Favorite Holiday

Now that alot of the major holidays are coming up, the question is which is the best. I would say Christmas is my favorite for a few reasons. One is that unlike other holidays Christmas season starts right after thanksgiving. It all builds up to the actual day so you are eager for it to come. Second you spend the whole day with the family and with other holidays you do other stuff during the day but at least with my family Christmas lasts all day long, we dont venture off. Third is presents, Christmas is the holiday where you give and receive presents, on your birthday you get a few presents and that's it. For Christmas you get alot of presents and you give presents to others. These are just a few reasons why Christmas is my favorite holiday but there are many others.

Grades are in

I just looked at my grades for Quarter 1 and overall its good. I dont know what my GPA is because im too lazy to calculate it so im going to wait for it to come in the mail. My worst grade this quarter was a B and that was in math. So i guess im going to have a good thanksgiving, not only because of the good grades. Also the fact that I dont have to go to school for 4 days and that I like to eat.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is another networking site but this one focuses more on business than anything else. It’s for showing the connections you are not aware of by showing your friends, friends. It helps you stay in touch with people you used to know but no longer stay in touch with otherwise. It can help people find jobs and other business opportunities. It’s for giving and receiving advice about various topics. It even helps out small business owners. This in theory can be a great thing but there can be problems. When business is done over the internet it’s really impersonal and you don’t really know who you are dealing with. You don’t know if someone is just wasting your time. One thing is a lot of people join and they have connections but they can’t find a way for it to benefit them. Some have an account for over a year and nothing has happened to benefit them in anyway so they are thinking what is the point. That can be said about any social networking site but when it comes to business it really doesn’t make sense if it doesn’t do anything for you. When it comes to these networking sites they are all pretty similar and do essentially the same things. The difference is that it depends on what type of networking you want to do. If you want to do social networking use facebook, if you want business connections us LinkedIn and it goes on and on and on. But the fact that LinkedIn focuses more on business than social networking makes it in my opinion one of the better social networking sites. This can be used for something if you know how it works. The bad part is learning what you have to do. Yea signing up is the first step but where do you go from there. Once you find out how to use LinkedIn correctly it will benefit you more than the other networking sites.

Family Tradition

Now that Thanksgiving is only a few days away the winter holiday season is upon us. When it comes to holidays alot of people have family traditions that defines the holidays to them. In my family we dont have big traditions like traveling and meeting up with the whole family. During thanksgiving we have a small tradition when one year we will go to our cousins house and the next year they come to ours. This year is our turn to host. During christmas we stay at home and we open up presents. We do it in a way where it lasts most of the day. We go one at a time and watch, most people just go at it and are done opening presents within 20 minutes. We usually have turkey for christmas but sometimes its honey ham. Then comes new years and after than the holiday season is over. Then all the lights come down and winter really starts to set in. Then we just wait for the winter to be over.

Myspace and Facebook

Social networking today is very different than in the past. Now the internet is vital to peoples lives. Now with facebook and myspace people can connect with more people than they ever could before. Myspace is now more used for music and it’s a way for bands and people to get there music known. It also helps people discover others like comedians, filmmakers, artists etc. Facebook is primarily a social networking site but it branches out to other types of networking. Its also used in making business contacts, getting up to the minute news, following famous people ETC. There are so many different uses for it you cant really know them all. They are more set up like a blog than other sites like twitter. You get to give a profile of yourself and post about what interest you, posting to others and much more. Plus these things connect you to people are around the world. Never before did people across the seas seem so close. These things are good and all but they are dangers that many people aren’t aware of. One is that anyone can access your information. This is a problem because some of the stuff you don’t want certain people to see, like parents. More important employers are starting to look into people’s facebooks and myspace accounts to see if they want that person to be in their business. What they find gives them an idea of what a person is like and if they don’t approve you’re in trouble. Many people have been denied jobs because of this. They weren’t even aware that what they were doing could be viewed by everyone that went looking for it. But if you are responsible and put stuff on there that isn’t viewed as bad its ok. But these things get abused by so many people and they don’t even realize what they are doing. So if you do what you are supposed to the pros of social networks like facebook and myspace can be a great tool to you. But if you don’t you might eventually have to pay for your actions in the future.

Here are two videos of the pros and cons of each

Grades coming out

The grades come out today on the Internet. I believe I did pretty good but with the grading system its probably not going to be good. I expect my GPA to fall now because of the new system. If the grades went by the old system I think I would have done pretty descent but now I don't know. They just decided to change the system out of no where without a good explanation and I don't think anyone had a problem with the old system. I was unaware people didn't think the old system worked but what do I Know. Changes should only happen if it improves what we had before and in this case its worse. It appears they only make changes in the school that are bad and the changes that are needed don't even get talked about. Well I will know soon what I got and I hope that the new system didnt harm me but it probably will.

Google Docs

In the recent past if you wanted to share documents with people you would just attach them to an email. But this can be time consuming if you have to send a lot of different documents to a lot of people. Then you have to keep track of every thing. Now with Google docs you can put your documents on the internet and people can access them without having to receive an email. It is a very good tool for teaching because every student can access a document on the computer without having to go check their email. They can do it on any computer and this makes doing computer work easier. This application can be used in so many different ways and for so many different reasons and that’s makes it good.

Google docs can be used in every type of career field; the thing is people just have to learn how they can take advantage of this free service. A lot of people aren’t even aware of its existence and they can benefit greatly by it. The reason why its here is because it helps people get work done easier.

It comes with a few problems though. Many people don’t trust putting there personal documents onto the internet because they believe that anyone can gain access to them. This has been a concern for many people and its something that has to be addressed. Google can’t guarantee that people documents won’t be at risk but they say the chances of something happening are slim. People want their documents to be secure and private but by putting them on the internet they are putting themselves at risk. Ownership rights of material are also coming into question. When you put something on the internet that is yours anyone can just take it and call it their own. These and other problems are being brought up but they aren’t big enough issues for most people to turn them away from it.

In the end google docs is very useful for certain things but be weary of what you put on it. If your document contains sensitive information and you don’t want to risk it getting out, and there is no need to use it, then don’t. This is just another tool that can be used to simplify some people’s lives.

Best Vacation

I have been on alot of good vacations and i cant really narrow down my favorite but a few stand out im my mind more than others. I would say by best vacations were the ones where i went down to florida where my grandparents lived when i was younger. We always went to the beach, theme parks, water parks, and hung around. I loved flying in airplanes and that was part of the excitment for me. Even though we didnt do anything super special i always look foward to going to florida.

Social Networking and Twitter

Networking is very important to a lot of people and in the past the ways to get in touch with people were limited. The creation of the internet opened up a whole new way of reaching people. It allows people to connect with others, which they wouldn’t be able to reach with if it wasn’t for the internet. One of the first popular networking sites was MySpace then more sites came out and had different functions. Another was Facebook and that is currently the most popular networking site. But now a newer site has come about and its called Twitter. It allows you to post a message about what you are doing in your everyday life, normally if you had something to say you had to talk to one person at a time. Now with twitter who ever follows you gets your post so you don’t have personally reach each person you want to tell your information with. These sites are very similar but have enough subtle differences that make them unique.

It can be used in a broad range of networking. Its not only social networking, talking to people you know but it can be used for business networking. Many businesses used twitter in order to reach out to a lot of people. It’s also to have everyone in the business to be able to connect with each other quickly. It is used in entertainment because you can follow your favorite stars and you are able to know what is going on with them at any given moment. It is also a great source of news because you receive new information faster than anything else. These are just some of the many ways that sites like twitter can be used in order to connect people.

The thing is it does come with its share of problems. One is that people get addicted to it and they are constantly doing it. You would think that it’s making people more social but in a way its not. People now would rather you text them or send them a tweet than rather actually talking to a person on the phone. It’s ironic because these things are to get people to be more social but in a way it’s doing away from actual contact and you need that to actually get to know someone. You can’t tell a person’s mood by text and a little face that frowns, it doesn’t do emotions justice. Another problem is people are relying on this too much. If they are unable to reach these sites for some reason people don’t know what to do, they are lost.

So there is a fine line that has to be walked when using these technologies. On one hand it is good to be able to share stuff that normally you wouldn’t be able to but on the other it’s coming to a point where it’s getting ridiculous. So it is good to use these things but they just need to be used in moderation because too much can actually can cause problems.

Additions

I have just added a widget to access youtube and i will be experimenting with new widgets and funtions of the blog. So now im just experimenting with it and things will be changing and I will post about the updates.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog ! I have added some of my favorite sites I visit on the right side of the blog so go check them out. I will be blogging about anything and everything. I am interested in a broad range of subjects and will be posting about what I think.