Jason Cosper

Category: People

  • And Then I Found A Job

    After looking for a job for damn near 3 months, I’m happy to report that I’ve been offered — and tentatively accepted — a position with DreamHost.

    I say tentatively because I’m still waiting on an offer letter from a colocation facility up in Los Angeles which I interviewed at a few weeks ago. It’s supposed to be in my inbox sometime tomorrow — but I’m not going to do much more than consider it unless they manage to do better than the proposal I was given this afternoon.

    To be perfectly honest, this couldn’t have come at a better time. Despite saving up for such a scenario, both my former employer and the EDD have given me the runaround on collecting unemployment. And what I mean by the runaround is that I haven’t managed to collect a cent of it since I filed for it months ago.

    I was very fortunate that I saved what I could before I was let go — which wasn’t very much I might add — and could pare back my expenses to live off of it for two months before I had to beg and take temp jobs. Also having a lovely girlfriend who was extremely understanding about having to cut back on what I could spend when I came out to see her was rather helpful. Even if it meant taking the occasional weekend off from one another and cutting back on our entertainment budget, she was a total trooper.

    Not a lot of girls are willing to deal with spending a lot of time watching bad cable TV and DVDs with their recently unemployed, long distance beau whenever they do manage to get a weekend together — especially if they haven’t been dating for all that long. Despite all that, I’d be willing to say that spending all that time together cuddled up and making fun of the crap we watched between loving on one another probably managed to bring us closer together. *shrug* The heart works in mysterious ways, right?

    But I digress… As of next Tuesday, I’ll be amongst the gainfully employed again. I’m hella excited at the opportunity I’ve been given — but to be perfectly honest, as jazzed as I am about the job, I’m just as excited that I’m going to be doing my job from a proper Apple workstation. Yeah, I’m going to have a company issued Mac on my desk. And while I don’t really need one to do what they’re hiring me for, they just wanted to make sure that I was working with an OS that I was comfortable with.

    Man, I can tell that I’m already going to like working here…

  • Good Weekend

    I compelled to do a proper post about the weekend Sarah and I had — but everything I’ve written down doesn’t seem to do it justice. Instead, I’m just going to borrow from my gal’s playbook and do a stream of consciousness type list of some of my favorite memories from our weekend together…

    • Walking into A New Hue1 to find my girl rocking the red hair.
    • Bringing Sarah home to meet my folks.
    • Three Words: Raspberry almond cake.
    • Having beers at Rob and Lisey‘s place.
    • Heading back to my parent’s place for breakfast burritos.
    • Getting a nod and a thumbs up from my mom as we left my folks’ house.
    • Going to the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium.
    • Jellies!
    • Being told, “You know, I’d really have no problem moving here to be with you.”
    • Snacking on appetizers at Mao’s.
    • Wading into the ocean barefoot at Venice Beach2 while holding hands.
    • Talking about marriage and kids with neither Sarah or I freaking out.
    • Distracting a pack of zombie seagulls with kettle corn to make a daring escape.
    • Fatburger!
    • Getting to play with a MacBook.
    • Being given a personal check for “services rendered”.

    I’m sure that a lot of this makes no sense when it’s disembodied and taken out of the context of our weekend, but I sort of don’t care… It means a whole bunch to Sarah and I — and that’s really all that matters to me right now.

    What can I say? That girl is my universe, yo.

    1. Warning: Comic Sans ahoy!
    2. I might have hepatitis now, but it was totally worth it for the moment we shared.

  • Boredom

    It’s Saturday night and I’m laying on my bed, listening to The Velvet Underground on headphones, surfing thru a backlog of Exploding Dog and downloading an .avi of the Jack White Coke Ad.

    The room is lit only by a 5 year old Ikea desk lamp made from translucent black plastic and my Powerbook screen. Every so often, a text message from Sarah makes my Sidekick chirp in faux 8-bit harmony. I flip it open, fire off a response and go back to farting around on the internet.

    I need to find something substantial to do, before the boredom eats away too much of my brain. I could write a post for Preshrunk, but I’m suffering from some fierce writers block.

    Somebody save me, please.

  • Lazy Tuesday

    I’ve been looking for work, doing business card mockups for Sarah and watching burlesque videos on Something Weird OnDemand all day long.

    If I could just figure out how to get paid to do this for a living, I’m pretty sure I could be a pretty happy dude…

  • What Sarah Said

    Almost a month after our first weekend together, Sarah told me that she loved me. After the initial shock of hearing her tell me how she felt wore off, I couldn’t tell her that I loved her back fast enough.

    Now before you go setting your calendars, this happened a few weeks ago. On St. Patrick’s Day, no less. But I know it was more than the alcohol talking because:

    1. I was pretty much sober.
    2. We’re still saying it.

    Here’s the thing… Before she told me I’d already knew that I loved her — but I was still a bit wounded from my last relationship. I wanted to be a little more cautious with my heart this time around. Despite that, the second she told me how she felt, all that caution managed to fly right out of the window. “Afterall,” as Sarah told me, “love is hardly a safe emotion.”

    As the weeks go on, I’m learning that statement holds pretty true. So while I’ve already managed to stub my toe once or twice in the dark on love’s ever shifting corners, the way we feel about one another really helped keep the brusing down. You know, sort of like an ice pack.

    Besides, the more I think about it, the more I realize that those proverbial stubbed toes and bruises are ultimately worth it. They help bring things into focus for a moment, and eventually fade until you can’t notice them. In the end, the only thing that’s left is what was there in the first place…

    I’d say that it feels good to be in love again, but I don’t think it’s really ever been like this — so I don’t know how it feels. If you asked me right now, I’d say that it’s as exciting as it is frightening.

    So here’s to wandering into uncharted territory… Wish us luck.

  • Lobbying For Dollars

    It’s settled… I’m crashing the lobby at Emerging Tech on Wednesday and Thursday to mingle with the big shot internet types and maybe get a few leads for jobs. If I can manage to weasel my way into a party or two, all the better… ;)

    So if you want to grab a cup of coffee or a bite while I’m in town, drop me a comment [or email/phone call/IM if you have that info] and we’ll see what we can do.

    P.S. Sean was nice enough to offer up the spare bed in his room at the very swanky W Hotel on Wednesday night. Much respect for that, yo.

  • Overwhelming

    What with losing my job, putting in my resume at a dozen places, driving 120 miles, watching “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party”, spending 3 hours trying to check into a series of hotels in Bakersfield, meeting my amazing new girlfriend‘s lovely parents, going to the deadliest mall in Southern California, driving another 100 miles, talking with a recruiter for Fox Interactive [See: MySpace], doing a presentation on Preshrunk at BarCamp LA, co-winning the eIron Chef challenge with my homey Eric and meeting loads of new people, the past four days have been a little hectic to say the least.

    There’s so many things I could uncoil on and flesh out into a solid week’s worth of posts, but my mind really isn’t up to it right now. It may never be. *shrug*

    P.S. If you know of anyone looking for a Junior SysAdmin or Helpdesk/Tech Support Grunt in the Greater/Lesser Los Angeles area [or even Kern County], let me know.
    P.P.S Since I don’t have any real obligations for the forseeable future — you know, other than finding a job — should I crash the lobby at Emerging Tech?
    P.P.P.S. I’d like to call bullshit on Jason Calacanis for scheduling his talk at the same time as mine… The six people who bothered to sit in on my presentation totally seemed to enjoy what I had to say, but I knew I couldn’t bring the heat like Mr. Weblogs Inc. C’est la vie.
    P.P.P.P.S. Does anyone else find it ridiculous that I’ve got more content in my postscripts than I do in the main part of my entry?

  • Hollywood Shuffle

    Why the hell does Donkeylips from Nickelodeon’s “Salute Your Shorts” have three MySpace profiles?

    I just know that I’m going to spend the rest of the evening checking to see if child stars like Jamie from Small Wonder have the MySpace too. *sigh* I’m such a lameass sometimes…

  • A Blemish On Your Record

    “Hickeys are like babies — they’re really only one person’s problem.”

  • A Valentine

    Dear Sarah,

    <3,
    Jason