Has anyone read Virtual Communities by Howard Rheingold? You can read it free online at

He is a great writer and although the book is somewhat dated, most of the issues are very thought provoking. What is even more exciting is that I converted all of the chapters to audio MP3s with the AT&T voices I bought a couple months back. It's fun listening to the computer read it to you and you could always load it into your MP3 player.

Chapter 1 -

Chapter 2 -

Chapter 3 -

Chapter 4 -

Chapter 5 -

Chapter 6 -

Chapter 7 -

Chapter 8 -

Chapter 9 -

Chapter 10 -

So I think this being sick thing has taken my weird food cravings to the next level. I am now eating korean indian fushion meal. It is kimchee and tofu with spinach paneer and rice. I have a feeling this is something only a spice ignorant white person would eat, hahaha. It makes my throat feel better. Maybe I will package it as a throat tonic.

Whoa, the upstairs people [inlink]ajay,147[/inlink] sound fun. Hi upstairs people, tis iz (e:flacidness) ok thats all i had to say was hi.

TK just hijacked this journal but I got it back now. I am still very sick. One of my students came to me to ask what she should do about grad school. She is currently enrolled in some telecommunications graduate degree at Canisius but really wants to pursue her dream of being a 3D animator.

She said she doesn't want to learn philosophy and such and wanted to really concentrrate on the animation. I was so torn because I myself had the same fork in my road. I ended up going to graduate school for my MFA for media studies at UB as most of you know. The questions is, did I make the right choice, or should I have persued something job oriented? Will I become a much more enriched, informed artist whose work reflects the critical analysis of the theories presented to me. I guess that has already happend. I dropped by interest in aesthetics and glitz and started working more towards social purposes. But where has this brought me.

I made me hate 3D stuff, which is not what I ever intended. It mad eme realise how mind numbing and meaningless it is. It just seams so fake and worthless. The pinacle of this is when I spent $20 on my American flag 3D airboat [inlink]paul,145[/inlink].

So what am I trying to say here. Now I am a conflicted, guilt ridden, overzelous, social-techno freak and I like it. Maybe I would have been happier being a 3D animator. Maybe it would have felt empty. Anyways, all this crap was running through my head when she asked me. I told her to just pursue her dream, why couldn't I ever follow my own rules. Who am I to know. I hate being sick.

I guess I am happy with my choice. Accept l probably (99.99998% likeliness) chose the wrong school and the wrong language and continent but the right thing in terms of not having gone into 3D animation. I really ended up prefering web programming and digital communication, right?

After fending off illness during the visit from our plague ridden guests, and even remaing germ free while (e:terry) and (e:mike) were sick, I am sick. My throat hurts so bad. I had to cancel my office hours today because it hurts to talk and wanted to save my energy for class tonight.

I got the cutest email from (e:holly) , well actually her mom sent it to her, saying reading her journal made her feel close to (e:holly). It makes me happy to hear things like that.

I was checking my phone messages, which I do once a month and found a message from today that was left by the Buffalo Gay men's Chorus. It is a miracle that I got the message because I never check the phone. They apparently saw the article in the paper and called about a web site design.

::DOWNLOAD SOUND::

If you read this before I get back to you, feel free to IM me at paulsidekick or email me by clicking on the link in my user link list.