Play Money- Work And Play

After reading some more of Play Money, I have come to realize that there really is an issue between the two terms work and play. Some may think that for those who make a living working online and selling or trading virtual things, it is more playing than working. Before reading this book I was one of those people. I always thought that if people were spending their days online trading things or playing games, it wasn't work, it was play. After reading this book I have come to change my mind. Within these chapters we read about several different people who made a living online, and their lives did not seem as if they were that much better than normal. Of course they didn't have to worry about leaving their houses early enough to make it through traffic and still get to work on time, but they did have other obligations. Every person that was talked about in this book seemed to be online for an excessive amount of hours everyday. Some people are even online and working for longer than the normal eight hour work day. I believe that working online has its ups and downs. For one, if a person has young children and does not want to put them in day care, they can stay at home and watch the kids while making a living to support these kids. If a person is handicapped and in a wheelchair they may find it tedeous to find a business place where transportation and moving around is easy. There are certain circumstances like these that make me feel like the ability to make a living online is extremly beneficial. However, there is always the case that while working online you do not have a boss that is always checking over your sholder to make sure your staying on task, there is not way to guarentee that your not going to get distracted easily. There is also the issue where a person working online may lack the social interaction needed. Besides communicating through the internet, when working online, these people are usually in their houses for the majority of their day. Who do they talk to? In this book it shows how easy it is to get addicted to an online occupation. It may start off as one who is doing it for fun and enjoying whatever little income they are getting. Then once that person starts to make more and more, they strive to keep that income increasing. Although many may see this type of job as playing, I believe that just like every other job there are negative aspects that go along with it and there are also tedeous tasks that they must complete. I guess whether or not you work online depends upon your preferences. If your not a peoples person and you would like to sit home and do your work, online professions are just right. If you like to communicate with others while being out and about, then online jobs are probably not the road you want to travel.

Virgina Tech

The Virgina Tech shooting was a horrible incident. After hearing many different stories about the incident from various news channels, I have come to the conclussion that technology played a role throughout this occurance. Technology was used from the campus staff to send students an email to tell them to stay in their rooms because it was not safe elsewhere. This is my eyes may have saved some lives. Although there was a lot of lives lost this day, I feel as if it may have been a lot more if there weren't emails being sent to students telling them to stay in their rooms. I even heard from on news channel that the shooter has posted onto some type of blog telling whoever could read it that he was going to shoot people at Virgina Tech that day. This gives me mixed feelings, part of me feels as if maybe it were a cry for help thinking that someone would read it and somehow he wouldn't have gone through with the whole thing, and then another part of me feels as if it was him being cocky and bragging. Regardless of my feelings the fact of the matter is if the news was correct and this really did happen, someone should have read it and someone should have done something. I understand that there may be a lot of this going on all the time and therefore it must be impossible to decide what threats of statements to pursue but if that isn't the case was it not reported because no one read it? I always imagined that once you put something on the internet there would be hundreds if not more people reading it or watching it. Was I wrong? Another disturbing part of this incident is the video that I saw on the news off of someones cell phone. I mean cmon why is this person close enough to the scene that he/she could record the horrible incident on tape, why wasn't he or she running for their lives? I mean is technology really advancing to the point where people would really be stupid enough to put their lives on the line to catch something "big" on video? I am sure there were a lot of people inside that would have rather been outside like that person, and if they were they would have been running to safety rather than taping the damn thing on their cell phone. These are my feelings and I do understand that there are facts that may not be correct, regardless of that though this incident was horrible and sad. My heart goes out to friends and family of the lives that were lost that day.

Play Money- Noobs

I actually recognized a few of the phrases seen throughout the first chapter. My ex boyfriend actually played online games quite often and I guess I learned a couple things from him. He used to play World of Warcraft, or as he refered to it as WOW, and call of duty 3. He used to talk about pwning noobs, which I later found out to mean killing newbies. I thought it was quite funny that the book actually incorporates some of the language I was so used to hearing. I can relate to the problems that this guy is facing in the first chapter of this book. Online games can become addicted and especially when people are participating in them so often that it becomes a second life. The guy in the first chapter explains that he was in a position where he had to make a decision, either he cut down the hours he played online games for or he made a career out of it. This is a completely common problem faced by online gamers because it is often hard to know when to stop playing, and the often lose track of time. I speak of this because I learned from experience that people who participate in online gaming get addicted, and for mine and my ex boyfriends case, it caused us a lot of problems. I am sure that if he knew how to he would turn online gaming into a career for himself as well, but as of right now he must now be capable of doing that. This is probably why I didn't know prior to reading this chapter that making a career out of online gaming was even possible. I am interested to find out just how people do so and I am extremely interested to see how much more I can learn about the actual process of making this hobby into an occupation.

Video Project Experience

After working on the video project with my group, I figured I would share the experience. Okay so I was very nervous, I am not good in front of cameras. Besides when I was little and my parents used to videotape the cute things I did, I am never on camera. Therefore when it was time to sit down and have a conversation in front of the camera, I did kinda bad. I should have talked louder, and I stuttered a little with my words. This makes me very grateful for the fact that there was only one project for this course that required me to get in front of a video camera. I don't mind the podcasts, after I figure out how to work them, because your just talking, you not being watched. I guess I should probably work on my "public" speaking because I am going to school to become a teacher, and talking in front of the class comes along with the job. Somehow I feel that I am going to be much more comfortable talking in front a group of first graders, rather than talking in front of college peers. That is what I am going to keep telling myself atleast, in the mean time I need to work on my presentation skills, hard core.