Ten Randoms...

Okay, so the randomness in my tweets did not get the job done, so here goes...

1. My senior year of high school, I toyed with the idea of going to culinary school. Still enjoy tooling around the kitchen and making up recipes, and wonder if I might get there someday...
2. I am number 10 in my family of 12 (9 girls 3 boys); all fourteen of us lived in the house for about eight months before the oldest was off to the Marines and the second was off to marriage. My parents still live there and plan on never selling it in case an emergency brings us (and their 7 sons/daughters in law and their 21 grandchildren) back home.
3. My first choice of profession was H.S. math teacher, 1 year in school; then pure math 2 1/2 years in school (to do what????); then tallied credits and loans and went for the practical Bus. Admin. w/ Accounting (gotta have me some math). Eight years later, BBA, please call me Dr. Wendy (okay most of it was part time, but still eight years...)
   
4. My biggest indulge the crave snack: Dark Chocolate covered pretzels. Loved it as the fundraiser pretzel rods made by Jr. High-ers until I worked with them on making it for a fundraiser...
5. I love to try new beers. Best gift EVER beer of the month club, some good ones some not so good, but nice to look forward to each month. One of my sisters works as a sales rep for a microbrew distributor, so I now have a filter so only the good stuff comes my way.
6. I "married" a library lover, and have converted. Don't have (make) as much time as I'd like for reading, but after my first interview w/ CML, I stopped in at REY and paid my fines.
7. I am not a huge animal lover (could do without them), but when I was told our house WOULD have cats, I dealt. I don't kick them or anything, but I don't show a tremendous amount of affection either.
8. When my eight year old asked for help with cursive, I had to consult my good friend Google I'm not proud of this, but feel I must own up.
9. I HEART Excel (some of you may already know this). I think pulling (sometimes seemingly unrelated) data into one file and cleaning up for presentation is FUN. Most of my Excel knowledge is a compilation of leaching off others' formulas and playing on my own to figure out how the heck they did that.
   
10. Given my perfect circumstances (work and home) I'd work second shift. I am a night owl and do not like seeing the sun in the east, EVER. Sometimes (everyday) it's a necessity, so I deal, but just for the record, I think I'd have gotten L&P completed in week one if I was working with the sun in the west and/or out of the sky.

Twenty-four (of twenty-three) things complete. Pretty sure that's good enough for a MacBook...

That's all folks

The L&P final post (excluding the 10 random; I'll get there). So I keep getting little pokes about whether I am finished or not. I figured I ought to take a break from work and get some playtime in. The journey, so far, has been fantastic. The results, unexpected. Going into this I figured I'd get exposed to new web tools and some old tools that I am already using. Figured it would be a couple months of playing around seeing what I liked and what I don't like. Figured I'd add some apps and bookmark some things.
Well... all of these things happened, but the BEST experience that came out of Learn&Play for me is the connections that I made. Being stuck at my desk with the volume of work that needs to be completed, it's easy to overlook the ultimate goal of my position; I am a cog in the wheel of an organization out "to promote reading and guide learning in the pursuit of information, knowledge, and wisdom." The library plays an important role in the community, and (aside from the accounting, reporting, timing, auditing, and technology differences) it's easy for me to get lost in my spreadsheetsssssssssssssssssss, and forgot where I work.
A huge THANK-YOU to the L&P team for bringing me out of my work and closer to the face of CML, the PSD staff that lives it everyday.

MOLDI

I've looked through through MOLDI's collection before, but did not find the user interface very intuitive (might just be me). With the nudge of L&P (again, thank you) I was given guided instructions and a little kick to poke around MOLDI. I went for music, and ended up finding a couple fun titles that went a head and downloaded. Then the program to read them (I wondered about the copywrite issue, think I got it now). I think I will spend some additional time looking through the MOLDI "stacks" and see if I can utilize this more fully.

PodCast

I've listened to podcasts of some of the talk radio that I used to listen to, but not for a while. I've given that up for music (again). I've found that throwing on a few of my faves in pandora can keep me occupied and productive for hours (as I look up and notice I should have gone home hours ago). I trolled through some podcast search sites looking for a quality cast on accounting (dork, I know). I think I found one that I will listen to as topics are appropriate: Dorky, I know
Although my history with podcasts has fizzled, I am hoping that my podcast future works out better.

YouTube

One video, just one? I've run into YouTube mostly from email links for ranges from religious, politics, professional presentations, and (of course) humor on all these topics and more. I lived on YouTube pre-election, mostly as a humor break, I have taken a time-out now that it's all settled. I still do check in on a comedian I picked up doing a SP impression, very funny, then moved to 236 and tamed up :( I still am enjoying her humor though. I will continue to check YouTube as it strikes as things interest me or come my way. As for embedding, I gotta go with my mean-self in:


That's some fine acting

Web 2.0 Tools

OMG How many tools are out there? I actually realized that I am fairly up on some of the more popular (award winning) sites. Mainly through others' invites, not because I am up on things myself... I have however payed it forward and gotten people to join things like Facebook, set up iGoogle, join Twitter (yeah I took a little pushing...), set up stations on Pandora (and share stations). I guess I am not as far behind as I thought. Unfortunately, I have chosen a profession that has not fully embraced web-based applications (that I've come in contact with). Many cannot see beyond the risk factors. I really think an opportunity for greater real time collaboration is being overlooked, but who knows maybe I am a leader in the trend...

CML Tools

I love the CML Power Tools page. The toolbar is sitting on all the computers that I work on regularly (4 or so) and I love the fact that IE opens my account in a new window and Firefox opens in a new tab. Power tools actually encouraged me to update my browser (on all computers) to Firefox (THANK YOU!!!) The only downfall of CML's Power Tools is how hidden they are on the main CML page. I want to see a PowerTools button across the top...