tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-229357902008-07-22T16:28:24.490-04:00Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comBlogger167125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-65339911330255631932008-07-22T16:14:00.002-04:002008-07-22T16:28:14.702-04:00

"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift; that's why they call it the present." -Eleanor Roosevelt I had a small heart-to-heart chat with one of my closest female friends over the weekend, and she brought up a different perspective I never thought of. She told me that I don't live in the present, especially relationship wise. She told me that my decisions are

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-52201085631983015552008-07-10T09:36:00.001-04:002008-07-10T09:55:54.112-04:00

Continuation from my last post. I woke up Monday morning, and drove to Bethesda to have lunch with my friend Eddie. He seems fairly happy, got married in Thailand while I was gone. Wow, marriage, whatta step. I guess he's been dating her for a few years, it's his time. I then drove to Washington Post and visited my old job. Reconnected with a couple of ex-coworkers, and played some foosball

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-38490674978562430822008-07-06T21:53:00.005-04:002008-07-06T22:45:32.903-04:00

So I'm spending the July 4th weekend visiting the DC suburbs, hanging out with friends, and a part of me never want this to end. My friends and I did nothing special, same old things we always did. Something about it, feels familiar, feels like "this is how it always should be", but I feel somewhat down because I know it can't last. It's ironic, that while living in DC, I visited Charlotte almost

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-82673414131269452902008-06-30T16:17:00.003-04:002008-06-30T16:21:08.962-04:00

Haven't been blogging here in a while and probably won't be blogging that frequently in the next few months. I've actually been doing a lot of writing in my other blog about my new hobby, for those that want the location of my new blog, ppzhao at aol.com So I'm spending July 4th weekend in DC with my friends, hopefully that'll be fun. I'll do some couch surfing with different friends so I can

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-5545222069674413522008-06-12T12:49:00.004-04:002008-06-12T12:54:42.378-04:00

I guess the economy really isn't that bad in my industry after all. I'm starting to get recruiters contacting me more often than usual. Again, if anyone's interested in this position, contact me and I'll forward the recruiter info. Original Email from recruiter: Cc: Bcc: Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2008 2:05 pm Hi

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-26213291468498197002008-06-05T16:51:00.002-04:002008-06-05T16:56:45.693-04:00

I randomly got an Email from a recruiter, about an SEO job in Atlanta GA. Since I'm currently not looking (both active and passive) for a new job, thought this might be a good opportunity for some of my blog readers who're passively looking. If anyone I personally know is interested, please shoot me an Email and I'll pass along the contact info and the job description. Subject:

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-68347868271498784252008-05-27T12:11:00.003-04:002008-05-27T12:23:12.117-04:00

I miss Pros in the city. They were an event organizer in DC targeting young single professionals. Most of their events range from $10 mixers to $50 classes. They usually offered several events per day. I remember doing random things with them, from small mixers to tubing down the Potomac river to handwriting analysis seminar and more. I guess that was the advantage of living in DC - lots of

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-77483752852081623742008-05-15T13:34:00.004-04:002008-05-15T14:02:00.388-04:00

So I randomly decided to join a salsa class at a club called "the 411" in Winston Salem. It was fun, we did it in a way that we kept rotating and switching partners. Since there were about 9 guys and 8 girls (including the instructor), a guy's out of a partner 1 out of 9 "rotations". I learned the basic Salsa 6-step, the instructor taught some bells and whistles in addition to the 6 steps,

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-41432451055435019842008-05-09T10:58:00.003-04:002008-05-09T11:18:00.658-04:00

While doing my usual dating research, I stumbled into random "guy decoder" from i-Village. I remember the site because I had a job-interview with their parent company, NBC-universal about a year ago. This "guy decider" is a list of explanations for girls on why guys do things they do. I got curious and decided to check on the article for "Why does he put his friends ahead of me", and the

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-80852402396253030042008-04-29T15:52:00.002-04:002008-04-29T15:57:46.525-04:00

Other than a hotel room turned into a studio apartment in the ghetto of Greensboro I lived in 3 years ago, this is the first apartment I've ever had all to myself. I've been having fun decorating it, making it an inviting, but personal place for myself - down to earth but elegant. The newest additions are a piece of simple art and an ambiance lamp. Right now, the lamp's just sitting on the

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-79600289503736304082008-04-11T15:52:00.004-04:002008-04-11T16:17:46.491-04:00

One of my favorite DC bloggers, Roosh, talked about "the perfect woman". He didn't really talk about who the perfect woman is or what she should be like. What he did talk about was the concept of the perfect woman disappearing as he "dated" more and more women. It reminds me of a more extreme version of my experiences - My failed relationships in my early 20's, casually dating women after that

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-73293511825324353052008-04-04T11:03:00.002-04:002008-04-04T11:17:01.577-04:00

This week's episode of South Park talked about kids trying to make money on the Internet by uploading entertaining videos on the web. At the end of the the show, they had a "what did we learn speech" and it was the following: Yeah, but you know I learned something today. We thought we could make money on the Internet. But while the Internet is new and exciting for creative people, it hasn’t

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-66291389360352686782008-03-27T16:23:00.003-04:002008-03-27T20:01:24.400-04:00

This post is a couple of weeks overdue, but better late than never. So last February I went to SMX in Santa Clara. It ended on Thursday, but I decided to fly back on Sunday instead. San Francisco is amazing. I loved the area, and also the culture. In my experiences on the east coast, as a whole, different cities have lots of "friendly" people, or "intelligent people". DC is probably

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-87975131216897845022008-03-11T12:26:00.002-04:002008-03-11T12:30:01.138-04:00

I stumbled upon this in my daily SEO research. Haven't seen it in a while, so I thought I'd share it. It's guidelines for people who're manually reviewing and penalizing spam sites. It's an oldie but a goodie.

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-74297046174530740682008-03-10T16:56:00.001-04:002008-03-10T16:57:29.262-04:00

I totally busted out this quote in a meeting today (but only as a joke). I plan to fuse six sigma with lean methods to eliminate the gap between our strategy and our objectives.

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-90033662032083205462008-03-01T03:05:00.003-05:002008-03-03T09:27:56.968-05:00

Wow, first major search engine conference I've ever been to. It was fun, but really exhausting. I've picked up some small things here and there, but I feel like I haven't learned anything really new. I learned small "tricks" such as to rank for more positions in search engines for your company's name, try creating pages on already-trusted domains such Myspace profiles. It was amazing to see

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-16955908396721606652008-02-26T02:38:00.001-05:002008-02-26T02:40:44.904-05:00

So I’ll be going to Santa Clara for SMX West. I’m pretty excited. This is the first major search engine conference. I remember almost going to SES NY a few years ago, but some last minute things prevented me from going. I worked a half day today, left my job around noonish for the airport. It was a 1:30-3PM flight to Dulles DC for transferring. My coworkers and I sat around for almost four

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-48569018361383414712008-02-13T13:40:00.006-05:002008-02-13T21:32:32.235-05:00

This is to test Google's "define" or "what is" operator and ways to influence it. I have chosen a few random names of my college buds to target that I think isn't competitive at all. Examples: Google the following: define:paul zhao what is paul zhao Hopefully, this experiment will work. Paul Zhao: a person that's always trying to manipulate Google results Andrew Simmering: one who is always

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-39222323018583219802008-02-12T15:10:00.000-05:002008-02-12T15:19:56.510-05:00

It seems like Jerry Yang, the new Yahoo CEO has decided to lay off about 1000 people. By what I personally understand, it's just one company getting hit, not an "economic recession". In fact, other companies in Silicon Valley are increasing efforts to acquire all the talented employees that lost their jobs. I guess it's the survival of the fittest in the corporate world. I believe most

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-65645385773514881082008-02-05T15:37:00.000-05:002008-02-05T16:08:28.936-05:00

Thought 1: Has anyone noticed that most super bowl ads don't use the phrase "super bowl" in the ad? That's because of trade mark issues, and most companies get around it by using words like "Win tickets to the big game" while having football-type images in the ad. Thought 2: Great game, real close, Giants managed to pull off the winning touch down with 2 minutes left. I'm not much into

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-24771317960048267492008-01-23T14:02:00.000-05:002008-01-23T16:26:02.715-05:00

During my usual “motivational research” of reading articles and listening to CD’s of how one should live life, I was re-reminded of a quote for men: “You should seek your path, figure out who you want to be, where you want to go in life, and then decide who you are going to take with you. If you ever got these two flipped, you’re in big trouble”. I didn’t understand that quote the first time I

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-39104097292337758052008-01-13T01:11:00.000-05:002008-01-13T01:19:48.869-05:00

Okay, so I was randomly browsing websites and I came across a banner ad. Wow, I haven't heard the dikfore jokes since middle school and it completely left my mind until now. "Dude, you gotta dikfore on your head"

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-5158666784918726532008-01-10T11:28:00.000-05:002008-01-10T11:32:09.893-05:00

When I was new to Search Engine Optimization, I worked in an agency called "Websourced". I've picked up SEO quickly because I worked on hundreds of clients while working there, doing different tasks from writing meta tags to keyword research to critiquing site architecture and all. While I worked there, I came across a competitor that uses techniques that're against Google webmaster rules,

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-80238542602750183342007-12-27T13:57:00.000-05:002007-12-27T14:08:23.165-05:00

After lots of work looking for an apartment, I've narrowed the choices down to 2 places. Mission Oak Ridge (bottom pic) Downtown Elm Street (top pic) Feature (Not a pro or a con) * Traditional "Apartment" with typical amenities * Downtown Greensboro, apartment above a shop on a major busy downtown street * "Mixed" neighborhood with all "types" of people

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22935790.post-14105685679582202312007-12-24T12:16:00.000-05:002007-12-24T12:35:08.665-05:00

Earlier this year, I blogged about Washington DC to be "the best city for singles", now I just read an article about "best and worst city for dating" from BestPlaces.net. It measured a bunch of artificial stats, such as number of coffee houses and bowling alleys. What it doesn't measure are the more "subtle" things of each city, which there isn't hard data for: Openness to casual dating -

Paul Zhaohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03802339448310355959noreply@blogger.com