PlentyofPaper

I can definitely say that I truly did enjoy taking DS106 this semester.  Of course, like most people, I originally signed up to take it simply because I needed it to fulfill one of my Gen. Eds.  I ended up looking forward to class every week and becoming really absorbed in the whole business of blogging.

I came into this class already with a bunch of blogging under my belt.  I update my personal blog daily, so I thought I already definitely knew what I was doing.  I had no idea what RSS meant, or what the impact of it could be on my internet popularity!  I have already read a bunch of reflections posted by kids in our class, and I definitely agree with a bunch of them on a couple of points.  First, I agree with Rachel that the readings we had to reflect on and trudge through in the beginning of the year were truly dreadful.  I found them completely boring and really, really disliked trying to understand what the heck those guys were saying!  I am all about doing critical analyses of readings, but these were just uninteresting to me.  I felt like they didn’t have much of an impact on what we actually learned in the class.  If I were to take this class again, I would prefer to not do those readings.   Granted, once we discussed the meanings of the readings in class, I could see their somewhat significance.  But on a larger scale, those readings are not what I personally took from the class.

What I did take from the class was my new knowledge of all these different web tools.  Jing, Audacity, Wordle, and Prezi are all pretty freaking cool.  I’ve heard from many of my friends on campus that Prezi is the new Powerpoint, so I am pretty stoked that I already have a good knowledge of how to use the program to design a neat presentation.  Jing will be really handy if I ever want to show someone how to do something on his/her computer.  I also really liked experimenting with WordPress itself.  It was neat to actually be behind the scenes of a website, whereas with my personal blog on tumblr, everything is basically already set up for me.  I have to admit, though, after we did the html-ing on our websites to make them prettier, I went back to my tumblr and customized everything in addition to the theme I already had downloaded.  I definitely felt a little sneaky.

The in-class activities were really fun.  I enjoyed being able to work with my peers and being able to get immediate feedback from Professor Groom. I love having my questions immediately answered and being strongly encouraged to creatively explore any directions I wanted to go in with any of the projects.  Professor Groom was extremely supportive of my digital story about my father, and it was always easy to contact him.  I couldn’t have asked for a more enthusiastic or helpful teacher.

My digital story turned out pretty well, I felt.  Although I know I could have put in some more work or added some more details, I feel like overall the final project turned out great!  It was difficult to do my father’s story simply because he is back home in Baltimore with the rest of my family while I am over 2.5 hours away and down here in Fredericksburg.  It would have been nice to have had more pictures available to me if I was back home.  It also would have been great to have been home and able to interview family members and my father while using my video camera.  I think if I had to do this project over again, I would try to pick a subject that is slightly more accessible and has more subject material directly at hand.  I truly did enjoy doing this story though; it was fun to write about my father’s life and struggle with cancer.  In a way, it was almost like writing and sending out to the internet the story of his heroism.  I love my parents so much, and this project was just really great in bringing together our communication even more.  I loved how my parents even commented on this blog, fairly frequently in fact, and that made this experience that much more enjoyable.  I would highly recommend Professor Groom’s class to anyone.

I have 20 years of memories with my father; it would be impossible to reflect upon all of them.  But I think I will attempt to highlight some of the best ones.

When I was still too young to read, my father would read storybooks to my sister and myself.  We would lay on his belly while he read, and whenever he laughed we would bounce up and down and fall over in giggle fits.

When I was about 11 years old, my family took a trip in August 2001 up and down the East Coast to visit some of New England’s best states.  Of course we went to Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maine.  Interestingly, 9/11 happened the same month after our trip. =/ During this trip, my father decided to accompany me on a trail ride on horseback.  I was the only person in the group who had ever had experiences with horses, so I was given a horse that usually stays in the back of the line.  This way, I could pull away from the group and do other things, like trotting, cantering, and small jumps.  My father is a very generous and kind person; he let every single other person in our group pick his/her horse before him.  Of course, my father got stuck with the bitchy horse that was going to be retired after that season.  During the ride, I suddenly noticed that my father was no longer directly in front of me.  Confused, I looked around and found him circling his nasty horse around and around a pole, away from the group.  She suddenly came galloping back to catch up with the group, and my father slowly started tilting to the side.  More… more… more…  GROUND.  He fell and rolled, like a good sky diver.  I was SO embarrassed, I didn’t know what to do with myself.  The woman who owned the horses and was running the trail ride was absolutely livid with him for potentially causing her horse harm.  Later, once we were back to the barn and my father had walked on foot the rest of the way, she apologized for her attitude towards him.  I think she realized that my father had the ability to sue her.   To make a long story short, I realized only later that I was selfish and immature for feeling embarrassed when I should have felt concern for my father.  I forgave myself though, I was only 11 years old.  It’s now a huge family joke amongst us that my father fell off; the irony is just too much to handle.  How could the father of an experienced rider do something so silly?

When I was 12, my father and I took a vacation together to Cedar Point, a very large amusement park in Ohio.  That year we took separate trips because my sister just didn’t get along with my father; my mother and my sister went to LA.  My father and I are huge thrill-seekers.  My father over the course of his life had owned a motorcycle, went SCUBA diving, had a pilot license, took over 2000 skydives, and had traveled all over the place.  Of course we both just had to ride the tallest and fastest rollercoaster in the world.  We waited FOUR HOURS in line to get on the Top Thrill Dragster, which is over 400 feet tall and goes over 200 mph.  It was definitely a fun ride, even if it was only 15 seconds long.  The ride was so fast that we were told to keep our arms down, or our clavicles and arms might actually break.  After the ride was over, we found dead bugs all over the fronts of our shirts, and our hair was beyond windswept.  While we were in Cedar Point, there was a massive power outage in the park.  It was only later that we learned that the power outage actually extended from the park to all over the midwest and east coast!!  I’ll always remember eating ice cream for dinner with my dad, and floating down the inner tubes in the water park, listening to the same three Beach Boys songs over and over again.

My father’s strength in the face of his cancer battle is something to be strongly admired.  Not once did I see him cry.  My mother told me she never even saw him shed one tear.  My father is an engineer; he fixes things.  Once the doctor told my father that he has Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, an incurable disease, he took it in stride.  “What do we have to do to fix this?”  His disease was something to be fixed so that he could get on with his normal life; it was never a huge problem that could potentially kill him and tear our family apart.  He never once showed our family doubt in his ability to survive;  he just kept impressing us with his strength and courage more and more.  There are too many good memories with my father, I can’t even begin to describe them all.  I simply reflected upon the ones that instantly came to my mind, although there are many many more that are popping up as I even type this.  I hope that I will continue to create wonderful memories with my father.  He is the best.

I’m going to make some guesses here, since Padre is at work and currently unavailable for further questioning. =X

Favourites…..

Animal: Buffalo

Color: Blue

Band: Pink Floyd

Movie: Monty Python & The Holy Grail / The Life of Brian / Airplane! / Easy Rider

Food: Crabs / Steak

Activity: Skydiving

Alcoholic Drink: Whiskey (Maker’s Mark) and Coke

Season: “Any day I’m alive!”

Vacation/Place to Travel To: Anywhere to SCUBA dive / Gettysburg

Hobby: Civil War Photography / Coin collecting

Television Program: The Simpsons / Family Guy / Cleveland / Fox News

Normal Beverage: Coffee / Orange Juice / Diet Vanilla Pepsi

Television Channel: Fox (To watch his angry old white men!!)

I’m running out of ideas for choices for the favourite category!!  Crap.  If you have any ideas, tell me and I’ll add them.

When I was a freshman, last year, I did a LOT of antique shopping in downtown Fredericksburg.  My father’s birthday is October 31st, Halloween, and at the time I knew his birthday was rapidly approaching.

At this point, my father was still in the middle of chemo treatments.  In this picture you can see he obviously didn’t lose any hair, and actually managed to GROW a beard.  Quite amazing, really.

So, one day while I was out shopping, I found this really awesome Civil War section in one of the larger stores.  I scoped it out, for my father of course, and found something truly neat.

I happened to come upon this Confederate Cavalry horse bit from the battle of Bunker Hill.  Freaking sweet, right!?  I simply had to buy it for my father.  Not only is he mostly interested in the Confederacy, but here was an actual horse bit.  Being the horseback rider that I am, not only would this gift serve to remind him of one of his greatest passions, but also to remind him of me.

I still think this is the best birthday present I ever got him.

Here it is.

First, I played around with my own personal blog, and got this interesting wordle.  It’s weird that it mentions “farmville,” considering I don’t even play the game!

My Personal Blog

Next, I Wordle’d this blog, plentyofpaper, and the words were obviously mostly concerning my father.

Plentyofpaper Blog

Then, I went to my parents’ blog, where I Wordle’d their journal and then guestbook, where family members and loved ones can leave little shout-outs!

Their Journal

Their Guestbook

My father is absolutely obsessed with the Civil War, mainly with Civil War photography.  His hobby actually got him some historical recognition, as he discovered that in a picture of General Lee, there was some grafitti on the wall behind him spelling out “DEVIL.”

So, my father got his name on a sweet plaque in a museum congratulating him on his discovery.  Nice work, Papa!

My dad and my mom also went to Gettysburg numerous times to have their pictures taken using the same camera that photographers used during the War.  Check these sweet ones out.

Padre as a Union Officer

Madre and Padre as Confederates.

My father. The Confederate Officer.

Hillen Road, the story of how my parents met.

Rachel and I decided to mix these old tapes together into a statement declaring that EVERY ONE should be alert while using the internet.

View Here.

My personal audio assignment, based on an uninteresting segment of my father’s life.

Dad’s Boring Story