Blogging for sanity

I have had an incredibly crazy week. My dad has been hospitalized this week with a brain tumor and I have been trying to keep up with as many people as I can over the phone and email.

If you are reading this blog you have to be at least a little bit familiar with the process of blogging. But I have been using a blog this week to keep more people informed than I thought possible. When my dad first was diagnosed with the tumor this week, I decided to just post notes on Facebook and let people know what was going on there, but not everyone I know has a Facebook page. So my next thought was to blog about it. It is allowing people to get information, send well wishes and keep up with the prognosis of my dad.

I think it is great when people email or text me asking me about my dad that I can send them to the blog. I find that it has saved me a lot of time this week to be able to send people a quick email letting them know that I have updated the blog and that I would appreciate them sending the ling to people they think would be interested.

Another thing I appreciate about blogging it is that it allows everyone to get the same information. In my opinion, it has helped cut down on the guesswork on what people hear and from keeping the story from not being told accurately.

Finally, I think it has been cathartic for me to be able to sit and update the days event of what is happening. I have had to sit and really process it to be able to post it on the blog.

Any of us can blog. We all know something valuable that we can share. Give it a shot.

My Nerd Circle

Ok I'm a nerd. I know it and you know it.

I can't help it. I have always had a love for technology. I started my computer adventures with a Commodore C-64. I took summer camp programs at AC to learn how to program in Basic when I was 9 and I have continued my journey all of these years.

I have hacked all kinds of things to make them work better for my family and I. I have dismantled everything from our personal computers to our Tivo to make them bigger, faster and more capable to meet our needs. I really like to tinker with stuff.

I have been a network administrator, a web designer and a computer sales person. I love computers and what they can do for us. I also really enjoy helping people with their computer needs and making technology work for them.

I do not have all of the answers. No one does. But I do enjoy finding the answers I don't have and sharing them with people. I am not the smartest technology person you will ever meet. I am, however, available. If you have a question that I can answer, please let me know. If you have suggestions for something for me to blog about I want to hear it.

My goal, so you know, is to post 3 to 5 times a week here. I hope you'll ask questions and make suggestions on how I can help you better your technology to meet your needs.


Todd

Keeping in Touch with everyone

I remember when I was younger and times were easier. The Internet was a infant and things were much simpler. I remember the first instant messaging tool I used back then. ICQ (I seek You). I was great. I could talk to all the people I knew who had an Internet connection, and back then... well, my options were few.

As time has progressed, the options for instant messaging has grown. We have ICQ, AIM, Google Talk, Facebook IM, MSN and lots of others. I used to go crazy trying to make sure I had the latest IM client loaded and If I wanted to talk to someone that had a different one, then one of us had to load a new one.

I used to use Tirllian to keep up with all of the different Instant Messaging clients I had loaded. Trillian was not an instant messenger client as much as it was a user interface for all of the different clients. What I liked about it was that if you had friends on all of the different instant messaging networks, then you could chat with them all on one software client. What I didn't like about it was that it was, like any software, something else I had to load.

I have found the perfect solution for myself.

Meebo seems to me to be the best of both worlds. Instead of being another client that you have to install onto each machine that you want to use it on, it is a website that you go to and create your profile. Once your profiel is created, you can log on to that profile from anywhere you have a web connection. How do I love thee, Meebo, let me count the ways.

As of now, Meebo supports the following clients:
• AIM
• Yahoo!
• Myspace
• Facebook
• MSN
• JABBER
• Google Talk
• ICQ
• Flixter
• Piczo
• Wadja
• Zorpia

Now - admittedly, there are some of the features that do not work exactly like they do in the original instant messenger clients, but in my opinion they are pretty insignificant. Things like emoticons may not come across exactly right, and you will not be able to send a message to everyone on a contact list - and I think that is sometimes a good thing.

Meebo is a 3rd party application and it does what it says it will do, it will clean up your instant messenger clients in one tidy browser window and let you browse in a different window. I'm not sure what else you could ask from an instant messenger front end - and no download is needed. Check it out at www.meebo.com