The Chris Morgan

So I dressed up as a sick kid for Halloween. I went all out. I was on my back in bed or on couch for 2 days straight, drinking fluids, eating soup and sleeping. I was also hacking, coughing and sneezing and running a slight temperature. I was on vitamins and meds. I basically slept 3/4 of 2 days. And was in a painful stupor for most of the rest. But I’m feeling pretty dang good now. I’m just hoping that my body is back up to working because tomorrow (Monday) I start again.

But I only have about 4 1/2 days of work before a Degree 180 retreat. That will be relaxing.

The weekend after that, I get to see Stacy! I was going to go see her this weekend. But then I got sick and started running a fever. It has been 2 weeks since I’ve seen her, and now it will be another 2. Ugh.

Anyway, I’m going to go.

-Chris

I started at SBUX Monday. I am still working at XM as much as I can manage. And I am still doing sound at SA on Wednesday and Thursday nights and Sunday mornings.

I work almost entirely mornings at SBUX. Last Wednesday my shift started at 4:30 am. This week my latest shift starts at 8 am (except for a Sunday afternoon shift). When I get off at SBUX, I go straight to XM and work there till six. On Wednesdays I am at SA by 6 pm and on Thursdays I am there by 7.

This means that last Wed. I was at SBUX 4:30-1:45, at XM 2:00-5:30, and at SA 6ish-9ish. The rest of the time was spent commuting (plus a few minutes at the Cohls after XM). That’s about 16.5 hours straight. I was exhausted. I guess my body will adjust eventually. But I really need to put in as many hours at each place as I can. The down side is that my next possible day off is Halloween, and I would be very surprised if I got that weedend off.

Looks like my motto is going back to “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” I used this motto when I lived in Hughes Hall, though it was because I was up all night playing, not up before God and sun working.

But now I have a job and I am getting paid. I will not complain about that. And one great thing about working at SBUX is free coffee while I am working. So I will not be falling asleep there, for sure.

-Chris

I am employed. I am going to start working at the Starbucks in Smyrna. I’m supposed to get my schedule tonight. I’ll start next week. w00t!

Today was amazing. Kenny had me looking for new trends for us to play and… I think I found one. I can’t say much, and our research is VERY preliminary, but our preliminary results are really promising. I still have a lot of work to do to make this playable, but it was a fantastic day and I feel like I made a great start. Now we have to quantify it and make rules that give consistent results. I’m really excited about it. This is my new brainchild.

On the Starbucks front, I had a great interview. She liked my availability and (I hope) my answers to the questions. She said that she would check my references and call me back by Friday. I have high hopes.

I’m having a great time working on the stock market. I feel like I’m doing well at it. This week was horrible for the market, so my biggest investments are in the red… but they should come back. We had our first concrete looser Friday. I lost $30 playing CALM on a $10,000 investment. That also happens to be the closest to breaking even as we’ve been yet. Friday I made a great play and made over 6% in under 10 minutes of market time. Nice.

I’ve also been doing some programming for the company. I’m learning the very basics of MySQL (just enough to get the data I need out of the database and store it in a usable fashion). I wrote a program that will give us an indicator of whether the stock is about to trend up or down.

If you want to learn more about how our system works, visit www.earningsrun.com and register to be a Beta tester.

I’m still unemployed. Still looking. I am putting in an application at Starbucks today (thus the title). A friend of mine works there and said they were hiring.

::EDIT::
I dropped off my application with the store manager Whitney. I am going in for a formal interview tomorrow morning (Monday).

So I’m posting again. Let’s see… where did I drop off? I completed my 5 weeks of cabling. I felt like it was successful. I did my job as well as possible. I left on good terms at the end of the time I agreed to be there. I could have stayed longer, but I couldn’t see myself doing that work permanently, and because of the time requirements and the mandatory travel, I have no ability to look for other work while there. So I went back to hunting.

I have a good friend who is a manager at a company. He is doing work with stocks right now and needs interns to do research and help with testing theories. I started “working” for him Wednesday. The deal of our agreement is that I have to work 2 hours a day, but I can work as much as I want. If I have an interview, I can leave. If I feel like it, I can leave (for the day). I can also continue my job hunt while at work. In return for all this flexibility I get a few benefits: $100 gas card a month, enough work to keep me busy and interested, a great distraction from unemployment, and a possibility of future employment (but no promises).

No, this is not a paid internship, but it takes me about 2 hours a day to check 4 job sites, only filter geographically and apply to all the ones I choose. Other than that, I don’t have much else to do. And this place is somewhere I can learn and work as much as I want. I’m really excited about all I can learn here. I’m also able to build my resume and keep myself sharp.

I have opened a paper money account to play with and I’ve started watching a few stocks and doing a LOT of homework. I’m really excited.

A good story: Kenny and I ate lunch this past Tuesday. We decided to keep it cheap, so we went to McDonald’s. A guy seemed really anxious to get in front of us and said he was in a rush. We obliged and then watched him try to pass a fake $20. He got caught. The manager came over and talked to him for a bit, then he tried to get out of there. He left from one door and Kenny had me follow him to try to get his plate number. Because I was trying to seem casual, I was too slow out the door and didn’t see him go around the corner to the other side of the building. I assumed he was in a car in the lot and I waited to see it pull out. In a few seconds I had made sure no cars were pulling out, so I went around the corner (the only other place he could have gone) and just missed the car. Kenny got a good description of it, but not the plate number.

The cops came and got a great description of the guy from the two us and did their paperwork. Then, less than five minutes after the cops left, the same guy came back through the drive-through passing the same bill… and got caught again. Now, drive-throughs are especially treacherous for law-breakers as they have a ton of cameras and are very good at getting clear shots of faces and license plates… this guy is not going to be happy when he gets home to find the cops waiting. But he was REALLY DUMB to go to the same McDonald’s twice in about a 30-minute interval.

-Chris

And week 4 of cabling has concluded. Today started (or maybe it was yesterday ending) poorly. I got off work around 5AM and started driving home. Around 7:30 I got a flat. No big deal. I have a spare. I change the tire to the doughnut. 20 miles later the doughnut blows out (and yes, I was keeping my speed low). 45 minutes after this, the tow truck driver gets there. Nearly $400 later, I have 4 new tires (the old ones had nearly no tread) an oil change (which I was due for anyway) and a new stud to replace the one that ripped off while I was changing the tire. I’m still one doughnut short. Maybe I’ll pick that up tomorrow.

Work… what can I say about work. Well, let’s say that I won’t be upset when next week is over and our deadline is in the past. I’ll do another store if I actually get the promotions that have been promised.

Otherwise, I have a few potential jobs that I’m looking at. They’re very hopeful and seem a lot closer to what I want for myself.

Surprisingly, I’m actually tired. I’m going to bed now. Goodnight, all.

-Chris

Almost my entire body hurts. It is yet to be decided if that is because of the physical work or because I was up until about 8am and slept till 5pm. Either way, this hurts.

Make no mistake, night shift and cable pulling are not for the faint of heart.

Well… not really up. It’s actually more like down. South. To a hole in the world known as Sylacauga. I’ll be working graveyard shift during the weeks, but have the weekends off. I’ll be pulling cables to wire up the security cameras in the linked WalMart. I’m leaving in about 1/2 hour and I’m not really sure when I’ll be back. I should know more tonight, but I don’t know if I’ll have internet access yet.

On an awesome note, Stacy starts her anthropology dig today. She’s off somewhere in the Cherokee National Forest digging up skeletons and pottery and… I don’t really know what else. It promises to be an awesome experience. This weekend she and I have our engagement photo shoot with the illustrious Tiffany Zajas. That’ll be fun. Though I don’t really know what to expect, I’ve seen the pictures she’s done for others and she’s really impressive.

Paul is going to be staying at my place while I’m down South. I wish him the best of luck dealing with the man who is possibly the most evil roommate I’ve ever had (or so he’d like everyone to believe ::wink:: ).

So… once again I am unemployed. This was my choice. I just didn’t see myself working 11 hours a day, 5 days a week indefinitely. No paid vacation, sick days or paid holidays. This week I made about $620. 3 of those days I made a total of $70. It’s also not as stable as I need. Nobody in the office was married (or even engaged). And I just can’t see myself as a super-salesman 30 years from now… it’s just not what I’m looking for.

All that is not to say that I’m ungrateful for everything I received while working there. I grew in ways that I had never imagined. I developed more in the past 5 weeks than I could have in months elsewhere. I believe that this business model is fantastic and is probably one of the greatest management training models I have ever seen. I think it is brilliant and it is obviously successful as a business model. But as I was told on day 1: This business is not for everyone. And ultimately it wasn’t for me.

I have a temporary telecom thing worked out with a friend. It will be working nights pulling cable in a Wal-Mart. It is a 5-6 week gig and should pay very handsomely. (I hadn’t even heard about this position when I decided it was time to leave.)

Love to all,
Chris