The Beat Goes On

There are a few topics I want to cover with the limited time I am allowing myself to attend to my blog.  Firstly, I want to provide an update on my daughter Laura.  Next, as promised yesterday, I want to tell you about “The Onion”.  Lastly, I want to update you on how I am making out with my PMP exam preparation. 

Oh, Broken Bones - Oh My!

Laura just left my place.   She had booked to come over so I could wash her hair.  I guess I am going to be doing that 2 or 3 times a week for the next month or so.  I got an update on her visit to the fracture clinic and it is a bit worse than the Emergency Doctor had said.  

She actually broke two bones and fractured another bone in her hand on her thumb near her wrist.  Her arm was still quite swollen and so she needs to go back in a week and have this cast replaced.  The Doctor told her that the Emergency Room Nurse had not fitted the temporary cast properly and that had caused more problems.  She is definitely off work for a week.  She is also still in a lot of pain and so this Doctor prescribed Percocets to replace the Tylenol #3s the Emergency doctor prescribed for her.  As a mother, I am quite worried about the meds – they are very strong pain killers and have an addictive quality quite a bit more so than Tylenol.     

The other item I needed to understand better was how desperate her financial situation was.  I knew that before the broken arm the credit card company had been calling her about overdue payments and she had said her phone bill was behind also.  So it was “family counsel time” and her father came over as well and we spent several hours discussing her financial situation, developing a budget for her expenses, given her week without pay and yes, lending her a large sum of money to get the bill collectors off her back.   Over the next several months Laura and I will be meeting weekly to discuss how she is doing with her budget and I am policing that she is keeping up her end of the bargain and living within the budget she agreed to and making the agreed payments back to her father and I.  I hope this puts her back on track! 

On to a much more interesting topic:

 

The Onion.   

I found The Onion through my twitter account and I am following The Onion’s micro blogs on twitter.   


They are so much fun!   What is The Onion you might wonder? 

It is an American “fake news” organization featuring satirical articles reporting on international, national, and local news both real and imaginary.  The humour often presents everyday facts as news using puns, quips and clinches, such as today’s headliner “

Daylight Saving Time Yields Massive Daylight Surplus”.    They also take actual news events and make fun of them by making up stuff surrounding the real news.  A few of the ones I noticed this week:

• Aging Seeing-eye Dog Purchases Seeing-eye Squirrel
• Obama Outfitted With 238 Motion Capture Sensors for 3-D Record of Presidency
• CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years
• 
  
  Hurricane Bound For Texas Slowed By Large Land Mass To The South 
• Obese Billionaire Opens World's Largest Gravy Park
• Area Man Thinks He Was Fired Because Of Recession
• Congress Establishes New Department Of Finding Change On The Ground

The Onion is the perfect thing to have as a regular smile generator on Twitter.  Every day there is one or two of these silly or even not so far fetched news items which arrive to make my day.    Some of these remind me of the old Saturday Night Live TV program “Weekend Update” which featured Bill Murray and Jane Curtin.

 
Yesterday I decided I needed to see the web site behind these silly twitterings.  They have what appears to be a full featured web site as large as any City Newspaper – but every single story is untrue and some are very funny.   The interesting thing is that a good number could well be true – but are not.  They also have a Video News section with a long list of PodCasts which will split your side.  I have included one for you to have a quick peek. 

If you want to check out the site:

http://www.theonion.com/content/index?utm_source=nav 

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Brain Tired, On Track but not ready to Leap...

As promised, the last part of this blog is an update on me.  It had looked like I was ahead a bit as the afternoon arrived and I had finished reviewing the two planned chapters on Project Time Management and Project Cost Management and I had only the 2 extra hours for memory work yet to do – so I thought I would be able to go out to my Documentary Film group tonight to see Leap.  

Leap is a documentary in which the case is made for the idea that everything around us is an illusion and so what naturally follows this is that we make our own reality.  It looked like an intriguing idea and I wanted to see it to generate some ideas for the fiction novel I am planning for November.   If you are interested in learning more:

http://www.leapmovie.com/ 

Laura’s visit and the “family counsel” ran into early evening, so I was unable to go to my movie Meet-Up.  I guess now I will need to buy the movie if I want to see it.  I am just now finishing my blog and I still need to put in the 2 hours of further study time. 

I am taking tomorrow off work to continue studying and I have 2 chapters for 3 hours and an extra 2 hours planned for memory work. 

 Lets see how I do!

Rain, Rain, go away…

I know I should not complain about the rain. It is warm outside and the snow has almost all disappeared. I am not able to go out and enjoy the weather anyway and so perhaps I should say Hurrah for the rain! Except that it has been a dreary and grey day. I much prefer sunshine, even if I can only look at it through my condo windows.

I have been working pretty steadily all day studying for my exam. Except I had a relatively low productivity morning. I was having a hard time focusing and kept finding other things which needed attention -- like twittering and reading some stuff from The Onion (more on that tomorrow). However the opposite was true this afternoon and I pretty much worked steadily going through the stuff and I did finish today the sections I had earmarked on my study plan – the Chapter on Project Scope Management and Project Time Management.

Ok, so that is the good news. The bad news is that when I did the review of the material studied last week I was not happy with how much I had retained and decided I have to put more time into the boring task of memorization. So I am going to work just a little longer tonight and work 8 instead of 6 hours on this stuff tomorrow.

Not fun – but what can I say. I am finding that it takes me longer to learn stuff than it did --I hate to say how many -- years ago when I was a full time student. Maybe it is the fact that I have been having brain draining work weeks or maybe it is just harder to apply myself, not sure. I could complain that it is because I am not having enough fun -- I always agreed with the principal of "Work Hard - Play Hard" and maybe I have not played hard enough this week. LOL

A bit of a news update on Laura, she did not get her cast on this morning due to a misunderstanding on her part regarding the time she should arrive, so she has to get there at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow. She had arrived at 10 ish thinking she could go at any time after 7:30 – which was not the case. She is still in pain and taking Tylenol #3s. The real heart break of it is that it seems she will certainly need a week off and maybe more – can she waitress with a cast on? Will her employer want to pay a gimpy waitress? I don’t know. She was very unhappy when I talked to her this evening. Even before this happened she was having a great deal of difficulty paying bills. I am suspecting my 2nd bedroom will not be vacant for long.

I must confess at this point that I have no brain cells left to blog further. I have planned to spend another 45 minutes memorizing some of the key points from todays review and must get back at it. After that – I am going to treat myself with a listen to a few new TED talks – I have a bunch bookmarked for listening and look forward to sitting back with a glass of wine and listening to some interesting ideas. There are a few funny ones – I also intend on getting a few chuckles in!

Have a great Saturday night all!

It is 10:30 and I haven’t yet started my blog.  Just got back from the hospital.  I got a call just as I was finishing up at work and it was my daughter Laura (or Lilly as she is more often called).  She was at work (she is a bar maid these days at the Dogs Bullocks Bar) and she said she had broken her hand and needed to go to the hospital.   Of course, I rushed home and grabbed the car and went to pick her up. 

It was nearly 6:00 by the time we were on our way to the hospital.  She had earlier that afternoon fallen down the stairs of her apartment and hurt both her arm and her knee.  Arm in sling she set off for work, but once there she realized she was in far too much pain to work.  Thus the call to Mom.  I have included a picture of Lilly taken last year to the right.

Laura and I passed the next several hours in various waiting areas of the St. Joseph Health Centre’s Emergency Department.  We were joined by a number of “stinky” people who seemed to want to engage in conversation and as Lilly put it “smelled of pee”.  Once was plainly drunk.   

Once we had waited a more than adequate amount of time, Laura was medicated and th Percocets made her forget her pain.   We joked that they should drug everyone who comes to emerg (even the family and friends) and just wake us up when it is our turn.  We were starving by that point and made plans to stop for burgers as soon as we left the hospital.  In due course, she was given a sling, x-rayed and the diagnosis made that she has fractured her arm in 2 places.   The knee is just strained.  She has a temporary cast and will need to go to the fracture clinic first thing in the morning for her permanent cast. 

The bright note?  They have Sponge Bob fibreglass cast plasters she can have.   Sadly, she is going to have a tough time working for the next while and I am not sure how she will manage to pay her bills this month.

So I am exhausted from my hours of waiting and need to pack it in for the night and mentally prepare for my study day tomorrow.  Will blog tomorrow night and let you know how both Lilly and I are making out.

Where did the week go?

As we round the corner past Thursday heading toward the end of the work week I think I will just do a recap of a few noteworthy items.  No rants or advice or navel gazing tonight.  I have only 30 minutes to do this blog – honest – I have set my timer!   Lots to get on with tonight, I have a full plate of other things to get done! 

Work has been quite a challenge, and I will not bore you dear readers with the mundane details that a Project Manager gets involved in.  Suffice to say that the forces of economics and fickleness of events has struck again and I am feeling like I am attached to the end of a yo yo.  Lots to do but still the overwhelming thought that they might cancel the project I am on and I would be looking for work.  

 On the topic of looking for work,
my LinkedIn site  (www.linkedin.com) has generated me a couple of job leads, which is surprising.   This is a professional networking site I belong to.  I did not quite expect that there would be folks scanning the site in order to find folks who are looking for work.  I really just use it to keep in touch with my professional associates.  However, not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I sent off my resume to both and we will see what happens.  The first one is an opportunity for a 3-6 month contract at TD bank, the other a 3 year contract in Dubai!  Not sure if the Dubai job would be of interest or if I am well qualified for it – but one can always turn down a job offer – right? No guarantee of even an interview for either job – they have a stack of resumes to go through and will pick those they want to talk to – so we will see.

 At the same time in discussions this week with RBC they have maintained that they definitely have work for me on a continuing basis, while they acknowledge it might be difficult if the project I am on were cancelled suddenly.  I hate to just take their word that they will continue to need me, on the other hand I like it there and would like to stay.  I guess I just try to hedge my bets for the moment and see what happens with the other two opportunities.  

 The last point of note for the week is that I have decided to follow a few blogs I am being written by folks in far away places, places I may want to visit. 

I have at this point found a (wanna be) writer in Madrid, Spain ("ProbablyMadrid" on blogspot) who also lived in Dubai and has a great blog from when he was there ("webmasterdubai" on blogspot).  I will make a list of maybe 3-4 other places and find some blogs to read regularly from those places.  Should help me with my travel planning.

Lastly, I am told my dear friend Barb, with whom I am travelling to Las Vegas at the end of March, that it is 24 big sleeps until our trip!  Countdown!   Can you tell I am wishing for a holiday and beach/pool time by the photos I have included with today's blog?

 So that is my blog for tonight.  Spent the last 10 minutes searching out a couple of photos to load it up and publish and I have kept to my 30 minutes for this blog!

So what’s Everyone Twittering About?

Lately my curiosity has been grabbed by the fad of “micro blogging” or as it is known by the social network which facilitates this - twittering.  Having read an article in the Globe on the weekend about David Miller’s “MayorMiller”’s tweets, I decided to find out more about it. 

Globe Article "Twitter Talk that Packs Real Bite"

So what is it?  A micro blog is a very short snippet of personal news or text information presented sent out over the internet as a real time feed to an audience of one sort or another by an individual.  One can restrict the receipt of information to a circle of friends or make it available widely.  It is a little like text messaging to a potentially infinite number of recipients.    You can do it via your phone and msg services or via a web connection.  There is a 140 characters max this seems to be pretty standard.  

It is estimated that there are 6 million members of whom 55,000 sign in to twitter each month.  This makes it the 3^rd largest social networking site in the world (following MySpace and Facebook).  It is different than either of those as it has its own niche.     

The main purpose is to “touch” people briefly and provide a short message (but often folks include a URL to a pic or other info) – so it is a new communication media entirely.  You can’t say much in 140 characters.   You can say what you are doing, throw out a brief thought or point to a place for more info.   That is about it. 

Let’s look at two aspects of this media:  firstly, who are the followers following?  I see it as three groups.  The first is a bunch of good friends or a team of associates who want to keep in close touch.  I can picture a clique of teenage girls in this category; – so they follow each other and use this basically as a group “texting” tool.   Secondly, important/famous people who want/need to stroke their “fans” and so they would issue frequent tweets as a cheap way of generating publicity.  Thirdly, as a communication media for news sources to issue short “news alerts” to announce something of importance to a defined audience.

Last night I signed up with Twitter and got ready to tweet.  My Twitter stage name is epeggyh – you can get me via the web at http://twitter.com/epeggyh  .   I issued my first tweet – and then wondered - what’s next?  Having read the Globe article about David Miller’s tweets I decided to look him up and follow him – MayorMiller.  And what do you know – he published several tweets in the next hour while I was nosing around looking for other folks to follow.  I also found Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, “ObamaNews”, and 10DowningStreet before I decided I had enough political figures.  I also decided to follow a news twitter put out by the Toronto Globe “Globe Technology” and a few other news sources such as “CNN Breaking News” and NYTimes.  I also found a couple which were a bit different such as “twittercise” who tweets every hour an exercise that you can do while you are sitting in your office.   

My next thoughts were who else might be twittering?  Movie stars – do they tweet regularly?  Without much trouble, I found  Ashton Kutcher’s twitter stage name “aplusk”.   He posted about a dozen tweets and one of them contained a link to a live streaming link to a photo shoot Demi Moore was doing last night!   Wow, what one can find! 

 Today I looked through my tweet list a couple of times and it took only a couple of minutes to see that Ignatieff was glad to be on This hour has 22 minutes again; MayorMiller was meeting with the Ambassador of Finland; Martha Stewart was having lunch with Ludcris; and there were a dozen news posts from CNN and NYTimes.  Boy in just a few minutes I was all up to date with more tid bits of news than I needed! 

Am going to continue to twitter and follow those that twitter for a while as part of my research for my November novel to come (Did I mention that November is Write a Novel month?) 

Just as an added note, my son Eric  (shown left) commented on my last blog and brought up some really good additional points regarding why people blog.  You really need to read his great “mini blog” follow on comment to my topic.  (Wish I could figure out how to have comments appear inline following the blog!).  Eric lives in Phoenix AZ, and we seem to connect mostly virtually and only in person (by voice or visit) maybe once or twice a year.  One point he made I want to follow up briefly here. 

We all like to share our day – our thoughts and “what’s happening” with our friends.  That is so true – but a blog adds another element to the desire to share our thoughts – we can share these things with a large audience of far flung friends and family very easily.  I might even venture to say that this is a futuristic equivalent of what letter writing was in the previous several centuries.  When even “local” travel was difficult and there were few other ways to communicate letter writing was a very large part and perhaps the only way to keep in touch with those cherished friends and family.    People spent a lot of time writing letters in the centuries when it was the prime means of personal communication.  Just as we seem to be doing now with our internet communications media.

Decades ago I would spend hours writing friends who lived at a distance to keep in touch.   Until recently I spend a good deal of time writing individual emails providing news to people I wanted to keep in touch with.  I still do that, but am able to keep those emails to private details which I would not put in a blog.  The newsy chatty emails have been replaced with more personal ones containing specific communications for specific people.  I am assuming that anyone I know who wants to know how I am doing will read my blog or failing that call me on the phone.   My blogs have replaced in a large part the letters/emails I would have written instead in the past. 

I can see a future reality in the coming decades where we are communicating via blogs, tweets and Facebook posts and meeting in a virtual reality such as Second Life for our real time interactions! 

I have read so many news articles lately that I want to blog about. I think I have enough items on my topic list for another 25 days!  Not to mention that I need to be mindful to keep my blogging time down to a minimum over this next 3 weeks – something I am finding difficult, so I really need to keep the breaks on my urge to blog.

So putting away current events for the moment until a time I can do justice in my comments about them, I decided to pose a question today: Why is blogging so addictive and do other bloggers find that this is so also?

Well the first thing I discovered as I explored this topic, is that there are a lot of folks out there convinced that it is an addition and that they may be an addict. 

The topic was well explored way back in 2004  in a New York Times article I found.

For Some, The Blogging Never Stops - New York Times

Why is it addictive?  Well, if you are up on your addiction theory there is a basic addictive personality, but I am going to leave that aside for the moment and comment on the rewards provided by blogging which (from my research) cause folks to keep pumping the stuff out.  Firstly, it the the belief that you are leaving a permanent mark on the world for all to see.  (Well, maybe it is a virtual mark on the real world, but it is a mark none the less).  Secondly, the lure of the following.  The delusion that there is an audience out there who is lapping the stuff up that you are spewing out.  Apparently, it is all the worse if this audience is not a delusion, because then the payback is even greater!  Lastly, we bloggers get joy out of reading our own blogs.   Somehow, there is joy to be had in experiencing our own creations.  OK, so lots of reasons to blog, but is it really a problem?  An addiction?

After reading a few blogs about blog addiction and noting that there were over 12 pages of google links, mostly to bloggers who had a subject line “I am addicted to blogging”, I found a quiz: Are you a blog addict?   Interestingly, you can be addicted to reading blogs or writing blogs or both - they seem to go hand in hand...  hmm, lately I have been reading more blogs, searching out ideas and seeing how other bloggers "do it"...  Maybe trouble!  Anyway, I took the quizz.  You might want to as well!

http://www.oneplusyou.com/bb/blog_addiction

My score?
51%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

So, well, not so much for me, however I guess I need to keep an eye out that it doesn't get out of control!  If it does there is a 12 step program for BOD (Bogging Obsessive Disorder):

http://activerain.com/blogsview/22023/Betty-Ford-for-Bloggers

With that, just to prove I am not addicted, I shall end this blog now and go back to studying.  Got to run through those flash cards one more time before bed!

Going quietly mad with these cold temperatures :(

When I walked home from work today it was damn cold. Frigid. When there is a constant blast of cold wind in the face one tends to walk hunched over, head down, body clenched and thoughts focused on survival. Your whole body feels stressed. Eyes stream wet drops that run down cheeks too cold to notice. In the morning the “weather eye” on my iPhone said it was -27 degrees Celsius with the wind chill. When I checked after work it said -21. GAWD!!!!!!!!!!!!

I do dress for the weather. Winter hiking boots suitable for my half hour walk through ice and snow, a layer of tights under my trousers (no skirts for me in winter!), a sturdy winter coat over a couple of sweaters, the hood from my coat pulled up over my thick faux fur lined hat (with draw strings pulled tight), scarf wound around my neck and pulled up over my chin and mouth and of course, gloves shielding my hands. The only exposed skin is about 5 inches surrounding my eyes. Still it is nasty and I am cold!

Unpleasant is an insufficient word. Just as tolerance for a substance builds up, intolerance to adverse weather also builds up. I am at my breaking point.

Ok, I exaggerate, but God, am I getting grumpy about our nasty Canadian winters. It is March – why can’t spring come in March rather than in April or as it did last year, in May?

OK, rant over now I get onto other pressing thoughts… Like my daughter Laura (aka Lilly) telling me tonight that next year when she goes back to University she will move in back home with me, so I shouldn’t refurnish her bedroom as my office and she should not buy furniture for her new place, because, where will she put it when she moves back home? I have only one word: HA!

Hmmm, I will bite my tongue now.
Laura is taking the year off school to recover her energy and motivation so she can finish her BA, which she has worked on for the last 3 years and only half completed. The other reason she is taking the year off is that she worked all of the previous summer and didn’t save any money toward tuition (the deal was she would pay 1/3rd). Not that she didn't work - she did - however taxis and bar tabs and fun kind of ate into her bank account. Gee, what is a gal to do?

I am sharing with you a picture of Laura (right) and her best friend Betina (left), who is coming back from a 3-4 month visit to Calgary this week. Laura has missed her "partner in crime" and so looks forward to her return.

Back to the Laura story. She moved out in January to share a place with a girlfriend, since living with her Mom was a bit restrictive - she really would like to have friends back occassionally at 3:00 a.m when she gets off work at the bar. I had offered that if she paid me rent that I would return it to her at the end of the year as her tuition saved, however that offer passed up for the lure of "her own place". Well, she is old enough now to make her own decisions.

I am suspecting that she is will not be able to save any money toward tuition in this next year, so I have no fear of her really going back to school and moving back in. But I am looking at the “wanted ads” for jobs in Dubai, just in case!

By the way, I did finish studying Chapter 4 yesterday and created about 30 “flash cards”. As I review the material I am creating these home made study aids. I am carrying them around with me and can spend time reviewing them during idle moments during the day.

I plan to put in an hour studying tonight and will go through the flash cards once or twice to help fix into my memory the stuff I went over on the weekend.

Before I "sign off", I have to tell you about the calendar I have in my bathroom. It contains a wonderful series of Zenga Paintings from the Gitter-Yellen Collection and Quotes on Zen Practice by Shunryu Suzuki. I put it in my bathroom because where else is it important to meditate? (OK, I am being silly, but you get my point, eh?). Each morning and evening I do my daily absolutions in that space and I just thought that it an appropriate spot for Zen thoughts and images.

I was absolutely delighted with the March Zen thought. Each day this month as I do my duty in that room I will gaze on the words "Just sit and see what happens".

Chat tomorrow, my friends!