My Life With IT

Having been blogging for quite some time, I have come to identify that blogging is an obsession. A blog is a site where ideas and opinions are meshed together.

Blog Abuse

After reading different types of blogs, from niche to personal, I have realised the abuse that blogs have become. There are many who make use of the traffic from genuine niche blogs to redirect to their money making sites infested with Google Adsense, Kontera and affiliates. The sites have no content value except to trick the non-savvy into clicking the advertisements.

Image via Wikipedia

Blog Wars

When someone blogs about the personal opinion of a certain subject, another takes offence and starts a post linking to the “offending” post. Another trigger could be from an interview with the newspapers and one blogger starts to be offended at being quoted as “second fiddle” to the other. This starts with the blogger stating the reasons that the other isn’t good enough and a blog war is started.

Throughout my journey with blogging, I have experimented with a few niches that I have interests in and they are gaining traffic at a slow pace. This is a good sign as it meant that I am doing something in the right direction.

While there have been negatives seen along the way, blogs don’t necessarily mean negative. I haven’t seen anything that has no negatives.

New Friends

New friends with similar interests are found. It’s much more fun talking about blogging stuff with people who have similar interest in blogging.

Community

A community is created and it’s filled with more people who have tried blogging with different platforms and their frustrations with the platforms.

Knowledge Shared

Knowledge is shared among people with common interest. There have been times when one posted a request for looking for missing friends or family members whereby the people were found.

Blogs have evolved from personal diary to niche whereby different sites attract the group that is being targeted. Some have even started their own eHow, Wikipedia and even shop blogs. Shop blogs are gaining popularity in certain countries due to the uniqueness of the products and most of the time, availability of products that can’t be found in the country.

This is a group writing project by Daily Blog Tips.

We have come a long way since the start of using blogs to record our thoughts. When someone is known by the real name in the online world, things can get ugly or good. It has been made known that a name is identified and he/she is blogging constantly. The updates can be about anything in the personal blog but often, the identity is linked to the company that this person is working at.

We somehow link to the company having a blog when the company’s blog already has an official blog while this person is just voicing out the thoughts and opinions. This leads to ugly blog wars. Hence, Ignorant Soup has a question and some thoughts of how to learn from mistakes.

A finance consultant has a blog about investments and he declares he is working for a certain company. At times, he will introduce ways to invest and will mention his company’s schemes for the people. Does that make him a blogger for his company or himself? He could be mentioning the schemes as he feels they are the best after making his personal comparisons among similar schemes.

I have never declared the companies I have worked for online. I don’t wished to be accused of doing any free publicity when all I have done is to vent out my frustrations that I can never tell the bosses directly. I don’t want to be named as someone who is against the company when I am not.

I am not sure if I still want to reveal myself online after all these sagas. 2 years and the thinking is of a 2 year-old child. Utter disappointment.

I haven’t tried it but I smell a fish there. If I were to use this system, I have to put in $5,000 and the money will grow. Or so it’s supposed to. Just take a look at this guy in his boxers out there in the freezing cold. There is a warning about how it works and how a business is to be setup.

Entrepreneurs who have experienced their own business failures and success will know. They have first hand knowledge of managing businesses. Business is tough. You can’t just sit at home fiddling with your website even though it is comfortable and think money will start pouring into your account.

I don’t know who Ty Coughlin is but a search threw up titles with the word ’scam’ ended up in the first page. Apparently, this guy has a lot of different domains trying to lure people into paying him money. This time, he’s looking for a business owner, via ProBlogger Job Boards, no less.

All sorts of marketing needs work. Lots of it. The initial work is usually the most difficult but the sweet fruits of labour is worth it. I have seen too many single page websites claiming that they have earned $7,000 per week and more. Each page design feels 1990s. The key is to use large bold red fonts to attract people into signing up.

Each package usually requires you to pay a minimum sum of $50. I don’t know how long such a system can last but apparently, during the downtimes of the economy, people are often turning to online hoping to earn quick bucks and not be stuck in the office from 8 - 6.

I have blogged for more than 2 years with different platforms. When I first started out, I thought it was just to voice out my thoughts and feelings on things that affect me deeply. Albeit too deeply at times.

What I thought blogging was about:

• I can just voice my thoughts.
• I can vent my anger.
• I can write anything I want.
• I can earn some money.
• I can blog for life.

What blogging has evolved:

• I can’t just say anything about the bad bosses I had encountered.
• I can’t identify the companies unless it’s positive. This is still debatable.
• I can’t write about anything I want.
• I get spammed.
• I get comments about posts that I have written that talk about my perspective being wrong.
• I can’t really earn peanuts if I am not famous enough in the blogsphere.
• I can’t just rely on blogging alone.

I haven’t really lost interest in blogging here. I have been busy with looking at other concepts because I am jobless in a couple of weeks. I have tested a few of my concepts and it’s picking up slow because I haven’t inserted any sexy images for them. Besides, seductive images don’t work because they aren’t about exotic tastes.

I may reveal more of myself but at this moment, I am not ready. I hope to be able to do something useful in life for once besides mindless working. As for the perspectives being wrong, I am not wrong. You are.

The grass always look greener on the other side. When you see a friend earning $4, 000 per month for doing seemingly simple job, you envy them and wished that you could earn that amount every month too. IT is known for its high pay. Just note that in Singapore, it ain’t that high a pay unless you are at manager level and above as they don’t see paying $8, 000 a month for a SAP developer or BW developer is worth the money.

Read here about foreign talents being paid more. Enough said. Being in the IT line for at least 6 years, I have seen different users with different ways of giving you their requirements. How they give it to you so that you can interpret it correctly is one thing.

It’s very frustrating when your user don’t even know what they want or are not able to tell you how they like it except they love to tell you how to programme it. Now, isn’t this great? I should just give them the programme and shake my leg while I still get my pay.

After 6 freaking months of doing 2 seemingly simple databases, I am about to give up. I kept being chased after on when the things can be up when they can’t even tell me what they want for nuts. If that’s the case, please gather your thoughts and sort them out before even telling any programmer to do anything.

After the development, they started to look at cosmetic changes. Nothing new. Except the changes involved the codes and there is no way I can shorten the timeline to change them they want to see it ASAP. Finally, they seem to have decided what they want. Now, they want another change to a previous request.

I’m starting to wonder if IT users tend to be the sort where they tell you how to do the programme rather than tell you how they want the system to function. Work can be such a headache and at times like this, I feel like changing to another field.

Image via Wikipedia

There are certain policies to be known. It is known that there are certain companies that dislike their workers blogging about work even without giving away any clues. I can also see why a certain company dislike bloggers. That company has official bloggers in its portal. In addition, they look as if they are able to voice their own opinions.

However, after going through it for some time, I realise that the topics are outdated. As any good blogger know, data must be fresh online. You must be the first publish any data so that you will be the pioneer of the data and all the trackbacks or ping backs will belong to you most of the time.

Google is known for indexing sites that have been around for a long time. Work isn’t meant for the online eyes. Companies are not ready for that. I doubt they ever will as the cache is known for its long memory. I have blogged about work but never where I have worked in.

I don’t give out names of the companies I have worked for and neither do I even dare to reveal to any manager that I am blogging. It’s dangerous. However, with my Facebook account linking to the blogs, I’m starting to wonder if I should have even linked them in my Facebook.

The 1st rule of blogging for personal sites is never to blog about the company’s name. You never know when your boss is going to google for you. 2nd rule, no real names on blogs. I am wondering if some blog awards like omy is giving out has a purpose besides giving out awards. They require real names and NRIC for identification purpose.

Image via Wikipedia

Ah, the perils of being the one who knows how to format computers and resolve printer problems at home sure is great, right? For the family, yes. For the one, NO. After facing so many problems at work, do you really think that back at home, the one would even want to resolve any problem? Think again.

The 3 in 1 printer can’t fax anything out or receive anything in. So, what should the one who knows IT do? Shrug. That’s because a fax machine has nothing to do with IT. Either the line is corrupted or the printer needs to be changed. Or maybe the printer’s setting is wrong.

At home, the one has to solve TV problems, virus-ridden laptops, mobile phone problems and anything that has remotely something to do with IT. It isn’t fun when work gets dragged into personal lives too. Able to resolve problem is one thing.

Being the one to be asked to resolve the problems every single time is another thing. Can get a break or not?

A 57-year-old man, unable to curb his urges, surfs porn at work, everyday for at least 3 hours. He was discovered when his computer keeps being repaired for virus infections. He was a very hardworking man indeed to have kept up his interests at work. He has kept the image of Japanese being the hardest working among Asia.