Road

Rockstar Equation

Early this morning was pretty funny because I ended up seeing the Galactic Ambassador once again. I've seen him in the past randomly on sleeping my couch and once even bringing donuts for me and my roommate, but today was especially odd because he walked in front of my patio while covering his face (as if I wouldn’t notice him), getting in a car and driving away! There's a lot of strange people out there and it's hard for me to fathom how he was able to remember where I live after I hadn't seen the guy in 3 years. Maybe locking my doors is not such a bad idea after all, since someone much worse could get into the house if it's unattended.

Even though I'm currently not working in the field that I desire, I'm glad I get to do construction with men I really look up to, even though manual labor is certainly more demanding than sitting at a desk all day. I just wish I had more hours so I wouldn't have to do damn deliveries in the evenings! I left my last tech job at the audio company over a year ago working under the worst manager I've had in my life with absolutely zero accountability and the loudest ego, but luckily I transitioned to being having bosses who are exceptional entrepreneurs and house-builders. It got me thinking that maybe putting all this experience on my public profile isn’t such a bad idea after all: it fills in employment gaps, provides evidence of achievement, and most importantly I think being a blue-collar guy gives you the kind of drive and attitude to get things done. I can put all the tech experience I want for the resume, but if references and background checks are needed I'd say the first people to reach out to are my mentors.

The band had a really dope jam session yesterday and I think my guitarist and I finally figured out that the right combination of light alcohol, food, and edibles makes us sound good as long as we pace ourselves. The last thing you want to do is get carried away when I fell off the stage at a show we I did last summer! I think the energy was just right and we didn't feel the pressure not to drink, so we sounded good and were still productive by learning new material. I definitely want to focus on uploading content and playing out more, since life's been hectic lately. I told my guitarist that I'm the tech guy but his job is to make us go viral, so I hope that it becomes a reality some day.

Long Road Ahead

I decided to reach out the geo-spatial company after not hearing back within 2 weeks. I got a prompt reply that they are wrapping up with their final batch of candidates and that I should receive a timeline update by next week. I really hope I I'm their first choice and that I did better than the rest when it came to the coding part, because I know that charisma alone isn't going to land me the role I desire. In the meantime I'm working on some new visual effects and improving my ongoing app projects, although I wish I was a little further ahead. If I could focus on tech full time I'd probably make leaps and strides in my own software since my ultimate goal is to have my own company.

We tried playing at an open mic yesterday but had too much to drink and it was too late to perform anyway. I've been jamming with my guitarist for so long I know full well when we've passed our alcohol limit, like when we got kicked out of a bar and another time I fell off the stage and broke my bass in half despite him telling me to slow down! The funniest time was when we were at a house party invited by the singer I was dating and he was telling everyone to shut up over them applauding and me trying to lead him to the door. I'm creating a list of venues to reach out to and my goal is to hit them up soon and get something on the books, but most importantly I wanna make sure we are sober enough to play the next time we take to the stage.

Times are pretty crazy right now and my theory is that as soon as quantum computing reaches AI, that's when we reach the singularity and our civilizations days are numbered. There are a lot of companies inducing massive layoffs due to AI, such as Snap, Epic Games, and Oracle just to name a few. Even my dad -- who is one of the best programmers I know -- is worried about his position. Everyone says that going to college is the tried and true path but even recent graduates are finding times tough right now. I feel like I'm much better off for having doing construction for years, despite not having a car making it a challenge. Even creative professions like music and marketing aren't immune to the displacement going on right now, and it feels like we are in the midst of a mini-recession right now. I know that things will only move forward faster so I hope I can find some solid ground to land on and do it soon.

Spring Sickness

Feeling a bit under the weather and expecting a phone call from the geo-spatial company I interviewed for a 3 weeks prior. I had a good time talking to the hiring team so maybe there's still a chance to get in but I don't wanna get my hopes up. When I talked to HR I this morning I found out that yet again another role was put on hold, this time because apparently the CEO changed and they had to reprioritize. It's is a shame it didn't pan out because I had such a great connection when I spoke to the other developers on the team and I was easily one of their top choices.

Unfortunately the same day I also saw the girl of my dreams post a picture with another man which broke my heart since I couldn't make it to California on time. When I texted her she saying I wish I'd made it out sooner but had to work she still seemed flirty with me and agreed that the job market is totally screwed. I told her that because of the state of the world right now we both should focus on our businesses and joked that she should open a salon out in Chicago! I'll definitely give her a call to find out what's going on in her life, since I've been trying to see her for quite a while.

The best thing I can do is what I should have done a year ago: buy a car off my Polish boss and keep working for him since he was one of the greatest mentors I've had in my life. Right now I don't have enough hours working with Greek and Italian house-builders but managing both I think I could make a good living. Both companies are run by really cool dudes who I want to introduce to one another; I can learn the most about running a business from the former boss and a lot about architecture from the latter. Even if it means swallowing my pride and asking my dad for a loan, it's just something I've got to do because I really hate juggling 2 jobs right now.

Skill vs Circumstance

I'm still pretty uncertain about life at this point. Mornings I work construction, some evenings I run deliveries, and I just had another interview entailing a series of C++ questions I think I got down for the most part. I haven't given up my pursuit to Cali just yet but life is so unpredictable right now that I don't have my hopes up. Despite how well I've done in the past, the tech space is very competitive with AI and sometimes skill has nothing to do with landing the offer, whereas timing does. The most frustrating example was when I passed every round for that geo-spatial company last month only to find out the role was put on hold 3 weeks later! Besides that, I'm still looking forward to another networking event in the city soon which I hope is promising. If I can't break back into the industry through my connections, I might still be able to work for my Polish mentor again if I manage to get reliable transportation figured out.

The tech projects are going pretty well I think and right now I'm focusing mainly on app development in Flutter, as well as learning CUDA and multi-media programming with sound and later with video. The roleplaying app I published last year desperately needs an update, I've got a new gamified note-taking app which uses AI to bring virtual companions to life, and another project to produce cool visual effects across platforms while calling C and C++ bindings. Additionally, if I have time to get to React Native I should spend some time on porting my existing website to TypeScript considering how popular the framework is in the industry.

I've reached out to a couple venues out here to play gigs and even had a chick hit me up about a show coming up at one of the locations I'm targeting (we even have a song which matches the venue's namesake). One of our instrumentalists has brought up changing the name of the band again which I've heard many times over the past 2.5 years. Every time it's come up in the past with my guitarist, usually one of the girls we're jamming with intervenes and he's calmed down because apparently the chicks love it. Now I just got to convince the other guy, because I've got the logo on my feed, my screensaver, and I even have a custom-printed shirt with our colors and text, which I'm not going to change! Some people think that names aren't important but to me they are signals commitment and longevity. After all, there's a reason I have my company name tattooed on my arm, so I'm hoping that we will stick together and all make millions someday.

Art of the Follow-up

I'm preparing to meet up with a mentor of mine to buy a car off him. I'm hoping we can work construction together again since the only thing that's held me back this past year is having reliable transportation to get to job sites. When I went to check out his vehicle I got some noise from the exhaust and got the gut feeling that the purchase probably wasn't worth it. The last thing I'd want is to end up in the same situation I was in last year with a car that was worth more in repairs than it was to simply buy another one used. Luckily the family on my dad's side is willing to loan me some money and we might meet up with someone selling an SUV real soon, so I hope that it pans out well. Life isn't the same without a car and it was always imperative that I plan ahead for the future.

I know I mentioned before that following up was important, but now I realize it's the most contributing factor to my success. The competition in the tech job market is though with high-experience senior roles being the only ones left, so I'm circling back with previous companies and connections as new opportunities come up. I applied to roles in the mobile development and graphics space and I've got another call with the massive online gaming company that I had an audio role interview one or two months ago. I've always worked construction before landing a tech job, so I'm hoping that I can pull it off once more and hopefully end up in California!

It's May and still bitterly cold in Chicago so I sure do miss about the West Coast weather. Another thing I miss is all the conferences, especially in the Bay area. I missed the NAMM show this year and GDC but I'm realizing that bringing the band to even local events can be lucrative. I went to a mixer in the city a few days ago -- and although I wasn't feeling the vibe that day -- I might be able to bring the band to the next get-together they have coming up at the end of the month to spice things up. Hopefully I can get a few more shows lined up this summer and hopefully hook up with the hot singer who's down to do the next show with us. The most important thing is to keep following up with people because there's no such thing as a lone wolf who succeeds; it's all about the pack and the relationships you maintain in your life.

Still Cold in May

As much as I like Chicago one of the things I hate most is that we literally get winter for half the year. It's still like 40 degrees outside in May and sometimes we even get snow this time of year, so I really wish I was out on the West Coast right now. Fortunately during my lunch-break I had a really good interview with a company based in LA in need of an app developer, so I haven't totally run out of leads yet. The interview started with the guy on the call asking me if I was Russian and we really hit it off in my mother tongue. He said he was going to pick the best 5 people and the next discussion was going to be a technical one with the CEO, which is much easier to handle than the dozens of rounds I'd gone through with other companies. I mentioned that last time I was in the LA area was for an interview with a medical research company and when he asked about my current position I usually work in construction when I'm not in tech. The interview ended with him saying "I hope we see you in Cali", so I've got a great feeling about this one!

You never realize how much life sucks without a car until it happens. Even something as trivial as dropping off rent money becomes a huge chore since relying on other people isn't ideal and I got caught taking a delivery car there too many times. Luckily my dad's side of the family wants to give me their old car to commute to work, since not having reliable transportation is the reason I haven't been able to do construction full-time. As much as I like working with the house-builders I'm not a professional like them so they don't need me every day, whereas my Polish mentor has the opposite problem of not having enough manpower and trying to be in 100 places at once! When I called him recently I told him I should have been working with him this whole year but partied too hard and didn't really plan ahead with the car situation. Honestly, if I did not have my room-mate helping out with rent I can only imagine turning back to crime and taking a car by force, but it's not a thought I like to dwell on.

My dungeon master friend is came over in the evening and I was looking forward to talking about the state of the world with him, since it's what we used to do back in the day. We discussed the possibility of either running a TTRPG in the Fallout universe, expanding on our "Dungeon & Double D's" plot, and even refining my own roleplaying app to accommodate a custom system. It's great to surround yourself with highly intellectual people. My friend caught me up about politics and recent events, and we even went down the rabbit hole of the gold buy-back program in the 1930's which I mistakenly thought was when the US went off the golden standard. We talked about the possibility of mixing comedy and music but unfortunately our conversation was cut short when my room-mate stormed outside shirtless after a day of drinking threatening and yelling at the guy! I've known my roommate for a while and we've been in the band for over 2.5 years but I've never seen him get that angry when he's drunk which is surprising since I've been jamming and getting hammered with the guy since the very beginning. I probably have to reinstate the "no drinking in the house" rule again and watch our intake again, especially if we plan on playing out live again this summer. I used to have a bad Kratom habit myself so I know how destructive it is -- not just in a social context -- but for our own health and longevity.

Pink Magic Pick

On my way to a celebration with the local communist party I saw a sedan for 8000$ I really liked. I usually go for larger vehicles like SUV's or pickup trucks but this find was definitely an exception. I do really like both of my construction bosses but they each seem to have the opposite problem: the latter is super close but doesn't have the hours while the former has all the hours but is too far to get to without reliable transportation. My roommate ended up reassuring me about the purchase as well because I'd be paying my dad back in the worst case scenario I'd probably able to upsell the car for more than I bought it for. If I do get a car again there's so many places I'm looking forward to seeing again, including Indianapolis where I met a beautiful bartender last time I attended a conference in the area. I swear to god the most beautiful women in my life where out-of-state and I've always had to catch a bus or plane just a few hours later!

Me and my friends ended up watching a UFC fight yesterday and it definitely seemed like the whole thing was rigged when they announced the winner after 5 rounds. There's nothing like chilling with the homies, getting drunk, and making music. We were chanting "pick magic pick" while playing metal and I think we had a hit right there! Aside from that, I really liked the conversations we were having, especially regarding how important it is to have good systems and be a product of light since god rewards those who give more than they take. I also tried to explain the origin of Abrahamic religions to one of the guys staying at my crib, but I like how my roommate put it best when he said that Judaism believes that only "they are the chosen" while Jesus would claim that "we are all the chosen". Mansa Musa is often regarded as the wealthiest man in history but giving away gold indiscriminately completely disrupted the world economy, so we also talked about the importance of tribe and how not everyone can be saved. We need to focus on building wealth for ourselves and improving the lives of those we care about the most.

I thought I had 2 calls from San Francisco companies the following morning and a 3rd one on Wednesday, but after the first two I had 2 more email me later on and one of them was from my dream company! I'd been talking to the head of talent from an animation tool company for some time now and it looks like they opened an Android developer role that looks like would be right in my ballpark. In the meantime I've got work on some of my personal projects, although I wish I had the motivation to get more done faster. I've been putting off updating the roleplaying app I published over a year ago and if I don't release an update by summer Google might close my account for inactivity. But that's not even the most frustrating part since I think they just charged me 300$ for their AI services using auto-pay! There may be more cost-effective models out there so I hope I can get this resolved, but in the meantime I might even rent out my empty garage since I need to make up for these losses somehow. The real challenge with building AI software is earning more than you consume from the tokens, so my monetization strategy has to be flawless for the next app I'm building in addition to the marketing component being thought out. However, if I can land one of the roles I mentioned I think I'd be able to focus on tech full time and bring us out to the West Coast!

Best in the Business

Spent yesterday with the house-builders putting up a fence but without reliable transportation I can't do construction full-time just yet. On my way to the next job, it was really funny running into the house-builders on the train with their girlfriends. I told them I was doing the night shift at a museum and we pretty much talked the whole ride there with a beer in hand. The laser job was pretty cool since I'd never seen the technology up close before and it looks like a little barcode scanner that you have to aim at the floor at the right height. It essentially works like sanding that uses heat instead of friction and can work on more surfaces, with our particular use case being a granite floor that needed to be the same color on the 8th floor.

During our walk outside, I told my guitarist that working for my 2 mentors made me realize we have to be completely self-reliant and need to be the best in the business to succeed. It doesn't matter if it's construction, tech, or music since the same principles apply: following up, continually improving your skills, and really putting yourself out there are all super important. It's also important to have a good team and the right people in your surroundings since the lone wolf entrepreneurial myth is just that -- a fantasy. Even if I do manage to find the dream job in the Bay area relying on someone else or another company for your well-being is never the answer and I need to make sure I'msetup for the future no matter what by focusing on my own business.

I never chose the easy path when I decided to go into construction instead of going to college, but the greatest mentors I've had and the most honest, hard-working men I've come across have all been blue-collar guys. Hopefully I can match their energy in the coming years apply their teachings to my own business. I know I can make killer apps for myself and others as well as produce awesome music with the right team and skillset. I'm still tired from working the night-shift at the museum last night since I'm not used to working around the clock but at least I'm glad they don't need back at the property just yet. The plan going forward is to borrow a car from the family to get my money up, possibly rent out my vacant garage for the next 6 months, book shows for summer, and continue updating my tech projects so someday something blows up.

A Technical Debt

I woke up this morning realizing that I'd incurred a substantial sum using Gemini during my app development workflow, so I'm transitioning to using local models like Gemma for text and hopefully incorporate image and audio generation in the future. The bill was quite literally a few hundred dollars and so it seems like the prices for AI went up even more than the gas prices! Had a good interview with a manager at Apple even though I thought they were looking for a rendering engineer and it turned out they need a compiler developer with C++ experience. The bar may be really high but even so I've got another company I'm interviewing with tomorrow with some more promising leads going forward.

Now that I have a car I can finally do construction full-time and I'm hoping the house-builders take me with them to Michigan in about a week or so for another job out there. My grandparents gave me their old car and insisted I don't give them anything in return but I know I'll return the favor as soon as I can. Running pizza deliveries for 9 months isn't the worst job I've had in my life -- that title probably goes to working in the sewers or for my awful boss at the audio company -- but being in a fast-food kitchen gets really tiring after a while! I've been in worse kitchens, I've also done my share of back-breaking work, but there's a different kind of disappointment to being stuck in a washed-out during the holidays with dozens of unfilled orders. Even without reliable transportation I've managed to find construction jobs in the meantime, but not being able to drive to jobsites is the only reason I worked 2 days out of the week. Now I can hit up any of my old bosses and make a good sum while I'm still trying to break back into tech.

I connected with someone I met up with at last years GDC to tell him about my new killer app idea but I have yet to hit up my Finnish business partner to discuss the graphics and rendering project he's helping me flesh out in Flutter. As far as the music goes I got maybe one reply from a venue I hit up but if I'm planning to play out every month this summer, I have to really step up my reach-out. It's crazy how fast time flies and how spring almost went by in the snap of a finger. All I'm looking forward to is it finally warming up outside and getting my money right even though I've got to pay my annual business filing fee plus the second half of my rent. My construction friends still owe me a bit and I'm glad to have a roommate helping me through the struggle. And although I might not currently be in the industry I desire, on the bright side I already look more physically fit because of the muscle-work I put into all this manual labor. I just wish I could explain how important it is to my dad's side of the family who've been spoon-fed the American dream, and the only way to do that is to succeed in my own business on my own terms.

Almost Summer

It's a few days away from summer and I'm surprised how quickly time has passed me by. It feels like so much has changed yet also remained the same in the last year. I'm happy though that I have someone to split the rent with while making the band work together and I'm lucky to be getting some money in for renting out my unused garage, even if the only comes a month from now. Apparently chicks have been hitting up my guitarist but I know deep down that the only girl I have eyes for is the one I met at GDC in San Francisco.

I'm still super broke until my bosses pay what they owe me -- but as long as I'm still not working in tech -- I hope I get to participate in their future projects. I know my Polish mentor is doing some cool restoration work with lasers and my house-builder friends are going to Michigan on a trip I hope to make with them. In the worst case scenario I might go back to roofing since I've got a car now and transportation is no longer an issue. In the best case scenario though I can keep the interviews going with the Bluetooth company or the one with the animation tool, or even with Apple if I can impress them on the C++ side! I know however that to succeed I need to always keep my own company in the back of my mind and that means putting in the effort to integrating new AI models and doing cool things with visual effects.

Me and the band are gonna practice tomorrow so we can play out 2 days from now an open mic and hopefully get a good recording of us in. I'm surprised how little response I've been getting from local venues knowing we played at one of the best spots in Chicago last summer, but I suppose it's luck of the draw kind of like the interviews I've had lately. Since I've got a couple slow days ahead the best thing I can do is iterate on my side-projects: the roleplaying app needs an update before Google shuts my account down, I'm working on a new game that doubles as a self-help tool, and I've got various rendering projects with interesting shader effects I'm hoping to bring from C++ to Flutter. I've hit up a couple of my partners in the game development and software space for ideas as well, so as long as I keep following up with folks and putting in 100% of my effort in, the greater my chances of making it!