Don Xml's Grok This

It really boggles my mind what some firms (both consulting and client) are trying to pay Information Technology consultants these days. I think that, for the most part, there are a lot firms and hiring managers that do not understand how Information Technology consulting companies operate. Seeing that I’ve been in this business for a very long ...

My experiment as a fulltime employee is now over. Well, it has been over for over a month now, but I'm finally getting around to blogging again. I had my longest blogging hiatus (just about a month). I'm not going to get into the details, but after a couple months, I could see the writing on the wall, and knew it was only a matter of time before I ...

Now that I installed Office 2007, and love the new Outlook 2007, I get an invite for Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta.  Seems as though this is the replacement for Outlook Express, but it a whole lot better than ol' Outlook Express.  Actually, I wonder why Microsoft working on one hell of an email client that seems to be almost as great as ...

In case you missed it, Rory has been going thru some life changing experiences, and feels like he is about to become Rory 2.0.  So, what does he do?  He creates a brand new website, TheSmartestMan, along with a 7 minute 30 second podcast that is his oral resume.  With a resume like that, who wouldn’t hire him?  Seems like ...

In case you haven’t run into LinkedIn before, it is slowly becoming the place for the corporate crowd to cultivate their “network” of friends and associates.  I’ve been a member for quite a while, but recently I have seen a major up tick in the number of friends and associates now using LinedIn.  One of the big ...

It has been a very long time since we last had a New Jersey Developers Dinner, but that is going to change this week.  Any Information Technology professional (developer or ITPro) that lives or works in New Jersey is welcome to attend the NJDD.  The date is August 24, 6PM, at the Harvest Moon in New Brunswick, NJ.  The only people ...

I’ve been a big fan of LookoutSoft’s Lookout Outlook Search Plugin for a couple years now, and with Microsoft buying them it was only going to be a matter of time before Microsoft yanked the free download from the LookoutSoft site.  Well, today I was talking to someone about this cool Outlook search plugin, and navigated over to ...

Rocky accidentally ignited the wrath of a couple .Net Test Driven Design guys (see Jeff Palermo’s post for a good example). with his recent interview on .Net Rocks, and then tries to explain his comments a bit better on his blog entry: Forests, trees, testing and design.  Now, I don’t always agree with Rocky’s architecture ...

My friend Scott Hanselman and his wife, Mo are leading Team Hanselman, and they are trying to raise US$10,000 for the American Diabetes Association.  Scott has freely blogged about his life with Type 1 Diabetes, which has helped me better understand the disease.  My dad and grand parents have Type 2 Diabetes, and with the extra pounds I ...

So, you have read and followed my post Developer Career Tips -2006 and now you are ready to look for a new job.  So, what do most job seekers do when they want to announce their availability?  They post their resume to a job search website.  Well, it isn’t as easy as they make it seem.  Posting a resume on a job search website (like Dice, ...