I live in Iowa: Chapter 2

In the engineering world I worked 43 hours all in front of my computer screen this week. I am in the perfect situation to learn HyperMesh and the intracasies of finite element simulations as they relate to stress analysis. In other words, I'm getting paid once again to get even better at one of the things I do. Yeah, life is good.

About working more than 40 hours a week, the way my contract schedule works I am hired to work 40 hours a week, but I can work extra hours and take time off later so that the total comes out to about 40 per week, I can also get paid a quarterly bonus for the extra hours I have at the end of the quarter. So I'll probably be working more than 40 hours every week that there isn't a Holliday. In fact, after my marathon I'll probably bump up the weekly hours even more for a few weeks. In other words, my salary isn't limited to 40 hours per week or restricted to five days a week.

Other than that I ran 73 miles. It took me like four days to recover from my 30 miler run but I backed that up with a great 16 mile tempo and a 4 by mile workout where I even ran a 5:11 mile! I haven't been doing that kind of pace (5k personal record pace) very often lately. With two weeks until Green Bay I feel that I prepared well. Not incredible or ideal, but better than I could have.

I got on my bicycle for the first time this year. Just to ride around town but Dubuque is small enough and I live close to the center that I will probably be biking for errands quite a bit this summer.

My unemployment book is headed in the right direction. I queried two literary agents this week. Thus far sending an electronic query seems to be much easier than applying for a job. Instead I am saying, 'this is what I have do you think you can sell it for me?' This stage of the process is all about querying scores of agents until I find one that wants me while I continue to edit my 54,000 work patchwork manuscript. I feel really good about this. It's a feeling like writing a paper for school and when you hand it in you know you did well. That's how I feel about my manuscript. By the way, if anyone does know a litern agent I would love a personal introduction or recommendation. Plus, if no one else ever reads more than the first chapter (typical of a query) writing all of this down has helped me immensely.

A few people have offered to be beta readers and help edit, that's probably a good idea, but I still feel like I have my own editing to do before that. The publishing process typically takes around a year so there is little need to rush, plus unemployment is still high, which means it will be easier to sell my book to a publisher.

When I write all of this stuff down it looks like I am super busy but most nights after 8pm I am as unproductive as anyone. (Except that here it is 10pm Sunday and I'm blogging with my thumbs like most nights...)

Question of the week: Is Osama Bin Laden really dead?

The Life of a Contract Engineer: Week 11

As weeks go this was a good as any. I worked a nice 40 hours. Although, one day they did not have enough computer simulation work for me so I spent the day in the "lab". We were working on competitive tear-downs, which involve hundreds of pounds of steel and copper. I had the chance to wear my lab coat which was fun for the first two hours then I got tired and slowed down. Eventually my attitude eroded a little because I felt that my talents were not being sufficiently harnessed. That being said, feelings are not fact. The most important task is often the one at hand. It was nice to see a different aspect of the factory and work with an A-frame and a chop saw, but I enjoy my desk.

The engineer who I was replacing is back and I am quite happy that he is. Several times every day I consulted him about the modeling that I was working on. He has more experience than I do and always offers valuable input. Before he came back I was an island making guesses about the accuracy of my models. Now that he is back I have someone who understands modeling well and can very accurately critique me.

Regarding my move to Dubuque, Iowa, I had an apartment picked out but someone else picked the same thing and had the deposit check in before me and thus rented the apartment before I could. So Monday April 18th, I'm starting work, but I don't have a place to live yet.

While I was unemployed I spent hundreds of hours applying value to aspects of my life outside of work. That is an important outlook to have on life. Without those things outside of work I guarantee I would be a workaholic. This brings us to the subject of running! I had a week that started on a good note, went through a bad section, and ended on a good note.

I had a nice 24 mile run Sunday, the longest training run I have had in a year and a half. Plus it was at a half decent pace. Then Tuesday a knot in my upper calf tore something in my lower calf/achilles area and I was more or less out of commission until I could massage it apart. It hurt so much! Fortunately, I did exactly the right thing and recovered soon enough to run a half marathon I paid for a few weeks ago. That race went very well. I started out with the leaders but going up a slight hill after two miles they broke away and I spent about the next nine miles running my own race. Then they were slowing down and I dropped a couple of 5:19 pace miles to move into second from third and come within nine seconds of the leader. I finished in 1:12:48 an official personal record by more than four minutes. I split 56:01 at ten miles (5:36 mile pace) and finished the last 5k in 16:47 (5:25 mile pace). I am really happy to negative split that much. I was holding back most of the race because I was afraid of going anaerobic and it was nice to let my legs turn over like that after the ten mile warmup.

I went over 53,000 words on my book and I reorganized it so that the chapters are more equal and related in terms of content. All I have left to do before submitting it to agents is edit it and add some more stuff about Reaganomics. It is a good book. I am excited. I have so much information that I consider useful from interview tips to "the exercises" to economic history. I feel it is a rather comprehensive resource for people like me in January of last year, which really could be anyone unemployed ages 16-30.

I am heavily considering buying a motorcycle. The problem is they don't sell the Honda CBR125R in the USA so I'm having a hard time finding something I am really motivated to own. I mean who needs to go over 75 miles per hour and who wants to get less than 90 miles per gallon? If you have any suggestions email me. I'm looking at used bikes exclusively and there are a number of sub 200cc starter bikes available for a 130 pound lightweight like myself. I mean Ducati starts at 700ccs! I would surely hurt myself on that without some experience.

I ended the week watching Morning Glory, which is a good movie, and writing a three sonnet series. The more sonnets I write (I'm up to five) the easier it gets. Sometimes I can even think out a ten syllable line that rhymes on the first try. It's fun to write poetry because it is an even better way to express emotions than simple writing in plain english. Who knows, maybe I will write an entire book of sonnets eventually. If you are curious to read them, sorry, they are on the romantic and emotional side and you have not earned that privilege from me. You can read my first sonnet if you want. The rest of them are similar, but I'm not the kind of guy that runs around talking about that stuff in public.

I am tired. 40 hours of work is like vacation, but when you add in the running and social events it adds up to quite a few hours.

The Life of a Contract Engineer: Week 10

Wow, ten weeks as a real engineer! This past week was once again exciting. I made more arrangements for my new life to begin in Dubuque, Iowa. I also managed to have a productive week at Kohler.

Working at Kohler Power Systems was the best career opportunity I could possibly have had. I was able to live at home for a few more months both saving money and seeing my family. Additionally, the people I worked with and still am working with were simply fantastic! I was able to participate in a contract position for a not yet finished three months, of which I spent about two months learning how to use two new-for-me softwares (ANSYS and HyperMesh). I was basically paid to learn new software and I feel I am leaving now before they really get to use my new skills. That being said, one of the experienced engineers I was sitting next to has repeatedly said that it was worth it for them to hire me. I suppose, but I feel that the amount of work that I did for the salary that I received is out of proportion. Fortunately, feeling are not fact and I'll take the money.

Saturday I went apartment shopping in Dubuque. I found an amazing apartment! It's not finalized yet but I am hopeful that it will work out.

As far as running is concerned, I had an amazing week. After recovering from my breakthrough 14 mile tempo workout last week I managed on Wednesday to run 4 x 1600 meters in an average of 5:18 with 400 meters of rest in about 1:45-50. A nice workout but nothing special. Then Friday, after eight hours of work, and only seven of sleep, I did a 16 mile tempo in a whopping 1:35. That's a 5:57 per mile average, for 16 miles! That is the longest tempo I have had yet. Mentally it wasn't very hard either, physically it was not easy, but the pace was so slow that two minutes after I was done my breathing was back to normal. A total of 90 miles for the week with 20 of those miles in workouts, I think that is the most quality I have ever done in one week.

I am running a half marathon this Saturday which is exciting because I am quite sure that I will set a personal record regardless of how well I feel on the day. Of course the time of my race will determine how my training goes in the next few weeks as I hope to run a marathon in the next two or three months.

Other things of note? I wrote less than a thousand words on my book this week. I think that it is time to edit and rearrange the book. I think that process will add or subtract up to 3000 words from the book as I delete repeated ideas and add supplemental ideals or illustrations. I discussed two parts of the book this week with two different people. I am especially excited about one section that I call, "The Exercises". In short it is a how-to section about how to change your thinking. I feel the most significant lesson that I learned from unemployment was to solidify my priorities and value my gifts. In other words, appreciate relationships more. However, it is far more complicated than that, thus I devote many pages to that aspect.

One more thing, which I will likely blog about separately in the future is that while things seem to be working out for me really well now, I don't deserve this. Suffering through a year of unemployment does not entitle me to all of the privileges that I am beginning to enjoy. However, it does help me to appreciate those privileges more now than I had in the past. I am very happy that I was unemployed for so long after becoming a master of science. I can not think of anything, aside from a death experience in Pakistan, that has helped me appreciate my life as much. I am so fortunate, and based on the people that I know that read my blog I hope that you too realize how fortunate you are and do not take that for granted.

The Life of a Contract Engineer: Week 8

This week, like most weeks, had it's ups and down. Monday around 1:30 PM was a rather significant down. I learned that the person who I am currently replacing is coming back ahead of schedule. When I originally was informed about this position in December the chances of the person coming back were dubious. Fortunately, he will be returning to work and whatever issue that he may have had is clearing up. That being said. My time is limited. He returns Thursday March 31st and there will be "several" weeks of overlap when we are both working there, but the insinuation is that I have more job hunting to do. I'll get back to that.

After a rather unproductive Monday afternoon wallowing in depression I rallied to have a very productive week. In fact Thursday from 4PM to 5PM I had my most productive hour of work yet. I received a modified CAD model of a support beam that I had been working with over the last two weeks and in that one hour I imported it to ANSYS, created all of the connections between the 19 parts, applied the forces and boundary conditions, meshed the part, and ran the simulation. I was so on the ball that as I was clicking things I vividly remember having to wait for the computer to process that action before I could make the next click with my mouse. My mind was moving as fast as it ever has. Considering that I was going head to head with a 3.7 GHz quad core computer with 20GB of RAM, I'm pretty excited. There was a lot of background experience to get me to the point where I knew what to click in what order, but still my mind was just flying. At this point in my life I would consider that a 100+ dollar per hour work effectiveness. Probably more like 200+.

Friday, I did not go into work. Instead I went to an interview at John Deere in Dubuque, Iowa. They are looking for people like me and I happen to have spent most of my life around rural locations where machinery is common. I've done my share of manual labor and operating large equipment so I think I'm a good fit for the job. But after five on-site interviews and only one job offer, who knows what a feeling is worth.

As far as tackling unemployment possibly again. I am far more prepared this time. I have Janzen Gear and my book in reserve. Plus I have been saving about 50% of my pretax income in my saving account so that I can hopefully pay bills on my own for a few months in case I spend a few more months unemployed. Additionally, I'm in a better mental state now than I really have ever been. Read the last paragraph of today's post to better understand what I mean.

In investing news, I'm really getting into the stock market thing. There is just so much money to be made with the right strategy and research that to ignore that kind of opportunity I feel is ignorant. I didn't buy any stock this week. In fact I haven't for the last month. I'm saving up for the first quarter statements to come up because it seems that there is generally a 1-2 month uptick on stocks with the best quarterly earning statements. Seeing as how I don't know which stocks are among the best right now, I'm waiting until some numbers come in. Additionally, there is a company that I am interested in investing in but they recently filed a document with the SEC when I feel the need to read before I invest.

In Janzen Gear news I'm waiting on the manufacturer to finish the boards. Lead times even in a little shop two miles away from my house can be rather long. That's a good thing to learn now when I am young.

In running news I ran 84 miles including a nice 9.7 mile tempo at 5:59 pace. I had two runs in the 6:30 pace range for a total of 22 miles and a 15 mile long run. I was aiming for higher mileage but I'll take the quality running any day over extra miles. My hip is coming around really well. For the upcoming week I was aiming for 100 miles, but I think 90 would still be nice. More importantly I want to get in two tempos one at half marathon pace and one a little slower than marathon pace. I'd also like to do some strides or short hills.

In writing mode, I passed 50,000 words on my manuscript! That's a huge milestone. After probably somewhere around 100 hours of plain writing, plus more than a year of unemployment and misemployment and countless hours of research and "testing", I'm at 108 pages of single spaced, 12 point, Times New Roman text. I'm probably 90-95% done with the actual writing. However I have to do some formatting and rearranging which I am maybe 20% done with. I also need to edit it extensively before I start showing it to people and realistically I'm less than 10% done with that. (As I read what I wrote weeks ago I often edit it that's why I've done any at all.) I have not queried any agents at all yet or set up any speaking engagements, but that is all part of the plan. This is very exciting for me because I feel this has the real potential to help other new graduates dealing with unemployment. I hope this book is a resource both from a physical point of view, such as giving direction about how to get a job, and the economic influences post-2008 that are creating the mildly unique employment/unemployment patterns. Aside from all of the technical aspects I devote much of the book to maintaining and creating a positive mental attitude. For me the most important lesson that unemployment taught me was a more appropriate value system. While the values at the high end of my priorities scale did not really change, the order of my priorities and my appreciation of those factors and relationships has greatly increased, even if I still rarely show my changed disposition. In other words, I became more comfortable in my own skin, because I made changes in my head. How do you change your thinking? That's a good question! Buy my book!

The Life of a Contract Engineer: Week 4

I worked my 40 hours this week. I enjoy going to work so much. I work with a good group of people. That makes a huge difference. I am learning new software and doing computer simulations, and I like that stuff and I'm half decent at it.

Communication at work can be interesting sometimes. I had a problem this week and the fifth person I went to had the time and was actually able to solve it in 30 seconds despite the fact that we spent five minutes debating what the actual problem was. That was after approaching the first four people who could not help. Slightly amusing and rather frustrating. Educational though, it is nice to be reminded once again how critical communication is.

One of my friends works at Intel, or perhaps it's IBM. Anyway, one of the things he likes about his job is that he can point to the little icon on the front of the computer and tell a six year old that he helps make that. My job is fairly similar. I ask if people have seen those car commercials where they have  a computer model they crash. Then I tell then that I do the same thing, except on giant rectangular pieces of sheet metal. Not quite as interesting but still exciting. I get to sit at a desk and make colorful pictures all day long and socialize with a nice group of people. Colorful pictures, nice people, an engineering salary, what more could I want?

I ran 121 miles this week. That's the most I have run in one week in more than a year. I've only had four weeks in my life that I ran 120 miles or more. Included in that total was a 12.1 mile tempo at 5:58 pace, the only tempo longer than 10 miles I have ever done. I also did some short hill repeats and the usual 20 mile long run. I have also started doubling on long run days and I like that trend. On the very negative side the week ended with a possible piriformis problem or glute problem or chronic muscle tear on my right side.

Why am I possibly injured? Running at a high level requires a lot of running, to run a lot you have to do all sorts of additional work to strengthen your weaker muscles. I have been neglecting those exercises the last few weeks. Actually I have been neglecting those exercises most of 2011. I deserve to get injured. I also have not had a massage in over a year! To be a good runner you have to do A, B, and C. I am decent at doing A (running a whole lot), but I can be lazy about the B (supplementary work) and C (rest and recovery) all too often.

In other news I passed 30,000 words (70 pages in MS Word single spaced) on my book about unemployment. I also bought a domain name and started another website. I am still working on the details, but I will probably unveil it in the next 10 days. I want to do some work on Janzen Gear before I flip modes and start another tribe.

I also had a rather interesting social experience Friday night. The local FFA (Future Farmers of America) puts on a wine and cheese show every year and I went with my parents this year. I tried all sorts of wines and cheese, and I talked to a few people that were at least a little excited to talk to me. I'm going to blog about excitement to see people in the upcoming weeks. Anyway, Sargento and Sartori and a few other cheese factories are within five miles of my house and I have to say that Sartori's Aged Asiago cheese is amazing. I guess it is so rare they don't even have it on their website.

I had a good week. I hope you had a good week too. It was a week were I am not sure I "went anywhere" but I progressed in several areas that I think I might be close to making a breakthrough. Life is good.

It's Not Rocket Science: Week 42... THE END!!!

In the world of finding a job... I found one! Monday I was offered a job and Tuesday I accepted it. It is a contract position which for me means that I will only have work through the end of April. They could easily extend the contract or they could hire me as an actual employee. "They" by the way is Kohler Engines. Kohler is famous for bathroom fixtures, but also has a thriving division of several hundred perhaps even a thousand employees that build engines and generators. I will be doing finite element stress analysis for concerns like wind loading on engine covers and skid structural optimization.

The job is local so I will be living at home with my parents at least through April. I am not allowed to discuss "directly or indirectly" what my salary is, but I have a masters' degree in engineering and using Google you can figure out what that means. I also signed at least two different documents saying that I will not share proprietary information and that things I create while using company owned equipment or time is not mine. So I am not sure if I will be able to write any more finite element tutorials using screen shots from work (of course I would never write the actual tutorial on company time, but I would have to take the screen shots at work) but I will figure that out in due course. I am disappointed that what I create will not be owned, even in part, by me. That is going to warrant a blog post in the future.

57 weeks after graduating with my masters' degree I have an engineering job, and only temporary one at that. Wow, that is not how I expected things to happen. It still does not feel real yet. As I write this I haven't actually been to work yet. As you read it I will be at work (and you will probably be at work too, shame on you for not working). In part, until I get that first paycheck I probably won't feel like this is all actually happening.

I don't want to dwell on having an engineering job just yet. After all it is temporary and in May I could very well be out on the street again. I also haven't done anything yet. Finally, I will not place all of my self-esteem and value upon the fact that I have a job doing what I want to do. I learned through unemployment that I have to value things in my life like relationships, health, and my time, not just what I do for 1/4 of the hours every week.

Unemployment taught me that my life "situation" is a whole lot more fragile than I knew. Hopefully you never experience living on credit cards, and if I wasn't so proud perhaps I would never have experienced it either. For the next several months I expect to have more revelations about what unemployment meant to me. So stay tuned. I feel no one can ever fully appreciate a situation until after it is over. Only then can we view the event or events with more objective eyes.

I had a great week running! I ran three workouts plus a 20 miler. I ran a total of six miles faster than 5:10 per mile pace, which is more miles at that pace then I have ever run in one week before. As part of that I ran a 4:56 mile in practice and two 5:00 miles. A 4:56 is the fastest mile I have ever run in practice. I also ran a 6.6 mile tempo and did some strides which puts my quality at the end of the week near 13 miles, which is a much larger amount and percentage that it has been in months, perhaps even a year or more. My total for the week was 101 miles, my third consecutive week over 100 miles. Needless to say running is going very well. I hope, and I feel from fall of 2009 experience, that my running is going to continue to be on the up and up. A job adds stability and routine and I do well when I have a schedule to follow. Which is to say I feel my life is more productive when I have some demands on my time, up to a point. But I can't imagine how working 40 hours a week will demand much of my time. I've never had a job that is only 40 hours a week. School and Boy Scout Camp always seemed to be 60+ hours a week. Who knows, maybe my mileage will get up to the magical 130 miles a week? (I tired about a year ago and ran myself into the ground for a 127 mile week.)

I am also writing another book.  It is about new college graduates and trying to find a job in this economy. While we have officially recovered from the recession, we are having the worst recovery from a recession that I have ever head of. So many things are changing that many of the expectations that younger people have, or did have, are naive and unrealistic. For example, people are living longer and due to the recent economic problems many people close to retirement chose not to retire so that they could earn a little more money to ensure their lifestyle in retirement. Thus jobs are not opening up as quickly due to retirements. Another example is the growth of less developed countries and the relative economic stagnation of developed countries. We are not building and constructing like we have been the last 60 years. Almost everyone in the United States has a cell phone and a house and a car that they drive on paved roads. The markets for those things are pretty saturated compared to a place like China or India.

I am up to 13,000 words with no clear idea how big it is going to get. The goal for this book is to get it taken up by an agent who gets it taken up by a publisher who prints a few thousands copies. Hopefully that will means things like Barnes and Noble and fan mail from people who were helped from reading my book. It's not about the money because I just got a job! Also, if this book has any amount of success and I write a second book in the future I can likely expect a pay check from that. I would rather help 5,000 people than get a $5,000 check.

How is this book going to be different than just reading the last 57 weeks of my blog? First, it's going to be far more organized. Second, it's going to include information that is not on my blog such as research and examples of other people who have encountered unemployment after graduation. Third, I'm going to address the mental aspect in more detail that I typically do on my blog. For example, everyone who regularly reads my blog or knows me knows that I love to run. I'm really going to try and explain that because I feel it is a critical aspect of my mental health during my 57 weeks unemployed.

A Year After Publication

About 13 months ago my sister and I finished writing and editing What Gen Y Wants You to Know. Since then we have had 62 downloads and have given away at least eight books to people that do not really use the Internet or that would have liked a hard copy of our book. We have not sold any paperback copies of What Gen Y Wants You to Know. 

What have I learned?

Advertising, advertising, advertising, and then some advertising will get things propagated. This is one of the ways that anything sells. Lots of people hear about it and think it's cool. Word of mouth is a really strong way for things to propagate. It works because people trust their friends. I tried to follow Seth Godin's model or Dave's model of give it away free and then offer to sell it. The idea is that people don't actually want the information in the book as much as they want to own a book that has ideas they agree with. However, after the fact I realized that it probably takes six years of successful blogging to get to the point where that works. Or you have to start out famous.

I also learned that traditional publishing is a competitive playground. Millions of people around the world think they are great writers while precious few actually write well. (Yes, yes, I know I probably fall into that category as well, but you don't have to read my stuff and nothing I have written, with the exception of my thesis, is exclusive in any way. It's all free.) As far as understanding the publishing world and what it takes to get a book published by one of the nice big companies read Miss Snark's blog. Aside from all of the segues into her personal life it offers real sincere nuggets of publishing information. 

Some people have a hard time downloading things that take more than one click.

What will I DO differently next time?

That is a curious question because there are different avenues that I would like to take depending on the book that I am writing. I am working on a rope solo climbing book, and have been for two years. This would likely be self published print-on-demand because the market for this book would probably be less than a thousand people. It could be tens of thousands but based on the web traffic I measured in relation to key search terms, we're talking about a few hundred people so self publishing would be it. I would also not offer it free. Why not? I feel that the concepts are important enough that someone should have the whole book and feel that it has value because it costs money. If someone would download it free and print out only two pages he or she could easily get in a dangerous situation without knowing how to get out of it.

I am working on several other books and in fact have 130 pages of my autobiography covering ages 9 to 15 that I typed out on my grandma's typewriter. Traditional publishing is so enticing because the ability to say, "you can get my book in Barnes and Noble" is incredibly exciting! Having a book in a big chain book store means that the man approves of your idea and your writing enough to try and sell it. You may not make any money but you will have gotten a book published and in book stores.

EBooks are the future, hands down. Of course there will be paper books for a long long time to come and people will continue to acquire a few books every year. Yet the writing is on the screen, people sit in front of their computers and read from their screens. It's also kind of fun. Just write a book make a semi-classy PDF and share the link. It cuts out so many middle men, and inevitably people that cut into your profits or people that slow your ideas down. Similarly, news gets Tweeted by The People instead of investigated, written about, edited, printed, and delivered to your door step in the morning. It's fast.

If the book I write next is a little thicker I'm going hardcover. It's just more classy.

Put some graphs, statistics and color pictures in there too. I like looking at the pictures and I think most people do as well. It would also be nice if a book I wrote was slightly longer. It does not have to be a novel but What Gen Y Wants You to Know was a scant 48 pages with large type. Most people read it in like 20-30 minutes. It probably takes that long to read a week of my normal blogging. 

By the way, if you are in Seattle and you see Dave (the photographer) tell him that he should make a coffee table photo book because you would buy it. I've seen some of his pictures and trust me it would be worth your money.

Biography Building

Long ago "resume building" kind of went out the window for me. Hundreds of hours of volunteer work, short term work, organization affiliations, club officer positions, and the like were just too small in scope to include on my resume. Even with a two page resume there is so much that is left off.

I also considered the term "character building" to describe activities that did not qualify for my resume. Unfortunately, much of my character building did not come from even mildly significant stuff I have done professionally but from recreationally like going to Pakistan or Mezcal or running Extended Lost Boys.

So the new term is "biography building". I have worked the past three weeks for my uncle at Janzen's Greenhouse a 56 year old business. A few more weeks will be all that I am here. It's too short for a resume, it's not really building any character. Everything I've learned socially (character) I've known so I haven't changed at all. I also used biography instead of autobiography because it's more general, and I'm a dreamer...

Everybody that I know has biography building experiences. Times when you are out of your preferred element, but not so far out of your element that your character changes. Things that are significant, but only significant to people who know and care about you. Biography building is doing those things you enjoy to make your life more interesting and are not profitable. Things you do with your menugas. Although those may be character building as much as they are biography building.

A relative said to me last week "I'll be curious to read your biography to know what it was like to live with two deaf people." A short preview of living with two nearly deaf people, it's loud. The other inspiration he gave me was the idea of having a biography. A way to pass of stories and information to future generations. The point being, write it down, tell someone, keep a journal, strive to pass on something that might help people in the future. I heard a line in a movie once, "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes a lot." I think that we make many mistakes similar to mistakes others have made. We can learn from others mistakes and make wise decisions in our life. If 16 and Pregnant on MTV isn't a lesson in safe sex or abstinence then I don't know what is.

So pass on your knowledge and experience. Even if it's not interesting now, in 50 or 100 years just about everything from today will seem interesting.

Book Review: Beyond the Mountain by Steve House

This is a solid mountaineering book. Steve describes the process of him going from a naive teenager to that of an experienced, one of the world's best, alpinists. He covers everything from being terrified on a 5.9 route (relatively easy) and using ancient climbing gear to getting divorced and his friends dying.

Much of the book reads like a journal or a conversation. He takes snippets of his life that were the more dramatic and puts them together in Beyond the Mountain. That is to say that much of the book can stand alone. Several of the chapters are short eulogies to alpinists died in the mountains. Others are trip reports of first ascents. Together it is an accurate description of what he gave to get to that level both on a physical and emotional level.

Beyond the Mountain struck me not for the descriptions of difficult climbing, which I promptly forgot, but for the emotional aspect. He tries several times to describe the connection between people after completing a very difficult and dangerous route. He describes the connection as one that might even be stronger than between a married couple. His descriptions reminded me of war veterans that often say they were closer to the people they served with than anyone else in their life. Veterans shared with each other in a way that people who weren't there don't understand. From my limited experience in that type of stressful situation I have an inkling of what they mean. Steve House, in my opinion, really centers his book around trying to describe those emotions.

It is a very insightful book into the life of one of the best alpinists. I will not say you need to go out and read it now. However, if you have a loved one who ventures into the mountains this is the book I would recommend most so that you might better understand your loved one. Beyond the Mountain describes the emotional effects of mountaineering, beyond the mountains.

The Value of Guidebooks

As electronic reading devices become more popular there becomes a time when you wonder if any book will be worth buying in person. I like books I like them in person more than on a computer screen but still it is cheap and easy to get a book on the computer. Now one small section of the book market is the guidebook. These are books which contain information about a location be it climbing, hiking, hotels, tourist attractions, restaurants, and other location specific information.

You see there is no economical global wireless service to search the internet or information. In fact there are places without electricity. These constraints pretty much limits devices like mobile phones and net books and without electricity even electronic readers are worthless. At that point the value of a self contained book with everything you desire to know about an area is very valuable. I recently paid $70 for three guidebooks to Colorado. Some may question that logic because probably 85% of the routes are available free on the internet. That's true but as has happened more than once people print the route information for a climb and only read the descent information once so they have an adventure descending easy terrain that was more scary than the route itself. Also in the case that you are holed up in a location without internet access you may want to climb another route or do something else. With a guidebook you will have a number of options of things to do in that area whereas otherwise you may have no idea what to do.

Additionally there are usually those few routes or activities in the book that are not online because they are obscure or infrequently done. I know that several times while my family was on vacation we would stop at places where we were the only tourists. In fact it has happened so many times it isn't even strange anymore. We have also stopped at those national monuments that get only a few thousand visitors a year and we were one third of the groups there.

So there is still value in a guidebook. Something that does not need recharging or a wireless signal. A one time purchase with no residual costs.

Read More!

I realized a while ago that I read a lot. It is not all quantifiable book reading either. In fact I do not read too many books. Maybe one or two books a month on in a busy month. I do read articles, blogs, status messages, away messages, scientific papers, emails, and a little bit of computer programming language all on a regular basis. I like reading because everything I read contributes to making me more well read. It helps me see through arguments. What I mean is that while often there is more than one way to accomplish a task there is often one way that is better than another. I should explain...

Once again I will talk about running because I do that almost every day. I am also quite well read on the subject. You want to run a 5k faster. There are several options which may all lead to a faster time. The challenge is to find the one that is right for your situation. Not the one that will make you the best 5k runner you can be but the one that fits you. In my running I have always been my own biggest competitor. I want to set a personal record as well as I can. I try not measure my progress against my friends because to some extent we are all doing different things. So if you are content to run 10 seconds faster than why go down the path of trying to run 40 seconds faster? You might become discouraged or injured. It is very counter productive. Everyone has to decide for themself the appropiate level of commitment.

For example:

1. Run hard three times a week and go swimming or biking another three days a week.
2. Run hard twice a week and easy four days a week and do no cross training or anything physical on the day off.
3. Run hard 2-5 times a week, run every day, cross train, run twice some days, and take recovery seriously.

You might be able to run better than before doing 1 or 2. Doing 1 you won't get bored as easily because you are doing a different sport every day. Doing 2 you can be part of a team and have time to do something else important. Doing 3 you will most likely get a lot better, destroy that 5k, be tired all the time, and have no social life outside of running. What is the point of all this running talk? This post is about reading! The point is that each method accomplishes the goal of getting faster. Like reading, reading status messages is like the news because people will comment on the news so you don't have to read the news. Reading emails is like having a lecture without having to sit there. The future of communication is far more diversified than it ever has been. Now pretend the message of X, Y and Z is the same. Who is to say you should read X when Y and Z will get the message across?

The point is to extract the information you want the way you want. How you are educated on some topic is almost irrelevant. There are so many sources saying the same things. In fact search engines search by words. So the more words there are in a webpage relating to what you are searching for the more relevant that webpage will probably be. While audio media is a big force it does not have the transparency that written word does.

I'm just saying: read more.

FREE eBook: What Gen Y Wants You to Know

It finally happened. I wrote and published a book! It took about nine weeks from the time I came up with the idea until it was all put together. This is very exciting for me! About the book...

I have been reading all sorts of blogs about marketing and social networking and the transition the internet is making into mainstream life. I was reading all of this stuff and they are talking about Facebook and what Generation Y is into and how we use the internet. I couldn't help but think that we are old enough they should be asking us what we want. Or maybe some of us should be telling them... So I did a quick search and our generation does not really have a spokes person. Sure we have famous people, but I think that they are a bad representation of our culture. Personally I can't relate to having millions of dollars, having cameras in my face all the time, or reading about my life in magazines. So I decided to write an eBook and give it away for free. I just want people to hear from us a little bit. I want to help older people understand younger people because the more we understand each other the more we are going to get done.

The problem with this sort of topic is that I want to be general and talk about the perspective from our generation not just my own personal views. So I enlisted the help of my little sister. We are somewhat different so I think we covered most of the bases.

Download the ebook (pdf): What Gen Y Wants You to Know

Along the way I learned more things. I plan to publish a book in 2010 and this whole process was great because I learned all about the publishing process. Specifically, the self publishing process which is a little like the wild west. It's amazing what you can do for free on the internet with very little computer skills! While researching all of these separate tangents I decided to make the book into a paperback as well. You can buy the paperback copy of What Gen Y Wants You to Know on lulu.com.

So read, enjoy, and perhaps now you might understand the teenagers and 20 somethings in your life a little better. If you are in Generation Y I hope that we got the gist of what you want.

Economic Predictions, New Graduates, and my eBook

Ugh. It does not look good. This is currently the start of my sixth year of higher education. I have been around to see many of my friends graduate and immediately start a new job. They make tons of money, buy new cars, get mortgages, have nice new clothes, pay off student loans, take vacations, and seem to go on summer break indefinitely. That was until this past year.

I have tried to find the following statistic in print but I have not. This is heard from word of mouth from a man who's daughter I believe went to Duke business school, which I heard from another person is #1 in the country. In the past the highest unemployment for a graduating class was 8%, 2009 (it could have been 2008) had 58%. The smart economists interviewed by Fortune are not enthusiastic either. Well, I should rephrase that. They are not enthusiastic about the world economy until like 2012 or so when we figure out more stuff and make better rules concerning debt.

When do we climb out of this? Six years, maybe just until 2012 according to a guy that won a Nobel Prize. My parents told me the other night that Wisconsin was not expected to climb out of recession for another six years and that might be a little exaggerated but the hotel industry in wisconsin is at least not planning to get back to 2007 levels for the next six years.

The total rate in the US for people unemployed and underemployed is 16.8%. The article by Peter Ferrara that let me in on that also said that we need incentives (think government incentives like lower taxes) for job-creating investments. How does this apply to recent graduates? Well, when I first read new jobs or job creating I thought of companies expanding but that is a traditional shallow view of the word "new". What about jobs that never existed before? Apple was one of the first companies to embrace Facebook and send my messages about student discounts and specials offers and new products. I do not know but I would guess that Apple employs several people who deal in social media marketing. People that get paid to promote and keep Apple enthusiasts interested by tweeting, blogging, or sending out Facebook messages to the fan club.

The fact is that new graduates are uniquely suited for these new jobs. For example, in engineering (my area of most experience) more people than ever are learning how to use finite element software. While any mathematical prediction has to be taken with a grain of salt due to the many assumptions the benefits are significant. Several different simulations can be completed in one day by one person whereas physical testing most likely requires several people and several days.

So my hope, and other new graduates, is that the skills we have learned that our predecessors did not will enable us to have a comfortable future. We are in a hard transition. Baby boomers planned on retiring and are having trouble adapting to the reality that many can not afford to retire. They are also having trouble adapting to the new version of Microsoft Office released every two years. Us in Generation Y are having a hard time getting a job because someone in India or China can do the same work as us for half the price or less. Generation X has had a good life, but it looks like things might not always be so easy. It turns out that plasma screens don't pay for themselves when companies give out blanket 20% pay cuts.

The future is scary because things will change. The world is going to be very different. We (people) don't like change. We want things to be comfortable and easy. I read all sorts of blogs occasionally. Notable marketing blogs are: Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and Duct Tape Marketing. What strikes me about reading some of these blogs is that these people make probably hundreds of thousands of dollars and a lot of what they say I already know. Most people my age already know. They talk about the internet and how to connect to friends. The part where they take a new step is how to use that relationship to sell something. Since no one my age is really selling anything we just use the internet to find what we want. Business people are trying to grapple with this new thing called the internet because no one really understands us yet.

So I'm writing an eBook. My sister is coauthoring it with me because we are sufficiently different to make it complete. The book is going to be about Generation Y, from the perspective of Generation Y. It's about what we want and how we think. It will be free too don't worry. I want to try and explain us better to previous generations. Most of it is pretty obvious I think but it has not really been said in print enough to get the point across. Expect it to be available sometime in October.

Book Review: Kiss or Kill by Mark Twight

I just finished reading Kiss or Kill by Mark Twight late last night. For those that don't know Twight was the most "extreme" alpine climber in the 1990s, at least from America. The book is a collection of articles he wrote from 1985 to 2000 and then he rewrote for the book as well as add an authors note to each one describing his feelings years later when he put the book together.

Many things in the book I could totally agree with. He talks about hard mountain climbing like it is a war instead of a romantic Hemingway book. However, he also talks about a lot of stuff that made me think he's crazy. He did a lot of hard free soloing when he was younger, and that's a sure way to get yourself killed. He talks about some of his friends and climbing partners that died in the mountains, around 40 total. He also seemed to harbor a lot of anger toward people that did less committing sports like sport climbing and people that were content to climb established routes instead of make their own. Personally I'm happy just to see people out there enjoying the outdoors and doing something physical.

His attitudes of going hard and working for some abstract goal most people don't understand probably resonate with most climbers. However, his attitudes of hate and disgust with people who don't do his kind of climbing was elitist and harsh. Throughout the book his negative feelings did fade somewhat, which was nice.

It's a book by a climber for climbers. If my parents read Kiss or Kill they would probably be even more terrified for my life. On the other hand I think it is a very honest portrayal of hard alpine climbing and should be read by aspiring alpinists before they decide to go do hard free soloing or any hard committing routes. Up there you have to be 100%. 99% leads to very bad things happening.

Rope Soloing instruction of the week: Continuous loop

The continuous loop method of solo climbing is not continuous but it might involve a loop depending on how you set it up. No pictures but I'll summarize it. 

1. Fix the rope at the bottom like for any typical lead soloing.

2. Tie the other end of the rope to a haul/rappel rope, and tie the end of that rope to the anchor or attach it to a haul bag.

3. Attach your leading device to the lead rope like you would to lead any pitch.

4. Stack the rope so that the rope goes from the anchor, to your harness, to the stacked rope, to the end of the haul/rappel rope.

5. Lead the pitch like any solo lead. At the beginning the weight will be very low but at the end of the pitch you will have the entire weight of the second rope on your harness as well. 

6. Rappel the haul/rappel rope to the first anchor.

7. Second the pitch however it is you second pitches. The advantage of this for free climbing is that you can set up a system for seconding similar to what is described in the Silent Partner manual using the lead rope as your main belay rope with your SP, minitraxion, whatever and the other rope you can tie into the end of leaving some weight on the lead rope so your self belay device will feed easier. Of course if you have bolts at the belay you can set up a fixed line by passing the tied together ropes through the bolts as long as both ends at tied at the above anchor. When you finish seconding the pitch pull the rope through like a rappel. 

Writing a Book about Rope Soloing

Occasionally I get frustrated with everything productive I'm trying to do and work on my rope soloing book. As of today it's 30 pages of single spaced 8.5 x 11 with no pictures. I've made some drawings and taken some pictures of anchors but I really have not spent the time to put any of them into the document. In part because I'm using Google Documents to write my guide. I've used it in the past and it is very good for large amounts of text because you can edit it anywhere there is internet (baring my iPhone) and if there are multiple contributors they can edit it and everyone else can see their edits in seconds. 

So why am I writing a book about rope soloing? The problem with rope soloing is that it is almost entirely trial and error. Jared Ogden tried to describe rope soling in his book (featured on the right) but devotes only six pages to the subject. Hans Florine ups the ante with an entire chapter devoted to the subject but it is a relatively short chapter and he talks about free soloing which really requires little in the way of technical rope skills. My Silent Partner manual has a few more pointers in it. There is also forum posts and $200 per day instruction, but besides that there is really not much else out there. So I'm writing the book. Am I qualified? Yes, I've done more rope soloing (as far as I know) than anyone else I know (that includes full time sponsored athletes and guides). Am I the most qualified? Probably not, but then I can always come out with a second edition and incorporate anything I may have missed. But seriously, I was writing about rope solo seconding hard (no free hands) free climbing traverses with and without fixed anchors earlier this week, so I'm not too worried about missing anything.