Carol H Tucker Passionate about knowledge management and organizational development, expert in loan servicing, virtual world denizen and community facilitator, and a DISNEY fan
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beladona Memorial Be warned:in this very rich environment where you can immerse yourself so completely, your emotions will become engaged -- and not everyone is cognizant of that. Among the many excellent features of SL, there is no auto-return on hearts, so be wary of where your's wanders...
In the "don't believe everything you read" category: Have you noticed the increase in studies that are making conclusions about everything from the way aging affects your brain to the impact of our lives online on how we relate to people? Ever wonder how accurate all this information really is? "‘Published' and ‘true' are not synonyms," said Brian Nosek, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia.
When a company makes a major change, they are asking me to do something differently, to become a different consumer/customer/user. How this impacts the way in which I tell my stories in my life is the determining factor on whether I remain a customer or perhaps become a raving fan. What is the future of story-telling?
You think that the economy is recovering? WalMart just missed their second quarter projections as their "lower-income customers in the U.S. contend with high gasoline prices and persistently high unemployment levels" What caught my attention was the comment about the paycheck cycle they have documented: "where customers buy immediately after payday and then make smaller purchases as money runs out."
I am not sure if I like the little printer or think it is redundant! There is something really futuristic about it, but then again, aren't we supposed to be going completely digital?
The former CFO/COO of Linden Labs has a new job. He has been reviled for the "damage" that he did to LL and SL, but really? Alll he die was make them operate like a "real" business venture instead of a free-wheeling social experiment -- especially since they have gotten the attention of the regulators. The real shame is that he never quite grasped what product/service the company was actually providing, so he pointed them in a direction that is not sustainable in the long term.
Speaking of SL, there apears to be some plant life creeping over...
In the category of digital life: Disney Research is working on face cloning for the animatronics. Can't hit the beach in person, but you can ride the waves in SL. If you think that SL is getting to expensive and you find yourself alone most of the time, there are other alternatives -- but the landscaping is more difficult to buy so the look you want is harder to achieve.. And the series H++ is available for free initially -- notice they only commit to the first six episodes being free, just a taste to sucker you in? And last, what do you want and/or expect from an online relationship?
Apparently the Theory of the Mind folks {AKA ToM] have isolated and identified that segment of your mind that appreciates irony. A timely discovery amongst all the political posturing, neh? Another study supports that feeling you have now and then that you just can't think when you are feeling down.
There was a time when many US travelers felt that "they" were not particularly welcome but their money was coveted. Now? Not even the dollar is welcome in Africa.
Our family has had a couple of illnesses that had to be addressed by surgery: the hole in Tom's heart and his appendicitis, my endometriosis and irregular heart beat, Gem's gall bladder, Frank's strokes and surgeries. But for most of our problems, we too turned to over-the-counter medications. Nowadays? I seem to take so many different pills -- pills to lower the blood pressure, bills to encourage insulin production, pills to regulate the "bad" chlorestal on top of the allergy meds [perscription Nasonex pluse my usual pills on bad days] and Zantac to manage an increasingly touchy digestive system. Were I to lose my insurance coverage, I would just stop taking them all except for the allergy meds because I couldn't afford to pay for them. I am afraid that I am not one of those who would surive the breakdown of modern society even with my sewing and bread making skills.
We have been hearing about a mis-match between skills and available workers -- this article makes the point that perhaps the mismatch has more along the lines of compensation. There is no doubt that employers are making it a point to offer as little to their staff as possible, severely curtailing benefits and limiting training opportunities all the while demanding high performance and an almost 24/7 commitment of time. Add to it the bitterness of seeing senior management, especially CEOs living their dreams and you have an ugly situation developing where some of those who have been laid off just cannot see their way clear to go back to work. There was a reason why unions developed and flourished no matter what the abuses in later years.
One world: Zorro. Happy Birthday, Don Diego de la Vega.
NASA says that the shooting stars will be spectacular this weekend. Figures -- we are in the middle of a severe drought and THIS is the weekend it decides to cloud up and rain on and off....
The Smithsonian was a favorite site of many a school field trip back in the day, and as a resident of the Baltimore/DC area, I have to admit that I rather have taken it for granted. On Friday it celebrated its 166th anniversary and I'll admit that I hadn't realized how it came to be other than it was the bequest of a rich man. The man is gone and not remembered, but his legacy lives on and on.
We just called it "The Point". My father worked there from after he left the Navy to when he left for Alaska -- almost 23 years or so. Bethleham Steel was inagruably the largest employer in East Baltimore and being a steelworker was a way of life. And the pollution was something you just lived with -- smells, cars that would rust out, people coughting. I am not sure the suit is against the right people, but it is way overdue and quite justified.
It isn't exactly turning swords into plowshares, but this particular bit of recycling is a cool idea I think.. Have you noticed that even with all the social media and viral videos, it still takes a story like that to bring something like this to our attention? I still have my father's WWII naval dress uniform boxed away in the Disaster Area, but I don't think I would want to break it down.. The kids may feel differently when I am gone.
I have a beef with the interactive Google doodles! The animation won't work in the office and CHROME insists on linking me to iGoogle every time I try to get to GOOGLE, so I have to fire up IE on my home PC if I want to see it. It isn't very often that I want to play with the doodle that badly.
I had to think about this post for a bit ... Sadly it resonated with me! Bela has been in world since December 2005. She has a particular look, an extensive inventory of over 70K items and extensive community ties. If suddenly I logged her in and she was back to newbie status with no inventory, a stock avatar and no links to friends and communities, it would be rather depressing to say the least. If we can become so attached to a visualization of ourselves, what other attachments have we acquired? Are they good for us?
You know that you can generate false credit card numbers to buy things online, there are websites that provide that service. Now you can get an app for your iPhone to provide a special fake phone number -- and make calls from it too!
This is a bit on the pricey side, but what a great idea! I mean, who wouldn't want to be a "real" Disney princess? Since the fairy godmother, or Merriweather, is not available? I would want to do Aurora [but in the blue dress please].
Well what do you know! I played around with GOOGLE and tried my full legal name and ran across an old wiki that I created to put my resume online! Kept trying variations of my name, with and without the middle name and found out there are 151 "Carol Tucker"s on LInkedIn!
When we went to WDW this last time, we had Tonga Toast for the first time -- and it was every bit as good as it was said to be. Now you can fix it for yourself at home, but I'll bet you it still tastes better when sitting at the Kona Cafe, knowing you have an entire day in the Magic Kingdom stretching out in front of you....
Language often reflects changes in society -- how you speak of something indicates how you feel about an issue or person. The Language Log traces changes in semantics and while the posts are densely written, sometimes the overtones or undertones of the words we use are very interesting. When a language has 26 uncomplimentary terms for a woman, that has to tell you something about a woman's status in that society, neh?
You don't hear as much about knowledge management anymore since some pundits declared it moribund.... Nancy Dixon was with us in the Knowledge Ecology Network when she lost her day job and launched herself into her career working with Communities of Practice. Here she gives a nice overview of the different stages of KM.
Now that a third movie is to be made, a new and longer trailer has been released! Have you marked December 14th on the calendar yet?
One awkward fearture of this particular blogging tool is that the length of the message is actually limited -- I forget the exact number of charactters, but have exceeded it more than once. Sometimes I edit. Sometimes I discard. Now and then I just break the post into two pieces
This is just plain scary -- anyone's identity can be hacked if it is true. I recently had an uncomfortable thing happen to me when an email from some guy in Indonesia arrived in my Gmail account -- it seems that bela.dona@gmail.com worked as easily as my actual beladona@gmail.com addy and he had created a FaceBook page using that. I changed the passwords on that account immediately, and all my main passwords, so I hope that I got to it before anything happened. I was lucky that I was at the PC when the notice came over and could act right away.
Recently there has been a couple of "no excuses" comments made about public education. But does this just confirm that education, like healthcare, has become dependent on the class structure? PL Thomas thinks so. Me? I am not as convinced, I think it has more do to with a societal shift towards no longer respecting knowledge and education, placing an emphasis on vocational training. We no longer worry about our kids being able to think, we only worry about the job they will be able to get.
Star Trek continues.... we will will always "boldly go where no one has gone before"! I just wish I could afford to go back to Las Vegas again. That was a swell vacation even if I was alone
It was my intention to be quiet today. You know the kind of day when all your feelings seem muffled and irrelevant to the global scheme of things and you just concentrate on the task at hand, like putting one foot in front of the other? That was this morning for me, feeling muted for lack of a better way of putting it. But there was a couple of articles first thing in the morning that caught my interest and I still operate informally by the rule of threes
The first was a rather thoughtful, introspective look at harassment and trolling online. Salome pretty much hit the nail on the head with this reflection on the interactions in gaming. To a lesser degree, some of these behaviors are also found in SL.
Second I ran across this news article about increases in healthcare for larger companies. The fact is that healthcare is going up for all of us, and the article does manage to cover that rather well. The fact is that it is not only the availability of care, but the quality that is available that is increasingly dependent on the size of your pocketbook. Companies opting to pay the fine rather than carry healthcare for their employees. Mis-diagnosis, especially in over-worked over-crowded clinics as more and more medical offices go boutique. Substitution of generic drugs for brands regardless of how well they work. Treatment that concentrates only on symptoms and not on a holistic overview of what is best for the patient. I'm sure it comes as no suprise that the haves live longer than the have nots. "There are essentially two America's," said Olshansky. "One subgroup of the population is highly educated, doing well, and they are experiencing a dramatic increase in life expectancy," he said. "Another subgroup of the population is less educated, doing very poorly, and experiencing a drop or only modest increases in life expectancy". Class warfare in ... 10.... 9.... 8....
And last, how do you measure economic growth? I happen to agree that well-being is more sensible than GNP in a more service oriented society -- but I have grave reservations about how we go about measuring an intangible; that has been the problem with implementing knowledge management, how do you measure and define success? How do yoiu know when things are going well and when things aren't? Talk about fodder for manipulation and newspeak ! Can't you just feel the propaganda mills firing up even as we speak?
And having broken the logjam of silence, now for this and that:
Now why is AMAZON hopping aboard the FaceBook app train? They have opened a game studio of their own and their own explanation for this: "Why is Amazon making social games, you ask? Good question! We know that many Amazon customers enjoy playing games – including free-to-play social games – and thanks to Amazon's know-how, we believe we can deliver a great, accessible gaming experience that gamers and our customers can play any time.". Not a bad promo, but it reads to me as just hopping on the bandwagon to keep eyes and attention in/on Amazon.com
Okay -- I am not a pack rat! I have a hoarding disorder and that's my story and I'm sticking to it!: " Hoarding disorder (HD) is defined as the excessive collection of objects and an inability to discard them. It is characterized by marked avoidance of decisions about possessions." The article makes it sound a bit like being OCD. Meanwhile, I now have an excuse for the Disaster Area... er, make that an explanation not an excuse. I'm sure that knowing I suffered with HD will be a great comfort to my kids when they have to wade through all this stuff someday....
Have you noticed? The media keeps stressing the cost of Curiosity .... like this quote from the WSJ: " NASA’s $2.5 billion Curiosity craft achieved the most complex, costly and high-risk landing ever attempted on another world. " Funny, they don't list the costs and/or risks of an air strike, or a political speech, or a new congressional study -- just the cost of space research and exploration, subtly influencing, reinforcing the perception that this is money that could be spent elsewhere. There is actually a movement to use crowdfunding to overcome the ignorance of Congress! Take a minute to read the archived tweets....
Very quietly, Congress is getting ready to start taxing all online purchases. Despite all the high-sounding claims about making the marketplace fair and equitable, the article makes it clear that the real impetus is the dollar signs that the local municipalities see pouring into their coffers
When you hear about predatory lending, you usually think of dastardly doings that are milking the poor of their hard-earned cash. It is harder to see the case when we are talking about mega-millions given to a sports figure, neh?
August 6th in 1181 Supernova observed by Chinese & Japanese astronomers 1806 Holy Roman Empire ends 1815 US flotilla ends piracy by Algiers, Tunis & Tripoli 1890 1st use of electric chair in US, John Hart, in NY for murder 1914 Austria-Hungary declares war against Russia 1914 Serbia declares war against Germany 1934 US troops leave Haiti, which had been occupied since 1915 1945 Atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima by "Enola Gay" 1962 Jamaica gains independence from Britain 1986 Phil Katz releases PKARC version 1.0, for the IBM 1990 UN Security Council votes 13-0 (2 abstentions Cuba & Yemen) to place economic sanctions against Iraq
The Olympics aren't over yet, but the Baltimore/DC area is already speculating on another bid, this time for 2024
Definitely if Rio de Janero intends to make their bid for the games pretty spectacular! There is nothing that we can do in this area that will compete with THAT! In fact? when I first saw the picture, I thought it was something in Second Life.
The rules against harassment at work have been expanded in recent years to include the expression of political opinions, especially opinions that run counter to that of your employer. This is just a sad story about how the freedom of speech is curtailed in the workplace.
And then there was one of the first images from Mars....
The full quote is from the opening of a very popular soap opera Days of Our Lives from the 60's that is still on the air today.
Quote of the day: "Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking." ~ H. L. Mencken
If you REALLY have a yen to be the captain of the Enterprise, this will definitely help.
I used to be able to have twitter feeds default to my GReader -- does anyone know how to do that? I would love to follow Curiosity as I did the other Mars rovers until they stopped.
Interestingly, Linden Labs is taking SL out of the OpenSim project and continues trying to create a differentiation for itself in the Virtual World market. At some point, the denizens of SL continue to hope that LL will understand what their product actually is, but I fear the influence of the investors' insistence on tangible profits.
I think that all of us have been told by HR that it is a firing offense to reveal salary information. Is that legal? Certainly the better organizations that I have worked with have been relatively transparent when it comes to salaries and positions.
This church reminds me of St. Alophonsus, the Lithuanian church on Saratoga Street in Baltimore. I once wrote a paper on that church in college, going through the different symbols that were woven into the gorgeous ornamentation. One of my favorite memories was going to a high mass on Christmas Eve with Bob [Tom's father]. It was a very long service because the entire sermon was given first in English, then repeated in Lithuanian in its entirety. Somehow the panoply of the high mass, the significance of Christmas Eve, the sheer grandeur of the church all melded to make an unforgettable experience.
I keep hearing Sancho's song in my head.... "A little gossip, a little chat, a little idle talk of this and that..." . I'll probably change the titles when the song dies away.
And it is a quiet weekend at home.... Still working my way through Babylon 5 and am up to the last season. I actually met the actor who played Byron at the Star Trek convention I went to out in Las Vegas to see William Shatner for the first time. He was there in the vendor room because he had some connection with STNG, I don't remember what. The odd thing was? He made a comment that he had worked on other shows and suddenly I recognized him and blurted out "but you were Byron!" A couple other people turned around and came over and I got to listen to a fascinating conversation of reminiscing about B5 production with a Narn extra and a grip and him.
I am a Disney fan. I am what I would call a moderate Disney fan -- I don't always dress in Disney clothing [but own an awful lot of Tshirts], I don't spend a fortune on pins, I have given away most of my music boxes. Vacationing in the parks is my preference and I am delighted that I have a chance to go to Disneyland in just 42 days. But I think this is going too far.
Bill Nye the Science Guy gives lessons on how to tie a bowtie in 24 seconds.
I ran across this suggestion for a woman to pack light. Doesn't quite seem like a lot of clothing to me, but then again, I tend to over pack. REALLY over pack! The one time that I didn't? What started out as a three day trip to Williamsburg turned into a six week stay and I actually threw away the clothes that I wore for that period of time when I got home.
Well I missed it -- I didn't realize that it was National Watermelon Day until pretty late at night.... Actually I don't particularly care for watermelon, don't dislike it, just is not on the top of the list of things that I like to eat.
Anticipation over the landing of Curiosity ...... 10:31 PM PTD, so 1:30AM EDT. The homepage is here, I have to remember how to subscribe to the twitter stream via GReader like I did with the other rover.
I found that the relationship spiral hit home -- especially with online relationships both in SL and LDRs.
August is Babylon 5 Love month, just in case you are a fan. It isn't as active as it used to be, but still has the stray fanfic and original art pop up. Speaking of fanfic, one of my all time favorite B5 stories is the The Babylon Five Parallel Universe
Although this article is really not very complimentary towards banking, it does point out a basic flaw in ROI -- what is the benefit of prevention? I once read a comment that Y2K was the biggest false alarm in tech history -- how ignorant that person was! Y2K was a non-event precisely because everyone busted their buns to prevent it and that prevention was worth every penny it cost. Oh, and by the way, I firmly believe that there needs to be a different level of regulations for "big" and "investment" and "community" banks.
When it comes to online identity, names matter. I have been beladona since I first became active online on a BBS and she will always be me. I have been beladona Memorial since 12.02.05 in SL. For whatever the reason, Linden Labs switched to a ridiculous system of naming when you sign up that requires you to make up an elaborate first name and sticks you with the last name of "Resident" . Literally thousands of SL users have commented and hundreds are watching the issue SVC-7125 https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-7125 but LL has done nothing to fix the problem other than say the change is permanent and try and argue that it is even desirable.
From the Banc Investment Daily: "The largest 401K administrator in the US, Fidelity Investments, said the average balance of its 12mm accountholders was $72,800 at the end of Jun or 2.4% less than the end of March." I know that my savings is going down and down and down just as I am getting to the point of possibly starting to use it!. I try not to think about it too much because then my bitterness towards that 1% grows too great to bear -- Congress is so totally out of touch with the mainstream with their 100% legal, dental, medical, optical insurance and full pension benefits!
Actually? the mother's curse that I knew about was: May you have a kid just like you. That was one that I never passed onto my kids because it was so effective that it scared me.
Google Maps really has some cool stuff -- like being able to tour the Kennedy Space Center! This was a place that we went every single time that we drove to Florida, but I haven't been since Frank died in 2004.
The CFO of an organization, any organization, has a great impact both on senior management and the ongoing strategic direction of the company. There is little doubt in my mind that the changes at Linden Labs [whether you agree with them or not] were brought about by this man who is now leaving -- and that he did so at the request of the investors, who were looking for some ROI and a more traditional business model. Unfortunately for LL, they originally sold themselves as a "platform" and that was what teh investors are looking for, instead of realizing that they are in the entertainment business
In every online community I have belonged to, I have opened a thread that consistented of stray information that I have found that interested me and I thought would interest others. By posting things in that thread, it was totally up to the reader whether or not they wanted to check in and see what was happening rather than posting it somewhere where they would stumble over it whilte reading something else. Think of it as the precursor to the "like" button.... It is usually an eclectic stew of banking information, pictures that I like or made me laugh, articles about anthropology, things about sci fi and/or fantasy, blog posts about dominance and/or submission, religious ponderings, SL, and anything else that sparks my interest and gets my attention.
Of late I have been posting in FaceBook, G+ and Pinterest, as well as sharing on my journal and emailing interesting parties. Seems like a poor use of resources, using push thinking and forcing me to choose which social network I am going to be posting in or trying to post to all of them.... So I am going back bo my roots. As of today, I am going to share/like/post here. Maybe someone will read it and maybe nobody will -- after all, stew is not for everyone! But I like it, thick and creamy and robust.
Today I did a foolish thing -- I reached out when I should have stayed silent. I cannot say I am surprised by the outcome, or even displeased, but I am disappointed. And I learned a lesson about perceptions too!
"There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over -- and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its value." ~ Ellen Goodman, journalist
CEOExpress
In every online community I have belonged to, I have opened a thread that consistented of stray information that I have found that interested me and I thought would interest others. By posting things in that thread, it was totally up to the reader whether or not they wanted to check in and see what was happening rather than posting it somewhere where they would stumble over it whilte reading something else. Think of it as the precursor to the "like" button.... It is usually an eclectic stew of banking information, pictures that I like or made me laugh, articles about anthropology, things about sci fi and/or fantasy, blog posts about dominance and/or submission, religious ponderings, SL, and anything else that sparks my interest and gets my attention. 
