Dot Com to Dot Bomb

Presentation by Andrew Fry was pretty awesome. Andrew sure knows how to keep the attention of his class. I like how he brings in a whole bag of plastic dinosaurs just to represent AOL, Prodigy, CompuServ, Genie, and Delphi. I pretty sure it would've been just as effective to draw it out but it wouldn't have been as fun as dinosaurs. Its funny how companies such as CompuServ (not sure) was first out of the gate but fell behind because of some stupid decisions. For example they tried to force consumers to buy proprietary hardware in order to use their service which is retarded. In a way it reminds me of Microsoft and their Xbox 360. They were out of the gate first but the reliability of their systems were horrible. Accessories such as hard drives, controllers, memory cards, wifi adapter and headsets were all proprietary. Not only that but they charged the consumers $200 for what was essentially a 120gb 2.5 laptop harddrive. $100 for a wifi adapter and $60 for a wireless headset. They also released a patch so all third party memory cards would not work. Mircosoft reminds me of the new CompuServ by trying to create a new standard with the propriety hardware. The Playstation 3 lets the consumer use what they have. Such accessories include ANY usb accessories used on pc. Want a webcam? sure use the one you bough for pc 5 years ago Want to upgrade your hard drive? sure go to best buy and pick up a 500gb for $80. As much as I like the xbox 360 I hope Microsoft strays away from this proprietary hard ware. If not I hope they fail like CompuServ.

Accounting Basics

The chapter just covered the most basic aspects of accounting. These general operational activities are accounts payable, accounts, receivable, payroll, depreciation/amortization. I used to take accounting classes for my business major but after two quarters of it I found out I hated accounting. Reading this chapter I felt various emotions. First I was stressed out, then tired, lost, and then zombie. Zombie in my opinion is when you are awake but not mentally there. In other words turning on auto pilot. In zombie mode you can respond to simple questions that require only one or two word answers, such as yes, no, go away, and thank you. After I awoke from my zombie phase I realized I didn't learn much besides what I have typed at the beginning of the post.

I don't see myself crunching numbers all day which is why I switched to communications as a major. As much as I feel that accounting is horrible I know that it is an important part of every company. It is the backbone of the company financially and every company needs accountants.

However I did not have the energy nor the motivation to try to reread and understand this chapter. Which is why it took me so long to write this OPTIONAL blog. I hope one day I will be able to sit down focus and learn accounting. Maybe when I get a little older and my attention span to boring things increase while my attention span to everything else decreases. One thing I do know now is that if I ever start a business an accountant would be one of my first set of hires.

Armstrong

Michele Armstrong was the guest speaker in class today. Out of all the speakers I feel that she provided the most useful information. A good portion of her time in class was spent giving us a lecture on what to say, how to dress and other necessities one would need to do in an interview. One of the tips she gave about dressing a step up but do not over dress really stuck with me. In all the interviews I have gone to I would always wear black slacks, a dress shirt and a matching tie along with dress shoes. I did this for every interview. In a way I believe that was why I never was able to get a job at Mc Donalds or any fast food place. However I was able to get a job at The News Tribune, West Coast Grocery, and at Rushforth Construction.

Another thing that stuck with me was how she mentioned businesses looking for employees. I initially thought that posting a resume on Monster would be the best possible way to find employment however Armstrong stated that the company would have to spend lots of money for a Monster account. She then mentioned that most companies turn to craigslist, and twitter because it is free to use.

Overall I learned a lot from her presentation and I will begin to build my resume online. I figure I might as well as hide my personal pictures on Facebook since I don't want possible employers to see drunken pictures of me. It scares me that she mentioned how employers looking into these social networking sites. Everyone is on a social networking site. It is almost impossible to hide everything about yourself. How will I prevent protecting myself against this? As technology progresses I feel that we are losing more and more of our privacy and information about anyone can be easily found on the web.

Derek Young

Today Derek Young gave a quick presentation in class. I enjoyed his presentation because it inspired the web designer inside me. I liked how he mentioned exit 133 started as a website for his friends for fun and almost accidentally blew up and turned into a popular site. He explained how Google and other search engines helped the site tremendously because of how they worked. Exit133 wrote their articles in a way that will help Google list their site on the top of the list. Therefore more people will click on it. Although he mentioned that this year is the first year the profited off the site it showed me how important the site was to him. He wasn't getting enormous revenue for running the site but he worked on it and kept it updated for his audience. He also mentioned that the writers were paid but money was given to their selected charity. He also mentioned how the old model didn't work because the quality of writing dropped and the quantities of writing increased. This was because in the old model writers were paid for each piece they wrote therefore when there was a need for money more and more articles were written however quality suffered. He also explained how ads would work and how they would create a more professional view to your site. Also ad will bring in some sort of revenue to help you pay for updates to the site. Knowing this I hope that one day I will be able to create a successful site and keep it running for the locals. At the same time I feel that if I have a successful website like Derek Young it will open different opportunities for me in life. Overall I thought this was a great presentation.

Kendall

Kendall was the next speaker to come to our class. He started the discussion off with who our high school mascot which was quite interesting. He then explained how certain mascots needed to be change because there were people complaining that certain mascots were discriminating against certain groups of minorities. After the first 30 minutes of his presentation my mind began to wander. I usually give presenters my full attention but not today. I felt that his presentation was very dry and more of a lecture then anything. I know that there was probably a good deal of information however I was not able to stay focused for it. The only thing I remember him mentioning is pipeline, funnel, chance to sell and some other stuff. However I can tell that he was passionate about what he does. He answered a lot of questions the class had and I feel that the class in general got a lot out of his presentation. I did not ask him any questions because I mentally checked out. I did not want to ask a question that was answered previously or didn't have anything to do with his presentation. I am aware of the slides being emailed to us so maybe when I have time I can go back and review the slides. If a quiz is given on his presentation I would probably fail haha. I hope I will be focused when the next presenter comes in