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2010 New Year’s Resolutions

January 2, 2010 in Uncategorized with Comments Off

Happy New Year!

This time last year I was in complete turmoil. I was working ungodly long hours at work under very stressful circumstances. As a result, I was facing what would become the end of my military career. A blanket of uncertainty and big thunderous cloud of acid rain hovered over me.

In March I left the military and returned home to Pensacola, FL, now without a job and not much of a clue of what would lay ahead. I had very little money, and if it wasn’t for my awesome parents, I would have surely been up the creek without a paddle. I became one of the 20% of 18 to 34 year olds that were returning home after failing, falling, being fired, laid off or terminated.

I spent the first month doing nothing… trying to let everything sink in, and get my bearings. In April I started working on resumes and began the job hunt. At the same time, I rekindled a serious friendship with my life long best friend and partner Victoria. With her, I was able to get a job at a local gas station and as a result started to turn my life around.

Over the last year, reconnecting with Victoria has by far been the best thing that could happen. In her I found a new sense of life and purpose. In her, I have experienced a very special love and in her kids, have found an awesome place to pour some of my love into.

After working at the gas station for a few months, I finally landed a full time aviation job with Aviation Systems of Northwest Florida, building training aids for various customers.

With my new job, and the significant pay raise, I was able to really enjoy the holiday season. I didn’t have to worry about anything. It is a complete 360 from this point last year where I was worrying about everything.

All and all, 2009 was a fantastic year, and I predict that 2010 will be just as great. I’m not too big on resolutions, but I do have some goals for the new year, mostly dealing with money.

I want to reduce my debt. I owe my parents my first born after all the money they have helped me with. Repaying them is one of my highest priorities. They aren’t rich, so I know the money will be helpful. I also have credit card debt, and really need to get rid of that so I can rebuild my credit line. Looking forward into 2011, I want to get a nice place to live on my own, or with Victoria should she want to join me.

Repairing my truck is next on the list after getting my debt under control. I smashed the front end almost two years ago, and still have not gotten it repaired! Once I get my truck fixed, I can start to have fun with it: paint job, accessories, sound, wheels, etc.

All along the way, I plan to stash and save extra cash where and when I can, building up an emergency fund and replenishing and rebuilding my savings.

When everything is under control, and I feel like it won’t hurt me, I want to try to get a new computer. Specifically, a new iMac. I want a custom model so it’s gonna cost me, but if I save and be patient I know I can get it. It may be a Christmas present to myself. Who knows?

Finally, I want to continue to build and grow my various projects, with The Speedzine at the top of the list. I have yet to commit and finish a full racing season with this project. That is my goal this year. I want to have regular content generation and timely news throughout the whole season. I know it will be challenging, but I feel if I dedicate myself to the one project, and tinker with others at minimum, then I know I can do it.

2009 was great, and I have no regrets for the past year. I leave 2009 excited about continuing my good fortunes into 2010. I hope you too are looking forward to a great 2010.

What are your New Year’s Resolutions? Leave the below in the comments section. Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!

I Went Tool Shopping

October 24, 2009 in Uncategorized with Comments Off

Tool Shopping

As I begin to write this post, I am freaking cold man! I went into work early last night, wearing shorts, and by the morning the temp had dropped from the 70s to the 50s. Yes, this may sound a bit whinny for me after I just spent five years living in North Dakota, but I am a Floridian through and through which means that even at 50 degrees I am cold.

So, no that I have some long pants and a hoodie on, I will continue.

I was supposed to provide a deposition yesterday at a local court reporters as part of an upcoming trail I am a witness in. I witnessed an assault earlier this year and now have been subpoenaed to testify on behave of the State and Circle K as to what I saw. The defense consul wanted a deposition from me, but when I showed up to the court reporters, I found out that the lawyer involved with the case has the swine flu. I don’t know yet when this will be rescheduled, but I am sure it will happen at the worst time.

Since I had extra time to kill yesterday, I decided to go “pre tool shopping.” With my new job comes the responsibility of providing most of my own tools. I will need a lot of “common tools”; wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers, etc. As a sheet metal technician in the aviation industry, there are a lot of specialty tools I will have to gather up as well. I am going to be getting a nice new rivet gun, drill, grinder, hammers, and other tools that would seem special to the lam-in, but are very common and essential to me.

That brought me to my local Sears. Their line of Craftsman Tools will meet just about all my needs. I walked up and down every tool isle deciding and recording every tool I think I will need that they have available for purchase. After scrutinizing each isle, I ended up with a list that tops $2400.00. Mind you, that is just an estimate. When all is said and done, I am sure the final cost will be closer to $4000.00. Good tools are expensive and even though Sears has most of what I need, there are a good deal of tools they do not have, which I will more than likely find on the internet.

My quest to build my tool box is well under way. I already have a rather large set of mechanics tools, which will give me a nice start. Once I secure some funding, I will get what I would consider the essentials to round out the beginnings of my tool box. I figure it will take me the better part of a year to fill up my tool box to have have everything I need.

Looks like I will be developing my own relationship with Sears, the Snap On guy, and the Mac Tools man. I wonder if any of them are on Twitter or Facebook?

If you’re interested in learning more about the tools of my trade, or if you’re just really board, here are some links to some of the places where I will be buying my tools. Enjoy.

Aviation Tool Supply

http://www.aircraft-tool.com/shop/main.aspx

Sky Geek

http://www.skygeek.com/tools.html

Brown Tool

http://www.browntool.com/

First Job Fair Provides Opportunities

September 19, 2009 in Uncategorized with Comments Off

The Job Hunt

Finding a new job these days has proven to be a difficult task. Aside from finding the time between my current job, current projects, and life in general to search for a job, there just aren’t many prospects out there. For myself, I am looking for an opportunity in the aerospace industry. I live in Pensacola, Florida, the home of Naval Aviation and the Navy’s Blue Angels. We have a moderately sized airport, and plenty of small fields scattered throughout town. The problem, however, is that there just isn’t any new jobs opening up very often that I am qualified for. Because of this, I have begun to look outside of Pensacola. While I am still searching for a career path that keeps me home, I am open to a bit of a commute if the salary is commensurate to the daily drive. This, and a tip from a friend, is what led me to attending the Panhandle Job Fair this past week in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

The job fair was only about the size of a high school gym, but it was packed with plenty of aerospace companies for me to choose from. Among them, L3 Communications, Lockheed Martin, and BAE Systems. The companies that I was most drawn to where Mobile Aerospace Engineering and Goodrich. The services that these two companies provide to the aerospace community mirror the skill set on my resume.

Thanks to the job fair, I am now researching the opportunities available at MAE and Goodrich. MAE, based and operated out of Mobile, Alabama, provides Periodic Phased Inspections and Maintenance on heavy jets including Boeing 747s. They also perform major modifications to aircraft such as converting passenger jets into cargo jets for companies such as FedEx. I have five years experience performing Phase Maintenance on heavy bombers thanks to the United States Air Force. I understand the ebb and flow of a maintenance cycle, and I understand the attention to detail and commitment to high standards that work of this magnitude requires. After talking with the MAE representative at the job fair, I am confident that I would be able to slide right into a comfortable, familiar atmosphere where I could really shine and possibly create a long term career home. The only downside would be the commute from Pensacola everyday. With the estimated salary however, I feel as though this can be overlooked.

The other company is Goodrich. They have facilities in a number of locations, including Foley, Alabama. Foley is a much shorter commute for me, and the job itself is still right up my alley. Goodrich Foley assembles and maintains aircraft pylons and nacelles. Looking at my resume, you would find that the majority of my experience is in nacelle maintenance. The B-52H Bomber has four pods (pylons), each supporting two engines. Each engine is covered by six segments of nacelle structure called cowling. All totaled, that makes 40 separate pieces of structure per aircraft that requires inspection and repair every 450 flight hours. Multiply that by 12 or more aircraft phases a year, and you can see how I have accumulated a lot of experience in nacelle maintenance over the past five years. At this company I would most likely assemble brand new nacelle structures for various airframes. Being able to create something with my hands and skills out of nothing, and getting payed well for it is a great prospect.

I plan on following up with at least MAE and Goodrich this coming week, and possibly looking into some of the other companies showcased at the job fair. This was my first job fair, and I wish was able to have stayed for the many workshops that they had to offer. Even without the workshops, this experience was very beneficial to me attaining my goal of continuing my career in the aerospace industry.

What would you do in my situation? Could you handle a long daily commute? Would you leave home for a job? Share you thoughts with me. Comment bellow, or send me a message on any of the social networks I am a member of. Thanks for reading!

The Job Hunt 2

September 5, 2009 in Uncategorized with Comments Off

Thankfully, at the time of this posting I am gainfully employed. I am currently working at a local Circle K gas station earning minimum wage. The biggest problems I have working there are that they do not pay enough for me to be able to live on my own and like most people, I do not want to work at a gas station for the rest of my life. That said, even with its downsides, Circle K is a good steady “in-between” job for me while I search for my next career job. I am an aircraft mechanic by trade, and a web/graphic designer by passion. I can also write, report, film and photograph pretty much anything if given the right tools. I have a lot of skills that could help me land a really good job somewhere. The only problem is finding that job. I recently applied for an aircraft maintenance job on NAS Pensacola, but was turned down for the position. I have also attempted to apply to Coca-Cola as a merchandiser and to yet another aircraft maintenance opening for a different company on the Navy base.

A good while back, one of my regular customers came into the store and told me about an open position for an airframes/hydraulic mechanic for aviation company L3 Vertex. This job would have been a good for me. It pays 25.50/hr, benefits, payed vacations, the whole nine yards. On top of that, I would have been working on the aircraft that Naval Aviators become pilots in, helicopters, and even on Blue Angels. The best part was I would have been working in the Blue Angels hanger doing a job that I truly love to do… work on airplanes.

My interview went pretty well. One of the interviewers was the father to some friends of mine from high school. I had the experience, the skills, and the willingness. What I didn’t have, however, was a collective bargaining agreement. Turns out that the L3 Vertex H-60 helicopter program is scaling back. That means that some of those employees would be moving, or leaving the company. Since there was an availability in the trainers section, my spot went to one of those guys. Bummer. At least I developed a report with the company that I feel left a good impression for latter down the road.

That opportunity closed, I tried to apply to Coca-Cola as a merchandiser. Merchandisers are the workers that come into a grocery store between shipments to restock and arrange product. They also deal with the grocers to order more stock and handle breakage and set up displays. Not a glamorous as working on Blue Angels, but still a step up from where I am now. I am still working on confirming whether or not my application is loaded into their system. Getting a hold of a human resources representative is proving to be rather difficult.

Going back to aircraft, I have also applied for a new posting with L3 Vertex, and hopefully this time they will choose me. Additionally, a new civil service contract for Air Force training aircraft is about to post job openings as well. That too would be on NAS Pensacola, just down the road from the L3 Vertex hangers. I will be applying for that as soon as it becomes available.

If all of the current opportunities turn out to be fruitless, I will once again start applying to print shops, and send out resumes to graphics studios. The truth is that even though that is where my passion is, I don’t have the certification, formal training and experience to be competitive. I have that with aircraft maintenance.

Whatever the case, I plan on continuing to search for my next career job. It is out there, waiting for me, and soon I feel that I will be out on my own once again.

Getting Up to Speed

May 18, 2009 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment

I have great news. I found a job. After being home for two months, and searching for about two weeks, I was hired by one of the first places I applied to. Thanks in part to a nice recommendation from my girlfriend, I will be starting as a Customer Service Representative for a Circle K that is very close to where I live. This is a good thing, because having this job will afford me the ability to keep my truck, and to continue to work on finding a design job, building my portfolio and continuing my education in the design field. I no longer have to worry about finding something, anything, just to put money in my pocket. That is a huge relief.

I know that many would see this as a crappy job, but convenience stores need cashiers. My girlfriend likes what she does, even with the less than desirable schedule. One side bonus of this situation is that I will be working with her, sharing the same shifts, and thus being able to see her a little more than I already do. That is always a good thing.

Beyond the relief of now having a job, I have picked up work on The Speedzine once again. At the moment, I am working on building content, and still trying to finalize the design. I have a feeling that a final design will come along further down the road, but one thing concerning the design is set. I will utilize the WordPress platform for this project. It seems to be the most efficient way to do this at present time. If I can update at least one thing a day on the site, I will be happy.

Speaking of updating, after only about a month or so under this design, I am already finding myself wishing I had stuck with WordPress for my main website. I know that going that route will hinder potential employer’s view of me as a web designer, but I will be working on enough projects to fit that bill. Additionally, I finally found a program that will help me desgin WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal templates on my own. More about that in the future, but for now I will probably be switching back to a blog format for my main website.

In another project that I am anticipate being fun, I hope to roll out with ChatrPad very soon. I have truly dove into the details, but here is what I do know. The name will be ChatrPad. It will be my take on microblogging and my first official foray into social networking. It will feature a frog as a mascot. The point of the project will be to provide a more personal social experience where you can just chat. Sure, you will be able to share videos, links, and the like, but that isn’t the point. The point is to be able to tell the world that you just ate a sandwich, or that you really enjoyed watching retro cartoons from the 1980s. I would love to develop a platform that takes the best attributes of Twitter, AIM, YouTube, and Myspace and meld them into one symbiotic service.

Well that’s about it for me and what I am up to recently. I really feel lucky to be where I am at right now. Sure, I have problems, but who doesn’t. The things I deal with in bad luck are more than made up for from having the opportunity to start over in life. For better or worse I am pretty much the same person I have always been, now with a bit more experience. I have been given a new start at life, and I intend on taking full advantage of the opportunity. I have a great family, good friends, and the love of my life. I am working on bettering myself and will try my very best to do it the right way this go around. Life IS good.

The job hunt saga.

May 9, 2009 in Uncategorized with Comments Off

What a day. I was awakened by my girlfriend at just after 7am this morning. It was really great to hear her voice after the day she had yesterday. She ended up in the emergency room due to a killer migraine. They gave her medicine and fluids and sent her on her way. At the time, before we knew what was wrong, I was totally freaking out.

I digress. So I woke up this morning around 7am and talked with my girl for a bit before starting my day. I finished filling an application with the convenience store chain Circle K, which was not the easiest user interface to work in. Afterward, I caught up on my massive amount of email, all three or four messages. Then I stopped by my usual online hang outs, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and a few others. I got all my resumes printed and bound; they are now ready to go when I submit them to various firms next week. By this time, I realized that I hadn’t yet eaten, so I scrounged around the kitchen a little and settled on a Chocolate Fudge PopTart. Yummy, until I drank my milk. YAK! Which reminds me to throw out that milk after finishing this post.

It is now around 1pm and I am starting to think that the day is gonna be a waste, so I called my girlfriend to see if I could bring her something. Come to find out that her parents had just left the house for a while and it was just her and the kids. YAY! I jumped in my truck, and headed over to her place. I got to spend some quality time with her just hanging out at the house. Good times.

Around 3pm, I left her house and was dead set on filling an application at the near by Publix so that the day wouldn’t be a total waste (in terms of the job hunt). It took me about 20-25 minutes to finish up at Publix, so I decided to head toward Target and Wal-Mart. By the end of the day, I put in applications at Best Buy, Publix, Target, Wal-Mart, Win-Dixie, Lowe’s, and got applications for Home Depot and Office Depot. It felt great to be making some progress toward getting a job.

Next week I will focus on my resumes, and trying to get hired by a design firm or print shop. Someone gave me the idea of job hunting in Mobile, which is about an hour away from here, Pensacola. I don’t know if I want to go that far yet. There are plenty of places to try and get hired here in Pensacola, so I may wait awhile on that avenue. I guess, in the big scheme of things, anything is possible.