shout, sister, shout!

It's almost the end of the semester--classes will go on until Monday, May 14th, but all my class projects will be over with by this upcoming Monday the 7th. Hooray! It's high time for this semester to be over . . . or so I feel. Taking four classes and working over 20 hours a week has been mentally and physically draining. Sam and I didn't see each other during the week--thank god I made the stipulation of not working weekends when taking the jobs I had. Now we'll have the upcoming summer, where Sam will be home all day and I'll hopefully be off, working a full-time job so I can bring home some bacon and give Sam a break in that department.

And with the end of the spring semester, I was greeted with a pleasure I haven't had since my days as an undergrad student--namely, having some big project due on my birthday! This year it was a fifteen page paper and a fifteen minute presentation on an instruction program (and, for the purposes of the presentation, actually instructing a class) for a library. My specific topic was instructing senior citizens (patrons of the public library) on Internet navigation. The paper was interesting, got me to think about what all goes into having a program like this in a public library. The presentation was fun, I was able to get people to laugh and even had a few ask if they could use, in the future, what I had prepared. If you're interested in seeing my presentation, here's the links:

for the powerpoint:
http://web.simmons.edu/~wick2/User%20Instruction%20Presentation.ppt

for the instructional web site:
http://web.simmons.edu/~wick2/page1.html

So even though I had all that due on my birthday, it was still fun. Throughout the day, I got to talk to family and friends--even got a call from my buddy, Spongebob! My sister found a website (from Nickelodeon, I think)that you could request a birthday call from a cartoon. It was pretty creepy, to tell you the truth, because the association between the voice and the cartoon character wasn't there (no visual representation of the cartoon character) so I was able to associate the voice with an actual person. The more I thought of that the creepier it became.

To end the night, Sam took me to my favorite restaurant in the area--Redbones. There I stuffed myself with BBQ piggies and had a couple of great beers. I have to admit, the only reason I was reluctant to move to the area was because I didn't think it would have good BBQ.

I have the whole day to myself. Well, myself and the two projects I have to complete before Monday. I don't have work at Pine Manor College during May--they don't have the $$ to pay their part-timers during this slow month--so I'm enjoying the fact that I don't have to make that trip. If I drive it takes 45 minutes and if I take public transportation it takes 1 & 1/2 hours.

So I'll be using the rest of the day for these projects . . . but will I be able to get them done? For one thing, I'm worn out. Another, I have the wii I can play. And to add to that, they're working construction on the road outside of my house. Big noise, see below!



Since I'll be listening to jackhammering all day--then again, maybe not! I hadn't heard regular construction noises (engines, beeping, scraping, hammering, shouts, hoots and hollers at the pretty women, etc.) in a little while, so I set out to investigate. Here's what I found--at 9.00am in the morning it was already break time!



It's a hard life but somebody's gotta do it.

Enough of that, I have to cut this short and post my music of the week! My mom and dad sent me a compilation of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel, blues, and jazz guitarist/singer from the late 1930's into the 1940's. And since it's gospel music I'm playing I can't leave out Sam Cooke. Enjoy Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing "Rock Me" and Sam Cooke singing "Jesus Gave Me Water."

flickr and books and tags, oh my!

So you may have noticed that I've added some new "thingies" to the right of the blog. I've been playing around with widgets (as they're called) to see if I could pimp my blog. It's all in the spirit of trying to make this blog feel more like it's mine--that and I see other people doing really cool things with their blogs, so I wanted to do it with mine. In the future I'm going to try and fix the page's code so it opens up the space a little more--you may notice that there's a lot of wasted space on the blog, with such wide margins. It's not my fault, it's the template that blogger provides. That'll all change, hopefully after the semester ends.

I wanted to just briefly mention what those widgets on the right are. I've already talked about the flickr tag--which is really awesome--but the three books listed from my library are just as cool. These are books that I've cataloged at LibraryThing--books that I own--and this widget is giving three random books from that catalog. There's a lot of cool ways that LibraryThing has been used. I'll save that for an upcoming post (let's hope!), mainly because I've realized I haven't been blogging about my profession at all. Shameful.

The other widget is what's referred to as a "tag cloud." It's a list of tags that I've applied to websites I've tagged on delicious. This widget takes those tags and aggregates them in a visual manner so that you can tell which tags are more often applied, judging from the size and shade of color of the tag. So, you notice the tag "folksonomy" is really big and dark. That's because I've applied the tag of "folksonomy" more often than other tags, such as "destination," which is tiny and lightly-shaded. Pretty cool, huh? If you're interested in learning more about these new Internet applications, I'd suggest going to the websites themselves. Links are provided on the widget itself--just look for the little blurb.

slacker!

I find myself again in the position of apologizing to no-one for not having posted in the past few weeks. Why apologize? I don't know, absolves me of my blogging sins?

Two weeks ago I had my fiscal management course, taken over Spring Break. So while all those girls were going wild, I was keeping my shirt on and being studious. Take it from me girls, it ain't all that and a slice of pie. But at least my family wasn't ashamed of me after seeing my Spring Break escapades. The class was great, really--we had a variety of very interesting individuals who gave talks. Most notable was a board member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), who dropped this line: "last week when I was at Warren Buffett's office, I asked him what he wanted to see on accounting sheets . . ." In case you're not sure who Warren Buffett is, here's a good article from Salon, and here's the Wikipedia entry. We also had a Vice President from the Federal Reserve talk to us about media concerns and their impact on the market. Really great stuff, but it's not for everyone.

Sam and I will be going to New Hampshire this Saturday to see a few places we have pegged as potential spots for our wedding. The one I'm most excited about is the Castle in the Clouds, which isn't too pricey and is freakin' beautiful.

So I've just seen word from my friend, Jess, that he's done with the blogging experiment. Or, as he says it, there's "nothing left to write." I find that hard to believe--this from a guy who just published a book of poetry. But sometimes it can get a little silly, writing a blog that you're sure no-one reads or, much less, cares about. That and blogging makes it difficult to divide the truly personal and that-which-should-be-blogged. I know that there's enough going on in Jess' life that he could talk about, but it's not always appropriate for the blogging forum. Same goes for me--I've written one post that was lost because Firefox crashed and, in retrospect, was happy that it did because what I had written wasn't appropriate for a public forum, no matter how little it's read. Along this line, my dad had told me about a workshop he had attended, made mandatory by his employer, that discussed the implications of correspondence through the digital environment, where anything inappropriate you say can and will be haunting you at some point in the future. Just type "MySpace" and "arrest" into Google and you'll see some implications of this.

Anyway, I hope Jess will get off his duff and come back to blogging. I've been enjoying his posts, there hasn't been a dull one yet.

I've been kicking around the idea of posting a song to the blog once a week, so this will be the first one. And in honor of St. Paddy's Day, I bring you The Dubliners singing Finnegan's Wake. If you're interested in understanding what they're singing, I suggest seeing the lyrics here. Enjoy!