Thing #19

Podcasts
Love 'em! I listened to a mom with a lovely Australian accent give tips on how to clean your bathroom. Enjoyed a skit from last week's MPR Morning Show. Subscribed to NPR's "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!," which is broadcast at a very inconvenient time for me. Will I actually find time to listen to it somewhere else in the week? Unlikely.
I did not create a podcast using Gcast -- but I did take a look at the site. The podcast directories were not particularly helpful to me. Once again, if I had a lot of time on my hands, I could use them to find cool new stuff to listen to. I find that, during my free time, I'm mostly looking for silence.

Thing #20

I joined Facebook, made many friends, joined a quilting group, took a "Breakfast Club" test, wrote on Carol's wall, and logged out so that I could log back in and check my account. Technically, I have completed Thing 20. Of course, it doesn't stop there. I can see that I'll have to log in every couple of hours and post what I'm doing, see if there are any new tests to take or fun applications to download.
Can't wait to get home so I can add a photo.

Thing #17

ELM Productivity Tools
1. Create a search alert
I did not manage to add a search alert to my Google Reader RSS thing. Apparently, I'm not the first person to have a problem with this. I can create a search alert and set it up for e-mail. I can also direct a patron to the very nice "help" page on EBSCO for creating and saving search alerts.
2. EBSCO Page Composer
Did it. Why? Why not just e-mail the results to myself? Would be much easier.
3. ProQuest
Did it -- except for the part about downloading it to my flash drive. I don't have a flash drive yet. Isn't the flash drive supposed to be the END product of all this work? Am getting a little testy about the way these 23 things are set up...
4. NetLibrary
Did the creating a note on eContent thing. I'm already pretty familiar with NetLibrary on the downloadable audio side. Biggest problem I ran into was that I couldn't remember my login.

I really did not enjoy Thing #17, but practicing with some of these tools will help when working with patrons who want to save search results.

Thing #15

Puzzle Pirates -- couldn't download it on work computer

Second Life -- laaaame! Watch a video of some alien rollerskating around, while I'm sitting here eating a Tootsie Pop. I'm the one who needs to be out rollerskating. Pay real money to buy pretend land and hang out with a bunch of cartoons? Maybe I'm just having a bad day, but this seems like a real waste of time.

Thing #16 (yes, before thing #15!)

Where were these project calculators when I was in school? And do they truly work for the hardcore procrastinator?
Next time a student asks me to help them choose an assignment topic, I'll point them to one of these calculators.

Thing #14

Here is the link to my LibraryThing library.

Easy to use. Useful for finding related titles -- but didn't seem any more useful than Amazon's recommended titles for the topic I was searching. This would be a good tool for keeping track of titles while creating bibliographies over a period of time.

Thing #13

I've been using iGoogle as my home page at home for ages. I love my little Zen fox who goes through his day without a care in the world. The gadgets I've added are not necessarily related to productivity (People headlines, phases of the moon, color schemes). I've added both Google Calendar and Remember the Milk, but can't seem to get them to work TOGETHER. I'd probably be better off with a simple checklist -- as I don't need to assign a time of day to everything I do at home.
At work, I have always been happy with my post-it lists. Putting them on the computer probably wouldn't make me more productive.
I have put the T.S. vacation calendar online. Big resistance from the staff at first. They were used to each getting their own paper calendar every month. They weren't convinced by my argument about saving trees. The best thing about the online version is that I can change it every time someone submits a new request, so it is relatively up-to-date.
One thing I've always been is a big fan of office supplies -- planners, little notebooks, colorful pens, stickers, fancy Post-It notes, calendars with pockets or beautiful pictures. They bring a sense of hope and order to my life. The computer just doesn't have the same feel...