Wednesday, January 4, 2012

1-4-2012 Progress Report

1) Two phone interviews in the last two weeks. The first was with Cobalt Group/ADP. The second one was with Tommy Bahama. Both went well, but I thought the Tommy Bahama one went a bit better.

2) Finally got some movement from Expedia. A recruiter sent me a questionairre a couple of weeks ago, which I filled out and returned to him. Haven't heard back from him since, but then again this was over the holidays and Expedia is known to move slowly.

3) Phone interview with a Microsoft hiring manager tomorrow. This guy is located in the UK and since he cannot interview me in person, he wanted the names of my previous Microsoft managers for references, which I provided. I'm not 100% of one of those references, but I don't really think he'll screw me over.

Notes On Creating A Real Blog

I would very much like to create a blog and link it to my LinkedIn account. I think I have some potential in the blogging arena. I'm a pretty strong writer and I have some good ideas and opinions that I think people might be interested in. One of the things holding me back though is learning freaking wordpress, since wordpress seems to be the blogging tool that all the cool kids are using. Wordpress also has it's own LinkedIn plugin, which is helpful. If I want to use blogger, then I have to integrate via Blog Link, a third-party app. Also, even if blogger had it's own app, I don't know that I would trust Google to keep it updated and maintain support. I don't think blogger is a key part of Google's strategy. I don't know who owns Wordpress, but it seems to be fairly well supported, and I'm guessing I would have to switch over to it eventually anyway, so I may as well start with it.

So what should I name this thing? The best blogs seem to have catchy names, e.g. Half Sigma or The Calico Cat.

Two names under consideration: The Spotted Dog and The Emerald Chateau. I don't think either of those are being used right now.

What do I want to write about though? What are my interests? Let's see, HBD is one interest. I don't know that I have much to contribute in that area that is original, but I could see myself expanding on the posts of Half Sigma and others. Media and the film industry is another interest. Books, obviously, both fiction and non-fiction. Mobile Technology is an interest, though not really a passion. Politics, Education, and Economics are huge interests, as is career development and job search. If I ever buckle down and learn Sabermetrics, I could see writing some baseball-related posts. One interest there is comparing the evolution of performance measurement in baseball to the lack of any real progress in the area of performance evaluations in major companies. I could even write about CrossFit and strength training.