Online Gaming

Oh, my...this is got a good lesson for me. I could waste a lot of time doing this! I am of the original Nintendo generation and boy, oh, boy to I love to play video games. Here are a couple that I played around with today:

Simple Game: Bejeweled
I'm a pretty big Tetrus fan, and this one resembled it a lot. Trying to line up the jewels is a good workout for my brain. It's almost a mix between doing a jigsaw puzzle and a crossword puzzle. I guess video games can really be good for your mind, right? All of the sudden I'm having flashbacks from when my Dad told me that if I played video games too much then my brains would ooze out of my ears.

Competitive Game: Hearts
This is without a doubt my favorite on-line game. It is funny...I'm very competitive, yet I seldom win at things. Oh, well. I have fun anyway. I've always been a Hearts fan, even though I'm not very good at strategizing. I thought this game was particularly fun, because it has whimsical graphics and music. It kind of makes you feel like you are in an English pub playing cards back in the day. It was very easy to set up and play. Like I said before, I could spend WAY too much time playing here!

Link to Hearts: http://www.hardwoodhearts.com/

Facebook

I am really enjoying Facebook. It's fun to search for old friends and to be able to reconnect with them so easily. I've caught up with a number of people I haven't seen in years. I like the fact that it's somewhat secure--that not just anyone can see all of my information. The "invite a friend" feature is very appealing, which puts me in control of who has access to my account.


Here is the link to my profile:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/profile.php?id=757362321&ref=profile


Here is the link to the note I posted today:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?saved&preview&suggest&note_id=38623259707#/note.php?created&&suggest&note_id=38623259707

Chatting

Chatting is so fun. It must have been invented by a girl!

I had a brief chat with a girlfriend of mine. It's a great, quiet thing to do (since my children and hers were napping). We were able to catch up on things that have happened this week and even plan for the weekend.

I think Google Talk was very user friendly. Both of us were first time users and a bit unsure how to get started. Once we got into Google Talk, it was extremely self-explainitory. I'm sure I'll use it again.

Finding Feeds

I must admit that some of this is a bit outside of my comfort zone! I feel like I'm learning by trial and error at times. I remember hearing recently, however, that "these kids today" are learning more by trial and error than by traditional teaching. So I guess I am hip and in the now.

I really liked the search tool Topix. I think the layout is very user friendly. I can easily scan the front page and locate any information I want. It is laid out my like I would organize it, so it really works for me.

I can't say the same for the search tool Syndic8. I found it a bit confusing and overwhelming at first glance.

I took a look at cnn.com today and added it to my Google Reader subscription. I noticed a feature for Yahoo! subscriptions I really liked. I could pick and choose sections from CNN to add to my RSS feed--i.e. only travel, only entertainment, etc. There didn't seem to be an option like this for Google Reader (or at least an option that I found!). It looked like I could only select the CNN web site as a whole.

"Really Simple"??? Why, Yes It Is!

I enjoyed learning about RSS readers today. It makes so much sense. I do feel like I waste quite a bit of time "surfing the Internet" and accomplishing nothing. I'll sit down to look up something quick and 45 minutes later I'm still sitting and clicking from site to site.

I subscribed to the following links:


LIS News--Library and Information Science News
http://lisnews.org/

Library Stuff
http://www.librarystuff.net/

I subscribed to the 2 sites listed above to keep my head "in the library world" while I'm raising my children. I want to be prepared when I return to work in a few years. I believe that these sites will offer information that will help me do that.


Combined Job Postings: Library Job Postings on the Internet
http://www.lisjobs.com/jobs/

This site will allow me to see what jobs are available in my field. It will be great to not only see what jobs are out there, but to see the qualifications necessary to be hired for a particular job, how often certain postions pop up, etc.


Unshelved: A comic strip about a library
http://www.unshelved.com/

Do I really need to explain why I subscribed to this site? Come on...what could be funnier! :)

Who Loves the '80's? I Do!

I had so much fun playing around with this mock magazine image generator. It is such a wonderful way to create displays, to advertise for an upcoming event, or to just be silly. I'm a bit embarrased to say how much time I spent playing around with this!

The possibilities here are truly endless!

I was amazed by how easy and user-friendly this image generator web site was. It took only seconds to completely reconfigure my design. I had absolutely no difficulties. I will definitely come back to play sometime soon!

*Images created with FD Toys Magazine Cover, found at: http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/magazine.php

Trading Cards???...but I'm a Girl!

Wow...don't I feel like an athlete!

I am one of 3 daughters. That's right...no brothers in my family. I was raised with Barbies and My Little Ponies. I did not do baseball games, karate lessons, or anything like that. I was and am 100% girly-girl.

However, I did have 3 of the coolest boy cousins to grow up with. And as girly as I may have been growing up, they were boy through and through.

Thinking about and creating this trading card brought back lots of memories from my childhood. I think among my cousins, they must have had 10,000,000 trading cards...at least. If they could see me now, they'd be impressed that I finally wised up and started trading cards!

Cats and Kids

How it all began- the story of my cats
Originally uploaded by Boered

I'm choosing to blog about cats because of my two precious children. We have a giant orange cat who looks much like the grown cat featured here.

Before we had our son and daughter, we looked at our cat as our "child". We loved that animal. After we had children, things changed a bit. Obviously, and for good reason, we didn't have as much time to spoil our cat. Our attention was drawn elsewhere. At times it would make me feel a bit guilty.

However, as our children grow they have come to take the place that my husband and I used to hold. Our cat dotes on our children. He lets them get away with whatever their hearts desire. He always sits just within reach of their sweet little hands.

As much as our cat used to need my husband and me, I think he enjoys his new "parents" even more!

Google Play

It makes me smile to think of Google as "an old friend", but the expression is quite true. I enjoyed taking a deeper look into Google last week. Just like with an old friend, there are many things that I know about Google. I did, however, find many new discoveries.

I love the fact that you can create and save documents on Google. That can save a lot of time and frustration by being able to access my info from anywhere at anytime, without being chained to a particular computer or computer disk.

The book search is great. What a wonderful tool to share with others in the library who are looking for a good book to read.

Google Scholar is wonderful. So often people think that they can get credible info on Google. Now they actually can be sure of it.

Google News is a terrific feature for our day and age. Very few of us read newspapers and sit for 30 minutes to watch the news. Even if we do those things, this feature keeps us up to the minute.

I love the Google Alert feature. As a Longhorn Fan, it would be great to get up to the minute reports on how my teams are doing.

I enjoyed my "play time" with Google this past week. I intend to get to know my old friend Google even better in the future!

7 ½ Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners

I understand the importance of being a "lifelong learner". In order to stay up to date with what is going on in the library world around me, it is crucial to keep up. After reading the list of "7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners", I see myself in a few. To be honest, however, some are a struggle.

For me, I believe the easiest habit is "Begin with an end in mind". I am a list maker. I like to be able to “check things off”, so I’m pretty good about laying things about and having a plan of attack.

On the other hand, the most difficult habit in my life is "Teaching/Mentoring others". While I do believe I am an effective teacher, sometimes I feel like if I don’t know everything, I’m at too much of a disadvantage. This mindset can keep me from “stepping up” and mentoring someone. I’m afraid I will sound unintelligent if I don’t know all of the answers.