One Man Shouting

Hopefully this isn’t too harsh.  I received a request today to alter an old blog post in a way that I can only assume is all about Search Engine Optimization.  The communication was mostly generalized flattery with a pass at being respectful of the integrity of my writing, but not enough that I think they actually took time to read through that specific post or any of my other writing.  I figured that the initial communication and my response might be interesting to those who’ve never had interaction with SEO folks.  Names and info removed.

You have contact request!

Link in Blog Post
From: [removed]

Hi Rick,

I hope this message finds you well. I’m currently working on cleaning up [company name].com’s online presence and noticed you have a link to our site in your blog post. First off, thank you for finding us valuable enough to link to – we appreciate it! Part our clean-up process includes adjusting links to match the current title we’re using on our site outside of the [company name] brand name.

Your Post with Link: [link removed]

If you could please change the current link text from saying “[company name]” to “[company name] [important industry keywords]” it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for taking the time. Let me know if you have any questions on this change seeing as I fully want to respect your blog post as is as well. I look forward to hearing back!

Sincerely,

[removed]

Hello [removed],

I am not a big fan of altering links just to serve Search Engine Optimization. If your request below is really about cleaning up branding, I would gladly change the link but if I do so I would also add a nofollow tag. If [company name] prefers not to be linked to in this manner, or the original form from the blog post I wrote over 4 years ago, I'd gladly change the post to remove the link.

Just as a side note if you don't know already, many bloggers are going to be defensive about this sort of thing. I'm not trying to be difficult, but taking time to edit a post just to serve your employer's search rankings isn't on my list of priorities.

I am a bit curious what sort of success rate you have with this type of request.

Regards,

Rick Hallihan

First, I have to explicitly state that the following process is not endorsed or supported by Microsoft or Verizon.  I have used it a couple of times successfully, but I can’t guarantee that your phone won’t spontaneously combust or otherwise cease to function if you follow the steps below.  If you have trouble, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to help.

I have heard several stories lately from folks who are finally taking the plunge into the world of SmartPhones on Verizon (with the AWESOME HTC Trophy).  Some Verizon reps simply state that you can’t move contacts from the old to the new phone, but they helpfully print out a hard copy of the contacts from the old phone.  Others point to the Microsoft Article on Syncing Outlook Contacts with Windows Phone which isn’t very helpful if you don’t have or use Outlook.  I figured it would be worth putting up a post on the process I used.

The first step is to make sure your contacts are backed up with Verizon’s Backup Assistant from your old phone.  The process is different for different phones, but should be similar to the following.

On this feature phone, you select MENU, then Contacts, then Backup Assistant, then OK, and finally Backup Now. If you have not used Backup Assistant previously there are a few extra steps to set up a password, but they are pretty self explanatory. Verizon also has a great deal of documentation on their website at http://verizonwireless.com/backupassistant

Once your phone shows “Pending: 0” that indicates that all of your contacts have successfully been updated to the web.  You then need to sign in at http://verizonwireless.com/backupassistant 

If you haven’t already signed up for Verizon’s online account access, there will be extra steps here.

After signing in you should see a screen listing your contacts.  Click on “Select All”

Now click the drop-down next to “Select All” and select “Export Contacts”

You will be prompted to select a file download type, select “Outlook (CSV)”.  We’re not actually going to use Outlook, but this is a file format that Hotmail can import.

Your browser may prompt you for permission to download the file, select “Save” and make a note of the file’s location.

Once you have the MyContacts.csv file saved, go to http://hotmail.com and log in.  You will need to use the Primary Live Id that was first associated with your Windows Phone during setup.  From the main screen, select “Contacts”

On the contacts screen, select “Manage” then “Import” on the Menu. 

On the next screen select “Outlook”.  Again, we’re not actually using Outlook, that’s just the common language that both Backup Assistant and Hotmail know how to use.

Next click the “Browse” button and locate your MyContacts.csv file, then click the “Import contacts” button.

If everything has worked as expected your Hotmail Contacts should now include all the phone number from your previous phone.

A few points to note.  If you are using a Live Id that is not a Hotmail Address, you can still log in at Hotmail with that Live Id to access the contacts section.  Also, if you have been using Hotmail for a long time your Contacts folder might have a large number of entries that you no longer want.  The web interface has some good options for cleaning up and combining duplicate contacts, and is also a good place to sort through and clean out unwanted contacts.  Any changes you make on the web will be synced to your new Windows Phone.

Seth Godin put up an interesting blog post today.  At first I thought this was in conflict with his writing in Linchpin, but then I realized that the true challenge is in designing a service that not only allows, but encourages the participants to be creative and human while still ensuring quality, throughput and other business objectives. 

During some recent travel I had enough time to read Seth Godin's Linchpin, cover to cover in one sitting.  Well actually it was two sittings back to back with a layover in Dallas Fort Worth, but close enough.

Looking back, I almost wish I had stretched this over several days since the concepts take a bit of time to bake. Godin appropriately points out early in the book that the ideas will meet with resistance in your mind. In fact, one of the main premises in the book is this idea that we are all basically of two minds. Our creative social mind, and a nicknamed "lizard brain" that resists risk and sometimes sabotages our ability to put forth our best effort. My lizard brain was on full alert as I crammed through the book, but strangely that helped me to at least validate some of the theories in the book in real time.

This book is different from the other Godin books that I have read in that it wasn't prescriptive in how to accomplish a goal, reach an audience, or spread an idea. It was more of a manifesto, a plea for the reader as an individual to be different.  The different that Godin is pushing for requires breaking the rules of conformity and abandoning the repeatable cookie cutter factory-like methods that so many industries cling to in the name of quality.  He asks the reader instead to focus on human interaction and emotional nuance and makes a compelling argument that this will allow the reader to stand out, do more, and become indispensable to the organizations they serve.

Godin rounds out his argument with anecdotes of modern successful linchpins, historical perspectives about why the current career landscape encourages cookie cutter behavior but actually favors certain types of rule breaking, and even gives some basic evolutionary neurology backing for his theories.

This book is a great read if you are looking to stretch your mind a bit about what it takes to stand out, be successful and make a difference.

It took me two attempts to get through Outliers.  The first time I started reading this book, I had trouble getting past the fact that everyone focuses on the “birthday” success factor when talking about the book, and outside of sports I tend to think that other factors are more important to success.  I’m glad that I decided to re-tackle this book on the plane because the latter part of the book covered some of my own preconceived ideas about success, and added several new facets as well.

If you have heard of Outliers have most likely heard the correlation between professional sports “stars” and their birthdays.  Basically Gladwell highlights a correlation between those who are the oldest players  in a year-group, and those who grow up to be successful athletes.  This correlation is provable across many different sports, and Gladwell argues that the attention these players get from being just a bit better due to physical advantages means that they get more playing time, more praise and more practice, and that this cascades and accumulates, ensuring that they have more opportunity to excel and become experts.

The later part of the book brings in many other factors that drive “Outlier” like success.  There are a few other circumstance type drivers, such as the year when someone is born, or the historical experiences that a culture shares.  Gladwell also points out several Outliers that had happenstance advantages, such as being given a unique opportunity at a key point of personal development.

Gladwell revisits the idea of “time spent practicing” later in the book, but in more of a comparative way instead of the “10,000 hours to excellence” that was highlighted earlier in the book.  One such comparison was academic achievement in different countries, compared with the lengths of their school year.  This highlighting of marginal differences was much more compelling to me than the first part of the book.  I also appreciated that the end of the book discussed some ways we can eliminate the biases that our “normal” way of life imparts on us.

The last running theme that struck a chord with me was that success is not a matter of personal will, but rather a mixture of will, chance and opportunity.  I do paradoxically wonder what happens when more people are given the knowledge of what it takes to become an Outlier, and they set their will toward making it happen.

This small book by David Sokol holds some interesting perspectives about managing change, from one of Warren Buffett’s chief lieutenants.  A lot of focus is placed on the Plan, Execute, Measure, Correct cycle, and after reading this book, it’s very easy to notice the absence of the “Measure, Correct” portion of the cycle in many change initiatives.  Too often as leaders, we have a tendency to stick to the plan simply because we are committed to our decisions. 

Sokol makes judicious use of personal and business anecdotes to highlight the points he’s making, but doesn’t belabor the reader with too much domain specific detail.

If you can get your hands on a copy, it’s an excellent quick read.

Ken Auletta has written a great book about the changes that are happening in advertising and in media, against a backdrop of Google's rise to prominence, with some interesting insights into the Google culture.

Auletta seems to have enough proximity to some of the major players that he paints a vivid picture of the personalities and motivations of high-level Googlers, specifically highlighting why Google is different from most major corporations.  It would be interesting to hear an inside opinion of how accurate the portrayals were.

This book is a worthwhile read, whether you are involved in the tech industry, media, or even as a consumer who wants to understand more about why and how “free” really works on the Internet.

This series of posts will be a mini-history of my career, and the long path that led me to Microsoft. It's about me, so I feel a bit weird posting it, but I think there might be some useful information here for others who are trying to steer their careers in the right direction. (Link to Part 1, Link to Part 2, Link to Part 3)

After taking a bit of an emotional and mental breather from the Microsoft job hunt, I happened upon a blog post on MSDN talking about some openings in Charlotte, NC.  This was interesting on several fronts.  First of all it led me to read a bit about the Microsoft Campus in Charlotte.  I’m not sure on all of the statistics, but it’s one of the largest sites outside of the Puget Sound area.  Secondly the job actually sounded like it might be a great fit for my technical skills and passions.  The team does developer support, and required ability to understand mail protocols and API’s, which I had previous experience with.

I contacted the blog author, passed along my resume, and proceeded through the process: An email screen, a phone screen, a more in-depth phone screen with several engineers.  I was then scheduled for an on-site interview!

After flying to Charlotte I arrived at the Microsoft campus extra early.  I called and talked to my wife from the rental car for a few minutes, and then about 10 minutes until 9:00am I decided to head into the lobby.  This, ironically, is the part of the day I have the most detailed memories about.  That’s because it didn’t really go according to plan.  The main visitor entrance was under construction, so I followed the signs down to the next entrance only to find that it was locked.  I scanned around for people, looked for other signs, and eventually found a call box on a pillar outside the door.   I hit the button, told the person that answered that I was trying to get to the lobby.  They said that someone was supposed to be at the door already but that they would check on it.  So I waited some more.  I should mention that I hate being late for anything.  I try to be early, and I was especially intent on being early this day.  So much for planning.  As the clock ticked past about 9:03 one of Microsoft’s facilities team happened by (on his way in from checking on the construction at the other entrance) and he asked if I needed any help.  I quickly explained that I was trying to get to the lobby, and he very helpfully escorted me to the lobby.  I signed in, took several deep breaths and sat down to wait for another 10 minutes or so before the interviews started.

This was different from my previous interview experiences in that everything was done panel-style.  I think this is telling of the teamwork dynamic of the team I eventually joined.  Two engineers started asking questions, seeing what I knew, and quickly progressing to the edges of what I didn’t know.  We spent enough time on the edge of what I knew that I left each session not really knowing how well I had done.  Two or three more engineers took a second session, and after that I moved on to meet with the hiring manager.

Now, I’m going to highlight how much of this day I can’t remember.  I have worked daily over the past 2.5 years with the individuals that interviewed me on that day, but I could only hazard a guess as to who was in the interview loop.  What I do remember is that on this day I totally let my guard down.  I articulated what I knew, wasn’t afraid to say “I don’t know”, or to guess and vocalize my reasoning.  I talked about what I was passionate about & what excited me about this position.  I didn’t posture myself how I though they might want me to be, but just tried to be raw and unguarded.  By this point in my journey I figured that I wanted to be hired for who I was, not for how well I could interview.

In the end it paid off. I received an offer and accepted a short while later. The next few months were a blur.  Temporary housing, selling one house, buying another, and many trips back and forth between NC and MD.  My wife did and absolutely awesome job through the move managing our three small kids and all the loose ends that are inevitable with a move.  We had Christmas 2007 in temporary housing, and closed on our house a few days later.

My first few years at Microsoft have been awesome, and I know that this is just the beginning of a long and exciting journey.

Sway is one of those books that makes you think about human behavior in an entirely different way.  By running through some common scenarios where people behave in seemingly inexplicable ways, and identifying some common themes, Ori and Ram Brafman provide perspectives and tools to help identify and avoid irrationality.  The story-telling reminded me a great deal of the styles of Malcolm Gladwell or Steven D. Levitt.  Anecdotal evidence was backed by some more rigorous analysis that made the ideas both compelling, and personally believable.

After reading this book, I settled on a new definition for Irrational Behavior: Acting in a way that is counter to or wasteful with regard to your true goals.

Just because someone doesn’t do what you want, doesn’t make them irrational, but when they start making choices that move them away from what they want, they have entered the realm of the irrational.

A few weekends back I spent the morning fixing a drippy ice maker in our Whirlpool Gold Side-by-Side refrigerator, so I figured I’d do another “fix-it” post. 

One morning when I opened the freezer there was a bit of a winter wonderland scene, with frost and icicles covering the upper-right corner of the freezer.  The in-door ice bucket was full of huge chunks of refrozen ice, and frozen up to the point where it couldn't move the agitator to dispense ice.  Pretty much just an icy mess.

I originally thought that maybe someone had left the freezer a bit open, but there was still a bit of water dripping around and I know the door had been closed before I opened it.

Still not knowing what was wrong, I removed the ice bucket, emptied it out and melted all of the ice that was frozen around the agitator.  I put it back in the freezer and then went about my morning.  A bit later, I went to get some ice and remembered that I hadn't turned the  ice maker back on, so I hit the switch.  I closed the door and waited for the ice to drop (It's an in-door bucket so it doesn't drop until the door closes).  Right when the ice dropped I opened the door and was then able to see first-hand the real problem with the dispenser.

Evidently in this model fridge, the water is dispensed into a small collector that then lets it flow into the ice tray.  The collector is circled in orange in the picture below.  Somehow this collector had filed with a solid chunk of ice, and was blocking the flow of water directly into the ice tray.  Since the float switch to stop the flow of water is in the tray, this means that the water stays on until enough water dribbles around the collector to fill up the ice tray (as well as coating a good portion of the freezer with water.

At first I thought I could attack this with a hair-dryer, but after removing all of the food from the top two shelves and then sitting with a hair dryer on the collector for about 5 minutes, I realized this was not getting me anywhere.  My next idea worked much better.  I used a turkey baster to squirt near-boiling water into the top of the collector (with towels positioned below to catch the overflow) and this unfroze the collector in about 2 minutes.

We haven't had any further problems with the ice maker.  I'm not sure if this was just a fluke, or if there's some sort of accumulation of ice in the collector that will come back again, but for now it's working great and I know how to fix it quickly it it freezes up again.

I've now seen this on two different cars of the same model & year and I couldn't find a reference to this specific resolution on the Internet so I figured it would be worth posting. 

The symptom is simple.  The power sliding door on one side or the other will stop working.  I'm guessing that this problem is shared between the Dodge Caravan and the Chrysler Town & Country since they share the same parts for this mechanism.  Some people on the Internet say that the problem went away after they had the dealer flash the BCM (Body Control Module).  Other people had to get an entirely new BCM before the problem disappeared. We never went down either of those paths since I had a simple quick, although temporary, fix.  If you open up the fuse panel under the hood next to the battery:

Then remove, count to 5 and then replace the following fuse:

The doors should work again for a while.

With the first van that had this problem, we went for many months just pulling and replacing the fuse whenever a problem occurred, and it would usually only stop working every few weeks.  A while later we ended up replacing the battery after the van wouldn't start one morning.  Since the door issue was only an occasional problem, I never really realized that it never happened after we got the new battery.

Fast forward a few years, and we ended up having to replace the van, and we opted for the same exact model & year.  When we had the "new" used van for a couple of weeks, the left power sliding door stopped working one day.  We were on a trip so I did the quick-fix fuse pull & replace, and the door started working again.  Within a week, the van wouldn't start one day.  A jump start got us working again, but I took the van to Auto Zone to have the battery checked, and it failed the load test.  I replaced the battery on this van, and we haven't seen the doors stop working again!

My guess is that the Body Control Module (BCM) that gets so much attention has a failure mode that is supposed to disable the sliding door motor if it detects a short or a stuck electric motor, but that when the van's battery starts getting marginal, it trips into this mode unnecessarily.

This series of posts will be a mini-history of my career, and the long path that led me to Microsoft. It's about me, so I feel a bit weird posting it, but I think there might be some useful information here for others who are trying to steer their careers in the right direction. (Link to Part 1, Link to Part 2)

After getting some more exposure to Microsoft as a company, and as a collection of really smart individuals, I get the idea in my head that I wanted to work for the Goliath.   I was constantly reading about Longhorn/Vista, or the next Live service, or Virtual Earth, and of all of the companies doing interesting things, Microsoft seemed like an awesome company to work for.  This draw was not without it's downsides though, considering the fact that my wife's family was all living in the same town in Maryland where she grew up and where we had started our careers and our family.  

In my mind, Redmond was the only place to go work for Microsoft, and I started fishing for interviews and trying to convince my wife that moving out to Washington state would be a great adventure.  Well, my wife humored me, although not extremely convincingly, and I managed to get an interview for a Program Manager position.  Leading up to the interview, I did everything I could to prep mentally and technically for the interview, even to the point where I spent the plane flight west "cramming" by reading yet another technical book about the technology the team developed.

The interview experience was fun, although I now know that at the time I didn't have the technical depth that was needed for this team.  Thanks to the cramming, I knew a lot of the stuff at an academic level, but I didn't really have experience with the technology at a deep level.  My loop ended a little after lunchtime, and I found out sometime later that I didn't' get the position.  Really this one was for the better.

I came back home, intent to re-focus on my career there, and it was quite some time before I started to get the "itch" again.  My next round started around the end of 2005.  By conversing with folks and reading blogs like the Microsoft Jobs Blog, I had come to an important realization of a problem with my previous approach. 

Microsoft, in general, has a ton of opportunities.  Even with our recent layoff announcement, we've still got over 700 positions posted on the external careers site, and usually that number is in the thousands.  The problem was that I read every job posting and considered it as a unique opportunity, and I evaluated whether I would like doing that better than my current job, and whether there was a reasonable fit between my experience and the skills required.  This is a problem because it didn't take into account my real passions and strengths.  This was even more of a problem for me because my background is very broad, and I'm interested in a huge variety of technologies.  Really if you told me that I could spend the rest of my career doing 3 month rotations on different teams throughout Microsoft, I would love it because I love getting exposed to a huge variety of technologies, problems, and people.  This facet of my personality led to to not be very focused in my job hunt, and it also left out an important part of the career equation.  The 3-month rotation scenario above might be very fulfilling to me, but what would it really offer Microsoft if every time I get ramped up enough to start being productive, I moved on to something new?

So, all of this leads me to the idea, and possibly the best advice I can give any prospective Microsoft hire.  You should not just focus on what you are good at, but you should focus on what you are best at.  You should not just think about what you are willing to do, but rather what you would love to do.  This is the best way to match your true passion with a potential opportunity, and when you find an opportunity with the right fit, it'll be that much more likely to happen.

So, this realization led me to my second interview opportunity.  I was in the midst of my MBA coursework and really focused on organizational theory and change management, and I found a Program Manager position that really fit with where I was focused at the time.  I was out in Redmond for a conference and managed to get an informational meeting with the hiring manager, and subsequently got scheduled for an on-site interview loop.  I honestly think this position was a great fit for my passion and personality, and to this day  think I would've managed to rock at it, but frankly I would've been at a huge disadvantage trying to fill that role without having first worked at Microsoft. It was a very business oriented role, and Microsoft's business is very different from what you see in most organizations. I guess it goes without saying that I didn't get this position, but again had an awesome time interacting with smart folks through a challenging interview experience.

Next time I get motivated to write on this topic, I'll cover the interview that finally landed me a position with Microsoft.

My trusty CX2620 has been serving the family well for almost 3 years now, but for about the last year the battery hasn't held a charge that would last more than 5 minutes.  I had attributed this to a bad battery, and with replacements going for around $150, I wasn't going to sink that much money into an obviously aging laptop. 

A combination of events recently lined up to get my laptop battery back in action.  Our original power adapter's cord had broken through the insulation around the place where the DC cord enters the adapter brick, so we ordered an el-cheapo replacement from Ebay.  This new adapter had the same specs as the original, and we managed to continue along, still not able to hold a charge, but functional while plugged in.

This new adapter only lasted a couple of weeks before giving out entirely right before we were going on a trip.  We decided against getting another cheap adapter, and put in a order for the original OEM spec adapter, to be shipped to one of the destinations on our trip.  When it wasn't there when we arrived I checked the order status to find that it was backordered for another 4 weeks.  Since we were suffering from laptop withdrawal, we ended up running out to Circuit City and picking up a Kensington Universal Notebook Power Adapter (K33404US).

Well, the new adapter is a 90 watt adapter, vs. the original 60 watt.  Low and behold, the battery will now hold a charge almost as good as when it was new!

Pretty much every time I notice something in the world that seems "broken" the analysis eventually leads me to think that the incentives are structured in a way that causes the brokenness.  Take the recent mortgage crisis, and look at what was driving the behavior of the key stakeholders:

Real Estate Agents:  Both buyers and sellers agents are paid a percentage commission on the sale price.  This means that the "knowledgeable representatives" on both sides have a financial incentive to get houses to sell at the highest price possible.

Mortgage Brokers:  Again, usually paid either a flat commission, or a percentage commission.  Either way, they earn exactly zero dollars for the mortgage they say shouldn't happen.

Mortgage Lenders: This group was a major part of the real problem.  Mortgage lenders, through bundling and selling of mortgage backed securities, had no incentive to turn away bad loans.  The mortgage backed securities were selling at a value that didn't account for the risk using standard economic formulas, so the lenders had an incentive to accept risky loans and sell them, passing the risk along to people who had no ability to understand the risk they were accepting. Basically the more they could get a potential homebuyer to promise to pay, the more money they made.  No incentives to push down the price of homes.

Appraisers: This is the group that should have been the safety net, but it seems that they've turned into yes-men (and women) for the Real Estate Agents and the Mortgage Lenders.  They are well insulated from liability by the formulas they use, and are dependent on Agents and Lenders for referrals so that they can make a living, so they have no incentive to challenge the value of an overpriced home.

Home Buyers: This group seemed, as a whole, to believe that as long as they planned to sell their house every few years, they should buy as much house as they could afford in order to maximize the future profit.  As a whole it looks like we bought into all of the advertising that claimed that houses were a great investment, touting huge yearly percentage gains in value, even though the fine print read "past returns are not a guarantee of future performance."  Greed, and the blind hope for turning a profit led this group to accept the inflated values as a reason to buy.

Home Sellers: Finally we get to the one group that should have been putting upward pressure on home values.

So, we now have a correction of sorts underway.  Home buyers are wary of getting into the market for fear that the values will continue to drop.  Mortgage brokers and lenders know they can't bundle and sell risky mortgages since there will be too much scrutiny, but they do seem to be trying to lock in anyone that has a good to excellent credit rating.  I haven't seen any real changes in the real estate market, but I'd be amazed if there isn't at least some fear of liability if an agent helps someone buy an overvalued home.

The current climate of fear and risk aversion has slowed the bad behavior, but nobody seems to be talking about fixing the system.  If we come out of this and the incentives haven't changed, then the bubble will just grow, and pop, again.

This series of posts will be a mini-history of my career, and the long path that led me to Microsoft. It's about me, so I feel a bit weird posting it, but I think there might be some useful information here for others who are trying to steer their careers in the right direction. (Link to Part 1)

After digging into the networking and security side of things for a while, I found more and more of my time being taken up by development projects, and although I had picked up quite a bit of knowledge about low-level networking and security, I felt that I would make better use of my talents by continuing to be involved on the software side of things as well. One of my former colleagues was getting ready to move to Florida and he was leaving an opening as a lead developer on a small simulation development project.  This was mostly a software project, but also had some specialized hardware components, and some networking angles as well.  This seemed like a good fit, and would allow me to return to more of a leadership role.

I had a great deal of fun and learned a lot with this role.  I was with a company that encouraged personal and career growth, and they paid for me to complete my Master of Business Administration (MBA) while I worked on a team that focused on developing simulation capabilities for a Navy aircraft.  Since I was someone who had both software development and networking experience, I got pulled in many different directions and worked on lots of very interesting and challenging projects. 

During this time I also got involved with blogging.  I used to read technology websites, and there was some mention on some fairly mainstream news site about a blogger at Microsoft who was giving a bit of a peek inside Microsoft.  I started reading this blog, and grew out from there, settling in at around 100 feeds with a constantly churning mix of individual bloggers & news sites.  Within a few weeks of starting to read blogs, I also started writing a blog called "Blobservations", originally at Bloglines, later at Blogger, and eventually settling at blobservations.com and still later transitioning to onemanshouting.com (now also accessible at rickhallihan.com).

Through participating in blogging, I was able to learn a lot about technology, the industry and also start getting some exposure as someone who thinks about and has opinions related to technology, programming, media, Internet, and any other random thing that I decided to spout off about.