Resolution addendum

I thought of another one:

8. Cook more (and better - although Hubby is still alive and he hasn't complained much)

Goodbye 2007 - Hello 2008!

I've been quite neglectful with my blog. But I have good excuses. Hubby and I just bought and moved into our very first house! It's been very exciting, and very stressful what with combining the move with the holidays. We were determined to be in a house by Christmas and we made it. We moved in two weeks ago, and we managed to get organized enough to have some family over for Christmas dinner. Very exciting! Of course, having people over for dinner involved my parents renting a U-Haul to bring their dining room table and chairs so everyone would have someplace to sit and eat! I will post pictures of the new house soon - since some of you have been asking.

Part 2

I put up my very first blog poll today. I'm curious about how many people plan on doing New Year's Resolutions. I've never been big on New Year's resolutions, but I might give it a try this year. There's a few things I would like to try to improve upon, so here goes:

1. Be a better housekeeper

2. Lose X amount of pounds (I'm not sharing how many - some things need to be private!) - or at least fit into my old summer clothes by this summer

3. Budget better - especially now with many more bills to pay

4. Stop procrastinating

5. Learn Spanish - put the cd's I checked out of the library to good use

6. Be a better blogger - I really want to make more of this blog since I love it so much - which means I should probably try to find a focus!

7. Learn to knit in circular so I can knit a kitty pi for when Gypsy moves in

There it is - I had more than I thought I would. Number 7 is a fairly easy one that I included so that when I finish I have some sort of sense of accomplishment!

So take my poll, and if you feel like it, share some of your resolutions in the comments section!

4 years in a row...

I know there are some people who are expecting me to comment on the Ohio State/Michigan game on Saturday. What can I say - Michigan was once again outplayed. It's become a sad state of affairs. And now Michigan will be stuck with some sad non-January 1st bowl game - which if recent history has anything to say about it - they will probably lose. Sorry, I'm a little pessimistic right now.

And just in case anyone is worried that I went all day Saturday without being teased/ridiculed for being a Michigan fan, here's a picture of what I had to put up with:











Yes, that's an Ohio State jersey, turtleneck, blanket and teddy bear. And yes, he went out and bought himself that bear. It's just not right people.

Thing #35 Mini-Blogs

All right, I read over the info about these "mini-blogs," but I didn't sign up for any of them. I suppose they're useful, and it's good to know about them, but I would never use it. I like my good ol' regular blog, plus, I'm just too wordy to limit myself to a few words. Besides, if I want to make plans with friends, I'll just pick up the phone and call them, or send them an e-mail or text message. Plus, I don't get the "following" thing. Maybe this would be clearer if I actually signed up for an account and used it. But, I really don't need any more accounts that I'm not gonna use. For now, I think I've accomplished enough by learning of it's existence. I actually had never heard of these before. Onward and upward...

Thing #34

I signed up for Fitday and also looked at Nutridiary, but I wasn't impressed with either. For the last year I've been using Discovery Health's National Body Challenge website to track my fitness and weightloss goals. I find this site much easier to use. I had trouble with Fitday trying to find how to enter the foods I'd eaten. When i went to enter the ceral I had for breakfast, it wasn't even on the list - and it's not like it's some crazy off brand. Life Cereal - not the cinnamon kind, just the plain. They had the cinnamon on the list but no regular life. So, I checked them out, but prefer the Discovery site.

Thing #33

Lots of good time wasting fun at Mr. Picassohead. Check out my lovely work of art that took just two minutes to create (and you know how quality things will be in that short amount of time):

http://www.mrpicassohead.com/canvas.html?id=640e8c9&skin=original

Mr. Picassohead was the best. The string and snowflake ones were kind of boring. The sand art was ok - kept me interested for about 2 minutes longer than the string and snowflake ones. Moving on...

Thing #32 - Omnidrive

Am seeing great potential for this - however, can't get it to load. It just sits there and does nothing and doesn't allow me to do anything. Not happy - suppose will try later at home.

Thing #31 Plaxo

Well, I set up a Plaxo account and imported my contact list from gmail. I also put in one entry on the calendar. I don't think I'll be using this much. I'm either just tired or it's not feeling very user friendly to me. Besides, I have my work calendar book that I carry around with me always and has all my appointments - work and otherwise. I also have a Dell Axim (Dell's version of a PalmPilot), that I use occasionally to keep track of stuff, plus it fits neatly in my purse. So, I tried it - but it's not for me.

lolcats r fun

Help Women in Need

You'll notice the pink ribbon to the right of this post. This is a great site where all you have to do is visit the page and the sponsers who advertise there will donate money to support funding mammograms for women who can't afford them. Also, on this page you will find links to click to support feeding hungry children, providing healthcare and books for children, helping to protect the rainforest and a page to help feed and care for animals in shelters. It's all free, you don't pay anything, they just count the number of clicks they get everyday and the sponsers pay. You can click everyday. Please check it out by clicking on my pink ribbon - it takes less than 5 seconds.

You can see I'm having way too much fun with this...

Scrapblog

As you can see from below - I accomplished my scrapblog. This was kind of fun actually. I know it said to use the images that we gathered from Photobucket, but I decided to use some of my wedding photos, because even though we just celebrated out 2nd anniversary, we haven't gotten our wedding photos from our photographer. The photos in this "album" were taken by my brother and my cousin's wife.

Scrapblog Album

Only in my dreams...

Thing #27 Photobucket

Ok, I did the photobucket thing. It's pretty much like Flickr - but I found searching and browsing for things a little better. I did a Harry Potter search and put some images in my album. It's kind of interesting that when I did a Harry Potter search in Flickr, I got a bunch of pictures that people had posted. When I did the Harry Potter search in Photobucket the images were more of things that people had uploaded - like movie stills or goofy little sayings - very few pictures. I was also a little surprised at how vulgar some of the images I found were - it was a little disturbing in some cases. The find stuff option was ok - I'd rather do a search though.

Thing #26

I did the Widgets "yourminis" thing a while ago, but never posted about it. Too clustered and distracting for me. I just wasn't getting the point. I set up the desktop with all the little buttons and such - but then I just couldn't figure out what to do with it, and then, I just didn't care. Nor do I care now, so I'm thinking this isn't something of use to me, so it's time to move on.

Too cute for words!

This is a recent photo of Drayden. This was actually taken with a cell phone. Pretty good image. Already a Michigan fan. Gotta love it!

I LOVE BANNED BOOKS!

Silly me, I've been so caught up in other library things (you all know what I'm talking about), that I completely forgot that it is Banned Books Week! That special time of year when a young reader's fancy turns to those prized novels (and picture books) that scare so many that they feel they have a right to keep perfect strangers from reading it. So I ask all of you to celebrate with me this year. Pick up your favorite banned book and be seen reading it. Let the world know that you will not be curtailed by others fanaticism. To get you started here are the "10 Most Challenged Books of 2006" courtesy of the American Library Association:

1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
2. Gossip Girls series by Cecily von Ziegesar
3. Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
4. The Earth, My Butt and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
5. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
6. Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz
7. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
8. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
9. Beloved by Toni Morrison
10. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

...silly me, thinking those penguins should take care of that egg rather than letting it die...

All right, I'm off to go pick up one of the Harry Potters and read it again. Supposedly I should be able to actually learn how to do witchcraft just by reading the book. Since I've read them about 30 times all together, why can't I make something float? I have a wand and everything. "Wingardium leviosa" - nothing - my computer monitor is still firmly on my desk, sigh... that would have been so cool.

(I suppose I have to include this disclaimer - these opinions are my own and do not reflect the place I work. If you're offended, take it out on me and no one else.)

"Oh, I am just a student, Sir and I only want to learn.
But it's hard to read through the rising smoke from the books that you'd like to burn"
--Phil Ochs, "I'm Gonna Say it Now"

Back to Bloglines

After looking at some other blogs, I see that they had their feeds directly on their blog pages, so I decided to attempt it. I like it. Much easier than going though to the bloglines website. It took me a little while to figure out how to do it, but I got it.

This post serves another purpose. It moves my Michigan M down from being the first thing I see when I open my blog. As much as I love my boys in Maize and Blue, their performace on Saturday was nothing short of disgraceful, and I'm all kinds of frustrated with them. Losing is one thing, but playing like you don't care is something else, and that's what it looked like in the first half on Saturday. They looked slow and unprepared to play football. After their loss to Appalachain State, they should have been fired up and ready to win. Sigh...

But on a brighter note, the YSU Penguins pulled off an exciting win against South Dakota State, beating them 23 - 17 in their home opener. Can't wait for this Saturday's game. Go Penguins!

The most wonderful time of the year!

I love college football - this is my favorite time of year. I also love the University of Michigan football. (Yes, I know, I live in Ohio - but my daddy grew up in Michigan so this is what I was raised to love!)

I know UofM had a rough time last weekend - but not enough props are being given to Appalachian State. They are two-time defending national champions in their division - and quite frankly, they just grow those boys big down there. So, Michigan may have been a little cocky going into the game - it happens. Now we move on to tomorrows game against Oregon.

GO BLUE!!! Beat the Ducks!

Thing #25 - My Own Newsletter

This was interesting. I made up my own newsletter - sort of a little journal about my golf "vacation" in June. I see lots of interesting uses for this site. And I think it's cool that it's free. However, I was a little frustrated with the formatting. Pushing enter automatically gives you a two space jump, so you can't go down to the next line directly below the text you typed. I also would have liked to justify the columns where all my text is, but it wouldn't allow me to do that either.

Anyway, here it is: http://letterpop.com/newsletters/?id=58188-ee18f5. Check it out, if you like, but it's not really that interesting.

Zamzar continued...

So, the amount of time it took me to type up my thoughts on Zamzar (which was just a few minutes), was the amount of time it took to have it converted and the link sent to my e-mail. Two clicks away and there was my pdf - bloody brilliant!

Zamzar

Ok, I didn't think I was going to do it, but I've decided to venture into the world of 2.1. Today was step #24, Zamzar. We had a brief introduction to this during on of our little PO staff meeings, but I hadn't gotten around to playing with it. I decded to check it out today. I uploaded one of my word documents to try to turn it into a pdf. I'm still waiting for the e-mail telling me it worked.

If this does work - it's fantastic. A couple of years ago when I was building my own website and trying to post my resume as a pdf, I was having to go through all kinds of hassle to get it converted. I didn't have the program on my computer (and then I found out it cost something crazy like $800), and I only knew of one computer that I could do it on at the Carnegie Mellon University library. If only I could have used Zamzar it would have been so much easier. I see much potential for this for lots of people!

Thing #23 - The Finish Line

Success! Here I am at the end. This has been a really cool experience. I flatter myself as someone being fairly technologically savvy, but there was so much out there that I didn't know. Starting with blogging - some of my friends have their own blogs, but I was hesitant to take that step and try to learn myself - thanks YPL for the incentive. I think the most outstanding learning moment for me was the RSS feeds. This to me was a foreign language of which I wanted to no part in having to figure out on my own. I love it now - I love knowing what the little orange button is for on webpages and I love going to my bloglines account and reading all my different feeds. I also just like the feeling that I'm not missing out on something anymore. There were very few things here that I didn't find interesting. I also enjoyed the process of helping others with their blogs, getting help for my own, and just checking out what other people are up to or interested in. I hope we have more learning opporunities like this. In the meantime, I can't wait for my MP3 player!

Just need to rant...

I am beyond frustrated at this point. I tried to put a couple of posts up today (things 21 and 22), and for whatever reason, after I typed them up and hit publish post, they wouldn't appear in my blog. About an hour later, they finally showed up, but in the meantime, my YouTube post and video that I put up Thursday night was gone. Now, this was extremely aggravating because that took almost an hour to get it posted and formatted the way I wanted. Now, I cannot embed the text at all to get the video to appear. I did learn from all this that you can post to your blog straight from YouTube, rather than trying to embed the html text. However, the text I posted underneath the video doesn't look the way I want, and when I try to change the date and time to back to when I actually did it Thursday night, the video disappears. Grrr...

Thing #22

I checked out both NetLibrary's list of e-books and PLYMC's list of audio books. When I worked at Carngie Mellon, I used to read a few different e-books form their million book project, but I've never been a big fan of reading books on my computer. It gives me a headache to stare at a screen for too long. Pretty much the only time I've read books on line was on Sunday nights at the CMU arts reference desk and I was REALLY bored.

As for audio books, I love to listen to books on cd in my car, but I have this wierd thing about being able to concentrate on listening to someone else read, so I always have to have read the book first, so there isn't a whole lot for me to choose from on the list - I haven't read most of the titles available. Plus, I've thought about downloading an audio book before, but I get all freaked out when it tells me I have to download software, so I end up not doing it. But, with a new mp3 player, perhaps I'll give it a shot!

Podcasting (Thing #21)

Ok, I've gotten some podcasts on my bloglines account. I'm finding Podcast.net to be very frustrating. The titles of podcasts don't necessarily give any indication of what it's really about, so I quit using that one. Using Podcastalley.com, and picking from their top podcasts list I found a podcast from the Harry Potter fansite Mugglenet.com. I also found a "Movies you should see" podcast that I fed to my bloglines account. Using the search tool and searching libraries, I found a podcast called "Uncontrolled Vocabulary" about current events in the library world. Now of course, when will I find the time to listen to them, because unfortunately while I was doing some sample listening out here at Springfield at the librarians desk, there was some vulgar and offensive language being used on one of the podcasts that I thought would be safe.

7Up - vending machine

This is a commercial from YouTube that I always thought was so funny. I went searching for it because a couple of years ago I was trying to find it on-line and couldn't, but it never occurred to me to check YouTube when it became popular. I also put this on here for my daddy because this commercial use to crack him up!

I've messed around with YouTube before, but not much because a lot of it is crap that I could care less about. I did, however, go searching and find the videos of "Extras" with Orlando Bloom and Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter to you Muggles). (Thanks to Megan for telling me about this show - hilarious!)

#19 - the end is in sight

I've been playing around with the Web 2.0 awards since yesterday, and these are really fun. I know it says just pick one, but that's so boring. I've played around with Zillow before, but I find it wildly inaccurate. If it manages to zero in on the right house with the aerial photos, it usually has the specs wrong - but still it's fun to see your house from the sky! I played around a bit yesterday with the free online games - Penguin Push was particularly amusing, and actually requires a little thinking - I'm currently stumped on level 9. If anyone figures this out, let me know. The best one I found so far: Cocktail Builder! It gives you drink recipes for whatever liquor you've got hanging around the house. Always good fun in my book!

One more Wiki Thing...

I thought I would just throw this out there - while searching for on how long to cook a potato in the microwave to make a "baked" potato, I found this neat wiki for how-to stuff: WikiHow

Check it out if you're bored!

more #18

Ok, I'm doing a separate post for #18, because I didn't want to mess with what I had typed in Zoho writer. That was so cool! So, so easy to type in Zoho word processer and then publish to the blog - scarily easy!

Thing #18

Here I am typing along in Zoho writer. This is pretty nifty actually - and quite frankly I'm all for any applications that could take away from the Microsoft monopoly. Especially now with the release of Vista, some of whose applications will not be compatible with older office versions. So nice that there are these easy ways around it.

Thing #17

My blog is officially linked to from the PLCMC Learning 2.0 wiki under favorite blogs. I also posted to the Favorite Book and Favorite Movie pages. However, I was getting extremely frustrated trying to italicize my book title. Whenever I attempted, it italicized all the entries before mine, but not my title. I restorted to using quotes, then when I posted to the Movie page, I just used old html code, and wonderously, everything was fine, sigh...

Thing #16

Ok, first, if I have to read what are supposed to be intelligent, intellectual articles about the technology we are supposed to be learning, is it too much to ask that someone use proper English? I know when we're blogging, it's not a bit deal, and I could care less about people's grammar, but in the article on wikis called "Using Wikis to Create Online Communities," I found this sentence that just irked me to my core: "And if someone don’t like what I wrote, they can make their own changes." Seriously?

Now that I got that off my chest, I'll move on. I think wikis are great. Even though it's not always the most reliable, I love Wikipedia, and I'm always looking at it for stupid little trivia things. I also really like that there's a way for people to contribute to the information on the Internet without have to know HTML or CSS languages. That they can just go in and type (like with these blogs), and presto, they've contributed to the knowledge of others.

As a side note: did anyone notice on the St. Joseph County Public Library's wiki, that they offer computer classes for the public for free (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more).

Here he is!

Finally! Here's a picture of my cousin's beautiful little boy, Drayden. Isn't he adorable!

Thing #15

So, I read most of the different articles people have posted about 2.0. I think the stuff we have been learning is fun and I am enjoying learning some of the new technologies, but I struggled with these articles. I don't know if it was the way they were written, but I just wasn't really comprehending the gist. I guess this is because I still don't understand the whole 2.0 thing. I get how to use the different technologies, it's the concept that I can't wrap my brain around. I know that everyone feels that the Web 2.0 and the Library 2.0 are important to know and to keep up with the emerging technologies - but we have patrons who struggle with just using a mouse - so it's difficult to see how something like getting RSS feeds is going to be useful or comprehensible to some the patrons, but then there are others who would love to learn about it - so I'm glad we are learning.

Harry Potter Mania

Since I haven't had time to read for number 15, I thought I would just post a fun blog today. This is me as Ginny Weasley at Barnes & Noble this morning around 12:30 a.m. Yes I was crazy enough to be at the bookstore to pick up my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at midnight - but then so was Cindy Beach and Deb Liptak. It was a little crazy and not nearly as fun as the library's Harry Potter party, but since I'm an obsessive fan, I just had to be there. Can't wait to keep reading!

I did it!!!!

originally uploaded by noms78


Ok, I'm very excited because I went to Cedar Point on Saturday, and I was FINALLY brave enough to ride Millennium Force and it was so cool! 300 foot first hill, 80 degree drop and 90 mph! I swore when they built it no one would ever get me on it, but my mom and I were both feeling brave, and my brother convinced us we would love it, so ride we did! Best ride I have ever been on! I will now be riding this coaster every time I go to Cedar Point.

rolling right along to thing #14

have now claimed myself on Technorati and am feeling very important. Technorati's cool I guess. just not sure I'm really into reading posts of total strangers. i like reading posts from the library folk here at YPL, because i like reading stuff from people i know, and trying to guess who is who (cause i'm really a detective at heart). i did the library 2.0 search, and got vastly different results, which wasn't all that surprising. so far so good, some of this stuff has been very interesting, some of it's just ok.

Thing #13

ok, I did the del.icio.us social network thing (am I the only one that thinks this is a really stupid name). moving on - it's cool that all the sites are together in one place that i can access from anywhere, but I just don't really feel the need to use it that much. The only place that I'm on a computer when I'm not at home is when I'm at work - and these aren't sites I would be using whilst i'm working (no, not me, i'm a good little employee). ok, I might use imdb.com if someone had a movie question, but really, how hard is it to remember a 4 letter website address. anyway, it's up, I learned, 1/2 way to my MP3!

Thing #12

After much trial and error and growling under my breath, I finally have figured out the point of Rollyo and have finally gotten my own search roll started and posted to my blog. See to the right.

I did a search roll on movies, called Everything Movies, and now that I figured out the point, it's actually pretty cool. I love to watch movies then look for trivia and other information about it, and now it's one stop shopping, so to speak! Now I can get back to the other things I was doing. Deep calming breaths... this technology will not lick me...

I'm an Auntie! (sort of)

This is completely library un-related, but I'm very excited and thought I would share that my cousin and his wife had a baby at 2:00 Monday morning! Yeah! I say I'm sort-of an auntie because our moms are sisters and our dads are identical twin brothers, so we are all very close.

He sent me a picture on my cell phone, and if I can ever figure out how to get it to my e-mail or my flickr account, I will post it here.

Congrats to Donald and Laura!

Welcome to the world Drayden Alekzander!

One more Flickr thing...

Here is a direct link to my flickr page: Click Here!

LibraryThing

Well, I'm glad this is one of our things to do, because I've been wanting to try it out, but I hadn't quite got around to it. I've only got two books in right now, but I wanted to try to post the link to from my blog to my LibraryThing account to see if it's gonna work...

Look to the right under my profile... Success!

Sketch generator

I'm still playing around with the image generators, but I stumbled on this very cool sketch generator. It takes any picture you have and turns it into a pencil sketch! This is a photo I took in Sugarcreek last year (that's me standing by the car), and it turned it into this sketch in just a few seconds. You can then upload the photo to your Flickr account, and it also gives you the text to embed in your blog.

Check it out for yourself: http://www.dumpr.net/sketch.php

Grrr... those bloglines

Ok, frustration waning. I had no trouble figuring out how to set up my bloglines account. Easily done, as was picking up some cool news feeds - Slate, New York Times Home Page, Librarian's Internet Index, and the always funny Unshelved. However, trying to figure out how to get the little bloglines button that would directly link me to my bloglines account was supremely aggravating. But, I figured it out and all is right with the world again.

I really liked Feedster at first and thought "Great, I can search a topic and then just get updated news items." I read the "Using Bloglines" tutorial, felt pretty confident, went to Feedster, then discovered that it doesn't look anything like the screen shots in the tutorial. "Well, that's ok," I thought, so I did my search, got some articles, then went back to look at the tutorial to see how to get the feed on my blog. It told me to look for the XML button. Nowhere on my results screen was there an XML button for the search. There were several RSS buttons for the individual blogs, but I couldn't get the RSS for the search like the tutorial told me I could. So Feedster is on my list.

On the plus side, I thought Syndic8 was great, super easy to use, and I got exactly what I wanted. Now, no one needs to get hurt.

Thing #5

Ah, what fun Flickr is! I was able to upload a few photos and I loved the Spell with Flickr as you can see from my Peace banner above. If you haven't tried it - I recommend checking it out - lots of mindless fun. See for yourself: http://metaatem.net/words/

Of the 7 1/2 Habits

I think I find Habit # 6 the easiest (using technology to your advantage). I love gadgets! I don't always know what to do with them, but I love them! I have lots of different gadgets, most of them hand-me-downs from my tech-geek brother who gives them to me when he upgrades to better models (it's also how I've gotten all my Nintendo and Playstation systems and games!).

I think Habit #7 is the hardest, because I do not teach or mentor well. I think it's a lack of patience for trying to explain to someone what is going on in my wacked-out, crazy brain, and getting frustrated when they don't understand. Of course, everyone should be able to read my mind...

So there's completion of another "thing." I'm well on my way to getting my grubby little paws another gadget!

First time...

Ok, this is my first time posting a blog. Decidedly easy to do, not so easy to come up with things to say. I'll post my thoughts later on the 7 1/2 tips.