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8 Random Facts About Jason Irwin

June 20, 2008 Home

The Lull must be in full swing because it’s that time of year when memes are flying through the blogosphere. Mike recently tagged me with one on “8 Random Facts” and, while this won’t be my first, it might be fun to share some Would’a, Could’a, Didn’t stories. Besides, what better place to share all the funny little errors in judgment we might have made than the interwebs?

So, without further delay, here are the 8 random facts that contributed to my not having a million dollars:

1. 6 Months of Pain – From 1998 to 2002 I owned and operated a small computer company in Southern Ontario. The advantages I sold to customers included “after-hours service” and a computer designed specifically for the buyer.

The way it worked was quite simple. People would set up an appointment, either by phone or online, and I would meet them at their home, work or somewhere else to talk about their needs. From there, I would suggest a specific computer and we’d work out the final configuration from there. Most machines could be assembled and delivered within 3 days and, if a customer wanted to watch me build and configure their computer while explaining what everything does, I would do the work in their home. This alone allowed me to win over dozens of clients. But, alas, it wasn’t to last.

In 2002 I had a run of very demanding customers. Because my company lived by word-of-mouth, I needed to work twice as hard to win these people over. Unfortunately, that never happened. Regardless of what services I offered, these clients refused to say ‘thank you’ and accused me of ripping them off. At one point I was almost sued until I showed that, for these particular customers, I was only making a 0.7% profit after everything was said and done. By the time they stopped calling, I discovered that I had lost $80 with each computer sale between January and May.

Good thing I had a full time job elsewhere.

2. Walked Away From the Table – Well … It was a slot machine, but why argue semantics. In 2002 I was playing the slots at a casino for several hours with a girlfriend (if you can even call such a sloth a ‘girl’), but was coming up empty with every pull. After calling it quits, a lady in her late 60’s sat down to pick up where I left off. Two minutes later, the klaxon was blaring and she was $23,750 richer.

This was also the last time I ever played in a casino.

3. Didn’t Take the Job – I was offered a programming/DBA job at an online startup in 2004, but didn’t take the job. At the time I was really short on cash and didn’t want to quit my steady job for such a risky venture. Now that startup has revenues in excess of $300-million a year and the owner is known to be very generous with loyal employees.

4. Dropped the Wrong Domain – Who knew that one of the first domains I had ever owned would become a popular name in Germany? I didn’t. So when I found out that I lost a decent sale of a domain by not renewing it, I wasn’t too impressed.

5. Didn’t Buy a Ticket – I’m terrible with lotteries. In 10 years, I’ve managed to “win” about $50 after sinking a good $4000+ into the system. To this end, I stopped playing a month before moving to Japan. Two weeks later 6 of my 7 numbers were pulled. Total prize? $437,680. Number of winners? Zero. I would have taken the whole pool.

6. Didn’t Pitch the Idea – Skateboarding was a big thing when I was in school, but I could never do it. To make up for this deficiency, I made a little toy that would let me “fingerboard.” This is to say, one could skateboard on a table with their fingers in some make-believe world. The idea became popular in my school and it was still “cool” a year later. The following summer, I was watching TV and saw an advertisement for a plastic finger skateboard … it was the same thing I had invented years before when I was 9.

7. Got Bored – You wouldn’t know it by looking at my stick figures today, but I used to be an artist. Heck, I even managed to score a few commissions and earn several thousand dollars while in high school. Several people spoke quite highly of the work, but I never thought it was good enough for the money paid. Unfortunately, I became bored with the work and looked for a new challenge….

8. Didn’t Write The App – In 1998 I was quite frustrated with how difficult it was to get my hands on new anime episodes. Back then, everything was done over IRC with XDCC servers or FTPs. I had thought about writing an application like Kazaa as a way to “force leechers to share,” but never put the code down. Napster and other applications hit the web soon after, but it was too late for me to get in there.

I will not make the same mistake with Embink.

So there you have it. Eight random facts on a very specific topic. The funny thing about this list, though, is that one might think I’m a pathetic and luckless loser. But this couldn’t be further from the truth … I’m not completely luckless

Heck, if I was a complete loser, I never would have been able to move to Japan, marry my Reiko, or keep going past the age of 25. Sure, there have been some lost opportunities, but it’s not enough to keep me from trying in the future.

To keep this meme going, I’d like to tag Nick from RomanDock, Nick from Anything Goes!, and MsDanielle.

Here are the rules:
1. People who are tagged need to write a post containing 8 random facts about themselves.
2. At the end of the post you should name several other bloggers to be tagged.
3. Leave a comment for the bloggers and link to your own post.

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