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.