There was a point in time where I was posting multiple postings in one day. Some times, as many as 6. Of course, there has also been a time when I’ve posted as often as once a month, and then again, there have been times where this site has not often been online for one reason or another. I’ve noticed here (and on other blogs as well) that blogging, like everything else has an evolutionary cycle that is followed, sometimes more closely than others.
Blogs, it seems, start out like many other “loves” in our lives. At first, the need to populate their pages with witty banter is great. Bloggers seldom go longer than 12 or 24 hours between posts (many may fire off a rapid succession of posts in a shorter amount of time. Whether or not these posts are of the caliber needed in the blogosphere is another debate for another day). Like young lovers in a new relationship, the new blogger mostly gets a sense of belonging from posting the menu from their lunch, what they think about the bitch in the cubicle next to them or what funny thing the odd looking man did on the subway this morning on their way in to work. Its almost as if blogging gives their lives meaning. A reason to exist online and try to connect with others.
Many new bloggers feel that the work their doing is important. As if Marty Kline in Podunk, IA (thats Iowa) really cares about the street musician in San Fransisco. But the truth is he doesn’t and after months of posting and checking PR and Alexa and god knows what other rankings, the new blogger is often let down.
After a while (rather quickly if the blogger is only blogging for money and not for any real reason) the process of blogging becomes something of a chore. A “yes, I must update today, but I won’t over the weekend” attitude sets in. Posts become more mundane, regular and more of a job than anything else. Its this point of blogging that most bloggers fall in to and never seem to escape from. How many posts can you find about the pizza someone had for lunch on thursday? Or about the way their boss makes them feel unappreciated (not that its a boss’ job to make you feel appreciated). Too many.
This period is perhaps the most dangerous for a blogger. For its now that the act of blogging looses its fun. If something isn’t fun, your more likely not to do it. When blogging becomes a chore, when you’re searching for that next post instead of just freely typing to get what you want, you’re more likely to stop.
I’ve noticed, among the bigger, more popular blogs, that unless you have multiple authors or contributors writing for you, content updates are sporadic. Its not a fault of the blogger (well, some of it is) so much as the fact that blogging has become a job. Its like waking up in the morning and driving to work. Punching the clock and counting the hours until you get to go home, except that in this case, you’re keeping track of word count.
Anyone can fall in to the point where they lack the desire to blog (I think I went most of February with out posting), the hard part is finding a reason to blog again. This series is going to continue with several topics on maintaining that desire to blog. Don’t ask for a schedule of when I’m going to post them, because I just don’t know.
With all the brouhaha over the google bitchslap that took place towards the end of 2007 (in case you didn’t know, google penalized sites who posted links with out nofollow for payment) something was bound to step up and take its place. The question is can a new comer survive in the shark eat shark world of SEO and Page ranking? IZEA (payperpost’s daddy) hopes so and it thinks it has a winning product with RealRank.
RealRank (RR) is Izea’s answer for its affiliates on how to retain a ranking system that doesn’t care how or what you link to so much as traffic quantity and quality to your site. The idea is that the realrank weights blogs 70% on daily unique visitors, 20% by daily active inbound links and 10% by daily page views as reported by ITK (Izea tool Kit). While the idea was just released to the public, Izea and the PPP crowd have been using this since December ‘07 as a way to rank websites in order to maintain the level of advertising as before. From where I sit, the only down side is that advertisers have been slow on the uptake of the new ranking system, prefering PageRank still despite the fact that anyone who would even consider posting about their products has virtually no PR at the present time.
The realrank system is a pretty nice system with some nice looking graphs. According to the ranking, Delusions of Grandeur is some where around 452 for the day with a weekly average of somewhere around 588. Not bad when you consider the 100,000 blogs that Izea/PPP is potentially already tracking. A nice feature about RealRank is the ability to keep the stats private. While I personally do not mind if others see how successful I am, it might not behoove a smaller site to have its stats public until they’ve built up a good base.
According to the realrank site:
RealRank is a more accurate ranking than Alexa and Google PageRank because it isn’t based on a small sample of a site’s visitors or on a censored link-weighting algorithm. It’s based on real traffic.
One of the other cool things is that they have an open api so anyone can develop for it with out any penalty. Already, there’s a rank badge available and its only a matter of time before there are more and more things developed.
We’ll have to see if RR makes a difference. If you haven’t checked it out yet, visit IzeaRanks to check out your blog, create an account and get the tracking code for your site. It could help boost your traffic!
When I hit 300 drops yesterday (which I repeated today!) I mentioned to gruntled that I had come across a ton of bad sites and a few good ones in my quest. He wanted to know which ones I liked, so I thought I’d let everyone know. Here are five of the better blogs I came across on EntreCard. In no order….
Fabulously Jinxed - A really cool site that has a mix of everything. The writing is easy to read and the site is rather well laid out.
Mrs. Sparrow - Granted, if she was married to the famous captain, she wouldn’t really have time to be blogging, but her site is fun, witty and another good read. Not to mention that chick pirates are HOT!!
Gospel According To Rhys I actually came across the Gospel before I came across Entrecard, but it wasn’t too prominent on my radar until EntreCard. Rhys is a witty writer from across the pond (thats England for you wags who didn’t know) who chronicles most anything he feels like.
cigar Jacks - This has become one of my daily must hits. If for any other reason than to extend my knowledge of cigars. I smoke an occasional cigar (I even have a Humidor), but my knowledge is rather limited to the one brand I happen to have on hand. I need to learn the lingo and find some new smokes and this is a good place to do it.
I think I’ll work on a five of the worst finds on EntreCard… the problem is going to be narrowing it down to only five.
It appears that several of the bigger players are abandoning ship in hopes that they aren’t dragged down with it. The promises made by BlogRush head John Reese have failed to materialize as more and more bloggers pull the widget from their sites in an effort to rid the web of such bloaty scripts.
I had posted back in November about my experiences with BlogRush and whether or not it was worth it and at the time, I decided to make some changes to the way I handled their system. Instead of giving them my main feed with every article in it, I switched to a specific blogrush feed that only showed the articles I wanted to show. It helped a little, but as the next screenshot shows, it still wasn’t the boon to traffic that programs like EntreCard, and even just making comments on other blogs has been.
My next step was to change the category my blog lived in as well on the BlogRush system. That did little more than drive my credits up as I received less and less exposure. So now, I have around 20k credits that aren’t being used (which is a far cry from the Cow’s 10,000,000 credits). I’ve noticed that as I browse the blogosphere, I’m seeing the BR widget less and less and with bigger sites pulling their widgets, I have to wonder if it was a good idea poorly implemented. One of the things that makes EntreCard worth while is that you have to get out and drop your card on other blogs and YOU get to choose who you advertise on and who advertises on you.
This form of self quality control enables you to make better choices that benefit you and your readers more than blogrush. Most of the crap on the blogrush widget is just that, crap. I really don’t need to know that you failed to make 28,000 a month last year. What I need is good incoming traffic.
I’ve developed a free, widget ready (I think) theme for WordPress thats based of a site redesign I was working on for another site. I’ve decided not to use the design for that site and thought it appropriate to make it a cool WordPress 2.3.2 theme.
The site is a two column layout with a footer area. The header automatically pulls the tags for your posts and creates meta tags out of them. You need to EDIT the header.php file and change the commonmeta tags to something more fitting for your site:
$commonmeta = "delusions,reviews,politics,family,ramblings,bloggin,money";
Please feel free to use this theme as you feel fit, I only ask that you keep the information in the footer linking back to this site.
Posted by mcangeli on January 2nd, 2008 | Comments Off | Delusions, blogrush
Dropping cards for traffic sounds like it is too good to be true doesn’t it? In fact, it is a little too good to be true, there’s more to EntreCard than just dropping yours where ever you feel like. This past week, I’ve taken the opportunity to visit a lot of the sites that Entrecard plays host to (and I’m no where near done yet) and its been amazing at the differences between sites that I’ve seen. I’ve come across some Really bad ones, some that are common wall flowers and others like The Gospel and Cigar Jack that have some cool stuff and good writing to offer that I’ll visit more often.
It astonishes me that the number of websites lacking proper design, writing and taste on entrecard is so high, but then, with the number of blogs that has sprung up lately, should I really be that surprised? It seems that everyone and their sister has a blog dedicated to making money on line that they fill with the “latest and greatest” money making tips that any monkey with a keyboard should be able to figure out. The number of personal diaries online has seemed to skyrocket as well. These two areas can probably be attributed to the rise in the number of paid blogging systems (yes, I do belong to several of them) that have popped up over the past year as well. One of the benefits of Entrecard is enabling more people to learn about your site through various means like advertising on other blogs.
Is it really worth it though when your “card” is going to be displayed at the bottom of a mile long page of mindless blabber about the weather and the fact that the site owner had to write about ladies undies you could at least do it in a better form than “well, a sponsor wants me to write about ladies undies but I’m a man!”. No its not. However, you shouldn’t let the bad sites ruin your chances to increase traffic.
As with any advertising media, there is a right way to choose whats best on Entrecard. You have every right to be picky about which sites you advertise on and which sites advertise on you. For instance, if I ran a blog about dogs, I would most likely not advertise on a blog about cats (or Vietnamese food) and I would not have a cat site advertise on mine. Do not be afraid to reject ads if they do not fit in with your topics. You don’t see want ads for window washers under the used car salesmen section do you?
Secondly, do not, I repeat, DO NOT, advertise on sites where the entrecard box is below the fold (the fold is an old newspaper term referring to the bottom half of the page which is usually not seen when the paper is folded. Here we’re talking about the bottom of a page where someone has to scroll to see it). If its not one of the first thing a person sees once the page is loaded, its a waste. Want proof? Ask around. I’ve found that in advertising on Entrecards, the ad’s I’ve placed that are above the fold perform better than those below the fold. You can drop your cards as much as you want on those sites, but DO NOT advertise on them no matter what kind of traffic they claim to provide.
Don’t be afraid to drop your card and even write recommendations for the site owner through entrecard. I’ve found that by dropping cards on sites I get more visits back in return. It does two things. One it lets people know about your site (and if you do it in your own category, you might gain new links elsewhere) and it encourages them to visit your site and drop cards. Dropping cards on other sites benefits everyone.
Lastly, and this is probably the most important, leave a comment on a post or two on the blogs you visit through entrecard. Not only is it free advertising to you, but many blog owners have the scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours mentality. If you comment there, they’ll come and comment on yours. Its an excellent way to gain friends, readers and comments which all helps in the traffic game.
If you want to see who all is on entrecard… Check HERE
These days it seems that traffic boosting schemes are around every corner when it comes to finding ways to improve traffic to your blog. Blogrush, BloggingZoom, Sphinn, Entrecard, thoof, Digg and so many others that if I typed them all out I’d be here for hours. It boggles the mind that yet another one could come along, but guess what campers, it has! rssHugger (from the folks that brought WordHugger to the masses) is a multistop rss feed aggregator (at least thats what it appears to be).
From their site:
rssHugger is a new website developed to help bloggers promote their blogs, and to help visitors discover new blogs that write about subjects that the readers are interested in. Through the power of the internet and viral marketing, rssHugger looks to bring blog writers and blog readers closer together.
They’re offering free 10 year accounts for a review of their service (you get the account after you do the review….. kind of backwards) or you can pony up 20 clams and get the same thing. I don’t actually know how the service works for Delusions of Grandeur, as I have to write the review of the service before I can use the service (are you confused yet?). I’m going to try it out for a bit and let you know how well it works, but if it works as well as their about page claims it will, then it should be good for something. At the very least, it gets my rss feed out to more people and thats always a good thing.
If you’re like me, you’re a bit hesitant to upgrade to the latest release of Wordpress. DoG was running a very good install of the last 2.2.x release and I wasn’t in a rush to upgrade it for several reasons. The largest reason and one you can still see some of the effects of on the site, is that the theme I’m using, Redoable by DJR hasn’t been updated for the 2.3 branch and most likely won’t be any time soon.
If you’re not currently running a theme compatible with the 2.3.x branch of wordpress, I would recommend changing your theme to one that is or wait to upgrade until you’re comfortable with doing the work yourself. I’m in the process of a redesign and I wanted to use some of the native features in the new releases of WP so I went ahead and made the jump. It wasn’t all cake though, there are some hoops to jump through before you dive right in.
Download the latest version to your server (if you have ssh, log in and do a wget) via wget or ftp if you can.
Log in to your admin area and disable ALL plugins (yes Virginia, even Akismet. No, don’t worry, you’ll have akismet back up with in 15 minutes). They make it nice and easy in wordpress to disable everything at once (there’s a link at the bottom of the plugin management page that disables everything with one click).
Set your default theme to the Default wordpress theme. This is recommended practice for several reasons one, the default theme is standard in wordpress releases and WILL work on your site immediately after the upgrade where as your current theme may or may not.
Unzip and copy (again really easy in ssh) the new release to your blog directory. Make sure to copy the contents in wordpress to your blog’s directory and not just the wordpress folder.
Run http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php - This is a crucial step as the database changed from the 2.2.x versions to the 2.3 branch. You need to update the database or nothing on the site will work correctly.
Check your site. Once the upgrade has completed you can check your site. Your posts and everything should display properly using the default theme.
Login to your admin area and UPGRADE ANY plugins that say there is a new release. **THIS IS IMPORTANT** as the database changes rendered the way some plugins accessed the information. If you don’t upgrade the plugins you might get errors (like the UTC category error on this site). Its easy and will take hardly any time at all. One of the features I LIKE about 2.3 is that it lets me know when I need to upgrade the plugins.
Activate all your plugins - Or at least the ones you still want to use. I went through and cleared out some of the ones not in use here on the site and it helped a bit.
Select new theme - You *should* now be able to reset your theme to the one you want. There may be some errors, if that is the case check the wordpress.org site for answers, chances are that someone has already had the same issue.
In all, it should take less than an hour to do the upgrade. If you’re unsure, there are plenty of people who will do it for you (often for a slight fee). I’ve found the best way is to be prepared. Download the new version before you start anything and make sure you read the upgrade notes. If you’re using a custom theme, make sure it will work. I’ve found that most themes will with some minor changes to the way they call some of the WP hooks.
While checking up on John Chow today I came across a cool new method to get free advertising on some of the bigger name blogs as well as some not so well known ones. By now you’ve noticed an image on the upper right side of the site (you noticed it right?). Thats my EntreCard. A new device in online marketing that costs nothing. Well, virtually nothing.
You gain credits for advertising on the network by visiting other blogs with entrecards and “dropping” your card. Like putting your Business card in a fishbowl at the local chili’s for a free meal. The more cards you drop, the more credits you get. The more credits you get, the more you can advertise. Sites like Problogger and Johnchow.com currently require around 100 credits (and a fairly lengthy wait) to purchase advertising through this method. The upside is that its a “free” way to get advertising (although not the best advertising) on some of the sites for a day.
For those of us with smaller budgets, entrecard is a great way to get the word out. You could advertise on a ton of smaller sites or a few larger sites with out breaking the bank. As Chow put it:
Because credits are build by having members drop their card, EntreCard can be a good source of traffic for the small blogger.
There’s been a lot of hubbub on the intarwebs lately about the latest round of Google Spanking going on over blogs doing paid links and paid reviews. While I happen to disagree with Google on their deranking of almost every blog involved in paid posting or paid links, its their system and they can do how they see fit. The one thing I’ve decided is that its my site and blog and if I want to do paid reviews, posts or show photos of my dog licking itself, no one (be they google or not) is going to tell me I can’t.
Thats why I’m fairly certain that realrank (a precursor to SocialSpark) can help replace Google PR, Alexa ranking and maybe even Technorati rankings with its fairly straight forward design. According to Ted Murphy, the man behind PPP, IZEA, SocialSpark and RealRank:
The formula is relatively simple.
70% weighted towards visitors per day
20% weighted towards amount of ACTIVE inbound links per day
10% weighted towards pageviews per day
Another nice feature is that RealRank is calculated at 2am (est) daily. So you could have an awesome RR one day and the next a not so hot one. It depends on your traffic and the number of clicks through the links on your site. RealRank not only looks at links on your site, but active links (links that get clicked in a 24 hour period) and incoming links as well. It seems to be a pretty robust system.
My rank yesterday was in the 400’s this morning, its around 800. Not too bad, but it could be better. Unlike most ranking systems, the key here isn’t to get a lot of links back to your site, but to generate quality content that people want to visit and link to. Quality seems to matter more in RealRanking more than quantity. Something thats refreshing to see for a change.
There has been talk on some of the boards lately about the best ways to promote your blog both on line and off line. Out side of the obvious (making comments on other blogs, posting links on forums and traffic scams like Blogrush) there are some non-obvious ones. If you work for a company that has a business card, look at one of your cards. It has all your contact information on it. Name, Phone, Email and most of the time websites. If you can have one for your job, why not have a business card for your blog?
You can get 100 Free blogger cards from ooprint right now and all you do is pay shipping. Its a really cool deal if you’re looking for a way to promote your blog or other personal site. The templates they have are pretty cool as well and you can decide what information you want on them. It can’t hurt to have another way to promote your blog can it??
The first words out of my mouth were @^%#&!@#! %#*$&#^@ #%@&@&#. You can imagine how I felt. Five years in to owning the X and all it had on it was a dent where my brother in law’s elbow landed (why he was skateboarding in the garage is beyond me) and a small patch of yellow from when I hit one of the barracades at my last job. Otherwise, the body was flawless. I had just dropped Grace off at her day care (I picked her up from school and we went to McD’s where she had 6 chicken nuggets and some apple slices) and was preparing to turn right on to 41 north bound headed back to work.
There was a car behind me, neither of us were moving (as I couldn’t go anywhere due to oncoming traffic) when all of a sudden WHAM (or whack or smash or a combination of all three for all I know). My beloved Xterra was jolted forward a bit and I knew in an instant what had happened. I could also tell with out looking that whatever had hit me was worse off than I was (its a perk to driving an SUV with a trailer hitch on it). I moved the car foward and out of the turn lane and I parked it, got out to look at the damage and I was right. You can see from the photos what I mean. He asked if I were ok and immediately said that he wasn’t paying attention and his foot slipped off the break.
Now, while I appreciate the honesty, I was taught that you NEVER admit the accident was your fault. No matter what. Especially to the other driver or to the police officer. However, he was nice enough (probably in his early 20’s) and offered to call the police (another not smart move on his part). Something else I learned at an early age was to try and avoid the police report if possible (at least if you were at fault) as not only would it affect your insurance but then you have it on your record as well. Anyways, he called the police and they finally showed up. The office asked for License and Insurance (both of which I had readily available for him) and the other driver only had his insurance (now you see why calling the popo was a bad idea?). The other driver’s father showed up and reassured me that they had good coverage and it would be taken care of (which I thought again was nice).
We waited for what had to be 20 minutes as the officer wrote up the report and returned to hand my license and insurance card back. I can pick the report up in three to five working days, which means that with the weekend and then thanksgiving, I can expect it the monday after thanksgiving if I’m lucky. As I got back in the car and prepared to pull away, I could see the cop’s face as he talked to the other driver. I believe he was in the process of writing a ticket either for following to closely or driving with out his license. Either way, I bet it wasn’t good.
I’d been waiting for an accident to happen at that intersection (I’m there no less than three times a day five days a week) as its a fairly heavy traffic area with out a stop light (its across a four lane highway). However, I’d always imagined it would be someone coming north bound hitting my car as I sat in the middle waiting to turn south. While the damage is actually minimal (I had to remove the dented plastic piece to keep it from rubbing on the tire) I’m glad it occurred without the girls in the car. If anything had happened to them, I’d have been seriously pissed. I’ve been looking at getting a new bumper for the X ever since I got her, one where I can mount the spare tire on it behind the rear window, now might be the best time for that.
Thirteen Reasons I Heart Huckabee!! In no particular order…
He Supports the FairTax - thats right. A candidate who actually supports the fair tax. HOW FREAKING AWESOME IS THAT?? Mike is for removing the IRS and instituting the fairtax. Something that would benefit EVERYONE and not just the super rich or super poor for once.
He can rock out on the Bass Guitar. - I’ll let this one speak for itself…
His wife has gone 2 for 3 with a grenade launcher, jumped out of an airplane, flown in an F-16 and shot an MP5 submachine gun. What have the other candidate’s spouses done (besides set the US up for one of the greatest terrorist attacks in the history of the country).
He wants to make health care better. Not by making it a government program but by fixing what is wrong.
by reforming medical liability; adopting electronic record keeping; making health insurance more portable from one job to another; expanding health savings accounts to everyone, not just those with high deductibles; and making health insurance tax deductible for individuals and families as it now is for businesses. Low income families would get tax credits instead of deductions. We don’t need all the government controls that would inevitably come with universal health care. When I’m President, Americans will have more control of their health care options, not less.
He wants to Improve Education not by more government intrusion, but through working with the states to improve the quality and not quantity of education. Mike believes that music and art should play important parts in every education and he wants to base the success of schools on actual academic results and not how much they’re spending per student.
He knows what he believes in and he stands for it. He believes “Our nation was birthed in a spirit of faith - not a prescriptive faith telling us how or whether to believe, but acknowledging a providence that pervades our world.”
He believes in right to life. While this isn’t a die hard issue for me (I’m much more concerned with taxes, health care and protecting our country) its important for a lot of voters. Thompson might have received the NRTL endorsement this week, but I believe Mike will fight for the right to life the hardest out of any of the candidates.
Chuck Norris Supports Huckabee. I could really stop the list here, but if Walker, Texas Ranger and his fists of death support Mike, shouldn’t we all??
Securing our Borders. Mike wants to Secure our borders to stem the flow of illegal immigrants to the country. He doesn’t believe in amnesty for those here against the law and he wants to do something about it.
He’ll fight to protect our right to Arm Bears. Wait. I mean bare arms. Mike’s a staunch supporter of the Second Ammendment and all it means to America. He’s the only candidate to consistantly fight for the rights of gun owners and protected gun manufacturers from frivolous law suits. Plus he was the FIRST govenor in the country to have a concealed handgun license.
He’ll work towards energy Independence - What does that mean? It means no more leaning on foreign oil for our oil. It means being able to take care of ourselves and not having to worry about the nutter in the third world country who supplies oil for our SUVs. It also means finding new viable energy sources and ways to fuel cars, power and other things like Hybrid engines, wind turbines and more power plants. And he plans to have it done by the beginning of his second term in office.
He supports the efforts to Protect us from Al Qaeda in Iraq and Around the world - This in itself is one of the biggest things Mike has going and one of the main reasons I haven’t looked at Ron Paul yet. Huckabee is willing to go the distance to secure the Country against threats from hostile forces. Something few of the other candidates are willing to do.
He’s picked up in the latest polls in Iowa to move in to second position in the GOP race there behind Romney. Chuck Norris Supports Him. His wife went 2 for 3 with a grenade launcher. The man just rocks.
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There was an interesting article in the November 5th issue of Computerworld by Mary Brandel listing out seven steps to boosting your career in 2008. I want to take a brief look at them to see exactly what they offer.
Talk to Your Manager - I think that this is actually a fairly good starting point. Your manager won’t know that you’re looking to move up in jobs unless you tell them. Just sitting by idly while the person in the cube next to you is making constant references to a bump in pay grade does little to get you noticed. Granted, it might mean your manager is a little harder on you to see if you have what it takes or how serious you are in your move. It doesn’t hurt to ask what you can do either.
Broaden Your View - Mary points out here that most in the IT field have tunnel vision. We tend to focus mainly on our area of concentration (networking, security, etc) where as we need to be looking at more of the business as a whole. In my position I’ve experienced the ins and outs of being a CSR and an estimator so far. Its helped me understand the workings of the company as well as the workings of the job tracking and order placement system we run here. Its also a good way to find out where we’re lacking in the IT field and what can be done to better that. Besides, its easy to go out to lunch with the sales weasels or the hottie in accounting, right?
Find a Mentor - Either one within your company or someone in your field from outside who has a lot of knowledge and power in the industry. Its easy to do and it can often lead to open doors you might not have found other wise. Besides, its a good way to network. As Mary points out in her article “People Like to Mentor other people”.
Show off your writing skills - No, not by writing long winded emails about the perils of forwarding on the latest forward. Contribute articles to any of the print or online tech magazines (techcrunch anyone?) or start your own blog. She points out that one of the biggest things lacking in the IT field is good communication skills and if you have them they can go along way to getting you noticed. Its true. Have you seen some of the support tickets that get submitted in the larger help centers? A little bit of writing practice can go a long way. And besides it can be fun to document your co-workers
Broaden Your Circle - Unlike broadening your Vision, this one takes place outside of the workplace. Brandel suggesting joining some of the local user groups (like a linux user group) or other interest group. Join Rotary or the Kawanis club even. A small bit of networking can go a long way. You never know who’s looking to hire and helping out with an organization can go a long way.
Work for FREE - Not at your current job. Brandel suggests volunteering with a foundation or group who might need help. Does your church need some one with network knowledge to rewire the current office network or maintain the computers? Put in a little volunteer time and you can add it to your resume. Even better if you learn a new skill set (programming?) out of it. Something else to add to the resume and as Mary points out it demonstrates “your willingness to learn new things”.
Become an Entrepreneur - Not in the true sense. Brandel isn’t suggesting you hang up a shingle and start your own consulting firm (though it may not be a bad idea for some side income) but her point is that you need to own your work. Both failures and accomplishments. Someone who takes responsibilty for their work will get noticed much quicker and gain more in their job than someone who doesn’t. With that comes the ability to take critisism well and handle what the job will throw at you. Don’t be quick to pass it on if it might mean you learn something or gain something out of it. Don’t wait around for the next task to land in your lap, find it before it finds you.
Follow some of the steps Brandel outlined and you might find that ‘08 is more rewarding than ‘07 ever was.
So I joined facebook a couple of weeks ago (two?) to see what the fuss is about. I’m on MySpace and I’m not impressed at all. Its a playground for high schoolers it seems. I like facebook at this point for the fact that it has some pretty cool add-ons like scrabble and a feed for my radar account.
The other nice feature is that I seem to be finding friends on Facebook that I’ve lost contact with. A couple from scouts, some from high school and a few from college. One of the last additions from my college friends has brought a little bit of drama in to my life.
I received notification that a friend wanted to friend me, so I accepted her invite. I also added how I know her. I put school (college), an organization (rotaract) and that we hooked up. On the last one, I put I Wish! as well. She was a good friend in college (someone I studied with often), but nothing in fact had ever happened with us. Well, that lasted all of three or four days.
I checked my email this morning and I had a note on facebook from her husband.
I don’t appreciate making those comments about you and my wife, wishing or not, it’s very innappropriate and if it continues you and I are going to have some serious problems.
*****’s husband
At first, I thought I’d contact her via FB (since I don’t have an email address for her). I logged in to find out she was no longer in my friends list. I could see stuff she had sent and said to me, but I could not access her profile either. I don’t know if its been removed or I’m just blocked. Thats yet to be seen. So I replied to his email:
Hi ****** * *****. Its nice to meet you. ***** and I went to college together and I was thrilled when she contacted me here on facebook. If I offended you, I’m sorry, though I have to say you’re acting in a very childish manner.
Emailing me and threatening me with “serious problems” when I don’t even know you, and then removing your wife’s facebook profile (or at least blocking me from seeing it) is juvenile to say the least.
Any way, if I caused you and personal or mental harm, I’m sorry. If you behave this way to any of Nancy’s other male friends, I’m sorry as well.
Oh and if you see ***** (which you should since you’re her husband) let her know I’m sorry if my innocent comment (how ever true it was) caused her any problems.
I hope you and I can be the best of friends,
Mark (Amy’s Husband) Angeli
Of course, I doubt that we’ll be friend at all, but if thats the tone he wants to take…
EDIT 11/12/2007: Now her name still shows up under my notifications, but there is no link to a profile, I believe her profile has been deleted, but it appears his is still online…
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