Coffee Klatch

Did you know that the proper term for a herd of elks is a gang? Many animal groupings have really odd names. I came across this list of terms today. Here are a few of the odder ones:

a gang of elks
a clutter of cats
a dule of doves
a leash of foxes
a trip of goats
an exaltation of larks
a company of parrots
a span of mules
a plague of locusts (ha!) a rafter of turkeys (and just how’d they get up INTO those rafters, hmmm?)
a fall of woodcocks

Visit the link to InfoPlease to find out more of these animal group terms.

Now THERE’S an unfortunate headline!! It was posted on CNN at 6:33 EDT this morning and has since been changed to “Iran, EU agree to resume talks, informally.” You can read the story here.

So, yes, I finally got on MySpace yesterday. In general, I had been rather turned off by the chaos I saw and heard on so many people’s pages. Semi-transparent text boxes with busy backgrounds so the text is hard to read. Lots of chatch everywhere (chatch is short for tchatchke, a Yiddish word meaning ‘frivolous decorations’). Often loud music assaulting you without a visible way to turn it off (until you know what you’re looking for and scroll down sometimes). All in all, any decent web designer’s nightmare!

And, of course, if you’ve heard about it in the news, you may think of it as a teen site where kids chat and get inappropriate suggestions made, endangering the kids. But it’s really just like any other tool. How it’s used is based on the people using it. And there are all kinds of 20-, 30-, and 40-somethings that are using MySpace to stay in touch with friends, search for long-lost friends, and taking advantage of the built-in blogging software to set up their own blogs.

So it IS a good way to connect to people. Of course, I won’t be using the blogging element aside from pointing to THIS site. And I’ve already begun reconnecting with friends, too. Pretty nice. I was also able to find a theme that I could use that wasn’t very busy, looked nice, and was easy to read. You can visit my MySpace page here: http://myspace.com/pfitzinger and if you’re already on MySpace yourself, add me as a friend. If you’re NOT on MySpace, visit my page and click on some friends’ links (and THEIR friends’) to see what can be done and how people are connecting.

And if you don’t have much time to spend on something like this, that’s okay. It’s easily usable without customizing and investing tons of time. Give it a try!