Hard to believe but sometimes I have no idea what to write. So maybe I'll just do a stream-of-consciousness thing and see, uhm,…if I'm conscious.
Went over to school today to hand in the last section of my Individual Study. Now I just have to put together a presentation
and finalize arrangements to present it to the 501 class and I'm done. Oh, and update the
paper with some new information and incorporate Lynne's
suggestions before I hand in my final copy of the complete project. THEN I'm done.
Has anybody else used www.logmein.com, a very handy, free service that allows you to easily access your home computer and share files from anywhere? I discovered it about a month ago and have found it very useful since I haven't migrated to a completely online life yet (though that appears to be the way we're heading…
Gmail for e-mail
Delicious for bookmarks
Streamload for file storage
Flickr for photo storage
…and so on.
– also got a good start on my Mission Statement critique for 506. I talked to Paul and Leah in the computer lab and it was good to hear that we were pretty much on the same page with regards to length (~4 pages), citations (~2 outside sources) and purpose (I think we all did public libraries though this wasn't necessarily a requirement of the assignment).
– It was +33 today and so after being at school for a bit, I came home and went down for a swim with Shea in the pool behind our building. There was rebellion stirring at our apartment – the building managers have been working on the pool for a month and a half (having originally told us it would be open “by June 1”). Their main excuse was that they couldn't get the chemical balance right but I walked by on my way to school and saw one woman in there. Her skin didn't appear to be melting off so we decided to try it too. Very nice! Maybe Christina and I can co-host a FIMS pool party later this summer?
– listening to an audio file of “Dance Monkeys Dance” by Ernie Cline on my MP3 player which I find very hilarious (the content, not that I'm listening to an MP3). I finally broke down and bought an MP3 player since the University bookstore was having a sale a couple weeks ago. The model I bought was marked down from $279 to $99 (although a check online when I got home showed that the current price is probably closer to $150 so not as great of a deal as I thought – still decent though.) It's a Sony and I feel a bit of guilt because I know they're evil with all their rootkit shenanigans. But at the same time, I like Sony products (why? I have no idea – probably because their marketing is better than anyone else's and has affected me on a subconscious level. 
)
Had a good talk at breakfast the other week on this topic – how far do you go to be a conscentious consumer? If you drive an SUV but use it often for your non-profit work, is that okay? If you eat at McDonald's once a month, is that still too much? Once a year? What about drinking Coke? Gassing up at Shell? Buying really cheap toothpaste at Wal-Mart? Or is ever possible to be completely pure in our society without interacting in some way with evil corporations? It's sort of that same point I made about the Al Gore documentary – I agree with lots in that film but find it ironic that he's travelled by jet to literally 1000's of locations around the world to present his take on global warming.
What else? I stare at the 12-month desk calendar over my desk everyday so decided to do a count. This semester, I had 48 assignments due over 14 weeks which is what, just about 4 per week? This includes everything from a fairly short (one paragraph to 2-page) weekly “reader response” to a chapter of a textbook or a children's novel to some mid-length essays (2-5 pages) to a few major projects including my Individual Study and a Book Ownership case study for children's lit where we interviewed a child about the books they owned, transcribed the interview, recorded the books they owned AND wrote an essay analysing our findings. Four weeks left in this semester and I have 14 left (I had a very top-heavy semester which sucked but of course, now that I'm through it, I'm glad that it turned out that way.)
Even if they're short, it's those weekly readings (with responses) that kill you. Maybe I'll do another list as a future blog post – “10 Tips for Profs at FIMS So That Your Students Don't Stab Themselves In The Eyeballs”. Suggestions welcome!
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