So I’m sitting in a hotel room at 5 am in Chicago IL, and life is different now.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks for me, finishing school, worked till the last day I was there, and spent my final weeks working with my SIFE team trying to ensure that the success I had built is sustainable, because to quote a very dear friend Steve Gibson, “there is no success without a successor” (I don’t suspect he was the originator of that, but that’s where I heard it)

So yeah, my last days were pretty introspective. I found it rather difficult to try and compartmentalize, or place feelings I have for a place whose influence permeates almost every facet of my life. From spiritual to secular, to work success and social life, Hawaii has played a huge role in where I stand today. I really wish I had time to sit on the beach and just be grateful to a place that had done so much for me. But such is my style, work till the last minute and leave wanting more. I find that takes pretty good care of me. :)

In other news, Chicago is looking really good, there’s something fantastic about riding an L train with people and have all 15 students (white kids included) staring out the windows looking at these ‘crazy buildings’ or getting nervous around black people, or hesitantly stepping on to a train/subway fearing the doors will get them. It’s like I have 15 huge children, it’s pretty fun and I have decided I am one lucky dude.

So I interview this morning with my corporate guys, and again later this week, I think my status is that if I get that job, I’ll take the return ticket to Hawaii and try and get some more stuff / rest for a week. If not, I’ll stay in Missouri and get my move on to Toronto or something of the like. I’ll certainly let you know.

But just in way of gratitude, I need to say thanks to the Tueller family, who so graciously took me in as I was living homeless on the shores of Oahu these last two weeks. I am especially grateful for the chance to be around kids again, to camp out in the back yard and have it be amazing, cook bacon over a fire on a tin can even though the stove just beyond the screen door works fine. I’m grateful for the example of family nightly scripture study, and especially for Sister Tuellers cooking. :) Further thanks go to Audi and Holli, we formed a sort of vagabond posse that looked like hippies and acted like college students, it was a nice way to spend the last two weeks of Hawaii, with some great friends. There’s one more I can think of at five am, and that’s Jared Hinton. We’ve played one on one basketball for almost 18 months, every time things got stressful, or so busy I wanted to cry, he’s been there to work it out with me on the court. We’ve played in the pouring rain, we’ve played in gale strength winds, we’ve played night games under stadium lights, and hours past that in the pitch black under the light of the moon. There have been times when that ball has saved my sanity, and Jared, thanks for being there buddy.

Anyway, there’s tons of other folks whom I love from Hawaii, professors, roomies, families, mentors, and friends, and I hope they understand that I appreciate them, and love them dearly. Here’s to Hawaii…. /me drinks a snapple

Now, standby for the next chapter in this Doan saga.

PS - pics will be up under the photo section, if they aren’t yet, here’s one for now. :)

so I haven’t had time at all to keep up on life and the like, until today! I figured out something amazing, I came home right after school and meetings finished, so I got home at 10, I grabbed some water, read my mail, then at 10:30pm I layed down for a nap. I set the alarm, layed down, and was up at 2am. I wrote a paper, surfed the net (oh sweetness that used to be, I surfed the internet!) caught up on all my news feeds I’ve missed so dearly, replied to emails (some) graded papers, and am now getting ready to write up my report and then expense report for my trip to Chicago. So now I am here, I’ll write this and get the creative juices out so I can write a nice dry report for the center and they won’t think less of me.

So last week, like Monday, I finally got progress out of the Center for International Entrepreneurship. (CIE) The center is a great idea, but I got a taste of what its like to work with a great and slow taped up policy heavy administration. I mean, I’m excited for the potential of this place more so than our decision maker it seems, which is weird. But I digress. So we’ve found this organization called C.E.O. or Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization, and they were having their national conference this last weekend. I got things all setup, and the guys from CEO up in Provo were probably the most gracious and accommodating group of fellas I’ve encountered to date, as they let me bunk in their room, gave me some of their swag to wear, and pretty much let me tag along the whole weekend. We had a blast.

First, the conference was good. You can tell they’re all entrepreneurs though, cause it’s probably the cheapest production I’ve ever seen. I mean, all but one of the keynote addresses over three days were done without any media support at all. No power point, no projector, no wireless mic’s, I mean we’re paying a decent chunk of change to get out there, and this is an organization heavily funded by those who have walked its halls and gone on to greater things, I’m just saying we could spend some money and make it great, eh’? Even for having an off year, with a few of their big names canceling, some others pulled through, and all were really interested in the success of everyone else. Ideas were flowing, people were improving ideas and relationships were forged. Good stuff and great networking opportunity. I think the biggest asset of this conference was simply being submerged in entrepreneurship for a weekend. I had more ideas and thoughts come to me as I sat there, eating, drinking, sleeping business, it was very worthwhile in that regard. They are weak in their competitions though, and have a relatively arbitrary judging process which is frustrating. In order for them to continue to be an asset to entrepreneurs, they are going to need to step up their game, challenge them, make teams work and come together as they attend this conference.

second, after the day’s activities, we would strike out as a group of fellas out to see the town. We ate some amazing pizza, (seriously, this was the biggest surprise, I thought pizza was pizza, but this is chicago style, and amazing) we saw some sights and walked the town. It was fun riding in my first US cab, walking around a big city again (Laie is nice, but its fun to hustle and bustle) and in the process, we ran into some great characters. Me and Ryan, a fella from Provo, were lagging behind the group as we walked to dinner one night and crossed the street into the arms essentially of this enormous black guy, the guy was huge, my height, and probably 4 of my weights, a monster. So Ryan, being very interested in people it seemed, jumped up next to him and got a cameo shot of him and this guy, we were laughing, asked this guy his name and he said “Bear” like the big black guy in Armageddon, I never found a name to be so fitting as it was then. We laugh a bit more, and then turn to go and Bear pulls his ploy, “can you help a brotha out? I just need some food for my family, a few bucks?” naturally, we’d heard this a few times, and successfully weeded through all the schmucks making a living off of begging by offering to buy them food instead, well Bear readily accepted this offer, and wondering where this would take us, Bear led us to a little pantry shop down the road. Ryan and I walked in there and looked around, then asked Bear what he wanted, anything in the store we said. Bear led us straight to the deli, and requested some smoked turkey sliced, needless to say we were a bit surprised, but amusedly we inquired “you got turkey?” then Bear adamantly corrects us “SMOKED turkey” he says, the lady finds the corresponding pressed meat and pulls it out and asks “how much?” to which Bear replies “10 bucks”, “5 dollars” I interject, Bear then turns and gives us that kind of “you kidding me” look only a monstrous black guy can give when dealing with dinner, and Ryan and I defensively throw out the poor student card and finally talk him down to 5 bucks. Bear gets his meat, and we parted ways grinning ear to ear, cause seriously, who begs for smoked turkey?

Well also we were able to hit up a broadway show, Wicked. This was a highlight. I wasn’t planning on going, but Travis was winning in an elevator pitch competition and wasn’t able to attend so I got his ticket through the grace of God. :) We went and saw this all star performance, and I fell in love. It was amazing. I seriously don’t get giddy about musicals very often anymore, but this one was wonderful. And so well done, it made me miss my starlight theater days. :) Oh, did I mention it was in the historic oriental theater? :) Yeah.

So that was my chi town extravaganza, thanks to Scott and Gary, the faculty and advisors for BYU Provo that were so accommodating, Derek, their CEO president who was assertive enough to help me get my trip planned out in time to make it possible, and all the fellas, LaDon, Travis, Tyler, Ryan, Mike, and Jamon, you guys were great.

CEO here we come. (yeah, that’s my end of the bargain, start a chapter out here, that’s aight, I’m not doing anything from 2:30am to 7am anyway. :)

so I’m in a public management class with the title disaster management. We talk a lot about hazards and disasters and what we can do to prepare. Well today, we went over the ever popular 72 hour kits, and I got the bug. I thought about it, after seeing it right in front of me, and thought I could do this on a college students budget. So a quick assessment of my assets showed I had a few things around the apartment, but most would have to be acquired from the local foodland and so it was. I headed out with a budget of $30 bones to see how I did, and I think we did pretty darn good.

Here’s what I picked up for the 72 hour kit, specifically for Laie Hawaii college students. :) -
(see the list and details after the jump)
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This article was nice to see, I even got quoted in there, ahhh yeah. It really is a pretty sweet program, I’m just glad we’re getting a little PR.

The best part is after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

So misty (see little brother Jakes wife) has requested that I give up some of the juicy details of my life for her entertainment pleasure. I thought this was a great idea until I realized that I have very few juicy details to give up right now. I will be honest, I’ve tried hard lately to get some juicy details, but no matter how much I want to, I just can’t make myself be a man-slut. I go into dates with the manly intention of grabbing a cheap make out and running, but then I just feel guilty for compromising my standards and what not, then in the middle of the deliberation, the girl will spout off something ridiculous like “Do you think I’m stupid cause I’m transferred here from BYU Idaho and not BYU Provo?” or the always popular “are you mad at me?” at which point all ill conceived dirty pleasure is forgotten and the girl is promptly taken home to wallow in her insecurities or whatever it is that makes the women I’ve been going out with lately be the way they are. And it’s not just one either, I can’t figure it out. But without fail, I’m always grateful that I held to my guns and didn’t end up getting “involved” with one of the crazies. Blessings all over I reckon. So there’s my juicy gossip, the more I date, the less I like it, I’ve actually taken to BBQ’ing some brats with the roomie and inviting married couples over to play games on the Wii, we laugh, have fun, eat well, and don’t have to worry about poor susie who can’t figure out the nun-chuck controller, or betty who doesn’t realize that the controller is a pointing device. I am finding more satisfaction in losing myself in math, or SIFE projects than I have found in love, so for the time being, I’ll leave it at that. Programming and saving the world via SIFE, that is the Life o’ Doan.

so i’m in the middle of my first spring term, and I had it all setup to be nice and easy, then I thought 6 credits, or the minimum, would be an insult to my college prowess, so then I added another class, went to my first day of all of them, then skipped a week. I have since returned and enrolled in a 14 hour a week (in class, so like 6-9:30 every day) course teaching Lean Six Sigma, been promoted to president of SIFE and charged with turning us into a top competitor next year, and been tasked with making up all my homework/quiz’s/projects for all my classes. I haven’t been this busy in a long time, I’m either in a meeting, at work, in class, or on a project literally every waking moment. I’ve fallen asleep while eating lunch cause I can’t get to bed before 2am and I’m back up at 6am every day. Life is crazy. The Six Sigma stuff is fascinating though, and I’m finding that I really like the idea of consulting, or building value within a company, or finding and fixing problems in the system as a whole. Tony Laturner seems to know his stuff pretty well, so it’s worthwhile now, who knows what doors it will open for me in the future. It’s tough for a lot of people because the theory behind it is counter every business/finance class you’ve ever taken, and makes most economists full of garbage all of the sudden. People don’t like when 4 years of study is contradicted, for me, however, it’s kind of refreshing because every one of those classes I’ve been in has always been a strugle to sit through because it never made sense in my mind, every chart and graph seemed to be missing something key to the process, now it’s making sense to me. Kind of nice to be on the side of “ahhh, I see” instead of “so your sure, this is seriously how it goes?….. mmmkay” Pretty good times

Anyway, life is dandy, I’m alive, can’t wait to get home though.

So I’m an employee of the Information Systems (IS) department of the university I attend and have been working on innovating some ways to improve the teaching of our upper level IS classes here. The IS classes we teach are your typical Windows 2003 server, which is essentially a MCSE prep course, advanced networking, which is essentially CCNA prep, systems development and implementation, more business process yada, your intro and advanced linux coursen, as well as some database flavors. The traditional setup we’ve gone for is open up as much as we can in the advanced classes to give the students a real feel for using the networks and servers and so on. The problem comes in the fact that if you have more than one section of a class, every student who sits down at the machine personalizes the heck out of it, causing frustration to the other students using the machine, and ultimately to myself as I spend time rebuilding Active Directory after one student tries to teach the other one a lesson and ends up hosing the machine. The traditional solutions of Deep Freeze, Altiris weekly imaging, or any other non persisting software just doesn’t work because often over the course of the semester a student does projects that build on projects, they need their data to persist. Additionally, if you build an AD setup, or a linux network and build yourself a firewall to sandbox with, you run into the problem where the big stuff, the stuff every kid wants to play with, is only one in a classroom (one promoted domain server, one firewall everyone connects through, etc) and if they want to play with it, they’re just out of luck. Read the rest of this entry »