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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.
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Thursday, January 24, 2002 |
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@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.
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Thursday, January 03, 2002 |
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@WORK. So I'm going back and writing this first paragraph after I've finished this entry because I ended up cutting out a paragraph that I wrote. I think the big question that is bothering me right now is what I should include in my online journal. At this point I don't think I can always be honest and write about how I feel in my journal when I know that other people are reading it. I know I have a habit of really limit myself in what I write for fear that I may include something inappropriate, hurt someone's feelings, or write something someone may take the wrong way. I guess the answer to this is to either not put my journal entries online anymore or keep a separate personal journal and continue to censor what I write online. I'll have to seriously think about how I want to proceed. -- Start Journal Entry January 03, 2002 -- I'm so thankful that I don't have to work a full week this week. I just don't think I could suffer through an entire week of after having off since the 21st of December. Even though I had all of that time off I didn't really get much rest. I was out partying and Justin and I were moving. It seems really strange now that Louis and Kalia are gone and it's just Justin and I. Honestly the flat looks so much better. I'm telling you that straight people are just clueless about painting and decorating. That's why they always hire the gay boys to come in and fix everything after they mess it up. Anyway, Justin and I were able to get all of his things moved over by the 31st and it wasn't too difficult this time. I'm not sure why but the last time he moved it seemed to take more time. It's really nice to have just the 2 of us. We opened up the door between the 2 bedrooms and turned the front room into more of a den / office. It's starting to look really good in there. This weekend Justin and I are going to have to make a few trips to my storage unit to get most of my things out. I'll be glad to finally have everything back with me and not feel like I'm just living in a bedroom now. I think it will be good for Justin as well because this will really be his first place as well since he's used to just renting a room. So New Year's Eve didn't really turn out as I expected. Philip, Justin and I ended up going to the Super Ball at Space 550 where Metropolis is usually held. First of all I thought it would be at least the four of us going but that didn't happen. At best the night was mediocre. I really like David Knapp who was the featured DJ, but for some reason he just wasn't able to get the crowd going. The last time we saw him spin at Empire it was awesome, but this time it really fell short. The crowd was pretty bad as well and maybe this is why the night wasn't that great. It seemed like a lot of straight people, people that didn't normally go out to clubs, and a lot of other freaks in general. There were a few of our other friends there which made it bearable but it just wasn't that great of an evening. I guess I know what not to do for next year. Maybe we'll just take a trip somewhere next year instead.
-- Cut Entry -- I think one of my biggest disappointments of the night was that Steven didn't go with us. After canceling Palm Springs he said he still wanted to hang out with us and go to the Super Ball but instead he ended up blowing us off and going out with his East Bay friends. He made up some excuse about not wanting to do E or something else. I didn't really know it was about doing drugs or anything, I thought it was about hanging out with friends but oh well I guess that's life. At least Philip and I know where we stand in the food chain. I wasn't really surprised though because Steven always does whatever they want to do anyway. We only seem to get first billing whenever the East Bay crowd decides not to come up to the city. I can understand this to a point because he has known them since High School but it doesn't make it any less frustrating for us. Anyway enough about that.
-- End Cut Entry -- So honestly I'm still feeling like shit from that night. I really decided to bring in the New Year with a bang. One of our friends, who is the closest one to a circuit boy we know, had the whole Pharmacy with him that night. Justin and I, in an interest to experiment a bit, started with E, tried K, then G, then some Tina and finished up with more E. I think after putting so many chemical substances into my body I didn't really know what I was supposed to feel. The only thing that really had any effect on me at all that night was the first E we took. The rest was pretty much a waste and I'm not in any hurry to try any of it again. Judging by the way that my body feels right now, I'd really say that it wasn't worth treating my body like a chemical dump. Oh well ... at least I tried it. Now I can move on with my life.
Once again I'm frustrated with work because just as I completed my part of the application they go and change the specifications again. I mean seriously ... we are in beta testing and they re-write the specs. This should not be happening when we have a firm release date for the end of the month. I guess I shouldn't complain because I have a job and these changes are keeping me employed. It's just really frustrating to go into work thinking that you have almost everything done and then you are taken back to the drawing board again because on a whim someone changed their mind. Maybe someday I'll be able to work for myself and not have to deal with this shit. So I talked to Mark last night. He told me that Andrea was laid off and is now taking a class for the LSAT. I can't believe that she wants to go to Law School. I think it's an incredible opportunity for her and I'm really excited. She is really lucky to have Mark as her husband because he is such a nice guy and supports any decision that she makes. I wish I were closer to them because I miss them and I'd love to be able to spend more time with them and my other friends there. I the back of my mind I sometimes hope that my company will go public in the next year and I'll have enough money from my stock options to move back to Phoenix and buy a house. I really do like it here in SF but Lord knows that I'm not going to buy a house out here any time soon ... Oh well .. time to go home.
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