February 2008 Archives

It’s only a few weeks in to the semester and I am already thinking about the summer. I am can’t help it because I am just the kind of person who’s mind is always wandering. I would say I can focus, but I do have a hard time resisting the urge to plan muy life too far in advance. Even with my meger attempt at self discipline, I feel that the cause of a fun summer in between school years is a worthy enough cause to let my mind go free and dream big. I went online yesterday and started looking at different places in the world I had never been. I looked on each continent and made a list of places I would like to go. When the list was finished I put them in order and took the top countries from each continent. Then I looked at these and compared them to what I am looking for this summer. Then I looked at my financial situation for the summer. When I had a ballpark idea of how much money I could spend now and how much I would have for the trip I narrowed my list even more. Now it was down to just two places: Sydney,Australia and Negril, Jamaica. The next thing I had to do was to compare hotel rates and the airfaires. After a quick look at the airfares I decided I would go with Jamaica. Now it was time to just compare hotel prices. I looked at a bunch of different sites to look for the best hotel deals I could finnd and this was a long process of writing down the different hotels and prices for each website, which all seemed to be differrent. After a lot of compairing I got it down to this one hotel which was actually a series of bungalows on the beach. I liked the idea a whole lot and made my hotel reservation this morning. Now I know a lot of people who like to fill their vacations with as much activity and sight-seeing as possible. Well, I will tell you real quick that I not that kind of person. My trip planning is over and I won’t make any more decisions about it until I get there.

The
semester has just started and I am really excited that this is the last
one.  I
will  be graduating this May and after that I am not really
sure what I am going to do.  I have a job already but I mean,
it's just such a big jump in to the real world that I can't quite
cope.  Every day I get up to go to class and I have to just
try and take in all of the surroundings that I have spent three years
letting go and walking by.  I realize more and more that there
are places on campus that have a lot of significance to me from all of
the memories made there.   At the same time I keep finding
places I have never been and I go out of my way to try and form a
memory in them.  Though I am interested in my classes and they
are all culmination material that all builds on what I have already
learned, it's just hard to concentrate when I know I will be leaving
here so soon. Though I am wrapped up in my childish sort of nostalgia,
I also have to just keep on keeping on.  Some topics like my debt consolidation
seem to keep emerging within conversations and offhand remarks remind
me of the issues.  I have looked in to my future career and
all of my plans as best I can, and I have found that I will have to
find some kind of bill
consolidation.  I want to do anything I can to keep
from having ask my parents for debt
help.  I just want to make sure I am set and don't
have to make that sad walk back home and beg for my financial salvation. 
For now I have just try and enjoy my time in this infantile state that
is college.  Only three more months and then it's off to
reality for me and in september I will be in school again with only a
slight role reversal.  My digital camera gets filled up every
day and my mind is a sponge to fill up with the last great metaphors I
will pass on to the next generations.

This year I have been working for my university at the travel agency in our commons.  We help kids book flights home, if they are international or if they live across the country.  We help other kids book flights when they go on vacation as well.  Sometimes we even have to help the kids who are studying abroad if they have some special time problem and can't make the student flight.  It's a pretty interesting place because I am expected to explore every country that people want to go to for vacation so that I can get them the best deals or the best vacation for their particular interests.  Sometimes I get some interesting requests for vacations in places I wouldn't have ever looked up it it weren't for this job.  I got asked about one such place just last week.  A kid walked in and asked for information on vacations to a place called Sardinia.  I just sat there staring at him with a blank look on my face.  I bet he thought I was a crazy person.  When I fumbled through some excuses about the computer being down or something, we set a date to meet the next week to plan it out with the agency software.  That night I went on the web and did some searching for information about travel in Sardinia.  Thankfully I stumbled across this site that saved me, charmingsardinia.com.  This site saved me because it was exactly what the kid had said he wanted.  He was obviously from a well-off family and he said he wanted to do a luxury yacht charter and that he only wanted to look at 5 star hotels  Sardinia. The first great thing about it is that right at the top of the page is a link for hotels  Sardinia. When I looked in to the link it turned out that they were all luxury hotels  Sardinia.  The next thing I took notice of that the kid ended up reserving, was the link on the home page to golf holidays.  I guess they have a lot of golf resorts where people just take short Sardinia holidays for a week or so.  The last really great resource I found on this site was the free rough guide to Sardinia they offer, which I keep in my office in case anyone else wants to go to Sardinia.

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"description" content="So how do you do that? By owning the organic results. If you Google your company’s name, what comes up? You may think it’s cool that one of the results is a blog that raves about your company.">

Internet
Reputation Management

Sticks and
stones may break my bones

But names
will never hurt me.

It wasn’t true when you were a child, and now that
you’re an adult, you know all too well the damage that can be inflicted
online by someone with an agenda and access to the Internet. 
If you want to properly deal with risk you have to have an
effective online reputation
management program in place to deal with problems before they affect
your bottom line.

What are you doing to protect your
online
reputation?  If you’re
like most business owners, you’re not doing anything, and if you are
it’s probably not enough. 
You basically have two choices: You can react to threats or you can be
proactive and respond ahead of time. You shouldn’t wait until something
happens to react, because if you do it could be a long, slow process to
repair the damage.  If this
describes your situation, the damage can be repaired, but a best-case
scenario is that you respond ahead of time.

So how do you do that? By owning the organic
results.  If you Google your
company’s name, what comes up? 
You may think it’s cool that one of the results is a blog that
raves about your company. 
That’s a good thing, right? 
Not so fast.  What if they
change their mind?  Public
opinion is like your credit score: It can change overnight. 
Like your credit score, popularity is nothing more than a
snapshot in time.  It’s the
“What have you done for me lately?” mantra in action, and if the answer
ever becomes – or seems to be – “Not much”, you could quickly find that
your biggest fans have become your biggest detractors. 
And then where are you? 
You’re stuck with negative comments ranked high in the search
engine results.  That’s
where a top-notch reputation management firm can save your bacon.

Internet
reputation management is all about controlling your message. 
If you control the top search engine results, you control what
your customers see. 
Internet reputation management can put you in control and keep the
naysayers far enough down in the results pages that your customers and
potential customers will never see the negative comments. 

If you can’t get ahead of the game and negative
information about your firm has already been posted, it can be fixed
with the help of a qualified – and skilled – online
reputation management
company.  But if you do it
incorrectly, your customers will get curious and dig a little deeper and
find negative comments or information about your company. 
To further complicate matters, the major search engines will give
credibility to your detactors and reward them with good result placement
in the search engines, which puts nasty PR about your company front and
center at a critical stage in the buying process, which can send your
prospect running away from your company, instead of towards it. 
If that happens, their wallet snaps shut – and you’ve lost the
sale. 

There’s good news, though. 
Effective online
reputation management can protect your image and your bottom line by
controlling your message. 
It’s not easy to correct negative publicity and it’s not easy to prevent
negative comments – true, untrue, or a combination of the two – from
showing up in the search engine results. 
You need the expertise and the dedication of a skilled
reputation management firm
that will watch your results like a hawk. 
That’s where I come in.

To learn more about how internet
reputation
management can protect you from potential financial devastation,
point your browser to the
reputation HAWK.  Your
financial future is at stake. 
Do it today.

This week I have to
start looking for a job for the remainder of the semster.  I
don't have to work because I am out of money, but because I would like
to keep the money I have saved in the bank and use the money I make at
this job to pay my short term bills.  The money I have saved
up so far was made at thei job that started out as and internship two
years ago and now has turned in to almost a career.  When I
graduate I plan to become a full-time employee there.  So far
I have worked there for two summers as well as every spring and winter
break.   My job so far has been the mail boy or coffee kid
kind of jobs where I don't really have any wieght in the real
work.  That all changed over the winter break this
year.  Since I will be graduating in May I expressed at the
beginning of the break my intent to go to work for them when I finish
school.  My degreee is in accounting and business
management.  When they had heard about my intent they tested
how much I had picked up from sitting in on meetings and reviweing
papers these last two years. They were obviously impressed enough that
they decided to bring me in on their new prject which started about a
week after I started.  They had me start by looking at a video
about Six Sigma online. 
This was part of their new project to try and streamline the business.
They said that it was great that I would be learning about the Six Sigma model
before I came to work because that would save them some time when I
started making more money.  After the week where I did my
usual work in between meetings about the program, I was told I had
earned a Six Sigma green
belt.  When I begin working in the summer I will
immediately go back and get one more week of training and I will earn
the Six
Sigma black belt.  After my training I will
immediately begin my new job as the project manager in charge of
efficiency.  For now though, I will probably be flipping
burgers.

Recently
I went on my first trip to Europe. It was so much fun because not only
was it my first long trip since graduating from high school, but it was
also my first trip outside of the country.  I went by myself
and had the whole thing planned out.  I did a complete
backpacking tour of all of western Europe and Italy.  

My
trip started out in England. I figured with the language barrier being
a bit thinner, I would have a much easier transition going there
first.  I went up to the north of scotland and back down the
east coast of Britain.  I had been using my American money the
whole way up until then and knew I would have to do a foreign
exchange before I took the ferry to
France.  Before I left I had used my online currency converter
to check on the money
exchange rates for the Euro and the
dollar.  While I went around the island I kept checking the us
dollar currency news to see if there was a better day when the dollar
was worth just a bit more so I wouldn't lose as much in the
exchange.  It turned out that the last day was the best
because the dollar's money
exchange rates had been doing well all
day.  So I went to a bank in London and did a foreign
exchange before heading to the seaport and my
ferry. 

When
I got over to France I began the long journey South along the coast to
portugal and Spain.  I rented bikes all along the way which
you would pick up from one point on the map and ride to
another.  When you got to the next place you would rent
another one.  

Spain
and portugal were so much fun, especially the nightlife.  I
had the most trouble with the languages inn these countries, but I
wasn't trying to learn all of the language, just the basics for
survival of a tourist.  When I set out from Spain I looked at
my finances and I was doing great. My schedule was nearly perfect and I
made it to Rome about an hour ahead of schedule. That I feel was my
strong point on this trip; my schedule was perfect.

I am just finally getting settled in to this area of the world.  Florida is great.  I love the climate, the people, the food, the culture. I love it all.  School starts in three months and I have so much to see around here before things start up again.  I just completed my transfer here from my old college in Pennsylvania.  I am moving because my major is supported better by this new school than my old one.  Anyway, I am just so excited to be here and to get everything settled in.  I have had some pretty interesting experiences getting to this point that I didn't even think about before.  One example is my summer job that I got because I was taking the Florida online traffic school course.  I was having some trouble because I didn't read the Florida Drivers Handbook, figuring that it was the same as the one in Pennsylvania.  Somehow I had read some instruction wrong and had accidentally applied for a Florida learners permit.  When I went down to the Florida DMV to take the Florida driving test I passed every task perfectly.  It wasn't until I got back inside and they handed me a piece of paper on it saying Florida Driver's license application.  I was a bit confused at first and actually sat waiting for someone to call me to take my picture.  When about twenty minutes went by with me constantly scanning this paper I finally went up to the clerk.  I told her my problem and she checked my records and the whole thing was sorted out right there.  Before I left that day, I had talked with that clerk for about another hour.  At the end I had mentioned that I didn't have a job before school started and she said they had an opening.  I didn't have any particular skills, but I could be a file clerk for the Florida traffic school she told me.  So that is how I got my job for the summer. Now that that is over I can just enjoy life and get ready for school at my own pace for once.

I have been looking forward to my spring break this year for some different reasons than in the past.  Usually I go to some far away place and sit on some beautiful beach and enjoy the time just relaxing.  The flights usually stress me out so much that it clouds my thoughts. It always seems that it is my flights that get delayed or canceled on the way to wherever I will spend the break.  Then for some other reason, my flights home are always so long and drain the energy I built up from vacation.  I always order my tickets with my credit card online, and there has not been one trip so far where there has not been some kind of problem.  

This year I will not be going anywhere and I have never been more excited about a spring break, I think.  This year I have decided to forego any of that stuff like traveling, spending time at the beach, or ordering plane tickets with my credit card online.  No, this year I will be spending my spring break here in the snow that always fells here over break and greets us when we get back.  I won't have to suffer that shock of getting off a plane with a tan, and slipping on snow in my flip flops.  No, I will be here taking it all in. While my buddies are swimming in cancun I will be ordering movies with my online credit card.  I will be the one laughing and having fun as I make hot cocoa and read good books.  They will all get back tired and tan, while I will stay the color of the snow and will keep my camouflage abilities in tact.  

This year I will be ready for class to start and not dreading it.  Without all of those memories of sandy beaches and margeritas, I won't be tempted to get lost in my thoughts during a psychology lecture.  My online credit card won't be maxed out from too many dinners out, I will be eating smart this year.  I won't be worn out from long plane trips or exausted from sun exposure.  There isn't enough sun here all winter to make me that tired.