Surprise!

Sadly, or maybe not so sadly, this is a big birthday for me and I was hoping to do something special and that is exactly what I got! I had known for maybe a week and a half that Matt was planning a vacation for us for my birthday, but that's all I was initially told. I was told a week out that I needed to take off Friday. Other hints given included: prepare to be spooked, you may want to bring your bathing suit, the weather will be similar to what we have at home, bring a rain jacket and walking shoes. I went back and forth on where we could be going. I thought I had it figured out yesterday, in fact I was almost positive I had it figured out. I thought I was going to Niagra Falls. Here was my logic...Prepare to be spooked=I'm deathly afraid of heights, Bathing suite = Yeah, there is water there, Rain jacket = again the falls, walking shoes = walking around the falls. But I was wrong!

Where did he bring me and how did I react?

And the Research Goes On...

Blogging has taken a back seat to the infinite amount of time that I've spent in Second Life conducting interviews and sitting in on support group meetings! My nights have revolved around when a group was meeting and how many people I could conceivably talk to after the meeting to answer questions about their thoughts on what they get out of support group meetings in SL. Thankfully I can now see a glimps of the light at the end of the tunnel!

I have essentially finished my interviews and although I still need to go to group meetings every now and then, I don't have to spend my Sunday's going to 3 or 4 meetings, which as you can imagine takes up a full day leaving me with little spare time after work, writing, etc.

Currently off the check list:

Interviews (although it would be nice to get a couple more done and that may continue to happen on a sporatic basis as I sit in on random groups to continue my work for my thesis)

Theming my results

Interpretation (can you say hyper personal relationships!) Realistically this will probably continue but the majority of the work I believe is done

Still to do:

Continue with group meetings to stay "in" with the groups and not have to try to regain access

WRITING....oodles and oodles of writing, initially to get into the ECA conference and then hopefully get published later on this year!

Now I just need to get through presenting my research findings to my advisor and two faculty members that he works with from two different colleges. My advisor is a Computer Mediated Communication person who does work with Second Life, one of the other faculty members is a SL person as well and the final person deals with Computer Mediated Communication and social support. So, I will be presenting to people who actually know what they are talking about, which adds much more pressure than talking to people who have no clue what I'm talking about!

Wish me luck tonight!

The Worst Nacho's EVER as told in a vlog

This week in our culinary adventures Andy and I visit The Whig and Courier and test out the Nacho's...