Ok, sorry, I’ve been slacking the last few days getting updates on the site. Busy at work, busy at home, and I’ve been thinking a lot about career directions. Been doing lots of fun unsupported stuff on my MDA, and I’ll talk about that soon (push-mail rocks).
Scoble (or was it Bubba?) had a post on Blogging and Careers yesterday. It started me thinking on how employees working for companies in the tech sector have more opportunity to blog during work. Some actually have it as part of their job – Robert Scoble for example. Others come to mind as well, mainly the A-Listers and so on, have more ability to blog during work and more importantly, to blog some of their work.
While I’m not ready to admit that I’m jealous, I do think that there is an important piece to blogging that many employers simply dismiss out of hand. The opportunity to blog about what you do and/or how you do it can help a blogger grow in their abilities. It can help expand a person’s writing style, imagination, and persistence. It will open doors that a person doesn’t even realize they have avaliable to them. Blogging does represent a window into a person’s character, and that is a good thing. In today’s environment where life is so fast-paced that people have trouble just keeping up with their work, blogging can offer an outlet for their ideas, passions and creativity.
Blogging can enhance your career in ways too numerous to ponder. One, for example is the simple availability to potential customers, and yes I view employers as customers. After all each of us have services to offer, and why not have a sample of these services and resources available to future customers?
There is more to blogging than many middle managers in corporate America understand at this time. It is a powerful tool for everyone, its as simple as that. Anyone can start and update a blog for free, and you can take it to many levels after that limited only by your own ambition. Blogging has not ‘peaked’ as some are trying to hint at – blogging has barely gotten started and will provide one of the best ways for those interested to promote themselves and their ideas. Come along for the ride and find out for yourself; your career and your personal life will be enriched.
Also, this article from The Boston Globe on the subject is a good read.
So now that our Disaster Recovery exercise is complete, its back to our regulaly scheduled program. I’ve got a few things on my list to get done that I have been meaning to touch on.
One will be how well the T-Mobile MDA worked as a modem for my laptop (before it crashed), another is a review of Pluck, a freeware news aggregator that I’ve used for well more than a year, and some other not-quite-yet-formulated ideas swirling in my head.
Earlier today I had crafted a great post for the blog on my MDA, and just as I posted it, Opera mobile for Pocket PC dumped the post and exited! Frustrating, because I typed a good post on the small keyboard, and because up to that point it was working quite well. I tried to start Opera again to no avail – it just wouldn’t load. I’ll probably need to reboot the MDA to get Opera to load again, so I’m losing interest right now.
On the home front, we’re going to be meeting with some of the contractors for our new townhouse, picking out tile, carpet, colors, appliances, etc… this week, so that’ll be fun. More opportunitiy to spend money (ugh), though we’ll be keeping it realistic.
Towards the end of the week, we’ll be having a quarterly departmental meeting somewhere offsite. This usually is interesting, though the last one would have been hard to prove otherwise. During one of the group meetings, I get to talk about RSS, and maybe we can mention our DR Blog. The introduciton of new ideas and new technologies can be so hard in a medium sized corporation. Everything is so static. Its actually embarasing that the some of the corporate management team is more energetic and enthusiastic about new ideas and technology than some of the IT staff!
At any rate, its back to the “grind” as we get back to the real business of IT at work, and I can get back to focusing on my interests here on the blog. I’d been trying to post while at DR, but it didn’t work as well as I had hoped. I had the time, was connected to the ‘net, but had no inspiration to write.
Wow, I’ve been doing a lot of testing lately. In the past week, I’ve had 4 operating systems installed on my system for testing, investigating and learning. So now that I’ve gotten that work done, I’m re-installing my base build (again).
Instead of using the image I made late last summer, I’m going to start fresh (again), but try something completely new. During testing, I limited the amount of software that was installed, and really relied on more online functionality. That is what I’m going to do this time around.
So what will I install? Firefox, Thunderbird for EMail, Pluck for my aggregator, WinZip, SnagIt, and very little else. I’ve got most of my “heavy duty” software on my main machine and simple “remote desktop” into that PC to run what I need. Its also my main Audio/Video “server” system and hosts some Virtual systems.
My day-to-day machine will remain a simple uncluttered computing device. My inspiration for this was my T-Mobile MDA. I’ve been using my MDA for several weeks and have found that I can do with a lot less! And the best part of all?? This new configuration is FAST.
You may not know this but I’m a sledhead (snowmobiler). So I watched the 2007 model webcast for Polaris, and I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed. Last year I was eyeing up the 700 Classic, but it’s disappeared from the lineup for ’07. Instead, they’ve got the 600 HO IQ LX CFI for 2007. A great sled to be sure, but I was really impressed with last year’s model. Oh well, maybe one’ll turn up in decent condition this spring.
@MAC_Arms Pay taxes when you make your money, pay taxes when you spend your money, pay taxes when you successfully invest your money, pay taxes when you save enough taxed money to afford a house, pay taxes to live in your house, pay taxes when you sell the house that you paid taxes on to
Yup, taxes are criminal and we need serious reforms. I've always said that if you want to see a tax revolt, make withholdings illegal and have Americans write a tax check every payday. They'll revolt for sure. You don't miss what you never had.
I think it’s safe to say that @GovEvers should stop blocking audits in Wisconsin and open the books…
“Only AMERICAN citizens should vote.”
Sen. @berniemoreno says voter ID and proof of citizenship are simply common sense.
“We’re talking about a very low threshold — identify who you are and prove you’re a U.S. citizen when you register to vote. I think we’re getting closer to
Wrong. Democrats are solely responsible for hours-long airport lines.
They voted to defund TSA three times and won’t even entertain a conversation about reopening it. Why?
They’re using it as leverage to stop enforcing immigration laws.
