I’ve now been working as a Programmer Analyst with the school district for seven months ( The Coolest ) …and the difference is night and day. I feel like a valued human again – not a cog or number. The work is all on-site – so no more treadmill, but I’m also not walking 14.6 miles daily in frustration, either.
Happy as I am – it’d be a waste of a good comic to not post it, so here ya’ go!
May is bookended on one side by Mother’s Day and on the other by my wife, Jodie’s, birthday. Throw in Memorial Day, busy kiddos, and a new job and I was surprised to get this comic done. Well, almost done – I’m posting it now ’cause I didn’t have time to color it when I gave it to her on Sunday!
The New Job
I guess it’s probably time to make an official announcement. Before I started working as an “Artist in Residence” at Rancho Bernardo High School (RBHS) I had applied for a Programmer Analyst position with Poway Unified School District – and was subsequently turned down. Well, about two months into assisting in art class I got a call from the district office to see if I was still interested in the programming position.
Honestly, I had to think about it. The art position I held was part-time, without benefits, and had very little chance of being renewed for the next school year. Compared to a full-time position with benefits at a much higher pay the decision should have been easy, but it wasn’t. The problem? I really liked teaching art and working with the kids. It was very fulfilling.
I ended up taking the programming position, but made it clear that long-term I’d want to be back in the classroom. My new supervisor seemed to be on board. She’s the executive director for Poway’s CTAAE Department, a mouthful of an acronym that translates to : “Career Technical Adult Alternative Education”. If you live in Poway and Rancho Bernardo and get the “Adult School” booklet in the mail, that’s one of the things my department does. My department is also in charge of CTE, or “Career Technical Education”, which spearheads a lot of the “alternate” classes that I used to like so much when I was in high school so long ago. My daughter, Ashley, for example, took a Computer Graphics course last semester at RBHS which was sponsored by CTE, and loved it!
It’s only been a few weeks, but I feel like I made a good decision. I like the work, the people are great, and for the first time in a long while I feel like I can make a difference. And who knows? Someday I might get to teach one of those CTE classes myself!
On a more personal note, I’ve yet to have the any of the anxiety attacks that used to plague me while working as an Application Development Manager at my last job. I’m beginning to realize just how unhealthy that place, and my manager, really were.
My friend, Ben Good, gave me this idea for a comic – or, rather – his van did!
Teaching
I’ve been assisting in art class at Rancho Bernardo High School as an “Artist in Residence” and loving it. I really enjoy working with the students and am blown away by their talent. Thirty years ago I was in their shoes, taking art at a different high school in a different time. It might surprise you, but I didn’t have a great experience in my art class. It would be twenty years later before I’d take another. Part of me wants to make sure that these students have a better experience than I did. And, if that means attempting awkward poses for their figure drawing course, so be it. Art is a serious thing, but it should never be taken too seriously.
While RBHS was out on “Ski Week” ( a one week holiday bookended by President’s Day ) I got the opportunity to substitute for middle school English at Classical Academies in Escondido for a few days. Middle schoolers are squirrel-ly counterparts to their older high school peers, for sure – but I enjoyed my time there, too.
The path to teaching takes time and money, however. For starters, I’m looking at one year of coursework and another year of unpaid student teaching. Furthermore, Computer Science isn’t an “approved” subject matter in California – not yet anyway. I would need to pass a CSET, an exam proving my expertise in an “approved” field, to teach Middle School and above. Yes, Art is an approved field, and I am considering it amongst other things.
So, yeah. I guess I want to teach…
Still in Remission
For those of you who have been following my cancer story, I am still in remission. I just had my quarterly bloodwork, and there is still no evidence of disease. That’s not to say I don’t think about it a lot. The boogeyman is always there, and the boogeyman is me. When I was undergoing treatment, I drew a lot as an escape. Five years since my surgery, it’s still an escape…
Like it? You can wear it, too. I have it available as a t-shirt on TeePublic.
Music
Now that I’ve been playing in a band, music has become yet another outlet for me. I’ve been posting some questionable poetry on Drawn And Coded for a while, but what I haven’t shared is that I have also been writing songs. Up until recently the lyrics always came easier than the melodies. Suno, an AI music generation service which I wrote about in my last post, helped me bridge that gap. Suno is not perfect, but if I feed it my lyrics along with details on how I want them to sound, it’ll create a complete song. If I refine my criteria ( for example, if I change the timing, the key, the vocal style ), Suno will eventually produce something reasonably close to what I want.
After playing with Suno enough I realized that I wanted to accompany myself playing my own songs, or basically “cover” them. Before artificial intelligence this statement would have sounded gibberish, but now? Not so much, Unfortunately, whereas Suno can create a remarkably realistic and good sounding song, it’s horrible at transcription. I’ve yet to find a tool that does an adequate job of automating the process of converting audible music to sheet music, so I did it manually. It was a painstaking laborious process that resulted in many changes to what Suno had originally created : the chord progression, timing, structure, lyrics, and intonations all had to be changed to make it playable and singable by ( gasp! ) me.
My first song, “Survive”
This is my first song. I call it, “Survive”. It’s rough. It’s not perfect. But it’s mine, and I am proud of it…
Thank you Ben Good and John Hatcher for your help. Also, thank you to my stepfather, Don, who used to sing and play guitar every night before bed when I was growing up. Don, I don’t think you ever realized how much of an impression you made on me.
Here are the lyrics, if you’re interested…
Survive
[Intro] Why do you have to be there? And come back into my life. Why can’t you just stay sealed up? Where you cannot traum-a-tize.
[Verse] You hurt me, burned me, you scarred me deep. You left me all for dead. A horrible void you left for me. I need you outta’ my head.
[Pre-Chorus] From the outside all is normal. No evidence of disease. But my mind still wanders back to you. Distracted and un-eased.
[Chorus] I will NOT give into you. I will NOT sat-is-fy, I will take you to the grave with me. At best it will be a tie.
[Verse] There are nights where I’m not sleepin’… ‘Cause of what you did to me. Thinkin’ of what mighta’ been… …and of what still could be.
I’ve found myself in re-tro-spect. In this vacuum you left behind. Why can’t you let me live my life? Free from you. Dig-ni-fied.
[Chorus] I will NOT give into you. I will not sat-is-fy. I will find myself! You will see. I just need to try.
[Bridge] I’m not the same I was before I don’t think I’ll ever be. I’ve picked up the pieces you left behind. And made myself a better me.
[Outro] I will NOT give into you. I will not sat-is-fy. I’ve found myself no thanks to you. It’s time to say good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye.
The Rubber Band
Meanwhile, the “Dad Band” that Shawn Burgwald and I started over two years ago is still going strong. Some Dads have left, and others have joined. The current roster is Shawn Burgwald ( Lead Guitar ), John Hatcher ( Bass ), Kenn Matthews ( Vocals ), Colin Young ( Drums ), Aaron Pipkin ( Keyboard / Guitar ), and Me ( Rhythm Guitar / Backup Vocals ). We’ve been playing together regularly and have even “broken out of the garage” and played live a handful of times now. Kenn Matthews is our lead singer, but occasionally I get a chance to stretch my vocal chords. Here we are at a practice a couple of weeks ago…
After 25 years of corporate software development I am trying something different.
I just received an email from Rancho Bernardo High School confirming that I am eligible to start work as a part-time assistant art teacher. The opportunity caught me by surprise and I owe a debt of gratitude to my friends and neighbors for recommending me for the role, and their ongoing encouragement. The position is only through June, but will hopefully give me a taste of the classroom.
I also volunteered for Encorps, a non-profit organization that helps STEM professionals get into the classroom and, eventually, credentialed. Over ten weeks I will volunteer as a computer science instructor in underprivileged schools once a week.
Why am I doing this?
I want to teach, but I’d like to “test the waters” first. Originally, my plan was to substitute teach, but my applications went largely unnoticed. This way, however? It’s better. I get to teach kids what I love – Art and Programming – and see if the grass truly is greener on the other side of the fence, at least for me.
Holy Cr@p, Teenagers
Ashley takes after many women in my family. Like my Vavoa, however, it’s all about finding the right approach. For my Vavoa it was See’s Candy. For Ashley? Just give it time 😉
I now am the proud father of two …. teenagers. Ashley is now 15. Kaylee is now 13. Being a guy, it’s amusing to experience how the teenage years play out for my two girls. To all the girls I knew when I was a teenager, you had me completely fooled! I thought you had everything figured out the entire time I was tripping over my own hormones and treading water in an ocean of social awkwardness. Ha! I know better now!
Anyhoo, I drew Ashley a comic on the eve of her 15th birthday. She’s notorious for being difficult to shop for. Her sister, Kaylee, however, is not. I hope I did a good job of conveying that in the comic.
Suno – A Generative AI Music Service
I strongly believe that Generative AI is going to dramatically change how music is created. I only hope it’ll be for the better.
If you haven’t tried out AI by now, you should. I’ll admit, I was scared of it first, but I am also finding it to be an amazing tool.
About a month ago my friend, Ben Good, introduced me to Suno, a generative AI music service. First, he showed me how he could provide Suno a “theme” ( i.e. “I want a happy summertime song about driving along the beach and enjoying the sun” ) and a “style” ( i.e., “American Folk” ) and it would generate a song complete with vocals and a backing track. Then, as a gag, he fed Suno lyrics – in this case a random wikipedia page – to show me that Suno could make a song out of just about any source material. You haven’t truly rocked out until you’ve rocked out to Wikipedia, by the way.
I was hooked ( Ben already was ). I bought a subscription and started feeding it some song lyrics that I had been working on. Low and behold! Suno generated a song. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start. A huge start, honestly. Just hearing my lyrics sung to a backing track got my creative juices flowing.
Since then Ben and I have discovered you can explicitly tell Suno through a prompt what exactly you want your song to sound like ( baritone, edgy, acoustic, heavy metal, twangy, emotional, simple melody, etc …) as well as specify the structure of the song ( verse, chorus, intro, solo, etc … ). The end result? Still not exactly what I was looking for – but close enough.
Here’s the coolest part if you can play an instrument and have a decent voice ( cough, cough – me ). Suno also allows you to download what’s called “stem” files for any song it generates for you. One stem file is the vocals. The other stem file is the music track. Then, you can take the stem files, feed them into a transcription service, generate the sheet music for your song, and learn to play it. Of course, you can generate them by hand – I mean ear, too, it just takes a little longer.
So what happens next?
Well, it doesn’t take too much effort to see the music industry is fighting back. Their claim is that Suno has “trained” its AI model on existing songs. I know for a fact that I heard inklings of well-known artists’ voices in the songs that it generated for me. However, in my very humble opinion? The train has left the station and is roaring along at breakneck speed. I, personally, don’t think they can stop it.
As for me? It’s an enormous win. Suno is helping me create music – my music – music that might have never been heard, otherwise. And with the stem files? I plan on learning to play and sing it, too. Ben and I are currently collaborating on an album. I’ll post here soon about it!
Vandervort Realty has a website
Last, but certainly not least – I finally got around to launching a website for Jodie’s brokerage, Vandervort Realty! You can see it here. Jodie is still very much into the sales side, but has been expanding more and more into property management as well. If you have any questions regarding buying or selling a home, or if you need help with a rental, feel free to use the “Contact Us” page – mainly because I haven’t tested it yet. ( Just kidding, I have ).
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading, people, I hope to post again soon. In the meantime? Go create … and….
The end of the year is rapidly approaching and, after a quick audit, I’ve realized a substantial backlog of projects that I have been meaning to post about. With the holidays on the horizon now is as good a time as any to catch up, so here goes…..
First up – a new Vandervort Realty Logo. Jodie’s real estate brokerage is growing and has expanded into property management. Although that doesn’t necessarily warrant a new logo, I couldn’t help but add some flare to the one that I created for her in 2021. My real reason for the gussying up? I wanted to surprise her with an applique for the glass doors leading to her home office and realized the original design didn’t exactly “pop”. Although I don’t expect “Vandervort Realty” swag to be a big seller, you can order your very own hat, shirt, coffee mug on my TeePublic store.
Next up – yet another comic based on my experiences in Corporate America. “Firehosing” is a term used in tech circles that is used to describe feeding someone information at such a rate that it’s impossible to digest. This particular comic has been sitting in my sketchbook for a while and it was overdue for some ink and color.
The Rubber Band and Penny, the birthday girl.“I Wanna Be Sedated” by The Ramones“I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty“What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” by R.E.M.“Santa Monica” by Everclear
Next up – some tracks of The Rubber Band playing at my good friend, Penny Bauder’s, 50th Birthday Party at the Westwood Club. We played about twenty songs – three of which I sang lead vocals on – all of which I opted to post here. I’ve been working hard on improving my voice ( and accompanying myself on guitar), so please indulge me. On a side note, if you want to indulge me further please go buy some band swag on my TeePublic store.
Next up – some concept artwork I created for my friend, Mike Jock, for his new car dealership, Classic Motors ( Facebook Page ) . Mike had been bouncing the idea around for a while and finally pulled the trigger earlier this year. If you’re looking for a used car, give him a call.
Next up from 2023 – some tattoo sketches that I created over a year ago for my band’s lead guitarist, Shawn Burgwald. He wanted something to honor his late dad, Eric, who was a huge Beatles fan. The guitar pictured is of “Rocky”, George Harrison’s eccentrically-painted Fender Stratocaster.
Next up from 2022 – a comic I drew after spending the better part of a month recovering from pneumonia. On the left is Asclepius, the Greek and Roman god of medicine and healing. On the right is Zeus, the king of gods. A hidden joke for those unfamiliar with Greek Mythology is that Zeus did in fact kill Asclepius after Asclepius attempted to heal mortals of wounds that would have normally been fatal. Zeus’ fear? That Asclepius would close the gap between mortals and gods.
Next up from 2021 – some concept drawings I did for a an illustrated book on engineering security practices that my college buddy, Adham Shabaan, and I were tossing around. The artwork was designed to make the material more approachable. Unfortunately, the idea failed to gain critical mass.
Next up from 2021 – a logo I created for the custom Stratocaster my brother, Todd Vandervort, built for me. Yes, it’s a play on words and probably wouldn’t fly past Fender’s legal department without being riddled with holes. My brother decided to use the more conventional “Fender Stratocaster” applique on the headstock, instead. As far as the guitar? It sounds great. I’m so lucky to have my own personal luthier in the family.
Phew! That’s it. I’ll try and stay on top of things moving forward.
To my (old) team at UPS : Thank you for helping me keep the ol’ train on the rails for the last couple of years.
This is my station ( time to get off ) …
I resigned from my job as an Application Development Manager at UPS. While I enjoyed working with my team, I found myself increasingly at odds with my supervisor, a rigid back-to-office policy, an incredibly stale technology stack, an almost criminal lack of respect for working conditions, and an-out-of-touch CEO.
I have started interviewing, but it has been rough. I am finding myself overqualified for the software development positions that I enjoyed during the first two decades of my career. In Corporate America you are two things : a number and a salary. When either of those tips the scale you either need to adapt, or risk sliding off of the scale altogether. I’m trying to adapt, but as a software engineer ( also known as an “Individual Contributor”), I am finding myself competing with younger and/or cheaper talent than me.
That leaves management, which, at least at UPS, became an increasingly tough pill to swallow. As a manager I felt like my primary function was to find ways to manipulate people to do the greatest amount of work possible in the least amount of time against increasingly impossible deadlines. As a manager I never felt like I was helping people grow or learn. Aside from the paycheck, it was not a rewarding experience.
As I have gotten older and dealt with some pretty significant life changes, I find myself wanting to make a difference – wanting to help people. Yes, I am probably naive in the assumption that such a meaningful position exists for me, but I am not going to give up hope.
One last thing …
Interviewing can suck hard
One company I interviewed at had a final three hour interview, the first hour of which was a slideshow presentation. The recruiter suggested I “tell a story” to engage my audience. Taking him too literally, I drew a bunch of quick sketches to illustrate my take on managing a software development team ( the position was for a Software Development Manager ). After my presentation concluded I was met with blank stares and silence, like I farted loudly in an empty concert hall. The hiring manager just said, flatly, “Did you even read the instructions?” Needless to say I didn’t end up getting the job.
Are we there yet? There are many obstacles before you can deploy to production.
Always break up projects into manageable pieces that can fit into a 2-week sprint.
The client is just one of many stakeholders.
Licensing is a constraint to successful projects.
As an incoming manager, don’t rock the boat until you first determine how it’s floating.
There are lots of different sources of information an onboarded team member can learn from.
It’s not always a technical problem. Sometimes, it’s morale.
I thought it was a technical problem …
Always keep offshore teams engaged.
Keep the [ sprint ] board clean.
Sometimes it’s a legacy [ software ] problem.
Make first contact with the product owner and manager as soon as possible.
Meet regularly and see how you can help.
Only rock the boat after you’ve had a chance to study it first; you’ll get more support from your team.
I could get on my soapbox, raise my fist, and scream my frustrations in a lengthy, expletive-laced diatribe, but what’s the point? Capitalism has spoken – and boy, is it clueless, sometimes.
My chair at work did lose an armrest a few weeks ago. I was denied a new replacement due to budget cuts and ended up reattaching it with an entire roll of scotch tape. The other option was digging through the graveyard of abandoned chairs leftover from prior layoffs and voluntary retirements, but most chairs were in worse condition than mine. I’ve had a desk job for 25 years now and it never ceases to amaze me that no matter what you spill or where you spill it, the stain always manifests itself as a dark stain in the chairs’ fabric exactly in front of your crotch. Inexplicably, armrests are inevitably more convenient than napkins when in meetings or battling it out with a coworker over email. So, scotch tape it is, and, if I’m going to sit in a stain, I’d much prefer it to be my own.
Art has been my outlet for a long time. It helped me survive three years of cancer treatments by poking fun at my situation ( and myself ). Recently, I started a new job and I’m finding that it’s helping me cope there as well. Some days are good, some days are … well, the comic speaks for itself here I think.
I have a lot more work related comics in the pipe, too, but given the circumstances – mainly not wanting to have an uncomfortable conversation with human resources ( or get fired for that matter ), I’m not sure when these ideas will see the light of day. It’s a shame, too, because I’m really happy with this one, not only because it cracks me up, but because it’s the first one I’ve created using a new process.
You might have noticed that I haven’t posted a lot lately. Well, that’s because I’ve spent the last few weeks rebooting my process for drawing comics.
First, I pruned. I have a whole backlog of ideas, some so old they’re not really relevant anymore. I tossed those. Wanting only the best, I axed the mediocre ideas, too.
Second, I started putting more effort into design. Now, rather than trying to churn stuff out comics as quickly as possible, I spend more time upfront on character and background design – even if I had drawn the stuff before. I draw the designs using pencil and paper, too. Seven years into this and I’m beginning to realize drawing digitally has as many cons as pros. While being able to erase and redraw to ad nauseum made me sloppy, the ability to zoom in to a pixel made me obsessive compulsive. Go figure.
Third, I now try to stick to 2-layers. Basically, a gesture and rough sketch to hammer out the shapes, followed by a “finished” pencil sketch.
Lastly, no ink. I used to spend hours inking over pencil lines and was never really happy with the outcome. Pencil is way more forgiving and, unlike ink, the lines can be tidied up much easier. The best part? After I colored everything the difference was negligible. Disney used a similar process in the development of “101 Dalmatians” way back in 1961. They took the hand drawn pencil sketches created by their cartoonists, ran them through a Xerox machine to copy ( and darken ) the lines onto a clear transparency, and sent the sheets to their paint department for finishing. In prior movies the lines were all painstakingly painted by hand. The Xerox process supposedly saved the studio by making it much cheaper to produce feature length animations. Hey, it it’s good enough for Disney, it’s good enough for me.
Here are the designs that I created for the above comic. I’m planning on following the same process for future drawings. Hopefully you’ll even be able to see the next one.
“Guess what girls? As of August 1st I can get you all of the free bubble wrap and boxes that you want!”, I joked. “I just accepted a new job at UPS!”
“Which store will you be working at? The one next to CVS?”, Kaylee asked.
“Uh….no….”, I laughed, “No, it’s a management role. I’ll be managing other engineers.”
“Oh…..”, they said in unison. Almost disappointed.
More than a few of my friends have also suffered through a similar lack of enthusiasm from their own kids. Working for Apple does not mean you work at the Genius Bar, nor does working at Qualcomm mean you hustle popcorn and beer at football games, although admittedly, the latter is a bit stale given the closure of the prior home of the Chargers football team.
As a manager I’ll be herding engineers rather than the 1’s and 0’s that have been the hallmark of my prior positions. It’ll be a change of pace for me, but one I have been working towards for a while. Over the last couple of years I have been reading books on management strategies, interviewing past co-workers, and enrolling in classes. This year culminated with a Certified Associate Project Manager (CAPM) certification, a Certified SCRUM Master certification, and, of course, this new job.
“To be honest, there are faster, smarter, quicker engineers than me…”, I admitted to my soon-to-be boss during my interview.
He raised an eyebrow at me.
“…I mean, I’m no slouch!”, I corrected quickly. “But, over the years I’ve had the opportunity to work with some amazing people, and, given my own experiences, I feel like I am in a great position where I can guide and motivate them to become what they were meant to be.”
“‘I’m a ‘People Person’, too”, I laughed, “You know, like Tom Smykowski from Office Space? You know, Office Space? The movie?”
A questionable stare. I guess not. Probably a bad analogy anyway, though, given that Tom was anything but a people person.
For me it’s all true, though. Between a one-two punch of a cancer diagnosis and COVID lockdown, I need to be working with people again, not staring at a computer screen. There will still be problems, of course, just of a different, more “people-y” nature, and I am so looking forward to it.
So, before I go, some job search statistics for those who are interested:
I submitted at least 80 job applications over a 3-month period. The first of which was on 4/17/2022, the last of which was on 7/15/2022.
I interviewed with 12 different companies. This equates to 15% of the companies that I had applied to. The majority of the interviews were split into three different parts – an HR screen, an hour-long interview with the hiring manager, and, finally, a half-day panel interview with the team. I am still waiting on responses from some of the interviews that I participated in.
I received 3 offers, which is roughly 4% of the companies that I had applies to and 25% of the companies that I had interviewed with.
The most responsive of the larger companies that I applied to were BD, Sony, and Amazon. The bad news is that BD, after several rounds of interviews and over a month-and-a-half of waiting, cancelled the requisition altogether. Meanwhile, two months and three interviews later I am still “waiting” to hear from Sony. As for Amazon, I almost felt I had to beat them off with a stick. I was contacted by so many of their recruiters over the course of my search that I lost count. I can’t help but think I was just a quota as follow-up calls were few and far in-between. An engineer with a heartbeat, yup, that’s me.
The least responsive large companies were Intuit and HP, both of which I submitted multiple applications, but never received a single follow-up. Intuit was by far the most frustrating as I attended not one, but two career events – uh, I mean, mixers.
drawnandcoded.com 
