My new website

I just "finished" my website on Franz Kafka and the trip I am taking this summer following Kafka's footsteps after reading all his works. I have spent a lot of time on it, which is how I missed my blogging session for last week. I have been slightly monomaniacal about it spending 6 to 8 hours on it each night after work. Every free moment was spent on programming this site. There is a lot more content to add, which is why, I suppose, no website is ever truly finished, but it is complete enough for me to take a step back for a moment and breathe. Check it out if you have time: http://vader.lib.umn.edu/lis753/peifer/ParistoPrague.html (no www). P.S. It doesn't look good in safari (I don't know why) so please use Firefox or Internet Explorer for full effect.

Google Documents

Google documents are so cool! We are in the process of choosing our Link Crew leaders for next year. We have to post the names of our applicants (over a hundred names) so they can sign up for an interview, but we keep all this information for next year as well. Anyway--my colleague Megan and I have to type in the data so we did it at the same time on the same spreadsheet on google docs. We could see what the other person was doing instantly and where we need to fill in information. It was fun and fast. Additionally, our colleague Annette can access the information as well so she can do some last minute tracking of a few students who will then be referred to Megan tomorrow so she can finalize the list to be posted tomorrow. Google documents have allowed us to streamline this process. When we go through the interview process, we will be able to take notes online and be able to see what we all thought even thought the interviews will take place in four different rooms. How great is that! Honestly, I love google docs!

Another new thing

I created a new wiki using wetpaint, which is supposedly more popular with users than pb.wiki. It is not as easy to use, but it is isn't that different from pb.wiki. It has more templates that make it more aesthetically pleasing, but it does use ads which is a negative--although, if it is for educational use, you can ask wetpaint to remove the ads so it is just one additional step. My wiki is to plan my dad's retirement party with my sister and mom so the educational part doesn't apply for this one. It has our to do list, our invite list, invite ideas, and our menu. It also automatically adds the pages to the side table of contents so you don't have to link the pages like one has to on the sidebar with pb.wiki.

It has been great fun using the wiki with my mom and sister. My sister and I were at Paper Source in Uptown buying paper for the invites. I created three different invites that were very different on wetpaint based on preliminary discussions with my mom and sister. Each has a different theme, so I was a little unsure of what paper to buy for our invitations. Courtnay, my twin, and I had pulled out about thirty different color combinations trying to figure out which would go with each idea. We each had our arms filled with beautiful different packages of papers from linen vellum to margarita inspired stationary with ribbons to match. My mom calls me while we were at the store. She had shown the wiki to my dad and they were able to tell me which idea they liked the best for the invites, which really helped in choosing the correct paper. How fun is that!