The Daily Krier

If you haven’t visited the site to determine your Klout score, I recommend giving it a look.  As they state on their site, “the Klout score is the measurement of your overall online influence.” It takes into consideration your activity on Facebook and Twitter and, more importantly, how people are using your content.  For example, do you have a lot of friends on Facebook and are they “liking” or commenting frequently on your posts? On Twitter, how many followers do you have, how many people are retweeting your tweets, how many people are adding you to lists, etc?

For anyone active or interested in social media, this is a fascinating site.  My coworker Barry Diamond is close to obsessed with his Klout score and checks the site once a day. More than that, he actually makes an effort to improve his activity on Twitter and Facebook and because he blogs frequently he makes sure to post and tweet those as well as retweet posts that he likes.

As it relates to jobseekers, I’m wondering how many recruiters or hiring managers, when looking for social media “experts” are checking this site out to see how candidates fare.  I’m not saying this is the only site to check how active and influential someone is, but it’s yet another tool to use when evaluating whether someone who is a supposed social media expert really is.  I think back to the job posting for Best Buy in June of 2009 which required that candidates have at least 250 Twitter followers.  There was a lot of uproar about if that had any bearing on how qualified the candidate was for the job.  Perhaps in the future companies will be checking the Klout score of their candidates? Mine, by the way, is 22.  Not bad but definitely room for improvement.

I’ve been extremely lucky as a parent so far.  My kids slept through the night at a relatively early age. The transition from bottle to sippy cup was never an issue.  They’re good eaters, preferring fruit at snack time and happily trading their mashed potatoes for my green beans at dinner time (oh, how I have them fooled!)  Naptime has always been fairly easy and bedtime was always a no-brainer.  With Connor coming along so quickly after Joshua, we moved Joshua into a big boy bed probably earlier than we should have but we needed the crib and, honestly, we never had a problem with him in the bed.  So when Connor started climbing out of his crib before he was even 2 years old, we knew we had trouble on our hands. First came the crib “tent” which worked quite well. Connor loved it and always requested that we zip it shut at night.  As we pondered converting the crib to his toddler bed we wondered if we were doing it too soon and, with all the bedtime struggles we’ve had lately, I’d have to say “yes”, we pushed it. So back the bed went to a crib, minus the tent.  Bedtime is now a nightmare with Connor usually climbing out 2-4 times before he actually falls asleep for the night.  Then add that onto him waking up around 5 am and coming into our room, couple with one mom who NEEDS 8 hours of sleep a night, and you have an ugly situation.  So now we’re at the point where we’re debating putting the tent back on the crib. Not only so he falls asleep faster but so that he stays in his crib longer in the morning. He turned 2 in June so perhaps it’s just time I acknowledge that I’ve lost the battle, convert the crib for good and come to grips with the realization that (gasp!) I have an early riser.  Why, oh why, did I push this? I could be happily settled into 8 hours of sleep a night and going in to wake my little man instead of being woken up by him way earlier than he should be up. Any advice from other moms out there?

I was at the HR Technology Conference in Chicago last week and made the rounds of the trade show floor.  I saw lots of great new technologies (Jobvite) and said hello to current partners (JSTN, Expressume).  The trade show “game” of having your badge scanned to get a water bottle or a Starbucks gift card was in full swing and to snag the swag I stopped at my fair share of booths and headed home with goodies for my kids.

Yesterday the email follow ups started from some of the companies I visited at HR Tech. Out of the three emails I received so far, two had glaring errors.

Both were sent to me, obviously, but in the body of the emails one read “Dear Barry” and one read “Good morning Anne”.  Now my two fabulous Pinstripe co-workers Barry Diamond and Anne Bucher were with me at HR Tech but clearly these two companies screwed something up when uploading our info and sending out follow up emails.  I’m sure these companies met a lot of people at the show, just as I met a lot of vendors.  But there’s no faster way to make me completely disregard you and your company than by calling me by the wrong name – especially since you have my name in the To: field!  Yes, I know it’s automated, but c’mon! Some kind of quality control is in order before you send out a mass follow up like this.  FAIL!

Joshua’s in the 3 1/2 year old room at daycare and with the fall program starting a few weeks ago, he now has “homework”.  Not in the real sense of homework, but he does have a project to complete at home about once a week.  The theme for the past week was apples so on Monday he had to take two different kinds and colors of apples to school.  On Wednesday he had to complete the apple family tree, with one paper apple for each family member (he just had to color the apples).  Finally, for show and tell this week he had to bring something that started with the letter A.  Well apple would’ve been too obvious but leave it to my creative son to come up with something truly interesting. Read the rest of this entry »

How cool are these?!  I was introduced to these Meet Meme social media trading cards a few months back and I used these as the basis for a contest at a conference earlier this month.  A few of my colleagues and I are now using these as our business cards and they are so cool!  I was just at a conference again today where we handed these out and every single person we handed them to commented on them. Definitely a conversation starter and an awesome way to connect the online and offline world.  Kudos to the folks at Meet Meme (Mark, Cyndi, Andy, Jonathan and Leah).  Not only are they brilliant but they are fabulous to work with as well – creative and uber-responsive.  I love partnering with people like that!

Quite a few weeks ago Joshua decided that he wanted a soccer jersey.  Since I wouldn’t give in and run out and buy one, I made the unfortunate mistake of telling him he should ask Santa for a jersey as a Christmas present.  Of course, he wanted to run right out to the mall to ask Santa so then I had to explain that Santa’s not at the mall yet.  That set off a litany of questions about where Santa was, when he would be at the mall, etc.

Fast forward a few weeks to this past weekend when, out of the blue, he asked if we could “go to that place where that guy is”.  Yes, to the mall to visit Santa.  Again I rolled out the explanation of how Santa’s not at the mall yet.  Unfortunately Joshua doesn’t have any concept of how far off Christmas really is so he wasn’t completely satisfied with the answer I gave him.

When telling a co-worker about the story this morning, she suggested I have Joshua write a letter to Santa as perhaps that would hold him over until Halloween (or whenever Santa arrives at the mall — ok, I know, it’s probably closer to Thanksgiving).  We didn’t get to that tonight but perhaps tomorrow night I’ll suggest that. In the meantime, Joshua’s now pestering to go on the “puter” (3 -year-old translation: computer) to order replacement tools for Handy Manny and his motorcycle.  He’s so impatient….gee, I wonder where he gets THAT from! 

My 3-year-old and Iwere looking through a photo album of him from when he was born and at first he had trouble reconciling the fact that the pictures were of HIM.  Once he got past that, he became quite intrigued and had lots of questions, as 3-year-olds do.  At the very end of the photo album were pictures of the ultrasound.  After explaining that those were pictures of him when he was in my belly, he (of course) asked how he got in there to start with.  I answered that with the “well it’s very special how you got in there” and was relieved when he seemed to accept that.  Then he thought about it a minute and asked me, “Well where are the pictures of THAT?!?!”

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been months since my last blog post.  Where does time go?  Wish I could say I’ve been preoccupied training for the 5k but that wouldn’t be true (well, not entirely; I have been training but that’s not the reason I haven’t been blogging).   Between work, the kids and their activities (t-ball, tumbling, swimming lessons), household chores and, well, life, blogging comes pretty much last on the list.  I so admire people who blog on a regular basis.  It takes discipline and creativity, both of which I wish I had more of.  Anyway, summer is here now and my goal is to take advantage of being outside as much as possible. My two boys love the outdoors and running around.  So while I hope to start blogging again more frequently, we’ll have to see.  Enjoy your summer!

Earlier this week we had parent/teacher conferences at daycare.  Everything was normal and both boys are not only doing well, in Connor’s case he’s mastered half of what he should learn when he turns 2 (he won’t be 2 until mid June).  One item came up, however, and while it was a tad bit concerning to me the teacher assured me it was nothing to be concerned about.

So there’s a little girl in Joshua’s class, Isabel, and they are quite fond of each other.  They are by each other’s side all day long, they hold hands as they walk out to the playground, etc.  Isabel was on vacation earlier this week and not at daycare, causing Joshua to be very sad.  He found another little girl in his class, Madalyn, to cozy up to in Isabel’s absence.  Madalyn slid right into Isabel’s spot and all was well Monday and Tuesday.  On Wednesday Isabel returned to daycare, making Joshua very happy. Later that morning Madalyn showed up at daycare and walked in, spying Joshua and Isabel playing together.  His teacher conveyed to me that poor little Madalyn looked quite perplexed and sad to realize that she was no longer Joshua’s #1 girl.  Joshua, upon spotting Madalyn, looked confused for a moment.  He looked at Madalyn, looked at Isabel, and proceeded to continue playing with Isabel, promptly igoring Madalyn.  Poor Madalyn!

So should I be concerned that at age 3 my son is apparently a player?  I can say that both little girls are very cute so at least he has good taste!

I’m sitting here watching “The Biggest Loser” and what do the remaining contestants have to do this week? They head to Texas to lead teams of local residents to complete a 5K.  Destiny? I think so.  All signs are pointing to me doing this.  And now I’ve publicly blogged about this twice so there’s no backing out, right?  For those of you interested, I plan on doing The Sausage Race, one I’ve completed as a walker in the past.  Only thing left to do is actually sign up. If you’re interested in joining me, let me know!