drive is with LinkedIn Learning certificates. When I lost my job, I was devastated. I made a pact that I would never let myself get put back into that situation. The biggest problem was that my skills were too dated to be relevant for most employers. Obviously, the fix for that is to refresh my skills and learn new languages and architectures. Fortunately, I did get a great job, and my new position does allow me the opportunity to grow and learn. That’s fantastic, but it takes time. What happens if the company suddenly takes a negative turn and they have to terminate some employees? I’m the low man on the totem pole, and I’m almost definitely going to be the first person cut. I can do my best to modernize my skills quickly, but I can’t affect market trends, and I would be helpless to combat that. My best option, after some analysis, seeme...

On Tuesday, July 14, 2020 at approximately 10:00 am, I died. Not literally, I just got laid off from QS/1 Data Systems (RedSail Technologies), but a part of me was certainly gone at that point. Where it Started (and Ended) I was shook. I had dedicated 8 years of my life, my entire career, to this single company. QS/1 was my professional home. I started as an intern during my last year of college, got hired on full time after I graduated, and I stayed there. At some point, I imagined I would probably be employed elsewhere, but I figured it would be on my own terms, and in my own time. For the time, though, I was comfortable. Comfort is a big deal to me. Looking back, this was naive of me. I should have known that I might be terminated, and I should have prepared myself for that possibility. Sure, there were several rounds of layoffs at the Q, but it was always somebody else. I hated it for them, but I was sure they would all go on to find gainful employment elsewhere. That wasn’t someth...