Back when I was a carpenter I was finishing up a commercial project, building a Booster Juice or something, that had a very hard deadline with big penalties if we were late. I was working 20 hour days for 2 weeks in order to finish in time to make the deadline. The day before the deadline was our company christmas party, and I had to work through it. The company owner stopped in on his way to the party to thank me and said, “Don’t worry, there’ll be a little extra on your christmas bonus for this.” This implied that: A) there would be Christmas bonuses, and b) mine should be substantial-ish.
The following Friday he called everyone to the office to pick up their pay and bonuses. I open my cheque, and it is my regular amount, and go to leave. He says, “Don’t forget your bonus!” and hands me a tin of flavoured coffee. “Merry Christmas!” he says as I walk out.
First thing to do when receiving suspicious emails is to check the sender address (which is often hidden unless you click it). The official-sounding email is often from a gmail address–a telltale sign to block and discard.
The great thing about computer programming is that it’s about as close to a meritocracy as you can get. Your shit either works or it doesn’t. You can’t bullshit your way to success.
But keep going with whatever story you tell yourself.
“Does your shit work?” = Does it work? Does it keep working? Is it reasonably easy to maintain and add new features as time goes on?
When you find someone who delivers on all that, and isn’t a complete asshole to work with. you hold onto them for dear life. But yeah, it takes a year or two for all of that to fully suss out.
One of the fun things about being an usher as a side job is that you randomly end up seeing stuff you would never seek out on your own that turns out to be really awesome.
This weekend we had this guy
A Hong Kong based international super star. Hes in the midst of a 4 city North American tour that for some reason came to our venue in the middle of nowhere. He easily sold out the show as he has sold out 15-20K seaters on this tour and the biggest venues in Hong Kong.
It was great! I don’t understand a word of Cantonese, but I was bopping along to all of his songs outside the ballads. The dancers were amazing, the production values were slick and interesting. He had one song where they played the James Bond theme nearly verbatim but he came out dressed as a futuristic cowboy which was weird but also really fun.
Highly recommended. Maybe not for the price some of these tickets went for if you dont speak Cantonese, but if you ever get to see him for free.
Also got Sarah Brightman this weekend, the original Christine from Phantom of the Opera and got to see her do the title track live which was incredible as was Con te Partiro.
