A Job I Am Done With

For the last 6 years of my life, I have been slaving away on peoples roofs in the blazing hot sun for 40 hours a week. I was a solar installation foreman, and while it had it's rewarding moments, I was never truly happy doing it.

Gotta be the longest one I ever built, 210 feet

Several factors, from the day to day wear on your body, to the fact that nearly zero contractors are willing to give you benefits or even pay you properly, to the fact that you never get to work in the shade (skin cancer anyone?) caused me to re-think my choice of career and eventually leave my company and head back to school.

It was SO FUN carrying all these panels up this hill in 100 degree heat

Even the best case scenario for this career path (becoming a contractor) sounded awful to me and was going to take much more money than I could make or save doing installation to ever accomplish. I felt like I would just be used by ungrateful employers until the inevitable day when my body couldn't manage to do the job anymore and then cast aside, left to start all over again, most likely in my 50's.

You never know what kind of hazards you'll face on a job site

 In my relatively short trades career (12 years counting carpentry) I have, been shocked nearly to death by solar panels, put a screwdriver through my hand, injured my back to where it hurt for over a year, worked on slanted roofs so much that my knees and ankles hurt every day now, cut myself more times than I could count and gotten awful sunburns hundreds of times. All this while never working for a company that provided health or even dental insurance. This was clearly not sustainable for me.

I will miss the views....and not much else

So here I am, just finishing my first semester studying for a computer science and game design degree and although I am struggling financially to make ends meet, I've also never been happier with the direction that my life is headed in. Just next week I am going into 2K games in Novato to do some paid game testing and focus group work and I really couldn't be more excited for what the future holds.

An Emotional Ride

         
          I'm not gonna lie, when I first heard that we were going to be reading the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, I couldn't have been less excited. As I made my way through the novel however I was pleasantly surprised by how engrossing the story ended up being for me.
          The vivid descriptions the Kidd musters are just as thick and rich as the honey that the bees work so hard to make. This beautiful writing style is coupled with a story that is both gut wrenchingly sad and glorious at the same time. The trials that the main character Lily endures throughout the course of the story are enough to make you shed a tear or two along the way.
          In fact, while I blame being sick and generally depressed, this was the first book to bring a tear to my eye since reading Where the Red Fern Grows in like 4th grade, (why did they make us read a book where dogs die?) so clearly Kidd has created something special here when it comes to making you feel her writing. I would recommend this book to nearly anyone who likes to read, it it amazingly well written and a story that I won't soon forget.

Reflections On Blogging

           As my first blog, I found  publishing my work on the internet to be a fairly rewarding experience and one that will most likely turn into a hobby for me. One of the things that worked well for me was the ability to easily illustrate my writing with various images, whether funny or serious, to better paint the picture I was looking for.
           My favorite post to write was the one that I wasn't assigned to do (big surprise), my review of Mass Effect 3 was a blast to write and made me feel like a games journalist. Future blogs that I publish will most likely be in a similar vein as I always have a good strong opinion on gaming and technology.
          Another thing that I enjoyed was trying to spice up some of my posts with a little humor, although I wasn't always successful. I really do look forward to blogging in the future and I am thankful for this class for showing me that this is something that I can enjoy.

Snatch Review

          In the year 2000 British crime flick Snatch, written and directed by Guy Ritchie, we get to follow the path of a recently stolen and quite sizable diamond as it makes it's way through the world of Britain's organized crime underworld. The film focuses on underground boxing promoters Turkish (Jason Statham) and Tommy (Stephen Graham) and the ever-expanding ensemble of thugs, cockney gangsters and even gypsies that they find themselves intertwined with as the story progresses. It is in this vast array of characters that the film finds it's greatest strengths. From Brad Pitt's portrayal of the gypsy bare knuckle boxer Mickey, to Alan Ford's icy persona as crime kingpin Brick Top, this film features a variety of truly wonderfully written and acted characters.

Turkish, Mickey, and Tommy

          With such a large cast of characters to follow, this film does require you to actually pay some attention if you want to fully comprehend the multiple story threads as they slowly converge. Luckily Ritchie has written such engrossing and often hilarious characters for this film that it doesn't have to struggle to get your attention. Still, it may take a second viewing for some to grasp all of the intricacies of Ritchie's sometimes overly complicated plot, and the thick cockney accents won't do you any favors either. In fact, Brad Pitt's character Mickey speaks in such a ridiculously thick cockney/gypsy dialect that even the other characters in the film can't understand him 90% of the time (I finally got most of his lines somewhere around my 5th viewing) and as annoying as this may sound, it only served to further endear me to the character, Ritchie's writing is just that good.

Alan Ford as the ruthless Brick Top

         If you are a fan of crime dramas and/or deadpan humor I recommend that you give this movie a chance. You would be hard pressed to find a better ensemble of characters anywhere in this genre of films, think Ocean's Eleven but funnier, more gritty and generally much more well written and acted. The way that Ritchie sets all of these interesting characters, all with their own motivations and stories on a collision course that plays out over the course of the film is really a testament to his skill as a writer and film maker. Snatch oozes cool from every pore and is truly not to be missed for fans of film. It laces a potent crime story with humor and brilliantly constructed dialog and still to this day stands out a Guy Ritchie's finest work as far as I am concerned.