Networking lunches – neither fish nor fowl
Posted by Thom in Networking on 2009/03/24
Networking lunches are an interesting beast – neither fish nor fowl. You sit on one side of the table with an air of quiet desperation while your counterpart across the table hunkers down hoping to survive the next inevitable round of layoffs. At least that’s the way it feels to me sometimes.
Digging Holes and other memories
Posted by Thom in Work Experiences on 2009/03/22
My very first W-2 paying job was as a construction laborer for a small family construction company one very hot Virginia summer. The job, given my relative lack of skills, was doing whatever I was told to do – usually it meant picking up scraps and trash, moving dirt and cement in wheelbarrows, carrying shingles up to roofs and digging footings. All for the princely sum of $3.35 an hour – minimum wage at the time and I was probably overpaid at that. After taxes I think my checks were something like $118.00 for 40 hours of sweating in the sun.
Public Personas and Google Results
Posted by Thom in Public, Social Media on 2009/03/19
Part of the rationale for the creation of this site beyond just communicating with clients was to raise my public profile and my public persona. By that I mean what comes up when someone types my name into Google or Bing. It’s not a question of vanity – although I’m probably as vain as the next person notwithstanding the car I drive – it’s really a question of competing for work in the toughest economy I’ve ever seen. I hope to demonstrate my ability to write a thoughtful, creative sentence that people find interesting. (and by creative I’m not referring to my grammar, spelling or punctuation) You’ll have to let me know if I succeed.
A world of Plugins to choose from
Posted by Thom in Technology on 2009/03/19
Starting a new blog or web site from scratch is like creating a character in Dungeons and Dragons with a very generous dungeon master. I find myself wanting to soup up my site without even really understanding what all of the plugins do. Google Analytics – of course! All-in-one-SEO-Pack, heck yes! Embedded Video, you betcha. Of course I’m adding all of these onto a theme I’ve only been using for about 30 minutes so I don’t even know what will crash what but I’m not going to create a Gannt chart or Microsoft Project Plan to map out the testing path and dependencies. I will however back up the site on a frequent basis because with proper backups any site can be recovered quite quickly.
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