Well… it’s mainly work related at this point. The New Year started of with a bang which means a bunch of workload on my desk at the dental website design company I work for. Given the current state of the economy not a bad thing but it’s eating up my weekends as well. Again, not a terrible thing but it also keeps me away of updating this blog. So finally a little spot in my schedule to give you an update.

Saturday we will be in Oakland. Our best friends Jason and Cindy getting married and A. is one of the bride maids. They will go shopping for a dress which means Jason and I will chill out in Oaktown! Since I’m shopping around for a netbook we probably will be roaming the city for this little gadget. I’m really drawn to the HP mini 1000 MI edition and apparently it’s only available at HP’s online store. We’ll see if we can find it somewhere.

So far the weather’s been pretty forgiving with temperatures in the lower 70′s but yesterday it finally started to rain. And rain is what we need. It’s been so dry here in NorCal and this could mean some potential problems later this year. California is notorious when it comes to water meaning no water at all…

Other then this I’m consistently working on my two other sites, richardlemon.com and eightdegree.com. Another reason I neglected this blog. Too bad a day has only 24 hours…

Oh yes, before I forget: mom, you can see my twitter updates here and here. The second one is mainly SEO orientated so not much of a fun to read…

The infamous Day 3 of Week 5 is in the books! Fellow C25K runners know what this day means: jumping from an eight minute interval on day two to a 20 minute run on day three. I finished with flying colors! I still can’t believe I ran for 20 minutes straight! Especially after missing my target by 40 seconds on day 2. I guess it really motivated me to finish day 3.

When I arrived at the trail I noticed the amount of cars parked along the side of the road. My initial thought was that people in Santa Rosa are running en masse on Saturday morning but later I found out that there was an actual race later that morning. The trail was packed with runners!

At first I was a little bit intimidated by all the runners. Lean and toned bodies all over the place, running warm-up laps with a pace I only can dream of (for now). But I was on the track to run my own race! During my stretching a slightly overweight guy passed me and I noticed he had the same pace I normally would run. A perfect target! Once in my 5 minute warm-up I saw him 300 meters in front of me. Perfect!

My 20 minute run started and the first 2-3 minutes are the hardest for me. My legs already start feeling sore but within 5 minutes everything went into auto pilot. My pace was perfect, my breathing controlled and my focus on the guy in front of me was sharp.

Every now and then I would lose sight of him due to some curves in the trail but I was gaining ground on him. I was afraid of going to fast and I would pay a price at a later time in my run. But everything felt good! My heart rate was steady at 149 Bpm with no extreme fluctuations, even the uphill parts!

My podcast notified me the 15 minute mark and I was a few feet behind the guy! I was about to past him! He was huffing and puffing and I knew exactly what he was going through. A few weeks back I was doing the same thing! I showed no mercy and once past him I excellarated with 4 minutes or so to go.

I knew my last minute would all be uphill but because of the guy I felt like a million bucks. Slowly I ran up the hill with one minute to go. And there it was, a little chime in my podcast telling me the race was over. I finished my 20 minute run! I was smiling ear to ear.

I couldn’t have picked a better day for my W5D3 run. The morning fog was about to burn off with a temperature of 63F (17C) and cool breeze. The guy in front of me was a blessing as well. Also my virtual running mate Daisy ran her W5D3. She is running on different continent but we are on the same running schedule. Once again congratulations on finishing your W5D3!

Last but not least a WordPress plugin for the Nike+ sports kit. My stats are now automatically visible in the right column. Sweet… On to week 6!

Last weekend was men boys only (John, Jason and me) at Lake Sonoma. Camp site was Buck Pastures 05 close to the water play area. Since all three of us work in the tech/internet industry it is of no surprise we exchange a zillion links. Without having any sort of connection to the W3 at the time I’ll try to mention a few links/subjects discussed this weekend. Unfortunately I forgot my camera to accompany this story with pictures… (John, send me the camera pics!)

Of course we talked about movies and TV shows, duh… If the list doesn’t make sense to you; you’re right. Pretty random stuff!

• the Dark Knight. Jas, make sure to see this one in the theater!
• Grandma’s Boy
• Twin Peaks
• Weeds
• Idiocracy
• New York – A Documentary Film. Directed by Ric Burns, this eight part, 14½ hour television event explores New York City’s rich history as the premier laboratory of modern life. A sweeping narrative covering nearly 400 years and 400 square miles, it reveals a complex and dynamic city that has played an unparalleled role in shaping the nation and reflecting its ideals.
• The Happening
• Mad Men

Geek talk and websites in general:

• The Couch to 5K Program
• The $499.00 Link Cable
• The M Field: Limitless Potential
• Gottapark.com. Find a parking spot in the City
• cuil.com
• searchme.com
• The Adobe® AIR™. The Adobe® AIR™ runtime lets developers use proven web technologies to build rich Internet applications that deploy to the desktop and run across operating systems.
• io9 is strung out on Sci-Fi. Part adoring fan and part discerning critic, the site appeals to both the hardcore obsessive and the generally curious. An ideal platform for many tech and entertainment brands, io9 bridges the gap between gawking and geeking out.

Totally random stuff:

• Alaskan Beer
• The Bacon Bra
• Now That’s Gangsta
• Flying Manta’s
• Flying Penguins on BBC Documentary
• YMCA Outdone

Last but not least my former employee on Google’s street view. Proof that rural America is being mapped by Google:

From the cuil website: The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Now that’s a statement!

Part of their faq:

How does Cuil improve search results?

Cuil’s goals are to index the whole Web, to analyze deeply its pages and to organize results in a rich and helpful way that allows you to explore fully the subject of your search.

So we started from scratch—with a fresh approach, an entirely new architecture and breakthrough algorithms.

Our approach is to focus on the content of a page and then present a set of results that has both depth and breadth.

Our aim is to give you a wider range of more detailed results and the opportunity to explore more fully the different ideas behind your search. We think this approach is more useful to you than a simple list.

So Cuil searches the Web for pages with your keywords and then we analyze the rest of the text on those pages. This tells us that the same word has several different meanings in different contexts. Are you looking for jaguar the cat, the car or the operating system?

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

This story blew my mind! Especially when our corporate T1 connection feels like a 14.4k modem.

Sweden is often celebrated as THE best wired place in the world. Almost all Swedes can enjoy a super fast broadband connection. But even these people are likely to get jealous when they hear the story about Sigbritt Löthberg, a 75-year old woman from Karlstad. Three years ago, her home was supplied with the world’s fastest Internet connection: a staggering 40 Gigabits per second.

In theory that means she’s able to enjoy 1,500 high definition HDTV channels simultaneously, but something tells me she won’t do this. However, she might want to download a full high definition DVD every once and a while. She will only have to wait for two seconds.

Once in a while I get overwhelmed with the amount of digital information that is thrown at me. Today was one of them. My home page is set to popurls. I’m pretty fast with scanning this page for stories I like or seem interesting. Today it threw a curveball at me: frienderati at Alltop. I was aware of Alltops’ egos, twitterati and socialmedia. Now there is frienderati… Can you feel the information overload?

So I thought to filter through the list and add the most interesting feeds to Newsfire (my rss reader). Newsfire told me I had 1181 1232 unread articles and it was then that I collapsed …and I still need to open up my email.

San Francisco is this year’s best city for young professionals because of its ability to attract and retain talent. It does this by offering long-term job opportunities, plenty of singles and impressive starting salaries.

The City by the Bay outshined the rest of the field in attracting alumni from the nation’s top schools. More of the class of 1998 from Harvard, Stanford, Rice, Princeton, Duke and Northwestern picked San Francisco as home, 10 years out of school, compared with any other metro. These are graduates with the skills to work virtually wherever they want, and this measure is an indicator of where high-caliber professionals have decided to settle, based on a combination of job and lifestyle factors.

Life is pretty exciting on a professional level. Last week I got promoted  and I’m totally psyched about it! It’s so rewarding when a company is able to see your potential and show you their trust. I can’t express how happy I am and what all of this means to me.

With a promotion there also will be more responsibilities to take and for me this is the exciting part. We have a bunch of projects lined up and each and every one of them will be fun to work on. It also means a lot of work but the good part is that I love doing it. It’s no secret I’m a internet-junkie. It’s my job and the hours I spend online after office hours are equal if not more. So it pays of for me to stare at a screen 15 hours a day! Information gathered late at night I use during the day and vice versa.

For those not familiar with my job description: I’m a Search Marketing Analyst. Some call it SEO Developer or SEO Strategist. Basically it’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Lately SEO is a buzz word on the internet. Although SEO is almost as old as the first Search Engines (SE’s) appeared it got mainstream a few years ago. All of a sudden bloggers are optimizing their blogs. Numerous plugins pop up for WordPress, one the most used blogging platforms. All for generating a better placement at the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Page) and thus generating traffic.

So it a nutshell:

SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Firms that practice SEO can vary; some have a highly specialized focus, while others take a more broad and general approach. Optimizing a web site for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many practitioners of SEO (SEOs) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization (since so many of those elements intertwine).  – definition taken from SEOmoz’ beginner’s guide

I could go on and on about my job description and I intend to do so in the span of the next couple of weeks. Another exciting part is the European Soccer Championship! Did I mention the Dutch are going to win 3-2 from Russia?

The most fun part of my job these days is setting up various social media accounts for our clients. It’s part of a specific SEO package a doctor can purchase. Besides designing custom websites for dentist and plastic surgeons (in fact there are more specialties we design for) we also market their websites. All for a better placement at the SE’s (Search Engines).

Check out PBHS’ lens on Squidoo, PBHS on YouTube and the PBHS blog.

I’m usually hesitant about blogging about the company I work with but in this case I’m going to make an exception. There are several reasons for doing this. First reason is the work environment. Even with a good amount of workload and the stress that comes with it PBHS manages to keep it all ‘sane’. The group of highly educated and brilliant coworkers is part of the joy of working with PBHS.

Secondly is the standard of website design. We are pushing boundaries every day to meet the expectations of our dental clients. Although we make custom designs for our clients our dental website templates are state of the art as well. Just read one of our client’s testimonial!

I’m glad I’m working with another great company after I left Best Image (a company I would recommend if you’re working in the real estate industry). If you happen to be a dentist, plastic surgeon or any profession related to the dental health industry I encourage you to look at PBHS’ website design services!

FYI: We’re about to launch version PBHS 2.0 pretty soon! I’ll keep you posted!