Fat Update

Quick update on my weight-loss campaign: I've lost 11 pounds after 8 weeks, a few pounds ahead of the pound-a-week pace I need to maintain to keep my money out of Stephen Harper's hands. I'm feeling good, and was able to move to the 4th notch on my belt yesterday! Alison brought a 5 pound bag of potatoes out of the kitchen, dropped it on my stomach and said "you've lost 2 of these!". I had been thinking of it more in terms of having lost about 1 cat...

Watching the Odometer Turn

One of the cool things I've been learning about as I've set up this blog is all the data you can collect using Google Analytics. And today was the day that couple of interesting milestones were reached, so I thought it's a good time to blog a bit about who is reading this stuff.

Today this blog surpassed 1,000 visits, as well as 500 unique visitors. That's counting from February 5th, when I hooked up Google Analytics to start measuring the traffic. There were probably only a handful of visitors before then to see the first 2 posts.

Google Analytics provides the following data about my visitors:

• 1002 visits (that works out to 9.1 visits per day since I started, or 59 visits per posting)
  
• 572 unique visitors
• Average time spent on this site per visit: 1 minute, 33 seconds
• 45% of the traffic is direct, 25% comes from Facebook (following links when I post there that I have blogged here), 11% via searches, and the rest comes via links that my friends have put up on their sites or twitter feeds (thank you Chris & Anita, Mike, and most recently Michiel!)
• Readers come from 28 countries! Sounds pretty impressive, until you dig down and find that all the visits from 18 of those countries spent 0 seconds at the site, meaning those were accidental visits of some sort. The real traffic is from Canada (63%), the US (28%) the UK (4%) and whatever country Chris & Anita happen to have their boat docked at (2%)
• 51% of visitors used Firefox as their web browser, 27% Internet Explorer, 13% Safari and 7% Chrome
• 73% used Windows, 17% Macintosh, 7% Linux and 3% iPhone

I don't know if any of that data actually means anything, but I find it cool that it's so easy to track, and thought it was worth sharing.

I'm the Ambassador to Technistan (With a Theme Song!)

I'm looking for a job, as most of you know. There are a few jobs advertised (very few) that would be a good fit for me, and I'm applying to them as I find them. For the most part though, my job search requires me to work my network, uncover opportunities before they get advertised, and persuade someone to create or alter a position to match my talents. And part of doing that requires getting noticed, and standing out. This is not a time to be shy.

A few weeks ago, I read this post at my buddy Hardcory Mogkenstein’s Blog. He took offense (well, just a little) at the suggestion that "some guy in his basement" might not be able to produce high-quality music. I was intrigued by the thought of getting a jingle or theme song for myself, and decided to take advantage of their offer of a free demo. I filled out the web form, explaining that I'm looking for a position as a software manager, and a theme song could help me get noticed.

The next day I had a phone call from John Schulte and Chuck Lindo in Los Angeles, the musical talents behind Jingle This. They had just come off a tough job, and the idea of writing a jingle for me seemed like a lot of fun to them. We spoke for a while, and they asked me a bunch of questions to understand the key skills I want to get across to employers, and get to know me a little. I warned them that my "marketing budget" was really small (like $zero), but they said they would do it anyway. I didn't hear from them for a bit (a few paying gigs took priority over my pro bono job, which is fair enough), until today, when they sent me the finished product. I think it's pretty cool, and I'm excited to have my own theme song. Here are the lyrics:

John, John Gross
He's the most talented software manager
John, John Gross
does the most to bridge your teams together

He sees high-tech through a manager's eye
He's way more than a computer guy

He's John, John Gross
He can, he's the ambassador to Technistan
John Gross, he can
'cause he's your ambassador to Technistan

and you can hear it here (open it in a new tab or window if you want to see the lyrics while it plays). I think the boys at Jingle This did a great job, and I figure the least I can do is recommend their services to anyone who needs a jingle or theme song. Nice guys, and I'm thrilled with what they did for me. I always wanted to be an ambassador...