The Quest to Have a Cool-Looking Blog

Aaaaaahhhhhhh! I have just spent twenty minutes trying to find another look for my blog. I want a background that depicts a quest. I found a few that might work, but I couldn't get the colors of the tabs and fonts the way I wanted them. So, now I'm on a quest to find the right background. I want one that depicts Don Quixote and Pancho Sanza. I'm reading about them in my L214 Classic Literature class. Don Quixote (or D.Q. for short) goes off on all these make-believe adventures and has a great time doing it. He goes on quests. So, wouldn't it be cool to have a background of them? Yes, I think so, too. Onward!

The Quest to Post Better Pictures

What a day! If I were a geek, I'd be in geek heaven!

As part of my job at IUPUI, I write a newsletter for the Staff Council. I am getting ready to take the newsletter in a different direction and wanted to learn how to manipulate photos to have them appear more sharply on the page, so I registered for a Adobe CS5 Photoshop class. Today was the day of the class. I have to say Adobe makes their products look difficult with all the gadgets appearing on the screen, but they also make the gadgets do some incredible things. Once you figure out what all the icons do, a whole world of imagination opens. I have some practicing to do before I can say I have the hang of it, but I have a better sense of what to do the next time a picture comes to me that isn't quite bright enough.

You know how celebrities seem to look so good in pictures? Well, thanks to Photoshop, we can all look like celebrities! At the close of the class, the instructor showed us how pictures are manipulated to make everyone look spiffy and thin. I'm not sure why I'm on a quest to lose weight. I can just Photoshop me into looking beach ready!

I also learned about OneNote in Microsoft Office today. I've used the product before, but it wouldn't sync from one device to another. If I can't see notes I've written at work for a project on other devices, how is that supposed to help? Thanks to a new iPhone app, the problem is solved. OneNote has an app that allows you to sync your notes from your computer to your phone and vice versa. Now if I just had an iPad, I could see my notes in larger type! Are you reading this honey? An iPad would sure make a nice birthday present!

Perhaps I'll Photoshop some pictures and post them to this blog. The quest now is to find the picture to alter! Stay tuned!

A New Quest!

Where have you been? That's usually the question I ask my friend, Becky, when she hasn't blogged for a while. Oh, I've been here. But, I thought my blog was lame, so I stopped writing. Now, I'm taking a class at IUPUI for my bachelor's degree and one requirement is to write a blog. The goal is to find my e-voice.

I decided to take the class for a few reasons.

1. It's a class I can take on-line.
2. It sounded interesting on a personal level but also would work quite well for my job since I do a lot of writing.
3. It meets a requirement for my degree.

By taking this class, I expect to get a better understanding of how to find my e-voice for the areas in which I write: personal e-mail, professional e-mail, Facebook (both personal and professionally), business correspondence, and for the Staff Council Newsletter. My writing skills on a professional level aren't bad, and I understand when to be business-professional or business-casual in my writing. My obstacle is learning to write more creatively for the Newsletter. I want to be casual in my writing -- like I am speaking to the person who is reading the articles -- yet, I need to be less casual and more to the point. I hope to overcome the obstacle by finding the e-voice required for that genre. Is it okay to be funny, yet informative? Would it be better to be more professional in getting the word out, or does the audience need less formality and a little more informality?

I will be exploring Second Life as part of the class requirements. We get to create our own avitars by giving ourselves a certain voice. We can be either just how we are, or we can create one to look and act how we would want to appear to others. I'm going with the latter. I want to be in good shape, wear fashionable clothes instead of the boring ones I wear now, perhaps wear some cool sunglasses, and drive a cool car. Stay tuned as I explore who I want this second voice to be like.

I am not going to change the title of my blog. It will remain Facsimilee's Quest. I'm still on a quest; I'm just focusing on a different type of quest now.

Like Don Quixote, be Sancho Panza and join me on my quests for adventure and enlightenment.

Cheers!