Life Choices

Perspective is an interesting thing.

For the last year and a half of my life I have been focused on a singular objective; becoming an Air Traffic Controller. I grew up in an Airport. At five or six years old, my mother used to drop me off a the greatest daycare in the world, the Control Tower at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Municipal Airport. My father was an Air Traffic Controller, so him and whatever staff was working at the time would take on the very easy task of babysitting me. I didn't need much entertainment, or even supervision. We were a hundred feet or so up in the air, so not many places for me to go and between using the white boards to do string bean math (which I'm pretty sure my mom invented), watching the planes land, playing golf on the computers, and otherwise finding ways to entertain myself. I thought this might be the coolest place in the world, I felt at home at the Airport.

Fast forward a few decades, and I'm a 26 year old business major who's work in everything from logistics, sports marketing, call center management, to now system administration. About a year and a half ago, I wrote the tests, passed the interview and was made eligible to become an Air Traffic Controller. All I was waiting for was the call for a training course in Toronto and I was set.

The wait was terrible. In the meantime, I took a new job up in Ottawa, ON with a company that supports a wide range of clients running Mac and mixed networks. Which leads us to present day. On Monday, almost a year and a half after I applied, 4 months into my move to Ottawa, and a few weeks into the realization that I may never get the call for an Air Traffic Control course; I got the call. They had an opening for a course at the Toronto Tower (Pearson International) starting January 8th. 3 weeks notice for a course that they generally give you 3 months for to prepare. I had to make a decision in 24 hours. It should have been easy. It wasn't.

An interesting thing happened to me over the last 4 months. I think I realized that I'm built for something different. Not necessarily better, just different. In my career, I've come to realize I'm good at three things. One, understanding technology and how to leverage it, coming up with great ideas, and convincing people to that I'm worth following. To me that equates to three things; technician, marketer, and manager. The simple fact, is that in the world of Air Traffic Control those skills and traits are rarely used. The big paycheck, the job security and the great conversation starter may have blurred my perspective on what I really wanted to do in life, and ultimately the career path I chose.

I made the decision to decline the offer and give this thing in Ottawa a shot. I love my job here, and see amazing potential down the road. I'm learning from the best Macintosh techs in the business, I love the city of Ottawa, and I've got lots of potential to explore my management, marketing, and creative roots down the road. It was a incredibly tough decision, but something was pulling me to give this a shot.

They say that the worse decision is no decision. I feel that having to make this difficult choice is what I needed to focus on my current career and give me all the incentive I need to hit the ball out of the ballpark. With nothing holding me back, 2009 could turn out to be an incredible year.

Have you ever Twittered?

If not, I'm really hoping I can change your mind.

So the story goes a little something like this. Maybe four or five months ago I started to hear a lot of buzz about something called Twitter. FaceBook was just starting to come into its prime, and I was anxious to see what the next big thing would be in Social Networking. So without knowing much about it, I signed up for an account. I started first with a few "tweets" as they are so childlishly refered to. Short public messages that let people know what your doing (think Facebook status). I was so excited that I told my girlfriend at the time, now ex, that I came across this amazing new website that lets people know what your doing all the time. Her response? Sounds great if you enjoy stalking or being stalked, but what's the point. *pause* I didn't know how to answer.

Fast forward those four to five months, and I've finally seen the light after a night of giving out Apple tech advice, comparing Chris Paul to Deron Williams, commenting on the unbelievable UFC Fight for the Troops event, and meeting some very interesting people. Let me try to explain.

Have you ever been to a party that didn't involve kegs, togas, or your neighbours swimming pool? I'm talking the classic cocktail party you'll see in a movie, or on a smaller scale a house warming party with a group of people your not entirely familiar with. What do you do? If your socially astute you spend most of your time moving from conversation to conversation looking for interesting people, or at the very least an interesting conversation. You'll most likely spend half of the evening speaking to uninteresting people about topics you would never choose to discuss, and probably through in a half dozen terribly akward situations that you would never want to re-live (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtyO4tmpPdk#). Well imagine for a second that before you walked into the room you could not only hear ever conversation that was going on, but also hear the silent thoughts of everyone in the room (well at least the ones they wanted you to hear). Wouldn't that make things alot more easier? If your a Leafs fan you might join in on the conversation at the bar between a couple die hards (Note: What's do the Titantic and the Maple Leafs have in common? They both cost alot of money and look great before the hit the ice). Or maybe you've got a newborn on the way, and decide to join in on the group of parents talking about the traces of melamine in baby formula (http://tinyurl.com/5aj69u) or plotting to take down Motrin (http://tinyurl.com/5gjapw) . Or maybe you're like me and hate large social situation, so you sit near the orderves and wonder how you go about auditioning for the Amazing Race; only to have a producer stop by to point out your Canadian.

This is Twitter in a nutshell. Connections with people that share similar interests, conversations with people who can either learn from or teach something to, getting your message or opinion out to the world, or finding the answers to questions that pop into your head throughout the day. There are so many amazing practical applications to Twitter that are just dying for you discover them. From my buddy Pat who recently started his own MMA clothing company (www.lightsoutfightwear.ca - *big sale now!) and wants to get the word out, to my mother Dianne who's always looking for interesting diet or medical advice, to my buddy Andrew who will drop anything for a good basketball debate, to my sister Renee who needs a quick way to keep her friends and family updated while she's in Africa. Twitter gives you the ability to search for tweets (again think Facebook status) based on topics of your interest, engage in quick conversations with the people who tweeted, and then follow the rest of their tweets if you find them interesting enough; or have them follow you if they find the same.

So if you havn't given it a try, head over to www.twitter.com and sign up for a quick account. Add me "@scobes" and then start searching for topics, following people and let me know what you think. If you're already on Twitter I would love to hear about how you use it. If your still confused or want some advice on how to get started, feel free to drop me a line here and I would love to help.

My profile: http://twitter.com/scobes
Twitter Topic Search: http://search.twitter.com
Twitter Video: http://dotsub.com/api/smallplayer.php?filmid=3066&filminstance=3068&language=none

Make the First One Useful

So I have to admit, I've starred at this empty blog for quite a long time. I've always thought that I have so many ridiculous thoughts, opinions, and ideas upstairs; that having a medium to get them all out would be both theraputic to me, and possibly even useful to other. The problem was, where do you start what do you talk about? There's so much leading up to this that I could barely make sense of it when I decided I wanted to write. So its time to just write, and let everything else take care of itself.

I decided the first thing I wanted to do was introduce my fellow Canadian's to a few really interesting and useful websites that are currently blocked in Canada due to Copywrite Laws and Restrictions. The good news is there is a really easy way to get around this and trust me, it's worth it:)

Read This If: You are from Canada and want to learn about and access three amazing sites for TV Shows, Predictive Radio, and Music Videos that are only available to Americans.

Site #1: Hulu (http://www.hulu.com)
What is it?: Quite simply, Hulu is the future of online television. Watch full streaming shows from Fox, the Comedy Network, Bravo, and NBC from your computer in excellent quality. The best part of Hulu is that all video is rated according to episode and clip, so you can check out the highest rated episode of the Daily Show for the last week, or the top 5 clips from Saturday Night Live over the last month. Awesome stuff.

Site #2: Pandora (http://www.pandora.com)
What is it?: Pandora is the Hulu for music. The concept is simple, yet unbelievably powerful. Create a radio station by picking your favourite artist or song and Pandora will start playing songs that match your tastes. This is one of those things that has to be seen to be understood, but for example a recent radio station creation using the Foo Fighters, White Stripes, and Weezer produced the songs Dumb by Nirvana, Daughter by Pearl Jam, Stellar by Incubus, Cold Hard Bitch by Jet, and The Middle by Jimmy Eat World, not too shabby eh?. If you've ever used the Genius feature in iTunes, this is similar but without the limitation of only using music you own.

Site #3: MTV Music (http://www.mtvmusic.com)
What is it?: Just launched this week, the new MTV Music site contains just about every music video created, ever. Again, only available in the United States you can search for videos by artist, by rating, view and make comments, etc. Very simple inteface that looks and feels alot like Hulu. In case you were wonding the top video right now is Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads, but Rick Astley isn't too far behind;)

So how do you access these from Canada? Its actually pretty simple. Go here and a download should start. Its an application called Hot Spot Shield which is meant to keep your laptop secure when loggin into public hotspots such as Starbucks or a Hotel, but it also does a great job of tricking these sites into thinking your from the United Stated. If you need some more detailed instructions feel to post a comment or send me an email. The program will run in your status bar on a PC, or in your Menu Bar on a Mac. It does create a small banner at the top of most websites you visit, but you can disconnect when your not using one of the three websites mentioned. This will also let you watch video on other sites such as ABC.com and MTV.com for shows such as the Amazing Race, Real World, etc.

Hope everyone enjoys. Good luck!