Who the heck is this guy?
My name is Paul Holder. I'm currently living in Atlanta, Georgia in what I like to refer to as East Dunwoody. Okay, I live in Doraville on the other side of the highway (tracks, if you will) from Dunwoody. Atlanta is a pretty good place to live, but it has one huge negative - there's no ocean anywhere close enough to enjoy on a regular basis. I grew up surfing on the East coast of Florida in the smallish town of Stuart. So the lack of ocean frontage in Atlanta is even more distressing to me than the average person.
So you might ask why I ended up so far from the ocean. There's a long answer, but simply put I came for the work. Currently, I'm a Senior User Interface Engineer at AutoTrader.com. Frankly, it doesn't take long to get accustomed to a steady, secure job (especially in the dot com world) where you actually have fun more often than not. I worked as a contractor before the site launched in May of 1998, but didn't come on as a full-time employee until November of that year. I've seen it grow from one Web server to many hundreds and all the stuff that goes with that sort of thing. It's been a very interesting and educational experience.
Some day, if I don't some day myself straight to the grave, there are several things I'd be happy to end up doing. Of course, they all require varying degrees of money, so they'll likely not happen anytime soon. So in a somewhat random order...
I think it would be incredible to buy a yacht and disappear for a few years, or even forever. It'd be a great way to travel the world and see all kinds of new exciting places and cultures. Just in case I find myself with a pile of money, I've been taking courses through the American Sailing Association so I'm not completely worthless at sea.
Another option would be to buy a bar on a nice beach on some tropical island. Nothing too big and stressful. Just a nice little tiki bar where I could hang out and meet all kinds of new and interesting people passing through.
If neither of those work out, I'd still like to relocate to some tropical island or country and try to maintain a U.S. job in technology. With any luck, the U.S. work culture will continue to evolve into a less office-oriented work place that allows employees to work from anywhere. The tools are there today, the culture just needs to catch up. There are tools that allow us to share each other's computer screens, teleconferencing and wireless connections. We don't really need anything else, except to break the reliance on the very inefficient face-to-face meetings.
So basically, I guess you could say that I ultimately want to end up in a nice tropical place where people are more friendly, and there are ample surfing opportunities.