Greg Vandagriff

It’s truly fascinating how being deprived of a functioning computer for a few weeks substantially impacts how I spend my time and how regularly I update my blog! Nevertheless, I am slowly trying to return to my regular technology-injected lifestyle as evidenced by my finally deciding to post again on here.

It’s an interesting time to be me… between outrageous traffic tickets, the approaching launch of the book I co-authored with my parents, and the return to classes at BYU on the horizon (with the associated hassle of financial aid); it is safe to say that I am a little anxious.

Perhaps in part to my depression, my traditional response to anxiety has been to shut down and avoid thinking about it much. While I admit I’ve been doing a little of that lately, I think I’m doing a pretty good job at keeping a handle on things right now.

That’s all for now.

For those who are curious, my posting has slowed down in part because the Vostro’s keyboard went crazy on me and so I sent it off to the Dell factory yesterday to get it fixed. I was plagued with a curious issue wherein the computer thought that the “Fn” key was being constantly held down. And yes, I tried the shift + f11, fn + scroll lock, and all the other key combinations to no avail. Pressing the key itself does nothing, it just treats it as though it’s constantly pressed down. When I use an external USB keyboard, it’s fine, but that sort of defeats the whole purpose of having a laptop.

I’m waiting until I get the computer back before passing final judgment on the matter. If they can fix the keyboard and get it back to me in a speedy fashion, then it will be an accolade for Dell’s service. If the problem continues after I get it back…

Anyhow. That’s your update from the life of Greg Vandagriff for now.

So I won’t be getting my hot new MacBook as soon as I was initially hoping; maybe in a month or two. We’ll have to see. While it is true that I probably could stretch myself to get the computer, the question on my mind when considering the proposition was whether I should.

I’ve spent the last year or so using my brother’s online financial management system, Banzai, religiously. I’ve been diligently setting aside 10% of my income to my “reserves” and they’ve grown relatively sizable. If I were to get the MacBook now, it would require, among other things, a complete depletion of my hard-earned reserves to do so. Now, if I were in a situation where I had absolutely no computer, then I might feel justified in purchasing a Mac with my reserves, but as it stands, I’ve surprisingly seemed to have developed the financial discipline to say “no” to my immediate wants in this case.

My exact thoughts were “I refuse to compromise my financial integrity for a computer”. There’s some sort of psychological connection between my self-respect and the level of discipline I exercise in my daily decisions, I think. Regardless, I do have a substantial amount of money which I’ve set aside for the computer, and I will be increasing that pile over the course of the next few paychecks. Eventually I’ll be able to have what I want without having to give into the impulsive desire for immediate gratification at the expense of what little financial security I have.

So a number of factors have led me to think about computers lately:

1) I work in a computer-heavy environment, surrounded by computer experts. In fact, one of my co-worker’s mothers had the audacity to label us as “a bunch of computer nerds”! The nerve! If it wasn’t at least 95% true, I would have been highly offended.

2) The power supply on my desktop burned out about 2 months ago, thus I currently have no desktop.

3) The power supply on my laptop which I use for all my work, including this post, will glitch out if I so much as look at it funny. These power failures are growing increasingly common with the passage of time.

Thus, it doesn’t take a mastermind to determine that I’m currently in the market for a new computer, in spite of General Sherman’s best efforts to destroy my financial welfare. Consequently, for the first time in approximately 7 years I’m actually studying computer hardware and the market in general.

The result?

I’m not really interested in the guts of the machines anymore. I don’t do anything on my computer that demands substantial horsepower, like gaming, these days. Additionally, two people whom I trust a great deal, my brother and my boss have recently “switched”. You know what I’m talking about.

I haven’t made up my mind for certain about what I want to do, but I’m thinking about all my options.

I think a key attribute in fostering entrepreneurial thinking is learning to adjust one’s perception of risk to include an awareness of the opportunity lurking behind that risk. I think an individual becomes an entrepreneur when he starts to fear his missed opportunities more than he fears the risk in front of those opportunities.

As far as I’m concerned, a failure to pursue an opportunity for the sake of “security” is nothing more than an illusion created to comfort those who are afraid of facing failure. Do I fear failure? Yes. But I’m also becoming a lot more comfortable with it as I stumble through my experiments and learn from the outcomes.

I feel somewhat validated in maintaining this blog now that it finally ranks in first place (as of 6:09pm) for the name “Greg Vandagriff” according to the useful rank checking tool available from Aaron Wall over at SEOBook. It took long enough, you wouldn’t think it’d be that tricky to rank for such an uncommon name, but it just goes to show that it takes more than a perfectly matched domain name to claim top spot on Google for that term. Another example of this phenomenon? Utah Magnetic Signs. Go figure, although I am starting to rank higher on that particular term than ever before (big money here I come!)

Well, it’s that time of the semester again. I actually don’t get all that nervous around finals for some reason… in fact, I kind of look forward to them as they represent the classic chance for me to salvage my grades and get them up to semi-respectable levels.
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So as I had written earlier, I was planning on living in student housing called “The Colony” this fall/winter semester rotation, in spite of the poor management, higher rent, and scarce living space. Well, I was willing to look past all that, willing to forgive them for their random and unannounced inspections of my apartment every two weeks the last time I lived there… but then they called me up a couple days ago and told me that they were “cancelling” my contract.

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As some of you may have heard, the General was in critical condition earlier today, but has since recovered.

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For the first time since coming back from my mission for my church a year ago, I feel like I’ve finally found something that I can really sink my teeth into and enjoy doing: web development. It’s like I have this burning desire to tweak, customize, develop, optimize, SEO, and of course, monetize websites! At least it’s a semi-productive hobby, I suppose. As a result I might actually *gasp* change my major to computer science simply because I seem to enjoy the field so much!

And that’s about all of the developments I have to report for you now.