The Story of Jim's Spine

After that fun ordeal, I started working on my computer (a lot) since I was pretty much stuck in bed for six months. As I was recovering I started trading stock options from my bed. Stock options are a fun game that I highly recommend playing...but not with money of your own. Find somebody (like your parents) who will let you play with their money. This makes the game so much more enjoyable. On my best morning trading puts and calls on various volatile stocks I made $5,000 in a little less then an hour. Then, I went back to bed after a hard hours work. I refer to this period of my life as my "Green Period". It was a glorious time and much fun was had by all. I actually had money...lots of it...some of which I actually framed and have hanging above my desk.

Every time I look at it I am reminded that when you have money, you do stupid things...like frame your money! I'm sure one day I will break into that frame and spend that hundred bucks. Until then the bill remains a haunting reminder that money can come and go in the stock market so much easier then you might imagine. Anyway, after losing my (father's) shirt in the market I decided to get a different kind of job. Since I had a lot of art experience, I got a job at a print shop. While this was fun and provided a source of income to satisfy my immediate needs I was not satisfied. My friend Tom convinced me to set aside some time to help him start an Internet company. "Well sure, what the hell" I said "how hard can it be to start an ISP?" You see, Tom and I didn't think it was fair that we had to pay $19.95 for Internet access. We figured if we owned the company we wouldn't have to pay the $19.95. Instead we agreed to pay $5,000 a month in bandwidth to our upstream provider. We thought was a much better deal for some reason, I can't remember why. I think it had to do with the fact that we had business cards with cool titles on them. At any rate we grabbed two more of our friends and started CBK.net.
I also kept my print shop job during this time because it merged my love of art, and my love of computers. Plus, I could print up my own company stuff really cheap. Life was moving ahead pretty good, but things soon got better. As I was learning that my current $7.50/hr at the print shop was not a lot of money (better late then never...right?), I started looking to better my financial situation. I answered an ad for a job as a helpdesk coordinator at the City of Irvine Civic Center. I sent in my resume (4 color printed on the press of course ;-) and I landed the job. Sadly, I started out as the helpdesk guy. I did my time answering all kinds of questions from the city staff and when I wasn't on the phone I learned all about the various systems we were using (VAX/VMS, Ultrix, SCO, Digital Unix, HP/UX, AS/400 and NT to name a few). I worked my way up from my starting position as the phone boy to the position of Network Administrator in one year. (That's a story in itself, I'm trying to keep this short) I then moved from Fountain Valley to Irvine because I hated the ten mile commute and figured I could sleep in a bit longer living 1 mile from work. So, there I was...a full time computer geek working on the LAN and the WAN for Irvine. I had finished all the Microsoft tests and gotten my MCSE certification.

I also started on the Cisco series at the same time. I was feeling that I had gone as far as possible with the city (although I will always miss the Fridays off and the 25 holidays a year that come with government jobs). So, with true American spirit, I went looking for more. I received many offers, but chose to work with Pickle...a company that I had worked with many times when they were contracted by the City of Irvine. Pickle is a networking company that provides T1 and DSL services, as well as datacenter co-location and on-site network troubleshooting. If it plugs in and turns on Pickle will make it work better for you. I learned many things at Pickle and got to work closely with many types of network customers. The biggest of the network customers was Merrill Lynch. (Can you guess where this is going?) Yep, Merrill Lynch hired me on May 1, 2001 to work on the new technology for their Private Wealth Center. They gave me a bigger salary and gave me a Vice President title. I am now Vice President Jim Blake, Senior Technology Specialist ...how could I say no to that?
The Private Wealth Center was opened in July of 2001 and caters to clients with at least 10 Million dollars in their accounts (and often much, much more). We handle the money of famous movie stars, sports stars, and some of the biggest names in the business world. It's pretty amazing just to get a glimpse of how some people live. And working in the Private Wealth Center is not without its perks. I've gotten to go to art exhibits, auctions, wine tastings and private museums. But as with everything there is a down side, I've very busy. Especially since the opening of the San Francisco Private Wealth Center which had me flying back and forth every week for a while. During this time Bernadette and I also moved to Los Angeles (Marina Del Rey to be exact) and live right on the water. It is a very nice part of LA but a part of us still misses Irvine as well.

While all this work and moving chaos churned around us, Bernadette and I fell more and more in love. On May 11, 2002 we were married in the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove California. It was a fairytale wedding with trumpets and fountains in a glass cathedral (you can see a lot of the pictures by clicking on the image to the left) and the day went perfectly, despite my car getting hit that very morning. Words cannot express how I felt watching Bernadette come down that isle ...that long long isle. We were both so excited, it was so perfect. And then came the best part ...the honeymoon. We went to Fiji for two weeks and stayed in a bungalow right on the beach. We went diving, kayaking, boating and trekking into the canyons to meet the local people of Fiji. We took lots of pictures that are in the gallery as well. The people of Fiji are very nice and welcoming and the island itself is very beautiful and a step back in time.

About a year after we were married, Bernadette took a job back down in Irvine working for Icon Pharmacuticles. She then took another job working for Allergan (the makers of Botox) working in their clinical research department. Bernadette had wanted to work at Allergan for a while and it is now staffed with a lot of people she used to work with at Neothereputics, Paragon, and Icon ..so she's right as home. Of course, with Bernadette working in Irvine, living in LA didn't make much sense anymore, so we bought a house in Long Beach (halfway between Century City and Irvine).

Shortly thereafter came the dogs. First there was Lilo, a purebred Keeshond. Lilo is a very friendly dog, but very spoiled and used to getting her way all the time. She was pretty much our first child for a while and it shows. Then about a year later we got Lani to be a friend for Lilo ...only that didn't really work out in the beginning. Lani is a Lab/German Shepherd mix and a bit on the hyper side. Lani also like to chew on anything fuzzy ...like Lilo for instance. But it all worked itself out and now the dogs get along very well. They were both content to be our children for a while. But then everything changed.

On December 7th, 2005 at 11:11pm, our son Connor was born, changing our lives forever.
Bernadette and I thought we were ready ...we read the books and took the classes. But we were wrong, we were nowhere close to being ready for all the things that Connor changed in our lives. First and foremost was the lack of sleep ..but more importantly, Connor really changed our priorities around and we are more focused on our homelife then our work lives for the first time in a long time. The birth of Connor is really a blessing on so many different levels and he brings such happiness to Bernadette and I.

So we were living comfortable as a family of three and starting to do all the things that parents do. We're at the parks, the beach, the Aquarium and of course Disneyland. Connor went from rolling to crawling to walking to jumping in what seems like no time at all. Soon we were back in the groove feeling like we were in control of everything. We were in so much control that we decided to take a much needed vacation away from everything and just relax. Relax we did ...and then a few weeks later we found out that Bernadette was pregnant once again.

Goals:
Aside from a desire to one day control the free world, I don't set my standards too high. I just try and excel in whatever I am doing at the moment. When I'm at work, I work hard...and when I'm at play, I try to play even harder. It's a simple philosophy but it has gotten me this far. My ultimate goal is true inner peace...the kind of peace that lets you sleep well every night knowing that you were the best you could have been. I want to make it through just one day without having to say "Geez, could I have f***ed that up any worse?" I want to be content to spend the day laying back in my hammock watching the clouds go by.. To move closer to my goal of inner peace I have turned to the wisdom of the east. I read a lot of eastern philosophy because I believe it to contain some of the deepest insight into true human nature. (You can review some of my favorite texts on the following pages) Not to say that we are not deep in the west...it is just that we seem to believe that the secret to happiness can be found in a mall.
(After writing that I found a similar quote from the Dali Lama)
``Sophisticated machines produce very sophisticated articles, but cannot produce peace of mind. . . . If I go shopping and say, `Please give me peace of mind. I will give you a million dollars,' I think the shopkeeper will laugh.'' - Dali Lama