So I guess the appropriate thing to do for my first official entry is to give you a little introduction about myself and why I am doing this. I am not going to get into a lot details about myself like what are my favorite movies and colors because that is what MySpace is for, which by the way I no longer have. I have nothing against MySpace, the guy is a genius for turning a profit over some lame HTML, it’s just the whole top friends, stupid surveys, and comments, lack of desire for maintenance, played out for me really fast and its more for high schoolers anyway. I suppose that most people who will be reading this already know me, and as for the ones who do not know me, well they will just have to paint a mental picture of who I am.
Why I am doing this? it is something new for me. I feel that a lot of times I have things on my mind and I want to share my thoughts and opinions. I was always better at communicating my thoughts on paper, so I figured this will be a good venue. I am open to constructive criticism and honestly do not really care if anyone even reads this, all I know is that it will be place for me to share my life maybe with someone who I do not get a chance to talk to a lot, a place where I vent and defuse, or a place where you can read some entertaining material on my rants about life. I will try to be diligent about throwing entries out on weekly basis just about anything. For example, one day I might talk about how President Bush is a fucking moron and another day I will talk about how Rap and Hip Hop music has gone down the shit hole or I might talk about how things went down at the VIP lounge at Tiffany’s. My writing style will be more or less informal, almost as if I was carrying a conversation, but at the same time you might see elements of a formal argument or an essay. My favorite word is cool, and even though the douche bag counselors told us not to use it in corporate America... well maybe one day I will stop using it.
I have been in U.S. since 1992, grew up in Cleveland Ohio. I came here as a political refugee seeking survival grounds from the heartless beasts a.k.a. Muslims that forced my family out of my own country by committing genocide to all the Armenians in Azerbaijan. Life was tough for me and my family for the several years after arrival. We were poor and strangers to the lifestyle of this new country. Through the rough times, we all stayed strong and supported each other and built a circle of friends in the Armenian community.
One love to my dad and my mom for giving up everything they had back home to give me a chance to make it here.
Today, some people might see me as an outlandish, spoiled, and flamboyant spender, but that is because I came here with 2 things, one in my hand and one in my mind, a suitcase and a dream. The hard work made the taste of early success that much sweeter. I will always be grateful for the opportunity U.S. has given me.
I fell in love with hip hop primarily with the beats and the style as soon as I got here and grew up listening to Dre, Snoop, 2Pac, and other major players in the game. I have seen people’s careers rise and fall. Back then West Coast rap was the Beatles of Hip Hop. I appreciated the lyrics because at the time I related to them on some levels. However, production is what really just stimulated my mind, because no matter how good the lyrics were the song was not right with a crappy melody. One way to describe me back in high school and maybe even in college is that I was a hip nerd, you know I got my shit done, but I also knew how to allocate time to party. Junior year of high school at 17, I hit the club scene and recently stepped away from it on a hard core level this summer at 25, reaching the climax at the ages of 21-22. I met a lot of interesting people and shared many stories from numerous crazy fun nights. I cannot even remember all of them, but it was a wild ride, and I would relive it any day.
I ended up going to Case for four years majoring in Computer Science. People might say that it is a party school and you are right it was not a party school compared to OSU or OU, but that was okay with me because I did not go there to party. Nevertheless, I had a fair share of fun and wild nights while maintaining a straight head and getting a few good friends out of the deal. I knew that my true party would start when I would see a nice direct deposit in my account from the code I would write for a company one day in four years. I was on a mission and nothing would stop me. At the time Computer Science was a hot item and I was pretty good at it and was always messing around with computers since sixth grade, so I figured I will give it a shot and see where it takes me. Ironically, I just got off dial up about a year ago, haha. To my surprise after a couple of years I found it a bit boring. I had no problem with the challenges, but I really just did not care about code that much in order to motivate myself to create really cool and outlandish programs or stay competitive with the uber nerds to land a job at Microsoft. Nevertheless, I did the assignments and aimed for an A or B to maintain competitive status and my scholarship. In the process I started to enjoy having leadership roles, doing designs, requirements, and vision documents for our projects, rather than the monkey code stuff. I felt that I wasted several years and that when I graduate I will be doing nothing but coding and eventually would get tired of it. I was at the crossroads of my early young adulthood and wanted to switch majors, but I am not a quitter so I stuck with it and figured that it is a good start to my professional career. Since IT was the future, I felt that I can always leverage it to help me find my true passion or hidden talent.
So here I am 3.5 years after college still involved with IT. I have been working at an insurance company for a bit over 3 years now. And yes, I still code, but there have been some many other things I have been exposed to over the past 3 years that I am pretty happy with the success and experience that I have had. Quite frankly, the first two years at this job I partied harder than I did in college. Professional grade money changes your party style and habits. Technically I have only worked on one team, but was fortunate enough to witness 3 different stages of this team as it changed its personnel and dynamic over the years. I worked with very smart, cool, diverse, and even some incompetent people. I was put in an environment which helped me develop on different levels, but at the same time nourish the qualities which I did not want to change like being a very outgoing and fun person to be around. You know I joke around a lot at work, and actually I used to be a lot sillier, but matured a bit. And there are still some people who might not take me seriously, all I have to say to those people is that the bottom line is that I am very persistent and meticulous on all of my responsibilities and that is one thing that no one will ever be able to challenge me on. It is another life in that office and you have to make sure you enjoy it otherwise you will be miserable and angry all the time. In summary, coming out of college I would not take back any of the experiences that I had at this company. Right now I am studying for my Master in Business and hoping to have most of the program completed by the end of 2008. I take it easy on the classes for two reasons, limited tuition funding and maintaining a healthy balance of other important elements of my life. Looking forward to 2008 on where it takes me.
Well, I suppose this is a bit more than I wanted to write, but in reality this was nothing, I left out so many details which I am sure I will use as references to my future entries. I do not want to spill all the excitement in the life of an application developer, but you’ll be surprised…
