Illinois Real Estate Salesperson License Renewal

Apparently, I am just one of a thousand other real estate professionals that have procrastinated the renewal of their professional license with the state until the absolute last minute. In fact, we have all collectively come together so much, the State of Illinois' webserver is barely functioning and constantly kicks out errors: HTTP 500 Internal Server.

Although on any typical day you could not motivate the independent realtor to do much of anything for his brethren, this day comes as a shock to most in the field. Even the state of Illinois has chimed in on the hammering of their website by reassuring us that even if we cannot complete the renewal online, we will still be assessed a $50 late fee if the renewal is not completed today.

In addition, the telephone renewal hotline is busy and their offices are closed. Awesome.

One Minute Inside a Man's Head

A local radio station, I think it's Kiss 103.5, often runs a skit of "One Minute inside a Woman's Head" which are often quite comical. It plays to the often distracted and completely disjointed thought process of many women; one of whom is my fiance. We have a great laugh about these skits when we hear them. So, I decided I would do "One Minute inside a Man's Head":

Man, I'm hungry. I wonder what's for breakfast. Damn, I know if I want something I'll have to cook it because I know the wife won't do it. So much for eggs and bacon...that reduces the choice to anything that will fit in the microwave. I wonder if we have leftovers. What did we have for dinner last night? Damn, I'm hungry. I don't want to go that meeting at 9am. That old bastard is always busting my balls. I'm kinda horny. No way the wife will go for that this early. Woah! Aim for the toilet bucko...that's gonna suck to clean up. Maybe I should turn the light on when I pee in the middle of the night?

Google Rankings

Well, one point of this blog was to test if blogging would help increase google ranking when searching for key words. This site shot up quickly in the Google Pageranks but just as quickly dropped off the main page and is no where to be found.

Is it because blogspot has no authority? Is it because the site is too new? Does the content fail to stay consistent? Why would the site shoot up so fast and then fall so quickly?

My experiment is not going so well...

Not to mention the lackluster performance of this blog, my LinkedIn profile is also not being indexed by Google. I've followed all the suggestions and parameters from Guy Kawasaki's blog as well as numerous other resources and they have all failed to bump my LinkedIn profile into the search results of Google.

Getting indexed and ranked is tough to do!

David Rocci on LinkedIn

There are many social networking sites out there nowadays; MySpace, Facebook, Zoodango and not to mention the zillions of dating services that tout networking abilities. The problem is many fall short of providing beneficial relationship building for professionals. Many sites lack the professionalism required by today's next generation leaders. LinkedIn fills that gap.

My LinkedIn profile has enabled my connections to network with each other and many have already reaped benefits from the exchange. I intend to grow the network and see where it takes me. I leave my connections open for others to contact and that selflessness is what makes it a better place for everyone to grow.

Guy Kawasaki is a columnist from Forbes that has compiled a list of the top ten ways to improve your listing and get noticed. From his website:

Most people use LinkedIn to “get to someone” in order to make a sale, form a partnership, or get a job. It works well for this because it is an online network of more than 8.5 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 130 industries. However, it is a tool that is under-utilized...

Get the full story on his blog.

Fun times at Chez Rocci

Saturday night was an unexpectedly fun evening in Greywall Club. Around 4-4:30p Adri and I decided to invite over some friends to grill some burgers and dogs and have some beers. Adam, Nicole, Ryan, Paula and their daughter came over for a really fun evening. The first round of frozen Sam's Club burgers went on the charcoal grill when it was a little bit too hot so they were a little burned....luckily no one noticed because they had been drinking. ;)

Then we converted the charcoal grill into a fire pit. We collected some scrap wood from neighboring construction sites and then woke our neighbors while running a circular saw to cut up the wood to fit into the grill. The fire added the perfect flare of ambience to a great night of fun and laughs with some good friends.

All in all, it was a terrific weekend; productive, fun and WARM!

What more can schools do?

In an earlier post I mentioned the difficult boundary of balancing student intervention, covering the liability aspects of the university and refraining from turning our university campuses into locked down prisons with metal detectors and body searches before class.

It seems that Time shares the same sentiment in asking, What More Can Schools Do? While none of us would like to see an event like this happen again we have to be conscious to prevent the sacrifice of our freedoms and privacy.

However much time colleges put into their efforts, there's no surefire way to predict violent behavior, and jumping to conclusions can have dire consequences for troubled students.

What can be done to find middle ground?

Liberty Tax season is over!

The first season of Liberty Tax Service in Shorewood is in the books. After a few grueling months of hectic 15 hour days, I thought I would be relieved that it is all over...but I only feel a bit lost. I've lost my purpose. Interviewing for a job sucks when you know your passion is for business ownership. I'm not looking forward to slaving for someone else...but you gotta do what ya gotta do!

I'm planning an employee party for April 28th. It should be a fun hooray to end the season and thank my staff for their terrific work this year. We are leaning towards an afternoon of bowling and some cocktails.

Chicago Web Design

I've searched high and low throughout Chicago to find a web design company that is responsive, hands-on and current with ever-changing technology. Most of us in need of good web design help are inundated with search results for web design and hosting these days but most companies offer boring templates or do-it-yourself configuration. If you need an expert that is willing to go the extra mile, you need the Usman Group - they are the premier chicago web design company.

Naveed Usman, the head honcho over there has been mentoring me with his SEO (search engine optimization) skill and it is already paying big dividends...stay tuned for the newest Rocci projects! The Usman Group offers programming, design, integration, optimization and expert consulting. You can read a little more about Naveed through his blog or his professional profile on LinkedIn.

Stop your search for quality web design in chicago and start looking at The Usman Group!

Liberty Tax countdown to filing deadline

T minus 51 minutes until my first season as a Liberty Tax Service franchise owner comes to a close. It has been a challenging and tiresome journey with many unexpected hurdles but overall I have learned sooo much from this experience. In the last 7 days I have been at this office for 113 hours! My respect for the income tax preparation business has been magnified by this experience. I can honestly say I've done more work in the last 14 weeks that many people do in twice the time.


Hats off to my phenomenal staff that made this year as fun and rewarding as it has been. These people fought through gruesome nights of training, passionate dissertations from yours truly and many late nights; special thanks to my new close friend, Red Bull. I simple could not have done it without them. I sincerely thank each of these wonderful people for their dedication and perseverance as we learned together.

VT follow-up

I feel compelled to add that I attended Virginia Tech for many years. This tragedy twists a pang of emotions in my belly that is impossible to describe. Two of the guys in my upcoming wedding party have little brothers that still attend the school. As the stories developed we frantically emailed each other with concern. Luckily, the people we know are safe. Unfortunately, the impact of the events will play out for many months to come.

The emotional attachment I have to this situation should embolden my previous post about exonerating Virginia Tech of culpability in this situation. I stand by my previous post that the responsibility for this event lies squarely on the shoulders of the GUNMAN and no one else.

The gunman who killed 30 people at Virginia Tech's Norris Hall before turning the gun on himself was student Cho Seung-hui, university police Chief Wendell Flinchum said Tuesday.

We cannot react to this event by locking down our universities. We cannot respond by creating an environment likened to a prison just for the sake of preventing a once in a zillion chance some wacko is going to kill everyone. These are issues that need to addressed proactively and I don't know what the steps are to do that but I do know we cannot sacrifice our liberties and the characters of our university system because of a single crazed lunatic.

Virginia Tech Massacre

Today brings emptiness after a day of frantic emailing and phone calling to confirm the safety and medical conditions of loved ones at Virginia Tech. As everyone in the country now knows, a lone gunman killed 32 students and professors, including himself, in a historic day of monumental violence.

According to Virginia Tech police chief Wendell Flinchum, it's reported the sick bastard even chained the doors to the building before beginning his systematic murder spree. I struggle to face the mix of emotions I feel about this situation. Anger, frustration and sadness come to mind but still miss the mark.

I've listened to and read many reports that are pointing the finger at VT administration for failing to lock down the campus quick enough. I know we are all looking for someone to blame in this incident so we must NOT take our focus off the killer that orchestrated this heinous act. It's more difficult to focus on him because he is dead and will never face a trial for his actions but we cannot shift our blame to anyone else. The school acted as quickly as they could with the information they had at the time.

No one else is to blame for this besides the gunman. Let's not forget it! It's a shame that he got off so easy but we must not divert our anger and blame for this incident to anyone other than this man.

wedding announcement

While I'm at it, I thought I also should mention that I'm getting married on May 27th, 2007 to a my beautiful counterpart, Adrienne Desmedt. We make a dynamic team and work through challenges with flying colors. She is my rock and helps steer me through all the tough times and she is the MOST fun to celebrate with during the good times.

You can browse the wedding website of David Rocci and Adrienne Desmedt and read our pseudo-blog at http://www.rocciwedding.com. We also elected to have 100% online RSVP'ing for our guests. We streamlined many aspects of our planning to remain on a tight budget. I recommend the budgeting tools on The Knot for anyone serious about keeping budgets and timelines when planning a wedding.

Who: David Rocci & Adrienne Desmedt
When: May 27, 2007
Where: Oak Crest Cove, Sandwich, Massachusetts

David Rocci Introduction

My name is David Rocci. I'm exploring the opportunities of online blogging to expand a SEO campaign of professional networking. This is my first stint into blogging and I only picked this one because it was free. I looked into typepad but they were too expensive. Is there really a difference between where you blog and the quality of search results you obtain?

Everyone said that social networking sites like MySpace and LinkedIn were the key to building sustainable contacts for both professional and personal relationship building but I've found them seriously lacking on Google rankings. Am I doing these social networking sites incorrectly? Am I missing the proper indexing parameters? Or are they mostly overlooked as overpopulated compilations of abbreviated text and absurd two-sentence bulletin posts?

In either case, social networking did not work for me so far. I've now embarked on a campaign to increase visibility by making quality posts to many community forums such as Real Estate Webmasters and YoungEntrepreneur; you can view my respective profiles for David Rocci the Real Estate Guru and David Rocci the Entrepreneur. I've also decided to indulge in some forums for some of my favorite activities as well; motocross and skydiving.