Lylemad’s Weblog

I just thought I would finish off the course with a Santa Claus Blog: the coal has been bought, the stockings are stuffed and I’m finished my paper.

Take a read if you like and have a Happy New Year in between time.

Until we meet again: Adieu! Ho… Ho… Ho!

I’m sitting downstairs here at the Viscount Gort fighting with people in their tweens, teens and twenties for computer time – go figure. I think they are starting to think that I’m some middle aged cyber stalker on the prowl. My dress code, or lack there of (fashion faux pas), aides them in this thought process: I look like the “Mad Trapper” – an Albert Johnson incarnate.

Anyhoo: Three items to report:

1. Passport Security Breach: It seems that when applying for his passport online, a gentleman out east, was able to access the files of other applicants simply by changing the last letter in the url address. The site has since been shut down for immediate correction by officials duly concerned.

2. Facebook Suicide: It seems that a parent and two teenage children started a false account by the name of “Josh”. Well “Josh” went on to have online relationship with a thirteen year old girl who committed suicide when he terminated the relationship. It has been stated thus far that it is unlikely that the online creators of “Josh” will be charged because “Josh” (technically) doesn’t exist.

Note: Both of the above stories were on our national news broadcasts over this past while so I perceive them to be true.

3. Greenprint: a product to be purchased to save yourself ink and paper during the printing process. It operates by preventing the useless printing of those blank pages we all use for airplanes after the job has been done and the water cooler is empty.

PS: I am still working on my paper: a thousand words and counting.

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, people of all ages… the “Rock of Retribution” is getting ready to roll: the deadline is near upon us and I can hear the typewriters all aclickity clack up the “Bayline” track: it reached Churchill in 19 and 29: Just in time to give all of those with their new found poverty somewheres not to be seen, or heard (crying) for that matter. I’m feeling pretty good “write” now for I have just come over from “Google Docs” and have gotten off to a decent start on “Mine Essay”. Yes, I’m also coming to you from that of the caboose, but last I heard they were “old school” too. I’m beginning to feel really irrelevant at times. Today in school my students asked me when it was that I would retire and they were hoping it was before that of my “Old Age Nervous Breakdown”. Just exactly what they were intimating is beyond my realm of comprehension…?

Well today I had the fortune of linking up with the G-Man and he was able to help me immensely in re: to the “essay” at large, my course progress thus far, on how I could embed URL’s within that of a paper proper and actually have them work, and… he introduced me to that of Zotero: to be found at http://www.zotero.org: a down loadable Fire Fox application or tool designed to aide and abet, both professor and student, with online writing delivery technique. What I like most about this program thus far is it’s ability to “APA” all of the url addresses etc et al for we students who get a wee bit stressed when it comes to the formal citation of borrowed research, ideas, and thoughts: we must not plagiarize now and back up that which we say (note to self) with that which is published in book or online. Have I worked on my paper today? Yes… the learning opportunity provided here will help me in the collection, citation and access to and of the information I will need/use to lend credence/validity to my argument per say.