Facebook, MySpace aka Friend Networks

This wasn't my favorite task. I set up on Eons because I am older than dirt and it's for the over 50 set. Setting up was pretty straight forward, but I just wasn't in the mood to think of my favorite movie and book. I'm not feeling at all social this Friday morning.

I invited a lady with the same spelling of Jenifer that lives in Mount Vernon, WA to be my friend. I also invited my favorite presidential candidate to be my friend. Yes, the candidate is listed on EONS and No, I'm not telling who.

I don't have any pictures of myself on my work computer, so I used a picture from Flickr of a 1930's dust storm. I couldn't really tell if it was public domain and have kind of crossed my fingers that I didn't violate any copywrite laws.

The Mother Road

When I was a child, my Dad took us on road trips to South Carolina every 6 or 7 years. My Dad was born and raised in South Carolina and missed down-home (his words) terribly. We would load up the family station wagon and point the car toward that small South Carolina town. My parents would switch off driving duties. We would drive straight through the night on first day out. If you needed a bathroom, you would have to hold it until the car needed gas. If you just couldn’t wait, my Dad would top off the tank so we could go further before he had to stop again.

My first memory of these trips was in 1962 when I was about to enter 6th grade. We drove straight through to Santa Rosa, California and spent the night with my Aunt. After a one-day visit, we headed south to Historic Route 66 (the Mother Road). One of the original federal routes, US 66 was established on November 11, 1926 and eventually ran from Chicago, Illinois to Los Angeles, California. Route 66 was made famous by the book Grapes of Wrath and a Bobby Troup song:

If you ever plan to motor west

Travel my way, the highway that's the best.

Get your kicks on Route 66!

I don’t remember crossing Death Valley…so we must have travelled at night. Cars in 1962 didn’t have air-conditioning so just like the dust bowl refugees, we travelled at night.

I remember that there were many motels, diners and neon lights along the Route 66. I remember the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Arizona. It really tickled my 11-year-old mind. I also remember seeing the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert. It was very hot in the Painted Desert and we eventually found a restaurant with air-conditioning and waited for dark to drive on.

We followed Route 66 into Oklahoma and then cut to the southeast. I love the fact that I can remember driving on old Route 66. The next time we journeyed to South Carolina, there was very little of the original Route 66 and it bypassed all those little towns, motels and diners.

This is part of a larger history that I am working on for my family. Flickr doesn't have a lot of older Photos to Illustrate a story like this. I enjoyed this assignment.

Pandora and Steaming Music

I had fun with this lesson. I tried out all the links that I didn't need to register for. I think I preferred last.fm because it allowed me to skip around from song to song.

I was excitedly skipping from song to song on Pandora and I used up my ten songs in about fifteen minutes. I like the fact that both Pandora and last.fm link you to similar artists.

The only bad thing about this lesson is that I was more interested in my playlist than on concentrating on my work.

I have added both Pandora and last.fm to my favorite's bookmarks.

I am probably the only person on face of the earth who was listening to Arlo Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash and Toby Keith.

RSS and Feed Readers

I have worked with RSS feeds before, but not this particular RSS reader. So far, I find the Google Reader easier to use. One thing I like about Bloglines is that it allows you to control the number of hours for each feed.

I think RSS feeds are great because they cut down on the time I used to spend checking each website for new posts or articles.

I found this lesson fairly easy.

Shout out to whoever provided the link to Unshelved. I had no idea I could get daily update from those crazy guys.

Instant Messaging

I have studiously avoided any form of instant messaging until Web 2.0 forced me too. I messaged with a co-worker and it went O.K. There is definitely a learning curve. I think younger folks have a definite advantage on some of these lessons.

I was really missing the spellchecker when I was messaging.

Tacking Your Progress

The first two lessons were really easy, but for some reason the third lesson was as clear as mud. I had trouble understanding that the log needs the permalink to each new post and not just checked off as completed. I think I have it now, but I had to read the instructions about 10 times.

Well, I'm off to try to post a real live permalink.