When daZZee shut down their Springfield office, I promised myself that I would not get so easily waylaid again.  I’ve been enjoying my new job so far, but I need a way to get started with software programming.  That means tools like software development kits and computers like a new MacBook or MacMini.

Any savings I’ve had was erased during the five weeks without a job and the first two weeks of the new job before regular paychecks started.  I can’t use credit cards for many reasons, but the main one is that they are the tool of the weak.  If you don’t have the money to buy something, credit cards enable your weakness to be satisfied.

So to start a business I need to raise capital in a more traditional way.  The easy first step is the business plan–a list of what you need and how much it will cost versus the likely ways to get revenue and repay investors.

Needs:

* Software development kit for the chosen platform.  This is easy and free since most companies want you write for their platform.  My choice is the Mac and that means…

* Platform.  I need a Mac and, while I have three (!) they are all older G4-based machines.  New software development can’t be done on a machine without an Intel processor.

* Training. That comes from books, the web and time, all of which are affordable.

Tammy and I took some time for a “date” tonight and headed to Tong’s, a Thai place on Campbell near the Honda dealer in Springfield.  Tong’s has been around for several years, taking the place of legendary Kim’s Korean Barbecue.  Tammy had a chance to get a salad from Tong’s while at work last week, so we headed there tonight, looking for something new.  We were not disappointed.

I had Emerald Chicken, a fantastic and simple dish of grilled chicken breast, sliced and placed on top of steamed vegetables and covered tastefully with a traditional Thai peanut sauce.  Paired with a Chardonnay, it was a great entrée that satisfied my craving for Thai and a need for solid protein.  Tammy’s dish was a local invention called the “Thai-rito”, an inspired food mashup of Mexican and Thai cuisine.  The bite that Tammy shared made me wish I could trade plates.  We also had a few appetizers–a soup called Tom Kha Ghi and a fried cake made of ground chicken and shrimp called the Todd Gunn.  Both were authentic and the flavor was great.

I’m running out of superlatives so I’ll wrap this up by saying:  treat yourself to Tong’s.  You won’t be disappointed.

From the Woot.com home page, a prescient product description:

>All Tomorrow’s LAN Parties

>Boy, the aphids are bad this year. Look at these turnips. At this rate, we’ll be lucky if there’s any left for the Harvest Feast. Well, hand me that cottonseed oil. Let’s see if it’ll keep them away this time.

>What? Oh, yeah, sure, I remember the Crash. I was 14, 15 when it all went down: the oil running out, the oceans rising, the 2nd Civil War. I’ll never forget those Chinese peacekeeping troops rolling a tank right down the main corridor of the Oakwoods Galleria. I was at this place called GameZone, looking at these things called video games. Oh, you’ve heard about video games, huh? Yeah, us old-timers used to spend a lot of time talking about video games around the village fire.

>It sounds funny now, but I was going to be a professional video-game player. That very day, I’d scraped up some of the Old Dollars to buy a pair of Everglide S-500 Professional Headphones. See, wanna-be pro gamers like me would wear these things over our ears, so we could hear our game and not the guy’s next to us. So I was looking for a pair that would fit over my ears and shut everything out – something huge, like these Everglide S-500s. They sounded great for games, and had a decent frequency response for music, too. I bought them after I spent, like, days figuring out which headphones were going to help me make a living playing video games.

>It’s funny what people used to get paid to do, huh? And funny what people used to consider important.

>Ah, well. You could drive yourself crazy wrestling with memories of the old world. Look at old Barry Gomez, sitting at that bus stop on the town square like it’s going to rumble down the road any minute. No, those days are over. You missed it, kid. Now let’s get back to tending these turnips.

Hello Weblog! 

I’ve landed just fine at CenturyTel.  I’ve got a week under my belt and I’d have to say it’s sure nice to come to work and enjoy the stability and resources of a larger company.  I’m working with current generation gear and have a great group of people to support.

I made it through eight hours of work today, the first real work day in five weeks. It wasn’t super hard, but it was a fresh reminder of suckling a paycheck at the corporate teat. I’ve worked for maverick, startup-style companies for the last nine years and CenturyTel is definitely not a startup. They are well organized and efficient. They have the infrastructure to back up their sales force.

It’s only been one day, but things look good.

Mark on WordPress: “My wife Sarah and I were in Wal-Mart last night, when we saw someone walking around with a shirt that said ‘Girl’s go’in wild.’ We had a good chuckle over the atrocious and arbitrary punctuation. Then I thought ‘hey, this might make for a good blog.’

4 hours later, Wordsplosion was online. It’s pretty amazing that you can go from idea to execution in a matter of hours using WordPress. Wordsplosion showcases ‘the best of the worst of the wide world of words.’ It contains (and will continue to contain) all manner of grammatical errors, punctuation gaffes, misspellings, horrible typography, etc. It’s LOL cats for smart people.”

Tomorrow morning, I start a new job, start new relationships and start new professional development.  Tammy took time to get me a “new job” gift — a new photo of her for my desk.  I can’t think of a better gift and a better way to start my work days.

Thanks babe!

MAKE Magazine: “Hafsteinn Júlíusson’s ‘Growing Jewelry’ via BoJ”

Growing Jewelry is a redefinition of modern values. It is a clash of jewelry an gardening; couture and organism. The collection of this hand jewelry is designed for people in metropolitan cities and is an experiment in drawing nature toward man, as nature being the presupposition of life.

I start a new job on Monday and it’s finally staring to feel “real” for me. Earlier in the week, Tammy and I went through my clothes closet, putting together some outfits for work. This job is a little different in that I’m wearing a shirt and tie each day so while I’ve got plenty of both, it was important to make sure they actually work with each other.

We found some ties that just didn’t cut the style standard any more, so they were out. One tie had a run in the fabric that I hadn’t seen before so it’s in the trash. The rest were paired with the right shirts and pants and I’m set for the week. It feels like the first day of “school” where you have to make new friends and find your place in the social structure

[Apple](http://apple.com) shipped their latest (iPhone)[http://apple.com/iphone] software update, version 2.1, with fixes for several customer complaints including poor battery life. I applied the update last night and was rewarded with something I haven’t seen in quite awhile: a nearly full battery in the morning.

The update includes fixes for many other things like email handling, dropped calls, signal strength display and security fixes. One big issue for me was the phone’s responsiveness when searching contacts or switching “states” from home screen to contacts. There always seemed to be a large delay, a long as three seconds, when making the switch from one state to another, before the UI would allow me to interact. This had become a constant frustration and with the new software update, it’s completely disappeared.

I’ll post in a few days about call quality to see if it’s really changed.