This past Saturday, my brother and I attended the Toronto Action & Networking Summit, which took place at the Hampton Inn, near the Toronto Airport. It was an interesting event, and it gave us a chance to meet one of our Internet heroes, Brad Gosse.
My brother is on Brad Gosse‘s mailing list, and that’s where we heard about the event (and we got free tickets too!). Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay for the entire day, so we only got to see the first two speakers present. The good thing was Brad Gosse was the first speaker of the day, and he was the main reason we went to the event.
Brad Gosse speaking at the Toronto Action Summit
Brad is an entertaining guy to watch. He’s straightforward and real, and doesn’t come across as fake or contrived like many speakers do. His presentation contained swearing, cutting through the BS you hear other people talk about, and open discussions of his marijuana use…
My brothers made a parody video of one of Brad’s videos last year, and he loved it. That gave us an “in” that nobody else at the Summit had, so we spent a bit of extra time talking to him before we had to leave. He was really easygoing and he even gave us an advance copy of his book, Chronic Marketer. It was a review copy, and it even had pencil marks and edits in it!
I found this picture on my computer recently. I remember taking it a few years ago outside my parents house. I used a long exposure and pointed the camera to the sky, hoping to catch some lightning. It only took a few tries before I got this picture, which I thought was pretty cool.
A few days ago I was putting away the trampoline for the winter and I came across this big dirty spider. It had a big body and some interesting markings on it. I did a bit of Internet research, and I think it’s an orb-weaving spider. Perhaps a “shamrock orb weaver”. Either way, it was super gross, so I just had to take a couple of pictures…
Back in June, the company that I work for decided to cut everybody’s hours and salary, because they aren’t making any money and they didn’t want to lay anybody off. It was a shitty situation, but I guess it was handled the best way it could have. Instead of laying off one or two employees, every employee got a pay cut. The good news: I don’t work Mondays anymore. The bad news: I don’t make very much money.
In July, my friend Albert told me the Ford dealership he works at was looking for a shop cleanup person. It didn’t sound like very exciting work, but it paid more than minimum wage, and it offered convenient hours and a location close by. I decided to take the job, expecting to get around 10 hours per week. Instead, they have me working 20 hours a week, which is good for the money situation, but not so good for the time-and-social-life situation.
I now work Tuesday to Thursday from 7:30am to 4:30pm at my day job, then from 5pm to 9pm at the shop. Those are some long days. I also work Saturdays from 8am to 4pm, which isn’t very fun.
The job itself isn’t too bad. It’s dirty, though. I empty garbage cans into the dumpster, crush up boxes, clean up oil spills, scrub the floors and generally clean up whatever’s messy. I work with good people, there’s no stress and it’s physical labour, which means I get a bit of exercise. The issue is I don’t have nearly as much free time as I used to. Tuesday to Thursday is basically a write-off, because I’m working from 7:30 in the morning to 9 at night. Friday nights are affected because I have to get up early to work on Saturday.
I know it sounds like I’m complaining, but in reality, I think this is good for me. I’m hoping it’s only for the short term, since my day job hopes to have everyone back at 100% by the end of the year.
Update! Just yesterday, my company notified us that they are doing better financially and are bringing everyone back to 100% pay and hours. I put in my two week’s notice today at Ford, so starting in October, I’ll have normal weekends again, not to mention more time during the week. Yay!
