The high cost of living (in a house)

This week's life improvement project has been working with a mortgage broker to get a pre-approval letter so we can start house hunting in earnest.  We've finished the initial application process, and we're waiting for the great and powerful Underwriters to send word to us through the kind and benevolent Mortgage Broker.

It's been a fascinating experience, and I've learned a huge amount about the process. For instance, I always thought that the biggest obstacle to home ownership was down-payment funds, or possibly your credit score.  It turns out that I was wrong entirely.

Staying on topic

One of the primary things I started this blog to chronicle was my attempt at getting some IT certifications, starting with the CompTIA A+, and shifting my career away from a dead end job at a casino/hotel, and into somewhere that I can feel like I do something useful.

I mentioned in my last post that I was only about 10 days away from taking my first certification exam, but my schedule at my lovely dead end job got in the way, so I pushed my test appointment back one more week. It seemed like a bad idea to work 6 days straight, have only 1 day off, and then take the test in the morning before work.

Real life gets in the way sometimes.

Over the years, I've developed a few phrases and quirks.  Things that I'll say, for lack of a better term, as catch phrases.  It's cheesy, I know, but it's not something I've ever done deliberately.  They just pop into my head, and then pop out of my mouth.  Think of it as cliché turrettes.  Some of them I've ripped off from books or movies, some I came up with on my own, and quite a few others, I couldn't honestly tell you where, when, or how they came about.

Bad habbits

I started smoking cigars when I was 15 years old.

Mostly macanudos, but the occasional natural as well.  When I was 19 or so, I also started smoking pipe tobacco (apparently, at 5'5" and overweight I didn't look enough like a hobbit)  The funny part was that the first time I was ever carded I was 23 years old....

It's time to study.

The day after my wife and I got home from our anniversary, my study materials for the Comptia A+ certification exam were delivered by FedEx. (hence the lack of make-up post) They actually tried to deliver them the day we arrived, but as usual, they tried to deliver when nobody was home so I just got a 'sorry we missed you' slip.  I'll skip that particular rant for now...

In any case, I've spent much of my free time since then studying for the Comptia A+, and I've come to a number of conclusions.

Yes, it is your fault.

I used to have a roommate who had just split with the woman he'd been shacking up with. (there's that term again)  At the time, I was just starting to pull myself up out of divorce.  

As you can imagine, we weren't exactly the dynamic duo.  The only time the townhouse got cleaned properly was when one of us had a date; and to be perfectly honest, that didn't happen much.

Get your butt to work.

People need to get their butts to work.

I'm not talking about job hunting here, although that's a great topic.  What I'm talking about is something a lot more basic.

When you have a job, go to your job.  Go there every day.  Go there on time or early.  Actually work while you're there.  You'd think that such a statement would be obvious; but you'd be wrong.

Making people change.

Everyone knows that you can't make a person change.  You can support people.  Provide inspiration and motivation.  You can set an example and encourage people to follow your lead; but at the end of the day, each person has to do their own heavy lifting. (some of use more than others)

Growing up doesn't happen every day.

Growing up can't happen every day, and unfortunately, neither can a blog about it.

If you're really working on getting your life moving in the right direction, you have to spend a lot of time and energy focusing on that, and limit the time you spend on hobbies.  To that end, Growing Up After 30 will be moving to a weekly release.  Starting June 3rd, you should see a new blog every Monday, so keep checking back.

For those of you who don't want to miss a post, there are some handy subscription options on the right side of the page.  You can follow me on Google+, subscribe using several popular online news aggregaters, or just subscribe to be notified by email when a new post lands.

I may occasionally let a nugget of wisdom slip out in between, but a steady release schedule should work well for all.

How to get better mileage and more performance.

A strange thing started happening on my commute to work this week.

Without so much as lifting the hood, my little red corolla was suddenly getting better gas mileage.  It even seemed to have better performance.  I was passing Porches and careening past Cadillacs.

The secret is actually pretty simple.

I wasn't towing a car loan anymore.

Talking to Professionals

When I first decided I wanted to move to an IT career, one of the things I did was to talk to IT professionals that I know in my area about my ideas, and whether or not I was heading in the right direction.  I think this is a great way to go, and can really help you to figure out the most reasonable path to reaching your career goals.

Pretty quickly, I figured out that around here, lot's of experience working around/with/on computers in non-IT jobs, combined with a few useful certifications, was a reasonable place to start.  It won't get you into a network engineer or IT manager position, but it will get your foot in the door with an entry level position.

I think that regardless of what you're trying to accomplish in your life, talking to people who are farther down the road than you can be helpful.

Make a plan, and make it loose.

Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "In preparing for battle i have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."


I've mentioned plans quite a bit lately.  My own plans, what makes a reasonable plan, and so on.  Today, I'd like to dig a little deeper into that subject.

Fat will be trimmed, again.

So, I used to be really fat.

5'5" and 283 pounds.  (That's 165cm and 128kg for anyone living in any country in the world except this one)  Like a lot of less than wonderful things in our lives, it snuck up on me slowly.  I didn't wake up one morning, and suddenly find that I was enormous.  It took years.

Maybe read a book once in a while.

I have a filthy horrible secret....



I enjoy reading self-help books.

Really, I feel better now.

In all seriousness, there are some great self-help books out there.  Even the not-so great ones can give you interesting perspective if you can stand to wade through the psychobabble.  The late John Wooden is remembered in small part for saying that, "Five years from now, you're the same person except for the people you've met and the books you've read."

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I think we've probably all heard the old joke that goes - Why are people always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up?

They're looking for ideas.


The very fact that we can laugh at, and relate to, such a joke tells me there are a lot of us who should have grown up a long time ago; who are still looking for what we want to be when we Grow Up™.

A little success makes everything else suck.

Stop and think about the last time you had a win that was centered on one specific area of your life.  Maybe you got a promotion at work.  Maybe you met a new girlfriend.  Maybe you lost 5 pounds.

Yay for you.

Did that make it easier, or harder, to tolerate the stuff that was still in your lose column?  Sure, it made it all easier, for about a day.  But if you're anything like me, it probably made it all a lot harder after a little while if your win turned out to be a Real Win™ and not just a nice moment that gained you nothing in the long run.

Growing up after 30

Given that this is my first entry in this lovely new blog, chances are good that if you're reading this, you're my wife.  Maybe my brother.  It could even be that you're my mother in law.  (shame on you for snooping)  None the less, come on in.  Pull up a chair, kick off your shoes, and watch the show.

Since I'm over 30, preparing to build a family, still living in an apartment, and just recently getting off my butt to get myself into a real job™, I thought, "Growing up after 30," was an appropriate name.  We'll see....

Before we begin, let's figure out where we've been, shall we?