The Cleveland Sharepoint Users Group will be meeting this Wednesday, August 27th, at the Cleveland Microsoft Office at 4pm-6:30pm. Bill English, an author and educator focused on SharePoint technologies, will be speaking on "Findability and Taxonomies: Notes from the Field". For more information, check out their website at: http://www.sharepointcleveland.com/.

Also on Wednesday, Corey Haines announced a geek dinner with Chris Woodruff, one of our fellow Tweeps (people from Twitter), starting at
6pm at Great Lakes Brewing Company. All are welcome to attend!

While checking out the GCPCUG C#/VB.NET SIG site, I found out that this month's meeting has been rescheduled to Thursday, August 28th at 6:30-8:30pm. That's right -- it is moved to this Thursday and will not be on Tuesday. Joe Fiorini will be presenting on MVC (Model View Controller). Unfortunately, I am unable to make it since I have other plans I cannot break, but I highly recommend checking this group's meetings out if you have time. They meet up at the Sogeti Auditorium (lower level at Beacon Place) for the meeting, and they typically go out to The Winking Lizard after the meeting. For more information and to reserve your spot, check out their site.

If you happen to know any other Cleveland tech events that you want me to blog about, please drop me an email at sarah at codinggeekette dot com with the event information and I'll include it here.

Labels: Chris Woodruff, Cleveland tech events, Corey Haines, Joe Fiorini, Microsoft, Sharepoint, Sogeti

I'm currently listening to the latest episode of Deep Fried Bytes while thinking about the deep fried Twinkies I had last week. Episode 3 is about Twitter war stories. After hearing others' stories, I figured I'd share one of my own.

One of Sarah's Favorite Twitter War Stories

I can't tell you how I found him for sure, but I somehow came across Michael Eaton on Twitter. At one point, I saw Joel Ross pull a picture out that involved Mike and the band Ratt. (I'll spare him the link in this post.) It was quite entertaining to watch his reaction every time Joel pulled out that picture.

One night, Mike Eaton was sending me a bunch of tinyurls to the World of Warcraft (WoW) account pages. Every now and then, the WoW guys on Twitter try to get me to resubscribe to WoW. He kept telling me it was fun while using the tinyurls to attempt to lure me back in. But I know better than to trust his tinyurls depending on the context, so I tinyurled the picture and asked if WoW was as fun as that pic.

I pulled the picture on him in person at Central Ohio Day of .NET this year, and I knew that payback would be hell. But at the same time, I just couldn't resist. And that's how the VBA rumors about me got started. We hung out quite a bit that day, and I'm definitely glad to have found him.

So thanks to Twitter, I now have someone else that I enjoy hanging out with and teasing. But I wouldn't have met him if it weren't for Twitter.

Comments on Deep Fried Bytes in General

I'm not much of a podcast listener. To me, podcasts are like talk radio, and that typically bores me to tears. But Deep Fried Bytes has me hooked, and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what else they have planned. So if they keep posting blog-worthy podcasts, count on seeing more posts from me on it.

Deep Fried Bytes is almost as heavenly as deep fried Twinkies! So if you haven't gone there yet, get your helping of Deep Fried Bytes now!

Labels: Chris Woodruff, Deep Fried Bytes, Joel Ross, Keith Elder, Mike Eaton, Twitter

So there's a new podcast in town called Deep Fried Bytes, and it's put out by Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff. As they descrive it, it's an audio talk show with a Southern flavor. I heard about it from Jeff Blankenburg's blog, and although I'm not typically one to listen to podcasts, I figured I'd check it out.

Their intro podcast definitely had me wanting more, and I checked out Episode 2: Interview War Stories. There were a couple of things that came up that I really have to comment on, so if you haven't heard the podcast, stop reading and go listen to it. Otherwise, continue on.

Overall, I really enjoyed the podcast. It was interesting to hear other people's perspectives on interviewing and interviews. From interviewing people for who they are (versus SAT questions) to making people cry in interviews to some randomness on chickens, the podcast goes across the board.

Throughout my past experiences, I've gone through all sorts of interviews. The most intensive interview involved a test of SAT questions (as Brian Prince called them in the podcast), a test of scenarios to put my knowledge in practice, and for those of us in the top 3, we ended up having to meet with the committee that was filling the position. There were probably 6 people on the committee, including the head of the computing services group. I wasn't chosen, but to make it in the top 3 for the university position (and to beat out a guy who had the position but left and wanted to come back) was definitely an experience worth going through. I knew a couple of people on the committee, including one who was my boss at the time. He actually had encouraged me to apply, since I was graduating that semester and it would've been a way to keep me there. I had also worked with another guy on the committee (who would've been the reporting manager for the position they were filling), doing some white hat work, so he was well aware of my work ethic and my technical abilities.

One of the more fun interviews I had was right out of college. The final question stuck out in my mind. "If you were a Muppet, which would you be?" For a technical position, it seemed to be a question totally out of the park, and it took me by surprise. But I answered it, and then shortly after, I joined the team. About a month in, I asked my boss why she asked that question, and she said that it's her question on judging a person's character. She had Muppet personalities associated with everyone on the team, and she wanted to make sure that my Muppet personality would fit well with their blend. Apparently they needed a "Statler and Waldorf", otherwise they wouldn't have brought me on.

Now in the many interviews I've been through, I've been lucky enough to not have an interviewer make me cry. They talked about that in the podcast, and it really irritated me that the one guy said he wanted to be "that guy" - the one to make an interviewee cry. Seriously, why would you want to have that reputation? That just seems purely asinine to me, but then again, I'm not the kind of person who'd want to make an interviewee cry.

So yeah, as much as I'm not one for the "all talk" nature of podcasts, I think I might stick with this one, as my discussions with friends have definitely got me wondering more about these guys.

Labels: Chris Woodruff, Deep Fried Bytes, interview, Jeff Blankenburg, Keith Elder, Muppets, podcasts