Perhaps some of you have seen in the news about the Station Fire burning near Los Angeles. My husband and I moved to North Carolina from that area two years ago, which is where I'm from. The Station Fire isn't burning directly near where we used to live or where my parents live, though they've smelled smoke at their house, they've said. A friend of mine who lives in one of the threatened areas went to stay with friends over the weekend due to smoke; she said there's smoke and ash everywhere, similar to a fire we had several years ago while I was there. (I remember ash all around my house—it's weird.)
The saddest thing about reading about the fire is I recognize a lot of the places they mention. The San Gabriel Mountains were my home; I always call them "my mountains" whenever I see them on TV. (You'll see them, too, if you ever watch the Rose Bowl or Rose Parade on January 1st.) I've been hiking in many of the areas that are now burning. I've seen plenty of blackened hillsides in my life but it will be strange to see the extent of this fire next time I'm there (whenever that may be). I've also been to Mt. Wilson and seen the telescopes at the Mt. Wilson Observatory there. (I think I even remember going there for a school field trip, probably in elementary school...) Mt. Wilson has a Webcam; it usually updates every few minutes and is very popular with those who know of its existence. I checked it a couple days ago and could see the plume of smoke in the distance. When I checked it today, however, I found it was down: Apparently a backfire burned through cables supplying all telephone and Internet service to the Observatory. If you look at the Webcam today you'll see a static picture from yesterday (located on another server)—the last update the camera had before going down. It's a smoke-filled sight.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
Blogging Update
Thanks, folks, for your comments on how you keep up with the social media world—I don't know how you do it! (Though I do know what you mean about needing something to do at work... been there, done that. And yes, I definitely know better than to respond directly to the prolific poster on a class blog, but venting about it just a little on my own blog did help me put it into perspective.)
So, an update on the class blog. First, I discovered I was wrong about the number of people in the class. Turns out there are two sections to the class: One for graduate and one for undergraduate. There are 12 (or now 11—I guess someone dropped) graduate students in the class. When I looked at the undergraduate section, though, I discovered there are 33 people registered there, so with 44 people in the class that explains a little more about why the posts seemed to be ballooning last week as much (and at times as quickly) as they did.
I'm also starting to get a handle on keeping up. Like I said I did the RSS thing, but even with that I'm learning to ignore it so I can get other work done. I'll look at everything from the RSS feeds all at once when I'm ready to do that, skim most and respond to a limited number where I feel like I have something intelligent to say. That tactic should help me keep things down to a dull roar.
Finally, I wrote to the professor today and asked him something related to how he was grading our blog posts and what he expected. He sent me back a very thoughtful response saying I'm doing just fine with the blog and he doesn't expect everyone to spend as much time on the blog as he does, he's just looking for a good "classroom" dialogue about the topics we're covering in the course. I can handle that, particularly since that's how I was approaching it already: Do my posts after I've listened to the week's lectures, read the material, and put together my thoughts about it. So I think I'll do ok.
So that's the status of one class. Maybe next time I'll talk about another class (I have three of them). And on that note, time to turn the computer off to keep me from being distracted while I do some reading for another!
So, an update on the class blog. First, I discovered I was wrong about the number of people in the class. Turns out there are two sections to the class: One for graduate and one for undergraduate. There are 12 (or now 11—I guess someone dropped) graduate students in the class. When I looked at the undergraduate section, though, I discovered there are 33 people registered there, so with 44 people in the class that explains a little more about why the posts seemed to be ballooning last week as much (and at times as quickly) as they did.
I'm also starting to get a handle on keeping up. Like I said I did the RSS thing, but even with that I'm learning to ignore it so I can get other work done. I'll look at everything from the RSS feeds all at once when I'm ready to do that, skim most and respond to a limited number where I feel like I have something intelligent to say. That tactic should help me keep things down to a dull roar.
Finally, I wrote to the professor today and asked him something related to how he was grading our blog posts and what he expected. He sent me back a very thoughtful response saying I'm doing just fine with the blog and he doesn't expect everyone to spend as much time on the blog as he does, he's just looking for a good "classroom" dialogue about the topics we're covering in the course. I can handle that, particularly since that's how I was approaching it already: Do my posts after I've listened to the week's lectures, read the material, and put together my thoughts about it. So I think I'll do ok.
So that's the status of one class. Maybe next time I'll talk about another class (I have three of them). And on that note, time to turn the computer off to keep me from being distracted while I do some reading for another!
Friday, August 28, 2009
Keeping Up
I've now completed my first full week of fall semester (the week before when classes actually started was only a partial week)—only 14 to go. Apparently a semester is 16 weeks long; whadya know. I think it's safe to say I'm drowning. Well, ok, technically I'm not behind on anything (yet) but I find it easier to just feel like I'm drowning all the time. That way when I really am (which I think is going to be pretty often this semester, anyway) I'm already in the right "mode" for working on stuff. If that makes any sense.
Actually, I am drowning in one place: Blogging. In my last post I mentioned that I have several blogs I have to post to this semester, and by "have to" I mean I'm getting graded on it, both quality and quantity. One of those blogs is for the "Social Media and Public Relations" class I mentioned. I've now taught myself about RSS (ok, I knew what it was, I just didn't bother to use it until now) and that's helping a little, but keeping up with everyone's posts in addition to having to do my own is already getting WAY out of hand. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about here: The way this particular blog forum works is the instructor makes initial posts and then it's our job to post comments, both to his posts directly and to comments other students have made. So you end up with multiple "threads" (multi-level comments) within a single original post by the instructor. It makes it hard to follow, particularly since the RSS feeds only include the title of the original post by the instructor so without going to the blog to see the context you don't know if a particular student's post is replying to the original post or someone else's post. (If that all sounds confusing, you're right—welcome to my world.)
On top of the less-than-usable interface the quantity of posts is pretty astounding. As of this particular moment (and it'll probably change by the time I actually publish this post), in the four original posts that the instructor has put up for this week there are a total of 131 comments. I should mention that according to the course enrollment—which I just checked—there are a total of 12 people enrolled in this class. Yes, 12. And 131 comments (and rising) in less than a week. Maybe the other people in the class are only taking this one class so can focus on it wholeheartedly, but with three classes I can't. It's my nature to want to keep up with everything for my classes but I know if I don't start ignoring some of the posts soon I'm going to go crazy. I know I need to just do my posts, comment on a few other peoples', then turn it off until the next week's assignment. It's just hard when I can't get all the reading and listening to the lectures (two per week each over an hour long) done immediately so I see the RSS folders fill with posts from people who apparently have. (Either that or they're posting to the blog before they do the required reading and watch the lectures, which could be happening, I don't know.)
So, after all this I have a question for y'all (if you knew me in person you'd know I could never pull off that word in speaking): How do you keep up with the social media world? I've only talked about blogging here (and one blog in particular) but there's the whole Facebook, Twitter, and whatever else world out there, too. Everyone says how time consuming it is yet they continue to do it; since there's only so much time in the day that means other things have to suffer, right? How do you manage it all? And not just with friends: My class is on how organizations use social media to reach their publics, so that means their publics—that's you and me—have to be spending time with those social media tools in order to see the organizations' messages. I don't know how anyone has time for it all and can still be a student, an employee, a wife, a husband, a person who has a relationship with anything other than their computer all day long...
As I've been writing this I've been monitoring the RSS feed and going back and forth to the blog I mentioned; one person has now posted 12 comments in the past hour. His most recent post is responding to someone who speculated that too much from an organization—too many tweets, Facebook updates, whatever—may be too much for some people. The prolific commenter agreed and asked when do you say, "Enough is enough." I am SOOOOOOOOO tempted to reply to his post and say, "12 comments in an hour—enough is enough!!!!!" But I'm restraining myself and won't. :-)
Actually, I am drowning in one place: Blogging. In my last post I mentioned that I have several blogs I have to post to this semester, and by "have to" I mean I'm getting graded on it, both quality and quantity. One of those blogs is for the "Social Media and Public Relations" class I mentioned. I've now taught myself about RSS (ok, I knew what it was, I just didn't bother to use it until now) and that's helping a little, but keeping up with everyone's posts in addition to having to do my own is already getting WAY out of hand. To give you an idea of what I'm talking about here: The way this particular blog forum works is the instructor makes initial posts and then it's our job to post comments, both to his posts directly and to comments other students have made. So you end up with multiple "threads" (multi-level comments) within a single original post by the instructor. It makes it hard to follow, particularly since the RSS feeds only include the title of the original post by the instructor so without going to the blog to see the context you don't know if a particular student's post is replying to the original post or someone else's post. (If that all sounds confusing, you're right—welcome to my world.)
On top of the less-than-usable interface the quantity of posts is pretty astounding. As of this particular moment (and it'll probably change by the time I actually publish this post), in the four original posts that the instructor has put up for this week there are a total of 131 comments. I should mention that according to the course enrollment—which I just checked—there are a total of 12 people enrolled in this class. Yes, 12. And 131 comments (and rising) in less than a week. Maybe the other people in the class are only taking this one class so can focus on it wholeheartedly, but with three classes I can't. It's my nature to want to keep up with everything for my classes but I know if I don't start ignoring some of the posts soon I'm going to go crazy. I know I need to just do my posts, comment on a few other peoples', then turn it off until the next week's assignment. It's just hard when I can't get all the reading and listening to the lectures (two per week each over an hour long) done immediately so I see the RSS folders fill with posts from people who apparently have. (Either that or they're posting to the blog before they do the required reading and watch the lectures, which could be happening, I don't know.)
So, after all this I have a question for y'all (if you knew me in person you'd know I could never pull off that word in speaking): How do you keep up with the social media world? I've only talked about blogging here (and one blog in particular) but there's the whole Facebook, Twitter, and whatever else world out there, too. Everyone says how time consuming it is yet they continue to do it; since there's only so much time in the day that means other things have to suffer, right? How do you manage it all? And not just with friends: My class is on how organizations use social media to reach their publics, so that means their publics—that's you and me—have to be spending time with those social media tools in order to see the organizations' messages. I don't know how anyone has time for it all and can still be a student, an employee, a wife, a husband, a person who has a relationship with anything other than their computer all day long...
* * * *
As I've been writing this I've been monitoring the RSS feed and going back and forth to the blog I mentioned; one person has now posted 12 comments in the past hour. His most recent post is responding to someone who speculated that too much from an organization—too many tweets, Facebook updates, whatever—may be too much for some people. The prolific commenter agreed and asked when do you say, "Enough is enough." I am SOOOOOOOOO tempted to reply to his post and say, "12 comments in an hour—enough is enough!!!!!" But I'm restraining myself and won't. :-)
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Back to School
Fall semester started last week at NC State. I don't know what it is about school but just the thought of it makes me feel overwhelmed—let alone the actuality of it. So, even though I've only had one day of classes (for my two on-campus classes; I also have an online class that isn't starting real work until next week) I am officially overwhelmed.
On the bright side I think it will be a fun semester. When I started the program last spring a lot of classes were full by the time I was able to register so my options were somewhat limited in what I could take. When registering for fall, however, I was able to register with all the seniority that being a graduate student brings and I had no trouble getting my first choices. All three of my courses are in my field, relevant, and include interesting readings and assignments. Now that I'm not a new student anymore I also know many of the people in my two on-campus classes already. I'm particularly excited about my online course, a communications seminar called "Social Media and Public Relations." I'm finally going to learn about all the social media I've been avoiding! And I'll be dealing with it from the perspective of how organizations can use it to enhance their businesses, not from a personal standpoint, which is what I was avoiding. Sounds like the best of both worlds to me.
One thing being back in school will mean, of course, is that I'll undoubtedly have less time for this blog. I'm still going to try to post to it once a week; we'll see how well I do with that. As part of my schoolwork and other responsibilities this semester I've actually got three other blogs I'll be posting to on a regular basis so that will keep me busy with blogging, I'm sure. But, the more practice the better, right?
I realized I haven't posted an update on our precious pooch lately—I'm sure inquiring minds want to know! I'm happy to report that she's doing MUCH better: She's finishing up her antibiotic this weekend and I'm taking her to our regular vet for a follow-up blood test on Monday. She isn't having any of the symptoms she was anymore and is definitely brighter and more energetic than she was for most of the summer.
She's still a little on the thin side and getting her to eat is still a daily ordeal; I doubt it'll ever be a matter of just putting her food in front of her and having her eat it again. But we've got a routine (and an understanding) now and she does pretty well. She always comes and eats at least a few bites of breakfast now; for a while she wouldn't even entertain the idea of breakfast. Her favorite time to eat seems to be after her evening walk when she often cleans her bowl. Today was an exciting day: She cleaned her bowl at breakfast, lunch, AND dinner! So even though I still have to stand over her while she eats and remind her to eat periodically (she's an easily distracted pooch) at least she's getting used to eating regularly again. She's also been sleeping through the night for the past several weeks—a true blessing.
On the bright side I think it will be a fun semester. When I started the program last spring a lot of classes were full by the time I was able to register so my options were somewhat limited in what I could take. When registering for fall, however, I was able to register with all the seniority that being a graduate student brings and I had no trouble getting my first choices. All three of my courses are in my field, relevant, and include interesting readings and assignments. Now that I'm not a new student anymore I also know many of the people in my two on-campus classes already. I'm particularly excited about my online course, a communications seminar called "Social Media and Public Relations." I'm finally going to learn about all the social media I've been avoiding! And I'll be dealing with it from the perspective of how organizations can use it to enhance their businesses, not from a personal standpoint, which is what I was avoiding. Sounds like the best of both worlds to me.
One thing being back in school will mean, of course, is that I'll undoubtedly have less time for this blog. I'm still going to try to post to it once a week; we'll see how well I do with that. As part of my schoolwork and other responsibilities this semester I've actually got three other blogs I'll be posting to on a regular basis so that will keep me busy with blogging, I'm sure. But, the more practice the better, right?
* * * *
I realized I haven't posted an update on our precious pooch lately—I'm sure inquiring minds want to know! I'm happy to report that she's doing MUCH better: She's finishing up her antibiotic this weekend and I'm taking her to our regular vet for a follow-up blood test on Monday. She isn't having any of the symptoms she was anymore and is definitely brighter and more energetic than she was for most of the summer.
She's still a little on the thin side and getting her to eat is still a daily ordeal; I doubt it'll ever be a matter of just putting her food in front of her and having her eat it again. But we've got a routine (and an understanding) now and she does pretty well. She always comes and eats at least a few bites of breakfast now; for a while she wouldn't even entertain the idea of breakfast. Her favorite time to eat seems to be after her evening walk when she often cleans her bowl. Today was an exciting day: She cleaned her bowl at breakfast, lunch, AND dinner! So even though I still have to stand over her while she eats and remind her to eat periodically (she's an easily distracted pooch) at least she's getting used to eating regularly again. She's also been sleeping through the night for the past several weeks—a true blessing.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Comments on Commenting
First of all, thanks to those of you who commented on my last post—it's nice to hear how other people navigate the blog world as I work on defining my own response to it. I've got some ideas on why my attitude might be what it is about some things; more on that in a minute.
First, some comments on comments:
Allison - I agree about the time management aspect of things! I don't know how people keep up with dozens of personal blogs on a daily basis.
Dr. Wifey - Thanks for the tip to the SITS site. That's a good idea—for people who must have a LOT of time on their hands! I can tell just from looking at it that I'd be overwhelmed by it pretty quickly.
K Storm - I'm always happy to hear what you have to say! I use the blog roll to see which blogs are updated, too, though I've noticed my blog roll doesn't always reflect things correctly: Sometimes it'll say a blog hasn't been updated for 5 days but when I check the blog there's a new post from that day. So maybe the blog roll just has a delay in its update times. I'm never sure what time zone it's working with, anyway...
Jen - I read a few blogs that are for information, too (related to the field of technical communications, in my case); if I ever do comment on them (which I haven't yet) I definitely wouldn't expect any comments on my personal blog in return. And I know what you mean about commenting sometimes keeping you up late at night—I've occasionally done the same!
Now, some thoughts about my attitude toward blogs and commenting. There are definitely different categories of blogs: Ones I consider professional or informational, which I read for the same reason I read articles on something like CNN; blogs of friends I know outside the blogging world, where I may or may not comment since we communicate in other ways; and blogs of people who I only know through their blogs. As I've been searching for blog friends I find blogs that look like they're written by nice people but I'm not necessarily looking at the content specifically. If I comment on several posts and don't get any response, though, then the content starts to matter more since that's all I have to go on. It's similar to if I try to befriend someone in person: If I'm doing all the talking and it seems like the person really doesn't want to relate to me then I'm probably not going to continue that "friendship" (which really isn't a friendship but more of a one-sided monologue) for very long. In the blog world—or any other online-only discipline—that two-way interaction is even more "removed" (the best way I can think to describe it) than face-to-face interaction. The truth of the matter is if I'm reading a blog about a family, for instance, then the kids may be very cute and they may do fun things, but since I don't have a connection to that family it isn't very real to me. Reciprocal comments on each other's blogs make people—and their families—much more real to me and establish that connection. When I look for blog friends I'm looking for that blog-level connection.
I'm also finding that quality is much better than quantity (back to that how do people keep up thing!) so I'm not complaining, just analyzing why I (and others, I imagine) might act the way I do.
On that note I'm off to class to learn about usability studies and technical communication theory. Happy blogging, everyone!
First, some comments on comments:
Allison - I agree about the time management aspect of things! I don't know how people keep up with dozens of personal blogs on a daily basis.
Dr. Wifey - Thanks for the tip to the SITS site. That's a good idea—for people who must have a LOT of time on their hands! I can tell just from looking at it that I'd be overwhelmed by it pretty quickly.
K Storm - I'm always happy to hear what you have to say! I use the blog roll to see which blogs are updated, too, though I've noticed my blog roll doesn't always reflect things correctly: Sometimes it'll say a blog hasn't been updated for 5 days but when I check the blog there's a new post from that day. So maybe the blog roll just has a delay in its update times. I'm never sure what time zone it's working with, anyway...
Jen - I read a few blogs that are for information, too (related to the field of technical communications, in my case); if I ever do comment on them (which I haven't yet) I definitely wouldn't expect any comments on my personal blog in return. And I know what you mean about commenting sometimes keeping you up late at night—I've occasionally done the same!
Now, some thoughts about my attitude toward blogs and commenting. There are definitely different categories of blogs: Ones I consider professional or informational, which I read for the same reason I read articles on something like CNN; blogs of friends I know outside the blogging world, where I may or may not comment since we communicate in other ways; and blogs of people who I only know through their blogs. As I've been searching for blog friends I find blogs that look like they're written by nice people but I'm not necessarily looking at the content specifically. If I comment on several posts and don't get any response, though, then the content starts to matter more since that's all I have to go on. It's similar to if I try to befriend someone in person: If I'm doing all the talking and it seems like the person really doesn't want to relate to me then I'm probably not going to continue that "friendship" (which really isn't a friendship but more of a one-sided monologue) for very long. In the blog world—or any other online-only discipline—that two-way interaction is even more "removed" (the best way I can think to describe it) than face-to-face interaction. The truth of the matter is if I'm reading a blog about a family, for instance, then the kids may be very cute and they may do fun things, but since I don't have a connection to that family it isn't very real to me. Reciprocal comments on each other's blogs make people—and their families—much more real to me and establish that connection. When I look for blog friends I'm looking for that blog-level connection.
I'm also finding that quality is much better than quantity (back to that how do people keep up thing!) so I'm not complaining, just analyzing why I (and others, I imagine) might act the way I do.
On that note I'm off to class to learn about usability studies and technical communication theory. Happy blogging, everyone!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)