Social networking

I registered at Dogster.com and AnimalAttraction. I thought the regististration process was very simple, quick and easy, and the registration link arrived quickly. Dogster also warned me that since I have gmail I need to add them to my address book, as they often get stuck in the bulk mail folder. When they asked for my zipcode, I expected them to link me to others in the area who are registered, but there was nothing. I don't know if more relevant information will come up as more people register. Animal Attraction I registered for because I think its a nice idea that they will donate money for everyone who registers, and every time you log in. I saw a lot of homeless pets, back in PA. We were a vacation town, and a lot of the inner city tourists would come for the summer, pick up a pet for the summer, and then on their way back to NY, would dump them on the side of the road. So its nice to see a website doing something positive for them.

As to some of the site features, most of them were ok, but I came to find myself getting very annoyed with Dogster's local feature. It required a keyword of some type, and even when putting in nothing, it came back with no results for () found. So even leaving it blank didn't help. I did find a page with all local pet businesses, and reviews of them from members, so that will be a nice thing to have.

Loss of a Pet

We did lose a pet, 4 years ago. It was very hard for us, but even more so for our youngest son. I checked out the pet loss websites, but, to be honest, I really didn't see anything that was any different from what we already know. I DO disagree with the ASPCA website, of getting a "replacement" pet a month later. These are members of our family, and there is no replacement for them. We waited 3 years, and then I made sure to not get another cat, as I didn't want it to even seem like we were replacing her. She was a wonderful friend, and kooky enough that even my husband, who hates cats, loved her. My son still writes essays about her, whenever he has to write something serious for school. We try to remember her, whenever we can, as a way of respecting her memory. We even have a special Christmas ornament, that she always played with, that goes on the tree last, down at the bottom, where she'd whack it around. My son hangs it in his room the rest of the year. It's just like losing a person. All the information in the world doesn't help, you have to go through the grieving process and no amounts of information is really going to help that.

Pets #72

I just did Sasha's Dogage and it comes up as Sasha's DogAge is 12.8!

That's 3.2 years younger than the average DogAge for Sasha's breed. DogAge is the biological age of your dog, measured in people years. Your dog is lucky to have such a good caretaker. You can make your dog even younger by checking out the details of your results below.

And as far as the things on PetFit, we already do some of them, like Pet Tag... nobody can outrun Sasha though!!! We also play a game of Fetch in the pool with her, and race her to the frisbee, we actually have a chance of winning then!!

Pets #71

I used Petpicker, and it said I should get a cat. I can't get a cat however, because we had a cat once, and she was my youngest son's best friend. The upset he felt when she finally died was too much and the thought of getting another cat for him, even 4 years later, just wasn't going to work. About a year ago, I decided to get him a new pet, and we decided to get him a dog. I did use Petfinder and assorted other apps, but we had a particular breed in mind, and there was none available in those particular websites. I ended up finding a breeder online, through www.chron.com and purchasing a Siberian Husky for him for his 12th birthday. Her name is Sasha and we just love her to death. This is a picture of her when we first brought her home.

Short Stories for Summer Reading

Summertime is an excellent time to peruse some new short stories. The Nebula Awards Showcase 2009 is a great collection of stories, they are all award nominees, and all beautifully written. There are also several chapters on the state of SFF today, and also coverage of award nominated movies. I'd also recommend Legends which is a collection of novellas from several famous authors, such as Anne McCaffrey, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, Raymond Feist., etc . The novellas are actually new stories set in the worlds that these authors have made famous. This is where Robert Jordan's New Spring was first published.

Speaking of Robert Jordan, The Gathering Storm, Pt 1 of The Memory of Light is scheduled to be released November 3, 2009. The Memory of Light is the 3 part conclusion to The Wheel of Time, and is being completed by Brandon Sanderson, per www.Tor.com. Tor is also running a re- read of the whole series, to be completed at approximately the same time as the release. HCPL's catalog of available titles is here, and it includes the book on cd version (for those tiresome commutes) and also the link to our downloadable audiobook, that you can transfer to your mp3 player. Happy Reading!!

Money and Finance

Yes, my bank offers online banking, and I've been using it for about 4 years now. I like it very much, especially since there is no fee for it, and I'm able to pay bills online, where, if I ws paying online at the company site, there's a service fee for it. So, I 'm still able to pay online, but avoid the extra fee by using my banks website. My bank has encrypted security, with a series of security questions if they don't recognize the machine you're logging in from.

I've been using Mint.com and QuickenOnline for about 6 months now. They both have their good spots, but neither one is "the" better program. I like Quicken for its ability to text me with the most accurate up to date balances on my account, they also seem to be more up to date with their numbers. Mint is nice because it actually checks my due dates, whereas Quicken just assumes them from the last time I made a payment.

I'm pretty frugal as it is when it comes to shopping for necessities. Car salesman hate to see me coming... 8-)

Texting

Oh, am I so ALL OVER texting lol. What better way to tell the kids what chores to do without hearing the whining??? No, seriously, you don't know how good it is till you do it. We've had the unlimited texting package on our cellphone plan for over a year now. It just makes sense. $20 covers literally thousands of messages a month. I actually used to text my husband before I left work(when I was working until midnight and beyond.) so he'd know I was on the road and on my way home. As far as the NY Times article, well, duhhh. Adults should know better, teens need to be taught better. That's all part of that, oh I can do anything, nothing will happen mindset they get in their later teens. As far as text lingo, ehh, a bit. But you have to keep in mind that I was playing mmorpg's long before they were as popular as they are now, and texting lingo has actually evolved from there. We were "leet" and "noobs" long before texting was even on the horizon. LoL, we've actually had a dinner conversation, where we had older relatives with us, and after we'd finished the conversation, they looked around and said, "OK, we have absolutely NO idea what you guys all just said." It was like we were speaking a different language. I think the next step in texting should be speech to text... it would go like this. I hop in my van, turn it on the blue tooth kicks on. I say"send text to Daddy" then, my blue tooth would take my speech (Hey, do we need anything at home) and convert it to a text. Then I say "send" and it does so. Incoming text messages would be transposed to speech as well, so I wouldn't have to read his reply at a red light. Speech to text already exists, I think it just needs a little finetuning in order to be used in this manner. Robby the robot voice just doesn't cut it.

Library 2.0 is a wonderful thing. I think we should make an effort to get more of our customers to use the HCPL website, and also to participate in iHCPL. Perhaps the library can offer the iHCPL course as part of their computer training classes. It gives a very broad overview of the things that can be done online and how useful some of them can be. Also, I think it would be great if we could have perhaps a genealogy research online class, showing how to use the different services, etc. Genealogy is such a hot topic right now, and there are more and more things showing up online.

Week 9

8-( I already did a week 9 and 10, but they seem to have been sucked up in the vortex of cyberspace. No, really. LoL I suppose its possible that I didn't actually hit the publish button, but one would think that they would be saved as drafts, as I see this save about every 30 seconds or so. Ahh well. Youtube and podcasts are very entertaining, and they can even be educational at times, depending on what type of video you're watching. My youngest son has pulled up several experiments, where they walk you thru the experiment so that you can recreate it. I think his favorite was this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-UnFb-uyYI

As for Overdrive, I've been using it for quite some time now, not that you have a choice with your digital downloads from HCPL. I think its more of a dr manager then a download manager, as it is the program that tells you when your time is up with an item, and what you can do with the item while you have it, as well as telling you to"delete any copies or cds you may have burned of this" I've not actually burned anything to cd from my e downloads, so I don't know what would happen if I put one in after my "time" with the item is up.

As for podcasts, I have to be honest, I don't particularly follow them. If I see something that might interest me, then yes, I'll watch, but I prefer to read a blog (in my own time frame) then to have to watch someone else do it in their time frame. Something that would take me 30 seconds to read, and then move on to something else, gets dragged out into 3 minutes. So therefore, I'm not big on podcasts, although I did look at them for this blog.

#52 pt Deux!

In searching for the 4th grade girls books, I used Allreaders, I had to change the parameters quite a few times, but I ended up with "A Dog's Life; Autobiography of a Stray" by Ann Martin, and Smoky , the Cowhorse by Will James. I tried to use Guysread for the boys, but kept coming back with database errors. iRead was equally unsatisfactory. I finally used FictionFinder, by the OCLC, and that was superb. I didn't use the clouds (I really don't like clouds, frankly) I used the browse genre section, and found young adult horror, which led me to the results of Tricksters by Margaret Mahy, and A Pattern of Roses, by M.K. Mahy.

#52

Ok, when I used Novelist Plus to find read alikes for Robert Jordan, it came up with Stephen R Donaldson and Raymond Feist. Ok, good choices, the writing styles are similar, but definitely not imaginative, or beyond the norm. Then I used Gnooks, and they came up with Terry Goodkind and Raymond Feist. However, at Gnooks, you can keep hitting the bar and get more and more names, and when I did, I actually saw authors there I hadn't heard of before, which is a plus. However, I don't really think Terry Goodkind = Robert Jordan. Different styles of writing, Goodkind is very humorous and tongue in cheek while Jordan was all business. Overbooked has moved to a .com as of 2/28/09 and I was unable to find a similar utility there. Using What Should I Read Next gave multiple suggestions, although it also suggested the same author you had already put in, and it also gave you the option of typing in a bunch that you liked, to narrow down your results. All in all, I think the last site was by far the best, (that's prolly why I've had it bookmarked for a long time lol) I actually used that site at work about 2 weeks ago, and one of my co horts said, omg, is that a website??? She was delighted, and I'm sure a convert now as well 8-)

week 8

Zoho is actually kinda neat. Lotsa gadgets to play with, I imagine I'll be playing around over there for a few months at least. Looks a lot like the old word, but more intuitive then open office. A lot of things coming together for cloud computing. I've also started using Plaxo, its a nice service to combine all your communications in one, and its free for comcast customers (the deluxe version) Just log in with your comcast user name and pw, and you're golden. I actually heard from an old co worker I hadn't heard from in years, that was fun 8-)

Plaxo is actually a kind of social network as well, more ala facebook then myspace. Personally, I don't care for facebook, although i've had an acct for years. I tend to use Myspace, its already established for me, and even my older relatives use it, so I can update all the family at once.

Week 7

Ahh, technology. Well, I suppose a word or two about Wikipedia is necessary, so here it is...Remember, Wikipedia is controlled by the users, so don't believe everything you read there. If enough readers believe something is true, and submit that information, Wikipedia will change the entry. Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reidsville,_North_Carolina if you scroll down the page to Notable Reidsvillians, you'll see where some of the kids have expressed their opinion of the town, and enough of them logged in and agreed to it that now its posted there as fact. I had actually been looking for another town in NC, that back when we were house-hunting, one of the local kids had edited the entry to talk all about him, and how leet he was, and how he pwnd Wikipedia, but I can't remember the name of the town. So just be careful with that one, and make sure you always back up your research. Its like that email from the president of Zumbawe, if ya know the truth, its funny, if ya don't, there's trouble ahead!!

Week 7, pt 2...

Ahhh, something technology related.. where would I even start?? lol I am LOVING the fact of cloud computing, and how I can access just about anything from anywhere...not that I don't love my laptop, but lugging it about can get very tired!! My whole life revolves around my laptop, here is where I pay my bills, keep up with relatives, research genealogy, play my games, keep track of my banking and investments, my family's insurances and medical profiles. And now, with the help of certain websites, like Mint, and Quickenonline, I can actually have balances of accts sent via text message once a week, just to keep me in sync with what's going on where, without actually having to go to the websites and ck for updates.

Week 4 exercise

Ok, ok, I know I'm a bit out of order, but hey, its early, and I'm still on my first cuppa. Frankly, the newsreaders and RSS feeds are overrated. I find it much easier to co-ordinate them all on my iGoogle homepage. I've been using it for years, and I have most of what I like already there. I find new things usually by hitting my computer spots, such as ZDnet, when I'm checking out new software options.

Library 2.0 week 6

I love Library 2.0 In my thoughts, libraries were always to maintain information,and make it available to the people that need it, and Library 2.0 takes it to the next step. Totally wired, able to access things at a moments notice. And I don't think in any way it will decrease the number of people actually going to the physical site of the library. Books are a love, and people still at times need that actual book in their hands. I lust for a Kindle, however, when my husband said, ok so that means you won't be buying more (physical) books, I looked at him like he had three heads. (Not two, but THREE!!)My Kindle would be used for periodicals, and those books that I have an interest in reading once, but would probably not want to keep around all the time. The physical books are for the stories I want to curl up in a chair with. And I can't think I'm so different from most of the bibliophiles out there!

Bibliophilia is not to be confused with bibliomania, an obsessive-compulsive disorder involving the collecting of books to the point where social relations or health are damaged, and in which the mere fact that an object is a book is sufficient for it to be collected or loved. Some use the term "bibliomania" interchangeably with "bibliophily" and in fact, the Library of Congress does not use the term "bibliophily," but rather refers its readers to either book collecting or bibliomania.^[1] The New York Public Library follows the same practice.^[2]

(Credit: Wikipedia)

As for Technorati, its ok, but honestly, there are so many services and websites these days that just seem redundant. I'll have to putter around there a bit more, but one of my reader services does the same thing. Actually, my iGoogle page does just about the same thing....

Tagging is helpful, works wonderfully with google as well, and it is certainly a great reference to do research by.

Next Step/Week 5

Well, I've done all the next steps in the list. Most of it was stuff I already knew, some of it I knew of, but hadn't had an interest in. The most disappointing was Library Elf. Now, they want you to pay for it, and you get the most annoying emails (Trial!!! 4 free remaining!!) the countdown till =gasp= I would have to pay to get the reminders... This might be a useful service to those who only have small rural libraries, that don't have the power of the internet at their beck and call, but in dealing with my library system, it already does all that, so all I'm getting is repeat information, ususally much later then hcpl's, that they want to charge me for. I genuinely like Library Thing, and might actually pay for the membership, and the scanner, so I can just scan in all my books at home. How convenient to be able to just shoot to the website to find out where am I in a series! As for the image generators, well, I actually enjoy the ones at Pogo more.

Created by Train Horns

Avatars

This is an avatar I created using Photoshop and some of my toons from Eqoa.

astraldragon

astraldragon
Originally uploaded by BobbiH2008

I love that site!!

11-10-07_1132

My boys....
11-10-07_1132
Originally uploaded by BobbiH2008

Internet Safety (hee hee!)

Ok, Ok, perhaps I'm a bit blase, because I've been around the net a couple bazillion times, but I don't really worry a lot about security. My home network is secure, I don't put financial information into a web app that isn't secured (just look for the little padlock!) Yes, I know sometimes they do fail, but, ya know what? I've been shopping and paying bills online for prolly about 6 years now, and never once have I been hacked for my financial info. However!! I've had to change debit cards twice because of using my card at a stone and mortar store BJ's (like Costco and Sam's Club) because employees were stealing the cc info. So which is more secure? The plain fact of the matter is you're just as much at risk handing your card to that clerk in the grocery store, as you are going to Amazon, perhaps a bit more so at the grocery store, because most of the financial transactions online are handled by computers, whereas, in the store, multiple people have access to your information. As for stalkers, pervs, etc., again, they're going to find you if they want to, whether it be online, at the store, washing the car, walking the dog. I think some good common sense should prevail here, and there wouldn't be as many issues as have been reported. Besides that, what would the tv news shows have to do special segments on, if there weren't so many reports of id theft??

Well, here we go!

Well, here goes the blogging. I've never been particularly attracted to it, I've thought about it a few times, as is evidenced by the fact that I actually set up this account at Blogger in 2006. Ok, ok, so it took me a while to post something... shoot me already! As far as learning, and what I've had issues with so far in this iHCPL series, nothing really 8-) I just can't register yet through Harriet, as I'm blogging from home, on my trusty dusty laptop. (And it really is dusty, seems like its a dust magnet, although I'm attached to it for most of my time at home!)