Category Archives: Mobile phone

13.1 x 5 digital resources

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walk

Triumph after a long walk. Here’s looking toward a victorious run!

Rule of thumb: Don’t post anything on Twitter that isn’t for public consumption. It wasn’t technically a secret, but I hadn’t really started telling many of my friends and colleagues. Now if I had posted it on Facebook, that’s a different story — there are definitely no secrets on Facebook and we all know it. But a couple of Twitter shout-outs here and there have officially let the cat out of the bag…I am training for my first half marathon.

People run marathons all of the time, so this is not front page news . But I am not a runner. I bike. I hike. I kayak. I do not run. The idea came to me a few months ago while lamenting a milestone birthday that is approaching in April. I need to turn back time in a non-Benjamin Button type of way. How about run a marathon? Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Half a marathon? Maybe. And so began my Google search for gadgets, online support, and mobile running apps.

  1. My first stop was Digital Running Club. I don’t know who these people are, but they know their stuff. I printed out their training program and started tweeting them for encouragement and advice. They never fail to reply, even when I accuse them of trying to kill me.
  2. Accountability is huge when you set any type of goal, so I brought the @MadisonMarathon Twitter team into the mix and proclaimed my intent to run the Madison Half Marathon on Memorial Day weekend 2013. Now they are expecting me to show up and I will be there.
  3. I also used my new aspiration as an excuse to buy myself a FitBit. Do you have one of these? They are way too much fun. It tracks my steps, the number of floors I climb, my calories burned and it syncs with MyFitnessPal.com to monitor my food intake and nutritional requirements. It will even monitor my sleeping efficiency by telling me how many times I woke up throughout a night.
  4. I’m still searching for a great mobile app that I can use for that day when the ice melts and I can leave the treadmill behind in favor of the streets. I’m looking for an app that will regularly speak to me and tell me how far and how fast I’ve traveled. An occasional “Lookin’ good, hot stuff!” would also be welcome. Shoot me some ideas!
  5. There are so many wonderful resources online for starting any new hobby. I have tapped into the expertise of RunningDivaMom about problems like running boredom…something I struggle with on a regular basis. Her inspirational posts keep me moving even when I’d rather stop.

These resources are great, but nothing can do the work for me. I’m almost halfway through my training program and I’ve endured both a hip injury and back pain that set me back at least a week for each. Now my body is adjusting and things are looking up. Remember that accountability issue? Well, now that I’ve truly gone public there is only one thing left to do. I’ve gotta run!

Word Girl prevails

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I have a love/hate relationship with Alec Baldwin. On the one hand, I’m not so much a fan of listening to him call his 11-year-old daughter a “thoughtless pig” on her not-so-private voicemail. On the other hand, Baldwin’s Schweddy Balls skit on SNL helps rank him as my second all-time favorite host of the show (my heart belongs to Justin on that one). When Baldwin made news last week for being kicked off an American Airlines flight because he refused to turn off his cell phone while playing “Words with Friends,” the first word that came to my mind was moron. But a few days ago, I was invited to play my first game of “Words with Friends” and now I get it.

Words are my friends. They got me through four years of journalism school and a certain co-worker of mine has been known to call me “Word Girl” when she needs a good synonym. The mere thought of myself sporting a superhero cape and saving the world with my words is enough to rouse goosebumps!

While I don’t consider myself much of a gamer, I have enjoyed an action-packed Scrabble match in my day. “Words with Friends” is really just an online Scrabble match with people who don’t live in your house. So then why is it so much more addictive?!

It took 2.5 days to finish my first and only game. Granted, my opponent and I have busy lives and families, but we also calculated each move very carefully and I could literally feel the tension from 300+ miles away. I found myself playing under the kitchen table during breakfast and hiding around the corner at playtime. I even studied my game at a 6% incline on the treadmill while watching the Green Bay Packers do their thing. Now that’s multitasking at its best!

There were some exciting moments during this weekend game as well as some questionable word choices such as zee and fixit, played by my opponent. At one point, I was horrified to realize I had lost a turn when I swapped my letters and suddenly found myself 30 points behind. Several moves later, I pulled out a 33-point tween and was back in the game. Just when I thought the board was mine, my opponent won a 39-point brugh and become very cocky on the messenger, so I appropriately retaliated with a 30-point glib. In the end, this Word Girl brought it home.

What’s my next move? Mr. Baldwin, if you’re reading this, I would be super jazzed if you would accept my invitation to play a friendly match with yours truly. If you must fly, I might recommend trying Funjet…seems like they might better understand our predicament. Game on!

Bad teacher

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Okay, I’m not Cameron Diaz bad, but even my own mom claims that I’m a bad teacher. Isn’t she contractually obligated to tell me that everything I do is amazing?

In the last several years, I’ve spent countless hours teaching my mom:

  • How to program the VCR
  • How to use a DVD player
  • How to use a universal remote
  • How to use a cell phone
  • How to search with Google
  • How to bookmark
  • How to create a Yahoo! e-mail account
  • How to buy me presents on Amazon
  • How to use a digital camera
  • How to attach photos to an e-mail
  • How to send photos to Walgreens
  • How to buy a Groupon
  • How to “ship to store”
  • How to reserve movies from Redbox
  • How to “friend” somebody on Facebook
  • How to “defriend” somebody on Facebook

While my mom has truly mastered a few of the items above, our lessons have left her performance less than stellar on a majority of these activities. She blames her lack of understanding on me for being a bad teacher. I will admit that I don’t read diaglog boxes, I grab the mouse from her hand, I click faster than a Kardashian marriage, and I swear a little. Apparently what I perceive as efficient, others find irritating. You say potato, I say potahto.

I pretended not to hear my mom a few weeks ago when she asked, “Should I be tweeting?” And again yesterday morning when she said, “I wish that I knew how to sell stuff on Craig’s List.” I literally ran from the room when she uttered the words, “I ordered a DVR last week.”

That said, my mom was my very first blog subscriber and she still doesn’t even know what is a blog. I truly love my mom for trying so hard to learn about technology, new media, and how I spend my days in eMarketing. I just wish that somebody else would teach her.