I'M DONE! I'M DONE!

23 Things Summary

I must admit that I have become familiar with many new technological advances as a result of the 23 Things program, and I also have become comfortable with them. My favorite discoveries are Del.icio.us and Bloglines, where some of my "finds" are housed. The entire process took me a lot longer than anticipated.

I would like to stay abreast of innovations and would therefore welcome another discovery program.

Audiobooks

No one needs to sell me on audiobooks; I listen to them constantly while driving. I watched the tutorial on Overdrive, and assumed that I would need to download the necessary program on my home PC. I viewed the available titles and concluded that this is something I will probably do. I think that this service would be very valuable to library customers who have difficulty getting to a branch.

Podcasting

I found the Yahoo podcast search site to be the most useful. I added the Lonely Planet Travelcasts to my Bloglines account as I enjoy learning about places to travel. After I finish the 23 Things and receive my MP3 player, I plan to download the travelcasts as well as some racier broadcasts! I am amazed at the wealth of information out there on just about every subject. When did this happen???

YouTube; FunnyorDie

Viewing videos is one of the 23 things that I have been doing for quite some time. There is a site called funnyordie.com that I prefer because I tend to enjoy comedy. Funny or Die came to my attention when I read a newspaper article about a video Will Farrell had made expressly for this website called "The Landlord." There have been other celebrity contributors and additional Will Farrell videos as well as many hilarious ones submitted by the public.

Of course, I personally owe my 15 minutes of fame to the submission of the 2006 HCPL Staff Day Elvis skit.

Upcoming and Farecast - 2.0 tools

From the 2.0 Winners List, I selected two sites. Upcoming by Yahoo lists upcoming events in many areas -- sports, cultural, educational, music, etc. -- plus some pictures from recent events. I particularly liked that I could view everything happening in the Baltimore area in just one place. It could be very useful in a library setting as a reference tool. The second site I visited was Farecast. In addition to searching for airfares, there were graphs that allowed one to view fare trends. The site was very easy to use. I liked both of these sites so much that I tagged them for my del.icio.us page.

Zoho

I was not aware that free word processing software existed, and I was impressed that it was easy to use and just as good as the software you purchase. I think that there could be many instances where it would be helpful.

My Zoho Creation

Young Adults

To those of you who are parenting young adults, I heartily endorse the theories of Never Give Up and Let Them Be Themselves. I was experiencing some frustration with my daughter, age 22. She was not happy at the University of Maryland on multiple levels and not settling into a major. So after 3 years, she called it quits, traveled across the US for a month, and attended a Wilderness EMT program in Yosemite National Park. Since that time she is focused and has transferred to Frostburg State University, where she is happily pursuing an outdoor education major. My husband and I had both been very discouraged by her lack of academic progress, but thankfully we continued to be supportive and everything appears to be going in the right direction.