Jeff Woelker : Chicago SEO, SEM, and Online Marketing Consultant

So today is voting day in Chicago. Don’t get me wrong, the title of my post is obviously cynical and pessimistic, but I truly do love the Democratic process. It really gives me a feeling of fulfillment when I place my vote and let the government know how I really feel about issues important to me.

However, voting in Chicago today puts a sour taste in my mouth. To begin, the board of elections sent out notices of polling places in Chicago almost two weeks ago, but the post office dropped the ball and now most people in Chicago will not even get a reminder. It wouldn’t be so bad for me, as I have internet access and can easily lookup my polling location online. But it didn’t really matter last night if I had internet access or not, because the Chicago Board of Elections website was overrun with traffic and crashed multiple times. And what about people without internet access, how do they find out where to vote? I guess you could call 311, but what if they don’t have a phone. You get my point.

Ok, so let’s assume I knew where to vote and made it to the polls. My ward, the 40th, only has ONE candidate. Patrick O’Connor, who is probably a decent alderman, but his bio reads like this: “Longtime Daley ally on the North Side is unopposed for fourth straight election.” Fourth straight election? Come on! There isn’t anyone who thinks they can take this guy on? Secondly, what business does he have being MY alderman. Look at where I live:

How can a guy who is primarily focusing on Lincoln Square/Ravenswood really care about Rogers Park? Rogers Park is a WHOLE different world compared to Lincoln Square. I guess I should be grateful I didn’t buy a condo half a block north as I would have this joker as my alderman and this guy cares more about goose liver than economic development.

On a final note, we get to the biggest deal of the day: the Chicago mayoral elections. That, however, is anything but democratic as Daley is going to crush his opponents, who have been too busy…busy…doing nothing it seems like. I have seen the Daley commercial maybe twice on TV and I can only name one of the other candidates because I saw her on TV last night, Dorothy Brown and from what was implied, she wasn’t sure whether she wanted to run or not, along with Johnny Otherguy who is also running. Do I have a problem that Daley is going to destroy these two? Not necessarily. I would however like to see some things come out of the Daley administration this term that don’t really seem to be on the docket.

1. CTA Overhaul: Can we get some trains that run on time? No slow zones? Scrap the Block 37 improvements. It would be a nice change. Granted, I love the bus system, but to be a world class city, you need to have reliable transportation.
2. Green City: Daley has boasted that Chicago is the greenest city in America, but I find that hard to believe. The blue bag program is a huge joke and the new program of drop off points just took a lot of blue bags being picked up with the trash and converted them into a big blue dumpster where we throw glass, paper, plastic, aluminum, etc. all together in one big happy mess. Why is it so hard to have a dumpster for glass, one for plastic, and one for paper?
3. Corruption: Why is it every time I turn on the news, there is a new report of the “Hired Truck Scandal” or some other garbage that indirectly points to the Mayor and his crew. I understand that city contracts are lucrative and lots of money is changing hands, so why don’t we up the pay for some of these city workers to ensure integrity (which really is a sad indictment of our society that someone has to say “Pay me more, or I’ll be corrupt”). Or is it that much money changing hands that there is no way to compete with it? Can’t we offload more decisions to committees instead of one guy pushing the button? This allows for more accountability in public office and makes it harder for one real estate developer, brother-in-law, or mob boss to get in the pockets of our city officials.

On a final note, I love this city. Seriously, I do. Everyday, as I ride the bus or train to work, I really appreciate the fact that I can live in a city like this at a time like this and have such “problems”. Hopefully, some things can change before the next election and I won’t have to go off on a tirade next time.

An article written by CIO magazine indicates that all of us late 20’s and early 30 somethings are in for a little pay raise pretty soon.

Generation X is also a cohort of employees who share some common traits. Born between 1961 and 1981, Gen X-ers tend to be a transient workforce, averaging a three- to five-year life span in any one organization. Gen X-ers are technologically savvy, pragmatic and competent; they are efficient at managing themselves to get the job done. They tend to be free agents, frequently distrusting corporate motives. And most have received very little training, development or mentoring in the workplace, and hence are adept at learning on the fly. Additionally, as a generation they have notably different values from the Baby Boomers. For example, many believe family time is so important that they are less willing to sell their souls to the 24/7 devil and often put work/life balance over income and career advancement. This means opportunities for flextime, part-time work and telecommuting are very appealing to them. These are generational traits that older leaders would do well to understand and incorporate into planning for their organizations’ future. 

Whoever wrote this did their homework. I can definitely attest to the work/life balance aspect of my jobs. I left one of my previous positions because I could see their future vision of having me living out of a suitcase for the better part of my 20’s until I had put in my time to get the cushier projects in Chicago. And as for the distrusting corporate motives, we’ll just say that my last job did not have the most reliable pay structure and I’ll leave it at that. In regards to the 3-5 year life span at a company, I think that is due to the crazy outsourcing and downsizing that occurred in the late 90’s and early 2000’s that caused “us” to keep our eyes open and play hot potato with our careers. Who knows when you’ll arrive at work one day and find the doors bolted and the phones disconnected.

So be nice to your middle managers today, because they may be the CEO’s and CIO’s of tomorrow.

Dear Chicago,
I get it - it snowed. I realize this. So you’re out there for half an hour shoveling out your spot so you can drive your car to work. This does not however give you the liberty to leave chairs, stools, boxes, cones, flowers, garbage, and other sundries in your space to say “This is mine”. I know it happens in Boston and Boulder and other locales, but come on, this is ridiculous! The fact is that Chicago is so bloated with cars that no neighborhood can afford the “this is mine” mentality. I’m increasing surprised that every neighborhood in Chicago doesn’t have neighborhood permits yet, but I’m sure that is coming soon. So please, the next time you shovel out a spot, let someone else park there. They might even leave right when you get home and we might get our neighborhoods shoveled out in the process.
Thanks,
Me

This morning, I awoke to little feet scampering about in my ventilation shaft for my furnace. It seems that I have a new roommate. Called Orkin, they will call me back just called and told me “We’ll be there between 8 and 10 on Saturday morning”. Called Terminix, they only offer 1 year of service (1 year, for 1 rat?). What’s the one thing in common with both of these services: no one speaks English as a native language. EXTREMELY difficult to understand both of them. It sounds liked Terminix’s call center was based in India and the guy from Orkin was really hard to hear, as it sounded like he was under a freeway. Hopefully, they can get the job done quickly.

More updates to come. Anyone have any better suggestions?

UPDATE: Orkin came by and looking and either, I don’t have a rat problem at all and it was just the pipes or the building may have a rat running around, but it’s in the entire building and not just my concern. Either way, the Orkin guy that came by was really nice and didn’t even charge me for his time. In honor of this, Orkin, I give you some keyword love: Orkin is Best pest control service in chicago.

You know that part in the movie Armageddon where the scientists come into the room with a bunch of wacky ideas on how to destroy/divert the comet headed towards earth, well this is pretty much the climate change equivalent:

Read more here

I like the ones where we have a dust cloud surrounding the sun, because, we shouldn’t change our habits on earth, we should just block out the sun. That makes far more sense to me. Or the one with sulfur in the atmosphere, sure, let’s just make our planet into FartWorld.

These ideas were from Nobel prize winning scientists? How about not relying on fossil fuels for everything? Could that help?

Happy Valentine’s Day

It’s official, Obama is running for the presidency. He’s added a lot of interactive features to his website like Facebook, Flickr and YouTube functionality, but many of them do not work at present (sign up list and blog). Guess these will be coming fast and furious. I’m a big fan of this logo though.

Let’s just hope he doesn’t pull one of these, otherwise we would be talking about President Dean right now.

Google has finally taken the only reason to use Yahoo out of the picture by adding link: back into their feature set of command line functions. According to Matt Cutts:

“In particular, for my site I was easily able to see more than 10x more links in this new tool than the link: command gave me. The link: command has always returned a small fraction of the backlinks that Google knows about, mainly for historical reasons (e.g. limited disk space on the machines that served up “link:” data).”

Thank you Google. Thank you! Read more here.