Thought Box

There is a lot going on I suppose. Maybe not, but it kind of feels like it!

I officially accepted my offer with ExxonMobil on Monday of this last week! I’m pretty excited, but I’m not planning on moving out there until the beginning of September… I look forward to a really great summer, but I can’t lie and say that I’m not antsy already. I’m ready to graduate and get out of school, that’s for sure! Perhaps when I’m just working I will feel a little differently.

Speaking of school, it’s been close to impossible to motivate myself to get my homework done. Seriously, it feels like my Senior year at Prairie Ridge all over again! I hated being that trunky back in the day, but I’m falling into that trap all over again… Homework is the real killer. I can do a great job of paying attention and attending class, but getting stuff done after work hours is NOT something I have a lot of motivation to do right now.

As for my summer plans, seeing as how I won’t be in Houston until September, I plan on working in the Project Management office here at BYU for those summer months. I’ve talked with Ernie and he is totally OK with me doing that – in fact he encouraged it a little bit since he wants me married by the time I end up leaving… I can’t say I don’t want the same, but I thought it was pretty funny.

So, I really don’t have anything specific to write about other than that I’m pretty happy and things are going well! I’ll probably post some pictures of Lauren and I at some point (yes, we’re still dating), but we need to actually take pictures for once if that’s gonna happen. I guess I forget that auxilliery stuff sometimes. Haha!

By the way, I’m writing this post from my BlackBerry Pearl! How cool is that? I’m pretty certain Jason is jealous…

So, it’s about time to do a little house cleaning.  The blog has a new sexy look, new pics are uploaded, and the main webpage is updated with a new main image.  I’m getting a little better with Photoshop, so I’m pleased with how that is going.  Otherwise, I really have no idea what else I want to use the website for right now.  As mentioned in a previous post, I think the blog and site will take on greater value once I’ve gotten married and started a family, but I’m a few steps away from that still.

Over the Holidays I setup new email accounts using the rosenbaugh.com domain.  Hopefully my family members are enjoying email with Jeff as their provider.  :)  In general though, it’s nice to have an email address that will give me a little more flexibility, that is not tied to BYU or another organization I am a part of.  I’m also really happy with the discussion lists that DreamHost lets me setup.  I’ve setup a family distribution list so that an email will go out to all of us by shooting off a single message.  Again, it’s not of super high importance right now, but as the family grows it could be a pretty handle tool.

I’m flying out to Houston to interview with ExxonMobil next week, and I’m pretty excited.  It should be a really fun time, and I’m really hopeful that this pans out.  I originally received an offer from  Accenture (who I 100% recommend for those interested), but I felt very uncomfortable with making a decision that would take me back to Chicago now that I’m not planning on getting married in April.  Houston has a great singles scene, and the pay at Exxon is fabulous.  So, all things considered, this is a really good possibility.  My buddy, Bradford, who is hosting me has had a perfect record in his hostees receiving offers, so I hope that correlates to good things!

I’m picking up dating again.  I still love Britt, but she has most certainly moved on and away from me, so I guess it’s my turn as well.  A couple of unsuccessful dates has made me a little sad, but life goes on, right?  We’ll be having a party here at the house next weekend (after my interview trip), and I’m planning on meeting some people then.  I tell you what though, getting over a relationship like the one Brittany and I had is a difficult adventure.  Things weren’t perfect, but they were pretty dang good, and I still have yet to learn how to emotionally detach myself from those I love (ask all my friends from 10 years ago who still get emails though we haven’t seen each other in a decade).

Anyway, I’ll keep things going on here.  Life is going to get interesting soon, so I’m sure I’ll have plenty to share.

It’s been a while since I’ve had some time to get a post up, and one of the reasons why is because I have been spending a lot of time preparing for the Omniture Web Analytics Competition at BYU. For those who don’t know, I’m taking a Web Analytics class this semester and we’re encouraged (maybe required?) to participate in the competition. This was my second semester participating in the competition, but unfortunately we worked with the same website’s data. Though you’d think I had an advantage, being familiar with http://www.costumecraze.com/, the Omniture people made it clear at the opening meeting that we needed to come in with new information this time around.

I can’t share any specific information due to my signing a non-disclosure agreement, but I can talk a bit about the SiteCatalyst product! To be completely honest, SiteCatalyst is an absolutely fabulous tool that still needs a little work. Currently, you have great flexibility and customization available to you (though sometimes you end up paying quite a bit more for some of those options) as an Omniture customer. The task of keeping up with all of your key performance indicators is pretty simple with the advanced dashboards you can create. From my experience, which is admittedly little, SiteCatalyst blows the competition away in sophistication and the level of customization available. Granted, those who use Omniture’s tools are paying out the nose, so SiteCatalyst better be good.

I do, however, have a few complaints. Omniture has broken up their reports into three main sections: Commerce, Traffic, and Paths. This is really helpful in some regards because it breaks up the many reports available into three different categories, yet I found myself extremely frustrated on several occasions. Because these three categories are very rigidly constructed, getting reports on data from both traffic and commerce is impossible (or at least hard enough to seem so). For example, should I want to find a report that gave me the percentage of site traffic that came from a specific domain and the revenue from that domain I would be out of luck. For some questions you can look up two different reports within their respective categories, but this is not always the case.

Without giving out specific information, I was trying to do research on CostumeCraze’s global presence (where commerce and traffic were coming from geographically) and I could not find reports that really helped me drill down on the issue. SiteCatalyst provides traffic maps, showing which countries around the world are providing site traffic, but I could not find anything that would help me see the revenue that matched up with that traffic. The data already being tracked, so why can’t I get to the information I need? There were ways to work around the problem, sort of, but I’d rather just have interoperability between the three categories.

Omniture does offer other services, and it’s entirely possible that Discover (a new app they use) or another piece of software solves some of the problems I see in SiteCatalyst. Unfortunately, I haven’t had access to any of the more advanced tools, but I can probably research it a little bit. Either way, web analytics is a pretty interesting and I encourage those who are web developers to look into Google’s free analytics tools (http://www.google.com/analytics).