Monthly Archives: April 2008

Daniel Pink, Career Advice, and Manga

Daniel Pink has a new book out and I am planning on reading it but until I can get an actual copy in my hand here are goodies to share.  Garr Reynolds has created a presentation with an overview and a few of his own ideas.  It is definitely worth the watch. The book is The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You Will Ever Need.   

An article in Business Week says this:

 

In Japan, no subject is too serious or too pedestrian for manga. Comic books about financial management are popular. The True Life of Carlos Ghosn, a series about the head of Nissan Motor (NSANY), sold well. And a two-volume manga account of the country’s economic development has become a classic.

As for those who are still dubious about the, uh, value proposition of a business comic book, Pink offers this pitch for manga: It provides maximum efficiency of expression.

 

You can watch Garr Reynolds presentation here and also download a pdf if you prefer a paper copy. 

I have not been a big fan of manga but as I read more online and the pile of books next to my bedside table grows taller than the table, it may be worth a second look.  My experience thus far has been the kind that high school students want to read and is often not appropriate for school.  I am interested to know if anyone knows of more manga style books that are reference or informational.  If you have any suggestions I’d love to hear about them.

Ten Steps For Burning A CD or DVD On Your Mac

  1. Create a “Burn Folder”
  2. Click the finder icon (the little blue faces) in the dock
  3. Click file/new burn folder (menu bar at the top of your screen)
  4. Go to the folder where the files you want to burn are living
  5. Click a file you want to burn to disc. (Hold down the apple key and click multiple files to select more than one)
  6. Select edit/copy and then click on the burn folder and click edit paste or drag the files over to the burn folder
  7. The files you selected should appear in the folder as “alias icons” with little arrows in the bottom left corner of each file (indicates it’s a shortcut)
  8. Select file/Burn “burn folder” to disc or click the burn button that appears in the upper right corner of the finder window
  9. There will be a dialog box asking you to insert a blank disk
  10. Insert a blank disk into the Mac and it will start burning your files.

Yay UIL!

Tonight I got to attend my second UIL banquet of the week.   While the two were for different school districts it still is such a blessing to realize what a great group of kids live in this community.  It also blesses me to know such awesome teachers who are so willing to go above and beyond to give to the kids.

Google Does It Again

Hurray! I haven’t checked the new features in Google Docs in awhile, but tonight I was uploading some documents and decided to peak at the presentation piece.  When I last tried to use it I got frustrated because you couldn’t download the presentations into PowerPoint.  They have fixed that and now your presentations can swing either way!  I was sure it was just a matter of time and now it’s here!

You still can’t have all the functionality as far as animations and themes but you can create your basic slides and get all your text set up.  You can also share with a team and track changes.

If you have a student who doesn’t have Microsoft Office on their home computer this is a way for them to get a bit ahead as long as they have access to the internet.

The Last Six Weeks Of School

This is a crazy time any year but more so this year because my son is a senior and my daughter a junior and they attend a different school than the one I work at.  This means two UIL banquets, and speaking of UIL my daughter is going to State for computer apps!  I eased into that gracefully didn’t I?

I’m proud of and for her.  She left the competition before the actual scores were final so she didn’t even know at that point.  A friend of ours picked her up so she could join a youth group attending a Third Day concert and the Rangers game.  She called me on her cell and held it up so I could hear them singing “God Of Wonders”.  She didn’t stay for the whole game – it was not one of their better games but she still didn’t get home til midnight but had an awesome time.  The praise team was tired and hoarse!

We have something nearly every night for the next few weeks – probably longer but I am not looking ahead any farther than that!

Dale Update April 2008

Dale had his regular appointment today as well as his 6 month glofil test.  His lab work was fine except his white count was low.  They are going to have us go to a local lab and have that checked next week as a cold could do that.  Another culprit could be one of his medications and if that turns out to be the problem they will lower the dosage.

We don’t have the results on the glofil test but it basically entails drinking some iodine in diet coke and then they have you drink a couple of liters of water (or at least it seems like it).  They inject a little radioactive isotope under the skin and then you can only use the facilities when they tell you. You have to drink three times and they draw blood three times.

The good news is they have switched his visits from every two to every three weeks!  Yay! For his sake and the sake of our bank account with current gas prices!

It all seemed to go fine but we didn’t get out of there til 3:00 so it was after 5:00 when we finally got home.  We are now in recliners in front of the tv. Both kids are at regionals and my plan for the night is to do a little laundry, watch tv and surf the internet.  I’d like to stay awake to see Numbers but we’ve been up since 5:00 this morning so I make no promises!

TV Tonight

Big Bang Theory Quotes of the Week

1. there wouldn’t have been any ass-kickings if that death ray had worked!

2. Question – what happened?
Answer – I’m not sure but I think it involves a part of the human experience that has always eluded me!
Comment – Well that narrows it down!

Sharing Some More Resources For New Mac Users

How to install software

How to Uninstall Software

The main site is a blog called Mac Kindergarten and there are a lot of great tips there.

An article that tells you basically what Pages in iWork is and is not can be found on Obvious Diversion and it might be a good idea to read this before you dive in and play with the program. A comment that I would add is that while the article talks about Pages just as a word processor it functions very similar to Microsoft Publisher in that you open a template and you can keep it exactly the same and just replace placeholder text with your content or you can move everything around, completely remove some parts and pretty much re-invent the pretty wheel to suit your own needs.

TeacherTube video tutorial for KeyNote

There are quite a few video tutorials on TeacherTube for Macs. I recommend going to the searchbox on the website and just search for a program you want to learn about. This is a great way to get introduced to the software before you dive in and play.

Girls Just Want To Have fun!

It’s Friday night and I’m sitting here with my latte (which just happens to have a tiny but of Bailey’s added) and I am unwinding from a busy and stressful week. I am watching Bones as I write this and I have been surfing my favorite “just for fun” site and decided to share it here.
Girls this post is about a website just for you! Whether you like to shop, connect, organize, or travel there is something for you here.  If you are into food, fitness, home, or maybe have a future mini-girl geek you want to check this out!

There is all this and more at what is actually a group of websites that are divided into specific interests.  I always start out at GeekSugar

You can look at the side bar on the left and as you hover over each category you will see popsugar, yumsugar, lilsugar and more.  These are sites for after work or Saturday morning with a latte and just relaxing.  There are love it or leave it polls, recipes for cocktails, latest buzz on celebrities and plenty of goodies to get your girl on.

So don’t get in trouble with your boss – just take a little “me time” tonight when the re-runs have you bored to tears and you need a little “geek is chic”  pick-me-up!  Have a great weekend