Getting started for the triathlon kickoff (T -14 days)

After many weeks of not doing anything, I finally started getting ready for the triathlon. The kickoff is on June 2nd (hence the T -14 days on the title), and the actual triathlon is September 9th (which is T -113 days).

So, what has been done:

1. Set up fundraising site: http://www.active.com/donate/tntgsf/abidmohsin
• Crop image using Gimp
• Upload image to Flickr to embed on page
• Create step-by-step guide using Powerpoint, and embed on page using SlideAware
• Put link to page in my Gmail signature
2. Decide to get in shape by getting a membership to 24 Hour Fitness
3. Go on a bike ride, but stop and watch the Bay to Breakers crowd

Next steps:

1. Send out emails to tell everyone about it
2. ... and ask for donations

But it's getting late right now. Will tackle that tomorrow.

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Abid

oDesk presentation for the PC Magazine SMB Award

Here is the presentation from Slideshare (link, or see below):

Weekend has gone by 2006 10 22

IMG_1523, originally uploaded by abdmhsn.

San Francisco was pretty awesome yesterday, right now it's getting foggy.

I'm about to take off to the Thirsty Bear, where a friend is performing Flamenco. I wish I had more time to learn all these cool things. Not that the weekend was unfulfilling, there just isn't that much variety in my everyday life.

I need to start putting something good on this crappy blog. Maybe figure out a way to store my big thoughts everyday and publish them here easily.

Someone actually read my blog

oDesk is hiring! Yes, it's true. After raising the second round (lead by Benchmark, previous investors are Globespan and Sigma), we are looking to expand the business aggressively and also hiring for some pretty awesome positions.

So, we put up the Careers page, and have been looking for kick ass candidates.

In one of my phone conversations, a candidate said that she had Googled my name (typical) found my blog (uh oh) and actually spent time reading it (What the *&$%?).

Someone actually took the time to read this crappy blog. That's amazing.

Also embarrassing.

So I've decided to at least put some effort into this site. Shouldn't come off as a complete idiot.

I think the next step would be to start putting stuff from my Flickr account.

The coolest fan video I have seen

Pretty amazing that people spend so much time on this. Enjoy...

RYAN WIEBER VS. MICHAEL "DORKMAN" SCOTT What began as a friendly rivalry between two effects artists explodes off TheForce.Net's FanFilms Forum and into the real world in a lightsaber battle royale. Originally created for the forum's lightsaber choreography competition, this fight to the death will decide once and for all who is truly most skilled with a saber. There can be only one. See the 5 minute epic for yourself.

oDesk Tour video is kick ass

Watch it at http://www.odesk.com/tour on on YouTube.


Hmmm.... I'm thinking this blog post isn't that great. I tried pasting the YouTube HTML code in here, but it messes everything up. Maybe I should also upload to Google Video and link from there. Soemthing for tomorrow I guess.

Made my first post on the oDesk Blog (http://blog.odesk.com/)

And I thought I would put it here also.

(Click here to go to the oDesk Blog)

For the past few years, my ultimate invention candidate has been the Star Trek Transporter (illustrated on left).

"Energize!", and you can go anywhere anytime. (My previous candidate was the Star Trek Replicator, to get my chocolate shake anywhere anytime). Why? Because the best places to work are not necessarily the best places to live (due to cost of living, deminished social life, being away from family and friends).

A lot of people end up living in foreign countries to pursue the career they want (e.g. me) and it's not easy to spend time with your family (who live in Pakistan and the UK). Skype and Gmail allow us to remain in touch, but they don't allow me to play with my nephew (picture on right).

I have a good friend whose main goal is to find a career where he can travel back and forth between Pakistan and the US, while not sacrificing the big bucks (he was working as a top programmer for a US company). He started a small outfit in Pakistan and was looking to get them some programming work. Naturally, I got him into oDesk as an Affiliate. He fairly quickly got a $100K+ project, quit his regular job in the US, and is now full-time involved as the Affiliate Manager.

Let me first outline some tips I got from him:

• He found job openings where his skill set was relevant (don't blindly apply to everything)


• He applied himself, and also had his Providers apply at the same time (so they appeared together in the Candidate List)


• He clearly outlined who he was (Affiliate Manager), who else was in his team (Providers), links to the oDesk Profiles of his Providers (use oDesk Short URLs in the cover letter), and why they were good for the job


• He had a US number where he could be reached during his business hours (you can either get a VoIP box from Vonics or Vonage, or get a SkypeIn account)

But the cool thing for me was that oDesk helped him achieve his equivalent of the Star Trek Transporter. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, has gone to his oDesk Buyer's offices in Texas, and spends time with him family in Pakistan while overseeing his (growing) Affiliate outfit. You could argue that it's better than the Star Trek Transporter. Captain Kirk always worked with the same people on his ship, and actually lost a few people in every episode (the poor Red Shirts). They should have just enjoyed their chocolate shakes in interstellar space and talked to the Klingons over Yahoo IM.

-

Abid

This is Nael

Although Rayyan is my main man, his little brother Nael is equally adept at causing women to swoon.

This cutie pie came into the world on Jan 27, 2005 @ 2:30 pm, weighing between 6 to 7 lbs. He has apparently gained a lot of wieght since then :) 

The oDesk team of old

This is the team I started with at oDesk.

The picture was taken on the last day at our old office, which was the office I started at.

We went through some changes since then, but most of us are still here

:0 <--- this I call the oFace 

This is Rayyan

My nephew is cute, no two ways about it.

He lives in London and was born on May 23, 2000, at around 4:00 pm, weighing 6.5 lb (2.75 kg). 

The oDesk Founders

Odysseas and Stratis founded oDesk.

Stratis lives in Greece and comes here infrequently. We've been scheming on how to get him to come to the US for a longer period of time, but for reasons unknown, Stratis likes the Greek air too much.

Odysseas does his best to keep in as frequent touch with him as possible. It is normal for them to have 8-10 hour continuous Skype sessions. That's insane.

They are both a little insane.

Whatever the case, we love both of them. 

Week of 2005.10.17

So things are really rumbling at oDesk (www.odesk.com)

We launched an Online Community (community.odesk.com) which is getting more traffic that we anticipated. Alex Carter is doing a lot of stuff on it, but it seems like it needs almost a full-time person dedicated to it.

Advertising is kicking my ass. We are spending more, a) on a CPC basis and b) on a budget basis. That is the industry trend, and I am still pissed I did not buy Google stock when this started to happen (Google shares went up 10-15% on this quarter's earnings)

We are overhauling our website with the help of Radiopuffin, a creative firm. The new site (still http://www.odesk.com) would be completely kick ass!! If we can make it happen, I would be immensely peased! And since I am incharge of the project, I guess I better get to work rather than writing this stuff.

Our Alexa rating continues to rise, but we need it to rise faster. With the new website, and the start of viral marketing, the hope is to exponentially increase our traffic rank, etc.

Week ending 08.07.05

Again I'm sitting at Happy Donuts, trying to do some work-related things so I don't look like a slacker on Monday. One of the bad things I took away from Capital One: procrastination. Anatole had told me to be extremely structured in my professional life. I need to listen to him more.

Right now, I am creating a metrics report for our advertising. Then, I need to do some contract stuff, and then... think about pricing. I'm in charge of the presentation and modeling for pricing. Cool :)

I listen to podcasts while I do work at Happy Donuts. Mostly news, technology and finance related stuff. Trying to get some info in my head. My head doesn't like it.

Will now post something on Yahoo 360

Thinking about how to structure my blogs...

There will be a similar post on my Yahoo! 360

At 3:00 am on Friday night, I am pondering the use of my two blogs (recently started).

Since I like the structure of Yahoo! 360 better right now, I'm going to keep my posts of any possible interest on Yahoo! 360

The rest, which is going to be a catalogue of what I did, useless information, but maybe nice to read every 10 years or so, would be on Blogger.

Hit the bed, think about it more tomorrow.

I want to wake up, drive to Hillsdale Shopping Center and eat a Cinnabon for breakfast.

I've been tasked with creating an online community

At work that is....

And I need to get the structure down in less than 2 weeks. Just did a basic search on "online community" and opened up about 25 tabs in Firefox. Once I browse them, I'll be creating a template to present to someone who used to do this for a big (really BIG) online company.

Omigosh!