For years, the U.S. has turned away smart, in-demand immigrants because of the limited number of H-1B visas it grants. Most regrettable is these highly trained and highly paid workers are also high in demand and often create more jobs than they fill. Instead, these workers attended U.S. universities only to return to their home countries to build companies, technology, and jobs.

Last year, Brad Feld started a movement to add a startup or founder’s visa to any immigrant who starts a company in the U.S. The Senate is now considering just such a bill called the Startup Visa Act (full text PDF here) that will encourage immigrants to stay and build companies here in the U.S. creating new jobs and new opportunities.

Certainly not every startup will succeed (no guarantees for U.S. citizen startups either), but as any venture capitalist knows, you only need one or two to take off to shake up an entire industry: see Google or Apple, Microsoft, and IBM of yesteryear. Our goal should be to make sure the next generation of Googles and Apples are founded in the U.S. as that ensures more jobs and more prosperity for the next generation.

I believe I caught this issue early. All the pages on Prodigeek were forwarding to different sales sites. It does not seem like malicious code was downloaded to anyone’s computer, but of course, any bad code is not good. I’m bumping up some more security plug-ins so hopefully this will not happen again.

Yup, I’ve been slacking on my blogging over these past few weeks. Between holiday traveling and some tough weeks at work (even the auction business gets into the holiday spirit), I’ve been finding it tough to keep to a schedule. I’m still working on a big release for my employer, Leslie Hindman Auctioneers (no relation at all to Prodigeek), as their IT and Social Media Manager, so things might be erratic for the next few weeks.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to find a new rhythm soon. Thanks as always for reading and have a happy holiday.

Prodigeek has been experiencing lots of missing urls and server errors over the past few days (few weeks, but everything I fix seems to lead to a worse problem). Traffic has dropped about 98%, so hi to the 2 people still finding their way. I’m working full-time, moving apartments, and trying to freelance, but I am working with my host to get Prodigeek back up to full capacity.

And if anyone is a Wordpress or htaccess expert, please email me (mcs@mikecs.net).

Thank you for your patience.

I have found a wonderful job as the I.T. Manager for Leslie Hindman Auctioneers. In addition to managing all the computers and email, I will be managing the website and social media strategy for the company. 

The blogging that I hoped would get more regular after finishing graduate school has now taken another productivity hit.  As I learn my job, I’ll find that balance that gives me time for the important things in life, namely video games. And once I’m done doing that, I’ll try to find time to blog.

My graduate school year comes to a close in a few weeks.  I handed in my thesis today (and will be posting all 35 pages this week in some online fashion).  I’ll be getting into a more regular posting schedule over the next week or so, that is, at least until I find a job (still looking…).  Until then, blogging will be a fun but poorly paying stand in. Masters degree really comes in handy.

More excuses from your friendly neighborhood blogger.  This is hell week not just because I have finals, but it’s also the week of my concert for the chorus I sing in (don’t laugh).  Next week, I’ll start posting somewhat regularly. Of course, then the holidays come and then I get started on the next quarter and my thesis for my masters.  On a bright note, I’ll be working on an independent study next quarter that might interest some readers: I’ll be writing a paper on video game usability and its influence on consumer software and hardware.  Not sure what I’ll find out, but that’s what research is for, right? If anyone has any resource recommendations, please leave a comment or email me.  As for my thesis, I’ll be posting more on that topic when I have one (it’ll probably be some kind of adaptation of one of my better blog posts).

Also, I will be finishing the 365 Geek-Out Moments, hopefully all within the year.  I have to for the eBook I’m making with them for next year.

School’s in full swing and sadly my blog is the first thing to suffer. Classes are obviously hard, but mostly due to reading and a few writing assignments (on theorists that would not be fun for this blog).  The next few months will be a trying time, so I’m aiming for posts at least once a week.  Geek-Out Moments will eventually get published, but that might not happen till Winter break.  Hopefully next semester will be better as I’ll be posting on my thesis ideas.  For now, I thank everyone for their support.  Always check out my Shared Google Reader items for articles I enjoy but don’t have time to write about and I’m still keeping Twitter updated as much as possible.

So the Flow Conference might be over (making the live part of the live-Twittering a little out-dated) but you can see some of the discussion topics at the panels I attended here: http://twitter.com/prodigeek

I’ll hopefully get some more fleshed out posts over the week. For now, I need to catch up on the reading and class work I decided to blow off for this “business” trip.

It’s been a busy week (gonna be a busy semester).  I’m flying to Austin tonight after class for the Flow Conference.  I’ll be presenting at the Music and Copy Protection roundtable on Friday (noon CDT) and have very little idea of what to expect. It’s my first academic conference why my professor wasn’t running the show.

I’ll either be blogging or Twittering throughout the week, depending on Wi-Fi coverage (if I’m Twittering, it’s probably on my cell phone).  Let’s hope I don’t make too much of a fool of myself.