Belated update again

Right. So. Point the first: after a year of fussing and procrastinating (additional to all those years previous in which I did so less avidly) I finally, finally made and attended an appointment for a bout of facelasering.

Went well enough. Did not have to call halt due to pain at any point, although it got a bit close at times. Results have been good. Only had the one session so far, but already feeling much better about myself and noticing effects being taken. Face smoother, hair less visible, taking longer to become a bother, that sort of thing. There are some patchy bits where it seems not to have taken effect so strongly, and those are quite noticeable if I leave it a bit untended. That is a bit gratifying as a reminder of how well the rest of it has gone.

Been finding my lack of regret or uncertainty surprising, as the expectation of it is one factor that has been keeping me back. Maybe it will kick in later.

Also recently, got an email from my supervisor asking if I could be available on a particular day of the coming roster period, not for a shift but because she asked that I be allowed to participate in some upcoming staff training. Not something the casual staff such as myself usually get included on, so I am feeling pretty pleased and vindicated on that front. Plus the degree I am taking requires I put together a portfolio of 30 hours worth of workplace development activities of the span of my studies and I can probably count this toward it. Double bonus.

While I was out getting my skin zapped I went and got a replacement external hard drive for the one that got wrecked early this year, thanks to being carelessly taken from its safe hidey-hole. Which means a couple of weeks of re-ripping my CDs for the music I lost with the drive, fretting every time an album turns out to have developed further errors, become more difficult to read in the time since last ripping. Very much hoping this is the last time I have to do so, and can subsequently keep my music collection safe.

I seem to have collapsed out of existence for the previous month. Oops to all my grand plans. Continue to worry what this suggests about my ability to Do Things in conjunction with being employed. As ever, try again.

Addendum: as part of the unit I am taking at the moment, I am required to keep an Online Learning Journal (OLJ). For my first assignment I had to create an OLJ and make an initial post, to whit:

To successfully meet the requirements of Assignment 3, students must create an online learning journal (OLJ) using a social networking site (e.g., a blog, wiki, ning, etc.), and complete the first entry for their OLJ. In this first entry (which comprised my first assignment), briefly:

(a) define what social networking is (in your own words);

(b) list what social networking technologies and sites you already use (for personal, work and study purposes); and

(c) describe what you expect to learn from completing INF206.

And what I submitted:

a) In the past, social networking seemed to mean something much like schmoozing - getting to know people and forming social connections for personal advancement. More recently the term seems to have switched to an almost entirely digitally networked context and taken on much more personal associations. Social networking in the present seems to refer to internet based platforms which enable the public posting of material from a user account along with the ability to subscribe to postings from other users. Some degree of control over the publicity of postings, e.g. entirely public, or visible only to subscribers, or to a designated subset of accounts, seems common but not essential.

There also appears to be a lot of overlap in sense of purpose. The old offline sense of social networking remains, as a sort of professional socialisation, building of contacts and - more recently - building of audience, but these platforms are also used very personally, with people maintaining familial and friendship connections through them as well as forming new friendly or romantic connections. This overlap between professional and personal uses of social networking, often by the same people, makes for relatively new difficulties.

It’s as if social networking is two distinct things trying to exist in the same space: a tool for professional connections and outreach, and a casual social space.

b) For work purposes I’ve not previously used social networking technologies. Personally have used Twitter, Google+, blogged on LiveJournal / Dreamwidth, Drupal and briefly have used Wordpress and Diaspora (that last was mostly abandoned for lack of userbase). Also maintain a rather lengthy RSS subscription and a wiki for personal projects. Various of these, particularly the wiki and RSS feeds have been used for collating or as sources of study material during the previous semester. This is not a platform I’ve used previously; the requirement to keep an OLJ for this unit makes for a suitable excuse to try and get familiarised with something new.

c) From INF206 I mainly expect to learn professional contexts and strategies for social media tools, because that arena is completely outside my prior use experience.

And that concludes this post. *dusts hands off*

P. S. I went and got a Tumblr after long resistance since that seems to be the only long-form platform most of the people I associate with on Twitter use these days and I suppose I want to talk at a wider variety of people at greater length. Posts will probably be the same as I post elsewhere, minus any thing I don't want to make public.