Summer Reflections8/25/01 - School starts in a couple days, so I thought I'd write a little on what all happened this summer. Overall it was a pretty nice summer, although the past couple months have been real boring. But I'll start at the beginning. I started the summer working for a small internet startup company. Nothing really amazing, but I've been working on a few little projects. The money's not getting to me as much as I'd like, but it's a tough time to be starting anything on the internet. Companies are losing tons of money, or going completely bankrupt, so it's no real surprise we're not doing so well. Also, it's summer, so business tends to be slow for everyone except the travel industry and the local ICM. (Ice Cream Man) Also early on I got some retirement stuff set up that I wanted to take care of. Even though I'm still young, I think it's better to set up stuff now than wait until I'm older. Tax-exempt investing really tempted me, as I expect was the plan the government had in mind. They wanted to entice people to invest so the economy doesn't crumble, and hopefully Social Security will be less of an issue if everyone has taken care of retirement on his own. I guess it worked for me, but I don't have tons of money to invest. Anyone wanna lend me a few million for retirement? Then I went on my trip to Croatia. That was fun, and a much needed vacation. I would be freaking out now if I hadn't spent a few weeks away from work and computers. They're nice and all, but I can only take so much. If you haven't seen the pictures, you really should go take a look at them. I'd like to go back sometime, but I don't know when I'll get the chance again. I'm telling you now, in 10 years or less Croatia will be a popular country with lots of tourism. That is if there aren't any more wars over in that area. After the trip I came back to more work. I've done so much ASP and SQL database programming I think I could tackle just about any project, but that also means I'm getting pretty bored with it. Right now there's a new project that should be a little more involving than recent work, but with school starting I don't know how much time I'll be able to put into it. And then there's the boredom. College Station, Texas isn't exactly the most exciting place on earth, and during the summer when most of the people I know are gone it gets pretty boring. I suppose if I had a girlfriend or some guys to hang out with it wouldn't be so bad, but usually I only see a couple of guys for business reasons. I hope I don't sound pathetic, because I get along fine being by myself for extended amounts of time. It's just that I'd like to get out and do things, and that's hard to do by yourself for very long. Also, around here usually the thing to do is go drinking, and that's not what I consider fun. That's another thing that happened this summer. I turned 21 a little while back and now look forward to what awaits. At least I won't be restricted from things because of my age, and anything I do is now by choice, not because I'm just "following the rules." 21 is just another birthday to me, but apparently the world sees it differently. Oh well. I'm not sure where I am in my life. I'm always hearing stuff about how you're supposed to be "discovering who you are" at college and such. All I know about myself is that I'm a nice guy who gets along well with people, and enjoys having good clean fun. That's not too appealing to most people, so I guess I've ended up more as a loner. Girls and guys both think I'm swell, as is evidenced by the experiences in this country and in Croatia this summer. But really good friends, the ones who wonder what you're up to, and keep in touch, are few and far between apparently. The people who are lucky enough to get close to me always enjoy it, but some people think I'm no more interesting than the guy they see sitting on the computer writing up editorials for his website. (^8 Catch y'all on the flip side!
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