Jeff Billimek’s Journal

Today is Mom’s birthday. I’m not sure how old she is, but it is over 40. I spent the entire day ‘cleaning’ my apartment. I threw away a lot of old clothes that I never got around to donating to charity. I also spent a few hours going through MS Money 2000 to tweak all my financial information in that program. I also went through all of the files I have in my file ‘crate’ and put all of my 1998 ‘tax’ info into its own folder. I’ll do that for each year in rotation so I’ll have a good backlog of old info for tax purposes. According to Money, at my current rate of investment into my 401k plan (my salary at the moment is (removed) + 15% yearly bonus with a 10% vestment into my 401k); I’ll have over a million dollars excluding inflation by the time I retire at 55 years old. This is good, I’m happy that I’ve been able to start at 21 years old with retirement investing.

The fall 1999 semester started a couple of weeks ago. I’m taking General Sciences 1 (Environment Science), Introduction to Data Communications, and Project Management. They all seem like fairly easy classes, but will require a bit of busy-work outside of class. I’m shooting for all A’s this semester so I can get on the deans list. But if it looks like it will be tough, I’m not going to stress out over it, as my GPA isn’t completely important anymore now that I have a good job. The only positive thing about a good GPS is the Hope Scholarship. If I can get my total, cumulative GPA over 3.0, I’ll quality, and my expenses will be paid for. That would be nice, but I don’t know how much work it will take to do that. Other than the Hope Scholarship, GPA doesn’t mean too much to me, since I have a great job. What I need to concentrate is pumping up my salary through hard work, and keeping my job. Once I get my IS degree, I’ll have over 2 or 3 years of ‘developer’ experience to be able to pick a job where I please with hopefully even more pay. What I need to watch out for is lack of REAL experience. Maintaining programs is nice, but not critical for an aspiring programmer like myself. I hope I’ll get some real, in the trenches, experience with the Validation rewrite. Who knows, I may stick with Delta Technology after graduation if I can get a senior developer position. It seems possible if I work at the qualifications and continue to get good reviews. If I’m able to pull that off, I’ll probably be the youngest senior there.

Craig is coming into town on Sep 29th and will leave October 3rd. We haven’t done too much over the past two years, and I can’t help but think that we are drifting apart. He isn’t doing anything with his life, and it’s sad to see that.

Speaking of not doing anything, I’m starting to get depressed that I don’t have a girlfriend. Even though I’m swamped with work and school, I could certainly use the companionship and friendship. I’m just too damn shy to ask people out, or do things that would lead to meeting people. I need to address this, as it is starting to be disturbing that I’ve gone this long with no relationship. I refuse to ’search’ for someone like online or in the personals. How do people meet others? I’ve been told that I’m good looking enough to meet people, but I don’t. I’m still working out, and it has been over 2 months now. I’m HAPPY to say that I can see a difference in my muscles, but I’m still not gaining much weight. I guess I’ll need to be more persistent about meeting with Gina (my neighbor) for some personal training sessions.

(edited, 08-13-2002)