The way that the buttons work should be fairly obvious but just in case, I’ll run through the basics real quick.

• Facebook Like: The “Like” button, when clicked will add an item to your Facebook profile that says you “liked” the article and will include a link back to the original article.  (see example below).

• Retweet:  This button will allow you to log into Twitter and retweet the article to your followers ( it will look like “RT @mkoby TITLE link”).

Hopefully tomorrow’s post from Andy isn’t his last and we will see many more posts from him in the future.

So tomorrow I begin the hunt for the ever elusive animal known as “employment” and in these troubled times the animal might prove truely elusive.  Time will tell though.  The good news is, that after the layoff I sent my resume out to some people internally and out to some social networks via a link (Michael Koby’s Resume in PDF), and this has already beared some fruit.  Hopfully that “fruit” will grow into interviews and eventually (and hopefully sooner rather than later) offers for employment.

In the mean time, I will get to spend a little more time with my 5 month old son, work on some Android programming, and continue to improve my development skills.

Again, you cam find my resume at the link below.  Please feel free to download it, review it, and pass it around.  Especially if you live in the Houston area.

Michael Koby’s Resume (PDF file)

What does this mean long term?  What I will probably do is move to doing a regular but less frequent link blog post.  I’m hoping for once a week, but it might be every 2-3 weeks depending on the amount of links I find that are post worthy.

You can find out more about the Disqus/Seesmic partnership on the blogs of Fred Wilson and Robert Scoble.

Website Updates

This website is in the process of getting a make over by my friends at AngelsEye Inc.  These folks are good friends of mine and you can expect a nice look and feel sometime in the future.  Since this is being done as a favor to me (I’ve known the owner of AngelsEye Inc. for 10 years and have helped in several areas), it could take a little longer than something like “next week” but I’m hoping before the end of the quarter.

Also, some of the following updates might affect the post frequency of this website so, lets look at the other stuff.

Personal Growth

Back in September I took a new position at Sogeti USA.  Sogeti is an IT consulting firm specializing in local solutions.  I was hired on for my C# and SQL skill set.  These two skills are what I have the most depth in.  However, I feel that I could better my career by getting more in-depth with C# from both a language perspective and the whole theory(s) around application development (OOP, Agile, Design, etc).  Things like OOP, Agile, application design, architecture are things I’ve only kind of read up on in order to understand what they were but not necessarily the how of them.

I plan to change that over the coming months.  I have taken a pro-active approach in better understanding Object-Oriented Programming with a focus on design and architecture.  I’m hoping that this coupled with a severe thirst to learn all aspects of the C# language and how to utilize it properly will help me in my career. 

You might think this goes against by “anti-specialization” sentiments that I’ve talked about on  my Consulting Consultants articles.  If that’s the case, you’ll need to tune in this Friday for my thoughts on that.  Also this is just one of the first things I wish to get a deeper understanding of.  Expect to hear me say I’m looking into things like MDM, BI, and data modeling after I get the C# and programming stuff under my belt.

The result is that there might be less time to post here as I’ll be concentrating on bettering my programming skills.

Personal Health

As much as I hate to say it, I’ve let myself go over the last decade.  I’ve put on more pounds than I care to admit and after some research I have discovered that I’m scientifically considered “obese” which is completely unacceptable to me.  I’m not crazy fat and I do not waddle, but I’m a little round in the gut area then I like.

The result of discovering this has led me to get motivated about losing weight and getting healthy again.  I plan to institute an exercise regiment and to eat better than I do now.  The eating part will be most difficult to me.

My goal is to get to 200 pounds.  I’d like to be healthy about it but also do it as quickly as that will allow.  I have set up my page up again at Traineo, if you would like head on over there and sign up as a Motivator for me (http://mkoby.traineo.com).  After I hit this goal, I plan to lose at least another 15.  But I want to do it in steps.

Now you can see why I’ve stated that updates might get a little sparse around here.  I’m going to be busy.

In Conclusion

Closing up I want to let you, my most valued reader, that I will still be writing and you can expect updates.  Those updates just might not be daily (or near daily) anymore.  I plan to keep the Consulting Consultant series going as that seems to be popular with several folk.  You can expect the occasional commentary, how-to, and even general update from time to time.

I plan to remain active on Twitter and FriendFeed as well.  If you want to help me achieve my health goals, you can sign up for Traineo as a motivator for me (see the links above).  Also if you have tips on the programming stuff, I’m all ears.  I’m here to learn.

Currently these are being done using my digital camera’s video function.  Not the best way, I know but I do not currently own a web cam or a video camera of any kind.  If you have any recommendations on web cams (at the very least) please leave a comment or shoot me an email.

I hope that you enjoy this latest edition to this website.

This is probably due to the fact that I am using Disqus to handle the comments on my blog.  There was a recent posting on the Disqus blog about some growning pains they’ve been experiencing lately.

So if you do not see the comment section on a post, trying doing a refresh on the page.  This usually resolves the problem and you can comment.

A little sidenote though, I was informed of the issues through Twitter and I replied to the peple point out the problem and told them I was using Disqus and that it was probably due to their growning pains.  Right after sending that message I got a reply from Daniel Ha asking if I was having trouble.  Daniel Ha is one of the founders of Disqus.  So points for the customer service.

What do you think?  Should I remove the title?  Does anyone like the title and thinks it should stay?  Any other bloggers that might be reading have an opinion on this?

Let me know what you think by either commenting below or shooting me an email.  Thanks for your opinion.

If you run a Wordpress based blog, I highly suggest installing Disqus.  It’s extremely easy to install and you won’t regret it.

Yep, that’s right.  Yours truly has won Chris Garrett’s "Follow Me Friday" contest today.  Every week Chris picks a random Twitter follower for a prize.  This weeks’ prize was three free months of training from SEOBook.com (a $300 value).  I’m very excited to have won, mainly because I usually don’t win these kinds of things.

If you are a blogger and don’t know who Chris Garrett is, run and don’t walk to check out his site for some top rate blogging tips.

So thanks to Chris for an awesome prize.  Can’t wait to start my SEO training.

My daily del.icio.us posts will remain though, because a recap of things I found interesting throughout the day maintains some relevence.

This post is to announce the revival of this series for the purpose of getting some of my weekly series started back up.  We will start with the Consulting Consultant series because I have a page in my notebook of post ideas for the series.  As I work to get this series back on track, I will then look at reviving my "Songs & Such" series.

So starting next Friday, you will begin seeing a new Consulting Consultant’s post every Friday.  Check back for more on the world of consulting.

I assure you that I have not forgotten about any of my faithful readers and you can expect a return from me shortly.

I will return to you I promise.  For now enjoy all the great content that is already here.

Also, my page view numbers are not high and this is probably also the reason.  I have decided that until I can justify having ads on my website that I will not use Adsense.  You will see some smaller ads placed around the site, but none of them are going to be intrusive.

If my viewership goes up, I might consider bringing back advertising on the site, but I felt that it wasn’t making me enough that I could justify subjecting my readers to them.  In some cases the ads were not even relevant.

Great phone, I think that I have been officially sold on Blackberrys.

For this I humbly apologize and beg forgiveness.

I will spend some time this week writing some killer articles for you next week.

Once again I apologize for this, and hope you will visit some of the other awesome content here on Almost, Not Yet such as:

Customizing Your Gnome Desktop
Why Comic Books Matter
Music Organization Tips: Tags

I would like to take this time to thank my readers and RSS subscribers for continuing to come back and check out the new content posted here.  It means a lot when you guys read and comment on the stories and without you, the loyal reader, I would still be in complete obscurity as opposed to the mild obscurity.

As we move into our second year here at Almost, Not Yet, you can expect to see more posts and even more quality in those posts (I hope).  You will also see posts that tie in more with the radio show that I co-host, Power of Information.  Which means more how-to and insight articles related to technology.  If you have a topic you would like to see me cover here, please leave a comment or even shoot me an email, I promise that I am no where near popular enough to not be able to read every message you folks send me.  So let the ideas fly.

Again, thank you for reading and I hope that you stick around for what is to come.