Soliciting Fame

A series of events have inspired me to start writing again. My last post was last August and a lot has happened since.

School has been doing well: I took 5 classes last semester and passed them all, although my GPA was poor because I decided to focus mostly on things like Chillin’ 4 Charity, a business case competition which we won, and of course my Internet Café.

The cafe has been doing well also. I’m not exactly rolling in money but I’ve been in the black every month and paying all my bills so I can’t really complain. Right now I’m waiting for two huge edge lit LED signs to arrive from Carmanah. It looks like they do good work but they’re definitely taking their time. In the next few days Van Houtte is installing a nice Keurig coffee machine, I plan to make a post about that endeavor later.

In December I officially stopped being a paid employee for Nexopia.com. I spent two years with Nexopia, initially working out of Timo Ewald’s - our founder - kitchen. Since then I’ve watched the company grow to 30+ employees. I helped move offices twice, and built walls, painted, and whatever needed doing. I was treated extremely well and I grew a lot both emotionally and professionally while working there. I had to leave because my commitment to school and my side business need to be my priority (in that order) and I don’t have time for two jobs and school. I suppose that’s three jobs. I plan to post more on Nexopia and social networks in the near future.

Once again my attitude toward blogging has shifted. I recently set up a WordPress blog for one of my good friend’s, Andrew. Andrew is getting married on August 16th and he wants to use his journalism experience to write a blog chronicling the journey towards the big date. You can find his blog at 227days.com. Hopefully he gets his rear in gear and catches up with his posts!

I also bought a new Nokia N95 8GB smart phone. It is hands down one of the best hand held devices I have ever used. First of all it’s made by Nokia, the cell phone masters of the universe, which means it’s durable as hell. My last Nokia phone was run over by a car and dropped in bars so many times I can’t count and it always worked when I pieced it back together. My Blackberry Pearl had the scroll ball break so I could only scroll down and after a few months of hot-keying around the phone I decided I needed a change. Much research (and money) later I ended up buying the N95 off of a great power seller on eBay. They also run importgsm.com. Nokia makes amazing phones, and amazing software which I will post about later.

I’ve also signed up for a Flickr account which I hope to use often. I previously hated Flickr because it was slow and the browsing interface isn’t the friendliest but I want to give it a shot.

Last but not least I ported my old posts into a WordPress blog. I know I previously posted that it was too verbose but I seriously don’t have time to fiddle with my own code, especially the security aspect.

Keep on truckin’.

I’ve had a lot of people bugging me to start posting again. I’ve been so busy this last month that the last thing I wanted to do was crank out a story about my life. I always run into this problem when I start blogging, I just don’t find my situation interesting enough to write about. Apparently everyone else does find it interesting so I suppose I’d better start writing again.

A lot has happened since July. I’ve been running the cafe for a whole month and I have two great staff members holding down the fort. I recently hired a third girl who will take some shifts starting September. I was accepted to the University of Alberta and will be starting the third year of my business degree. It will be interesting trying to finish school and running this business. I am hoping to get some credit towards my degree for running the cafe.

I’ve decided to major in International Business, which my uncle refers to as “a slogan”. He believes there is just “business”, not wishy washy labels attached to it. As part of this major I’m going to learn German. I know a tiny bit already and I have been to Germany. Ideally I will be able to study abroad and take an MBA in the future. Germany offers a fine MBA at some of their universities and I would love to get out of Canada for a while. I still have a little more than two years left before I finish my undergrad degree.

Business here is picking up. I had 5000 4″ x 6″ flyers printed and I have been slowly distributing them around Whyte Avenue. They seem to be working because the place is making more and more everyday. I’m really happy that this is turning out how I expected it. Hopefully it will be self sufficient enough that I don’t have to worry about it as much in the future.

In other news, my BlackBerry Pearl’s trackball only scrolls up, down, and left. It’s too bad almost all the functionality of the phone requires me to scroll right. I will need to look into getting something different soon. I can’t see myself getting a phone without Wifi though, I’m sick of paying through the roof for data from a wireless provider.

Well that’s all for now, I’ll try to post more regularly.

I have been watching the panel with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at this year’s 5th rendition of the D: All Things Digital Conference.

I initially expected to see Jobs and Gates pitted against each other in a battle of wits. The popular idea everyone has of these two tech titans is that they hate each other. I must say that the way they acted on stage was surprising. Thinking about it a bit more I realize they are probably friends who are actively engaged in a healthy competition.

Both Jobs and Steve are extremely wealthy and they technically don’t have to work another day in their lives. However, both these men sit down at their desks each day because they love what they do, they have legacies to leave behind and their work isn’t done.

To survive and leave your mark you don’t need to hate your competition. I can’t imagine being an ethical businessman if I have to hate competitors. Competition sets a precedent and it furthers society as a whole. Technology wouldn’t advance at the rate it does if there was no competition between inovators.

I believe that if you are good at what you do, love what you do, and look for learning opportunities all the time, only then will be successful and enjoy your job at the same time. Many people are successful and probably hate their jobs. I doubt many love their jobs and barely survive.