I have to apologize to myself for not taking the time to blog in the past few weeks. I apologize to me because, well..no one else reads this thing. With Christmas, New Years, all the new toys, work, and getting set for classes to begin..both at work and at college..I have completely lost myself in a tornado of things to do, things that need to be redone and things that probably will never get done. Add to all that the recent loss of a friend, and well..you can understand why I've been neglectful.
Before anything more, I would just like to say that on Sunday, January 11 2009 the world lost a great person. We will all miss you Katie Pictou. None of us understand why you had to leave us so soon, but you won't be forgotten. Rest in peace. For those of you who knew Katie, the wake will be on Thursday from 7-9 and there will be a memorial celebration in her honor at Northern Maine Community College on Friday at 3 PM. If you need more information you can contact me or the college.
I hope everybody had a good set of holidays. Mine were filled with many fatty foods which I will spend the rest of the year burning off. I got some great gifts from the family. For the first time in years I can easily say I have no favorites among my gifts, they were all awesome. Thank you everyone. I would like to take this moment to gripe about one thing, the jewelry business can bite it. That's right, I said bite it. For the first time since I've been with Alyssa I decided to buy her jewelry for Christmas. I wanted to make my gift to her this year special..and the best way I could think of doing it would be to buy something for her that she KNOWS I would never buy. Jewelry, to me, seems like a huge waste of money. Sure, it almost never loses its value and is timeless..and all that. But what function does it serve? It makes you sparkly. For some reason, women love sparkly things and we, as men, are required to provide sparkly things to them in order to appease them. It kinda reminds me of a penguin mating ritual. ANYWAY..Alyssa knows me well enough to realize that me buying jewelry for her would be no easy task on my part...it goes against everything I stand for..I thought it would be a great surprise. That was..until I got hustled. By a JCPENNEY clerk no less! I ended up paying a decent amount of money for a pair of earrings that were SUPPOSED to be, you know..actual diamonds. I made it clear to the clerk that I didn't want any of that fake garbage. A day or two after Alyssa had opened them and put them on..she realized that there were no actual diamonds in the earrings..and that they fashioned the metal around the FLAKE of diamond that was in it..to make the earring look as though it were a full, real diamond. I was more than a little perturbed and I did let the clerk who returned them for me know that I was pretty upset.
Don't let idiots like me buy jewelry, we just lose all our money.
I can't finish a blog without discussing at least one groovy new geek tool. Today's "Geek of the week" as my friends over at EdTechTalk would say, is going to be Dropbox. Dropbox is the online storage solution that all of us geeks have been waiting for. They're finally out of beta testing and are open to the public and I have no idea how I lived for so long without this app. The idea behind dropbox is to allow you to sync your files with "the cloud" almost effortlessly. To get started you simply go to getdropbox.com and download dropbox. Go through the setup process as usual and it will automatically create a dropbox folder for you. Once setup is complete..you're good to go. Dropbox gives you 2 gb of storage for free (50 gb if you pay 9.99 a month) and it automatically syncs any files you drop into your dropbox folder to "the cloud". For those of you who don't see the benefit of this, let me explain further. By dropping your files into this folder and syncing with the cloud, this gives you the ability to have an automatic backup and it also allows you to sync files across the internet to and from multiple computers. I, for example, use between 3 and 4 different computers throughout the day. I often need access to the same files on each of these computers and used to have to carry a jumpdrive with me. Now, I just store all the files in this folder, put the dropbox app on each computer, keep my account signed in, and voila...instant sync-age. Yes that's a word. It's cross platform compatible, so it won't matter if you're using a Mac, a Windows box or Linux. It also boasts a web-interface that allows you to see recent file transactions and updates. In this web interface you can also choose to see previously deleted files and have the option to restore them. This is all done through a simple user interface that anyone can use. Another excellent feature is the ability to create a shared space on the web. You can create a folder in your dropbox and invite others to share that space with you. This will allow them to have that folder in THEIR dropbox and all changes will be updated across everyone's accounts. My favorite feature is the "copy public link" feature. Inside your dropbox you will find a folder labeled "Public". With anything you place in this folder, you get the option to "Copy public link" which places a link in your clipboard that you can paste to an e-mail or website. This link gives anyone who clicks it instant access to the file that you copied the link for. Isn't it easier to copy and paste a link rather than sending an attachment? This is especially useful for me when I need to share Jing videos with people. Jing creates videos in .swf format which plays through Flash. If Flash isn't opened in a browser you need a 3rd party application to play it..with Dropbox they click on the link which opens in a browser by default and voila..instant flash video. Best of all..it's free..so you have no excuse not to try it!:)
Photo: Dropbox
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