We've had some pretty heavy posts so I am going to lighten it up.

One thing that annoys the crap out of me when pulling clips from Comedy Central for the show is the they play an ad spot before every single video.

The most annoying? Blackberry. We ge-e-e-et it. You have a phone that is almost as cool as an iPhone. They currently have three different versions that rotate in the cue.

But one of them I think has my identical voice twin - you know like in the Friends episode where Joey finds his identical hand twin. You've probably seen it on TV a half a billion times but go ahead and take another watch:



Now listen to a version I recorded of myself (with no alterations):





See. Ok, so I know I don't hit "Life" quite right - but I think that has more to do with my poor VO ability than the voice itself.

Somewhere out there (probably New York or LA) there is a guy out there with my identical voice. Ohh how I hope one day we can meet and have conversation where we aren't really sure which one is talking.

While I could probably write another 10 posts on this topic, I am going to wrap this series up.

Over the past three years I have had numerous 20-somethings come to me struggling with the idea of doing something they love or doing something that pays the bills.

I find that most people I know who are struggling with this balance fit into one of two camps: 1.) they either do something because of the money/security/upbringing/family or 2.) they do something purely for the love with no regard to the security.

The answer is you have to find a balance in-between.

Neglecting the security needed in employment is wreckless and impractical. Yet doing something just for the money or security can be devastating towards a holistic and well rounded life.

I am going to use my brother for an example on this one. About a year ago my brother graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Theatre Communication and Culture and a minor in Theatre. My brother loves acting and from what I hear he is fantastic at it.¹

But like many people in that field, he realized upon graduating that it wasn't exactly going to pay the bills for a while (if ever). So he had a dilemma: does he just give up the acting thing and find a secure job with a future, or does he throw all caution to the wind and pursue acting with no regard to any long-term financial security.

My advice to him: neither and both.

I told him that if he loved acting then he should pursue that responsibly, and the risk can be reasonable. He needed to get another job that allows him to pursue acting and keep him out of debt. If in three years he decides that it isn't working out, and assuming he isn't in debt, then there really is no long-term loss.

I have another friend who also is a theatre person who works at Starbucks. Sure, he knows Starbucks isn't his future. It isn't what he set out to do in life. But he fully recognizes Starbucks is what enables him to pursue what he loves.

The same rings true for people who love to teach or do research or own businesses or anything else. There is a way to pursue what we love and are passionate about and still be reasonable with it. It might me some lifestyle sacrifices. But in the long run, doing what one loves in a responsible, balanced manner leads to a more holistic and fruitful life.

It is 11:18 pm and I am just getting to the office for the first time today. Now this is not to say that I haven't worked at all. To the contrary, I have put in about 9 hours already. But it is almost midnight, and the fact that I am at the office instead of home right now is worth at least $15,000 a year to me.

I definitely grew up in a household/school system/personal mindset that those who are smart and can make a lot of money, should. It's one of the benefits of being educated. One of the largest hurdles for me to accept when going into ministry was that I would never make "Doctor" money.

Most of us will never make "Doctor" money, and that is ok. But to say that salary is not a factor in a job search is ridiculous.

The mistake I find a lot of 20-something make is their assumption that their job salary is only about money. But salary goes beyond money.

Maybe it is because of my upbringing, or maybe it is because I am a numbers and spreadsheet kind of guy, but I like to put a monetary number on the intangibles of a job - which I have included below.

Doing this helps one realize what sort of quality of life a job provides - and in the end - isn't that what we are looking for.

It also helps recognize how values change over time. Take for example, on the positive side, a flexible schedule. I know once I have kids, this will become an even larger perk. On the negative, take lack of weekends. If you would have asked me a year ago, this would have been in the neutral category. But this has been getting to me more recently.

When all is accounted for, I really do feel like I work a job making $150,000 even though my salary is $55,000. Now just as long as I don't spend like I make $150,000 I think everything will be alright ;)

Some might think posting about this is arrogant or self-centered. But when talking about job searches with friends and family, the topic of salary always comes up, so I figured I'd include it on the blog. Ignore if you'd like.

Actual Monetary Benefits
Base Salary		$55,000
Cell Phone		$1,044
Dental & Health (est)		$1,500
Stock Options		$0
Positive Incentives
Passionate About Mission (Ministry)		$45,000
Flexible Schedule		$15,000
	Sleep In
	Work Late
	Mid-Day Naps
Independent Thought (i.e. argue with boss)		$10,000
Creative & Technical Mix		$10,000
Great Vacation		$7,500
Live Close to Office / Work from Home		$7,500
Startup Environment		$7,500
	Challenging
	No Stupid HR Policy
	No Chain of Command Drama
Casual Environment (i.e. Baseball hat attire)		$5,000
Boss is a Mentor		$5,000
Large Growth Potential		$5,000
Position of Influence (Media)		$5,000
I Am Having Fun		$5,000
Interacting with People Like Erik		$5,000
Neutral Elements
Stability		$0
Negative Decentives
Not Where CJ & Andrea Live		-$15,000
Lack of Travel		-$7,500
Lack of Weekends		-$7,500
Misc Reason(s)		-$5,000
Grand Total Salary:		$150,044

So you've figured out your employee type, now it is on to the right job. Next up: the dreaded interview.

For some reason, I have never really dreaded interviews. It might be because I am a conceited bastard, but I think there is another reason. I have always held that interviews are a two-way process. It is always important to remember that you are interviewing a company just as much as they are interviewing you.

This is good for two reasons: 1.) Nerves and 2.) Long-term happiness.

When one goes into an interview with the mindset that the company needs to impress you just as much as you need to impress them, it has an amazing calming effect. This calm helps clear your head and your nerves so that your answers are more confident and precise. But it also helps you ask them the right questions as well.

The other reason this is important is because we often forget in the job search how large of an impact a job has on one's life. Usually out of desperation to find employment, we forget that we will spend more time at work than we will with our family and friends. And while it might feel secure to find employment at the first offer, if you don't interview the company correctly, you'll likely find yourself in a similar situation that you were in before.

A while back I was solicitated to take a job outside of my current employer. I had some phone conversations. I was tempted. They flew me out. I talked with people in the organization. And it was clear within 10 minutes of being there that I was interviewing them, as appose to the other way around. Now you might be saying to yourself, "yeah, but Andy, that's different. They wanted you to come. They were pursuing you."

This is true. But here's the kicker. The most important interview I had in making that decision wasn't at the new company; was the one with Allen back in April of 2005.

Allen's church was of course interested in me working or they wouldn't have flown me out. But I had no grand reputation with them. I was just some punk kid from California looking for a post-graduation job. It was, in the truest sense, a job interview.

But the two-way conversation that took place in that Waffle House on that early morning not only helped me realize Mount Pisgah was where I needed to go after college, it also helped me realize that I needed to stay put once there.

Since graduating from Azusa in May of 2005, I have been offered 11 jobs - both ministries and private sector companies - all around the country. Including some who were offering impressively more money. But not one conversation I had with any of them have ever been more impressive than the conversation I had at Waffle House. That's the power of a two-way interview.

It has been 3.5 years since I graduated college and while I am definitely not doing the job I thought I was coming to Georgia to do, in every stretch of my 2005-self's imagination, the past years have been an overwhelming success.

I am not sure what the reason (economy, younger friends graduating, older friends unfulfilled, etc...) but for some reason this summer I got bombarded with questions about how to find the right job.

So I am going to embark on a series of blog posts about work. Upcoming topics include The Interview: It Goes Both Ways and What Does the Job Really Pay: A Look Beyond Money. There might be a few others...

But before we venture into that, we must first recognize what a company exists for: to make money. A company does not exist to employ you. And it does not really exist to provide a service.

It seems somewhere in our coddled generation we got the idea that we go to college and then there will be jobs out there with the sole purpose to employ us. Wrong. The sooner one realizes this, the sooner they will be successful with their job search.

As one prepares for the job search they have to ask one question: am I a person who makes a company money or saves a company money (see #4 in this MSN article). If it is a non-profit or education it is slightly different, the question is do I directly fulfill the mission of the organization or do I save the organization money/resources.

Take for example my bestfriend CJ and I. CJ is a phenomenal salesman. At the age of 26, he is already a top performer in a very large corporation. He brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue annually. He is definitely someone who makes a company money (and a lot of it). I on the other hand am a horrendous salesperson. I just don't have the skills. But I save organizations money like nobody's business. The amount of people (and therefore salary) it would take to replace all the different things I do at my current job would probably at least be three and probably more.

It was the same way when I was 16 and worked at the courthouse in Indiana. I got brought on to help with an influx in tax warrants. They were piling up faster than they could process them. But my value to the organization was that I figured out a way to process them 4x quicker than they were doing before. That saved the courthouse money because they didn't have to hire 4 other people to do the job.

Sometimes these traits stay the same over life (i.e. CJ and I will never trade positions), but other times they change. Take for example Attorneys. When you are fresh out of law school, your value to the practice is that they bill your time for a whole lot more than what they pay you. Thus you are saving the firm money. But as you age in your practice, your value becomes your client portfolio and thus you are paid more due to the business you bring into the firm.

Figuring out your role in an organization is not just monumentally important for the interview process, but also to figure out whether or not you'll be happy with your job. I would be miserable if I had sales quotas. Thus I don't waste my time in the job search for positions like that.

Come back later the week for more on the work series.

It was a big week this week. First, Justin broke my faucet in the kitchen so I had to install a new one. I know you are thinking to yourself, that isn't big. It is for me as it continues to reaffirm that I am a man and can do handy things around my house.

After that I fixed my cable box in one room and then took a nap while trying to watch the Cubs game. I was awoken by a phone call from Justin. All I heard was, "did you see the e-mail? 235, man. 235."¹

Justin and I have been tracking World Series tickets with the Tampa Bay Rays for a couple of weeks now. The problem was, StubHub does not have RSS capability so we would have had to check the site manually all the time. Not a good option. But I figured out a way to do a script that would capture the webpage every hour and send us the results via email. And sure enough, today, World Series tickets were put on the page almost $150 below everything else we had seen. We snapped them upped immediately.

Now everybody root for the Cubs and the Tampa Bay Rays.

Then, if the week wasn't good enough, this morning Allen was interviewed on WOWO in Fort Wayne, IN by Charley Butcher as we are going to be going live in my hometown starting this Saturday. The Allen Hunt Show - and all its Homestead bashing due to my inability to spell - can be heard Saturdays from 9p-12m on WOWO 1190 AM. So tell everyone you know to tune in, listen, and call - especially this Saturday as we get preempted on our flagship, News/Talk 750 WSB, due to UGA football.

Not a bad couple of days if you ask me.



P.S. For those wondering how to create the Email when RSS isn't available I have included the PHP code below.

<php

// Retrieve the Date
$plushour = time() + (60 * 60);
$date = date("g A - D M j", $plushour);

//URL of File
$file = "http://www.stubhub.com/tampa-bay-rays-playoff-tickets/rays-vs-tbd-10-23-2008-587821/";

// Retreive HTML Document
$html = implode('', file($file));

$box_end = explode("</tbody>", $html);

// Create An Array for Each <tbody> Tag
$box_beg = explode("<tbody id=\"ttb\">", $box_end[1]);
for($i = 1; $i < count($box_beg); $i++){

$box_body = "<table cellpadding=\"2\">$box_beg[1]</table>";

//Send Email to Andy & Justin
$to = "Andy Borgmann <andy@2timothy42.org>";
$from = "Andy Borgmann (Webmaster) <webmaster@2timothy42.org>";

$headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
$headers .= "From: $from" . "\r\n";
$headers .= "Cc: Friends Name <friends.email@gmail.com>" . "\r\n";

$subject = "World Series Tickets - $date";
$body = "<html><head><title>World Series Tickets - $date</title></head>
<body style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 12px;\">
<div style=\"text-align: center; font-size: 24px; font-weight: bold; \">What do you think? • Anything good yet?</div>
<br />
<a href=\"$file\">$file</a><br />
<br />
<b>This is for World Series Tickets: Thursday, October 23, 2008 at Tampa Bay Rays - Home Game 2</b><br />
<br />
$box_body
</body></html>";

mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);

}

?>

Then you just setup a Cron task to execute the script every hour

0 * * * * nice -n 15 php /dir/to/script/baseball-tix.php >/dev/null 2>&1

I have a fan-tastic job. I really do. But nothing is ever perfect. One of the drawbacks is that I don't really have weekends - both in the sense of a full two-days off and in the sense of missing events on Saturdays. I try to take a half day off on Thursday and a full day off on Friday. This sometimes works.

So I have been trying to at least be more proactive about this.

This past weekend I took a 45 hour trip to Denver. It was a surprise trip for my mother's birthday. She was psuedo-surprised about me, but she was really surprised about my brother. It was really wonderful to be apart of.

We went to the Rockies game. Had breakfasts at Grandma's. Went to Red Rocks (sort of).

We debated politics. We shared stories of jobs. We laughed about the past, and some of the present.

It was a great 45 hours.




The weekend trip is one of my favorite things. I know it's weird. I know most people want more time. But I find 48 hours is just about the right time for most trips.

If I had the money, I would spend every weekend I could in different cities. Visiting old friends and families. Watching baseball and football and hockey games. Visiting places in theory too far - like Paris or London or Helsinki or Prague - and returning. Okay, that might require 72 hours. But still, you get the point.

Upcoming weekenders I am thinking about doing:

1. Visiting brother in Chicago in October to watch the play he is in
2. Visiting Patrick in Miami in November
3. Ski trip to Colorado/Wymoning in January.

If you had 48-72 hours only, where would you want to go and with who?
Or, what was the best weekend trip you ever took?

February 10, 2006. I remember just clearing security at Sydney's airport heading to my gate. I was about to board a 13 hour flight back to the States. And there it was, a computer...

I promised myself that I would not check e-mail for my entire 12 day journey down under. And I had done it!

It was the first 12 days I had gone with out checking e-mail since probably 1995. I remember sitting down in front of the computer at the airport café and feeling almost violated. It was like something was pulling me from a joyous, stress-free environment, back into the hustle of everyday life. I haven't left that hustle for almost two and half years.

July 27, 2008. For the first time in 2 years and 24 weeks, I am going on a real vacation. Not taking a laptop. Not taking a small to-do list. Not doing anything.

I am going to visit loved ones in Fort Wayne. I am going to hold Asher for the first time. And I am going to hopefully not drive myself crazy out of boredom.¹

I have to admit, I am a little scared. I am not sure if I am going to make it. But I got everything done for the next two weeks and there should be no problems. Everything else can wait.

If anybody is in Fort Wayne, give me a ring on the mobile² and I'd love to meet up. To the rest of you...see you in 7 days! I will not be blogging.³

P.S. Too all my law school law graduates lawyer friends who are taking the Bar on Tuesday and Wednesday, congradulations. I am very proud of each of you. I know the Bar is hell, but you are almost done. If any of you are in Fort Wayne,⁴ I'll buy you a drink at Columbia Street.⁵ For the rest of you, I'll buy you a drink the next time I see you. Congrats, you now officially can hold it over my head that you are an attorney, and I am not ;)

I am down at Hilton Head this week with CJ, Andrea and Jadyn. We are having a blast. But Jadyn is 2 and goes to bed at like 9 pm. Andrea is 7-months pregnant, and she goes to bed at like 10pm. And CJ and I don't really like each other, and refuse to talk once the girls go to bed. So what's a boy to do on vacation? That's right, work...

I have good news if you are an iPhone user and an Allen Hunt Show fan. Tonight I have created a specific iPhone page for the allenhuntshow.com.

Currently it includes four sections: past shows, Allen's blog, daily real life and faith moment, and caller of the week. You can also use it to e-mail Allen.

To access, all you have to do is go to allenhuntshow.com on your iPhone and it should take care of the rest.

P.S. For those of you who aren't nerdy out there like me, and are more interested in my actual vacation time. You can view photos of the trip here. I'll be sure to post something about the vacation time later this week.

Right where the 605 and the 210 meet in Los Angeles, I distinctly remember the billboard when driving back from the beach in Orange County. It was a CitiBank billboard and it had the following phrase: "Your college girlfriend called and wanted to remind you that you were once poor and happy." Even at 21, the phrase resonated somewhere deep within me and I have never forgot it.

Fast forward 4 years. If you would have told me about the job I have now and the money I am making and the lifestyle I am living back in 2004, I wouldn't have believed you. It's been a whirlwind couple of years. But am I happier? Was life not better from the cheap seats?

Don't get me wrong, I am sure life is incredibly more stressful when you can't pay the bills. When you worry about foreclosures and debt and providing the basics for your family. It's just an inevitable that life gets complicated as the years go on, but does that by definition mean life gets less happy?

This weekend was a pretty fun one for me. Friday night, Justin and I saw the Braves series opener against the Reds from our seats (the cheap seats). The Braves won, with Hudson pitching a 2-hit, complete game (you never see CGs anymore). On Sunday, my Uncle invited me to the series finale against the Reds at his seats (the good seats) which were 8 rows back from home plate (the photo to the left doesn't do it justice).

But it got me thinking; do better "seats" in life, mean a better life?

What I find unique about most people I know who are "rich," is there is a distinctly different tone they use when referring to the old, "poor" days. There is a fondness there. Talking about beat up cars barely making it home. Eating PB&J for days on end. Not being able to go to movies or pay for cable and just enjoying one another. Are those days lost as we progress?

I am not sure what the answer is. I am only 25, and by American standards, I am not exactly "rich". But maybe that is a good thing. Maybe life is better in the cheap seats and I should enjoy it while I can. Maybe that is what the Bible means when it says:

Ecclesiastes 2:26
To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.