Career management--something I definitely don't have figured out.

The career management thing last night managed to be inspiring and very intimidating all at once. The coolest bit (from a nerd perspective) was that I got to see a Roomba in action, because one of the speakers was one of the founders of iRobot and she brought one along. It was so cute! It went in circles, bumped into chairs, ate a napkin and shredded it all over the floor, and generally did its thing.

Of the three speakers, one was her, one was a very Dale-Carnegie-influenced network-savvy guy who thought the only way to be really successful is to start lots of companies with other MIT grads (thus centering your career around people), and one was a nutrition science guy who's basically just worked at a lot of places and wanted to remind us that things change all the time. (Be Prepared.) I guess I found the business-starting guy most convincing, no doubt partly because he's taken public speaking courses... and is a multimillionaire. :b I have to admit that sounds pretty good. All the same, I know that starting companies doesn't work out for everyone. And also, I still don't have any good ideas that don't seem to be taken, and my college friends all went in different directions. (Stealing some of my friends from my current job, now, that might work better.) Maybe my best bet is to keep thinking about robotics and maybe consulting companies, and also big cool companies in which career advancement within the company might be possible, for next year. Oh yeah, and take that damn Dale Carnegie course. I notice that one just started in Boston on April 14... I keep missing them.

A brand new experience for me...

The item I'm selling on ebay has actually bid up to almost double its starting price... and there's still 1 hr 5 mins left to go.

ENOUGH!!! I have had... exactly... enough.

So, my tae kwon do teacher had us all do our form today. (Today was the last day to sign up for the currently happenin' test, btw, but I wasn't really hoping too much after the way things have been going, so that's incidental). I'm positive that I did the form better than my friend L, who's testing, but he really wants me to work on my basic moves. So, he made fun of my punches, and when I asked for clarification he said I should just go do them in front of the mirror. I told him that I had done that and also worked on them with J, a black belt student, and I would really like to know what's still wrong. He more or less just shook his head and went on to the next group. And I went over to the mirror and didn't see anything wrong.

All I have to say is what the fucking fuck!!!??? This person is supposed to be a TEACHER, which means that when a student has a correctible problem you TELL THEM WHAT IT IS and you TEACH them. Teachers are SUPPOSED TO FUCKING TEACH! I came so close to going ballistic in there, which is a) really not the right thing to do ettiquette-wise and b) not physically such a hot idea when you are in fact a green belt and dreaming of smacking a good one to a sixth degree black belt. Sigh. I am still so livid though. I'm not a quitter but I'll be damned if I'm going to stick around for endless months of this shit. I'm going to try a couple of things. I'm going to try going to the Boston school where the real head honcho (8th degree black) teaches--he's a bit more patient--and I'm going to try getting help individually from a couple of other teachers. And I'm going to do what they say. But I'm giving them two months, or two testing sessions anyway. If I don' t get my blue stripe in that time frame, I'm outta there, because at that point it will be the teachers and not me who aren' t doing their thing. Oh, and if I do get it I'm still going to freeze my membership for a month, just to get this SHIT out of my HEAD. I have a little head and it's just about full now.