Ok, I have vowed not to be negative toward technology in my blog this week. However, I do have a couple of good reasons why I could be negative. I will spare you the drama and just say that I am very happy I did not lose any masterpieces over the course of the week.
As I sit here, I am once again trying to think of things to say. Our wiki group did get our wiki established this week. I think we are on a good-paced track. Kathy is keeping us well up-to-date on everything that needs to take place over the next few weeks. I was actually able to set up a test page on the class wiki.
I guess I could talk about technology in a different sort of light. I am going to think of ways in which technology has enhanced my life over the past 30 years.
1) Hmmmm……….
2) You know, maybe its not that it has enhanced my life, maybe it’s that it has made me more requiring of it. Such things of this caliber include:
· Electric car windows
· Tape and CD ability in my car
· Ability to work/locate articles for school papers from home
· Typing out my papers in Word - spell check, re-writing of my grammatically deficient papers
· Although often times frustrating - Microsoft Office in general makes school work much easier
· Internet - being able to locate all kinds of cool stuff
· Instant updates on banking statements
· Credit Card acceptance in fast food restaurants or pretty much anywhere for that matter
· ATM machines
· Pay at the Pump - absolutely one of the best technological achievements yet
· Internet access of weather radar so I know whether I am going to stay dry while riding my bike or running
· Cell Phones – Although I have never come close to using all of my minutes, I no longer own a landline and only about ten people know my number. I can call anybody, anytime, from anywhere, because I keep my cell phone with me at all times. It is also very handy when I have an “emergency” and get to wake my husband up from a snoring sleep to come get me. That is the coolest part of having a cell phone.
· Digital cameras – Boy, with over 2,000 pictures downloaded to my computer, you would never know that I love my doggies and the instantaneous picture developments
· Self-checkouts – Oftentimes much faster and more personable than a slightly warm body standing there putting your groceries together in the wrong bags.
I could probably keep going, however I believe most of us could say that a majority of these things are important to all of us. I finally did away with owning a TV in 2001. I did not have a problem with getting rid of that, but I wonder how inconvenienced I would be if I no longer had my cell phone, internet and pay at the pump? At this point, I feel no need to do away with any of my mentioned technological conveniences. I did however, have no problem making this list, I hope as new technological conveniences come along, I won’t become as accustomed as I have to these!!
Talk to you next week.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Blog #6
I can say this week I am at a total stand still as to what I could put in a blog. Our group did meet with our wiki client, Michelle Farley. Everyone seems to be very interested in getting started. However, we are in limbo until we get an answer from Dr. Ball as to exactly who is going to set up the wiki space.
I was sitting here trying to think of something to write about in my blog. Having nothing come to mind, I googled “modern technology.” The only thing that looked remotely interesting was an article about amber that was found in France in 1997. Due to my religious beliefs, I have a difficult time measuring the earth in millions of years, but the article indicated that this amber was developed many millions of years ago. It noted that at the time it was developed, France would have been in the tropical zone. France being in the tropical zone was of some interest to me.
I also went to Wired magazine. I clicked on the title: The Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits — to You. The article address is: http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2008/ff_secretlife_1602 What you may find interesting about this article is the very in-depth and detailed; should I say it? Fl, Fl, Fl, Flow-chart diagram. UGH. Flow-chart diagramming. Have we not had enough of that in the last two weeks? This diagram is all color coordinated with all kinds of neat features. It was definitely produced by a computer techy type geeky person. More power to him or her!
Because I have had so much on my plate with school this semester, I have been unable to read as I should. Therefore, I checked out Tony Dungy’s audio book Quiet Strength. Now there is a book well worth listening to or reading. I recommend this book to anyone struggling with life and wondering what he or she can do to cope. His message is very simple and well integrated with his life’s work. I suggest listening to it on audio book, because Tony reads the book and makes it more personal sounding.
Well, that is all for now. Talk to you all next week.
I was sitting here trying to think of something to write about in my blog. Having nothing come to mind, I googled “modern technology.” The only thing that looked remotely interesting was an article about amber that was found in France in 1997. Due to my religious beliefs, I have a difficult time measuring the earth in millions of years, but the article indicated that this amber was developed many millions of years ago. It noted that at the time it was developed, France would have been in the tropical zone. France being in the tropical zone was of some interest to me.
I also went to Wired magazine. I clicked on the title: The Life Cycle of a Blog Post, From Servers to Spiders to Suits — to You. The article address is: http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2008/ff_secretlife_1602 What you may find interesting about this article is the very in-depth and detailed; should I say it? Fl, Fl, Fl, Flow-chart diagram. UGH. Flow-chart diagramming. Have we not had enough of that in the last two weeks? This diagram is all color coordinated with all kinds of neat features. It was definitely produced by a computer techy type geeky person. More power to him or her!
Because I have had so much on my plate with school this semester, I have been unable to read as I should. Therefore, I checked out Tony Dungy’s audio book Quiet Strength. Now there is a book well worth listening to or reading. I recommend this book to anyone struggling with life and wondering what he or she can do to cope. His message is very simple and well integrated with his life’s work. I suggest listening to it on audio book, because Tony reads the book and makes it more personal sounding.
Well, that is all for now. Talk to you all next week.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Blog #5
Well, after a rather stressful week of finishing papers and stressing over how I am going to handle working with teams in all three of my classes, I guess I am ok. I keep thinking about that light at the end of the tunnel coming on May 11th.
I have had one irritation with technology this week. My group in management class conducted an interview for one of our upcoming presentations. Two out of the five members were unable to attend the interview due to work. One of the two was me. I was not overly concerned about missing it, until I received an email from the member who taped the interview. The email started something like “sorry, but……” My heart instantly sank to my feet. I did not have to read another word. Therefore, once again, technology has failed to deliver. Now I must rely on everyone’s notes. What is funny though, it reminded me about the blog I left a comment on last week. The woman, due to technology malfunctions, ended up copying five pages of the same information that she had already typed into the database. Overall, she printed five sheets of paper, used an envelope and a stamp for something she was suppose to be able take care of online. Because the recorder for our interview did not work, three members must reorganize their notes, type them out, and make two sets of copies or email them to the two of us. Of course you know what we are going to do with them? That’s right—print them! One of the team members has also attempted twice to send needed information to another member, but to no avail.
I sometimes feel that I tend to be rather negative towards technology and I guess I am. However, everyone is always commenting about the shortness of life. Can you imagine if you added up all of the hours that everyone has wasted trying to get some sort of a technological device to work correctly; how many years or even lifetimes that would be counted? I bet the number is mind staggering.
I hope that next week I will be in a more technologically positive mood. Until then, Happy Valentines Day!
I have had one irritation with technology this week. My group in management class conducted an interview for one of our upcoming presentations. Two out of the five members were unable to attend the interview due to work. One of the two was me. I was not overly concerned about missing it, until I received an email from the member who taped the interview. The email started something like “sorry, but……” My heart instantly sank to my feet. I did not have to read another word. Therefore, once again, technology has failed to deliver. Now I must rely on everyone’s notes. What is funny though, it reminded me about the blog I left a comment on last week. The woman, due to technology malfunctions, ended up copying five pages of the same information that she had already typed into the database. Overall, she printed five sheets of paper, used an envelope and a stamp for something she was suppose to be able take care of online. Because the recorder for our interview did not work, three members must reorganize their notes, type them out, and make two sets of copies or email them to the two of us. Of course you know what we are going to do with them? That’s right—print them! One of the team members has also attempted twice to send needed information to another member, but to no avail.
I sometimes feel that I tend to be rather negative towards technology and I guess I am. However, everyone is always commenting about the shortness of life. Can you imagine if you added up all of the hours that everyone has wasted trying to get some sort of a technological device to work correctly; how many years or even lifetimes that would be counted? I bet the number is mind staggering.
I hope that next week I will be in a more technologically positive mood. Until then, Happy Valentines Day!
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Blog #4
This week I can say I have not learned anything new technologically. Instead, I strolled down memory lane to the first computer class I took as a child. I first must mention that I was raised in a traditional family setting. My father owned an Indiana limestone business and my mother was a homemaker. I am an only child. We owned two T.V.’s, however, cable was not allowed. At one point, we owned the game that played Pong on the TV set. We quickly lost interest in Pong and allowed the server box to collect dust until my mom got tired of looking at it and pitched it. My grandparents did have cable and eventually bought the grandchildren an Atari. I spent a lot of weekends during high school at my grandparents playing Atari and watching MTV.
For the majority of my childhood I was under the impression, due to my mom’s lack of confidence in technology, and my father never mentioning it, I thought that computers and technology would be a passing societal phase. That was why I was shocked when my mom signed me up for my first computer course over my summer vacation sometime around 1980 or 1981. What a joke! The class was taught by a computer nerd (I am married to an IT project developer, so I am allowed to say “nerd” or “geek!”) who had a pocket protector, a swoop, and absolutely no disciplining skills. The only thing I remember about the class, other than the teacher, was that I missed time being out in the sun, flirting with the cute guy in the front row, and the sugar cubes I ate located on the coffee counter along the way to the restroom.
The next experience I had with computers was in a high school class. Being from Bloomington, our local schools were guinea pigs for IU’s “new teaching innovations.” Therefore, during this guinea pig teaching innovation era we were on our own to learn however we could. It took me the entire semester to learn how to get Happy Birthday to blink on my screen. Wow, I learned a lot there!!
The third occasion I recall occurred during my undergrad studies. David, my boyfriend now husband, wrote out the instructions for me to save one school paper on a 5 1/4 inch floppy disc. I had two floppy’s and this long set of instructions that told me when I needed to insert a specific floppy, remove it, insert the other floppy, etc… etc…..etc…. All I remember is that it was very time consuming, frustrating, and again I was missing being out in the sun.
Finally, when David and I got our first PC, I very nervously would write my school papers in Word and save them to the desktop. I had to wait until David could save them to a 3 ½ inch floppy because I had previously lost one great paper trying to save it that way. So from then on I left the dirty work of saving to a disc to David. I also had a problem of “mysterious icon movings” on occasion. David would fix that problem also.
I think back over the past twenty five years of my limited and most of the time frustrating technological encounters and wonder where I would be today technologically if I had not married an IT guy. I probably would not own a computer and be even further in the dark technologically than I am today.
As my mom once said when I used to make fun of the geeks as technology was moving forward: “Those geeks are going to rule the world one day.”
Don’t you hate it when your mom is right?
Talk to you next week.
For the majority of my childhood I was under the impression, due to my mom’s lack of confidence in technology, and my father never mentioning it, I thought that computers and technology would be a passing societal phase. That was why I was shocked when my mom signed me up for my first computer course over my summer vacation sometime around 1980 or 1981. What a joke! The class was taught by a computer nerd (I am married to an IT project developer, so I am allowed to say “nerd” or “geek!”) who had a pocket protector, a swoop, and absolutely no disciplining skills. The only thing I remember about the class, other than the teacher, was that I missed time being out in the sun, flirting with the cute guy in the front row, and the sugar cubes I ate located on the coffee counter along the way to the restroom.
The next experience I had with computers was in a high school class. Being from Bloomington, our local schools were guinea pigs for IU’s “new teaching innovations.” Therefore, during this guinea pig teaching innovation era we were on our own to learn however we could. It took me the entire semester to learn how to get Happy Birthday to blink on my screen. Wow, I learned a lot there!!
The third occasion I recall occurred during my undergrad studies. David, my boyfriend now husband, wrote out the instructions for me to save one school paper on a 5 1/4 inch floppy disc. I had two floppy’s and this long set of instructions that told me when I needed to insert a specific floppy, remove it, insert the other floppy, etc… etc…..etc…. All I remember is that it was very time consuming, frustrating, and again I was missing being out in the sun.
Finally, when David and I got our first PC, I very nervously would write my school papers in Word and save them to the desktop. I had to wait until David could save them to a 3 ½ inch floppy because I had previously lost one great paper trying to save it that way. So from then on I left the dirty work of saving to a disc to David. I also had a problem of “mysterious icon movings” on occasion. David would fix that problem also.
I think back over the past twenty five years of my limited and most of the time frustrating technological encounters and wonder where I would be today technologically if I had not married an IT guy. I probably would not own a computer and be even further in the dark technologically than I am today.
As my mom once said when I used to make fun of the geeks as technology was moving forward: “Those geeks are going to rule the world one day.”
Don’t you hate it when your mom is right?
Talk to you next week.
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