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Rainy

It’s been very rainy this last day for which I am grateful. Both the temperature and humidity has dropped considerably making my apartment much more comfortable. Soon, I will not be quite so favoured when it comes to weather. Every time I am hot here I think “How the hell am I going to handle Texas?”

We leave in less than a month now, and plans are certainly well underway. I’m starting to stress about packing and moving and sleeping on the floor and flying and everything else, especially since this is my first time.

Anyway, the second edition of Weekly WrapUp will be posted shortly, check it out!

I’m Steaming!

and using very bad puns. You see, about 3 weeks ago, there appeared some signs in the elevators instructing us lowly inhabitants that on the 24th of June there would be no hot water for several hours and that in the beginning of July they would be doing work that involved replacing 2 water heaters. No biggie. I thought it was smart to put these signs in the elevator.

June 24 came and hadn’t realized it so I tried to run the hot water to no avail. It coughed at me, perhaps released a spray of water, I recalled the date and was content to wait it out. No biggie.

But after the water was supposed to be back, to the point of 12 hours later, we were having issues. Initially, turning on the water did nothing. Then it released grossly yellow water in a fit of coughing. Out of the bathroom sink came something that appeared to be some sort of seal for the faucet. It came out in several smaller pieces and then finally one big chunk. I do not think this is “normal.”

Eventually, after running the water from all sinks (the kitchen faucet seemed like it was about to fly off but it has a history of doing that), which at first meant coughing fits that made the surrounding areas quite wet with yellow water, the coughing and discolouration stopped and we appeared to have normal water.

Almost.

The issue we continue to have is that our hot water is not working very well. You cannot wash your hands in hot water in the bathroom unless you turn the water on 5 minutes before you even realize you need to use the facilities which is just silly and wasteful.

The shower/tub is another thing altogether. Our solution so far is to turn the water to the hottest setting, letting it get hot and gradually turn it back down to comfortable. Turning it to comfortable from the beginning means it doesn’t get hot at all. Sometimes this doesn’t work, though, and it just stays scalding hot. I’ve found that, occasionally if I turn the cold water-that-should-be-hot off and then back on, it works. It’s all guesswork.

The kitchen tap takes a bit longer to become hot but doesn’t seem to have any of the more serious issues of the other 2.

To add insult to injury, they expect us to give them 2 more days – for a total of 8 hours – where we cannot use hot water because they’re swapping out steam something or anothers. Hell, I’m not even sure what they did the first day!

I guess I can’t complain. I can’t even use hot water now so maybe I won’t even notice the difference.

5 Years Today!

Just a quick note to say that July 7 is the 5 year mark for Ryan and I (thanks to an inquisitive cousin 5 years ago d=). Coincidentally, we shall be heading out to eat tonight. Mmm, italian.

Weekly WrapUp

Would be a bit hypocritical if I didn’t take part in this, eh? With much ado, the first Weekly WrapUp!

What did you accomplish this week? I went grocery shopping, cleaned the house, tried a new recipe, opened a new site – Weekly WrapUp,updated the layout of another site – Reviews by Cole, finished some icons, updated WordPress plugins, read 2 books and spent time with Ryan..

What were your goals? I didn’t have that many. I wanted to clean and change the layout at a site, which I did.

What are you goals for next week and what can you do to better meet them? The one thing I didn’t do was eat at the Italian place off base. I really want to do that next week so I shall make sure to adjust my schedule so that I can!

What’s so great about social bookmarking anyway?

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “social bookmarking” and you’ve also heard about sites like Digg, Technorati, StumbleUpon or Delicious. Hell, “Digg” has even become a Web2.0 Invent-a-Verb in much the same way “Googling” has. But what exactly is social bookmarking?

At it’s most basic definition, social bookmarking is an easy way to say “Hey guys! Look at this cool site I found!” without having to individually message all of your contacts.

This also leaves it open to be a tool to keep up with your friends and family – to see what they’re doing online and what interests them.

Because social bookmark sites keep track of how many times a sites is bookmarked – or “Dugg” – social bookmarks are also tools used to gauge the popularity of articles, sites and blogs.

For instance, upon logging on to Digg, the index shows the most popular recently submitted links. From there, the visitor can see the most popular links in the last 24 hours, 7 says, year et cetera.

Similarly, Technorati‘s front page shows rising stories – though they are divided by whether they are news stories or blog posts (unless you’re logged in; then it shows updates from your favourite blogs as well as when your blogs last pinged – or alerted Technorati of – updates).

Both sites allow visitors to view bookmarks in a variety of categories from business to technology to politics to entertainment to lifestyle and beyond. Furthermore, users can browse by media type such as image or video.

Technorati‘s provisions for blog posts might make it a bit more popular among bloggers as often times, blog posts do not seem to fit within Digg‘s “news story” submission process.

Technorati‘s Blogger Central allows blog owners to “claim” their blogs and submit updates via RSS feeds which publish automatically to a profile page for their blog. From there, others can add the blog to their favourites. Technorati also searches for links to blogs – or “reactions” – which help determine its popularity. Blogger Central also has widgets for use on your desktop, in your browser or on your blog to keep you connected to Technorati all the time.

Digg seems to be a bit more advanced in that it has a friends system, allows comments on submissions and users can send their Diggs/submissions to friends via “shouts.”

However, Digg and Technorati are not the only 2 on the scene.

Del.icio.us is a popular, if much simpler site. Sign up, upload a copy of your bookmarks/favourite from your browser and via plug in or browser, you can add sites to your favourites list. Del.icio.us is big on tags which describe the type of content you’re uploading. Unlike Technorati or Digg, it’s more about traditional bookmarks than news stories or blog posts so pretty much everything feels at place here.

The Del.icio.us homepage shows hot stories and tags. Visitors can view submissions by popularity of recentness.

Upon logging in, visitors see all the bookmarks they have added to Del.icio.us as well as tags. “Your network” shows submissions from friends and “Links for you” are similar to Digg shouts in that your friends can specifically send a recommendation your way. Set up tags you’re interested in and new bookmarks with these tags will show up under “Subscriptions,” similar to Technorati‘s Watchlists.

StumbleUpon is another popular option for social bookmarking; however, that is not its sole purpose. SU is a browser add-on which allows people to recommend sites via categories/tags. Other users can set up a profile and indicate which topics are of interest to them; the stumble upon toolbar will then take the user to a random site based on these tags when. This is known as Stumbling.

Stumble Upon also lets visitors connect with friends to see what they’re browsing, view popular sites, and post to an on-site blog. SU also divides content by media type (videos, images), has a message system and even has groups for those of similar interests. Like Del.icio.us, tags are important in SU.

However, there are many more social bookmarking sites online. Some are general and some are geared toward a specific interest group. Check out Slashdot, Reddit, Newsvine, Bloglines and Yahoo!buzz.

Tired!

For whatever reason, this whole weekend, Ryan woke me up while I was in the middle of sleeping for no good reason. For instance, today he couldn’t sleep so he lays there and finally decides that his boredom might be cured by talking to me. So what does he do? He asks me if I am “awake.” Well, the funny thing about that is, no-I-wasn’t-thank-you-very-much but now that he’s spoken, I am and that makes me very unhappy. I not so kindly pointed out that his plan was unwise, grumped a bit until he left and went back to sleep.