Today I turn 26 years old and it feels like I’m not getting any younger. Last year, besides winter being cold like the year before, I finally finished my master’s degree and completed studying the Advanced Japanese Textbook. While the job search was rough and at times, which made me felt discouraged at times, luckily found a job within 5 months after graduating in the Federal Government, although I had to relocate.
I started working on the 27th of July and so far, it has been a good experience so far. I will be learning more on various database tools, data warehouses, database administration and more on security (yes, I will be getting a Security+ certification, which is being paid by my employer at the end of this month). Not only that, the transition to living on my own has been going well so far as I finally got used to driving and doing chores own my own. It took some time adjusting to this new life, but I can admit that the future looks bright, providing I do not screw up. I highly doubt I would since I worked so hard to get here. Still, I have to admit that I was lucky.
With that, what does the future holds as I turn 26. Well, a lot of things. While I have to pay for living expenses and student loans while living within my means, I plan on going to at least one convention next year and hopefully start saving up on that soon once I strengthen out my budget. I will announce it in the near future which one I will be going to. In addition, I plan on studying for the N3 next year as I focus more on actual Japanese media and start writing some posts in Japanese only for practice.
To celebrate the occasion, it’s time to share my new place where I will be writing posts and yes, it is clean compared to my previous location. While my setup will change as I earn and save more money, I’m hoping to add another monitor to have a dual or even triple monitor setup (which includes the laptop display), a bigger network attached storage, a server of some sort and solid-state disk upgrades. My new setup consists of a Mid-2012 15” Core i7 2.6 GHz Macbook Pro, 24 inch Apple LED Cinema Display, an old 22 inch Samsung LCD monitor, Surface Pro 2, Mid-2010 2.4 GHz Core i5 Macbook Pro, Bose Speakers, Blue Snowball, 3 TB WD MyCloud NAS and 2 external hard drives.
With that, feel free to say Happy Birthday in the comments below. I will be going out for lunch and dinner alone for my birthday (my parents will be coming to visit this coming Friday), although it will not be anything fancy.
Also, this site’s domain turns 5 years old on the 11th… Yep, time flies.
Happy B-Day to ya and soon enough happy 5th bloggiversary. Do your best in your new life and keep on chuggin’.
Thanks, and I will do my best.
Happy birthday! Glad to hear the transition from “student living at home” to “full-time working adult living on your own” has been smooth for you. I know I’ve said it before, but yeah, you’re so lucky to have gotten such a high-class, well paying job right out of college, not to mention being able to afford getting your own place to live right away (as opposed to needing roommate to help you with rent), your own car, etc,. Working full-time and not having anyone to help you with everyday other things (like cooking, cleaning, running errands, etc,) does take a toll on you after you do it for a while, but if you enjoy what you’re doing and it’s not stressful, then I’m sure you’ll be fine.
While it’s not a high paying job since I make around 46k before taxes, which is a decent although it’s not as high compared to what private sector will pay. I mostly chose to do civil service because there are better benefits, better life and work balance and such. While I’m on probation for at least a year, I think I will do good at my job so I can pass it. I heard it’s very difficult to get a federal government job since so many people are applying, but it’s worth it. Hopefully congress won’t fool around with the budget come September and decide to shutdown the government
Yes, I’m lucky since my parents paid the closing costs, but I do have to pay them back once I start making more money after passing the first year.
As for living alone, it’s almost three weeks since I have been living alone and working and it’s not that bad, although I have slightly less time. But I’m glad that at least I have some money to spend on my hobby.
Also, thanks.
Happy Belated Birthday from me, since the way I usually get post has been on the fritz for a couple of days, but should be fixed now. Anyway, hope everything goes well for you in the future and good luck finding your own style of Work–life balance. Although, I don’t think that will be a problem for you.
(Nice setup btw. Probably won’t be able to replace my desktop for a couple of years now. Some of the hardware is beginning to become outdated…when it comes to games anyway).
Yep, everything is going well. I do need to learn the software they are using, but I will pretty much get used to it after some training.
As for my hardware, my 2012 Macbook Pro still runs very fast and haven’t shown it’s age, except for gaming since the GPU is more than three years old, which I don’t do much PC gaming to begin with. To me, it seems that this computer can go on for another five years since the Intel Core i7 I have in it still runs very fast for what I do and I have 16GB of memory in that thing. Probably the only thing it really needs is an SSD upgrade.
But in general, I feel that CPUs in general have pretty much stagnating these days. The only real benefit with the new CPUs are power efficiency and better integrated graphics. GPU and SSDs are really the only big upgrades if one does not have a decent or high end quad/octo core CPU already.
Happy belated birthday…from me! Same a person above, I don’t check on a normal basis (new to this blog since I came over from Feal’s), but I wish to make this one home :3
Admittedly, while you don’t feel any younger, I’m feeling young (yes, I am younger than you). Most people would look at me with a “weren’t you 30?” expression, so I have to be the devil advocate, saying in honesty that it delights me to hear about someone’s birthday when they are older than me.
Anyways, my talk out of the way, I wish you well in your future 27th year of your life. May your birthday wish come true and may good (if not bad) come your way. Wish I could hand over a small present…but how would I do that atm?
As for the current display you have…I would like to say your set up already looks decked, but I should say much when mine is 6+ monitors. I presume all four of those “monitors” are not hooked up, unless my eyes are fooling me XD
Again, happy belated birthday!
I have to admit that I still look very young given my appearance since asians in general look several years younger than they are. I’m thinking from a figurative standpoint.
As for me, I can’t get any more monitors aside from a thunderbolt display since my laptop only have one thunderbolt port. Maybe if I had a desktop and two graphics cards, maybe I will have more. Then again, I don’t know what I would do with that many monitors since two is usually enough for me. Maybe these monitors can be used for Euro Truck Simulator 2 or something so you can see the whole interior of the truck. I don’t know, but it can be useful for IT for security monitoring and such, but I’m not a system administrator. :p
Hey man, happy belated birthday!
I’m glad you had been doing fine and from what I can see, your job seems like a pretty nice job, especially considering you just got straight out of college, lol. Wish I got the same luck that you had, I personally have had a lot of problems with my work recently.
Oh, I finally got your Sunshine award post done btw, took me quite awhile, lol.
While I hard trouble getting an internship as absolutely nobody would respond back when I went to the job fair. I think the master’s degree helped for the fact that people are looking for people in IT that knows security and such. But judging from my co-workers, I think I won’t have trouble and the job.
Thanks, I will check out the sunshine award post and reply to it. probably tomorrow.