I love watching the cowboys in the playoffs. It's just too good.
1/15/2024
The future is exciting.
Or at least, it should be. I've been thinking about what to do in the future, and honestly sometimes I feel like there's a lot of paralysis by analysis. I am very confident in my ability to get and maintain a job- getting laid off was actually a blessing in disguise because I learned that my skills are valued by the market. People want what I have to give, and to know that I have honed my craft to that point is a really good feeling. But at the same time, I think I have to ask myself- What do I want?
I started a company recently and have been able to find some great clients, and I guess I would like to continue growing that. I'm going to continue growing that. But is that all I want to do? No, I don't think it is. I want to do cool stuff, build cool stuff. Build stupid stuff, pointless stuff- if only because it's going to be fun. I want to design for myself and not for other people. I want to design because I like design, and not because I need to do it for work. Ok yes, design is my job, it's my career. But I know it means so much more to me. It's something that in a way, I was born to do. I was designed to design.
So I guess that's what I'll do. I'm going to keep designing. And yes, for other people, and yes to make money. But also for myself. For fun. For silly reasons. Because it doesn't always have to be serious. There's more to life than work. So I guess that's what I'm on a quest to discover more about.
10/17/2023
So I was laid off this week. The company I was contracting for, CVS Health, let go over 5000 employees, and unfortunately I was one of those affected.
That being said, I'm really grateful for the opportunity to work for CVS. I was able to work with amazing people on a bunch of really exciting projects, and as a result I was able to really hone my design craft.
Over the next couple of weeks I'll be looking to revamp my entire resume, portfolio, and website. It'll come in stages, because I'm planning on applying for roles soon and will need to have something to deliver immediately.
One of the big ambitions I have is to custom code my entire website, backed by my own personal design system, and I've already started to do so. This project will probably take a really long time, but it's something I'm excited about and will give me tons of learning experience.
As far as my career goes, I'm not super worried. I'm more confident in my skills than ever, and so while I'm going to keep applying for design positions, I'm willing to wait for the right opportunity.
Here's to the next chapter of my adventure!
8/17/2023
“When an unclean spirit comes out of a person, it roams through waterless places looking for rest but doesn’t find any. Then it says, ‘I’ll go back to my house that I came from.’ Returning, it finds the house vacant, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and settle down there. As a result, that person’s last condition is worse than the first. That’s how it will also be with this evil generation.”
Matthew 12:43-45
So I keep a pretty clean place. And by pretty clean, I mean that it’s actually really nice: Things are neat and tidy, there’s a place for almost everything, and there is enough furniture and space and room so that even if I put some of my clothes on the floor, it’s really easy to pick up and clean up and it doesn’t really look that out of place.
I used to have this verse in my mind for quite some time, and in the past I didn’t really understand it. I still really don’t, but I was just so confused and puzzled by this parable, and it was a little frustrating every time I cleaned my place it popped into my head and that confusion was nagging at me. To be honest, I always had an issue because somehow I felt personally attacked because I keep a clean house, and this person kept a clean house, but somehow keeping a clean house backfired on this person, leaving that person in a condition worse than the first. And of course, like almost everyone else, I can relate to having come across many unclean spirits in my life. And I wanted to keep a clean place but I also don’t want more evil spirits to be hanging out anywhere near me, and so it was just a little bit of an issue.
But this morning, as I was cleaning my place, I was saying a prayer and a tiny bit of understanding came to me. Obviously, I’m at a really low point in my life. Lowest of the low, lower than all of the previous lows, a new record of lows. It’s almost like my condition was worse than before. Well, not almost, it’s exactly like my condition was worse than before. And it really sucks. And I was praying and asking God for help, because I’m struggling every day, and I need to pray just to get through a single day.
Well as I was cleaning, I was asking for the Holy Spirit to fill this place. And that’s when I realized something: the evil spirits were only able to come inside because the house was vacant. If the house was already inhabited by the Holy Spirit, then it would be impossible for the unclean spirit to come back and settle there. In fact, even if at first the evil spirit found the house vacant and goes to find its evil spirit buddies, if when it comes back and the Holy Spirit is there, well those eight evil spirit buddies would be out of luck because they can’t enter.
So I believe that God led me to understand that if I’m going to clean my place, if I’m going to sweep it and put my things into order and have it look neat and tidy, I should do it to invite Him and the Holy Spirit into my house. And beyond that, I should clean it so that I can invite real people into my home so that they can feel love, joy, and peace in this place. Of course, there’s definitely more to this verse that I don’t understand, and I believe that theoretically every single verse in the Bible has an infinite amount of ways to be understood by people, but today I’m thankful for this tiny bit of understanding.
God, thank you for this day that you have made. Thank you for your invention of a home. I pray that you fill my house with your Spirit, and I invite you to reside in my place so that you may be here with me. I pray for a future house on this earth, and I already ask that you go ahead of me to prepare it so that it’s ready to be filled with good memories, good people, and to be a tool to serve you and to build your kingdom. And I thank you for the eternal home that you already have built for us in Heaven. Amen.
4/11/2022
3/15/2022
I created a new journal called "Statistics". Feel free to check it out below. Also yeah so I didn't add it but I'll add it later lol.
3/15/2022
People who knew morse code would probably make good drummers. Or at least good musicians. Well actually a morse code song would be really cool.
3/4/2022
So I have a theory. You know how matter and energy are actually the same? (From Einstein's equation E=mc^2). Well this is interesting because the Sun shines on the Earth for a really long time, so the Earth is actually getting a lot of energy. Well that energy of course turns into matter, with plants conducting photosynthesis, animals eating plants, etc etc... But maybe the reason we are having climate change is because we're turning too much of that energy into matter, aka we're turning too much of the Sun's energy into CO2 and pollutants. We should just keep that energy as energy. Team Solar baby, let's go.
3/4/2022
You know an audio version of Mural would be really dope. Like an audio whiteboard. I think that would be like a digital recording studio. Anyways back to that QR code idea, it would be really funny if I made it really big so that you wouldn't be able to scan it lol. Like a square of 110 vw.
3/2/2022
You know, now that I'm spending more time building something on the Internet, I'm always so pleasantly surprised how abundant screens are. Like for example, if while you were reading this, you saw a little tiny man with an excavating tool and he walks on over to the middle of the screen, and then starts digging. You would totally notice that if you were reading this! In fact, you wouldn't even be reading anymore you'd be watching the guy. Lol. Well maybe you'd come back to read the rest of this and then watch the guy.
Also, here's a fun experiment. If there was a QR code that appeared somewhere on the screen, really the only way that someone would be able to scan it is on their phone. I guess maybe a tablet. Maybe a 95% to 5% split. Or 90 10? But if you do that then you could really personalize an experience.
I don't know I guess the whole reason why I'm thinking about this is because those two people from NYC and Santa Clara bounced this site and I'm taking that personally lol.
3/2/2022
Huzzah I did it, I was able to publish my Ocico, LLC website using Digital Ocean. Right now it's just using a domain that Digital Ocean created, but I've (hopefully) attached my custom domain which should be deploying shortly. If it's correctly deployed you could click here to check it out.
3/2/2022
So I'm tracking website analytics for this site using Plausible, which is essentially Google Analytics lite but in a much user friendly UI (which is why I like it). I'm currently on the free trial, which ends in 26 days, but I'm enjoying using it for now. Obviously I'm not going to pay after the free trial and I'll just use Google Analytics after it's ended.
Anyways, I've only shared this website with a couple of people, as well as applied to the Google jobs, and I noticed 3 people that have visited from 3 different locations that are unaccounted for. These mysterious unknown people are from: Santa Clara CA, New York City NY, and Minneapolis MN. Obviously the hope is that one of them are from Google and my plan for someone to see my application, resume, and website is hatching. Unfortunately, the people from Santa Clara and New York City bounced and left immediately without clicking anything. But the person from Minneapolis clicked around. But unfortunately once again, I don't think there's a Google office in Minnesota.
Either way, I haven't heard back from anyone just yet so we'll see what happens. If any updates happen, I'll post it here in the weblog.
Another update is that I'm attempting to learn how to host websites without Webflow. I shared this site with my friend Daniel Rowe who is an A++ software engineer and he shared with me some useful links and tools. Basically my understanding is that if I export and upload it into a Github repository, I could use the Digital Ocean app platform to host a static website for free. I'll tinker around and see if I could pull it off.
3/2/2022
Alright I've added a time sheet page to help me keep track of how much time I'm working on this project. I've also added a fitness page to help track my workout progress. Honestly I don't care if people see these (or if people judge my lifts) so I have zero concern for security. Perhaps maybe in the future it might be a fun project to implement some sort of security solution, but really it's no big deal if someone just looks at the content of the site and finds everything.
3/2/2022
Ok so I finished making the website relatively responsive, so it should look good on most screens. That being said there's still a lot of work to be done. This paragraph thing on the weblog is just not gonna cut it, I have to implement some sort of CMS system, or just fake it until I make a CMS system. But I don't know, I kind of like just having everything scroll down, but I need to log things with dates.
I've also added a single project, but I could always just add more using the structure I've already made for that one. In the future I need to think about how I'm going to organize all the information I'm putting into this website to make it accessible and useful, mostly for myself but I guess other people too lol.
Also I'm deciding that I'm gonna add a date to all these entries and it'll be at the bottom. I'll retroactively add dates to all my previous logs. Obviously it would be a lot easier for the dates to be added all automatically but until I figure out how to do that it's just gonna have to be like this for now.
3/2/2022
Dangit I shouldn't forget to make this responsive. Maybe that's something I could work on tomorrow.
Also I should learn Latin. Would be a really good language to know.
2/28/2022
I don't know if all these split up paragraphs would show in the code as split up paragraphs. I wonder how it would look like, and I wonder if there would be a noticeable time in slowing down the loading time of a bunch of split up paragraphs. My guess would be absolutely not, because technology has come such a long way.
2/28/2022
The purpose of this Weblog is to be my memex of sort. Or at least an experiment to get it as close as we can. There's a lot that needs to be done, recorded, and logged on here. But I'm excited about the different iterations that this website will have.
Anyway, I was thinking that I should add another hidden link into the weblog for music. And I was gonna make a list. Oh and btw I was thinking of making these all NFTs. And then donating all the NFTs to the church. But then we would need to figure how to cool down all the machines that are using crypto. Idk, might be fun.
This whole entire thing is the business project that I'll be working on. For some reason I'm still thinking 5 years, that I'll dedicate to this project. That's a long time, I probably would wanna shorten that a little bit. How about a sprint, I'll work on it during the workdays.
2/27/2022
I'm glad you found your way over here! I created this whole page to help illustrate a simple simile on why I think I'd make a great Googler.
I've applied to 3 positions at your company: a Visual Designer, a Creative Recruiter, and a Recruiting Specialist. I want you think of the ideal candidate for any of these roles, and imagine their professional experiences as the area underneath a curve. Let's call that area A (shown below).
Now although my experiences are not exactly A, I have a multitude of different professional experiences. We can call those A(1), A(2), A(3), and A(4).
As you can see from the illustrations, my argument is that these different professional experiences are a very good approximation of A. Essentially what I'm saying is that it's a like Riemann Sum. Haha.
If this is confusing at all, I'd love to be able to explain further on a quick phone call.
I hope to hear from you soon. Thank you.
-Oren Pajela
2/26/2022
