(Today we present part two of "The Difference Between Me", where I continue my brutal, online self-examination. Today fleshes out details about my education and employment history, and how it has transformed me since high school. If you found part one too self-serving for your tastes, you might as well go read the funnies or something. Y'know, because today is more of the same thing.)

Life Resume For:
Phil (aka Zab, Shuffledog)
Calgary, Canada

Objective:

My goals in life were set really early. You get a decent job, you marry a nice girl, you have a couple of kids, you pay your taxes, and you retire with a little nest egg.

So far, not a lot of luck on all that.

I do have a decent job (so far), but it isn't yet a career. I've been with a wonderful girl for the last seven years, but I haven't had the money or financial stability to take it the next step. No kids, just a bunch of animals. Two cats, two guinea pigs, one Senegal parrot (the Tiny Dinosaur), one albino Pac Man frog and whole tank of fish. Plus Mamma piggy and her three little babies who we still haven't returned to the store. As for taxes, I think we're up to date. Nest egg? Hah! Hah hah hah!

That doesn't mean my goals have changed that greatly. I still want a sense of financial security, and am still looking forward to making Lisa my wife. Of course, the whole career thing has changed around on me. On everyone I guess.

Last year my career counselor reinforced the common thinking of the day: There are no employees any more - just contractors. Your loyalty is no longer to the company you work for, but to yourself as an independent firm. You should expect to move from company to company, and the only one you can count on to provide benefits and security is you.

I certainly shouldn't count on any corporate pension plan.

As the master of your own destiny, a key thing everyone should do is create a priority list for yourselves. A 'What do you really want' list. Go ahead and be as shallow as you need to be, because this list is all the things you require to be happy.

I've already got a lot of the things on my list. Someone I love, a wonderful family, friends I can rely on. There is always food on the table, and a warm place to sleep. In a lot of ways, my life is better than anything I could possibly ask for, in the ways that matter most.

I've had to remind myself of that a lot in the last year. I could be living on the street. I could be utterly alone, without loved ones to stand by me. I could be wondering where my next meal is coming from.

But I'm not.

Education:

I graduated high school with honors at the end of the eighties, and received the much coveted (and widely given) Rutherford Scholarship for high marks. It was $1,500 towards my secondary education. Pretty good start.

Out of high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself. I knew I wanted to go to university, but I suspect that was more of a status thing. All the smart kids from school did it, so I had to go along as well. Damned if knew what I wanted to do when I got there.

My final decision (at the time) was to try to get into the Pharmacy program. This was a career that appealed to what I thought I wanted at the time. Security, a decent wage, and a job that helped people. I used to work for a local pharmacy, so I had some idea of what the job entailed. I pretty much ignored the downside, which included highly repetitive tasks all day long, a lot of sick people, the need to continually study to keep up on advances... Plus the complete lack of any mystique or, to be frank, coolness in the job. Fonzie would never have been a pharmacist.

Anyway. I went off to university. The pharmacy program was not being offered at the local university, but credits could be transferred from here to Edmonton. Of course, the class schedules for the prerequisites differed quite a bit, and what would have taken me a year in Edmonton would take two years here in Calgary. It's okay. I filled in my time with nearly every science course that would let me in.

University was a hoot. The people were smart and active, students debated and discussed things in classes, and you actually got to mix dangerous chemicals together. I spent hours hanging out in the student building or on the quad listening to protestors and activists on their soapboxes, busy changing the world for my entertainment value.

I did three years at the University of Calgary, getting my various prerequisites and options. It should have only been the aforementioned two years, but I needed better than a D- in calculus.

In the end, I submitted my application to the University of Alberta, but I wasn't accepted. Apparently, I was 0.01 points off of the 3.35 GPA they required for entry. Damn calculus.

For the best really. I took a year off, working as a construction inspector until the end of the season in November (my summer job for five years was to sit in a truck and watch other people work), and worked for the pharmacy until the season started up again the next summer.

That winter I came up with a new plan. I liked to write, see? I didn't really need an English degree to write stories or novels, so I figured I should get a job that allows me to write. I could learn more about the craft and do my own personal work on the side. So I chose to take the journalism diploma program at a local college.

College was also a hoot. In fact, I enjoyed my two years at college a lot more than I did university. I don't know what it is like in the States, but here in Canada colleges usually have less people per class, more hands-on attention from instructors, et cetera. On the other hand, until recently colleges didn't offer degree programs, and even now you still have to go to a university to get a 'higher' degree like medicine or law.

The smaller classes really appealed to me, and I like getting my hands dirty, rather than doing abstract research. Plus the people I was working with were creative - something not often found in the back row of an Organic Chemistry lecture.

I discovered one unfortunate fact about my chosen career path - the lives of journalists suck.

Bad hours, bad pay, no respect. There is no fame involved unless you become a columnist like our dear friend Ebert, but taking that step seems to be more based on luck and ass-kissing than skill or worth.

It was around this time that my roommate, Joel, introduced me to a little thing called the 'World Wide Web'. I had been online for years, frequenting local BBS's, but had no experience with the burgeoning Internet. Within a couple weeks, I had my own little website.

Employment Record:

I think I was one of only two people in my classes who had any real Internet knowledge. They certainly didn't teach anything about it then (now it's a hefty part of the curriculum). When it came time to try to focus my plans, I decided I wanted to go online. Online journalism! Wave of the future!

My first job out of college was with a company called UWannaWhat Intermedia. Long time readers and friends will have heard of this particular fiasco before.

We were Calgary's first big portal site. We were also Calgary's first big dot-com disaster. We had a business plan based on advertisement and directory placement - the same plans that spelled the death for most of our ilk. What we offered was a comprehensive directory of bars, clubs, events, restaurants and festivals tied in with original reviews, previews, sports and more. I started out as their HTML guru and main copywriter, but after a year I became the editor. The editorial team originally consisted of the editor, three freelance writers, and myself. At the end it was me and the president of the company. A trend that should have warned me.

Of course, I probably should have known right at the beginning, when my very first paycheck bounced. At the same time that they were shelling out $40,000 for a parade float. I got my money within a day, but I still shoulda run for it.

See, this was my very first adult job. I had no idea of what to expect, what my rights were, what was a good idea and what was complete garbage. The president was a great salesman, and sold us all on a get-rich-quick business plan which was supposed to have us all wealthy in two years. Hey, it looked like everyone was doing it, and we wanted our piece of the big money pie.

I can't blame the president too much. He dumped over a million of his own money into the company, and struggled to keep it open even after we had all walked out and he had been evicted from his offices. Sure, he was an idiot, but you can't fault his persistence.

See the problem really was that Calgary was and still is an oil and gas town. You ask an investor for money and he says, "Where are you going to drill?"

Anyway.

Within a week I got a new job with the Cool Independent ISP Inc. (now a fully-owned subsidiary of Amalgamated WeOwnEverything Corp.) as their Webmaster.

Webmaster. Yet another short-lived term of the dot-com boom. Depending on whom you asked it meant anything from 'lead Internet application programmer' to 'web marketing strategist'. In this case it meant web content editing and design. Which I could do. And did.

I think I was at the Cool ISP for two and a half years altogether. I was earning a decent salary, and was doing work that was occasionally challenging and fulfilling.

Primary problem with the company: technical people were running it. Such a state is all fine and good when it's three people working from someone's garage, but tends to fall apart once you have a staff of a hundred people.

Don't get me wrong. The product was just fine. The staff, on the other hand, were under paid, under appreciated, generally sullen and basically unhappy. No benefits, pitiful wages, some truly horrifying managers. (One moron was fond of actually sneering at customers when they came to him to complain. Not just a sullen look of derision, but and active, angry snarl.)

I worked directly under the president of the company, who was well known for slamming doors and screaming obscenities at anyone who looked at him sideways. He was also fond of handing out impossible tasks and getting violently angry when they were not completed within the hour. He was backed up by his office manager, who would retreat crying to her office if any of her pet projects were criticized.

It was a fun place to work.

I might still be there if it hadn't been for one of the sales guys, who got a job working as the Online Director for a local paper, and brought me onboard a few months later. At the Online Edition, I handled most HTML duties, as well a content editing, photo manipulation and design. I even wrote a couple articles, something I hadn't been able to do since UWannaWhat.

Working for the newspaper was great. A ton of free movies, neat people, and excellent management (at our local level anyway). Everyone was working for the same product, sharing ideas and resources and actually helping each other out. I was making a great wage too!

Alas, that heaven was not to be. The newspaper was sold, and within six months, our department was gutted completely. I was on the street again.

I'm not going to rehash the months after that, as it's amply covered in the archives. It's not that much to read either, as I spent most of my eight months of unemployment on hiatus from the journal.

Skills:

All these jobs have left me with a diverse and unique set of skills. Unique enough that I sort of fit in a number of different jobs and positions, but not exactly into any of them. Which suits my new job at the Sporting Goods Company, as I wear at least three different hats every day.

I'm a writer and an editor. I'm trained in layouts, both paper and web. I can create custom graphics or edit existing ones (I put a coworker on the cover of GQ once). I can muck with JavaScript and Cold Fusion. I know bits about word processors and database programs. I can make a Flash animation, and proofread tiny lines of HTML code. I can teach courses and review movies. I can add polish and flair to a technical treatise or research obscure French punctuation. I'm also a fair typist.

I LIKE variety. Counting pills all day would have had me pulling out my hair in great big nasty chunks. I like the fact that every day is a different task, a new page to create. It's not terribly stable, but it's always interesting.

References:

Available upon request.

On Enterprise: At last! An all-Phlox episode. Phlox is so cool.

Shuffledog's Slacking at the Office Tip #6: Do some actual work sometimes. In fact, suddenly become a complete whiz-bang-gung-ho-workaholic-freak for a day. Because 1) They will catch on to you if you never get anything accomplished, and 2) They will generally remember the day you did an amazing amount of work and assume that is what you normally are like. So long as you haven't been caught sleeping on your keyboard previously. Then all bets are off.

One Year Ago Today Minus Two Days: Low system resources - where I talk about being very tired and worried about my job.

Mom Rating: 3.5 out of 5. Mom thinks the mock resume idea is clever, but this whole thing is getting a bit old already.

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Take me home, big fella