Posting 40 memorable, funny, and good moments of my life -usually 2 a day, in no particular order – leading up to my 40th birthday. Today’s post has 3 moments.
#12: Obama Rally
In 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama held a rally in Louisville, campaigning for the Presidency. I went with my sister; we both ran into an old high school friend.
I won’t bore you with campaign promises and rhetoric from the rally. Nevertheless, it was neat to be at one of these rallies, to see who would be elected our President later that year, and to feel the good vibes and competence that are sorely lacking in the U.S. government these days.
#13: Hired At Kinetic
This job began the turnaround with finances that I had desperately needed in 2013.
I was working out of retail for the first time in 17 years, by the time the summer 2013 rolled around. It was about a dollar raise between Target and Kinetic but it was about 3x the hours. With those first few paychecks, I managed to get my phone service back, catch up on LG&E and water, and not have to borrow bus fare for work.
It was a good overall 4 years with Kinetic, with that first summer stabilizing things, financially!
#14: Internship
Kinetic started the fixing of the money issues; my Internship cracked open the door towards a possible career.
My current job is to monitor interstate traffic within the Louisville area, but we also have an IT Staff that makes sure that all of our workstations, all of the digital interstate signs, and all of our networks are working correctly. The head of our company allowed me to intern with our Systems Engineer for 3 months, about 8-12 hours a week.
I mainly worked with translations: reworking and rewriting a web application from the Perl computer language to Python. This was difficult; I had no experience with Perl. But, with a combo of Google, questions, and trial & error, I managed to get enough worked out that Jonathan (Lead Programmer) cleaned up the rest in short order. It was a cool learning experience and it gave me a glimpse into possible jobs, in the future.
The Nexus 