August 2006 Archives

I know it's distracting, but one thing I love about organizing is finding old pictures. Then I usually sit there and think, "oh yeah, I remember this." Well I found some old pictures that weren't in their spot...I liked them so I'm blogging them.

This one of Alex and I was taken at Josh & Stacie's wedding, outside of the chapel. I don't know why I remember this, but I remember that the flowers at Carthage were especially beautiful that day...not that they're not usually beautiful, a running joke at Carthage is determining how much of our tuition money pays for the landscaping on campus.

The rest of these pictures are on the day of me and Alex's wedding rehearsal. This picture is me and my dad. The only significant thing you need to know is that it's a picture and my dad and I are both smiling in it...somebody must have said something funny. This reminds me that my dad's birthday is tomorrow and I need to call him...

I've always wondered what I was thinking at this exact moment. I was obviously deep in some thought. I was also obviously ignoring whatever was going on at our rehearsal (sorry Pastor Pete).

I must have been happy because I was smiling a lot this day...I suppose weddings just do that to me :)

This is Alex plus his wedding party, minus Josh...I wonder where Josh wandered off to? Anyway, from left to right is Justin, Alex, Brian F., and Robert (Alex's brother, can you tell?) I know I have some other great pictures of these guys in our wedding photos somewhere.

I get sentimental, can you tell? I especially love weddings...even ours, as disastrous as it actually turned out. Actually I hate to call our wedding disastrous because after everything that happened (our DJ didn't show up and Alex's car got totaled, it's a great story), I wouldn't trade our wedding in for anything. It was ours and I loved every horrible minute of it...

Tags: pictures, weddings, wedding, people

I recently got the brochure for the upcoming Homecoming celebration at Carthage in the mail...in big, bright letters on the front it says, "Carthage Beach Party". Can I just say...what were they thinking? My recollections of Carthage during Homecoming does not conjure thoughts of a beach party, that's for damn sure. Instead it conjures thoughts of freezing my ass off in the stands during the football game, with a trumpet frozen to my face, the wind whipping off of Lake Michigan, while I'm counting the seconds on the game clock and wishing it were time to leave so I can go back to my room and drink something hot (or alcoholic).

So why did I do it? Pep Band was the best paying job on campus, and Homecoming weekend usually raked in a good $100-$150...it was worth it...despite the fact you don't have time to think the whole weekend.

Why do I go back? I don't know, it seems like everything I hated about Homecoming when I was in school I love about it now. I mostly just love seeing all of my friends again, that's more than worth going back to visit for. I even love the football games, the beer tent, the hill (although it was lame the last time we went), going to the Boathouse or Ron's with friends, Alumni Choir and Recital...I can enjoy all of those things now, I couldn't really enjoy any of it before.

Still not sure about this beach party thing though...anybody care for a dip in Lake Michigan this October? Didn't think so...

Tags: carthage, beach party, homecoming

Confessions

Something strange happened to me today...I listened to this CD and I liked it. Country music, and now Usher? Something must seriously be wrong with me.

I only got it from the library because it was in the MyStrands recommendation engine based on the stuff I've already listened to. I guess something can be said for these recommendation things...I would've never picked this one up myself.

Technorati : music, mystrands, rap, rhythm and blues, usher

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

I've been catching up on all the books that I should've read a long time ago, but hadn't had time. Freakonomics was one of those books...plus I was getting to a point where all of the recent books I've been reading are referencing these other ones I haven't...I figured I should read them. I absolutely love this book! Levitt actually made economics interesting, although I'm weird enough to think that it's probably already interesting (especially since I think math and numbers are interesting). Levitt shows us that there's probably a good reason for everything, and one that we probably didn't expect.

I think there will be a revised edition of this book coming out later this year, I'm curious if there will be more scenarios added, or if it's just elaborating on the scenarios already there.

I'm working on the household finances today (huge mess, I've been such a slacker)...well as I was going through my bank statements I found something that made me laugh. Some time ago Alex bought some bagels from Tim Horton's for his lab...well the guy behind the counter accidentally charged our bank account $1552.24 for the bagels...oops. Alex had to call the bank and explain everything and Tim Horton's had to do some stuff (call or fax the bank or something), it luckily got fixed the same day, but it was pretty funny. I hope the guy at Tim Horton's didn't get into too much trouble from it.

Technorati : bagels, expensive, tim horton's

When I switched to MT I basically just recreated my old blog (again) in a different software...I realize this blog has gone through now 2 transformations like this...I also realize that the width of my blog is a little too small. I'm too busy right now to fix it but I should throw that up on the to-do list. I read an article on Jacob Nielson's blog recently about designing fluid page widths to accomodate the people who have 800x600 screen resolutions...but we should really be designing for 1280x800...which for once I totally agree with him. I've hesitated using a fluid design, only because some of them do annoy me (I like the centered on the page look...not fixed to the left side of the browser). Once I thought about it more, I also realized that I would need to get more creative with my banner if I were to do that too...the banner would have to move with the page width. I actually have some ideas of how to do this without actually changing the way the banner looks ('cause I do kinda like it), but that would take more time than I have.

So in the meantime...my blog will be cramped up in the tiny margins until I get some time to fix it the way I want it...sorry. Every time I venture into CSS land, it ends up taking me a lot more time than I thought it would...especially when I start testing my site in different browsers...just thinking about it makes me tired so I'm going to leave it this way for awhile.

Technorati : blog, site, site design, web design, website

I don't like country music but you would think I did if you looked at some of the music I've been listening to these days. Unfortunately my computer speakers are broke (thinking about taking my computer in to get that checked out today), so I've been listening to music the old fashioned way...on a stereo. It's really hard to explain what I like and what I don't like when it comes to the country genre. I don't like people like Garth Brooks or Kenny Chesney, or anybody like that. I can tolerate the more poppy sort of country (Lee Ann Rimes sort of stuff), if it was on the radio I would listen to it...but I don't listen to pop music much anymore either. Here's where it gets tricky though, I love bluegrass and folk rock sort of music. I even like the old school country singers, Kenny Rogers and Willie Nelson were two of my favorites when I was really young. I grew up all old school rock and roll and I don't think you can appreciate rock and roll much unless you have an appreciation for its roots...country, folk, and blues mostly. When I recently visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame I watched a movie presentation on rock and roll and I remember Tom Petty saying about the same thing in the video. My favorite quote was when he said that, "rock and roll is the bastard child of music". It totally is, and that's really one of the reasons why I love it so much. I'm not exacly sure why bluegrass appeals to me but not the new school country music though. I think though, if you were to ask me if there is a purely American type of music, I would say that it's American folk and bluegrass. Even though Jazz and Rock are both born out of American tradition I don't think I could say either one of these are purely American. Anybody who's studied music, including Jazz, can easily see the European influence in that type of music, especially in the structure and harmony. Jazz is a combination of influence, just as rock is, and rock is even more so considering that jazz influenced it (as well as bluegrass and country). Bluegrass, on the other hand, was created in remote parts of country, where European musical influences were quite absent. That's my opinion though, I'm sure others might disagree. I appreciate a lot of different types of music, even if I don't listen to all of it though.

I did want to review what I'm listening to right now that falls into the "country" category...some of it is more bluegrass, but there are some pretty incredible albums out there right now.

Have you heard about this 62 year old woman whose search results were revealed from AOL due to them publishing them on the internet? I hope people were paying attention, even though AOL stripped names from the results that they published, somebody at the Times was still able to identify her and now her phone is ringing off the hook. I think the woman is still baffled about this herself, but I like the quote she had here:

It's like someone going into your mailbox, looking at your mail and putting it back. If someone did that, they would go to jail.

If anything this whole AOL thing should make us realize that we're not as anonymous as we think we are online. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, I just think that we need to pay a little bit more attention to what these companies are doing with our information...that's all. It also should be an indicator as to how personal searching is. I love this Slate article in response to the AOL thing and how people search...the numbers junkie side of my personality loves this stuff too, so I do see some good in what AOL did...albeit still scary...

I'm thrilled that our camping trip from last fall is getting a lot of mileage from the Absolute Michigan site, we did go to a ton of great places in Michigan though. Anyway, Destination Michigan did a slideshow of the Whitefish Point lighthouse and museum, many of my pictures are included here. Then on their blog site, Michigan in Pictures, my Whitefish Point Lighthouse picture was featured. I just added these not too long ago, even though it's been almost a year now since our trip...slowly but surely I guess, I took over 200 pictures on this trip. I'm almost done though, and I really think the best pictures are yet to come.

I have to marvel tat this Whitefish Point picture I took though, I can hardly believe that 1. this is something I took, and 2. this came from my camera to begin with. It's simply beautiful. I should make some sort of poster, postcard, or something with this.

My husband and I were talking about going camping again in September, this time I was thinking about somewhere along the Lake Michigan coast in Michigan (we'll be spending time at the other coast in Wisconsin when we go to homecoming in October). I do enjoy traveling around the state though, it's been a lot of fun. I have to also force myself to remember that we went to Northern Wisconsin on that same trip, it amazes me that we visited so many great places in only 1 week!

Tags: travel, michigan, pictures, whitefish point, lighthouse, museum

Secret Society Girl: An Ivy League Novel

I vowed to start reading a little more fiction these days. I don't know why I don't, they go by so fast for me, this book only took a couple of days for me to get through. I really enjoyed Secret Society Girl, but I have to admit it was mostly because the experiences of Amy Haskel is similar to the history of my own fraternity. Well, minus it being an ivy league situation and it being an actually "well-known" organization that is critical to your future career possibilities. I could totally relate though. Amy is the first of 5 girls initiated in the most influential secrety society on her presitgious campus, although a few of the alumni have taken issue with decision and decide to put up a good fight.

My own organization had a similar experience, but we were expelled by our national organization (way before I ever joined), as well as other chapters that also initiated women at the same time. From my understanding, our local chapter is the only one of those initially expelled to even exist today, quite an accomplishment, I think. Anyway, the book was a nice easy read.

Technorati : book, college, fiction, ivy league, school, secret society, women

Happy Anniversary!
Originally uploaded by heidigoseek.

My husband is awesome, today is our 3rd wedding anniversary and he sent me flowers at work! He's the best!!!!!!!!!!

Flickr : anniversary, flowers, motorola

While I was perusing the DOPA tools at the YALSA blog I noticed a post related to digital copyright which was pretty interesting. The post is called, Who Owns What? and it pertains to educating teens to content uploaded to the various social networking sites, sites like YouTube and MySpace for example. While this doesn't just pertain to teens, I think it's with this generation that the lines between what's acceptable and what's not start to fade...I got my own taste of how little teens understand of this issue at work myself, and to be honest with you, I don't blame them for not understanding...copyright is confusing, and it even contradicts itself. I think for this reason it's important for librarians to help all of our patrons understand, especially teens, and to promote education of copyright issues in our libraries.

YALSA also brings up a good point about teens as creative owners of content though:

You Tube, My Space, and other social networking sites terms of service aren't necessarily bad, (It really takes a lawyer to make complete sense out of them.) but it's important that teens know about the terms of service on the sites they use. And, don't forget, teens also need to know about Creative Commons and how to license the content that they create for sharing, mashing, and/or non-commercial (or commercial) use.

Many more kids are creating content online and I think these issues will start making more sense to them when they're on the other side of copyright. While I worry that many teens don't understand why it's important to protect intellectual property rights, I think that my worries could be premature. It could be that once teens are actively participating in the creation of this content it might actually click for them. It's really hard to say, but in the meantime I think librarians can certainly help them out as much as we can...and of course it's kind of hard to help kids participate in the creation of online content if the government decides to ban sites like Flickr, MySpace, and YouTube from our computers...let's hope it doesn't get to that point either.

Tags: library, libraries, youtube, myspace, creative commons, copyright, intellectual property

I just wanted to get out some of the DOPA news and other DOPA things I've been collecting.

First of all, YALSA did publish a great set of tools to use when talking to people about DOPA and contacting your representatives regarding the issues. It can be found on their teentechweek wiki. Here's a list of the great stuff they have there for you:

• Teens & Social Networking in School & Public Libraries Toolkit
• DOPA Information Packet
• Legislative Advocacy Guide
• My Space for Parents (from Imaginon)
• Smart Blogging (from Hennepin County Library)

Then some disturbing posts I read later last week regarding the proponent's of DOPA next target...Flickr. I initially found this news as a post on the Libraries and Librarians Flickr Group, but it's popped up in a couple of other places since then. Those people against Flickr are asking libraries to ban the site from their computers (some have already, sadly) because "there is an entire subculture within [the] network that poses grave danger to [their] children." These concerned library patrons have apparently found loads of porn on Flickr, including child porn. I would actually like to know where, because I've been a paying member of Flickr for some time now and I have never even accidentally stumbled across anything that I would consider pornographic! As a matter of fact, many of the librarians who have read this particular letter floating around the internet have tried to search for these "disturbing images" and all have come up empty handed. I'm sorry, but if librarians can't even find the images, I'm thinking they don't exist. Flickr has a strict policy against this type of stuff and they take it very seriously...if I had kids, them using Flickr would not be a concern of mine. For another post on the subject, try the ALA Techsource Blog, Michael Stephens has a good post on the DOPA/Flickr/Social Networking software thing. And don't forget to contact your senator regarding the issue...it's really really really important that we stand up against DOPA, protect free speech in the library, and let these people know that these sites are not evil or scary and they need to teach their kids social responsibility online!

Oh yeah, and I'm happy to see that MIT's Technology Review took aim at DOPA with a great article...currently it appears on the top of their homepage...we need more people like this to get the word out!

Tags: dopa, library, libraries, librarians, social networking, social networking software, flickr, tools

I used to read Zach Braff's Garden State Blog, I knew he was switching it to zachbraff.com, but I haven't been keeping up with it. I loved reading what Zach wrote on his blog before, and I love his new blog...I'm definitely going to bookmark it again.

Zach also has a MySpace page, I can't wait to be #5294 on this friends list. My friends list so far is devoted to people I know personally, but I have to add Zach, he's very respectful to his fans, a refreshing change to a lot of well known people these days...plus he's funny as hell...

Tags: zach braff, blogs, celebrities, myspace, blog, celebrity blog

I had to laugh a little when I saw this post in Slashfood about people dipping their fries in Wendy's Frosty. I used to work at Wendy's so this practice is not new to me, a lot of people who I worked with did this, along with dipping their french fries in mayo (ick). While I've never done any of this myself, I did other weird stuff with Wendy's food. What I used to do with Frosty is mix it with coffee. My friend and I would order 2 cups of coffee, half full, and then one small Frosty, then we would combine the Frosty and the coffee together in the coffee cup...it is so yummy. Then back when they used to have the pitas, I would use pita filling to make a yummy salad, it was usually better than any of the normal salads. I think my most favorite though, is taking the leftover spicy chicken after we closed and making chicken nuggets out of it...I would usually eat these driving home after work...I loved dipping it in the nugget honey mustard sauce. Actually, it was doing this the first time that I realized that the nugget honey mustard made a far better sandwich sauce than the stuff they usually put on the grilled chicken...I have ordered plain chicken sandwiches with a side of honey mustard sauce before...

I guess most of us who worked there had our favorite things...I still order my Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers the same way (mayo, ketchup, tomato, onion, lettuce), and I prefer the taco salad seasoning in my chili rather than the chili sauce (although I don't know if they have the taco salad stuff anymore...and you have to add cheese and onion to the chili of course). I like it though, because Wendy's is the only place where I don't have to think about what's on the menu before I go there...I just have to decide what weird things I'm going to put on my sandwich instead.

Tags: wendy's, fast food, frosty, wendy's frosty, french fries