Yikes! That was really depressing.

I just reread the post from Saturday. Hokey smokes! I guess I was a little depressed at the time. What happened after that was nice, though, because I got to play for a retreat at the diocese and got a bit of a spiritual booster shot in time for Holy Week. It was conducted by Father Luis Rodriguez and he really rocked it. I think every "cradle" Catholic should have to go through RCIA. There's some good stuff.
Tomorrow I have to go to a conference at the diocese and learn about how to protect the school's network from unscrupulous employee blogs and nasty searches. Sounds like fun. Oh, well.

Stupid, stupid brain

It's Saturday morning and I've been up since 5:15 -- the time I get up every day. I'm waiting for 8:00 so I can call Jinny (my sister) ((the one with cancer)) and catch up. We talked on Tuesday and she's right--the cancer dominates and colors everything, every conversation, every memory, every plan. I think about calling Jinny and the second thought is, "I wonder how much more time I'll have to do this."

Damn internet. Damn modern life. It's too easy to find out things you don't want to know. It's too easy to lose focus. I teach information skills and I'm beginning to think I'm being overloaded with it. Perhaps I should join the fundamentalists and move somewhere I can get all this junk out of my house.

Working on 2.0

I have spent the last several weeks trying to collect information on good Web 2.0 apps to use for the presentation at Trinity. It's so easy to get lost in fiddling around with things that are so cool. It's too easy to lose focus on the reason I am doing it all. I've worked in Webspiration and created a Wiki so I can list the apps I use in the presentation. I intend to list a lot of the things I find right here, as soon as I can figure out how to do some of them. Yeah, right.

Nice, Quiet Day

Today was a perfect day for staying in my robe until I absolutely had to get dressed -- cool & damp. I worked on my proposal for the Dio Conference presentation and started poking around in Webspiration.
Mind Mapping software is a good thing for folks who need visuals to keep themselves focused--like me. My mother probably would have given her checkbook to anyone who could map my thoughts. If they had this kind of technology around when I was a kid, I probably wouldn't have spent my entire school career thinking there was something wrong with my brain. I knew I was smarter than my test scores. That's probably why I spend so much time with kids who need the kind of help I can offer. With the right approach and application, I can give the kids who can't take tests an opportunity to show that they really know the material if you give them some time and a leg up.
So I signed up for Webspiration (beta) which is free for the time being. Who knows what they're going to ask for it once they're done with the trial. The software is not cheap at all. Soon afterward I got an email from them that they're going to stop adding accounts on the 18th. I just got in. So now I have something else to play with. But if it goes like I want it to, it will make the presentation that much cooler.
I also got started on a Wiki. I figure I'll need one for after the presentation so I can post my information on it for people who lose the handouts.
You can check out the progress.

http://mywebspiration.com/view/116168a32d39

100 Undiscovered Websites

I've become a champion of Web2.0. Spending over 30 years in a Catholic school you get used to looking for cheap, or better yet -- free. So, when PC Magazine had an article about the top 100 Undiscovered Websites, you'd better believe I was on it.
There they were -- a treasure trove of goodies for the teacher of technology to download and begin sharing. Gotta love it.

The grandboys and I had fun with Totlol last night -- looking up videos of kittens falling off ledges and laughing at dogs morphing. Totlol is YouTube for kids -- filtered for content and of age appropriate.

Viewzi Power Grid is one of the best search tools I've ever seen. Put in what you want to search and up pops the website index pages to browse. I'm going to see how to put the links on this blog.

Earth Album Alpha -- a mash up between Google Earth and Flickr. Click on any part of the world and up comes beautiful photos of the sights.

SearchMe -- another Visual Search. You can look for videos and music as well as pages. Ask for The Beatles and you can even find a choral arrangement of Michelle by the Kennedy Chorus (if you really want to hear it.) As for videos -- most of the ones I looked at were YouTube, however, instead of offering other things similar but unrelated, it has a plethora of videos by the artists right there to scroll through.

There was lots more besides, so I'll put in the link to the article.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2174685,00.asp (good stufft)

The Dow is Up (and so am I)

Went to Andi's today to see Theo. We played all morning while she went to the doctors. I don't remember having this much fun with my kids, although I'm sure I did from time to time. The great thing about going to see Theo is that I have nowhere else to go and nothing else to do except rummage through his toy box and put stacking toys together. At that moment, there was nothing more important in this world -- not work, not Church, not cleaning the house (joke). Just me and the boy wrassling on the floor and dancing to the ABC song.

The Dow is still Down

Sitting on the heating pad while trying to get the back to settle down, I'm watching the smiling babes at CNN worry about the Dow. It's below 7000. I don't like to think about the Dow or the NASDAQ or any other acronyms that mean numerical trouble for us. I don't understand them, and have never been able to figure out exactly what the numbers and arrows mean. That's not a good thing to admit since they have a direct effect on what happens in my life and the lives of those I love. I do understand that down is bad and up is good. I guess, since I don't know anything about Wall Street and the suits that run everything, I'll have to put my faith in the people who do, or say they do. Certainly, the Prez is thinking about it, and that's his job. Mine is to keep working for my paycheck and trust that I can keep doing that until I win the lottery.

It always makes me think about the stories of the Great Depression that my dad would tell. His favorite (and mine) was about a boy he knew in his one room schoolhouse who was so poor that he would go to the creek with two pieces of bread and catch a grasshopper to put between the slices for lunch (yeech). Whether it was true or not it made his daughters squeal and that was certainly the effect he wanted by the telling of it.
He'd talk about how he was born in one room and chicks were hatching in another and that it was more important that the chicks survived than him.

From listening to his stories and those my grandmother told of the abuses of the Industrial Revolution, I must conclude that we have quite a ways to go before we get as desperate as those who lived through those times.

Who knows, perhaps if we did get desperate enough we could produce another generation like that one.