So, I'm exercising regularly now. Every weekday morning at 6:30 (ugh) my wife and I get up and do some crunches and push-ups and whatnot for about a half an hour. It's not much but it's working for me. Not that I have much to lose. I was about 170 or so a few weeks ago when we started and now I'm about 165. Not bad. Just goes to show you how much just a little effort can do. Hopefully we can keep it up. I have a tendency to start slacking off after a while, sleeping in a little later, taking a day off here and there until I'm down to nothing. It's better when you're doing it together. I should start doing something on the weekends too. Maybe get back to jogging or start riding my bike or something.

Finally... a rather productive weekend.

Got some important paperwork worked on for my wife's permanent residence application. It's so difficult trying to figure out what these people want sometimes and why they need us to run around getting documents from agencies they could probably deal with directly. Oh well, we're trying our best.

Discussed some renovation ideas. We've developed themes for all the rooms in our new house including a title (to center our ideas), keywords (to inspire regarding details) and colour schemes (primary colour, accent colours), as well as rethinking layout and what furniture/appliances/toys will be needed. For example, we thought about the downstairs bathroom: Theme: Celebrity; Keywords: Retro 50s, Old Hollywood, Martini Lounge, etc.; Colours: Red, White, Black, Chrome. We want to move things around and would like to fit in a shower down there if possible. And just outside the door there will be a little seat (for waiting your turn *laugh*) that will be "telephone-booth" styled (since it will be between our "Urban Night" Media Room and our "London" Laundry/Kitchenette. Cool, eh?

I completed my review on "Managing E-Learning Strategies". It's a good book. If you're interested in that sort of thing: the actual development of e-learning stuff. So I'll get it looked over by some colleagues and submit it to our new journal.

I also worked out a protocol for naming our photos on the computer. It's simple and obvious but I think it will work best: Year, Month, Day, and 24-hour time the picture was taken (with a letter afterward to differentiate between two pictures taken within the same minute), with 99 acting as the day if it's not known, and 0001-9999 for the time if that's not known. (For example, "200508251423b" would be a picture taken on August 25th, 2005 at 2:23 in the afternoon with at least one other picture having been taken at that time.) It's an easily accessible and somewhat meaningful unique identifier, and can be used for virtual any photo without resorting to complicated subject classification rules. All that info can be put in the files property fields. Yeah, I'm a librarian.

I'm really working on Jordan's "Eye of the World". I'm up to the part where Perrin and Egwene have left the Tuatha'an, Rand and Mat have escaped from the Fade through Thom's "sacrifice", and Lan, Moiraine and Nynaeve have arrived in Whitebridge. It's really hard reading a book and series like this after so long. It's difficult trudging through the potatoes of detail building up to the real meat of discovery of powers and important roles for certain characters. I can't wait until Rand gets really powerful and starts runnin' the show!!! *giggle*

(Read this and this.) So, again I have to praise Google! I'm really hating this "not doing evil" thing they've got going... *laugh* They are now the ONLY ones protecting us from the "government" trying to sneak their way into our lives again. America Online, Microsoft and Yahoo all buckled under, only one for which I had any respect left, but Google has refused to comply with their rather broad subpoena for "the records of the searches internet users are asking it to perform".

You know, I don't think the American government is really out to protect the children. What is really "harmful to minors" in terms of sexual content anyway? I mean, when we talk about hitting someone or taking their stuff, it's obvious what we mean by "harm". Poison is harmful. Overcharging is harmful. Insulting someone is harmful. Racism is harmful. All pretty obvious. Looking at boobs? Doesn't seem to be quite as obvious. It's ok when you're 3 months old. It's perfectly natural for children to be sexually curious at 14, if not earlier. At what points does it start and stop being harmful in between those ages? Many of us haved accidentally walked in on our parents or someone while in the state of undress (at least). There are whole native cultures in which it is perfectly normal for the children to be well aware of their parents having sex. (There ain't so many multi-room igloos out there.) Now that we have rooms and door with locks, it's horribly traumatic and damaging for us to be aware of probably one of the most natural events on the planet?

Perhaps there is some harm... I don't know. I'm not a psychologist. I'm a librarian. I've tried to look up research in this topic and it seems like too many simply take for granted that it is harmful. We simply bring too much bias to the subject to consistently deal with it rationally and effectively. (See "Mitchell, Kimberly J; Finkelhor, David; Wolak, Janis. The exposure of youth to unwanted sexual material on the Internet: A national survey of risk, impact, and prevention. Youth & Society. Vol 34(3) Mar 2003, 330-358.", "Rind, Bruce. Adolescent Sexual Experiences with Adults: Pathological or Functional?. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality. Vol 15(1) 2003, 5-22.", and "Ybarra, Michele L; Mitchell, Kimberly J. Exposure to Internet pornography among children and adolescents: A national survey. CyberPsychology & Behavior. Vol 8(5) Oct 2005, 473-486.")

Still reading "Eye of the World" and "Managing E-learning Strategies". I've really got to put down the fiction for a while and concentrate on what I HAVE to read instead. But fiction is so much fun! But it's so unproductive... But it's fun! But you don't LEARN anything... *my two sides arguing*

Had an interesting day yesterday. My wife's an American citizen and we've recently moved back to Canada and for her paperwork we needed a copy of our marriage certificate. No problem except that we needed it right away and they typically take 6-8 weeks to find and send it out. So I had to take the day off work and drive for over three hours into the heart of Toronto (900 Bay Street) from Kingston and get it "expedited". When I get there, there's NO lineup (wonder of wonders at a government agency) but then they say "nope!", I don't have the proper "proof of urgency" and they show me a list of what DOES qulaify as "proof of urgency", two of them being AIRPLANE TICKETS and WEDDING INVITATIONS. So, my showing them documents saying that my wife would be kicked out of the country, leaving her husband and two young children isn't urgent enough but someone waltzing in there with two tickets to Aruba gets a "Right away, sir!" Fortunately, the lady said I could talk to her manager who promptly said it was ok. Evrything was ok but she had me panicing a little there. I had just driven a long way, had taken the day off work, had a rapidly approaching deadline for this thing, and, to top it all off, the money situation was pretty tight (Let's just say that I drove without the radio on so that I could conserve gas... *laugh*).

Anyway... So how was YOUR day?

As you can hopefully see, I've been working on my site design lately. I hope you like it. I do. The design is called "Abysmal Thallasic" -- yeah, just try and figure out what I mean by that! *laugh* The way I've set up my site now, I should be able to make changes in design solely through changes in my style sheet.

I've started rereading "The Eye of the World" by Robert Jordan again. It's been a while since I read the series and I've waited long enough for him to have written two or three more so I'd better reread them and catch up. I've read the prequel ("New Spring") so I'm really reading it in the true order. I'm also reading to review a book called "Managing E-Learning Strategies" by Badrul Khan. It's very interesting (at least to me) although a little dry if your not into the subject (developing e-learning courses and programs.

I've become a man recently! No, not in that way -- Get your mind out of the gutter. (There's no room with my mind already there! *laugh*) No, I mean I went to Home Depot, bought some hardware and equipment and went home and fixed stuff and installed stuff. Well, I HAD to use the power tools I got for Xmas, didn't I?

We've recently started IM at my library (with a lot of my help, if I do say so myself). And it's actually been used! Early in the second week of it being available, we received several IM reference questions. Cool, eh? I really think it's the wave of the future. Instant messaging technology or something similar will be a big thing in the years to come. That's really what text messaging is really. The more we are at computers and need to communicate, the more we will rely on instant technology like this. The phone just isn't the best tool always. I can do more while I'm instant messaging. I can talk to several people at the same time. I can check email or write something or do other work while chatting or discussing something important. It's so convenient and efficient. If you haven't tried it, try it. I suggest Yahoo! Messenger. MSN and AOL are evil (although I do use them - at "mjthomas43" for all three).

Read this article.

For those of you who can't access this, or don't want to, here's a summary: Google's great. Doctor's are using Google to diagnose your illnesses. Google's beating the pants off of the other tools including PubMed and Google Scholar is gaining popularity. But don't use Google too much.

Ok, I'm being a little petty. But it's early and I'm tired of seeing articles like this. Ok. We get it. Google is popular. We'll use it already. Yes, we know it's not perfect. Yes, we'll use other things. Not only all this but it starts off with the usual, "Does Google mean the end of libraries?!?!? Oh no!!!" No. The answer is no. FindLaw doesn't mean the end of lawyers and Medline doesn't mean the end of doctors. Give it a rest. Libraries may not last forever but no technology is advanced enough to replace all the books and all the librarians and all the products and services that come out of those buildings just yet. Chill.

If people start thinking that they can get all the answers out of Google then that means people are dumber than I thought.

1. All information available is not on the Internet quite yet.
2. If the people at Google have figured out how to get to the wisdom through all the MUD sites and porn, then they deserve a Nobel Prize and to rule us all because they've solved the riddle of the human mind. They've done a good job, but not that good.
3. Too many people can barely make themselves understood by other people, speaking the same language, let alone conveying their information needs within a tiny little text box with a few words and an enter button.

Like I said, Google's great. I use it all the time. But it's like any tool. It's useful for certain things and useless for others. This is what you should use Google for:

• Getting started on a topic when you have no idea where to start.
• Getting information on a topic you're not sure how to describe.
• Finding the website for a company or association or organization you don't know the address of but know the name of.
• Finding some popular opinions about a topic.
• Finding information on a topic you can't find anything on anywhere else.

That's pretty much it. Tell me if I've missed anything. Or tell if I haven't missed anything and you just want to tell me how great I am. I'll struggle through accepting some praise if you really feel you have to... *laugh*

I'm back after the holidays. Whew! It was all ok, I guess. I'm not a big fan of Christmas and such. Actually I'm not really a big fan of any holiday. Mostly it's just a big hullaballoo just for the sake of it. It all seems so fake to me. I'm sorry for being such a downer. I just think that everyone should celebrate as the occasion comes up. It's like we have to be convinced into being happy about something and remembering it. Bah humbug! *laugh* Of course, if it was left up to people to just celebrate things on their own, it probably wouldn't ever get done. Problems, problems...

Anyway, I'm back (you can celebrate that if you'd like) and you can count on all sorts of new site designs. I know it looks kinda ugly now but I fixed it so that I can just change the style sheet and it all will change. Yeah, I know I'm cool like that. *laugh*