Bloglines/RSS Feeds

This morning I set up my first RSS reader account with Bloglines, and so far, so good.

Setting it up wasn't really a problem. I already have quite a hefty collection of links that I faithfully check every day, and having them consolidated into a single place to check, which I can look at from anywhere, is a nice feature. Like the del.icio.us exercise I did for one of my library school classes, but without all the excess clicking. It's definitely more personal, less like an open-source bibliography, but that's one of the advantages.

You can be completely idiosyncratic in the organization of your Bloglines account. And no one has to know exactly how many webcomics and snarky blogs you're a faithful reader of.

Yet I haven't quite decided if the application is merely useful or a bit on the lazy side. I mean, of course I selected the option to show the entire article for the blogs I read faithfully rather than summaries...but now I feel like I have no reason to go to that blog.

For instance, my recent discovery of Wedding Bee, which not only encompasses blogs but also wedding planning discussion boards as well as classified ads for wedding-related materials. I use the discussion boards almost more than the actual blog posts, so having everything in a feed isn't as useful as actually going to the website, at least when I'm going to be at home on my own machine anyway.

Overall, I think it might be nice to eliminate some of my fluffy links that are purely pleasure reading and replace them with a single link to my consolidated Bloglines account, but there are still always going to be websites I'd rather look at in their entirety.

Losing Touch

Today I finally emailed my undergraduate advisor, whom I hadn't talked to directly since graduation last spring.

The entire process of moving to Kentucky was so frantic, almost, that I kept thinking of reasons why it would be awkward to write rather than how awkward it was to not talk to someone I had been used to having at a minimum weekly discussions with throughout my undergraduate career. My mentor and my honors project supervisor, who read the strangest of my essays and the most explicit of my poems and didn't think less of me.

It seems like people who are separated by a change in living circumstances always wait for specific events to bring them back into interaction again. I had planned on writing Christmas letters, sending cards.

But I'm planning a wedding and had no spare time at the end of the past semester for card-writing.

Today I wrote an email. I hope I get a chance to write more, without reason other than the joy of communicating with someone who really understands me.

Chatting

Another day, another Blue 2.0 assignment.

I'm very attached to my chat services, though I've never used a service like Meebo before to consolidate my accounts, which can be rather convenient. During middle and high school I primarily used MSN Messenger, then added AIM when I went to college and found that most of my friends there were already using that service provider.

While my college friends have mostly changed over to Facebook contacts as I no longer see them every day or have similar work and play schedules, my high school friends and family chat with me often. I also love to answer chat questions at the Young Reference Desk because I'm a fairly fast typist and often have an easier time explaining to someone what they need to do while typing rather than talking on the telephone. It's also something I prefer because I don't have to balance a phone on my shoulder while trying to answer a chat question.

I worked in the Library Development section of the Missouri State Library this past summer, where Windows Chat formed a large part of office communications for those situated on different floors or who just needed to check something with someone else really quickly. It was easy to just send off an IM and keep working while waiting for a response. Since the chat was also linked to office and personal Outlook calendars, you'd also know if the person you were looking for was in a meeting and would be assured a response without spending half the day trying to hunt them down inside the building.

Overall, I like chat best for inter-office communication. To me, it's often easier than trying to walk or call around to find someone. While it can be good for reference questions, sometimes it is easier to just ask the person to email or call instead and pick up the question on a faster medium, but it's also easier to multi-task while answering chat questions.

There are definite positives and negatives, but overall I'm comfortable chatting.

Poor Puppy.

I feel bad for my dog sometimes. He has the strangest problems.

Like the fact that he gets the hiccups at least once a week, looking like he's about to explode right before the little hic sound comes out. When I was at the vet I told her about the hiccups and she wasn't concerned, but it's still disturbing to watch a dog older than a puppy expanding and contracting like a rather fluffy balloon.

Or his cold-weather tendency towards static electricity. Dry air, fluffy dog, carpeting and covers...and he starts crackling every time he moves, even with a humidifier running in the apartment. Makes me want to see if rubbing him with a dryer sheet would make a difference, though the same homespun remedy had no effect on my own unerring ability to sudden shocking contacts.

I'll ask the vet again if there are any solutions to these doggie dilemmas, but I'm already doubting any succor from stress for my shih tzu.

(Sorry for the overwhelming alliteration. I just couldn't help myself.)

Here we go again.

I've actually had a blog before. Still do, actually. It's one of the largest on OpenDiary.com, which hasn't really kept up with the times in terms of technology and user freedoms.

Between my tendency to leave more unsaid for the time being and the fact that my former online refuge of confidences began in a now-embarrassing period of my high school days, I'm starting to think that total abandonment, or at least the attempt to seek a different outlet for the writings of the person I am now rather than the girl I was then, is a rather good idea.

So here I am, starting over on Blogger as an assignment for the Blue 2.0 training through my library assistantship. I'm interested in seeing how I approach "learning" how to use some of the technologies I'm already fully involved in, but I'm hoping the overall result will be that it'll be easier for me to teach people who haven't had the kind of exposure my generation has with greater ease and understanding. We'll see.

The hardest part was coming up with a name. Though oddly enough I found several blogs on the topic of "Help! I can't think of a name for my blog!" which were both helpful and often funny.

I'd like to post on a wide variety of topics currently important to my life: studying library science, my shih tzu, planning my wedding this summer, and the frustration of moving and living far from my family for the first time. I don't think I could incorporate this blog into the work I'm currently doing, but I can definitely see potential in learning to use it to incorporate in future projects and for the sheer joy of dealing with this type of technology.

What I'm secretly hoping for is to get enough raw material to start to try writing poetry and creative nonfiction (maybe even magazine article possibilities) again.