Ten years ago it wasn’t all to typical for me. Just a week prior I was working for Porivo, a “last mile” performance metrics company in the Raleigh/Durham area of NC. I had a bad vibe that we were about to be let go. Management called a mandatory Tuesday AM meeting (we never had morning meetings) and soon enough 50% of the company was laid off, including myself. So I was still not used to the idea of not having a job. I had slept in a little and woke up for some reason a little uneasy. I hadn’t paid much attention but I had left the TV on and it was on CNN and they were talking about the first plane hitting the towers. I remember the time was 8:55 at that point. I jerked out of bed and was just astonished at what I was watching. A few minutes later my heart just sunk, a feeling I don’t think I had ever felt had come over me. Profound shock, anger, confusion, I almost felt paralyzed seeing the second plane hit live.

I remember scrambling to call my then-girlfriend (now wife) who was at college. It went right to voice mail so I knew she was in class, but I felt uneasy just not being able to get a hold of her. I jumped online and saw that ArsTechnica had two threads on it already. I started jumping on IM, SMSing my friends in NY and other places to make sure they were OK. Soon my wife got a hold of me and I told her to hurry home.

The next couples days I was still in shock to a certain extent. After a quick discussion with my wife we had decided if in the next couple days I did not have a solid job lead we would head back to NY. Before you knew it I was informing the complex we were leaving due to me losing my job and uncertainty of what the future really held at that point. We traveled to Kingston NY where I spent the next two months trying to find a job. I started my web design company, Paris Creative, and had a few leads that helped us to pay the bills. Soon after I had landed a job just before Thanksgiving 2001 just 4 blocks from the White House on Pennsylvania Ave. working for the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance.

I will admit I felt a bit uneasy at first working so close to a prime target. I remember numerous discussions with my co-workers that someone could walk right down Pennsylvania Avenue with a suitcase nuke and take a good couple blocks out, and we would be right in that contamination zone. But we pressed on. As days and weeks went by the uneasiness subsided. Things really started to gain some level of normalcy.

Of course this is just what is on the surface. So many things had indeed changed in this post 9/11 world. Massive security changes at the airports. Random bag checks at the subways. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wiretaps and extraditions. All in the name of security, all using the precursor of 9/11.

I have remained steadfast in my political beliefs. As a progressive I had always been opposed to things like the PATRIOT ACT, opposed to the Iraq war, opposed to the “policification” of our way of life. Security cameras are as commonplace as stop lights. Police over exaggerating threats like a tourist taking a picture. When viral marketing from ATHF can shut down the city of Boston, you know that we might have misplaced our fear with massive overreaction.

9/11 has indeed changed everyone in some way. Some for the good, some for the bad. It is up to us to not only hold in remembrance of that tragic day ten years ago, but to also remain vigilant not only of impeding threats to our nation from the outside, but also remain vigilant of our duties to ensure our way of life has not changed so much that our way of life pre-9/11 becomes irrelevant.

There is a lot going on so my postings have been pretty erratic as of late. Hopefully I can get back into a continuous stream of information when things settle.

I’ve decided to resurrect as much data as I could from past versions and put them all here on my new blog and that would not be possible if it were not for the Wayback Archive.

I hope you enjoy the show!

I hit one of my first major setbacks in mid-1997 when I lost my job, and couldn’t find another. I had to abandon the notion of living in DC, and moved back to Northern NY, the same ol’ area that beat my sanity down in years past. I took a few months off working to contemplate my next move. Living off my unemployment checks gave me larger paydays that pretty much any job I could find in the area. It wasn’t till the beginning of 1998 when I got my career back on track, finding a job in Northern NY that was about an hour away from my father’s house paying again a paltry sum. I managed to get by, largely due to the fact that I lived with my father. I did well enough that I was able to own my first new car, a 1998 Dodge Neon R/T.
Then came the year that tested my sanity, put me in virtual financial ruin, and almost destroyed my life. In February of 1999, I decided that working for pennies was not going to be my mantra, and I began a search for a job back in the DC area. I found a job that was going to pay almost 3x the salary than I was currently making, and of course as soon as they offered it I took it without hesitation. I remember driving back from the breakfast interview with my friend Scott I kept on screaming out “fifty-five thousand dollars!” I decided to help my friends who were struggling to move down with me, and share a nice rental townhouse in Rockville MD. I really felt that I had finally made it, that I was now getting paid for what I was worth.
Of course all of this got to my head. I felt beneath the brand new car that I had just bought and quickly dispatched of it, opting for a one-year used 1998 Golf GTI VR6. The payments were close to double for what I was paying with the Neon, but who cares, I am getting paid, right? But quickly my new found empire crumbled. The new job that I got fell short of cash, and I lost my job. No big problem I would just find another one, but I let my big head get in the way of the big picture. I landed a new job a couple weeks later, but I saw ethical issues with it and left within a day. After that I could not find anything on the market. To make matters worse, my friends that I had brought down with me decided to move back to Northern NY. So here I was stuck with a huge rental payment for a townhouse, a car payment that was nearly double what I was paying, and out of a job. So I had to swallow my pride and move back to Northern NY again.
It took me many years to help fix my credit after this debacle. It just wasn’t the car payment, but credit cards, phone bills; I am still paying for these ‘lack of judgment’ issues to this very day. With the help of my wife I was able to right myself financially. This isn’t to say that we didn’t spend money wisely all the time. It’s only now after re-visiting the lessons of the past that we are able to put things into perspective. We now live in Upstate NY, I make good money, and we are smartly planning for the future.
This entire long-winded story has a purpose, to help remind people that we can settle for just ‘good’. To continue to strive for the very best will put most people in the poor house. Even if you are able to achieve top status, usually it’s at a terrible price. Overextending your credit, living well beyond your means, working ridiculous hours to make up for the lost wages you need. There is another solution, to settle for your personal best without going overboard, to say “no I don’t need a Hummer H2, I can settle for the nice new car I already own”. Sure there are splurges that are necessary, when they are affordable. That nice new LCD TV is not outrageously priced if you save for it in advance. Impulse purchasing is what business wants you to do. They want you to pay just the required payment on your 14 credit cards so you are in debt to them for 10, 20, 30 years or more. This is why they continue to push your available credit limit higher and higher.
We as a society need to learn that keeping a car for over five years is not a bad thing, or that owing a $250k home is smarter than scraping every nickel and dime for a $600k house that the shadow of foreclosure looms every day for years. Once we have learned to settle for what we have, with the caveat of owning what you can afford, only then will we not only financially better off, but finally happy with ourselves. I can say I am much happier now that I have ever been.