Scattered Thoughts

Ok, so I missed another week of updating.

All I can say is — Oh Well. It's not like I have a huge readership anymore. I remember just a few months ago, I had a lot more people coming to the site to read or say hello. Wonder why there's been such a change.

Not like it really matters to me, I don’t' really write for the amusement of others, I write to keep track of my own life and if others find some meaningful insight, so be it.

Summer is a mere two weeks away, and if you look at my Google Calendar, you can see that my summer starts off bright and early at 8am on Monday May 8th with Coffee with Keith. I'm definitely looking forward to pre-camp staff this summer. I'm not going to be doing anything elaborate during my evenings save the Monday night T-119 meetings. I plan on spending as little money as possible this summer. My goal is to spend ~$20 a week with occasional splurges of up to $40, but no more. I figure that way I can get as much debt as possible paid off and save some cash to get myself started in the "real world" — whatever that is.

The last couple weeks were good for me. I've been able to get back into touch with even more friends and keep myself sane with the school work that I've had to complete. The next couple weeks should be cake as the only two things standing between me and graduation are a research thing for Z302 and a final exam on Monday evening.

If I were to summarize my last couple weeks in a few words, they would be: Case Competition, Little 500, Job Searching, Halo and World of Warcraft.

Speaking of WoW, my goal is to finally hit 60 (the end-game level as of right now) by Staff Week. If I'm really lucky, I'll be able to hit 60 by Staff Set-Up Weekend. I also think I'm going to start writing about my Adventures in Azeroth here just because it'll let me write more.

I also created a new desktop image for myself tonight at work. Click the image to see a full-size image.

For those of you wondering, that's an in-game snap of my toon. His name is Rootusair.

The HA staff this summer is as follows: I will be the High Adventure Director, Phil will pretty much be my right-hand man, his friend Devin will be my Man-at-the-Tower, Carney and Hayden will be the two n00s. I think there might be one more on my staff especially since I specifically asked for another person so we can have three instructors at both the Tower and C.O.P.E. at all times (not accounting for the Ranger Program).

I really want to develop a sense of ownership in the HA staff this year. I really want everyone to be proud of the work they do. Not only do I want them to want to come to work every morning, I would like it if they want to play as hard as they work and share their knowledge and skills with the rest of the RA staff. It's a pretty lofty goal, but we came pretty close to it last year and I think we can nail it this summer.

That's really about all I want to write about at the moment. Hopefully the rest of my shift goes well and I can sleep most of the day tomorrow.

take care!
tm

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown
Song of the Day — Slide — The Goo Goo Dolls — I think I'm going to push this into the slideshow this summer.
Quote of the Day — "You guys have the most po-dunk-white-trash Wal-Mart I have ever seen!" — The second comedian at Comedy Caravan on Monday.
Hero of the Day — Carrie for inviting me and Erin to Comedy Caravan at Bear's Monday night.
Villain of the Day — The efficiency at which we problem report the paper levels in the Information Commons…
Current Mood — — Sleepy

Until the next post…

Ok, so the Google Calendar (CL2) has been available to the public for a few days now, so I thought I would chime in on how I see it compared to other calendar programs.

Google Calendar — website

Key Features:

• Calendar Layout — Something all the calendars have in common is the user interface. Google's is clean, lots of white space. It's got the calendars on the left, and view options on the top. The settings and logout buttons are located at the very top of the screen on the right just like with Gmail, Google Personalized Home, etc. On the left at the top are links to Google and Gmail, hinting at future integration with Gmail and/or Google Personalized Home. Biggest thing for me here is that the calendar view starts on Sunday, and by default, you view one week at a time. All of this, of course, can be changed in the settings. When you select an event, you see the familiar Google Local/Google Maps thought bubbles with event specific options. And, of course, there is a search bar at the top of the screen that will search your calendars.
• Event Creation — Very easy in Google Calendar. Click and drag the mouse from the start time to the end time of the event. You can also create an event by using the "Create Event" or "Quick Add" links right above the calendar on the left. The "Create Event" link adds an event using the "advanced" interface, and "Quick Add" is simple, and… well… quick. The quick add allows you to type something in plain English such as "Lunch with Bobby at 3pm Thursday" and it will add the event at 3pm Thursday.
• Invitations — Integrated like adding recipients to an email in Gmail, you just start typing the name or email address of who you want to invite, and Google Calendar automatically starts searching your Gmail contacts for matching entries. Guests can only be added in the "Create Event" link, or by editing the event by clicking on it.
• Event Notifications — You can be notified by email, SMS or on screen popup when someone invites you to an event, they accept your invitation, an event you're invited to changes, when someone replies to an invitation or when an event is about to happen. All of which is controlled in settings.
• Platform Independent — This can run on just about any web browser on any Operating System.
• Subscribe to Calendars — Simply search for the calendar owner's name in the search box in the "Calendars" section of the sidebar, and the matching entries will be displayed. Click "add" and the calendar becomes subscribed to. You can also subscribe to any calendar that produces a feed of some kind (XML or iCal).
• Multiple Calendars — Yep, does that.
• Share Calendars — Google gives you two different ways to share and two technologies to use. You can share your calendars completely (i.e. everyone can see all the details on your calendar) or just so people can see that you're busy during specific times (the "anti-stalker" calendar). Shared calendars can be subscribed to using either XML or the iCal format. Your own private calendars can also be shared this way, as long as you don't give out the URI Google gives you. If you do, Google lets you reset the URI so that anybody who was subscribed gets a broken link.

Overall Review:
My favorite of all the products I reviewed. It incorporates well with the web-based Google applications (Google Talk, Gmail, Google Local) and will probably incorporate with more in the future. It's exactly the calendar system I was looking for. Some of the features I didn't know where to put above are the integration with Google Local, i.e. give the calendar an address, and you can get a map to that location by clicking on the event. It will also allow you to let other Google Calendar users manage calendars of yours. This will be great for a secretary organizing something for her boss or for a collaborative project trying to keep all their members on the same page.

iCal — website

Key Features:

• Calendar Layout — Pretty much the same as Google. List of calendars on the left, the actual calendar view in the middle, the view options are on the bottom. iCal also opens up by default with the event details drawer open on the right.
• Event Creation — The easiest way to create an event is to click and drag on the proper day from the start time to the end time and just enter the information about the event afterward. You can also choose file-new and create an event that way. There is no quick add option, but most people won't use that often anyway.
• Invitations — iCal integrates with Apple's Address Book software. You can start typing in the Attendees section of the event details to begin searching through your Address Book. It sends an email notification to the user.
• Event Notifications — Via email and on screen only when an event is about to happen. You can also use iCal to schedule AppleScripts for various functions (i.e. using iTunes as an alarm clock).
• Platform Independent — Macintosh Only
• Subscribe to Calendars — You can subscribe to a calendar using the calendar-subscribe option. You must know the address of the published calendar though since there is no "search by person" option.
• Multiple Calendars — yep
• Share Calendars — This is done through publishing. You can publish to a .Mac account or to another account on a webdav enabled server. Right click on the calendar or choose calendar-publish.

Overall Review:
Pretty good for a stand-alone, non-web-based calendar. It's got a lot of online capabilities, but it's a little bit lacking and not quite useful for me anymore. The main problem is that iCal isn't cross-platform. If it was, I would probably use this over anything else.

Kiko — website

Key Features:

• Calendar Layout — Another web calendar. When it starts up, the interface is clearly more crowded than the Google Calendar but basically the same layout. The calendar information and list of contacts flanks the calendar with view options linked above. There is a quick add text box at the top where you can type plaintext appointments and the calendar will add them for you. At the very top left are the user options. Help is on by default, which clutters the screen even more. Sharing and Calendar are both tabs above the view tabs, making for some modal operation, which isn't usually a good thing, but it works for Kiko.
• Event Creation — Same methods as with Google Calendar
• Invitations — You must have the people you want to invite to an event in your contacts or have their email addresses memorized. Kiko doesn't have a built-in list of contacts from scratch like iCal or Google Calendar.
• Event Notifications — Email or popup but not SMS.
• Platform Independent — Works in most web browsers.
• Subscribe to Calendars — You can subscribe to any calendar that is a feed.
• Multiple Calendars — yep
• Share Calendars — creates feeds in both vCard and iCal format.

Overall Review:
Pretty good AJAX calendar system. The only beefs I have with it are cleanliness of the interface and the fact that the calendar doesn't refresh itself. You have to refresh the page manually to see what changes have been made to it. I discovered the refresh problem when I tried to import my exported calendar from Google Calendar to play with the new (yes new) interface. Wasn't too happy that I had two copies of everything…

I was going to write about Outlook's calendar as well, but I decided it wasn't worth it. For me, for now, it's Google Calendar for the win. After using iCal, trying to use Kiko and finally getting settled with Google Calendar, the choice has been made easy for me.

My Google Calendar is shared, so you can look me up using tlmason at gmail. If you've got gmail, I'll probably start inviting you to events using Google Calendar.

You should use it anyway

But now, I'm out to enjoy the rest of the day!
tm

I'm hooked, what can I say. I've always enjoyed watching Kevin Smith's movies and I always knew in the back of my mind that he kept a blog, but I had never visited the site until tonight. While surfing myspace because I was bored, I stumbled upon a bulletin that my friend Lindsey had written:

Subject: Literary Crack
Since a fair amount of my friends are Kevin Smith fans, (whether they realize it or not) I figured that I would share…

Go to www.silentbobspeaks.com and read "Me and My Shadow" …but make sure that you start with part 1 and not part 7.

I was skeptical at first, but after I started reading, I couldn't stop. Even though you know how it ends. It is literary crack.

And I would like to give Josh complete and total credit for making me an addict. Thank you Josh.

Enjoy!

So I thought to myself "Why not check this out. I like Kevin Smith and Lindz, although she's pretty ADD, says it kept her attention." So I went to the site. I was quite surprised after reading the first part of this soon-to-be-finished eight-part series of entries. I don't want to say much else about them other than the fact that they're really long so if you read them, plan lots of time.

Here are the links to each part.

• Me and My Shadow – Pt. 1
• Me and My Shadow – Pt. 2
• Me and My Shadow – Pt. 3
• Me and My Shadow – Pt. 4
• Me and My Shadow – Pt. 5
• Me and My Shadow – Pt. 6
• Me and My Shadow – Pt. 7
• Me and My Shadow – Pt. 8
• Me and My Shadow – Pt. 9

Have a read and let me know what you think, if you're so inclined.

That's all I got for today. Time for an awesome staff meeting after absolutely no sleep all night…

Ugh…
tm

If you would like to help me beta test Google's new Gmail for Your Domain, shoot me an email and I'll get you set up with a M@st account. M@st stands for "Mail at ScatteredThoughts" — creative huh? I thought so. Anyway, I get 25 accounts for free, and your email would be username@scatteredthoughts.org. I'll give you more information if you sign up, like how to access your email and whatnot. It's pretty cool so far — it even incorporates Google Talk (which if you don't have it already, you should get it and friend me cause it rocks — tlmason at gmail). If you haven't used gmail in any form yet, you're missing out on one BA mail client.

Enough about that — the weekend.

This weekend was quite busy. Friday we celebrated Tim's birthday. Erin, Schuyler and I took Tim to Asuka for dinner, which was amazing. Then we came back to our house, Austin, Ben and DrLash came over to hang out for the rest of the evening. DrLash ended up getting towed by the tow-happy bastards who patrol Hoosier Courts.

Saturday, I lead some leadership activities for Psi out at Hundred Hall. We played Circle Tag, Human Knot, Magic Carpet, Lap Sit and the Trust Lift. All-in-all it was a big hit and a lot of fun for those who attended. And if you didn't attend and you're in Psi, you're a loser.

Saturday night, we inducted the Delta Upsilon class of Alpha Zeta. They're all great kids.

Sunday, Erin and I went out to celebrate Luke's 24th birthday a week early. He had his party on the ropes course at Rancho Farmasa. It was a lot of fun, highlight of the day — hearing The Jew scream "SHIT!" when he let go of the release on the Flying Squirrel. By the way, Ransburg needs a Flying Squirrel… BAD!

Erin and I also made a surprise visit to Greenwood for my mom's 50th birthday. We went to Bucca di Beppo for dinner, which was pretty tasty. See the email pasted below for the entire situation explained by my dad:

Just FYI, your mom is sort of bummed because you and Erin and Eileen and Jason aren't coming. We told her that just she, Laura and I were going out to dinner. In case she calls, I told her that you had a friend's birthday party to go to (it really isn't a lie, I was just mis-informed about the time I told her that Eileen couldn't come because it was so late and she and Jason were going to watch the NASCAR race earlier in the day then she had to get ready for class the next day. Maybe finally we have been able to pull off a surprise for her. See ya tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing ya both.

And that's the end of the weekend. It was a lot more busy than most.

Apparently there is going to be/was an article in Time Magazine about high school dropout rates, and it features Shelbyville… my dad just sent me an email containing the text of the article. I haven't read it yet, but be sure I'll comment on it come Wednesday.

Also, I've been getting a TON of Spam lately. Anyone else? cause I'm sick of it. I'm going to forward all my email from tlmason.com to my gmail account just because I'm sick and tired of the spam. Google seems to have spam protection down to a science and apparently Spam Assassin doesn't work anymore.

Anyway, that's all I got for now. I'll update again come Wednesday morning.

peace out
tm

The End-of-the-Blog Rundown
Song of the Day — Mr. Brightside — The Killers — I wish I could use this song for the slideshow this summer.
Quote of the Day — "The orange guys were in here fixing things" — Nan when talking about the Logistics crew coming to fix some things. Their names appear in the STC Chat in orange.
Villain of the Day — The unpredictable weather.
Current Mood — — Tired

Until the next post…

I did something horrible today haha.

I contributed to the downfall of the internet as we know it:

click on the image to see the full sized file

I'm going to submit it to YTMND as soon as I get home and can insert some jank sound file to go with it. So you'll see it there soon.

That is all

tm