Paul's Tech Talk

5 ways to improve your chance of getting hired.

PaulOctober 10, 20083 Replies

Having seen the economy this week, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is time to redo all the important essentials and get all my ducks in the order as they say. I’ve been thinking of how best to be ready in case the dreaded day comes when my employer no longer needs my assistance and what could I do to be prepared.

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Get Someone to Critique your Resume — This is the most important step because this is the first place employers look when they want to hire someone. So how do you get it critiqued? Here are some good links to help you start off with: Careerbuilder Critique, Mind of Root Peer Critique(Last until Oct 30, 2008).

Have your Resume Ready to upload to Resume sites — You should always register at all the important resume sites just in case. The Sites that I recommend are : Monster, Career Builder, Hot jobs, Dice, US jobs, Best Jobs USA, Computer Jobs, and Nation Job.

Use your website as a place to put your Resume — Have your resume available in case some contacts you and tells you they know someone who is looking to hire people. Have this resume hidden and only give it out to people you know. This is also known as networking.

Network as much as possible — There are sites out there that have made it easier to network. Sites like linkedin.com, this site is great because of the 6 degrees of possibility as I call it. You know someone, they know someone, and then you will both know the same one!! This also will greatly increase your chance of an employer finding you.

For those who want to be Self employed — I wanted to say that most people who want to be self employed know just how hard it is to begin with. So I’ve got some interesting links to help start you on your way. First link is Technibble.com Computer Business Kit, This has Maintenance Sales Letter, Work Order, Marketing Analysis and Payment Overdue Letter. It is also a good idea to have an MP3 Advertisement that you can give to podcast and throw them the link to it. You will need to market yourself to the public in ways that no one has thought of. You will on an occasion have to spend money in order to get money, it’s always been that way but it seems to work.

These are some great tips that will greatly improve your chances of landing that job or becoming even more chance of you making money. If you have any tips or want to suggest ways to improve upon these tips please email me. If you like what you see discuss it on the blog or click on my ads to help offset the cost of this blog.

Backup your Mozzila Thunderbird profiles

PaulOctober 7, 2008

So you have all this mail you want to back up in case something terrible happens to your hard drive. So here is ways to backup your email and other programs in Vista. I think Vista has a new way of keeping program profiles in an hierarchical setup. So what is the HIDDEN directory it is:

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C:\Users\[USER]\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles

Now as you can see your Thunderbird profile is in a hidden directory in the AppData Directory. You can easily get to the hidden directory by typing %appdata% {enter} in the search bar of Vista. Now How do you backup and restore. The program I use to backup is GoodSync. I send the data to the cloud and when I need it I can restore it back to the directory. Now what about restoring, if you have to do a complete re-install of Thunderbird you can always copy over the back up to the Thunderbird Profiles directory and install Mozilla Thunder bird and it should see it. If by chance you load up Thunderbird and you have to re add everything you would have to delete everything in that directory and then restore from the back up.

It is also a good idea to backup all the roaming directory from time to time. This way you have every important program needed in case of a problem with your drive. These are just a few tips and tricks to keep your data safe from having problems in the long run.

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Google Ups the Anti!!

PaulOctober 4, 2008

As part of our effort to protect the accounts of AdSense publishers, we have mailed a Personal Identification Number (PIN) to the payment address entered in your account. This PIN must be entered on the PIN Information page before any payments can be issued to you. In the meantime, your account remains active, and you may continue to show ads and accrue earnings.

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Well that came unexpectedly, Google actually is trying to protect our accounts now from getting phished and or/taken over by some malicious person. This is called two factor verification**, Something you know and something you have. You can also get verify through your Cell Phone. Here is what they said in my Email:

Hi,

In an effort to protect the accounts of Google AdSense publishers,
we've starting using automated telephone number verification to
ensure that your information is accurate and up-to-date. As a result,
you should see a Required Action on your Payment History Page to
'Please verify your phone number' after you log in to your account.
To initiate this process, lick the 'Please verify your phone number'
link and follow the instructions.

Keep in mind that you have 6 months to enter the verification code.
If you have not entered your verification code within 4 months, we'll
start displaying Public Service Ads (PSAs) on your web pages. If you
have not entered your verification code within 6 months, your account
will be disabled and any unpaid earnings will be refunded to the
appropriate advertisers. You can learn more about our phone number
verification process at
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=32055.

For additional questions about getting paid, please visit
http://www.google.com/adsense/payments.
If you prefer a video presentation of this information, we encourage you to watch our Payment
demo (currently available in English only), located at http://www.google.com/adsensedemo4 .

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

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So here’s my take, you don’t have to verify both of them just one or the other. It is going to be rather difficult that people get paid. I don’t think this will be a big problem for most people, but I am sure some are going to get annoyed having to enter their* pin every time they want to get paid. So what do you think? Is this a good upgrade or a bad upgrade you decide and leave your comments. I want to hear them.

(*) Thanks to the Diggers to showing me I had a mistake.

(**)Someone ask why I capitalise the two in so I changed it!

(The Google Letter) That text is from my email no changes have been made except line breaks, so if there is an error it comes from Google.

Economic Death?

PaulOctober 3, 20081 Reply

Are we having an Economic Death? If so how could we change that? Is it to Late? In a recent CNN release President Bush talk about the Economic Depression of the US.

And you know what. I am not sure how to feel about this. Should I be worried or do I have any reason to worry? Having said that I like to talk about the problems that we might face if we go into a more economic depression and how might that affect your lifestyle.

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Having seen this coming the past year, I have been growing more and more uneasy with the way the U.s. Economy is turning out. Worried about paying bills off and earning enough money for my kids and wife. The typical situation for the average family. If your like me you have been struggling to pay bills and deciding on what is more important. You fixing your car or upgrading your PC/Laptop. These questions are undoubtedly going to cause problems with people who do work on computers to become almost non-existent. Not saying that is going to be to difficult to become truth.

It however will make peoples lives much more harder to deal with, or at least motivate people. Ever wonder what people would do if they were not motivated to do anything. Would they walk about the house naked or in there underwear?

You see there is always going to be a time when there will be hardships. We must fight through them to see the other side. They say the grass is always greener on the other side. That is like the economy, it will fix itself over time. I wonder how many of you are having to create a lean bank book? Have you bought any new games or PC hardware or For that matter Software lately? Are you planning on doing that in the next few weeks? Are you worried about the finanical situation and do you think it will impact you? Thease are all very good question to consider in the coming months.

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What are you going to do differently and why? I encourage you to discuss this in detail. I want to see what people think and why?

Taking back Program Controls : For the Beginners!

PaulOctober 1, 20081 Reply

: Image via Wikipedia

So, let’s face it, this is one of the most annoying problems there are with programs. Programs that you think are shut down but are actually still active in the Taskmanager. So I figured I’d talk about some of the most common fixes for these problems. Now as you know there can be any number of programs or glitches as they say, causing the problems. So let’s talk about the why, shall we.

Most of the time programs don’t quit because they are waiting for some kind of response from the system or the System is waiting for the program to close by itself. It could also be a problem with a Virus or Root kit? How do you fix it?

Fixing the problem is somewhat just trial and Error. It isn’t always the hardest thing to do but sometimes people overlook the easiest solutions. So here are some easy ones:

Check to see if one of the Microsoft updates are causing the problem — Sometimes you might not realize it, but having installed an update can cause problems like KB951748. That one caused a major Headache for Zonealarm. So it is wise to check each months updates when you start seeing problems, sometimes it could of been happening for a while but it can sometimes cause troubles.

Do a Hijackthis scan — Just in case it is virus this will tell you what programs might be the virus. You will need to go Analyze the logs so go HijackThis Log Analysis Site 1 and HijackThis Log Analysis Site 2. Check the logs to see what viruses might be on your system. Just Remember that if you delete something important to your system you will have to install the Operating System.

Boot into Safe Mode and Clean out your Prefetch Directory — Yes that is right, if you boot into Safe Mode and clean the cache you sometimes help fix problems. You see most programs loaded in cache sometimes get corrupt and might cause problems.

Uninstall any programs that you think might problem — This one is easily overlook because most people don’t realize that a program is loading up with your knowledge and might cause a variety of problems. You can also check the Msconfig for that programs that might not need to be loaded up when you start windows.

These are just a few ways to fix the problem and I think if you do this most of your problems will go away. There are of course other solutions depending on your system configuration. As with any changes to your system, please talk to your computer care specialist if you have any questions.