It's a date.

It was brought to my attention in one of my classes that Sarah Vowell is visiting the Tech Campus on March 3 to speak as part of the Presidential Lecture and Performance series. I recently read her book, Assassination Vacation, and thoroughly enjoyed it (a good portion of the book is available on Google Books). It regales her "travels around the country researching the assasinations of US presidents Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, and James Garfield (Wikipedia)." While it doesn't necessarily sound like your usual page-turner, her humorous delivery of historical facts and anecdotes makes the book both educational and pleasureful to read. I'm not typically a laugh-out-loud person, but several guffaws escaped my lips while reading the book. She also wrote Take the Cannoli, The Partly Cloudy Patriot, and The Wordy Shipmates along with I really look forward her reading and commentary and encourage any who enjoys history, humor and social observation to attend.

You can call 806-742-0706 ext 401 for tickets.

Blurgh!: Peanuts on Planes

Allergy patch by Jeeto!

As the parent of a child with a peanut allergy, this recent story about Northwest Airlines struck a nerve. Before my son was diagnosed with the allergy, I would have scoffed at the complaints of individuals with peanut allergies, but now, after seeing my son have a reaction and reading the material on the dangers of peanut allergies, I completely understand and stand behind those complaints against the airline industry and the peanut-providing airliners.

What people don't realize it that allergic reactions aren't predictable: one day it's red eyes and hives, the next it's anaphylaxis, and the following time it is just a throat tingling. There's no magic formula to predict the severity of an attack.

Thankfully, my son isn't, fingers-crossed, one of the breath-the-fumes-and-have-a-reaction people but those individuals are out there, and I feel for those people. It's hard enough worrying about whether or not you'll be stuck next the crying baby, the talker, or the sweaty guy without having to worry about every-single-thing that goes into the mouth, the surfaces you touch, and the air you breath causing an attack.

The accommodations, a "buffer zone" and peanut-free snacks, are of little consolation when an allergy attack is a possible risk. I don't understand why Northwest Airlines is distributing peanuts again, but I suspect money is at the root. Peanut allergies are on the rise and for almost an industry to ignore the medical needs of some of its passengers is irresponsible and a slap-in-the-face. I say, "Blurgh!" to you Northwest Airlines.

The power of blogging

Recent class readings have me thinking about the power of blogging in this Web 2.0 world. The amount of power that bloggers wield with their keyboards never ceases to amaze me. Bloggers speak their minds (sometimes ad nauseum) about anything and everything--a feature that makes them both a PR dream and a nightmare.

This story about the math deficiencies of Verizon customer service representatives came to my attention a few weeks ago. The story is from 2006, but it's still making the rounds in one form or another, which just demonstrates the permanence of the web. Here's the viral video that first introduced me to the story:


If you notice, in his Verizon Math blog, his account was settled within days of beginning the blog. I have to wonder if this was a response to his phone and letter complaints or if it was the popularity of his blog that prompted such quick attention from the company.

Another awe-inspiring story is that of this mom. In October 2008, she started a blog to campaign against Carter's (the children's clothing line) tagless clothes after her daughter developed a "burn" from wearing the clothes. Her story and the subsequent others that cropped up in response prompted Carter's to issue a voluntary recall of the tagless line in question. Within weeks of the initial blog posting, Moms could return the clothes, in any condition, to the company for a refund--not a merchandise credit but a check for the suggested retail value of returned each item--without having to produce a reciept. This was a huge loss to the company but important for damage control. Damage caused by a concerned mother with Web 2.0 power.

These stories are a dime a dozen, but each one is important to the company involved. I imagine that corporations are (or will) hiring teams to monitor company exposure in blogs. Blogs empower the consumer like never before and companies are positioning themselves accordingly.

Over the weekend, I bought a baby shower gift for a friend on Babies R' Us and decided to review an item on the site that I had personal experience with. After reviewing the product, I was surprised to find that I could add the review to my blog with the touch of a button.

The conspiracy-theorist in me thinks this "feature" is just a way for Babies R' Us to track the blogs that review its products in an effort to stay ahead of consumers, but it could just be Babies R' Us' way of hyperlinking the heck out of its site and products and increasing its presence in the blogosphere. Either way, blogging is still in its infancy and it's evolving every day. I'm curious what "blogging" will involve in the future and how it'll impact our consumerism even more.

Farewell, perpetual immediacy.

I took the plunge this week and bought my first laptop. I've squeaked by in my graduate studies without one until now, but I can't help but think things would have gone a little smoother with its convenience. Now, with two kids and growing familial obligations (read: craziness), I felt it was a necessity.

I spent the last few weeks reading every article or review I could find on CNET and Consumer Reports, and I've followed the weekly sales ads to understand my options. Once I got the green light (hello, student loan), I bought my HP Pavilion dv4-1225dx. I don't entirely understand all the specs, but it's got a great processor, suffiencient memory, and a reasonable amount of hard drive space so I'm certain my computing needs will be met. I nearly let greed get the best of me by purchasing the 17-inch version that was nearly the same price point, but I wisened up and realized lugging a 17-inch laptop around would be similar to adding another child to my brood. No, thank you. So, I've spent what free time I could find these last few days downloading programs like Flash that I take for granted as being there and removing some of the junk trial-versions and other superfluous software (I'm a little more conservative about software removal than I'd like to be but I'm horribly afraid of doing irreparable damage to my new gadget).

I rounded out my week of techno-splurging by using my student discount to buy Adobe's CS4 Design Premium, which includes Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks, Flash, and Acrobat Professional. I've used Photoshop and Illustrator a number of times but never had enough time to play and learn. I recently started using Dreamweaver, too, and I'm new to InDesign this semester. I adore all the whole Creative Suite and can't wait to spend some quality time with my new software.

While I'm alarmingly uncomfortable spending that sort of money on myself, I'm trying to look at it as an investment in the future, professional, tool-trained me. I'm desperate for some resume bling!

Recession depression & redirection

With all this talk of recession and the recent deluge of layoffs, I can't help but feel a little gloom-and-doom about future job prospects since I've been here before: here being the final lap of a degree plan with a fractured economy and little hope for a clear-cut career path.

When I graduated with my undergraduate degree in 2002, the US was still recovering from the blow 9/11 dealt to industry. My shiny new BA in Advertising was a worthless bauble in an economy where companies jettisoned their advertising budgets at the first sign of trouble. I was lucky to have found post-graduation work with the advertising agency where I interned, but instead of a typical salaried position, I was only an hourly wage worker -- earning a measly $7 an hour and prohibited from working more than 40 hours a week.

Five months after graduating, I moved to the Dallas metroplex in hopes of some greener pasture, even if only slightly greener. However, the Dallas marketplace was saturated with unemployed advertising wannabes and has-beens, and copywriters and account coordinators (my two areas of experience) were considered "a dime a dozen." Starbucks even refused to hire me for a simple barista position despite previous coffee shop experience because they feared I'd want advancement opportunities. At that point, though, I just wanted a job, regardless its long-term viability. I finally found work as a receptionist/assistant-to-the-VP at a small B2B agency. There wasn't much opportunity for upward mobility, and after a few twists and turns and years down professional lane, I ended up in my current graduate degree program.

I'm not sure what job prospects will be available when I graduate in May, but I know that I'll have to set myself apart from other applicants if there's any hope of securing a position, and considering that I'm a terrible interviewee, I've got to develop my professional bells and whistles if I want to get my foot in the door. Fortunately, I consider that a thrilling charge and will no doubt glean such a opportunity from this economical downturn -- now it's just a matter of deciding what bells and whistles I need.

A Blurgh! is born

From my experience in blogdom, naming your blog is much harder than actually creating its content (posting consistently, however, is on another plane of difficulty). Despite that knowledge, I still spent the better part of last week trying to come up with something clever and memorable. I started my search with the obligatory stab at a pun-inspired moniker but came up empty-handed. I also considered some theme-related options but then decided it was best not to pigeonhole the content if there's any hope of me keeping up with this blog. So, out of frustration, I settled on Blurgh!

"But Blurgh!?," you say. Let me explain.

Blurgh! is term I stole from 30 Rock that its heroine Liz Lemon uses in lieu of an expletive. I wouldn't say I use Blurgh! as an expletive so much as a filler. It's a catch-all for any exasperation or case-of-the-Mondays that I might experience as well as an escape from commonplace interjections, and its addition to my vocabulary has proved invaluable. I have been known to shout it out in a fit of road rage or toe-stubbing or even mutter it during one of the memory lapses that accompanies motherhood. The brilliance of Blurgh! is its senselessness. It’s very likely that my two-year-old son witnesses those less than graceful moments of mine, and, thanks to Blurgh!, I’ll never worry that his impressionable ears might hear a taboo word that would no doubt be repeated while standing in line at the grocery store among admiring grandmas and mothers-to-be. Any mimicked "blurghs" would just be filed away by passersby as more toddler gobbledygook. Genius. Blurgh! has been a life saver in many regards, and with this blog, it’s once again proving its usefulness.

This is my second active blog as I have another "mommy blog" that I use to tell family, friends, and the random web wanderer how awesome my sons are and what they had for lunch. For that reason, I want to leave Blurgh! open to everything else: current events, random musings, school-related topics, craft projects, and any Blurgh! moments I care to preserve for posterity.