I was out in my kitchen today, and I got to looking around.  A couple of things occurred to me.  One, I need to dust.  Two, my bulletin board says something about me in a very subtle way.

I’ve always had a cork board for as long as I can remember.  Even as a little kid, my brother and I had cork boards in our room to display whatever it was that took our fancy.  His was always very neat and tidy, with just the bare amount of things, like a calendar and some postcards.  Everything was all lined up and square, and placed with the utmost care and consideration of space and shape.

Mine was a haphazard mish-mash of this and that, and consisted mainly of anything that could be run through with a thumb tack.  It had actual layers, and wasn’t in the least bit tidy at all.  I actually remember it falling off the wall from the weight of the stuff pinned to it.  It was a great source of pride, and foremost, it really defined me and my personality in many ways.

Before I moved to Utah, the adult version of my cork board resembled my childhood version quite consistently.  Instead of kid-like things though, there were more grown-up versions of life displayed there.  Even still, it was layered and messy and very impractical for it’s actual purpose, which is organization.  When I decided to move though, I chucked it in the trash along with just about everything else.  I’m sure I lost some memories, but efficiency was the rule then.

When I got here, I promptly started up a new one.  Weirdly though, over the course of three years, it hasn’t accumulated much of anything.  It’s like a little part of me was left behind when I moved, and something that’s just always been around suddenly isn’t so important.  A lot of me isn’t there anymore.  I still use it, and I still use it for anything but what it’s intended purpose is, but I don’t pin much up there anymore.  I guess I keep my memories in my head now, for the most part.

So I want to do a little social experiment.  I’d like my readers to look at the picture I’ve posted of my bulletin board, and leave me a comment saying what it tells you about me.  There’s probably some insight there somewhere, but I believe there’s quite a bit that’s not there.  Even so, I’d be interested in seeing what people can gleam about me and my personality just from a picture of a personal object.  It could be fun.

After watching (on my computer) the first two episodes of season three of Big Love, I officially declare it to be the Best Show on TV.  Seasons one and two were the very pinnacle of television awesomeness, and season three is shaping up to be even better.  How can anyone not love this show?

That is all.

My hard drive crashed last Friday.  Actually, one of my hard drives, as I should probably be more specific.  I actually have five connected to this very computer as I write this, and a one-gig pen drive and a four-gig pen drive lie in wait as well.  I guess you could say I’m prepared.

The drive that crashed was my “main” drive, as it were.  The boot drive containing Windows and pretty much all of my files.  Naturally, you’d think with the abundance of hard drive space I have, I’d back up all those important files and applications on a regular basis.  But, you see, that’s where you’d be wrong.

My main drive is (was) a 160 gig SATA drive.  That was backed up by a 160 gig external USB drive, a 320 gig external USB drive, and another 80 gig USB external.  The 160 external is used for general back up stuff, namely music or applications that I download… stuff like that.  The 320 is for my photography and anything super-important.  The other 80 gig is just a leftover from an old computer, and is currently not being used at all.  Of course the drive that crashed was the main drive, and it currently held non-backed up important stuff, like my 2008 W2, my resume, a few project files for something I’m working on, and some wedding photographs that I’m photoshopping for a friend.  All of these things were more or less irreplaceable, and of course, I’d neglected to save them elsewhere in case of just such a thing.

My motherboard has SATA connections, and booting from an external was out of the question, so the situation necessitated an emergency trip to the store, where the cheapest SATA drive I could find was a 500 gig.  I bought it and then proceeded to spend two entire days reinstalling Windows, downloading all of the service packs, upgrading all of the drivers, and trying hard to remember all of my various passwords and such (still can’t get into my Bank of America account.)  It’s a massive undertaking, let me assure you.  It doesn’t help that my motherboard is finicky and it took about 5 or 6 tries to get it to recognize the new drive in the first place.  Such a headache and a nightmare and I don’t want to repeat it again anytime soon.

Finally, everything is back up and running smoothly.  One good thing about fresh installs is that the operating system is all fast and shiny, and runs great, without all the gunk and crap that Windows seems to collect after a time.  It’s almost like having a new computer.

Oh, and after two days in the freezer, I was able to connect the crashed hard drive and pull off all my files, so I didn’t really lose anything important.  Right now, it’s behaving well enough that I left it connected as a slave.  I may get to keep it as long as it doesn’t act up.

So let this be a lesson to everyone.  Back up your files!  I’ve now begun a program of regular back-ups, virus checks, and restore point settings so this doesn’t happen to me again.  I really don’t think I could handle another round of “was this my password?… Nope.”  “Was this it?… Nope.”  “How about this?…”  Nope… (Etc.)

I didn’t finish college.

There’s really no good reason for this.  Not one that I can think of, at least.  I did go to college, and in fact I got accepted into every college I applied to when I was 17.  Now, that was based largely on the fact that I played Viola, and less on my academics, but still, I graduated high school with a GPA around 3, which was respectable since I failed two math courses.  If not for that, I’d have made Cum Laude (I did the math.)  For the record, math still sucks and I hate it with a passion.

No, I didn’t finish for a couple of reasons.  Money was number one.  I funded my college education myself.  I didn’t get a single loan or grant, nor did my parents help in any way.  I got a job and went to college at the same time.  After a time, I simply ran out of money.  The bright side to that is that I have no loans to pay back.  I remain debt-free.

Two, I was young and impulsive.  There were too many distractions, like girls and work and girls and drinking beer with friends, going out (sometimes with girls), and generally being a kid, even though I was technically an adult.  I spent too much time in class goofing off.  I carried my “never do homework” policy over from high school, and I just pretty much dropped the ball.  I didn’t take it seriously enough.

Now that I’m old I realize what a huge mistake this was.  I’ve always said, and still maintain, that if there’s one regret I have in life, and if I could go back and redo one thing, I’d finish college.  Education is more important than just about everything else, and if you don’t take advantage of it, you find yourself in your late 30’s with no job and no degree trying to earn respect you apparently don’t deserve.  It’s very humbling.

I recently updated my resume.  I pretty much cried through the whole process, and I felt humiliated by the pathetic-ness of my professional life spelled out before me in black & white.  My resume is a sad, sad thing to see.  It lists years and years of actual work experience, almost all in leadership and management positions, but no real education, which probably invalidates the entire thing to hiring managers and HR people.  It’s embarrassing.

What makes is worse is that I see college-educated people all around me every day.  I see these people, with their fancy degrees and their six-figure salaries, and note that they lack even the most basic skills, like spelling words correctly and using proper grammar when they write.  They can’t articulate at all.  They are sloppy and lazy and over-confident.  I see examples of artwork by “professionals” that I know I can outdo easily.  These are people that paid tens of thousands of dollars for an education that can barely write their own names legibly, or create something truly unique that isn’t tainted by an over-reliance on forms and traditions.  It sickens me that my experience and native ability trumps their education almost every time, but if it came down to me and some guy with a degree for a job, guess who likely wins?

I’m woefully undereducated, but still pretty damn smart.  My close friends can attest to that.  There is nothing I’ve not excelled at when I take interest in it and put my mind to it.  I wish society could look at people for what they can do, and what they are, instead of what they didn’t do, and what they didn’t finish in the past.

I didn’t finish college.  Some mistakes you just can’t fix.