Jun 29 2008
Well, the iPhone is finally on it’s way.. July 11th. And a hefty price tag to go with it. (You can read more about it with opinions here for e.g.) The petition mentioned in the first link is here
I want one, sure, but I’m not about to shell out that kind of $$ for it. As it is, the cell I currently have is hardly used (as anyone who’s ever tried to call me on it has discovered). Sure, I want the concept of the iPhone, but what do I really need it for when I’ve got an XO with viewfinder?! 
Jun 28 2008
I woke up early today to find myself fogged in. Perfect. I mean, who wants nice summery weather on the Saturday you have planned to spend the day indoors? So, glad that I got a car a few weeks ago, off I trundled to the Nortel Campus in Carling with some grapes, some chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and my XO.
A while back (late March?) Mike Lee of the DC Learning Club had contacted me to see if XO owners in Ottawa would be interested in a meet up hosted at Nortel with a video link-up to the DC Club hosted at Nortel in DC. Would we?! Is it even a question?! Of course!
It took a few months to make it happen. But here we are. Some kinks need ironing out in the conferencing technology, perhaps, and we weren’t able to log onto the internet in the room we were in, … nonetheless, we sorted out who has what battery issues, discussed ideas with Wayan and Mike, listened intently about the work they are all doing, and most of us upgraded our OS, too.
Here’s a photo from the Ottawa end…
And here is what I won in the Raffle (My Beau is more excited about it than I am… “Wow! I can use it for my Blackberry!” (ahem)) Clearly, though, I will have to solve my battery issue if this is going to work for my XO.
Ooooo… and Mike sent me a gift… and when I heard that… I was hoping it would be the viewfinder. And you know what? It is the viewfinder!!!! 
Some time ago a close observer of mine called me a “Connector” as in, one who connects people. I recently connected Jasonji and FreeD after 4 years of trying… and now I seem to be the Ottawa XO connector. 
Maybe there is something to that? Indeed, I am thinking of ways to do another meet up in Ottawa before too long.
Jun 27 2008
Your result for The Fashion Style Test…
39% Flamboyance, 67% Originality, 68% Deliberateness, 52% Sexiness
[Tasteful Original Deliberate Sexy] You choose your outfits carefully according to many criteria. You don’t like looking cheap, dull or random and you go to great lengths to avoid this. You are successful, too. People admire your taste and sex appeal. Many try to imitate you but not many can recreate your unique style. Sometimes, however, they find you too intimidating to approach. If you don’t wear retro style yet, perhaps you should consider it. It would become greatly your sexy, mysterious self.The opposite style from yours is Fashion Enemy [Flamboyant Conventional Random Prissy].All the categories: Librarian Sporty Hottie Office Master Uptown Girl/ Boy Brainy Student Movie Star Fashionista Glamorous Soul Fashion Enemy Bar Cruiser Kid Next Door Sex Bomb Hippie Kid Fashion Rebel Fashion Artist Catwalk God(ess)Take The Fashion Style Test at HelloQuizzy
Jun 27 2008
My mother emailed me today to let me know that she found what she thinks is a pair of my earrings neatly placed on the step outside her place. Odd, because she included a photo and they *are* indeed my earrings. Odder still because I have NO CLUE how they got there.
Jun 27 2008
Thanks to the folks at the DC Learning Club and Nortel, we’re having a joint Ottawa-DC meet up at Nortel offices tomorrow. Click here for more info. It’s our first time doing this on the Ottawa end, so we’re pretty excited. 
Jun 25 2008
The International Handbook on Virtual Learning Environments, edited by Jasonji, Jeremy, and Joel and in which I have a chapter, has gone virtual. Click here for details
What does that mean? It means you can download chapters in pdf format online if your institution subscribes to it.
Jun 17 2008
Alexi, an awesome musician i’ve met once or twice and with whom I celebrated R&E’s weddings in proper style… will be hooking up with José James at the Toronto Jazz Fest (9pm on June 27).
It’s times like these that Ottawa shouldn’t be a 5 hour drive away. 
Jun 17 2008
From Gwen Smith, Editor, Allergic Living magazine
For years, the food allergy community in Canada has lobbied and waited for legislation that would require all food package labels to clearly and thoroughly list the top 10 priority allergens among ingredients.
The good news is that new regulations that would bring far greater clarity to the wording on food labels are ready. The bad news: they’ve been ready for two years and have yet to become law.
In the hopes making the allergen label law a priority for the federal government, Allergic Living magazine has launched an online letter-writing campaign to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Read the letter and about the issue at www.allergicliving.com (Click the green box in the upper right corner.)
If you are a Canadian concerned about the health and safety of those living with food allergies and celiac disease, take a moment to e-mail the letter to the Prime Minister. The more letters he gets, the greater the chance the legislation will pass.
Please make your voice heard. Thank you for your support.
x-posted from Allergic Girl
Jun 15 2008
We order out from Ging Sing a lot, because *some people* in our household prefer American Chinese food… and frankly this is Ottawa and you’re lucky to get anything else! AND, for American Chinese, it’s not half bad.
Well, tonight Ging Sing nearly killed me.
We got some veggie spring rolls… and we’ve done this before without trouble. This time, they gave us a dipping sauce which had fish sauce in it. And, I grabbed a spring roll, dipped in the sauce unsuspectingly, and took a bite.
I realised *immediately* that there was something very very wrong with it and spat it out.
At first we thought that the spring roll had fish in it. But when we called the restaurant, they said, “No! It is not in the spring roll; it is in the dipping sauce!” The Veggie Spring roll, however, apparently has pork in it, so don’t get them if you’re a vegetarian!
Like that makes a lot of difference whether it is in the roll or the sauce when you’ve got a hyperallergy to fish!
Due to evasive action, all I got was an itchy palette and tongue.
Lucky for me… and even Luckier for Ging Sing!
Jun 14 2008
As seen in Life and Times of a History PhD Student
What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded [or were bookclub choices that you never read that month]. Bold the ones you’ve read, strikethrough the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: A novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: The life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: A memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake
Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud
Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: A rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: A true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
Thoughts:
There are probably a few more in that list.. but high school was awhile ago! I would be interested to know who saw the movies of some of these books, too. There is also a long long list of other classics that aren’t on this list. It’s strange.
