Jacqueline Gets Her Geek On

BLOG CLOSED. Please join me on Facebook!

2008-07-01T19:30:53-07:00

I've decided to shut down my public blog and move to Facebook instead, and will be limiting access to people I know in real life and my closest online friends.

If you want to continue reading my blog you'll need to create a Facebook account, become one of my "Facebook friends", and log in to read it.

I apologize for the inconvenience, but having a gated blog will allow me to be much more open, comfortable, and detailed about my life and activities without worrying about creepy strangers reading it.

Please email me at if you want an invitation to Facebook. If you already have a Facebook profile, please email me your Facebook name and email address so I can find you and add you.

Thanks!

I actually miss my former classmates from the MBA program

2008-06-30T21:52:02-07:00

They had their faults, but at least they were a lot more proactive about group projects than these undergraduates in my business writing class.

What horrible thing did I do in a past life to deserve being inflicted with so many group projects in this one?

2008-06-30T15:09:02-07:00

So, another semester, another class, another group project (you can tell from the long blog posts that I'm supposed to be working on something), another groupmate who submits "work" copy/pasted off the internet. Seriously, UNLV, where do you find these people?

At least this time it probably wasn't a deliberate act of plagiarism.

The plan was for everyone to find different credible sources and take research notes, which we would then combine and organize by topic. Then everyone would take a couple topics and synthesize the notes into sections of our rough draft. I thought that this was a fairly straightforward plan and that everyone understood what was expected of them.

Apparently not. Not only did one of our group members miss the day the professor explicitly forbade the class to use Wikipedia as a source, but he thought that copy/pasting a Wikipedia article was sufficient "research" and turned it in as the entirety of his "notes".

He did clearly cite at the top that Wikipedia was the source of the information, and he characterized it as just "notes", not a draft, so in my judgment it was not a deliberate act of plagiarism nor an attempt to deceive us about the amount of work he did. My impression from talking with the guy is that he has never worked on a research paper before and genuinely doesn't understand what's expected of him.

I don't know how he got into this class without knowing this, because the main topic of the prerequisite class is how to write a research paper. (Plus, you know, some of us learned how to do this back in the 8th grade... but he's a foreign student so who knows what the curriculum was in his home country. He was probably busy learning how to kick Americans' asses in math instead.) He *is* in the class now, and in my group, and I have to deal with it.

I am already overwhelmed by the workload of the class (let me serve as a cautionary tale: do NOT take a writing class during a shortened summer session) and I really don't have time to personally sit down with him and coach him through how to find, evaluate, and take notes from online and other sources. This guy desperately needs to learn some basic English 102 research skills from somewhere, though, if he's going to be useful in our group (or survive the rest of his college career).

So, a bleg: Can anyone please recommend a quick, clear, simple, very easy-to-read and understand online tutorial about how to find, evaluate, and take notes from online and other sources? Something really short and easy. (He's not dumb, but he's ESL, and I don't want him to not read it because it wasn't assigned by the professor and appears too long or complicated to bother with.)

While I'm at it, a related bleg: I am looking for people who have recently lived in or spent time in New Delhi, India, whom my group could interview for our class project. Background: The project is for my business writing class, and the premise is that we are consultants hired by the human resources department of a multinational corporation to advise them about how to prepare their American employees for transfer to their New Delhi office. We are supposed to interview "primary sources" as part of our research and haven't connected with any yet. My understanding is that India is a very diverse and rapidly changing place so I think it's probably important that we find someone with *recent* experience in India and specifically in New Delhi. Yes, I am being that dork who wants to get it right and not just good enough to fool the professor -- my motivation in this class is skillz not credits.

...

Sigh. The more group projects I work on, the more I understand why certain professors are always bitching so much. :)

Update: I chatted with him about it and he sent me some real notes a couple hours later. YAY! I can tell it was all his own work, too, because of the errors. :)

Moving my blog to Facebook or similar gated site

2008-06-30T04:09:01-07:00

My original reason for starting my old blog was to keep in touch with my family and friends, and to perhaps make some new friends (or find a boyfriend) who shared my interests. Over time, I expanded my blog's purpose to include networking with economics professors and students, writing about my politics and activism, and making money from ads. Then I got too busy with my real life and shut it down for a while, until I had free time again and restarted it because I was bored and lonely.

I've been blogging on this second incarnation for almost three months now, but I've begun to doubt whether my new blog in its current format is still effectively serving my needs:

1. Keep in touch with family and friends: It seems to work pretty well for this purpose. I suck at keeping up with one-on-one pen-pal relationships, so being able to post all my stuff in one place where people I know can read or not read it as their time and interest permit, then comment or email me their responses and personal news when they want, works much better for me. Most of the people I know IRL read my blog at least occasionally. Also, I frequently hear from distant relatives and old friends/acquaintances about how much they enjoyed browsing my archives after they Googled their way here, so having a public internet presence is helpful.

The drawback, though, is anyone -- including stalkers and creepy strangers -- can read what I post here, so I have to censor myself much more than I would if I was writing only to people I know. My husband doesn't want me posting pictures of him because he doesn't want weirdos stalking him in the poker room and/or outing him as a professional gambler to the fish. My more privacy-oriented friends and family members don't want me to blog about them at all. I often start to write about my plans then delete it when I realize that I'm giving out too many details about where I'm going to be when (I've had some bad experiences with creepy men showing up places to pester me after finding out where I was going to be from my blog).

2. Make new friends: I have made many "friends" through blogging. However, I am not sure that these are the best type of "friends" for me to be making.

Over the past few years my social life has become unbalanced in favor of online "friendships". The primary reason for this shift was that all the moving around I've done (Seattle to Bellingham to Costa Rica to Vancouver to Las Vegas to the Seattle to Las Vegas in the two-year period of January 2005 to January 2007) made it difficult for me to establish and maintain real-life friendships. Why bother if you're just going to move again soon?

My online friends were my only social constant for most of that period. In some ways, it was great. Whenever I was feeling lonely in a new town, it was comforting to know that Phil, Scorpius, Wayne, Andrew, Shawn, Bill, etc. were just an RSS feed update away from virtually hanging out with me chatting about Battlestar Galactica or whatever. On the other hand, being able to easily assuage my loneliness online has reduced my incentive to ever leave the house.

Also, I've noticed that a hugely disproportionate number of my blog "friends" are single heterosexual males (SHMs). Perhaps this is just an innocent correlation due to a combination of my primarily "male" interests and the additional free time that singles have available to spend socializing online. But I suspect that in many cases it's because their interest is more than friendly. This was flattering when I was single, but now that I'm married I'd prefer that my friends not fantasize about having sex with me.

I realize that sexual attraction is not every SHMs motivation for befriending me (so no need to leave ego-deflating comments about how much you *don't* want to have sex with me, thanks :) ) but it's the motivation of *enough* SHMs that it makes me suspicious of all of them. Especially since I am apparently not very good at reading people in this area -- I've been surprised by how many of my SHM "friends" suddenly stopped speaking to me after I got married. (Many of these former "friends" also used to pretend that their interest was only "friendly" when I was single, so I've stopped believing SHMs about their true motivations for friendships with women.)

I like and want to keep most of my current friends, but I don't want to make any new long-distance or SHM
friends until I've balanced out my social life with other types of friends. Since my blog seems to primarily attract long-distance SHMs it no longer fits my friendship needs/goals.

3. Find a boyfriend: Well, I got married -- unrelated to blogging -- so that's not a need any more.

4. Networking: My blog has actually been quite effective for this. I got my last job (in less than 24 hours!) because of my blog. Also, when I was still thinking about graduate school in economics, I made contacts and found out about programs that I wouldn't have otherwise made or found out about. I've been approached for other jobs and freelance gigs (that I decided not to pursue) as the result of my blog as well. So I think that in general, a blog is a good way to network. However, I strongly suspect that an ungated mixed diary/political/hobbies and interests blog is not the most effective way to network professionally.

5. Write about politics and activism: Having my own blog for this made sense when I was a candidate for office. However, I don't plan on doing that again, nor do I plan on blogging about politics frequently enough to build up a sizable audience interested in reading about it. If I want my political posts to actually influence anything, I think I would be a lot more effective as an occasional contributor to a more popular frequently-updated politically-focused group blog. So I might take ElfNinos Mom up on her invitation to write for Last Free Voice when I have something political to say.

6. Make some money: I made a surprising amount of money with my old blog until the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act killed 95% of my income and forced me to get a job. :( Not all of my blog revenue was from internet gambling ads, though -- some of it was from Google and Amazon as well.

Since then, I've spent a lot of time pondering what did and didn't work for making money on my old blog, as well as researching how others have made money online, and I think I could be successful at it again. I considered putting ads on this blog, but just like with networking, I'm pretty sure that a mixed diary/political/hobbies and interests blog is not the most effective way to make money online.

...

So. Writing through the above, it doesn't seem like this blog, in its current form, is effectively meeting my needs or furthering my goals anymore. What, if anything, would work better?

I enjoy blogging about my life and want to continue, but I've decided that want to restrict the audience to only people I know in real life and my closest online friends. So I'm exploring social networking sites that would allow me to do that.

I don't like MySpace -- it's ugly, full of the wrong kind of people, and has a confusing interface (I still haven't figured out how to configure it to prevent strange men, spammers, and bands from approaching me yet still allow real friends to find me).

Facebook appeals to me because the privacy settings are pretty configurable. I can decide what kind of information each class of people -- friends, friends of friends, my "networks" (UNLV and Las Vegas), or the general public -- gets to see. It's also already relatively widely used, has a lot of neat features, and is a hell of a lot classier than MySpace. I like the school- and local-oriented networking features. Although it's more of a social networking site than a blogging platform, there are blogging plug-ins, so I think I could do almost everything there I can do now, maybe more. However, I wish that I could customize the privacy levels more -- either with custom-made groups, or even on the individual level -- instead of just having one big group of "friends" with equal access to my friends-only content.

LiveJournal is another option. I haven't experimented with it much, but I've gathered that you can set up different "friends filters" to manage who gets to see which posts, which makes the privacy settings much more configurable than Facebook. It's just a blogging platform, though, and there isn't a way tostore non-post profile information privately like in Facebook.

Any other ideas? I don't know much about the social networking sites, is there something out there as fully-featured as Facebook, but with more customizable privacy settings? I'd prefer to go with something that is widely used, so as to increase the likeliness that friends and family already use it or would have more use for it than just reading my blog. I'm also interested in suggestions for sites that are more professional networking-oriented -- I might create profiles on different sites for different purposes.

Also, if you are a friend or family member, please let me know which social networking service(s) you already use.

Recommended: Wanted

2008-06-29T22:05:25-07:00

Disclaimer: This movie requires A LOT LOT LOT of suspension of disbelief, and the premise is flat-out stupid. It is also very bloody -- too bloody for me, I cringed and closed my eyes through several scenes.

That said, it's a lot of fun. The special effects and action are great. It reminded me a lot of the Matrix. Just don't expect much depth or sense from it and you'll have a good time.

I've heard that Wall-E is awesome, so Hubby and I will see that soon. Hancock is not getting very good reviews so far but I love Will Smith so we might see it anyway.

The best buffets in Las Vegas

2008-06-29T17:39:13-07:00

Just a brief list, in alphabetical order (these are all in the same quality class so it's hard to rank them):

Bellagio Buffet
Paris Buffet
Planet Hollywood Spice World Buffet
Rio Carnival World Buffet
Rio Seafood Buffet
Wynn Buffet

I don't have the time or notes to write reviews right now, but you can find additional information on the details and merits of each of those on plenty of other Vegas sites. I just wanted to jot my list down because sometimes people ask me for my opinion as a local who has eaten many meals at many buffets.

Diet break: Round 3

2008-06-28T17:44:32-07:00

Diet break: Round 3, originally uploaded by Jacqueline1776.

Here comes the serious diet breakage.

Warm chocolate brownie, creme brulee, pumpkin pie, chocolate-dipped strawberry, baklava, jelly beans.

I couldn't finish it all but I did get a nice taste of everything.

I was 140 lbs this morning... will probably be up a few pounds tomorrow!