I’ve got something to tell you, and I’m pretty sure you all need to hear it right about now. Whether it’s back to school time coming up shortly, or your kid has already been in school for the past few weeks, it’s going to be okay. It may not seem like it now – with the routine changes and the frustrations of explaining once again why sitting Johnny by the door is an invitation to disaster, but it will be okay. [Read more…]
Word Wednesday – An old word that has new life in the Internet Age
It’s been an interesting week here. Had an amazing time out with friends Friday, went up to the cottage on Saturday, and returned Tuesday. Oh… and last Wednesday I watched the ESPYs (ESPN Awards) to see Caitlyn Jenner get the Arthur Ashe Courage Award and unwittingly stepped on an internet landmine when I tweeted that I thought she looked great and that I thought she deserved the award. A few people took umbrage at my choice of pronoun and decided to tell me all about how it is a crime against nature and / or God – both privately via DM or in a Twitter conversation. [Read more…]
The Walls Have Ears…
One of the things that brings me joy is my work with children and teens who have Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). When I tell people that I tutor and coach people with ASD I often get quizzical looks or outright questions of why I would want to do something like that.
Book Review: Emily Giffin’s The One and Only
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a complete and total football junkie and have been since I was a toddler. I’m also an avid reader and quite enjoy the genre known as “chick lit”. One of my favourite writers in this genre has been Emily Giffin . I find her work engaging and fun to read with characters I can relate to. Given this, imagine my glee when I found out that Giffin’s latest book, The One & Only, was going to feature a female football reporter as the protagonist. I may have squealed. Loudly. Then I made an almost fatal mistake – I crowd sourced. I often hit up Goodreads when I find a book I like just to see what others have thought about it. I saw a lot of negative Nellies complaining about the book making generalizations about women who love football always being in it for a guy, that there was too much football (no such thing imho) and not enough plot, or that the characters weren’t relatable. I hate feeling disappointed or let down by an author I love so I put the book aside for a few days to think about whether or not I wanted to read it. I took it up to the cottage with me because I’m always running out of books to read (especially when the weather is as dismal as it was this summer, rainy and cold for most of my vacation) and I’m really glad I did. Had I not read the book based on those few Goodreads users who really disliked the book, I would have missed out on one of my favourite books so far this year.
BBM
One of my favourite applications on my Bold 9900 is BlackBerry Messenger or BBM. BBM is more than simply a messaging system – it’s an easy way to keep in touch and coordinate events with my friends and family. BBM allows me to share my calendar appointments with the people I need to – I can invite a friend to a concert or my parents to a family dinner. It also allows me to easily send pictures in a compressed format. I use this feature while shopping if i need a quick opinion from a friend on a shirt or a pair of shoes. With BBM connected apps I can chat with my BBM contacts within certain apps such as foursquare or twitter. The biggest advantage BBM has over text messaging is that messages in BBM can be up to 2000 characters long. This means that I can send 1 longer message and get the whole story across. My favourite feature of BBM (apart from it not using any of my data because of the plan I’m on) is that I can see when my messages are delivered and read. I can invite multiple people to join a conversation – which comes in very handy when I’ve been at a large event and want to meet up with people. Adding people to BBM is really easy too – from the “invite to BBM” screen, you can enter the person’s name, email, phone number, or PIN. If you’re in the same room as the person you want to add you can scan their BBM bar code – it’s really neat and easy to do.
Displaying your bar code for others to scan was a bit tricky at first but then I learned that all I had to do was hit the BlackBerry button 
while in BBM, select “view my profile”, and then scroll down to “personal bar code” and select “show”. Quick and efficient.
A feature that I’ve started using recently is BBM Groups. BBM groups are different from simply having a chat with multiple people in it. For starters you can have people in your BBM group who aren’t on your BBM contact list. You can have up to 30 people in a BBM group. I have one for my football contacts and love being able to make and share appointments and pictures quickly within the group. Joining a group is as easy as scanning the group bar code. You can invite other people to join a group you’ve made by getting them to scan the group bar code as you display it on your phone. I was a guest of BlackBerry at the Manulife Financial LPGA tournament in Waterloo last week, I couldn’t attend the final day (Sunday) due to other commitments, but because I had scanned a BBM bar code from BlackBerry@LPGA I was kept up to date with tournament and scoring information. Several other organizations have similar promotions – you can become a BlackBerry Blue Jays Insider by entering the PIN or scanning the bar code found at Bluejays.com. This gives you access to contests, video content on your device, score updates and more.
To be honest, I never thought I’d use BBM as much as I do. It has become something I just can’t live without. 