Researcher, Educator, Author, And More
It’s been awhile since my last post, and I have some very good reasons for that – and despite what one of my favorite artists would sing, Summerzcool is not where the courses are easy and there are no rules! Read on for a life update! Continue reading “Living and Blogging in 3/4 Time”
Well, I’m registered, checked-in, and now the proud owner of a Microsoft MVP shirt. Unfortunately since my body is still thinking it’s on the east coast, I’m up extremely early for my normally sleep-loving self! It’s 8:54 local time now, but feels much later (Perhaps around noon?). Our first official meeting is “Lunch” which is scheduled to start around Lunch time, e.g. later than I’m thinking lunch should be. Anyway I had a breakfast sandwich to hold me over, and am psyched about getting to meet some MVP friends (Although not sure how I’ll meet them, I figure I’ll seek out Jason sometime in the next few hours, once I’m relatively sure he’s gotten in as he was flying down this morning).
Seattle weather is the norm – rainy, and around 45 degrees. Now this is different from 45 Degrees in Ohio, as there is no frickin wind to whip you around. 45 Degrees here isn’t bad, and I’m quite comfortable with my vest and sweatshirt.
I’ll be posting pics pretty much all week and they’ll all end up on the homepage at jonwestfall.com (Even though this blogging is being done to my Confessions blog – it just works nicer sometimes, especially for editing posts in Word). The pics usually get rotated screwy, but I’ll try to log in and change the rotation as best as possible.
Stay Tuned!
OK, I do this often enough that I figured I’d start blogging about it more so I can see just HOW often I do it, and my reasoning.
Since I received it in early September (The 7th I believe), I’ve been using the awesome HTC TyTN II. Tonight I decided to put it to rest for a bit and switch to the T-Mobile Dash! The TyTN II therefore logs 42 days & 7 hours or so of work.
Why the switch, well for a few reasons
So Dashy gets back in business for at least a few weeks probably, or maybe a few months, or maybe a few days – who knows. It was a tough call between the Dash and the Treo 750v. Perhaps the Treo will get some love before the end of the year. Oh, and for sure the JasJAR will make an appearance when JDM rolls around for gaming on the plane and composing emails on the go.
Well, this week has been an interesting one. A LONG one as well!
First of all, I’m typing this on my new IBM (Lenovo) Thinkpad x60 Tablet, which I absolutely LOVE (I’ve actually retired all of my other Laptops and use this one exclusively now). The 12.1″ screen is actually extremely usable, as opposed to my previous Tablet which just didn’t cut it while working at home. The usual IBM perks (i.e. fullsize keyboard, Thinkvantage Junk that’s actually helpful) have been nice as well. Blogging from Word is also nice!
This last weekend we Upgraded Dark Energy with some snazzy new hardware (which is making it run absolutely stunningly). I commissioned a new Win2k3 Virtual server to be a backup domain controller and Intranet host. BJS Employees will soon have a Sharepoint intranet to use for collaboration, and the Admin Team will have an Admin Wiki & Sharepoint site to themselves as well. This has been my diversion this week.
This last Tuesday was my M.A. Thesis defense meeting. I passed, with minimal revisions to make (Which I hope to do in the next 2 – 3 weeks). This should put me on track to graduate sometime this summer, or fall, or at least some time this year. It also frees me up to focus on my Dissertation.
Karey’s been a madwoman this week working on stuff for the approaching holiday. I was at school pretty much all day Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (the latter day to grade Cognitive Exams). Today I’m relaxing and catching up on some projects around the house (And typing this blog post).
Happy Easter Everyone!
Well, LiveJournal is seemingly on it’s way to becomming a MySpace-esque youth hangout, and I feel less and less like Youth all the time. So with my third year of blogging underway, I’m switching things up a bit and going to WordPress hosted off of JonWestfall.Com (Right now, as I type this, it’s off of “new.jonwestfall.com” – but that will chage soon.
The Old LiveJournal stuff is still available for perusing (I have no intention of closing down my LJ account, I just don’t plan on updating it), and the archives of it are available here as one really-long html file. I have the backups in XML format, so I may one day reformat them to look a bit nicer than that giant HTML file suggests. Just not today!
So back to the new Blog – Confessions of A high Self Monitor. Self-monitoring is a concept from the area of Social Psychology. I’ll probably expand on what it means in the future, but suffice it to say, I feel the title fits me well. Whenever I take a Self Monitoring scale, I tend to score as extremely high. This ability is something I feel is a strength, not weakness, although some may disagree. In the coming weeks, months, years, I’m sure some of the posts here will echo some real-life confessions of a self-monitor, and some will not. Deal with it, it’s my blog! I’ll also be porting over some resources to jonwestfall.com in the coming months, as well as maintaining them at jonwestfall.org (my more traditional site).
Happy Reading!
I’m proud to announce that I’m launching a sister site to JonWestfall.Com, JonWestfall.ORG (I have really creative names for these sites, if you haven’t noticed!). Actually, it’s pretty crazy to call it a sister site as it’s really just taking over hosting some of the content that I had on JonWestfall.Com. My LiveJournal is great for frequent updates and blogging, but I also wanted some spot to put static content, writings, tutorials, etc… 1and1, my new webhost (Since January) offers a WYSIWYG editor that can put together a fairly decent site, so I photoshopped up a logo, and published the site. Check it out, if you’re bored.
If you want to get daily email updates of my blogging, you may be interested in using FeedBlitz and signing up for my livefeed. It’ll be terrific!