Things to Do This Week

Got a few things on my plate this week. I’m digging in to try and get as connected as possible with the folks at IZEA and the IZEA Insiders – I’ve met a few cool people prior to this week (Drew at BenSpark.com, @Heather in BC) and I’ve started following some interesting people on Twitter like GimmeBluFrog (@GimmeBluFrog), Ted Murphy (@tedmurphy), Jeph Jacques of Questionable Content, Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), and Rainn Wilson (@rainnwilson – Dwight Schrute from the Office, and also The Rocker!).

I’ve got to get up a few more of the Linux for n00bs posts done this week – looking at about three more installments this coming week. It’s mainly just a matter of getting to where I can take good screenshots of the setup process. Once I’m in the OS, Linux has great screenshot tools built in.

There’s a new community hub installed on my blog here, called CloudShout, an IZEA innovation. It adds IM features, community chat, and has lots of extensibility through what’s called the “App Store,” where you can add features to your blog. Tested that community chat out with @dascgo who works on CloudShout and The Midnight Writer and a few others, it works great! It’s still in alpha, but I have a few alpha keys to give out if any of you bloggers out there want one. Just hit me up with a comment below and make sure I have your e-mail addy.

This week in class I’m the Project Manager of our team of the week, so I’m reading and planning (or at least I need to) – and then after work tonight I’ve called a meeting to discuss the assignment. I can’t believe after this class is finished I will be 1/3 of the way to a Master’s Degree already! I’m reading a book for class called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni – it’s pretty good so far. The pages have lines that are well-spaced apart and the language is easy to digest, so I poured through about 40 pages of it earlier in just a few minutes. I hope to finish it maybe tonight or tomorrow night.

Hey, when you get your tax refund, why not get an X-Shot? From what I can tell, it fits your basic camera tripod mount, but instead it’s more of a uni-pod, or… a stick. Anyway, it’s retractable and lets you take self-portraits and group portraits without handing your camera off to a stranger while allowing you to still be in the photo, and not have it look all MySpace-y.