Day Trippin’; San Diego Pt II
“Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means a whale’s vagina.” Thanks Ron Burgundy! That’s right it’s back to San Diego I go.
This is Southwest? -I recently heard that Southwest made some changes to how they book and treat business travelers, but this was my first experience since said changes. Up to this point, I always viewed flying Southwest as a necessary evil. They had the best schedule and usually the cheapest flights. That said, I’m a huge fan of the new business ticketing process. The new program allows for priority boarding (SW’s version of a first class upgrade), more rapid rewards points, and a free drink. In other words no more stampeding to the ‘A’ sign to line up 20 mins before boarding. That alone was a huge improvement. Kudos to SW for listening to their business travelers.
Sunny with a high of 75 -unlike last weeks trip which was cold and rainy, yesterday was the much more what I love about San Diego, sunny, low 70’s, ocean breeze. This is why I could live here…if it didn’t cost a bazillion dollars to live close to the ocean.
Should have gone with the convertible -as a rule, renting a convertible is almost always a no-no on my company’s expense policy. When I booked my trip to San Diego, all the smaller and cheaper cars were booked so my choices were down to a small SUV, full size SUV, convertible, or luxury car (we must use Avis so there was no comparing other companies). The small SUV was the cheapest, but just as I was about to finish my reservation, I noticed that the convertible was only $3 more. Clearly not thinking I booked the SUV anyway. I’m so trained to do the right thing…either that or I’m tired of getting in trouble with finance, but that’s another story. As I was pulling out the of the Avis lot I saw some guys getting into their convertible and I realized that could have been me. Damn!
Karl Strauss is my friend -back in the 80’s when I lived in San Diego I worked for the first Karl Strauss Brewery (called ‘The Old Columbia Brewery), since then my family and I make them a regular stop when in southern California. The food is great and of course the beer is excellent. So when I pulled off the freeway for my meeting I was psyched to see a Karl Strauss Brewery down the street from my meeting location. While a lunchtime beer was out of the question, the food and service were great. If you’ve never been, put them on your list for your next visit.
I love/hate technology -most days I love technology and I should since that’s the reason I work in the field that I do. However, when technology goes wrong or doesn’t work, it can be downright painful. From the beginning of my presentation yesterday, I encountered issue after issue. Error messages and page refreshes were more common than actually demonstrating the software. I’m usually pretty good at doing a little song and dance in these situations and with the power outages in the southeast I was able to blame most of the issues on that crisis and get through the demo unscathed. Still few things make me sweat like standing in front of a room of people with a product that isn’t doing what it’s supposed to.
Riding off into the sunset -with my meeting safely behind me, there was nothing left to do but enjoy the ride back to the airport and enjoy the ocean view off to my right. If not for my wife and kids I might still be there.
Until next time…
[tags] business travel, southwest airlines, San Diego, Karl Strauss
Top 10 Jobs for the next 10 years
In an ongoing effort to keep you abreast of what’s hot on the job market, here are the top 10 jobs for the next 10 years as released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many of these are well known, but there’s a few that caught me by surprise. Happy hunting.
The jobs which are projected to be the hottest for the next 10 years are:
- Network systems and data communications analyst
- Personal and home care aide
- Home health aide
- Computer software engineer, applications
- Veterinary technologist and technician
- Personal financial adviser
- Makeup artist, theatrical and performance
- Medical assistant
- Veterinarian
- Substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselor
– Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2008-09 Occupational Outlook Handbook
Until next time…
[tags] hot careers, job hunting, top 10 jobs, job forecast
I deserve $1 million, how about you?
Every once in a while I’ll watch one of the new game shows that seem to be inundating our nighttime programing. Whether it’s ‘Deal or no Deal’, ‘1 vs 100′, etc, they tend to be addicting. But what I’ve truly found fascinating in the this new game show world is the use of the word ‘deserve’. As in ‘I deserve the million dollars’ or ‘he/she works really hard and really deserves the money’. Really, because I work really hard and I know lots of people who do the same. Do they deserve $1 million? What about people in third world countries? There’s no doubt that they work and suffer far more than we do, don’t they deserve $1 million too?
Websters dictionary defines deserve as: to be worthy of : merit <deserves another chance> intransitive verb : to be worthy, fit, or suitable for some reward or requital. It used to be that $1 million was a lot of money. As in ’solve all your problems, welcome to easy street’ money. Today, by the time you buy a house a couple of cars and invest for the kids education, your million dollars is gone and then some. Still it’s a lot of jing and could certainly be life changing. But it’s the concept of deserving that still makes me scratch my head.
What makes any of us so deserving? For the most part, we’re all about the same, we work, we come home, we spend some time with our family and friends, we do our best to pay our bills and try to squeeze in a vacation once or twice a year. So what makes me more deserving than you or you more deserving than the family down the street? Nothing, nothing at all. I don’t deserve a million dollars and neither do you. Sure we all want a million dollars, duh. But deserve? Get real. Sadly, I think the media and pop culture are mostly to blame for our overblown sense of worth. They glamorize every ‘C’ list celebrity they can create, they bombard us with stories of the poor kid who made it big by acting, singing, playing sports, whatever. They’ve done such a great job promoting the rags to riches stories, that we’ve created whole generations of people who are almost literally standing in line waiting for their E true Hollywood story.
Being the spouse of a teacher I hear stories almost daily from the playground of kids who are just sure they deserve this or that. From iPods to cellphones, to laptops, to $100 sneakers, generations are coming up with the expectation of having everything they want. Then they grow up, go off to college and enter the workforce with the shocking reality that most of them won’t start out making 100K a year or even 50K. Many will get something less than 40K and will be shocked at what their employer expects from them. Yeah, that’s why they call it work.
The reality is, there is no lottery waiting to be won, you’re not the next American Idol, you won’t ever play in the NFL, NBA, etc, and you’ll never have a hit TV or movie career. You don’t deserve it. What you do deserve is the opportunity to work hard, make a nice living and provide a better life for your kids. That’s what you deserve, that’s what our founding fathers fought and died for, opportunity, nothing more. There is nothing in the Bill of Rights about getting an easy million dollars. That music in your head isn’t from ‘Deal or no Deal’ after you won the big bucks, it’s your alarm clock; so get out of bed and get to work.
Until next time…
[tags] easy money, deserve, entitlement, bill of rights
