jibes by Janet

Wellness #42 Staying Well (?)

2008-10-10T08:55:00.000-07:00

Eating the right foods and exercising faithfully can go a long way to ensure a happy and healthy life. There are also many things that go on in your daily life that you have no control over and you or someone in your family will have dental problems, will get sick or hurt in some way. One of the great things about the Internet is the ability to retrieve current and somewhat personalized medical information . Both of my parents are having some major health issues right now and I am able to research some of their symptoms. I did not find "symptom checker" on the Mayo Clinic web site very helpful to me. A medical web site I do like is Wellness Resource, It explains medical conditions and treatments to me in simple terms that I can understand. The Mayo Clinic Cancer. Org. gave and very good diagnosis explanation, and treatment plans.
The local medline plus was an interesting site and one that I have never explored.
I picked a topic on denatl care and dental resources, in Fort Bend County. I found a lot of information on dental health care but I was hoping to find a source to be included in an independent dental study, or something of that nature. What I found was a school in Warten that you could have dental work done at a reduced cost. When it comes to my dental health I am wishing for a set miracle teeth, and not a visit from the tooth fairy.

Wellness # 41 - Going Green Part 1

2008-09-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

CARBON FOOTPRINT: I have thought that I have been doing my part in trying to live a greener life, but after taking a carbon footprint survey, I found I am not doing as much as I should.
The average family carbon footprint rating was 9.44 co2 a yr, and mine was 15.0. The interesting thing I found out is that I am living in too big of a house. My five bedroom house is too big for just 2 people. (I did not add my five cats as household members.) My home rated a 9.9. driving rated a - 3.4, and flying was only 1.8.

EATING GREEN: It is amazing the amount of pesticides used on our foods, and how much of it remains even after a thorough washing. The highest amount of pesticide residue is on peaches, apples, bell peppers, & celery. Imported grapes were rated high, domestic grapes were low on the list. I am thinking now instead of eating grapes out of hand I will just drink them (think wine)

LOCAL FARMERS MARKET: The farmers market at La Centera, is a joke. I live close enough to La Centera that I can walk there. This I thought this farmers market would be a good thing. Get some exercise, reduce driving, and buy organic produce. Ha! Every time I go I am always disappointed. I look forward to walking there, thinking I am going to get some great things, then leave empty handed. It would be nice if someone actually sold some produce, I realize this is Houston and not the produce growing fields like California, but still we do have some things that do grow here. All I have ever seen is way overpriced eggs, and organic dried meat. There are lots of vendors selling lots of other items, like artwork, oil, soap, candles to name a few. Not what I would call a farmers market. Still it's a nice morning walk, and I can keep hoping someday there will be vegetables for sale.

Wellness # 40 FITNESS

2008-09-02T14:38:00.000-07:00

Exercise is something I need to do. I have to do. Sometimes I get lazy, or life gets too busy and I skip exercising. I try not to get to far off track for very long, because the longer I skip exercising the harder it is to get motivated again. I felt I really needed an exercise tune-up and on the Exercise Prescription site I found some helpful tips for my day to day workouts. I find that I do the same type of exercise routine over and over again. RX has animated weight training exercise that you can watch and learn. Also I liked that you could target a specific area of your body. I like to use hand weights, and now I know I can use the hand weights every day without causing muscle fatigue or injury if I do different routines. The video made suggestions and showed proper lift technique. This video was great, almost like having a personal trainer without the fee! This site will even program you a personal workout menu. I am hoping this will motivate me to work harder.

Now the diet part of the wellness module was a very had lessonto do. This required me to be honest about my health, weight and eating habits. I looked at the fitness calculator and checked my BMI which was good 18.9. But other areas not so good, and I am not willing to share those statistics. Basically I eat too many carbs and too little protein. I have learned if you want to build muscle mass and endurance plus have more energy I need to add more protein in my diet. I took the age questionaire and the results said I could live to the age of 93.4 years. My health age was 43.2. Oh boy! Now I just have remember to look both ways when I am out running the streets!

Wellness # 39 Nutrition

2008-08-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

I also believe everyone WOULD like to eat healthier, but for the most part we don't. Most of the time we make our food choices on whatever easiest,fastest, cheapest and tastiest. I found that my most favorite thing to eat, pretzels, is not a very wise food choice. Most pretzels are fat free, and that's a plus, but they are very high in sodium, and too many carbs. I still like pretzels and eat just as many as before but now I feel guilty when I eat them.
I enjoyed the Sparkpeople site. I posted two recipes, and toyed with making them more nutritious. One fun thing I found if you increase the number of servings per recipe, you decrease the amount of calories per serving. Duh. I would still probably east just as much it only looks better. I also found a lot of recipes others have posted that I would like to try. I have added those to my on line recipe file. There was a lot of good information on the spark people site and I find that I go to that site when I am at home on the Internet.

Week #30 Spring cleaning

2008-03-28T08:36:00.000-07:00

Don't have anything to clean out on the S drive. I know how to place a file on the S drive so didn't practice that. Cleaned out the extra stuff that wasn't being used on P drive. Things I used several years ago thatwere still there and getting dusty...got rid of those documents! The few photos I had on the P drive that I used for IHCPL got moved to flickr. Also went and cleaned out the sent mail on my email, and that cleaned up a lot of space. Yeah! Spring cleaning sure feels good!

Week #29 email, moving forward

2008-03-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

This exercise is a continuation of the previous week. On last weeks lesson I focused on finding order between my work and personal email, and using an outside source to get my personal life in better order. So this week I created additional folders in my work email. Things I might want to save and refer to at a later date.
Such as some of the weekly updates about ill procedures. I also have a folder for all correspondence from Coxnet. From time to time I need to go and clean out those folders too, and this exercise has taught me a little about orgainizing skills

Week #28 TA DA! getting organized, maybe...

2008-03-07T07:40:00.001-08:00

After spending some time reading about getting things done I realize I have a lot to learn about getting all my "ducks in a row" An interesting thought about removing stuff from your head and parking those thoughts somewhere more concrete and readily assesable. There are far better ways to keep lists than writing stuff down on a post it note and then forgetting where you put it. First thing I learned by reading GTD was HOW to get my work and personal information in order.
First I separated my work email from my personal email. I canceled all junk email by unscribing to as many as I could, and what ones I wanted to keep changed it to my personal email. I signed up for TA Da, thought I could find a use for organizing lists. With this wedding coming up there is a great many things to keep track of, like all the many many things we have to buy and what we have already bought, cost of things, guests and the like. So now I can add that to my Tada list and keep track and I can also set it up so that anyone can add to our wedding lists. Pretty cool.
So I think I am on my way to good organizing!

WEEK 10 - SUMMARY

2007-11-20T17:22:00.000-08:00

The time has come the Walrus said to talk of many things.... to view a video on you tube,just a few--then on to blogs and blings! This has been a very interesting program. Some lessons I liked more than others. Some things I will use, and others never want to view again. All in all the exposure to new technology was at times, fun exciting, and some stuff was downright painful, but never once boring.

FLICKR - This was probably my most favorite lesson, and probably the hardest to figure out. This took me some time to master, but once I got the hang of it was fun and I have used it many times since. Before IHCPl I never even knew it was out there!

DOWNLOAD MEDIA/PODCASTS - This is one thing I have used before, but on the podcasting I had never used the rss feed, and now found some new sites to subscribe too. I look forward to new postings.

YOU TUBE - was fun, never really looked at it before now. It's amazing how many creative videos there are. You can see a video about anything you can imagine, and some you wouldn't want to imagine.

AVATARS - This was a fun lesson, and my second most favorite posting. Don't know if I will ever have the need to use avatars in any way, but it was fun, like playing with dress up dolls... change hair, change clothes, change everything with a click of the mouse.

There were so many things I've learned about 2.0 over the past several weeks, and would like to have more time to practice what I have learned so I don't forget. I am hopeful that I can share what I have with others.

WEEK 9 POST # 22 - DOWNLOAD MEDIA

2007-11-15T12:18:00.000-08:00

I have looked and tried the HCPL digital media. A while back our staff was fortunate to have a tutorial on this site. I enjoy reading books more so than listening to them, and have down loaded books using Adobe reader. I like checking out on line cookbooks, and can copy recipes that interests me. At present I do not own an MP3 player so havent' used that medimum much. I did practice dowloading on the library's mp3 player. I have not tried checking out videos and watching them on the computer, but that is my next goal. I browsed HCPL'S electronic books and found a lot of interesing books, and right now most every one I wanted was able to check out right way. I think Libravox as a greater selection of material, but most of books that interested me was checked out. One thing about HCPL if enough holds are placed more copies might be purchased. I could place holds on these and have done so, but by the time the book became available, I was on to something else and lost my interest in checking it out. Of course this is all free and since it's a virtural checkout sfter two weeks it goes away and no overdue fees to pay. I also think Libravox wants too much personal information that I don't want to give. Libravox probably has a greater mass appeal, somewhat like Blockbuster, but for my money, I'll stick to HCPL for my books.

Week 9 Post # 21 PODCASTS - eat less weigh less

2007-11-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

I was very happy with what I discoved about podcasts. What interests me is exercise and running, and one site was Podrunner exercise and music. It is fast music designed to motivate runners to perform better. Another was about running injury free. The third site I assigned to my bloglines account was exercise and diet. These ideas motivates me in my personal life and carry over in my work life. The great thing about adding these feed to my favorite bloglines, is that I am notified whenever something new is added.

mash up pics, cats n things - Optional exercise

2007-11-13T10:20:00.001-08:00

Week 9 Post 20 YouTube - Cat

2007-11-12T09:21:00.000-08:00

To view this kat flick click here

I had a little trouble posting it from the instructions listed on our exercise page. So did an alternate address. This was a funniest video I have ever seen on cats. No matter how many times I few always makes me laugh. YouTube was fun. I could see a need for it, not only can you be entertained, but also learn something. There is a lot of useful instructional videos too, such as learning how to make a chicken from a folded napkin. Great tip for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Week 8 post #19

2007-11-05T09:48:00.001-08:00

This is a zoho practice. Today we are learning how to use this document writer. This works a lot like word. BUT the biggest and best thing about it is the ability to access this from any computer any where. This will be something I will use a lot. My dad does not own a computer and still likes letters in the mail, so now a can write a few words to him from time to time home or at a friends house and save my letter till a future date when I've run out of things to say. I also like all the features it offers. I will enjoy exploring this site. Next step is to tackle excel! What next? Maybe a new color. Now I can write my letter to Santa in seasonal colors.

Week 8 -#18 - Social stuff?

2007-10-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

This week I reached out and "touched" several sites. Thought face book was an interesting place to visit. Never knew how many people had my same name. It was fun to read about what all those people with my name were doing. Very much enjoyed looking at you tube. Lots of people like to write about and video their cats. But the funniest thing was a short cartoon clip about a wake up call from you cat. Never knew this stuff existed. This exercise was very enjoyable. While it was nice to view these sites, it didn't want to make me sign on to any sites. I know it is especialy popular to post your stuff, my family does it a lot, but I'm not convinenced to try it.

Week 7 Post #17 Technology. - CELL PHONES

2007-10-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

There is so much to choose from, but I picked cell phones as my topic. Cell phones can do many things besides making telephone calls to your kids and grandma. Phones, for the most part, (I'm only going to address the positives of cellular use) have made our lives easier. I can be connected to the internet, down load music, play games, call my relatives any time day or night, or organize my schedule. The best part is all this technology fits right into my pocket!
I had fun this week adding comments. Mostly I looked at all the cat blogs, because cats are cool.

WEEK 7 #16 WIKI! WIKI!

2007-10-24T07:38:00.000-07:00

I added my blog to the ihcpl to the favorites page. Then I speny a considerable about of time browsing wiki. The best thing about wiki is that anyone can edit and add whatever information they want. A possible down side is that anyone can go and delete information, or even post wrong information. I believe that most information posted is monitered so that it would be a rare occurance of wrong data being out there. I can see the use of Wikipedia's free-content source as a good reference tool. The library success site is a great place to share ideas within the library community. There is just so much information, I find it almost overwhelming. So much to read so little time.

Week 6 #15 Library 2.0

2007-10-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

I have spent the past several days reading the Library 2.0 articles. Someone here had printed out some the articles on 2.0 so I was able to read and ponder the articles without rushing. I think it is a good tool. With the fast changing world we live in, you can get current up to the minute information, not only book, but also . Like wikipedia you can trust the information is accurate and new. It's a fast way to expose a lot to people to more resources. For several years I have heard my partner talk about metadata and metatags, and now the light bulb as clicked on. I have a better understaning what it's all about. This was a great brain exercise

Week 6 #14 Technorati exercise

2007-10-19T09:14:00.000-07:00

After experimenting with the technorati site, I have decided that I do not want to tag my blog. There is too much information out there about me already. I like that fact that you can look up a corporations blog, but I think I can get as much information by just using google, and for me a lot easier. I also found that it helps to be a good speller, because you may not get the site you were seeking. Still, this was an interestingg always good to learn a new approach.

Week 6 #13 T AGS - (Tags R US!)

2007-10-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

I learned how to create a delicious accout. I have tagged many sites that I would like to visit again. I can see delicious being a great resource for reference. You can get the most current and up to date information available. It will be great for homework help too. I liked tagging some fun sites, such as finding the most current ways to tie your shoe laces! Also, no matter what computer I use, with this delicious account , I can find these sites that I have tagged.

Week 5 - Post 12 The Library ELF

2007-10-11T08:57:00.000-07:00

This is will a great addition. Now I can get emails on my yahoo account. Looking forward to using this feature. What's next? Maybe we can work on a new web site that will employ house elfs to look for our missing books!

Week 5 post 11 Library things

2007-10-09T16:02:00.000-07:00

Today was an exercise on my library things. Hard to pick just a few books. Some I have read, others want to read, and a few I want to own. So this site could also be a wish list.
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jburkett

Week 5 / post 10 avatars

2007-10-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

It's Vegas baby!

http://avatars.yahoo.com/export.html.

Week 4 #9 Finding Feeds

2007-10-04T14:25:00.000-07:00

Did some searching on bloglines looking for new feeds. It will take a little practice on doing this. So far I looked at Topix and Feedster, and the day I was doing this the web was a little slow going to different feeds. I think the feeds that are linked to blogposts are more interesting to look at. Feedster will be good to add a link to your blogs. Topix are just good to read, didn't want add any to my blogs. More down the road.....

week 4/ # 8 RRS

2007-10-02T16:18:00.000-07:00

This was an interesting lesson. I signed on to at least 10 feeds it was fairily easy to, with a little help from my friends. It might be hard to pick the one I like the most. It will be fun to track the weather in my home town. Then if I am a loss for words I can just go "quotes of the day" for inspiration. I have also subscribed to my co worker's blog, she has great cats and now I can follow her pictures and postings. Looking forward to see wha'ts next.

week 3 post 7

2007-09-27T08:25:00.000-07:00

trains part 2

2007-09-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

Tiki's name in lights

2007-09-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

2007-09-25T17:58:00.000-07:00

Week 3 post 4

2007-09-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

This is my name with many different letter types . How cool is that! This was a very hard exercise for me to master. I wonder how many ways there are to spell Janet!

Train coming home

2007-09-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

Train coming around the bend

The happy chipmonk - week 3 practice

2007-09-25T12:18:00.000-07:00

Week 3Post 3

2007-09-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

This is my cat Tiki

2007-09-24T09:57:00.000-07:00

This is my girl cat, Little Bits

2007-09-24T09:41:00.001-07:00

This is my second cat Johnny

Today is a good day

2007-09-21T09:19:00.001-07:00

Today is two of my cats birthday. My boys, Tiki and Johnny are six years old. Don't know for sure their exact ages, the vet thought
Tiki cat is a few months older than his "brother" Johnny. They are best buds and share everything together. Today, their birthday, they are wishing for special kitty treats,and probably a bottle of good wine. Smart cats! Happy birthday to my cats!

2007-09-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

Today I have been thinking about safety on the internet. I tend to view blogging as a personal diary that the whole world has accesss to. Way back whenI was much younger you wrote in a hard paperbook type of personal diary you could lock up when finished and no one would have access to your thoughts except you. Thoughts you would not want to share with your sister let alone the entire universive. So I feel you should not write or reveal anything that you would not want to share with others. So maybe you should write like you lived in a glass house!

learning about blogs

2007-09-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

Today I have been given instructions on learning how to blog. I enjoy the challenge of learning new things and look forward to future lessons. Sometimes it is hard to make time to practice the things I have learned and will have to to budget my time and organize my day so I can blog. I have read other blogs, and soon I will have a good working knowlege of this for myself.