geek in heels

I’m sorry about the lack of updates. This past weekend I took a trip to the unknown wilderness known as the Pennsylvania Poconos (with…*gasp* no internet access!) for a mini-reunion with some old friends. I returned Monday feeling absolutely shiesty…and I’ve been bed-ridden ever since. But alas, here they are, my favorite articles for the past week:

1. Guitar Hero World Tour Debuted, Engadget. The full-band version of Guitar Hero looks a lot like Rock Star, but I’m crossing my fingers that Activision put a bit more finesse to it. The best part of this intro video has to be the people involved: Paul Abdul judges, while Tony Hawk and Brody Jenner play the two guitar parts.
   
   
2. Discovery Channel Slideshow of a Young Gates, Jobs, Woz, End User. Pretty cool if you’re into computing history like me (and actually liked the TNT movie Pirates of Silicon Valley).
   
   
3. Mashed Frontier Airline Safety Rules, Boing Boing. I actually LOLed while going through this list.
   
   
4. Nokia E71 Review, Boy Genius Report. I still have a fondness for Nokia phones…after all, who can forget the 3200 and 6100 series, the first cellular phone for many people of my generation? BGR declares the E71 “the best phone Nokia has made to date.” Go read the review and drool over the pictures and specs as I have.
   
   
5. Starting Salaries but New York Tastes, NYTimes. An homage to the young generation of New Yorkers whose salaries are below the six-figure mark. Yep, I too can be living the high life if I didn’t live in the NYC region.
   
   
6. The Original Indiana Jones, Neatorama. Have you seen the new Indy flick yet? It’s entertaining, but not too great. Now read about the inspiration for the character - a Nazi archaeologist!
   
   
7. Apple Receives 188 Mysterious Cargo Containers: 3G iPhones, New MacBooks or the Finest Colombian Snow? Gizmodo. I’m pretty sure they’re the new iPhones, to be debuted at WWDC. What do you think?
   
   
8. MacHEADS: The Movie Interview, Gizmodo. I’m definitely going to watch this movie. It reminds me of my favorite coffee table book, The Cult of Mac, which I purchased shortly after buying my first Apple computer.
   
   
9. The Secret History of Star Wars, Slashdot. I actually downloaded this book in PDF format and started reading it. Some of it was not surprising; after all, I had written a 20-page paper on Star Wars and the impact it had on American culture. Nonetheless, it’s a must-read for any Star Wars fans.
   
   
10. He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died, Mental Floss Blog. I was reminded of Project 365, which I started a few years ago and eventually stopped. Some of the photos are a bit eerie and creepy, but still interesting and captivating.

Part 1: The world doesn’t owe you anything.
Part 2: It’s never too late.
Part 3: Make the best of it.
Part 4: Be ballsy.

5. Sometimes, it really is pure luck.

When I first started job-hunting, I didn’t have much going for me. My grades weren’t good, I had little experience, and I had no clue what I wanted to do for a living.

I sent out my resume to hundreds of companies and never heard a peep.

Soon, the bank of mom and dad threatened to cut me off. “Get a job or move back home.”

I decided to try temping while still job-hunting, just so I can prove to the parents units that I wasn’t lying on the couch watching TV all day.

I contacted a temp agency, and what happened next was one of the luckiest, most fortunate events of my life.

The first job the temp agency offered me was to work as the personal assistant to the CEO of a large, multinational company (you probably heard of it if I told you). The gig would last two weeks - was I up for it?

Immediately the image of the nightmare boss from The Devil Wears Prada popped into my head. However, I quickly pushed my overactive imagination aside to accept the offer.

A couple of days before my two weeks was up, the CEO called me into a meeting he was having with the VPs. He then said to them, “This is Jenny. She’s a good worker and she needs a job. One of you should give her a job.”

The rest, as they say, was history. I had landed my first full-time job out of school.

I’ve said before that you should take advantage of every opportunity, no matter how small, life throws at you. I’ve preached that you need to work hard to be successful.

But sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to make it.

Or you may be living the good life and an act of God comes to take it all away.

We should always keep trying. But we also need to realize that there are some things we cannot control. And we have to roll with it.

I hope you enjoyed this series! If you have any ideas for more, please let me know!

Part 1: The world doesn’t owe you anything.
Part 2: It’s never too late.
Part 3: Make the best of it.

4. Be ballsy.

I have mentioned before that I am a textbook ISFP. I have terrible stagefright and I shy away from being the center of attention. I’m great at giving others a lending hand and making suggestions, but I’m horrible when it comes to helping myself or taking my own advice.

In short, I’m a terrible at selling and promoting myself.

Needless to say, I hate job interviews.

Now I like to think of myself as a fairly polite person with decent manners and a pleasant (albeit somewhat reserved) personality. However, that doesn’t take you very far in the cutthroat world of business.

I actually never interviewed for my first job - I obtained the position through a stroke of luck. (I will write about this in the next and final part of the series.) So the thought of meeting new people and sitting through interview after interview not only terrified me, it was a fairly new experience in itself.

After a few failed attempts I was starting to lose hope. I was getting better, sure, but it still wasn’t good enough for someone to hire me.

Then, one day I had another chance encounter with lady luck. As I waited in line to pay at a grocery store, my eyes scanned the usual titles that lined the check-out counters. My gaze stopped at a small book that read, “How to Get the Job You Want.” It wasn’t a best seller. The cover wasn’t particularly attractive. In fact, it was one of those generic, small, self-help books that end up gathering dust wherever they are sold.

However, I had time. The line was still long. I flipped through the pages.

I don’t remember exactly what the book said, but the biggest lesson I learned in the 3 minutes of scanning the book was to be ballsy. Act like you have a 10-inch cock. Trust that they need you more than you need them, and make them believe this too.

I figured, “why not?” and decided to try this method at my next interview.

I walked into the room like I owned the place. I asked more questions than they asked me. I acted like I was interviewing them for a place in my life, because when you think about it, this is precisely what should happen at an interview.

At times I was certain that I made the interviewer a bit nervous from my direct approach. He cleared his throat and loosened his tie several times as my voice became stronger and clearer.

I wasn’t afraid to speak my mind. I wasn’t afraid to show excitement either, with wild hand gestures and a raised voice. When the hiring manager cautioned that the job at times can become very tedious as every detail need to be triple-checked in their dozens of printed material, I exclaimed, “Are you kidding? I get off on that stuff!”

To be honest I thought I had lost him there. I almost clapped my hand over my mouth and prepared to apologize. But he loved it. He ate it all up. And when he emailed me to schedule a second interview, he mentioned that my “enthusiasm for the job clearly presented itself” during the course of the interview.

I was determined to end my second interview with a bang. When he asked if I had any further questions, I leaned forward, looked directly into his eyes, and said, “I’m perfect for this position and you know it. I’m not looking for a job…I’m looking for a career. And this is it for me.”

I had to rehearse this in my head many times. This was so uncharacteristic of me! I was so out of my element and so far from my comfort zone that my hands shook for the remainder of the day.

But it worked. After I said this to him he paused and looked at me calmly. “I hope to see you again,” he said. And I knew I had it in the bag.

The next day, I received a call from the company’s head of HR with the official offer. They even offered me more money than I had asked for.

I’m not sure where I mustered up the courage to be a self-confident, strong and powerful person for those few hours of my life. All I knew was that I needed to step out of my comfort zone if I were to prove to anyone that they needed to hire me.

The final part of the series will be 5. Sometimes, it really is pure luck.

It’s reassuring to see that my readers like this Wednesday feature. Thanks for the emails and comments!

1. Air Jordan is Cannes Bound, Perez Hilton. Spike Lee is directing a documentary about Michael Jordan! I am truly, genuinely excited about this and I can’t wait to see it (hopefully) next year.
   
   
2. Death of Society, Eater. Guilty as charged. I too, take pictures of food at restaurants and blogging about the experience the next day.
   
   
3. To Beat Google, Beat Google to the Mobile Web, ReadWriteWeb. I love my LG Voyager, but I don’t particularly like surfing the web on a cell phone (unless that phone had a 10″+ screen). However, the use of mobile surfing is growing exponentially and the writer of this article does a good job of pointing out that Google does not (yet?) have a stronghold in the mobile web market.
   
   
4. Bubble Alert: Facebook Traffic Declines 10% in April, Mashable. I noticed that I’ve been using Facebook less and less these days…what about you?
   
   
5. Jonathan Ive: Apple’s Top Designer Explains Design, Gizmodo. A must-read for anyone interested in product design, engineering, or both.
   
   
6. 10 Free Web-Based Alternatives to Photoshop, LifeClever. I’m a total Photoshop whore, so whenever I’m using a computer sans Photoshop I feel empty inside. None of these programs can ever replace Photoshop (at least for me) but they come close.
   
   
7. 10 Ways to Pimp Your Blog, Stepcase Lifehack. Some great advice for bloggers. Funny how the first advice is to UNpimp your blog.
   
   
8. The “Asian Fit” Sunglasses, That Mofo Said What?!?!?! My friend forwarded me this link and I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or become really angry and write a heated letter/email to Oakley. What do you think? Is this racist? (FYI, the person who told me about this also said he’s thinking of buying a few pairs now because when Oakley stops making these due to the inevitable lawsuit, he can sell them on eBay for a sweet profit.)
   
   
9. Kama Sutra for IT People, Computer Fetishists, Gizmodo. I sometimes want to do this to my MacBook Pro…
   
   
10. “Goodbye Toby”, The Office Fan Site. The season finale of The Office was one of the best episodes in the show’s history. Here is the entire episode, just in case you missed it.

As a side note, does anyone else use Twitter? I joined way back when and I only started using it again regularly recently. You may have noticed that I added a Twitter Stream to my sidebar, displaying my latest 5 Twits, and I’ve also installed a plug-in that automatically sends an update to my Twitter account whenever I post a new entry on this blog.

*Sigh*…I love the power of technology.

Part 1: The world doesn’t owe you anything.
Part 2: It’s never too late.

3. Make the best of it.

I hated my first job.

In hindsight, it wasn’t a total waste. I gained valuable experience, learned the importance of office politics, and the salary wasn’t bad at all for an entry-level position.

However, I couldn’t ignore the fact that I was miserable. I hated the numbers-driven strategy and the mad scramble at the end of every fiscal quarter to meet the quota. I hated the work I did, which was providing administrative and strategic support for my sales group.

I knew I was capable of more.

During my one-year tenure at this company, I befriended a man in the marketing department. To be more specific, he was a designer within the marketing department. And the more I talked to him and learned what he did, the more I knew this was what I wanted to do.

In a ballsy move very uncharacteristic of my usually shy self, I arranged a meeting with the VP of Marketing and discussed my future with the company. “This is what I want in my career and I know I can do this,” I emphasized. “I want to work for you.”

Unfortunately, her staff was full and she didn’t have room in her budget for a new employee. However, she offered to talk to my supervisor on my behalf.

A week later, the VP of my department called me into her office.

To be honest I was scared shitless. I had never expressed interest in moving to another department. Would she think I was going behind her back?

This wasn’t the case at all. She told me that she believed I was a great worker and praised me on the many achievements I had accomplished in the past year. She didn’t want to lose me and so offered additional projects which were more in line with my interests.

I gladly accepted the new responsibilities that she had created specifically for me, but I also knew deep inside that I didn’t want to stay with this company. In addition, I wanted to move back home to New York (I was in Baltimore at the time).

What I really wanted to do was design work and/or marketing but I realized I had a disadvantage for not having had any formal training.

So in my spare time, I taught myself CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. I delved deeper into Flash and the Adobe Creative Suite applications.

I never never taken any marketing classes at school so I bought some books and read up on the subject.

I took on freelance work whenever possible, even volunteering my services for free, just for the experience and to build my portfolio.

A few months later, when the lease on my apartment was about to end, I decided to move back up to NY and started looking for work in my newly desired field.

And I got it.

Currently, I work in marketing and have a wide variety of responsibilities which keep me mentally and creatively stimulated. I write copy and design the material on which it is displayed (letterheads, envelopes, pamphlets, brochures, posters, websites, gifts, etc). I organize mass mailing campaigns that reach almost 100,000 people all over the world. I design ads that are displayed in some of the most respected journals and magazines in the industry.

But most importantly, I work in a field I love (IT) and I no longer dread going to work every morning.

I feel that anyone who feels they are stuck in an unfavorable position can learn from this experience.

First, I decided what I wanted. (By talking to the man who worked in the marketing department and finding out all I could about the position and the field)

Then I went for it. (By talking to the VP of Marketing)

And since I didn’t get exactly what I wanted, I decided to turn the odds in my favor. (By accepting additional projects, training myself, taking on extra work in my spare time)

I retried, and I got it.

It may seem cliché, but when life doesn’t turn out the way you want, you have to make the best of it by taking advantage of every little opportunity.

Stay tuned for the next installment in this series: 4. Be ballsy.