Cow’s Life - Thinking Outside Of The Barn

Woohoo! My first professional blog is formally launched! You can read about the announcement on b5media. I thought launching a blog site with pre-defined template and some prewritten contents would be easy. It still took us a full week to get all the details worked out. Nothing is easy nowadays.

Ok, here is the new site information:
Title: Blog Fabulous – Feeling fabulous in and out of the office
Address: www.blogfabulous.com

What does this mean to Yuna’s Village? Under the contract, I can’t post any new posts I write for Blog Fabulous on Yunasville. Therefore, a lot of topics I usually write about such as self-improvement and office lives will not be here anymore. Other usual topics such as technology, finances, rock climbing, snowboarding, games, and some stupid or smart Brew-Ha-Ha jokes that are not related to office and corporate lives will still be here. You will see that I am also moving some of my old posts to the new site over the next a few months. I don’t know how this is going to play out. But we will find out soon enough.

So, is the professional site making money? I sure hope so. Other bloggers from b5media are already getting paychecks now. I have no idea what I am going to get. Although I am still too tiny to blog for food, I sure hope I can blog for an ice cream bar once a while.

Today, I sent out my “hello everyone” introduction email to every blogger in the b5media blog network.

At this very moment, I am staring at my first professional blog site’s administration page that was just given to me by the b5media’s owner Jeremy Wright. After a long delay caused by the exicting merge with AW and other bigger projects, Jeremy and I finally closed the deal and set the site up. Although it will still take another week or two to finalize the design and officially launch the site to the public, I am absolutely thrilled to share this with you:

I am creating a blog that is dedicated to the working women. The new blog will be part of b5media’s women channel. Yes, yes, there are a lot of topics and I am absolutely thrilled to finally have a place to voice the concerns from the highly stressed working women, to share our stories, to encourage each other, to make friends and to find support in a community.

I did notice a lot of you guys on this site are men. (maybe because I am such a nerd?) Well, hopefully you guys will still be able to find something interesting to read in the “women’s channel”.

I will let you guys know once the site is formally launched and announced on b5media’s homepage. Now, I need to find some tequila and margarita mix to celebrate.. Haha!!!

ComputerWorld just published their newest 2005 IT salary survey results. I thought we were overpaid back in the 90’s and the market had done the self correction to adjust the ridiculous IT folks’ salaries in the recent years. Turns out, the young ones who entered the market recently got screwed. Oh, and the poor webmasters and technical trainers are getting nothing comparing with others.

Here are some numbers

• Besides those CIO and CTO jobs, here are the top 5 high paying positions:
  Director of networks: $126,734
  Director of systems development: $142,558
  IT director: $108,227
  Internet technology architect/strategist: $112,027
  Data warehousing manager: $110,626

• Other than the operator and help desk positions, lowest paying IT positions are:
  Network admin: $54,284
  Webmaster: $57,184
  Web developer: $61,078
  Technical trainer: $55,412

• 69% had a salary increase in 2005. 22% no change; 9% took salary cuts.
• How stressful is the IT job?
  A whopping 86% selected “very stressful”, “stressful” and “somewhat stressful” . Only 14% of IT folks feel pretty relaxed on the jobs.
• 81% are happy to be in the IT field
• IT workers work 47 hours a week on average. Only 29% work 40 hours or less a week. 16% work more than 51 hours a week.
• Which factor would mostly influence your decisions to change jobs?
  81% would change jobs if offered more money. Only 45% answered yes if the new job offers better work/life balance.
• What matters most to the IT folks about their jobs?
  Base pay 52%
  Stock options 44%
  Potential for career advancement and development 37%
  Vacation time/paid time off 33%
  Skill development/educational or training opportunity 30%

Here is the full report if you are interested in seeing all the data.

My thoughts

• Although I don’t see my exact job title on the list, I am one of those high paying architects who sit in the meetings drawing sequence diagrams all day long. Honestly speaking, this is relatively a more exciting job than project management or programming. The money is good (relatively) and the designing part could be somewhat fun. However, when politics kick in (which happens all the time by the way), being an IT architect could be pain in the ass. If I am going to name the best IT job, I’d say video game designer. Does it qualify as an IT job?
• Remember the three things a woman shouldn’t joke about a guy? His hair, his penis size and his wallet size. So I am not surprised to see so many people are willing to put in extra hours and deal with the stress in exchange of bigger paychecks. I am an older woman (relatively) so I have different priority. But to a lot of younger guys, 6 figure pay is the ultimate goal. I am not saying money isn’t important. It surely gives me a lot of freedom. However, I believe we need to protect ourselves from being overly stressed so there is a fine line to draw as how much we are willing to take. After all, health is the most important asset we have.
• I feel that the webmasters and the trainers’ low paychecks are not justified; especially the programmers are getting 50% more pay. I have prepared and taught corporate classes and it was a lot of work. For a lot of webmasters, the job involves not only the creativity but also heavy coding. I guess there are just too many of these guys out there to compete for the finite amount of money.

Simon Cowell from American Idol moves on to the next project to produce American Inventor for ABC.

Set to premiere in early 2006, the show is auditioning for contestants in 8 city tour.

You could win a million dollars. Although you have to go through the public humiliation since Cowell is the boss, that still beats eating pig’s guts on Fear Factor.

Oh, look!! Denver is on the list!!! Boy, I have only a month and half to come up with something ridiculous so I can get on the “worst audition” list.

2005 Annual Customers First Awards just released the 15 winners. Here are my top three:

Netflix
I must say that Netflix absolutely deserves the first spot. If you love watching DVDs and haven’t tried Netflix, you are missing out on something big. I love Netflix because of the convenience and the large title collections they have in stock. And if you live in any metropolitan areas, you can get your DVD in 1 day after the selection makes to the shipping list. The business model is simply brilliant.

Craigslist
The next best thing is Craigslist. I spent only 800 bucks to furnish my place with the items I found on this site. If you are a landlord or looking for a place to stay, use this site. I recently helped a townhome owner to rent part of his place. I didn’t think he would have any luck because of the location and the competition, but we found a tenant within one week. The site gets millions of hits and nicest part of it is that it’s free and easy to use. No registration. You can’t beat that deal. The only thing I don’t understand is how they make money? I don’t see Google Ads on the site. I have been scratching my head for a while…

Whole Foods
Ok, Whole Foods is expensive. But the quality is top notch. I am sick and tired to shop in Safeway, Kroger, KingSuper, etc… ‘cause they all have the same stuff. Grocery shopping was so boring until I discovered Whole Foods. Besides the quality, we all want different experiences. I just don’t understand why all the grocery chains can’t be a little more creative to sell some new products?!

When I started blogging about 3, 4 months ago, I didn’t know people could actually become professional bloggers to make livings by blogging.

If any of you found my site through Darren and Duncan’s Problogger.net and Blog Herald, you will know that these two guys are starting a new blog network called b5Media with Jeremy Wright. I submitted an application with a few ideas to them about a month ago and then went back to my normal routine.

Today, I got informed that b5Media would like to work with me to create a few pro blogs. I am very excited to have this opportunity to work with some respectful A-listers. Although I am well aware the amount of time I have to put into the new projects, I am willing to give it a shot. Otherwise, I will never know how this whole pro blogging thing works.

Darren Rowse is another reason why I want to work with b5Media instead of applying with Weblog Inc. Although I have only exchanged a few emails with him, I truly respect Darren’s work ethics.

So, what does that mean to my personal blog site? I only have 24 hours a day and I still have a full time job. So, I will have to slow down a bit, however I have no intention to close the shop here. After all, this is one site where I can exercise the right of freedom of speech and bitch about anything in any location at any given time without worrying about Ads click rates.

Anyway, I will keep you guys posted if I am writing any new blogs. In the meantime, let’s have a good time in the village.

Mike from Heavywinter just wrote a post to state his disappointment in today’s news media. Like many bloggers out there, Mike chooses Blogosphere when it comes to digging newsworthy articles to read. As he stated in his post:

…train wrecks, abductions, wheather phenomenon, killings, etc. There’s nothing truly new about that stuff. …Different names, different places, different dates, but nothing truly new among it.

But what about the 90% heating bill increase warning that will affect our wallets soon, or Greenspan’s Jan 31 step down plan that will eventually affect every corner of the US financial sector?

I am not denying the powerful social influences caused by the 18 million blogs out there, and the 80,000 new ones being created every day. Comparing with one year ago when there were only 4 million blogs, today’s Blogosphere is filled with an incredible amount of information and the talents. Look! AOL is buying Weblog Inc! Finally, the mainstream is taking blogs seriously. However, as you all noticed, the blog articles simply either link to the original sources, comment on the original sources or do both. So, my argument is - why reading the second hand news when the original sources are available?

Regardless how many brilliant articles Boing Boing has been collecting or Jason Kottke has been filtering, the blogs are simply not positioned to take over the roles of the traditional news sources. The reason is very simple - resource. The big boys such as CNN, NBC, USAToday, etc have the deep pockets AND the connections to get the stories that few bloggers can lay hands on. They have the money to hire experts from all areas to give in-depth analysis. They are able to walk into the press conferences hosted by the White House. And when you look at the big blog sites, they are still linking back to the news from Yahoo and Reuters’ RSS feeds.

Mike may be able to survive without newspapers and solely rely on the blog articles to get what he needs. I know I would be dead in the water if I don’t read USA Today, money.cnn.com or The Wall Street Journal. On the other hand, my day would be dead boring without digg.com’ geeky tech news and fark.com’s goofy odd news.

After all, the Internet readers are trying to find the best balance. We need to read original sources and we want to hear what people are saying. It’s like TV’s original dramas blended with the reality shows. So in my opinion, the traditional news sources and the Blogosphere work hand in hand to provide us with both sides of the world. The only thing we need to watch out is information overflow, ‘cause I am about to explode with a few dozen feeds I am scanning through each day! Soon, reading RSS feeds is going to become a full time job when each citizen owns 15 blog sites.

Happy reading everyone!

I have been an individual investor for almost 10 years. The current economy indicators worry me a great deal.

CNN just ran a report on the surprising fall of the consumer spending, which is the biggest drop since Nov 2001. We all know that a large portion of our economy depends on consumer spending. With the pressure from rising energy price, large government spending on war, and dealing with disaster aftermath, I am getting a bit worried about the money in the stock market now. Here is the full report.

However, the money magazine (also owned by CNN) asked Vanguard to run an analysis on the possibility of the stock market crash and the result came back quite optimistic. According to the Vanguard’s Center for Investment Research, the real probability of the crash is about 2 percent.

Maybe I am paranoid about this whole situation and maybe CNN’s experts are right about the short term setback, however I am afraid of the chain reactions that few people can predict. Although I am not going to take drastic actions such as moving 80% of the stocks from my retirement portfolio into bonds or cash, I think it is time for me to do a health preliminary check to protect my long and short term investment goals.

I am not a financial advisor, so don’t take my words seriously. I am just doing what I need to do to protect my investments. So here is a list of actions I will be taking in the next a few days while I am on Blogger Holiday:

1. Although I rebalance my retirement and long term portfolios once a year, I am going to do an emergency rebalance now, which is 4 months earlier than scheduled. So I am going to sell high and buy low now to shift the money among bonds, international, REIT real estate and US stocks
2. I am leaving my 401K future contribution alone for now. If stock drops significantly, I am going to raise the contribution percentage of the stocks so I can buy low.
3. Go through all of my short term stock mutual funds (short term meaning I need the money in the next 5 years), sell as much as possible and move them to my bond funds.
4. Move a portion of my cash reserve into treasure bonds or other government short term bond funds. As long as I have enough to cover 3 month bare minimum living expenses, the rest shouldn’t be sitting in cash or money market right now.

In summary, I am trying to cash in what I have made in the stock market now and start looking into the bond funds. I am quite optimistic about bond returns since the rate has been hiking up like crazy. Worst case scenario, I may not make as much if the stock market does hike up in the next a few years, but I know I won’t be losing 30% or 40% if the market crashes.

Ever since I wrote the post about losing bet to the MillionDollarHomePage, I got spammed by the copycats every now and then. Some of them shamelessly claimed that it’s their idea. There are also some honest ones admitting the borrowed idea but proudly put out their own designs.

A lot of people are speculating whether these copycats are actually making any money. Or, are they getting any traffic at all to their sites? So to answer these questions, I put a list together with some stats information of each site.

You will be surprised that this list is actually pretty long.

Continue…

Update on Oct 2: I am surprised to see so many creators of the “copy-cats” here and I learned that many of them are honest people who are just trying to make a few bucks, buy some homes, pay off the debt and plant a few trees with a borrowed idea. I have then expanded the list to include the honest ones and listed the possible scammers so people don’t fall into their traps. Wish everyone (the honest ones) luck with the pixel business!

At first glance, I was really puzzled when eBay’s CEO Meg Whitman made the decision to acquire Skype for a whooping $4.1 billion in mid September. First of all, I can’t seem to be able to connect the dots between an online auction site and an online phone service company. I was hoping Whitman could give a better explanation but even Fortune’s article wasn’t able to decipher the 78 page PowerPoint presentation as why eBay made such an odd move. “Meg’s motive?” Fortune wrote, “”(is to) keep(ing) pace with Google and Yahoo”. Hmm, what does that mean? Even the market isn’t so enthusiastic about the news. eBay’s stock is down 7% since the rumor of the merge broke.

I was flying this weekend. After my flight got severely delayed, I checked into the Admiral Club and met a business man who seemed to be really bored. So we chatted. I learned that he owns a small printing business with his partner. Since I own a side family business as well, we started chatting about how to expand business and compete for more customers. At one point, he said something that got me thinking. I don’t remember his exact words, but here is the summary:

“… We ought to think 10, 15 years ahead. We have to have the visions that people in today’s society may not understand. That’s how we stay ahead of the game…”

Four years ago when Yahoo’s new Hollywood CEO Terry Semel wanted to transition a Directory Search Engine into a Hollywood style media company, we probably all gave him the same reaction, “You are going to do WHAT????!!!” Now, the reality shows his vision is really working. Yahoo is no longer a search directory and online ads saler. If you are interested, check out this article as how Semel turned Yahoo into a Hollywood style new media company. Even IBM has changed so much since I first joined the company in 1996. We are the first to manufacture PCs and now we no longer make them! Instead, our R&Ds are making all kinds of chips and processors for XBOX 360, PS3 and Nintendo Revolution! 10 years ago, none of the IBMers would believe this. I know I’d be shocked. But I think we made a good decision by ditching the money-losing PC hardware division and grabs a share in the hotter digital entertainment industry before Intel does. (Author’s note: Actually we haven’t been a hardware company for years. Our core business has shifted to services and consulting because of Lou Gerstner’s vision after he took over the company in early 90’s).

After all, it’s the vision that makes a company staying successful years after years. It might seem odd today that eBay is merging with a communication company. But as more and more sellers and buyers are demanding better communications on the bidding merchandises, it might make sense to team up e-commerce with communication.

Hey, maybe Jerry Seinfeld deicdes to host a real-time digital video auction to sell his auto collection one day. You never know…