Retired folks often say that they somehow become busier after they stop working. This year I got a taste of what that meant.

In April, I quit my job to take a break, reset, and enjoy a summer off with my educator wife. Those planned few months turned into 6+ months of "pretirement" and it was incredible.

I wasn't necessarily busier in pretirement, but I was definitely more active and more productive with my own wants. I got to wake up nearly every day and just wing it. I loved it.

Health

I generally felt way better than I did during my typical desk job life. I easily closed my nerd watch rings daily, maintained a healthier weight and my general mood, outlook, and overall mental health was immensely better.

I unexpectedly found golf …

I recently decided to leave PayPal so that I could take a few months off and recharge.

Here's how I got to where I'm at...

2013-2015: Building Modest

Building a startup is quite an experience. In our situation, it was even more strange because we had a team of 4 with a nice chunk of funding before we even knew what to build. So, we spent ~6 months flipping back and forth between ideating and contracting while we figured things out.

Once we got the idea to build a contextual, mobile-focused commerce platform, we moved fast. In a couple years, we grew the team from 4 to a little over twenty and had some solid initial clients. We built a full-fledged commerce API, a couple web apps, JS SDKs, mobile SDKs, white label mobile apps, …

I moved to Chicago for 466 days, where I lived in 3 different neighborhoods and visited 375 different places — 239 of which were restaurants or bars. I walked around 10,087 steps (or 7.67 miles) per day, slept roughly 7.19 hours per night, and gained 1 pound before returning to Iowa.

I was actually in the city on 400 of those days and ventured out of Chicago on 117 of them. 68 of those (spread across 17 different trips) were spent in my actual home, with my wife in Iowa. I was also fortunate enough to get out to Washington DC, San Francisco, Arizona, and Napa Valley.

I spent 302 days at Obama's campaign headquarters, where as an engineer I committed over 140,000 lines of code written in 6 languages to 19 applications across 1,675 commits. …

Once I got to work, things were fairly normal - well aside from most everyone else being dressed to the nines… especially the ladies.

But then around lunch time, about 30 giant secret service dudes started showing up along with cops, dogs, etc. We had a mandatory office leave while they swept the entire place. (Remember, this is Obama's campaign headquarters. These are the people who love the president and are hired to re-elect him. Security was still this tight)

After the sweep was done, we all came back to the office and went through security similar to an airport (or a hip hop show), but with qualified professionals. Not the TSA.

Once through security, we hung out for a bit, working as usual while tip-toeing around the secret service …

So my buddy, Harper is currently serving as the CTO for the 2012 Obama Campaign. This spring, he told me I should interview to join his team. However, after taking the 5 hour commute and a couple other minor details into consideration, I declined.

… and regretted it immediately. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, working on technology for our president with a team of baller engineers. There would've been a lot of sacrifice, but the experience and knowledge I could've gained would have been completely insane.

So fast forward a few weeks... I began talking with Harper and his team again.

Today, I accepted an offer with Obama for America - so did my friend, Nick.

Most of you probably know that I'm not a very political dude. …

This is one of the best, most condescending emails that's ever been written about me. Back in my corporate days (circa 2007), a director sent this to all of information management.

Subject: Sorry to have to write this...
Importance: High

Folks,

I'm confident that it's no one in our group - given your maturity and professionalism, but you can help me by spreading the word that the reoccurring stupid and immature prank of taking, or tearing, a "bite" from Friday donuts (and other food) and putting the remainder back into the box is a thing of the past, starting now.

If you see anyone doing this in the future, please politely ask them to take the whole thing and not replace the remnant.  Please also politely inform …

So a lot of you have probably heard by now - I started a new job last week. I've actually been contracting for this company part-time since the beginning of the year, but last week marks the start of me going full-time for a San Francisco based startup called Dipity.

This whole process sorta started last November when Harper introduced me to a dude named Derek Dukes - the CEO of Dipity. After a bit of conversation, he had me talk to some of his team, they gave me a couple programming tests, and actually offered me a full-time position. Getting that offer was super exciting, but I wasn't quite ready to jump into the startup world. So, I opted to stick around at Red Five and do some part-time contracting for Dipity. This Spring …

So, two and a half years ago I left my cushy corporate job to join a small marketing/web development company called Red Five Interactive. I made that move primarily because corporate politics bothered me... but I also wanted something with a little more freedom that would encourage me to learn new things. Red Five was exactly that.

See, when I started at Red Five, I was an anti-mac guy; I hated the Apple fanboys. I had also never seen a line of Ruby code... and Linux sys admin was definitely not one of my strong points. Red Five, on the other hand, was an all Mac shop... that built Ruby on Rails apps... and would force me to become proficient in linux/unix sys admin.

If that doesn't give you an idea of how in over my head I …

Welp, I've now been free from the corporate world for a little over 3 months now.

Ha. Man it rules. It was scary and a little stressful of a move, but I am so, so glad that I dove in.

No more Microsoft Office, no software audits, no B.S. meetings, no re-orgs, no safety e-mails, no ethics surveys, and most of all no seemingly pointless PHBs in upper management.

It's funny, ever since I left Pioneer, I feel like a real live adult employee rather than an intern. Everything I do actually affects the company. Everything serves a purpose and we don't waste energy on the things that don't. I mean, in 3 months I've worked on more projects than I did in over 4 years at Pioneer. wtf.

It's interesting how much I've improved as a …

Holy first day. Seriously... I haven't felt this n00b in a long, long time - I'm both stressed and excited about it.

So first of all, the drive. It's longer, but sooo much better than my last drive. My drive to Pioneer was about half the distance of my new drive - however I did it in exactly the same amount of time - 22 minutes. On my old route, there was no opportunity to pass slow cars due to all the back roads, but now I can weave down i235 just the way an F150 should... or something.

Next comes the Atmosphere. I'm in Valley Junction - a small village with lots of local shops. It's basically a ghost town at 9am, which was unexpected, but I guess it makes sense. I walked up the stairs into my new building at 8:50 to find …

It seems like just a few months ago - my last block at Cornell College - when I'd drive out of town via 8th Avenue and park in a cornfield entrance at the top of the hill. This is where I always went to get away from the loud dorm I lived in to make important phone calls.

This time I was making my call to Marv Hardisty - checking on the job I interviewed for a few weeks prior. It was an interesting call - first he asked me about brooksfsw.com, one of my huge Soap Shoe web sites that I let get away. He asked me if I ran it and if I was aware that it was now a pornography site. I quickly explained what happened and that it was not my porn site. My stomach dropped and I was convinced that I wouldn't get the job - all because I let a …

Until I am done working at Pioneer.

That's right. On Monday this week I put in my 2 week notice at my cushy corporate job. Why?

Back up to a month ago when my promotion (supported by 3 levels of management) was brought forward and then shot down by the director of Information Management. This caused much frustration with the corporate mind state - which I'm not going to get into...

• Tuesday, Sept 25th: I was informed that my promotion got denied - so I immediately applied for several external jobs and one internal job.
• Thursday, Oct 18th: I interviewed for a job within Pioneer that would be the same level I was supposed to be promoted to.
• Friday, Oct 19th: I interviewed for a job at a small (8 employee) web dev company called Red …

As of last Friday, I've been at Pioneer for 4 years... and I'm still an entry level programmer! Haha, weak. However, I somehow carried over 9 days of PTO this year... which Brings me up to 18+9... 27 vacation days for the year + 1 floating holiday, yesssssss. Plus, only 1 more year until I am completely vested in Pioneer Pension.

Aside from that, I should note that I'm slowly making progress on the bar. Rico came over Saturday morning and we got the actual countertop all mounted. Time and Funds are killing me. I should be able to work on it again in August, haha, sad.

Later Saturday, Jeff and Iulia stopped over to grill. Then Elizabeth, Jon, Joe, and Andrea came over. And even later, Cedric, Nathan, Chuck, and Ando stopped …

Oh man, so I got a new computer at work.

Dell Optiplex GX620
-P4 HT 3ghz
-2gb RAM
-150gb HD
-DVD ROM/CD-RW
-And a ball mouse, wtf? I need an optical mouse in this piece.

Combined with my new dual LCD monitors, I'm loving life at work.

I haven't even had it setup for a full day yet and I already want to get a new setup for home. There, I'm running the same computer I got back in 2002. It was pretty fast at the time, but it's over 4 years old. I've doubled the RAM and added 120 more gigs to the HD, but it's just not keeping up with my video/photo stuff anymore.

So, I need a new PC to compliment my new 22" wide screen LCD from Jeff. And then I'll compliment that with another one of the same monitors. And then compliment …

Starting today Kari and I have been together 1 year!!! haha, actually today I have been at Pioneer for 1 year... wtf that went fast. I really have no idea how long Kari and I have been together... she has no idea either so we're straight.

Anyway yeah a year out of college... I have some nice furniture. I've been to Kansas City, Minneapolis, Denver, Chicago-twice, Saint Louis-twice, and Detroit. I got an Iowa License. My hair has grown about 8 inches. I have a goatee. I've gained about 10 pounds (stupid stupid desk job). I got really good at tech decks. I learned to ollie a skateboard and drop in on skates. I've gotten a salary increase. I started a company with Nick. I've gotten a lot of new electronics. My car is faster.

Today was Chad Kraus' last day at Pioneer... weird. So here's a little story of him and his time here...

He started the same day I did almost a year ago. The punk actually got the job I applied for, hehe whatever, I write web apps (roxor). Anyway, chad was fun because he always fell asleep in meetings. He also made lots of funny faces and was a big alcoholic.... haha, j/k.

For a few months we put random food (pickles, pepper bar, donuts, etc) in one of his drawers. It took him a few month's to find it and when he did, it was gross and he was mad. Kraus' family also has a big involvement with Dairy Queen; a lot of times kraus would go home to eat hamburgers for lunch. So Nehru started calling them Krausburgers... which caught …

Yo check out the glacier we have sliding off the roof of the Shull building, it's been sliding for about a week now.

Outside - Inside

Jan 5, 2004 1:47 PM Seriously, this is getting out of hand. I had to move so many things around on my desk to get my tech deck stuff to fit in here...

Check out my ramps and rails. I am so lame.

I need to fill them with spray foam and attach them to my desk. Everything is hollow, so it's sooo loud.

So, today when we got to work we were in some sort of serious brown-out (we were getting a little power, but not quite enough).

The flourescent lights flickered, the PCs would boot until the harddrives started spinning, then it would start over again..

Some rooms/cubes got a little more power than others. Doug, a guy I work with took his PC into a conference room and plugged in, so me and a couple guys went in with our RC cars and Tech Decks and watched Office Space.

Now, it's 10:30 and the power is back on. suck.

My job includes a lot of challenging work, but it rules for several reasons.

a) people are cool here
b) my bosses are just as cool
c) we have drag races, both big and small
d) we have guns and shoot things
e) people that have been here over 20 years make donkeys out of cheese, and people, and people that pet the donkeys