Enkay Blog

Back in Houston from Training

As many of you know, I was in Atlanta for training for the past week and I finally returned home on Friday. I am an accountant and no matter what field you’re in, its always crucial to be well trained to perform the tasks that you are expected to complete at your job. As part of my training, I was involved in several hands-on projects, presentations and instructor guided learning seminars.

One such company that provides great training is known as Countrywide Training. Their onsite training provides its students to learn from a live instructor and ask questions that they may have as if they were actually in the class itself. Countrywide training also sets up training programs for companies in the event that you need to train more than one individual at a time. They send over a certified instructor to a company’s location to train its staff on a variety of topics.

One of their several different training programs includes Microsoft Office. This training helps employees become proficient in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access. Being proficient in these programs is a crucial goal for any staff at any level in their career. Their training programs include other IT specific training courses and even several different types of certification programs to help elevate your staff to a higher level of technical knowledge. So, if you’re looking for some training programs then you should probably look into something like Countrywide onsite training.

As far as my training, I am finally back in Houston and ready to begin work on Monday. This will mean that I won’t have as much time to devote to my theme design, but I’m sure Ill have time on the weekends to do so. Training in Atlanta was tedious but it helped me become proficient with the software and corporate culture of my company. I will have a post this week that will talk about some of the things I learned about work ethic, that we, as bloggers, can apply to our blogs in the blogosphere.

IT Boot Camps? Those Exist?

Of course they exist. Certification is an important part of getting accredited with certain credentials that are an important part of being a specialist in your field. I will be talking about Countrywide Training in my next post but today I wanted to highlight their it it boot camps certification programs. Lately, Ive spoken about Kalliance and several of their programs but if you’re looking for an alternative then you might want to check out Countrywide.

They offer similar certification programs and they offer them in a bootcamp setting. The boot camp training courses are only a week long and the curriculum is fast paced and rigorous. They state that if you’re not willing to put forth the effort or you dont think that you’re capable of performing the curriculum as it is intended, then you shouldn’t enroll in the bootcamps. They mention that there are several benefits to such programs. One situation in which you might enroll in these bootcamps is if you are in a hurry to get the certification for a prospective job, or your work requires you to be certified, then you can sign up and complete the program within a week.

They offer several types of bootcamp classes such as Cisco, CIW, Database, CompTIA, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, ITIL, EC-Council, SQL Server, Microsoft Windows Server, Oracle, Sharepoint, Microsoft Exchange and several others, for an entire list, check out their it boot camps list.

So, as I mentioned earlier last month, jobs are shrinking and you need to find a way to stand out. One such way is to be certified in as many relevant programs as possible. This shows competence and knowledge in the different IT fields. On that note, I hope you will enjoy my next post, when I come back from Atlanta.

Just Graduated! & The Future

So I graduated a week ago with a Bachelors in Accounting and it was a great event to mark my success and progression through life. Graduation is a big deal for anyone regardless of whether its high school, middle school or college. I was really glad and to top it off, I graduated with the highest honors (Summa Cum Laude) with a 3.9 out of 4.0 GPA. I was really excited and I thought I’d share the news with you. For those of you who are wondering, I will be going back to school for my Masters in Accounting and will graduate with my Masters same time next year so I’m looking forward to that.

After graduating, I look towards the future with happiness as well as a little nervousness. The reason is that the economy is still kind of down and jobs are harder to find. People are worried about their investments, homes and savings accounts. With everything coming forth, I wonder what is running through peoples minds.

Some people take every day at a time but I am someone who likes to look forward and plan ahead. I wonder what the future holds for me and I am skeptical about how the economy will fare in the upcoming year. I know a lot of friends and family members who are either out of a job or are at the risk of losing their current job. I’m sure when you look around, you probably see a somewhat similar situation. As they say, its a recession when people around you are getting fired, but its a depression, when you are the one getting fired. Sad, but true.

I know that I had previously talked about how the recession was affecting bloggers but I know that not many of us are full time bloggers. I know that several bloggers have other jobs and I wonder how things are working out for you guys. I want to hear how my fellow bloggers are doing in this slowing economy and how the economy has affected you. I wonder if there has been any loss of jobs or if you were able to find other jobs or whatever the case may be. I want to know how you are doing in this economy and I’d really like to see what you have to say about that.

Aside from that, I want people to realize that investing is a good option right now, specially if you are secure and have the funds to invest. No..no.. Don’t invest in cars. I mean, invest in land, a house, falling stocks, bonds, things of that nature. Even things such as diamonds are at a 30% discount due to the economy and can be had for much less than normal. Its time to invest in yourself and your future, so go out there and do it! In the mean time, let me know how the economy has affected your “other job”

How I Re-Design My Blog

So, every so often I do a re-design or I take my current theme and redo it based on what I think needs to be updated and what I feel like changing. Every single time, however, I notice that there are some things that I do to make sure the process goes through smoothly and usually I never have to go back to test it and I figured I’d blog about certain things I do and keep in mind while re-designing a new theme.

1) Keep Resolutions in Mind - No..no.. I’m not talking about your New Years resolutions but screen resolutions because that will help you in ensuring that your blog design looks and fits well in the most common screen resolutions out there (generally, 1024×768)

2) Graphics Load Time - I always try to maintain a load time for my pages to a certain amount of time. If it goes over, then I usually try to either reduce the graphical content or I try to compress some of the smaller, less important graphics but while you design your blog you should keep this in mind.

3) Focus on Content - I always try to find ways to attract the readers attention towards the content. As you can see, the design is quite simple on the side that the content is present because I want to present the content and information and focus on that, not on any types of images or anything.

4) Always Test Changes - I always try and test the changes I make on a dummy blog before I apply them to the actual blog and even then I make sure it works on different browsers for compatibility since I try to make the transition process smooth for everyone.

5) Back up - Lastly, yet, most importantly, always, ALWAYS create a backup. Most of us have learned the hard way that having a back up is more important than anything because once you lose something, its gone, unless you have a back up. So always save your work and your previous work as well!

Well, thats all for today folks! I hope you enjoyed another one of my list style posts! I will have another update shortly!

Bidz is Sending YOU to New York!

Direct Agents is back again with yet another great contest. This one is called New York, New York and if the name doesn’t say anything to you then maybe the following sentences will help you get a better idea. Direct Agents is offering the highest grossing affiliates for the Bidz.com entrants the opportunity to win a trip to NYC for the Affiliate Summit show and includes a stay at the New York Hilton. Here is what the prize list looks like:

1st prize: (5,000 leads)
The first prize package will consist of:
• Round Trip Tickets to Affiliate Summit East for four days, three nights.
• Platinum Pass to Affiliate Summit.
• Driver pick-up to and from the airport.
• Three night hotel stay at Hilton N.Y.

2nd prize: (1,500 lead minimum)
• Gold Pass to Affiliate Summit East
• Dinner for two at NYC restaurant of choice.

3rd prize: (750 lead minimum)
• Gold Affiliate Summit East Pass

Honorable Mention: (200 lead minimum):
• 2 Affiliate Summit East Prize Giveaways

So as you can see, they want you to live it up in New York and they are not holding back with the special treatment. The contest has already started on May 1st and ends on June 30th. They’re even having contests on twitter for new affiliates with weekly prizes valued at $50. To win the weekly prize, all you have to do is tweet this phrase after you sign up:

“Just signed up to @directagents for a chance to win $50 for the @nynycontest. You can too- sign up here: http://bit.ly/lnuKz”

or you can write a short blog post about it. If you want more details about the contest you can visit the contest page here or better yet sign up for DirectAgents right here!