This morning I launched Bipolar Lives, a blog that discusses the broad issues and personal challenges of living with Bipolar Syndrome.

Readers of this blog will know that I was diagnosed with Bipolar I in 2006. It’s a condition I am very open about and that is a challenge (and an opportunity) that I live with. Medication, therapy, and a loving and very understanding family help me make through each day.

Bipolar Lives will present research, ramblings, personal experiences, and other things of interest to people with Bipolar.

Come over if you want to learn a little about how we see the normal people.

Tags: Bipolar Lives, Bipolar Syndrome, blog, Challenges, Issues, personal

It seems that more than the usual immigration backlog reduction process has been at work in the USCIS. There are two likely scenarios that appear to be running around immigration circles these days, regarding the Green Card slot tease that has turned into such a furore.

The first is that the Department of State, which issues the Visas, was pressuring the USCIS to fill the Fiscal 2007 Green Card quota, something that has happened rarely in the last few years. What most people in the US don’t know is that most years, thousands of eligible Green Card slots simply disappear because the applications can’t be processed fast enough by the USCIS.

Recent events have highlighted this, and the Department of State may have applied pressure to USCIS to completely exhaust the 2007 pool, to avoid the embarrassment of having to explain to Congress why they can’t process applications faster.

The second reason is greed: as of August 1 2007, the government fees for Green card applications increases massively. For a family of four, the cost will increase by $2,500. So, by not allowing the flood of applications from all of those expectant people, they have guaranteed themselves a higher revenue stream for next year.

All things considered, the whole event smells.

Now, for the long-term affect on skilled immigrants, Microsoft has set the trend by announcing that it will be moving development over the border to Canada [here]. As a country with a skills-based immigration policy, highly-trained technical professionals feel welcomed and wanted in Canada, something that is not the case with the archaic and glacial immigration policy of the United States.

In the next 5-10 years, US companies will face a serious inability to recruit employees from anywhere other than the United States. Skilled professionals will simply not come to a country that actively discourages them from staying permanently and making a contribution.

The US policy policy will be a boon to Canada, Ireland, and other countries who actively seek and encourage skilled professional immigrants.

Tags: USCIS, Department of State, immigration, Green Card, skilled professionals, Canada, Ireland, brain drain

Tags: app, application, Canada, Challenges, cro, government, Green Card, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, immigrants, Immigration, Ireland, Issues, it, LAN, Microsoft, Om, pr, run, Technorati, United States

The client visit this week (and don’t expect too many details) was to MySpace. It is interesting to get an inside perspective on their performance challenges, as well as their beyond unique infrastructure.

I am bagged, and off to write up a document for another client.

Tags: LA, MySpace, myspace.com

Tags: Challenges, client, HTTP, IE, it, Om, performance, Technorati

Normally when I discuss the performance of a page I am measuring using GrabPERF, it’s either good news (”you just got 5 times faster!”) or bad news (”your page hasn’t loaded in 6 months; you still there?”).

Today, something a little different: a question. What’s the question?

Why is the performance of a Technorati Blog (aka Traditional) Search so different from a Technorati Tag Search?

For those of you who have been around for a while, you know that Technorati allows you to search for results based on a Traditional search engine methodology, which is date-ranked, most recent first. It also provides a way to search through the user-defined tags that are appended to posts, or listed as category titles.

The issue that I have been seeing from my measurements is that Tag Searching is performance substantially worse than Traditional Search.

TRADITIONAL SEARCH

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TAG SEARCH

What I need to understand from the Technorati team is the particular technical challenges that differentiate Traditional v. Tag Searching, because the difference in performance is astonishing.

And then there is the success rate of the Tag Search.

TECHNORATI TAG SEARCH SUCCESS RATE

When I examine the data, almost all of the errors on the Tag Search measurement are Operation Timeouts. I have set the GrabPERF Agent to time out when no response has come back for the server in 60 seconds. So, effectively 15% of the Tag Searches do not return data to the client in 60 seconds.

So, while the Traditional Search has been tuned and optimized, there appears to be much work left to make the Tag Search an effective and useful tool.

Technorati: technorati, search, tagging, seo

IceRocket: technorati, search, tagging, seo

Tags: app, ARIN, blog, Challenges, client, data, GrabPERF, GrabPERF.org, HTTP, IE, IM, it, measurement, media, normal, Om, optimize, performance, posts, pr, search, seo, server, Technorati

In Lisa Haneberg’s article, I fall into the first category.

Lisa, this is not weird, but it is becoming increasingly common as the knowledge worker generation collides with the industrial management culture we still hold.

I want to do more. See more clients. Solve more problems.

When I am bored, my productivity decreases exponentially. When I am challenged and pushed, my productivity increases exponentially.

We want challenges, not obstacles.

That said, my resume is drifting around like a message in a bottle.

Technorati: management, Middle Management, human resources, resume, curriculum vitae

IceRocket: management, Middle Management, human resources, resume, curriculum vitae

Tags: blog, Challenges, client, HTML, HTTP, IE, it, Om, One, PHP, pr, Technorati

Would love to hear from some of the folks at BlogPulse/Intelliseek about the challenges their success is causing them.

Technorati: blogpulse, intelliseek

IceRocket: blogpulse, intelliseek

Tags: app, blog, Challenges, HTTP, IM, Issues, media, Om, Technorati

BlogPulse has improved, but it is still a very relative improvement.

Still no word from anyone on the BlogPulse team about the challenges they are facing.

Technorati: BlogPulse, Web Performance, Capacity Planning, Web 2.0, SEO, traffic analysis

IceRocket: BlogPulse, Web Performance, Capacity Planning, Web 2.0, SEO, traffic analysis

Tags: analysis, blog, Challenges, HTTP, IM, improvement, it, LAN, media, Om, One, performance, pr, seo, Technorati, traffic, web, web 2.0, Web Performance, Web+performance

Blogpulse appears to be suffering from a case of the terminal meltdown.

Does anyone at BlogPulse want to share with the community what the challenges they are facing are? No judgements are made here; the objective to share our Web performance tuning knowledge.

Technorati: BlogPulse, Web Performance, Capacity Planning, Web 2.0, SEO, traffic analysis

IceRocket: BlogPulse, Web Performance, Capacity Planning, Web 2.0, SEO, traffic analysis

Tags: analysis, app, blog, Challenges, community, HTTP, IM, it, LAN, media, Om, One, performance, seo, Technorati, traffic, web, web 2.0, Web Performance, Web+performance

From MacRumoursLive:

Catch up - two major challenges - making OS X think on intel procs. Every release of OS has been compiled for intel x86 for the last 5 years - cross platform by design.

Wow. Wish I could have snuck out those binaries.

TECHNORATI: Apple, Intel, Steve Jobs, Powerbook

Tags: app, Apple, book, Challenges, cro, design, EAD, HTTP, IE, live, Mac, Om, pr, Technorati

Decided to add something to my resume today.

Is your company remarkable?

Are your employees amazing?

Does your company thrive on employees who think differently?

What was the last book your CEO read? What was the last book your VP of Marketing read?

Tell me about you and your company. Or if you are a recruiter, tell me why you like finding employees for this company (beyond the fact that you get paid for it).

I am looking for companies that are challenging their employees daily. Tell me your stories of success, how you lead your industry, and how you constantly look for new challenges, not simply coast along on the glory of the past.

If it looks like turning the interview process on its head, you’re right. I want to know why I should come work for you.

My blah, blah, blah is below. But you are the kind of company who hires based on what’s in a resume, I don’t want to work for you.

Why? Because I am a square peg, and most companies who hire by resume only are looking to fill triangular holes. I am different, and that cannot be seen in a resume.

Does your company need someone who thinks differently? Does your company need someone who refuses to fit into a job title?

Come on over and talk. Tell me what you are looking for; and I will tell you what my ideas are.

smp
May 7, 2005

Why did I do this? Cause I want to separate the wheat from the chaff. I will not settle for a job. I want to go to work and have a vision. I want to be enthralled, motivated, and driven to go to work every day.

Does your company have what it takes?

Tags: book, Challenges, EAD, HTTP, IE, IM, it, marketing, Om, One, PHP, pr