Staff Letters: Phil

...Then we'll see if I let you love me...

Yeah, I know - there was no letter from me last month. Believe it or not, that was intentional. I wanted to be able to give you all the news after everything was confirmed.

As of August 1, I started a new job. I now work at Ticketmaster as a Systems Administrator for the web systems group (i.e., I run the webservers). It's a particularly interesting and cool job because Ticketmaster has to face problems that are very unique. For example, when tickets go onsale at 10am on a Saturday, we get more traffice between 10:00am and 10:05am than most companies get in a week, and many companies get in a month.

This provides an interesting challenge in building an infrastructure that can not only stand up to such a beating, but can be responsive for the users and provide a smooth experience to ticket buyers trying to get tickets at that time.

My co-workers are cool and I love my job. I get to leave at a reasonable time, and I'm expected to do a reasonable amount of things. Unfortunately I know longer have a kick-ass workstation with 3 monitors - I have a laptop. And unfortunately we have no relation or control over core IT, which runs a Microsoft Exchange environment for enterprise mail... and they don't allow POP or IMAP, which drives me insane. But the annoyances are significantly less-so than USC, and I get paid much better, so all in all, a very happy transition.

The job is in West Hollywood which is also pretty sweet!

Additionally, as you might have guessed by the job switch, I graduated! That's right, I officially have a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering and Computer Science. Go me!

What else? My best friend Josh moved out here about 5 weeks ago, and lived with me for 4 weeks while he found a job and a place to live. He's now a waiter at the Olive Garden and lives in Santa Monica and goes to SMC. It's nice to have him close by again.

Also, in July I spent a little over a week in Texas. Half of it was visiting my friend Jason in Dallas. I spent my time meditating, doing drum circles, watching movies, and getting massages (he's a professional massage therapist). Pretty spectacular. The other half was in Houston visitng my brother, sister-in-law, and 1-and-a-half-year-old niece who is absolutely the most adorable little girl ever! I had a lot of fun spoiling her and getting to know her.

Lastly, I recently saw The Aristocrats. YOU MUST SEE THIS MOVIE! It's an independent film by Penn Jillette (of Pen and Tellar) and Paul Provenza. Basically, there's a joke called "The Aristocrats" that is the absolute most disgusting joke you've ever heard, and this is every comedian you've ever heard of telling and talking about the joke. And since the joke is 99% improv, it's just fucking awesome. It wasn't picked up by the movie chains because of it's content, so you'll have to find a theather near you on the website. Just to name a few of the comedians: George Carlin, Robin Williams, Bob Sagat, Sarah Silverman, Jason Alexander, Lewis Black, Drew Carey, Andy Dick, Gilbert Gottfried, Penn Jillette, Chris Rock, Andy Richter, Jon Stewart, Teller, Bill Maher, Jeff Ross, Howie Mandel, Whoopi Goldberg, and the list goes on and on. GO SEE THIS MOVIE. If you're uptight, go see it twice.

Well, that's a pretty good update. Until next time...

Phil

GOOD

Graduated!
Cutest niece ever!
Cool new job!
Seeing more of the people I like in life and less of the people I don't

BAD

Microsoft Exchange
Bad Windows admins

MOVIES

The Aristocrats
40 Year Old Virgin

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