Arggggggh - technology

Compared to Bob I've been particularly bad at keeping up my end of the blogosphere, mainly because the last two weeks have been so fraught with Blackboard issues that the thought of coming home at the end of the day and sitting down in front of my Mac, however gorgeously delectible it is, and blogging has just not been appealing. I have a love-hate relationship with technology as I'm sure most of you do. When it works it's quite positively the best thing ever; when it doesn't I despise and curse it and long for a paper and pen.

A month or so ago I decided to go all out and switch our Direct TV to FIOS. I've been using FIOS internet for a little over a year and will never go back. A bit like buying my MacBook. While FIOS tele certainly offers as good a selection as either Cable or Satellite and with my recently purchased high-def flat screen tv, Formula 1's Giancarlo Fisichella never looked so good, I have had one annoying, ongoing problem. The FIOS box works fine in the mornings but at the end of the day when I put the tv on, it locks up on channel 833, (I still haven't figured out what's on this channel) and I have to unplug the whole thing, wait for a few minutes, plug it all back in and allow the box to reset. I've been doing this for about three weeks now and finally made the decision to call Verizon so that I could give them a piece of my mind. First, though I figured I'd try something else and unplugged the HDMI cable - this also seemed to solved the issue so now I'm wondering if it's not just a faulty cable. Either way Verizon gave us the cable so it's still their fault.
So, that's been my technology frustrations - I won't even go into Blackboard as I would be here all day and talk about blackbored! On the other hand Bob did share a very call new application with me this morning that will allow me to put together training sessions on my Mac which is super exciting as I've always had to do this on my PC which is okay, but like, so yesterday.

And just so this isn't all about technology negativity and to relate to our current Learning Block project, here's an interesting article on how the European Commission is using YouTube to further its communications and create tighter dialogues and unification between the EU countries.

European Union YouTube

This one is taken from the Youth in Action project, which "...aims at mobilizing young Europeans' potential and at fostering their active citizenship, solidarity and tolerance by supporting a large variety of youth projects and activities. The ultimate goal is to provide an increasing number of young people with the unique chance to get involved in highly enriching, non-formal learning experiences."