#38 Console Games

After playing Pacman for 15 minutes I found it to be just as annoying as it was many years ago. My son was in love with the game and would always want me to play with him. Of course, I would, but I can honestly say I never cared for the game and of course he always beat me. I would have to say I never did acheive many skills back then and have not gained any since that time. Oh, well???

As of today I have grandchildren and they now have the WII System and have a blast with it. It is unbeliveable how gaming has evolved since then. I do think that gaming can be helpful in a educational way by introducing some of it into the library systems. It can bring in young patrons who may never have been in a public library and hopefully attract them to books, but it can also bring them in just for the game. I have seen many young people spend hours and hours playing games in the library (good and not so good).

#37 Get Your Game On

The article that I read was the Shifted Librarrian and I found it to be quite interesting. After working in a library for the last 3 years I have observed how disruptive that teens can be to other patrons because their parents have dropped them off and they are bored being in a library. I would have to agree that I think gaming in the library would be a great interest to them, because it can be fun and educational at the same time. As it stated in the article, how parents would much rather have their teens doing something fun and of interest to them, then to have them out on the streets.

I did play one of the games on Carnegie Mellon and found it to be quite entertaining, but a bit confusing on the instructions. Once I figured it out I was on a roll helping patrons finding what they needed and quickly returning their books to book drop. I did manage to win in the end.

Yes, Yes, I am for gaming in the library!!!!! Especially after reading how many teens it would bring in on one night and how much more the teen books where being checked out as of a result of gaming night.

#36 Games and Gaming

Let me begin by saying that I love playing games on the inter-net, but I have only played puzzle games. This module has been a new experience. I did explore Runscape and did manage to complete the turorial. I found it to be a bit confusing and fun at the same time. I really enjoyed creating my character, but was unable (after several attempts) to post a screen shot to my blog. There didn't seem to be a place to view your character so that it could be viewed.

I also tried Chore Wars briefly and was able to create an avatar her name is Dustie.

They did not have a lot of options to create something new and different. I plan on playing that more to see how far I can get with the gardening and of course the dusting, which happens to me my least favorite chore.

#35 Games? In The Library?

Learning can be made fun with games and I think it is a fantastic way to learn for both children and adults. I played the free rice game and was able to donate 1700 grains of rice to the hunger. Now, how cool is that!!! I found the game easy to follow and found it to be something that I would go back to again and again and also, something that I will pass on to family and friends. I also checked out some of the childrens games and found them to be helpful for my grand-daughters. I think that they will really enjoy funbrain.com. It seems to have alot to offer.

#34 Geocoding and Geocaching

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&output=html&q=N31%C2%B024.54534%2C+W095%C2%B034.65762&btnG=Search+Maps# I was a little worried about this last module, but so far have breezed through it. The location that I picked is a favorite campsite that my husband and I visit every spring: Crockett Family Resort at 75 Dogwood Lane West, Crockett, Tx. 75835 and the GPS coordinates are at the above first line.

This last module was interesting, but I found it to be something that I would not normal use, although it could be very useful for someone who's job has them on the road. I tried going into Geocaching.com and setting up an account, but every time I tried to put my password w/validation code in it kept saying it was incorrect. I also tried emailing them and did not receive a response back.

#33 Relocating w/Online Maps

I looked into a few of the sites, but found HAR to be the most helpful. I was amazed to find how many homes are in forclosure (sad). Another, reason I liked HAR was because of the map that you are able to click on and narrow down your search. I started by checking into and area that my husband and I are planning on retiring to in the future and I found it to be great place to find out about locations of shopping, parks, police stations, etc. Some other info. I thought to be very helpful was the tax record, mortgage calculator, and I loved the photo gallery. Just for fun I decided to check into the time share and found a fabulous place that I could probably only visit through this site (but, hey we can always dream.....- ML#7918165)!

I decided to look into some new homes and found the site for mapping out walking distance to be really neat. I thought it to be pretty cool to be able to put in an address and a map will appear with all of the major places within walk distance and then some. That to me seemed to be the easiest to learn because of the way you could zoom all around on the map till you found your location.

#32 Current Events

After looking through 100 Things to do, I chose the one on music because it is something I often search for, especially concerts and sports events. So, say for instance you were looking for upcoming concerts to your town for Bette Midler you could go to the following web site www.buytickets247.com/concerts.cfm

I tried to explore the 3 different sites, Global Incident I found to be frightening and not very interesting and National Atlas I could not bring up at all. I did find Terra Server to be of interest because of the historic sites. The map I found of most interest was that of Ellis Island (my grandparents came to the U.S. through Ellis Island). ABOVE RIGHT is a photo that I have of Ellis Island.

#31 Have Map, Will Travel

I checked out all 3 map sites, but went with Google Maps because I already have an account with google. I created a map of a place that my husband and I plan on retiring to in the future. I was amazed how I could get so much info. on one very small town. I have placed markers in several locations and I am looking forward to how many more I can put in as the years go by and to see just how many will change. Pretty cool stuff, I did not know this was available. Once again, thank you.

#30: Take A Load Off Our Drives

I am pretty familiar with the S, P, & Z drives on our computer. We utilize the P drive for all of our training hours. I find it to be a fantastic place to keep track of all my required training hours. I did find out something new about the S drive, I did not know that the "S" stands for scratch drive and I did not know we were able to add files to the "S" & "Z" files. This is helpful to know for future projects at work. I enjoyed this months training because I thought that I was always well organized with all of my computer files, but now I have learned a few more organizing tips.

#29 Email

At the start of My 23 Things I did create a personal e-mail account to be used just for that related purpose. I did that just to keep my work training seperate from my personal account and my work account. I would strongly encourage anyone who is just starting the training to do the same. It has been very helpful keeping them seperate. I have always been a firm believer in keeping things organized and disgarded if not needed and have always practice that on all my interactions with a computer, including work and personal accounts. I must say I did find it helpful to learn about "yousendit". I know that will be something I will use in the near future for both personal and work. I also took the Netiquette Quiz and scored a 70% (7 out of 10), I guess thats not to bad for someone who has never been in a chat room.

#28 Spring Cleaning

First, let me start off by saying I was very shocked to hear that it cost the taxpayers 20 grand to store files on the library computers!!! That is a real wake up call to spring clean on our computers. I found it helpful to keep in mind the 2 minute guideline and to deal with one item at a time. I also, liked the idea of the Tickler File for organizing your paperwork (43 folders - 12 for each month and an additional 31 folders for each day). This will come in handy with all of my un-organized hard copies and also with my husbands business, which I work part time at.

I looked into all of the online calendars and even started one with google, pretty cool, I think it will be a big help with my busy, busy day's. I liked the Ta-Da- List, especially the get inspired section, where you can create your own list (books to read, bills to pay, web links to visit). ALL VERY helpul, a big thank you!!!

#27 Podcast Challenge

I have not had an oppurtunity as yet to phone in for the podcast, but I am looking forward to doing it in the near future. It sounds pretty neat!!!

#26 Making Music

I have looked at some of the music sites, facebook and friedster could not be viewed without setting up an account. I did look into MOG, which offered a few different items such as: browse moggers, top post w/songs, top post w/music videos, and daily picks. I also checked out Phling where you can stream your music from your pc to your phone, share music w/friends and listen to their music, find out who is listening to what, etc. I found both of those sites to be of interested to younger people. The site that did catch my interest was project Playlist. What really attracted me the most to the site was the fact that you could actually add a song from your playlist to your blog. I am going to try that at a later date when I have more time. I did enjoy creating a playlist of songs, in fact I have created a list of songs that are some of my husband and my songs and I have emailed them to him.

This excersise for me has been fantastic, because I love music and did not know that all of these different sites where available. Thank you a bunch!!!

#25 Music Pirate

Yes, I have to confess I have burned music a few times before, but have always been concerned about whether or not it was legal. This exersise has helped by letting me know about legal sites and explanation of the laws. I will now have some comfort when burning music, a big thank you!

I am sort of torned about whether musicans benefit more from strict copy right protection or from open sharing. I think on one hand it helps them to get their music out to a wide range of people, but on the other hand they may not get as many people buying their music when they can listen to it free or burn it to a CD.

#24 The Sound of Music

First of all let me begin by saying "It's GREAT to be back"!!! After looking at the different pay sites I found them all to be very similar in features, but found Yahoo to be more user friendly. With the help of my grand -daughter (who is only 8 yrs. old) I was able to download a song to her MP3 player, she loves Taylor Swift! I was really amazed to find out that you can actually listen live to one of your favorite radio stations via my computer. One of my favorite stations just so happens to be KILT 100.3 and it was very easy just clicking on the "Listen Live" and WOW there it was. Some of the other stations I had some difficulty with, such as KRBE and KUHF.