An American Creed

I Do Not Choose to Be a Common Man

It is my right to be uncommon—if I can.

I seek opportunity—not security. I do not wish to be a kept citizen, humbled and dulled by having the state look after me.

I want to take the calculated risk; to dream and to build, to fail and to succeed.

I refuse to barter incentive for a dole. I prefer the challenges of life to the guaranteed existence; the thrill of fulfillment to the stale calm of utopia.

I will not trade freedom for beneficence nor my dignity for a handout. I will never cower before any master nor bend to any threat.

It is my heritage to stand erect, proud and unafraid; to think and act for myself, enjoy the benefit of my creations and to face the world boldly and say, “This I have done.”

By Dean Alfange

There is one program on the Mac, that I rely on heavily!  It’s called BarGenie and the creators are geniuses!!  It’s a beautiful program where you can input, everything you have in your refrigerator, seasons cabinet, pantry, alcohol cabinet, wine, and beer, and it’ll come up with a combination of drinks you can make from all those ingredients!  Let me show you what I mean:

First you can see ‘this is what I have’ list on the right and a short list of all the drinks listed.

Now you can ‘see what I can make’.

Now you can ‘see what I can almost make’.

HOW RAD IS THAT!?!??  It’s a great party starter, and I’ve used a number of times.  Definitely the best piece of software I have ever paid for!!  Best thing is they just came out with a Windows Version!

There’s no real easy way to gain experience, and I always hated the notion that companies wanted someone ‘experienced’, but I now understand what experience really is.  Since making a lateral move to another program, there was a short interview process in which we talked about my ‘experience’ and what this new task entailed.  Everything ‘clicked’ during the interview, those engineering and program terms I wasn’t very familiar with long ago, were common words, phrases, and acronyms that I’ve had lots of exposure to.  It felt really good to hear those words that I was extremely familiar with.

My career has lead me to an interesting place, and I can finally define what I want out of my accomplishments working for a company.  It’s easy..and it’s my new ‘resume objective‘:  “To apply my systems and software knowledge and experience, to work on a product that is powerful, reliable, robust, and intuitive, while helping people and profiting for a company.” You like?   Having worked with defense companies for 7 years now with 3 different companies, I’m starting to understand what these companies are looking for, and I believe my resume sums it up well.

I really enjoy putting experiences into words and now this post and my resume describe that.  I always had a software engineering title and knew that was wrong, but was afraid to put systems engineer on my resume.  Now, I know it’s right and everything I’ve been doing falls under systems engineering, but more specifically integration and test.  I’ve really enjoyed the work I do, because it’s so dynamic.  The biggest benefit is training people, and customer support related tasks.  It’s such a multi-functional role, and being relied on for so many different things feels good.

Keeping my resume up to date lately has been great, aside from being easy.  However it’s been more important to finally keep my resume and experiences written down and up to date.

In all, I still hate when a company wants someone ‘experienced’ and I understand why, but I would hope they give those with powerful degrees and a great attitude an opportunity, because in the end you always have to get spun up, adjust to the environment, do in-formal training and learn the system.  It just takes people with experience less time and people without a little more.  Also going from job to job is less frightening.  Hang in there, buy your time, but don’t limit yourself to just one thing or one job, anything you do can be considered experience…