WOW!!  It's 2020!  Can you believe it's been 2008 since I last posted here??

There have been a LOT of changes in my life, as I'm sure there have been in yours.  I'm not going to do anything else here today.  Suffice it to say, I'm BACK!!  And I will be posting here in the very near future!  And I'll be updating all of my current info. as well.  #STAYTuned

Below are just a FEW clues to upcoming posts, I've no doubt.  with the gentle reminder of = #DON'TBoxMeIN

#GOTeamHS  #myWW2020 #POWERFUL #WWTD #MINDBLOWN #FINALFRONTIER #ENGAGE #GWTW #DIVERGENT #WWTDagain 

Sore bum

Well, I've learned that there is indeed a price to be paid for exercise. Recently I managed to get an injury while exercising (yes, my beloved Jazzercise!) which is quite literally a pain in the a@#! Unfortunately it means that not only am I unable to workout for now, but I'm on light-duty at work as well. Quite ironically I'm back to sitting on the sorest part of my body for basically 40 hrs. a week. The Dr. has me on a prescription anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxants (which I can only take when I'm not working or driving). Oh well. I would however like to say that no matter what, I'm always going to advocate exercise. The health benefits are numerous (keeps my blood pressure in check, helps to maintain a healthy body-weight, and has increased my bone density by 24% in just the last year since I started Jazzercising) and definitely out-weigh the cost of injury that's for sure. So, hopefully in short-order you'll find me back at my exercise routine (albeit carefully to start) and back in the swing of working in the Explore Collection (I miss Groovelily terribly!). For now though, you'll find me sitting on a heating-pad at my desk for most of the day.

End of vacation blues...

Well, today marks the end of my vacationing from work. **sigh** Tomorrow I'll be back at the old grind. Don't get me wrong. I have a good job and consider myself very fortunate to have it, but somehow it's always a little sad to have vacation time end. I spent the last 5 days in Oregon visiting family and friends. It's always a fine mix of emotions when I go down there. My parents are getting on in years and I know that I don't have that many more years left with them.

At any rate it's been an interesting summer in more ways than one. I spent a weekend at the beginning of the month doing a big garage sale with a couple of friends. It's a lot more fun to put together one of these with a few gal-pals I've discovered over the years. And once again I learned that people are strange. No matter that you've priced items at beyond low, there will always be people who just aren't willing to part with even the smallest amount of money for what would normally be a pretty expensive item. Case in point - All three of us ladies had gone through our purse collections and brought a whole slew of purses to sell. We'd spent all day Friday and half of Saturday selling our various purses for $2.00 each. Granted at one point I'd had a lady ask if I'd take a dollar for one and I agreed. One of my friends had brought 2 very nice real leather purses on Sat. morning to add to the sale. Later that afternoon we had a lady grab one, walk over to my other friend and in a very snotty way said "How much are the purses? 50 cents?" To which my friend said "Nope. 2 dollars." The snotty lady in a huff, marched over and put that very nice leather purse back where she'd found it. Well, I guess she showed us didn't she? We all agreed that had that same lady asked us in a much nicer way if we'd take less than $2, then we definitely would have been more than willing. As I had done with the previous lady. The old saying really is true. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Pedicures

Well, this coming Friday will be a milestone in Jazzergigi's life. At the tender age of...uh... Forty-something, I'll be going with a few lady friends to get my very first pedicure. Coincidentally, I heard on the news just this morning about a recent treatment that's popular in spas in Turkey involving flesh eating little fishies who nibble away at dead skin on one's feet.

I don't know whether or not this option is even available in the small town of Marysville. Plus I'm not sure whether I'd ever be able to actually stick my feet in a tub of these hungry little buggers without having flashbacks about movies involving piranhas, but then again if Joe's Yuckas were on hand, who knows? Jazzergigi might then be brave enough to give this a try.

For an even better look at this interesting pedicure treatment check out the YouTube

Finally!

At last, I'm offering an inside peek as to what Jazzergigi actually looks like when warming up for her Jazzercise class. Via my Meez. Although not all of the animations come across from the Meez website. I'll have to ask my fellow Jazzercise gal-pals if my feet really do look that large, and my legs that darned skinny. ;-)

Reflections

I can't believe that we're at the end of this incredible experience! I have to say that my favorite discovery in all of this is that I came to love blogging! Initially it seemed more than a little daunting to me to have my thoughts out there for all the world to potentially see. Which surprised me because I consider myself to be a rather open person, but then again I guess I can also be very private. In any case I quickly realized, along with many others I'm sure! that I was in control, and that I only had to put forth thoughts that I actually wanted others to see. Silly me!

I truly enjoyed most of the exercises. Some were a little more difficult than others, but nothing was overly so. And many were just plain fun!! The avatar comes to mind! Overall I have to say that this program affected my lifelong learning skills by teaching me that I actually still have some! I think that perhaps I was just getting to a point in my life where I was feeling that technology was moving past me and that I was helpless to keep up with it. All of these exercises, difficult or otherwise, taught me that indeed that just isn't so! And not only that, it taught me that I have more than enough capabilities to continue to learn as I move through middle-age and beyond. I couldn't be more thrilled by this knowledge.

When we first started this process I went into it thinking that I'd create a blog just long enough to complete the tasks and then I'd delete it. However, as we progressed and I added more and more to the look of it and connected to people in ways I'd never even imagined, I became completely attached. And now I can't imagine disabling it. It's become a wonderful way to connect and share with people that I'd never have had an opportunity to connect with in any other way. It's a powerful and direct channel for interpersonal communications and proved to be a fantastic morale booster as well. I know quite a few people who have become very excited and happy with this process.

Without a doubt, if another such program is offered here at SIL in the future I will participate without hesitation. Thank you for the golden opportunity!

Games

I played some Crazy Pool. Kind of fun. Although, if I play it again I need to remember to turn off that hokey little tune. I now have it stuck in my head and can't get it out! Then I had to play a little Scrabble, as it's one of my all-time favorites. Very fun! I even won. :-) I'll have to try to forget that is there as I could easily become addicted to it! Yikes.

Now I'll have to hum the theme to "Love Boat" or "Gulligan's Island" as they're two of the old theme songs that I keep in my repetoire as clearing my mind when I get a tune stuck in there that I can't get out. Weird I know. But since I was a kid it's been my own version of Mental Floss. :-)

Google Earth

I didn't have very good luck with this one. The first time Google Earth encountered an error and shut itself down. The second time it just stalled, locked up most of my computer and I had to go into Task Manager and end program. What little bit I did see seemed disappointing considering all the hoopla. The buildings were just big grey things and the two different addresses I put in (our current house and a previous address) the houses were either flat looking or really blurry when I tried to get close. But maybe that was all a part of Google Earth not responding as it should have and why it locked up. I don't know. Maybe I'll try again later, but for me it pretty much seemed like a waste of time. Sorry.

Lamenting a looong week

For some reason it's been my experience that the weeks where there's any type of Holiday involved can often be the longest week at work. Why is that? Is it the expectation of a shorter week? Although this week for me really isn't any shorter than usual, I work 10 hour days with Friday's off anyway. Still, this week seems particularly long to me. **Sigh** Although, now that I think about it, it's probably because I'm missing my Explore Partner and dear friend, Groovelily, who is right now relaxing and enjoying the sun and Bavarian fun in Leavenworth, WA. Whatever you're up to right now Groovy one, know that you're missed and that I look forward to seeing you and hearing about your trip next week.

I'd like to shout out a very heart-felt "Thank You!" to Thisandthat, who without her incredible help on Tues., we'd have been behind in the Explore Collection all week!

To all my friends, Blogger and otherwise, have a Happy and Safe!! 4th of July!

All over Avatar!! Updated 6/25/08

I couldn't even wait for the assignment to actually be due for this one. This is the most awesome internet tool ever! I'd seen a couple of these animated folks and always wondered where folks got them from. So as soon as I saw that they were next week's assignment I had to do it right away! Very fun.
Anyone who knows me at all knows that I am totally a clothes freak and a shopaholic, so the very idea that I could shop for an animated character, (not only clothing, but hair style, etc.) was simply intoxicating for me!
I went with Meez and was totally overwhelmed by all the choices. Although I was a little disappointed that the really cool stuff (like a background of a mansion, a yacht or a penthouse) were just a little too "expensive" for me right off the bat. But, I'm already saving "coinz" for 'em! LOL!!

I checked out the other Avatars a little bit, and for what I'm using my Avatar for, I much prefer Meez. From what I saw the different options for body, hair, eyes, etc. weren't nearly as good as what Meez offered. And I didn't even look at any of their clothing. I have no doubt that Meez offers far more clothing for the gal who wants to stay current with her outfits and gives a fashion crazy gal like myself more than enough clothing options to keep me up at night filling my Meez-gal's closet! And the backgrounds...wow! This girl will get to see places that I only dream of.

I saw that much like Second Life, Meez offers an online community, but that's just a bit too much for me. I already find myself crunched for time in the real world. How much worse would I make it if I started to spend time in a virtual one? Yikes. My closets and cupboards at home seriously need to be gone through! I'll keep the Avatar World of online communities in mind for retirement. ;-)

I also checked out Ms. Dewey. She's great! I totally love her attitude!

Online docs.

While interesting, I'm not sure that I'd use this much in my job, or elsewhere. It definitely doesn't seem to be as powerful as Excel, from what little I saw...And since we all have Microsoft Office, and can attach docs to e-mails without second thought, I don't see much need for this personally. Although it is nice to know that this type of stuff is available free online. I was able to upload an Excel document from my desktop to Google docs. However, I wasn't able to upload any of my Excel stuff to Zoho. I was told "Importing of .xls file is currently unsupported". Oh well. I tried. I did import a picture however.

I can really see these applications being used for those e-mails that people forward and fly around the internet but that so many folks can't open because they don't have the correct software to do so.

Ladies and Gentlemen start your Engines

I'm so used to using Google anymore that it was kind of fun to try something else. I didn't get a whole lot of different major hits on any of the metasearchers vs. Google. Although I noticed that Google is the only one that pulled up any articles that have appeared in newspapers in recent days pertaining to the subject that I searched on. And I remember from past searches with Google that I've often seen links to recent newspaper articles and I really like that. I enjoy staying current with certain subjects, so I guess I'll continue to use Google on a regular basis.

I also ended up trying out a clever search engine Searchme not mentioned in this assignment, but is linked at the Techies Page of our web site (found because it was mentioned in the June 10th "What's Up on the Web" report). Very cool to see your search results visually layed out like pages you can scroll through! I highly recommend trying that out at least once. :-)

Poddcasts

I just seemed to stumble from one weird podcast to another. I signed-up for an account with Mevio and searched the topic of library. I found some podcasts done by Emory Libraries entitled "Woodruff Library Survival Guide". Once I got past the shock of having only audio, no video, I tried to listen to one about the myths of libraries and librarians. Unfortunately the audio was too low on the production and no amount of turning up the volume could bring it up to where I could comfortably listen. My next word search for library brought up something called "Dr. Pus presents Library of the Living Dead". With the subtitle Zombies can't read. Hopefully you can. Now with a title like that one knows going in it's bound to be strange, but sometimes one's curiosity (or mine at any rate)tends to overtake one's common sense...so I listened. No way for me to describe the song I heard here, but suffice it to say Dr. Pus seems to have many voices in his head. Maybe he has them filed by dewey decimal number? because I couldn't find any reference to a real library there at all.

Next I figured I'd just peruse the site to see what I could find, and this time I searched the Video ones only. I found an interesting video podcast on getting applications for your iPhone (which would have been more helpful if I had one!), and lastly looked at a rather humerous one called "If Britney was my Mom". Funny song and video that is!!

Much like YouTube, I can definitely see how podcasting can be a very powerful teaching tool. More people can be reached using this method, because everyone is free to watch whenever they can fit it into their schedule. No having to be somewhere at a certain time. And it's conceivably saved for all time and eternity. Fun to imagine people in the future watching and learning about history as it unfolded from those who actually lived it.

Image generators

Whew! I think I got this one accomplished finally. Last week the only thing I was able to generate was a whole lot of anger with it. The first attempt I made to put a picture on a magazine cover went awry when I tried to stretch it to fit. I ended up with all the wording on it doubled and overlapping. And not precisely either. Yuck! So I tried to start over with another picture and a different magazine cover. It kept putting the original picture I'd downloaded in there with the wording from the previous magazine overlapping the wording from the second choice (grrr....) no matter how many time I downloaded the new one. I finally gave up in exasperation. Today it was pretty seamless. However, after last weeks fiasco I didn't even attempt to stretch it to fit and just left everything alone. What follows should be a picture of my cat on MEOW magazine.


Made with free image tools @ TXT2PIC.com

Down"load"ables

What an interesting process it was to get everything all set up to go for this task. It felt like a "load" for sure. ;-) At any rate, it is kind of a fun thing to play with. I was able to find a book by an author I enjoy and download it and listen to it a little. I wasn't able to find alot available to choose from, as horrors of horrors! most of it said "Place a Hold". Which I found shocking considering the format. I guess I expect too much sometimes, from technology, but I had assumed that one of the benefits of this form of media would be that patrons would have unlimited access to any one title. I had no idea that there would be such a limited supply. Seems like any and all titles that we "carry" would be available at all times. But, I guess not.

I'm not so sure how often I'd use this format, but it's nice to know it's there. Perhaps it'll inspire me to go get the bluetooth connectivity device I've had my eye on for a while now, so I can listen "cordfree" from time to time.

The iPod compatible audio books (coming soon) also will open up another range of possibilities as well. However, I assume that the same limitations will apply. Bummer.

Del.icio.us

At first I wasn't too sure about this one, but the more I use it the better I like it. I love the idea of not only being able to access all my favorites from both home and work, but I love the organization of it all! Or as was said in the YouTube tutorial on Del.icio.us, I love when "chaos becomes orderly"!!! Awesome. Now if "they" can just come up with a secure place online where I could save all the passwords I've used for setting up all the accts. I've created online over the years, I could die happy!

It's fun to just click on "tags" and "related tags" of things. Interesting to see where it leads you. I was personally excited to learn from perusing our Sno-Isle 20 for 2.0 delicious page that one can use this tool to set up your own personal "cookbook" full of recipes! That speaks to me for sure! Honestly, I think that the posibilities, when it comes to usefulness of this "social bookmarking" and using tags to manage bookmarks, are endless.

Wiki Wiki where's the wiki?

Besides just being plain fun to say the word, I can see where Wiki's can be totally useful. Wow, I can really see them being used by teachers/students. A great place on the web for everyone in one "arena" to go to gather info. as well as input it. I can see the drawback if "control" is really needed, but I'm sure that issue will (if it hasn't already) be addressed somehow. Another issue could be "organization". Some of the Wikis I looked at appeared terribly disorganized to me. At a glance it was hard for me to decide where to look first and even what exactly the info. was that the Wiki intended to convey...So as far as I'm concerned, there should probably be one person who actually "maintains and organizes" the Wiki, (a "Wiki Master") even though anyone/everyone in the group could (and even should) theoretically add to it.

It might be an interesting tool for Acquisitions as a "manual" of sorts, being that things are constantly changing in the actual processes of ordering, etc. within our dept. There are 4 of us who do the job(s), but we aren't always all here at the same time to hear the same info. being shared. The drawback could be that someone would have to always remember to go put the info. on the Wiki as changes occurred. Not to mention the fact that we'd each have to remember to check the Wiki for updates, although RSS Feeds could probably help with that! :-) That aside however, if it were kept up-to-date, and if it were kept nicely organized! I think that once it was up and going and everyone was used to using it, it could truly be extremely useful. It would simply be a matter of someone starting it. BTW -Don't look at me, I'm just the "idea" girl! lol

Jazzercise Clippers Halftime 2008 RC

I used the "share option" which made this even easier.

YouTube, etc.

Well, I seemed to have tried to get into watching a little YouTube on the wrong day. I don't know whether there are too many people signed-on, of if my computer is having problems, or what, but I'm having trouble watching any videos on there. They all want to stop and start. I did manage to suffer through the electronic glitches long enough to watch a few that were pretty good though. I liked the "Gorilla Librarian" and the "Ninja Librarian". Pretty funny. And then I tried to watch, no surprise here, one about "Exercise in the Library", but it wouldn't come up at all. Too bad. It was really highly rated. Maybe I'll try again another day. It did lead me to look up Jazzercise on there though and I managed to find one that I wanted to post on here. So I did, see above.

I like YouTube for not only the obvious entertainment value, but that it can so easily be used as a tool for instruction. I learn best by visual instruction, rather than simply reading it (as in a manual), so personally I find this tool to be extremely valuable. And as we've seen SIL has already utilized it a bit during our Web 2.0 experience. Well done.

As for the other 2, Hulu and Fancast, I'm going to have to wait until another day, hopefully soon, to deal with learning about those, as I've spent more than enough time on just YouTube today. To be continued...

Weird Headlines

Yikes. This one I can't resist commenting on today Man Caught Wearing Stolen String Bikini . I'm wondering if the reporter knows the difference between a "string" Bikini and a "thong". Although thankfully there isn't a picture accompanying the story, so I guess I'll never know the answer to that question...