Month of July , 2007

In my ongoing experimentation with online advertising and paid writing services, I signed up for payperpost to see how it works. As with other sponsored posts here, any post written at payperpost's request will be clearly marked as such -- in fact, it's a payperpost requirement!

Here's what's new from me at lifehack.org:

Becoming a Great Step-Dad
Don't Be Eeyore
Advice for Students: 10 Steps Toward Better Writing

Last night, my girlfriend and I are sitting in the garage (we've got a nice little sitting/smoking area out there) and relaxing when she sees a dog run by. Thinking it's our neighbors chihuahua, she goes tearing off after it, barefoot, while I head to the neighbors to let them know their dog is out. We've got a billion dogs in our development, most of them either huge or pit bulls or both, so you know a chihuahua isn't going to last long out there!

This weekend marks the end of my second week at lifehack.org, and what a week! Here's what I posted this week:

• Learn Something New Every Day
• Advice for Students: How to Write Research Papers that Rock!
• Get More out of Google Reader

I've just submitted my first Search Engine Result Page (SERP) at Mahalo, Jason Calacanis' new "hand-written" search engine. The topic is "David Weinberger", whose work I've been following for years. (You have to have one reviewed before you can take on a wider range of topics at the same time.)

I put two posts up at lifehack.org this week; there's a third in the pipe which I assume will be posted tomorrow. The goal is to post three times a week, but we're having some small difficulties coordinating that since the editor, Leon, lives in Australia which is actually in the future, while I can only post in the present. Damn International Date Line!

The posts this week were:

Well, maybe not "easy", per se, unless by "easy" you mean "really, really hard".

This week was the first week of the summer session of my women's studies class, "Gender, Race, and Class". While I've taught about a half-dozen summer sessions of anthropology at the community college, this is my first summer session at the university and my first in women's studies. Summer classes are a ton of work -- class prep every day, unmotivated students, only a couple weeks between intros and mid-terms, and then again between mid-terms and finals. They tend to be breathless, jus-in-time affairs.

Way back at the turn of the century, when the Web was still 1.0 and a ragtag band of ragged IT staffers thought they could make a mint going virtual, I got to repeatedly experience the joys (please note intense sarcasm!) of web conferencing, dot-bomb style. We had the marketing and sales office in NYC (where I worked), the data center in New Jersey, and believe it or not, coders in Bulgaria. And every few days, we got to do web conferencing with jumpy blurry webcam images and scratchy audio and really ...

Starting next week, I will be blogging at lifehack.org on topics related to productivity, organization, learning, and generally living the Good Life. I'll still maintain this site for more general musings and updates. I'm very excited about this opportunity and am looking forward to dealing with some of the topics I've dealt with here in a more general way. Check it out!