Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
Thursday, January 24, 2002
@STARBUCKS IN SAN JOSE, CA. Once again I'm sitting here at Starbucks but this time not in the city but rather San Jose. I just finished my training class for the day and I'm waiting to meet up with people from my company for dinner down here. It's pretty inconvenient because I have to waste 2 hours waiting since I cannot leave and come back.
I'm really enjoying this training class. It is so exciting to be doing something different for a change. In some small way getting laid off from Gator was the best thing that happened to me because it gave me this new opportunity. I'm a bit nervous about the traveling again, but I think for a while it will definitely be a nice change from the monotony of going into the office everyday. I'm also somewhat nervous because I'm not sure what to expect with this new job. I don't know how much travel it will entail and I don't know how things are going to work with the company. I am excited that it will be doing "true" consulting work and on site at primarily large companies. I think after 2 failed attempts at dot-com's I'm better oriented in the fortune 100 sector then in the small startup realm. With the travel aspect being an unknown variable I'm afraid that I'm going to be away from home more then I would really like. I don't want to leave Justin home alone and I don't want to be gone all week to only see him on the weekends. Though in the long run it may prove to be a good opportunity for him to travel and see some of the country because if I'm out on site he could fly out for the weekend and stay with me instead of me flying home. I'm sure that one way or another everything will work out alright, I'm really very excited about taking this training class this week because it is a totally new skill set that I can put on my resume. I love learning new things especially when I can use them to further my career. I was told a year ago that SAP Consultants can demand upwards to $200/hour for integration and configuration consulting so this is definitely a plus for my career. Although the SAP software we are using doesn't seem all that stable, it has many nice features and I can understand why large companies would want to use it. This is going to sound really arrogant but interacting with some of the other people in this training class really makes me realize how much knowledge I have in this industry compared with others. I guess it just comes easier for me and I can grasp concepts very quickly. It's amazing that the people sitting all around me have a difficult time understanding and following the instructor but yet I get it, usually ahead of the instructor and then end up surfing the web while the others are still trying to figure it out. I found myself a few times this week explaining things to the instructor where I had never even worked with this product before. Those guys aren't very technical anyway. Now don't get me wrong I'm not implying that everyone is stupid and I'm the smartest one in the bunch, because there are quite a few others that are also pretty sharp. It's an interesting mix I guess. What I also enjoy is the interaction with other developers and IT people. The conversations we have had over lunch about business, politics and and technology have been a welcome break from the stagnant lunches I used to have while at Gator. I enjoy talking to people about these things and having someone challenge my mind, and give me new insight into things I may not have previously thought about. So with all said this week has been a pretty positive experience and I think that because of this new job some major changes lie ahead for both myself and Justin.
It's really nice to finally feel like a professional again and not like a worker rat funneled into a cube every day.
This a really random thought but I'll write it anyway. I really enjoy wearing my glasses but I think I have to get a new prescription because my eyes just seem so tired by the end of the day. I can understand why my Mom says she doesn't like driving at night because with glasses it produces too much glare on my eyes. Hopefully this will prove to be a year of new and good changes. I think Justin and I are going to head down to Phoenix this weekend and spend a few days with Mark, Andrea, and the pups. I miss them all. It's been about 6 months since Justin and I have been down to Phoenix to visit. I'm dying for an AZ/88 chicken sandwich and to hang out in the desert. I'm afraid that if we only go down for 2 days that the trip will seem much too short. I guess I should just be thankful for the time I can get.
I won't actually know until tonight if we can go down or not because I should find out what I'm going to be doing next week. I'm hoping that I can ask for Monday off since I had to cancel my trip to start this training class this week. They don't need me to work on Monday, Tuesday should be a find day to go somewhere or start a new project. Well I think I'm getting tired of sitting here and writing. Too bad that I can't work on my web page from the Palm. Wouldn't that be a trip. I'll have a laptop soon anyway.
