Why I turned down your friend request
Posted on September 22nd, 2009 @ 10:35 am
I get a lot of friend requests. I’m one of those people who do not accept every friend request that comes my way, though. Here’s a few reasons I might turn down your particular friend request.
I can’t see your face
If I don’t know who you are by looking at your profile picture, I’m not going to accept your friend request. It doesn’t matter if your picture is so small that I can’t make out your face, or if you have a picture of your kid instead of a picture of you, or if you have a picture of an American flag. If your profile picture isn’t a clear shot of your face, I’m not going to accept your friend request.
I can see your face, but have no clue who you are
Sadly for you, this may not be completely your fault. I tend to not have the greatest memory for people, both faces and names.
However, you can curb this reason by sending your friend request very soon after you meet me in person. Like, within 48 hours generally works. While my memory is bad, it’s not quite that bad yet.
You have a second account for your business instead of a page
Businesses should have a Fan Page for themselves, not a second account. Accounts are made for people, Fan Pages for businesses (and some other purposes).
This is not a hard, fast rule, as I do occasionally accept a friend request from someone who set up an account for their business. But I’m always worried that if they don’t know how to use Facebook properly, I may not want them as my friend on there.
We have no mutual friends
If I can see your face, but don’t remember you, I may still accept your friend request if we have quite a few mutual friends. If, however, I have no clue who you are and we have no mutual friends, chances are slim that I will accept you as a friend.
Again, these are just guidelines I personally go by. I’m not necessarily recommending you do so. Plenty of people accept any and all friend request they get.
Obviously, I’m not one of those people.
Tags: facebook, friend, friend requests
Origin of Ctrl Alt Del
Posted on September 16th, 2009 @ 6:42 pm
Interesting short video on the origin of Ctrl Alt Del. But Bill Gates sure does not look amused when this guy shares the credit towards the end.
Smashing Magazine stole my image, and I like it!
Posted on September 15th, 2009 @ 11:10 pm
I’m a fan of Smashing Magazine, an online magazine for web professionals. It’s pretty popular and frequently ranks well among web designers and web programmers. Alexa* ranks it 1,081 among all websites on the online.
About a week and a half ago, I was checking out their latest articles, when I discovered a familiar looking image in their article, 10 Useful WordPress Hook Hacks. Sure enough, I checked out an article I wrote on T&S’s blog back in 2008 about checking your website in multiple browsers.
So why do I like it? I figured out the reason they used it is because it currently ranks #2 on Google’s search results for the phrase browser logos. So it’s a nice statement to our search engine optimization skills over at T&S. And since I’m currently doing all our optimization work myself, it’s a testament to my personal SEO skills.
Yeah, I’m pretty awesome.
* If you’re not familiar with Alexa, they’re somewhat like the Nielsen ratings, but for websites.
Tags: blog, geeky, seo, smashing magazine
How to conduct a group interview
Posted on September 12th, 2009 @ 6:04 pm
Amber Hanks, our summer intern and current programmer
At the T&S Web Design, just yesterday we did our first group interview for interns, both programmers and designers. Previously, I had wasted spent a full day and a half interviewing any time I hired a group of interns, whether it was designers or programmers. Spending a full three days one week did not appeal to me, to say the least.
One thing I noticed in the previous interviews was that I spent about a half hour telling each applicant the same thing. A group interview, it seemed, would at least eliminate me repeating that part time after time after time.
There was a three step process:
- Interested parties called a hotline and left a voice message with specific information.
- The applicants that passed the first part had a relatively short phone interview.
- The applicants that passed steps one and two came in for the group interview.
Now I’m a nerd about trying new business methods, so I was really excited about trying this new method out. Jennifer Howard helped us come up with the three steps, but we filled in the specifics ourselves.
Voicemail
Here was our particular message when the applicants called the hotline. I was the one who they heard when they called in.
I’m Tim Priebe. My wife, Leann, and I own T&S Web Design.
We are hiring both design and programming interns, to work a combined 80 hours a week. 40 of that is programmers, and 40 is designers.
Our focus on interns is hiring those who are willing to learn, not necessarily those who exactly match the skill-set of what we do.
That said, let me talk briefly about the job duties of the programmer first, then the designers.
Programming interns will be responsible for performing both client T&S requested updates to existing websites, converting website designs from static image files into working code, and making changes to website code throughout the website creation process.
Designer interns will be responsible for coming up with designs for both print and web web work and modifying graphical elements as requested by clients or by T&S.
We use Adobe CS3 products currently. Our sites are designed in Fireworks, converted to code both by hand and using Dreamweaver, and then implemented either as a Dreamweaver template, a WordPress template, or a combination of the two.
Our business is deadline driven, and interns will be expected to meet deadlines just as our full-time people are. Everyone must work in a team environment and not be easily stressed when working on a tight deadline.
Hopefully I haven’t scared too many of you off.
If you are interested in joining us at T&S and becoming an intern, please leave your name, a telephone number where you can be reached during the day and your email address. Let us know where you are attending school, and if you are applying as a designer or a programmer. Finally tell us why you think you would be perfect for this job.
Let me go through that one more time. Leave your name, a phone number you can be reached on during the day, your email address, where you are attending school, whether you are applying as a designer or programmer, and why you think you would be perfect for this job.
Oh, one last thing. While we’re excited to consider you for this job, we simply don’t have time to talk to everyone in person. So don’t call our office phone to speak with us, or you will not be considered for the position.
Thanks!
Phone Interview
We researched the applicants with publicly available databases. Yes, this included Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Once we’d eliminated some of them, it was time to call the rest.
Each interview here was slightly different, based on what they left in the voicemail and what information was publicly available about the applicant. However, one of the questions we asked everyone was the number of hours they were available per week to work. We were looking for 40 total hours worth of programmers, and the same for designers.
If they passed the phone interview, they were given the date, time and location of the group interview.
Group Interview
We had each applicant bring three things:
- Resume
- Specific weekly availability
- Work samples (We had to be able to keep them)
We broke the interviewees up into two different hour and a half sessions, designers and programmers. Here was the break down of how we spent that time:
- 30 minutes – About T&S
- 30 minutes – Group activity and presentation
- 15 minutes – Presentation of work samples
- 15 minutes – Each applicant rates the other applicants
For the group activity, we had the designers critique a specific website that Emily, our full-time designer, found. For the programmers, we had them research and find the best contact form plugin for WordPress. We weren’t nearly as interested in the results as we were in how they all worked on solving the problem.
For the rating, each applicant just took a sheet of paper and wrote down their thoughts on all the other applicants. My instructions included something like, “And remember, you may be working with one of the people you comment on, so be sure to be honest.”
The whole process seemed to work fairly well. We will be notifying the applicants that we chose on Monday, so it will probably be a couple months before we really know if the process worked well or not.
Tags: business, group, group interview, interns, interview
Fish, vitamins and the danger zone
Posted on September 9th, 2009 @ 12:28 am
I’ve had high blood pressure for somewhere around 13 years. Well, about three and a half weeks ago I finally went on a diet. It’s the DASH diet, which for me primarily means low sodium, although there are other qualifications as well.
Leann had me scared to death that I would hate everything she cooked me on this diet. I had to assure her that I would eat anything she made, even if I didn’t like it. Luckily, there’s only been part of one meal that I didn’t really like. The rest has been either amazing or at least acceptable.
I have been eating a lot of blackened fish (cheap and easy to make), popcorn with margarine and blackened seasoning, toasted pita bread cut up into chips, wraps with meat, cheese and spinach, and fruit. In fact, just two weeks ago I did not like oranges and hadn’t tried them in years. Now I have one almost every day.
Leann does also have me popping a handful of vitamins. You can see Jackson pointing out the numerous pills I’m popping, including the blood pressure and stomach medication up top. For some reason I can’t completely fathom, that’s all very fascinating to a two year old.
Just as long as he sticks to his own vitamins and stays away from my blood pressure medication.
Now Tom Cruise is just in the crazy zone
The blood pressure has come down a bit, though I’m still in the danger zone. And that’s not the cool danger zone like in Top Gun, but the one that caused me to get on the diet in the first place.
Oh, one last side effect of this diet has been the loss of about ten pounds. Not the point, but cool nonetheless.
Tags: blood pressure, diet, fish, oranges, popcorn, tom cruise, vitamins
Redbox rebooting
Posted on September 7th, 2009 @ 3:09 am
Sadly, my very first post wasn’t quite nerdy awesome enough to accurately represent me, so I’m reposting something I put on my family blog, ThePriebes.com, earlier this year. Back in January, Brent Fuchs and I happened to be at a Redbox right at 1am, and found it rebooting automatically. Cool stuff, even though it didn’t have our movie.
Since I posted this originally, I’ve talked to a guy who works for Redbox, and he assures me they’re all Dell computers. Kind of makes you wonder why they didn’t go with a Linux distro like Ubuntu. Probably would have saved them thousands and thousands of dollars.
Hey, my own website!
Posted on September 7th, 2009 @ 2:21 am
That’s right, I’ve finally created my own website. I bought the domain timjpriebe.com quite awhile back, and have been meaning to put a blog up here. This will have both personal and professional information, and will likely be of interest to every single person on the planet.
Oh, thanks to Emily Spirek for assuring me that my design looked fine. Thanks to Komodo Media, Rogie King for the Social Network Icon Pack (more info on site credit page). And thanks to myself for coding it.
You’re welcome, Tim.
Tags: blog, introduction, website
