June 15, 2007 by phillip.

Summer is here. It’s not like when you were a kid though. You don’t all of a sudden have nothing to do for months (well, except teachers for the most part). You have work or a business to attend to and probably children. Well, here’s a list I’ve compiled that should help most of you use summer to change your life for the better. I’ve helped many people change jobs or get promoted and it usually seems a least a ten thousand dollar increase. Some of the steps may seem very mundane but believe me, you’ll reap the benefits soon and into the future.
1) See what others are making and doing

Look on the internet (not at work) for job sites like monster, careerbuilder, or dice and see what people in the job you want to do are making. Looking for the jobs paying the most and the job descriptions and see what you need to learn or even better if you need to apply. Also, go to google and search for resumes. In the google search bar you can type in a phrase like: “resume ceo filetype:doc” This will return resumes of people all over doing that job and what they’re doing or have done in Word format. See what you need to do and do it.

2) Learn how to use 1 new application

For every profession there is at least 1 program you could learn to use that really would make you a star. Presentation software (Powerpoint, etc.) can help you look great leading meetings. IT guys might substitute application with programming language (ie PHP, Ruby). Upper level staff and financial people might want to learn SAP or Peoplesoft because many big companies use them.

3) Be seen at summer parties

You don’t need to lose 30lbs or be the talk of the town but you do need to be seen. Most opportunities don’t come from what you know but who you know. So meet some new people and just talk and get their info.

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Posted in Something to know, Life Lessons, Tips | 3 Comments »

June 15, 2007 by phillip.

Not really a tech issue so much but thinking about our environment today. The government has changed the way it calculates gas mileage. Your car should be on this list.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/

Posted in Something to know | No Comments »

June 15, 2007 by phillip.

For all you really techy types there’s a new RAID storage device called Drobo.

It’s a storage device that takes any combination of 3 SATA hard disks and combines them into on USB storage unit in RAID 5 fashion. Could I have done this with an old computer, SATA card and Linux/BSD OS of my choice? Yes… but it looks so cool.

At $700 and no plans of wifi or gigabit ethernet call me really un-cool.

Posted in Only for the techy people | 2 Comments »