Interesting Social Media Statistics

I’m curious to know what this means. I pick up followers on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t know. That’s not unusual; I routinely find people through social media that I don’t know. I’m interested in what they have to say and in what they’re doing. I follow them.

The types of people most likely to follow me on Twitter that I don’t know are pastors and Internet marketers.

The types of people most likely to follow me on Facebook that I don’t already know are Real Estate investors.

What about you? What kinds of people, besides friends and family, follow you on the social media sites?

Remembering the $1000 iPhone App “I Am Rich”

This is a classic. One of the first apps released for the iPhone’s OS 2, and one of the most expensive I’m aware of. I Am Rich originally sold for $999. It was bought by 8 people, two of which appealed. 6 people apparently were happy with their purchase. I Am Rich did little. It showed a picture of a red gem, and had a mantra which read:

I am rich
I deserv [sic] it
I am good,
healthy &
successful

Deserve was misspelled. But I guess if you’re rich, you don’t have to spell “deserve” right.

I had a freeware version of the app for Windows Mobile.

Would Liking This Be Morbid?

I noticed this on the right side of my Facebook page, where advertisements and friend suggestions are:

Just because I have a tendency to be a jerk, I was tempted to click “Like”.

How To Use A Daily Capture Mind Map

Way back in September, I wrote a post about using a concept called a Daily Capture Mind Map. It was to address a serious vulnerability in my own productivity system.

For the most part, it worked really well. I began using Mind Manger for iPhone. I kept this map on it. I treated this as a dashboard and used it to park information that I needed access to quickly. Prior to buying Mind Manager for iPhone, I was using Mind Meister, an online mind mapping service with a free plan. At the time I had two computers for work on two different networks, so I could access my dashboard at either, plus at home.

With Mind Manager for iPhone, if I was out and about, and came up with a new idea, or an action item, I would park it on this mind map until I could get to it later. If somebody committed to get something to me, it went on here. And, if I committed something to somebody else, it went on here. I referred to it several times a day.

It worked really well for a while. At least, it worked until I didn’t have a job anymore. For some reason, I’m a lot better at tracking lots of information than I am very little information. Once I was removed from my position in November, I didn’t have anything else to track. I haven’t really used this map much since then.

I’m going to dust this map back off as I go about my job search.

Juggling A Lot of (Figurative) Balls? Read This

John Maxwell had a timely post about the balls we keep in the air. It was actually a quote from a commencement address by Bryon Dyson, CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises.

Bryon Dyson compares the roles we fill to glass and rubber balls. Guess what happens to each if it gets dropped? Obviously, rubber bounces. Glass breaks.

He then goes on to say that these 4 balls are glass: family, health, friends, and spirit. Drop these balls and they shatter. They’ll be irreparably damaged.

Work is a rubber ball. Drop it and it will bounce back up. That’s very timely for me right now. My work ball is somewhere between my hand and the ground in this metaphor. But this is right; my work ball isn’t irreparably damaged. It’ll bounce. It will be back in the air again before too long.

What Do You Consider A Good Workplace Perk?

I have a title for a blog post that I’ve been wanting to write for a while. I don’t quite have the content to go with it yet. I’ve been wanting to write a post about “When Companies Believe Their Own BS.”

Have you ever worked for a company that went on and on about how great it was? It told you how kind it was to the employees, how great it was to the community, and how everybody working there loved it. Yet you thought you were the odd person out. You didn’t get it.

I wondered about this with my last company. The one that let me go last Thursday. I’m not bitter; seriously, I’m not. I’m glad they kept me around as long as they did.

I’m curious about why the company built itself up over certain perks. I did like and benefit from the free coffee. It was the first place I’ve worked where I didn’t have to pay dues to a coffee mess or bring my own coffee. They also paid entirely for a picnic every summer and for a “holiday party” in December. But, the company only gave employees 7 paid holidays a year. That’s right; we had a great Christmas party, but we had to work on Black Friday.

Employees started with 10 vacation days a year. After 5 years of service, you get 12. Wow, 12 days a year off! What am I going to do with all that spare time? You can almost make up for the 10 paid holidays other companies in this industry offer after 5 years of service and those 2 extra days!

On top of that, any readers I have know how much I hated my cubicle. Seriously, I would rather have a quiet and secluded place to work than an open bar at the Christmas party. I can’t work effectively when I’m surrounded by noise and distraction and I feel like I’m in a fishbowl. I don’t like being snuck up on. Micro-MAN-ager had a habit of coming up behind me and grabbing my shoulders. When I was concentrating on something, it took a lot of willpower not to come up swinging. I’d rather had a desk facing the door than a free picnic in the summer.

What do you consider a good workplace perk? What kind of silly ways does your company claim to be the greatest that you don’t get the point of?

How Wrong Is This?

I used to have a Google AdSense account. It got suspended for “click fraud”. Basically, one day while I was looking at my own blog, I noticed some Google ads that interested me, so I clicked on them. Google then suspended my account for click fraud. I appealed, Google denied my appeal.

So, imagine my surprise when I uploaded a new blog post and saw the following:

Figure 1. Ads By Google

So, let me get this straight. Google suspended my AdSense account because I clicked on two or three ads on my page. But Google is still running ads on my blog through a 3rd party (Addify).

I’m not entirely opposed to it. One thing I like about Google ads is that they are targeted. That’s why I clicked on the two or three ads that got me banned for “click fraud”. They were targeted to the posts I was writing, therefore obviously I was interested in them.

Why Do Companies Make It Harder Than It Has to be to Apply for a Job?

Before I go any farther in this post, I’ll state that I will do what needs to be done to pay the bills. If that requires getting back into another soul-sucking 8 hour a day cubicle job, then I will. But not if it can be avoided.

Except for one year (1998-1999), I’ve spent my entire adult career either in or around the U.S. Navy. It’s been a good run. But there are a lot of needless inefficiencies built into the Navy, and into many of the contracting companies that support the Navy.

I’ve been looking for a job since November. I’ve avoided mentioning it just in case anybody from my previous job might stumble across my blog. But I’ve been looking ever since just before I got fired from my original position. I continued looking while I was stuck in a stuffy cubicle working from Micro-MAN-ager.

I’ve come to realize that, unless you absolutely HAVE to put food on the table right now, the degree of difficulty in applying for a job just MIGHT be a sign of the difficulty DOING the job.

Some jobs have been easy to apply for. I come across the job on Monster or Dice, or even Careerbuilder. I click “Apply Now”. I’m taken to a page asking which resume I want to use, and if I want to include a cover letter. I make those decisions, and click another button. Then I’m done. I get an email confirmation.

But some companies make it really hard. First, you have to register at yet another job site. God help you if you’ve already registered and can’t remember your password, because you can’t use your email account again (Comcast is the worst offender I’ve come across in this regard). Then you have to upload your resume. THEN, after your resume is uploaded, you have to copy and paste your work history and education into text blocks. Even though this information is already on your resume, you have to type it in again.

The government is horrible. Trying to apply for a job through USA Jobs is a nightmare. OK, not all. Some are relatively easy, but I have yet to find an agency that is tied into USA Jobs and can take your resume from the main site. Normally, you find a job on USA Jobs and are taken to another site to apply for the job. This requires creating an account and inputting your information. Some aren’t bad. Applying for a civilian IT job for the Army was actually easy. The Navy makes it almost impossible to apply for a job. I couldn’t get past the first step in the process to apply for a civilian job for the Navy. I put in a trouble ticket. I found out (which shouldn’t surprise me) that I can’t apply because I’m not using Internet Explorer 6, which is the official web browser of the United States Navy.

So, let me ask you: if it’s a pain in the neck just to APPLY for a job, once you get in, do you think you’ll find a massive bureaucracy that makes it nearly impossible to actually do the job?

Job Update

This post probably won't be my masterpiece. I was dismissed from my job on Thursday. It wasn't a surprise. I knew it was coming, and I was under incredible anxiety about it. Once I found out, most of the anxiety went away. I'm still wondering how I'll pay the bills, but I know I'm smart and I adapt. I was just stuck in a bad spot. It was bad for me and for the company, and I am grateful to them for keeping me around as long as they did. Sometimes I wonder if that just prolonged the inevitable. Nothing I can do to change that.

On the bright side, I can chart a new course. If there was ever a time to make some hard decisions about my career and future, this is it. Here are some of the positives I've come up with. Some are silly, some are really profound:

• I can openly complain about how bad most job descriptions and sites are. Seriously, some of them are really bad. Take Clearance Jobs. It's one of those needy sites. Every 30 days I get an email from them "You haven't been on Clearance Jobs in 30 days. You need to refresh your resume." Sometimes I wonder what the point is. To this point in my job search. Clearance Jobs has been one of the more useless. I got an email from one person early in my search. When I did some research, it turns out he's a one man shop. I sent him my resume and all the information he requested. Then I heard nothing. I called him twice and left a message. He didn't have the decency to call me back.
• I can chart a new course. Do I want to stay in engineering? Do I want to get more into pure IT? Do I even want to stay in this field, or stay in the defense industry? One of the prayers most in my mouth right now is "Please, God, don't let me end up in another cubicle." I need to keep that in mind as I decide which path to choose. I've been miserable to some extent in my last 3 jobs. I should probably
  try to figure out why, because I don't want to end up miserable again. I'm sure the cubicle isn't the only reason, but I don't like them. I can't concentrate and I feel like I'm being watched all the time. I hate that. I don't do very good work under those conditions, and that's not fair to me or my customer/employer. I don't care if I'm the only person on Earth who doesn't like working in cubicles. I don't.
• I can set out on my own. I can start my own business. I've been trying to find some freelance writing assignments. I can also set up as an IT consultant or follow my Computer Coach idea.  I've also considered looking into Real Estate, and a few other ideas. 

I have many possibilities. 

How Do You Handle Link Exchange Requests?

I have a question for other bloggers. What is the best way to handle link exchange requests? I've gotten two of these so far. I checked out the most recent one. It appears to be legit, but the benefit to me is minimal, since the link page I would appear on has so many links on it, I'd be better off appearing in the top 1000 of a Google search.