Author: Josh

We’re sitting across the desk from John, who’s preparing our taxes. I’m afraid of the number he’s going to come up with, and I think he’s afraid for us as well. As we’d walked in, I told him that I opted for forbearance on tax deductions from my unemployment compensation, and that we had to cash in on some investments to survive the 9 months that I was unemployed. I think we all knew that we were going to owe the government some money.

After an hour, John put the number in front of us. And this number, to our surprise, was to our benefit. The first thought that my inner-consumerist could muster was, “Alright, we should go buy an iPad!” And before that thought could even complete itself, and for whatever reason, it was squashed with, “I’m going to buy skateboards for Maly and me.”

To this day, I still don’t know why skateboards popped into my head. The only explanation I can think of is that Maly has pretty much mastered the PlasmaCar, Razor scooter and her bicycle. I’d also much rather promote fresh air, physical activity and coordination over either her or I sitting on the couch with an iPad on our lap (we already do enough of that as is with either a laptop or just the TV). Teaching my daughter how to ride a skateboard just seemed like the next logical step in my head.

I wanted to introduce Maly to the world of skateboarding that I grew up knowing in the 80’s; big, thick boards with knobby wheels (compared to today’s skateboard wheels). After doing some research, I decided that my 4-year-old daughter probably wouldn’t get into skateboarding enough in the short-term to warrant my nostalgic penchant, so we decided to just go to WalMart and get her a “beginner” skateboard. She chose a Tony Hawk Birdhouse deck, complete with skull graphics. It was a proud moment for me.

As for me, I wanted a throwback board — something that would rekindle my youth and the way that I chose to ride when I was an adolescent. The other kids on the street were busy teaching themselves how to ollie and grind. While they were doing that, I was traveling from point A to point B. I cruised. So, 25 years later, I wanted to find a board that would suit my cruising ways. That meant a longboard. They didn’t have longboards when skateboarding gained popularity in the 80’s, so this was completely new territory, but essentially a no-brainer.

I did quite a bit of research on the shapes and styles of longboards and found what I thought I wanted on Austin’s craigslist: a 46″ Dregs Alpine pintail with 66mm wheels. It looked like a surfboard, and that’s what I wanted. Maly and I woke up early on a Saturday, met the seller at a restaurant downtown, handed him $75 and he handed me a practically brand new longboard.

And I’ve been trying to ride every day since. I still suck, but I try, and I’m having fun. Maly hasn’t taken the interest to skateboarding like I was hoping she would, but that’s her prerogative. I’m not going to push her, but I’ll encourage any interest and will gladly hold her hands while she practices getting her legs beneath herself and learns to lean.

I don’t think 24 hours had even passed after having owned my first longboard that I decided that I wanted to build my own longboard. I really liked my Dregs board, but I had an idea of what the “perfect” shape longboard was for me, and I couldn’t justify spending even another $75 on another board.

And so, thanks to YouTube, I learned that one must glue and press multiple layers of maple veneer or plywood to create the concave of a skateboard deck. So I built a skateboard press that I affectionately named the “Wood Maiden” and pressed my first skateboard. I carefully designed the shape of my longboard using a combination of aluminum mixing bowls and a long strip of scrap 1×2 to create the nose and curved shape for the sides of the board, and traced my design onto a long sheet of paper that I borrowed from Maly’s art easel. I then transferred the outline to my pressed wood and began sawing and sanding.

In a month, it’s kind of turned into an addiction. I’ve made myself two 46″ spoon nose boards, made a friend online who gave me his old longboard, made another spoon nose for a friend and am currently helping the 10-year-old neighbor boy build his own custom longboard (with a design that I’m thinking about trying out myself). I want to try my hand at making a “drop through” longboard and would ultimately like to see if I could maybe sell a few of my designs. I also made myself a custom “goof board.”

On weekend mornings, I get up before the sun and ride down parking garages on the west side of town. I love the quiet and still of the morning and having an entire, empty parking garage all to myself.

I’m really looking forward to getting Buster’s board done so he and I can go riding together. Next steps are to design a drop through deck, build a 5- or 6-foot-long deck, figure out a way to transfer photos to a longboard deck and learn to work with fiberglass. It’s been a fun ride so far!

[flv]http://www.janicek.com/video/20110325_SpoonNoseDone.flv[/flv]

Photos of the project can be seen here.

After deliberating for a few days, I finally decided to commission my own blood to paint the three little birds design that I wanted for my first longboard.

[flv]http://www.janicek.com/video/20110324_Painting3littlebirds.flv[/flv]

It was supposed to be 47″, but due to some plywood overhang, I had to scale it down to 46″. This video is of me transferring and rough-cutting the design shape. Thankfully my neighbor, Charles came over and told me about hollow ground jigsaw blades, otherwise I probably would have splintered my deck.

[flv]http://www.janicek.com/video/20110316_longboard_shape.flv[/flv]

[flv]http://www.janicek.com/video/20110315_Longboard_Press.flv[/flv]

Last night Maly and I went out for dinner at the neighborhood restaurant. Nothing fancy. Nothing out of the ordinary. She had the burger with a side of fruit. I had the tortilla fried catfish and shared some of my fries and coleslaw with her.

Shortly after we sat down she asked, “Daddy, can I go play on the jungle gym?”

“Sure, but stay where I can see you. And don’t be gone too long; our food will be here soon.”

I kept an eye on her and noticed a few things during my subconscious observations.

My daughter and I haven’t gone out for dinner by ourselves in a long time.

I didn’t feel compelled to keep a hawk’s eye on her as she played. She’s almost 5-years-old and if she falls or hurts herself, and she has the capacity to do so, she’ll come running back to me at our table. If she gets hurt badly enough, I know her whimpers, cries and screams well enough to where I can hear them through the sounds of a busy restaurant and a playground full of screaming and laughing children.

She looked alone. She would come back to our table every couple minutes for a sip of her milk or to color in a few lines on her kid’s menu and then make her way back to the playground. Each time she’d leave our table, she’d do so in a hesitating cadence while she surveyed the landscape and the other children. It seemed like every other child out there was in the company of friends or siblings.

As she would cross the miniature suspension bridge or climb up and slide down the slide, I’d catch her watching for me out of the corner of her eye as I sat at our table. She’d tilt her head to the right and sneak in a bashful smile. And I’d reciprocate as my heart maintained it’s butter-like form.

At the time, I think I was indifferent. Thinking about it now, I think I was sad. I was sad because she’s old enough to where she can go out to the playground by herself and I no longer have to stay within arm’s reach to catch her every fumble or fall. It’s yet another sign that she’s growing and doesn’t need Elise or me all of the time. I was saddened by what I observed as her loneliness. She didn’t have a sibling or a friend with her like all of the other children. I was sad when when she came back to our table at one point and said, “Daddy, a little girl came up to me and said ‘you’re in my way.’ The girl didn’t even say ‘excuse me.'” I was sad when I told her that she’s going to experience little girls like that for the rest of her life. I was sad when, after I’d paid for our meal, I asked if she wanted to go back out to the playground with me and she said she wanted to go home instead.

As we were leaving the restaurant she said, “Daddy, I’m cold.”

I picked her up and held her close to my body. She put her arms around my neck and rested her head on my shoulder as we slowly walked back to the car.

That made me happy.

A few weeks ago Adrian and I were having dinner before attending a funeral. As we were paying at the cashier stand, I pulled my iPhone from my pocket to have it slide out of my grip and land, from a height of approximately 4-feet, on the tile floor. I picked up the phone and quickly inspected it to find it had a little fracture in the upper right corner of the glass face. The phone worked as normal and I didn’t mind the minute cosmetic damage.

Fast forward a couple weeks and I’m getting up from the couch on Saturday night to go to bed. As I’m getting up, the phone slipped out of my pocket and fell the 15-inches to the hardwood floor and must’ve hit just perfectly because the glass face spiderwebbed.

After living with my cosmetically mangled iPhone for a couple days, I decided to look into trying to fix it myself. I found an iPhone 3GS replacement digitizer kit on Amazon for next to nothing. I excitedly waited for my replacement kit to come in the mail. In the meantime, I started studying up on how to replace my phone’s digitizer.

And at last, today was the day that the replacement digitizer was delivered to our mailbox. I’d made a run to the grocery store after work and before I stopped to get the mail. When I got home, I had the mail in-tow, with the bubble wrapped package containing my iPhone digitizer replacement kit. I hopped out of the Jeep and put the mail on the garage floor so I could bring the groceries into the house. Elise had to run a quick errand so we were two ships passing in the night. A couple minutes later, Elise came back into the house to inform me that she’d accidentally run over the mail. My bubble wrapped package containing my digitizer replacement kit was included in the carnage.

What are the odds of that happening?

When I decided to grow the Chelsea Lawn, I thought it would be cool to do a time lapse because, as I’d recently discovered with our little Santa rye grass pot, rye grass grows quickly.

This is my first photographic time lapse and, although it’s not as cool as I was hoping it would be, it was still a fun and relatively easy project. All I did was setup our Canon Rebel XT on a tripod, hooked the camera up to my computer with a 10′ USB cable and set OS X’s Image Capture (I don’t know why Apple doesn’t tout this little handy application) to shoot a frame at 5 minute intervals. I’d click ‘Start’ in Image Capture at around 8 a.m., go about my day and then click ‘Stop’ around 5:30 p.m. Then I simply dragged that day’s photos into iMovie to build up my movie comprised of over 1,000 images over the course of 5 days.

A few things I learned that are worth noting:

1. A photographic time lapse of grass growing probably only requires a frame every 10-30 minutes. On my first two days, I’d set Image Capture to shoot a frame every minute. It wasn’t until the 3rd day that I changed it to shoot a frame every 5 minutes.
2. This time lapse probably would’ve worked better had I shot in landscape versus portrait.
3. If possible, connect the camera to an external power source if the shot sequence is going to extend beyond the capacity of your battery or batteries. The shifting of the frame from day to day in this video is due to my having to move the camera to swap out batteries.
4. Manually focus on the subject of the time lapse for a consistent focal point.
5. Rye grass grows quite a bit overnight.

Watch the video here:

For Christmas, Joanne sent Maly a little Santa head pot with a little package of rye grass seeds. A few days before Christmas, Maly and I planted the seeds and were able to watch the seeds turn into bright green blades of grass. Maly got a kick out of it because she was able to see the “fruits” of her labor, and she likes to give Santa a haircut every couple days. I enjoy looking at the vibrant green blades of grass on our kitchen window sill. The growth and life are refreshing, inspiring and invariably puts a smile on my face when I make my morning coffee.

Last night I was inspired and decided we needed a little rye grass lawn in our house. I ran over to the HoPot this morning and picked up a bag of rye grass and some scrap lumber to make a planter box. I built a little 2-foot by 4-inch box about 2-inches deep, slapped some leftover trim paint on it, put down a layer of combination peat moss and potting soil, a heavy layer of rye grass seeds and another top layer of soil. Then I went outside and poured a cup full of rain water from our rain barrel to water my new lawn. Hopefully in a couple days we’ll have a cool little planter box with some lush & vibrant green grass growing.

More photos of the Chelsea Lawn to come…

1/11/11 UPDATE:

After 1 week, and after becoming a bit discouraged and on the verge of dismissing the project, I came home this morning after getting a haircut to find bright green sprouts rearing their little heads:

1/12/11 UPDATE:

1/13/11 UPDATE:

1/14/11 UPDATE:

1/15/11 UPDATE:

1/16/11 UPDATE:

You can watch the 5 day time lapse video here.

I just got off the phone with a corporate recruiter and, well, I just feel like venting about the conversation. I’d venture to say that 50% of the hiring managers and recruiters are not much unlike shoppers. To me, there are 3 types of shoppers:

1. the impulse buyer: you “want” something, or you think you need something, and you buy that something half-cocked. In a short time span it is realized that the purchase was a mistake, or you truly didn’t need it and it was probably a waste of time and money because you didn’t do your research or you bought on a whim.
2. the researcher: this person researches their pre-purchase ad nauseum. They may or may not know what they want. If they do know, they do their research before going into the store or clicking the ‘buy’ button. They know the value [to them] of the product or service, and they know the fair price.
3. the quick buy implementor: you know what you “need” and you just go out and get it. You might pay a little bit more because you didn’t do the same research that the researcher did, but you bought it, it does what you need it to do and the purchase is done. Over with.

I received a call from this recruiter early last week. When she told me who she was with, I immediately knew that I didn’t actually want to work there. I’d sent my resume to them because 1) based on the job description, I knew I could do the job and 2) it’s always good to practice interviewing skills. I went ahead and scheduled the call with the hiring manager after making it past the “pre-screening.”

I seriously thought about just blowing off the interview that was scheduled for last Friday. I thought about doing the courteous thing by calling the recruiter back, just being honest and telling her, “I just don’t really want to work at your company” [note that this is a large, corporate entity and I am not a corporate guy as I abhor meetings, meetings, meetings, Powerpoint, meetings, red tape, politics, meetings, bureaucracy, egos, meetings, name badges and meetings]. Instead, I decided to keep the date. I thought, “who knows, maybe this is the best job in the world and my preconceptions might be completely off-base.”

The hiring manager called me at 1 p.m. sharp on Friday. He was the first of countless interviewers who called me on time. That alone spoke volumes. The interview lasted a good 45 minutes and I really enjoyed the conversation that I had with my potential boss. He didn’t ask the “explain a situation where you took criticism and implemented that feedback in a constructive fashion” or “explain a time where you disagreed with your supervisor” corporate questions. He asked about me, my previous and current work experiences, my ambitions and about how I could use those experiences and acumen to help him do the job that was advertised.

The hiring manager and I talked a lot about a little business I started 6 months ago. This business sells a simple Windows-based desktop application that compares two sets of data (in this case email addresses) and returns a sub set of data (matching addresses or non-matching addresses). Everyone that I speak to, especially in interview scenarios is really interested in my business; not so much the business itself, but how I built it from the ground up in a month’s time, and how I set it up to run itself and generate passive revenue with very minimal involvement from me. It’s worth noting that this business is outlined on my resume, the same resume that I sent to this particular company as well as every other company who has advertised a position for which I’ve applied.

Fast-forward to today. I was outside, watering the yard (yes, 4 days before Christmas – it’s Texas!) and my phone rang. I let it go to voicemail. I came inside a few minutes later to listen to the message. It was the recruiter. She said, “Hi, Josh. Just wanted to touch base and provide you with some feedback from your interview last week.”

“Provide you with some feedback” does not equal “I wanted to schedule an in-person interview.” Elise was curious about the feedback, more so than me. I already knew I didn’t get the job based on her voicemail, but curiosity was kind of getting to me as well. I called the recruiter back and the feedback was, “the business that you’re currently running would be a conflict of interest in what we’re doing.”

That’s when the conversation got interesting. I asked her if the company engaged in data cleansing, data encryption, de-duplication, or deploying emails on behalf of their clients. Dead silence. I said, “hello?” and she said, “uh, I don’t know, I’m just relaying the feedback that I received in this email.” In her defense, perhaps it’s not her job to know what her employer does. Hell, I couldn’t tell you what her employer does. I think their tagline is something like: “We do innovative things to innovate innovation. Oh, and we streamline things, too.”

Even knowing it wasn’t going to get me anywhere, I defensively told her about how interested the hiring manager was in my business start-up and operation process (again, not the nature of the business itself) and how I found it interesting that there was never word of there being a conflict of interest.

Really no big deal to me but the frustrating part is that it was just a big waste of time for both parties (more so for the company). They could have saved a lot of time and money by being a “research shopper” first. They should have looked at my resume and, after just a smidgen of research, would have realized that there might be a conflict of interest. That company probably lost $500 in processes and resources to have a 45 minute conversation with me. That could have been completely avoided. My little company would LOVE to have that $500!

It could have happened at any company of any size, but it seems like it’s always the larger ones, or the ones who are getting “too big for their britches” that are so wasteful with their resources. And that’s the #8 reason why I avoid the corporations.