Alanz Eyes

I was thinking about my life this morning, and it occurred to me that there have been a few really significant moments in my life that are memorable for what I learnt or experienced, or simply the impact they had on me at the time. I'd like to list them here, just for the record, and will try to list them in order of when they happened, but no guarantees….

• Sculling a full 750ml bottle of rum, without stopping, at the age of 18. It was during a farewell party my closest friends were giving me, a few days before I left Pt Augusta. I've never been able to drink rum since. Ever. The smell makes my stomach turn.

The other day I went to my old forum, where I used to do my online journaling before it became a blog, and discovered it was no longer there. Apparently the database no longer existed, according to the message on the page.

After waking up from the dead faint, I panicked slightly. My life was on that forum for a couple of years, and I hadn’t transferred everything across to my blog. It was like a part of my life had just disappeared, gone forever.

I found quite an interesting post over here relating to age differences between online friends, and how the author felt 'weird' to be friends with people ten years or more younger than him.

At my old age of 31, were I to be a "real world" friend of any 20 year old girl, people should be asking questions. If I were palling around with some 14 year-old boy geek, they would be asking other questions. Yet, the occasional eyebrow-raising invite hits my e-mail box, and makes me wonder if somebody just might get the wrong idea.

What a couple of weeks it's been.  A few things have happened, which I'd like to share with you.  But first, apologies for not having written anything these past weeks.  I've been a little pre-occupied with a few things, which I'll be sharing with you below.

I've been once again having some challenges finding another contract to move on to.  I think there's a few factors at play there, including a slow contracting market at the moment, due to changes in how the new government wants to do things.  This makes it a little bit more difficult for contractors, as this government town has a bit of a freeze on hiring new contractors.  And then there's the fact that I'm aiming my applications at an area I haven't had a lot of experience or background in, so starting a new career path at the same time has its own share of difficulties.

If you're like the average person out there, Twitter might be something that you just don't get. 

"I just don't get it," I hear you cry out every day.  Well, I've explained the value for average users over here - Twitter for the average user - so I recommend you read it. And then follow me on Twitter. 

But what about if you're a blogger?  Or if you have a website that you want to promote?  How can Twitter be of value for you? 

I’ve changed the ‘recently updated posts’ to ‘recent posts’, so that it shows only the latest 10, rather than the ones I’ve recently updated.  This prevents anyone from being confused as I edit all my old posts.

So, I’ve started editing the old posts, modifying some of their formatting, and tagging them instead of categorising them. 

I’ve added a Tag cloud underneath the Categories on the left there, and as posts are updated with tags, they’ll be included in the tag cloud.  When I’ve finished, I’ll remove the Categories and just leave the Tags.

Interesting article I just read called Top fears of job seekers.  I thought I’d mention my own experiences in relation to the list it discusses, and what I’ve learned from them. 

I won’t be hired because I’m overqualified
This has happened to me, and is valid for many people.  Most worthwhile managers will not hire someone who seems overqualified for a role, and justifiably so, in my opinion.  As an example, hiring someone with management experience for a non-management role means they’re not going to be there for very long before they find another management role to move on to.  That’s not what the business wants.

I was just re-reading this post Two weeks to go, and during the reading of it I was feeling the stress of it all, all over again.  My heart rate increased, my memories were filled with the stress of moving, selling, packing, everything…  my entire body relived it.

It wasn’t very nice.  I’ll need to watch that in future, emotionally re-living the past.

I’ve also decided that I’ll be re-categorising my posts from the very beginning, starting with the posts from 1998.  This will mean the posts I edit will show up in ‘Recently Updated’ to the right there, so please accept my apologies for any inconvenience this might cause you.

There are quite a few people out there in Twitterland who are following tens of thousands of people on Twitter.  Many of them are writing articles about how to use Twitter, usually including advice stating that the more people you follow, the more interested in learning you'll seem to be.

I don't think it's about that at all.  I think there are a number of people out there whose ego seems directly proportional to the number of people following them.

There’s over 1,000 posts in this blog, with the majority of them being in the ‘Pre-2006′ section.  I’ve decided that I need to clean up those posts by getting rid of what’s useless, and appropriately categorizing the rest of them.

It’s going to be a big project, which will take some time to complete. 

I’ll need beer.  Lots of it.