During the month of April, while I was between jobs, I took a trip to Vegas and a trip to Denver/Boulder, Colorado.  Both of these trips were a blast and I’m so glad I was able to take the time to complete them.

Vegas!

My trip to Vegas was just a few days from the 10th-13th as I needed to get back to host a couple parties that weekend. I met up with one of my best friends, Brant and we stayed in a two-bed suite in the Hard Rock Hotel.  Brant, like myself, has been to Vegas a number of times before so we kept this trip pretty low key.  Avoided the clubs, wondering around the strip and expensive shows and instead just played the table games, laid on “the beach” and watched some baseball.

I always enjoy gambling with Brant cause he is great to learn from when it comes to the games. He also usually gambles with more money than I do so his strategy tends to be different and enjoyable to watch too. This trip was relaxing and fun. I did get to enjoy one show while I was there called “X Burlesque.”  The show was a modern day show that has been on the strip since last year.  It was quite a good time.  Full of laughter and lots of girls 🙂

I also Ended up trying a couple good restaurants while I was there. Check them out on the artofforking.com.

The trip was also profitable as I walked away winning a few hundred bucks playing blackjack and betting on some baseball. Always great to leave Vegas a winner.

Denver and Boulder, Colorado

My trip to Colorado has been most excellent. I left on the 24th and am in the Seattle airport writing this entry now heading back to Portland on the morning of the 29th. This trip was just me traveling, but I met up with a number of friends along the way and made new ones while exploring the area. The main reason for going to Colorado in the first place was to see some couch surfers I hosted at the end of the year. A couple Turkish girls who are living in Denver.

The timing of the trip was perfect as Hande was leaving on the 27th back to Turkey.  I was able to hang out with her a few times before her departure. She will truly be missed. The other reason to go was that  I’d never been to Colorado and I like to explore new places. Most of my time was spent in Denver as this was where the Turkish girls lived and where I was being hosted by an awesome couch surfing host, Scott.  Scott is a software developer like myself and works from home or wherever he has his computer on the project Triple Jack Poker.  Being able to work remotely wherever I am is definitely something I want to try doing one of these days with my time.

Scott and the girls gave me a great overview of Denver and Boulder.  We went to a number of restaurants and fantastic locations while I was in the cities. I was able to see and enjoy the following:

• Dinner with a great view of the city skyline
• The Red Rocks Amphitheater
• Biking around Denver on the amazing bike paths they have
• Enjoying a pint in downtown Denver while watching some baseball
• Dinner with a bunch of people including my friend Lenay, creator of Whim And Fancy.
• Coors Brewery Tour in Golden
• Poker, craps, blackjack and roulette winning $150 in a casino in Black Hawk
• Enjoying the awesome atmosphere of a Denver speak easy called Green Russell
• Making use of the Denver/Boulder transit system by taking the buses and light rail from Denver to Boulder
• Meeting up and drinking most of the day with my friend Anthony and his roommate Jerrad
• Hanging out around the Pearl Mall area of Boulder until late in the night
• Hiking up Mt. Sanitas which is part of the Rocky Mountains
• Going to a Rockies baseball game – though they lost 🙁
• Hanging out with some amazing people while I was there adventuring around Colorado

The trip was fantastic and I couldn’t have asked for more amazing people to make my trip awesome.  I didn’t get to see some people while I was there: my friend Cameron, and my cousins Jeremy and Chad, but I’ll see you all again later down the road.

Thanks to Hande, Duysal, Scott, Julia, Anthony, Jerrad, and everyone else I had the pleasure of spending my time with and meeting up with while I was in town.  You guys made my trip soooooooooo amazing.

Until my next adventure – coming up – Sasquatch at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington coming Memorial Day Weekend.
Keep up the adventures! – Jason

The first weekend of this month I, along with 500 other highly motivated individuals, attended the World Domination Summit put on by Chris Guillebeau and a number of volunteers.

This unconvential convention was very inspirational and one of the best networking experiences I’ve ever had.  To sum things up, the weekend was a blast; full of material about traveling, working remotely, making the most of life and other jots of info that I’ve been trying to understand.  I met a number of bloggers whose works I’ve read and so many more that I’ll look into.

Big thanks to Chris Guillebeau and the rest of the team who put this summit together.

For more info about this summit, go here.

Thursday I had the fantastic opportunity to meet-up with Chris Guillebeau, author of blog “The Art of Non-Conformity” and creator of Unconventional Guides (.com).  It was great to be able to meet with someone who is doing so much and has such extravagant goals. Chris, resident of Portland, traveler of the globe, is doing what he wants to do in life (without the 9-5 job).  His goal of traveling the globe and visiting every country enlightens me so much.

Being able to meet with Chris and ask him how he got his start makes me realize that with the right amount of effort, I could do something similar.  Chris gave me some great advice and was kind enough to also point me to some other blogs and helpful books.  What a genuinely nice individual.  If you haven’t clicked on the links above yet, then get on it.  He has some amazing posts (1, 2, 3) that will really get you thinking.  He also has some great guides that are really worth the money and pay off multiple times over (I’ve already earned 100,000 miles off of his Frequent Flyer Master guide).

I am so excited to begin traveling more and seeing the world, and though I am not ready to rid my life of my career in Software Engineering (cause I actually enjoy it), I do realize that life is more than just working. There is so much to see and do in the world, and it just isn’t possible to view it all on just a few weeks of vacation a year. Thankfully I enjoy what I do and am willing to continue working away, growing my career, saving up money and paying off debt.  However this won’t be my mindset forever.  🙂

Here’s to my next journey,

Jason

I had a great time being toured around Credence this last Friday.  They design systems that test circuit boards and processors.  Pretty fancy test equipment.  We were toured by 2 MECOP students and one of the new employees that work with one of the students.  I got to meet the senior software engineer who was working on a project in Java ( 🙁 ).  He was working on an interesting project atleast. 

Overall I had a great time and got to catch a small glimpse of the air show that was going on around the city.  Love those things! 

 Enjoy yourself!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve made a new post, so here I go again.

 This last Friday I went on a tour at Boeing in Portland and the Thursday before that (July 26th) I toured at A-Dec.  The tours are setup by the MECOP interns to give a chance for other interns to see the company they are working at.   The program allows for us students to have our employers cover our expenses for 3 afternoon tours.

A-DEC is a dental equipment company who doesn’t just design and manufacture their own dental chairs, but all the fixtures, cabinets, dental lights, and delivery systems.  The tour wasn’t setup for a person in software engineering since it took us around the manufacturing area and just showed us what they did and how they did it.  I can’t say I could see myself working at A-DEC, but the tour was interesting…they had some really cool telescoping monitor stands!

 Boeing on the other hand is a company I could see myself working for.  Probably not the Portland campus where we toured at, but perhaps one of their branches in the Seattle area.  Unlike A-DEC and even Garmin AT, they were very tight with their security.  We had to have background checks and be checked in with badges that couldn’t leave the premises.  I could understand why though; with single pieces costing a half million each and some pretty amazing machinery, it’s understandable that they would be so strict.  They talked about the new 787 they’ve designed and about mentioned that it should be up in the air in the next 2-3 months.  That’s pretty exiting.  We’re talking about a plane that will hold between 210 and 330 passengers depending on the seating configuration.  It’s also going to be more fuel-efficient than the other 7X7s they design and manufacture.  The Portland branch manufactures the parts for the planes and ships them up to Everett, Washington where they get pieced together.  This was a cool company to visit and see how the big planes are made.

 Overall I’ve had a great time touring the companies (and it was nice to get paid doing it too 😉

This upcoming Friday I’ll be touring Credence Systems.  Hopefully this company will have something that perks my interest and has more of an involvement with software.

-J!-