It has been a great ride here at Lockergnome, but I am ready to do more with this blog. So, it is with some sadness that I announce that Vitamin CH is moving. Future posts will be over at GeeksWithBlogs.Net/VitaminCH

All future Vitamin CH posts will be there. I don’t know how long Chris and Company will let me leave this stuff here. I am trying to get the content from here moved there, but it is a slow process. I will continue to check for comments here for a bit, but expect to see more there than here.

I want to thank Chris Pirillo and company for letting me use this blog as a jumping off point. If I hadn’t started this blog, I never would have started in the new directions I am now going with my life. Thank you for letting me take the the first baby steps with you!

Hi everyone! It’s almost Friday again, so I am here asking for your help in making donations to the Frozen Pea Fund.

For those who don’t follow this blog regularly, a short recap: In December, the Twitterverse started to come together to raise money for cancer research. We started this effort to help support @SusanReynolds, who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. You can learn more about Susan and her battles by following her on Twitter and by checking out her blog: BoobsOnIce

Shortly, avatars on Twitter started turning green. Not with envy - with peas! Many of us chose to support Susan in her battles by changing from avatars to peavatars. From there, it was just a small step to: What else can we do? We can raise money. People started doing pledge drives for followers (get me to XYZ followers by midnight and I will donate). OK, interesting idea, but not really up my alley.

Then people started talking about doing the Susan G. Komen for the Cure and dedicating the race to Susan. Again, a great idea… but with my knees - nope, can’t walk that long or that far.

 Last week, @GlendaWH had the brilliant idea to sell her e-books and give part of the proceeds to the fund. Finally an idea I can participate in. In fact, it was such a great idea, that I followed suit. I sold all of ONE book. While I really appreciate the fact that @SpiderWebWoman made a purchase and donated extra, I know that we can do better.

I have a box of copies of Kathy Jacobs On PowerPoint sitting by my front door. Normally, I sell them when I speak about PowerPoint for $25. (The book sells on Amazon for $29.99.) I have a limited time offer for all of you that don’t have a copy yet: You can buy it directly from me for $20 plus $5 shipping. You will get a personally signed copy shipped to you. And you will get to help contribute to a worthy cause. (Offer good in US. If you want the book shipped overseas, you will need to contact me for the shipping costs.)

Last week, the offer was: For every book I sell on any Friday in January 2008, I will donate $2 to the Frozen Pea fund. This week, we are going even further. If you all buy a total of 10 (or more) books between now and midnight my time on January 18, 2008, I will donate $4 for each book to the fund. Yeah - I’ll double the donation just to get you to help us out.

The details:
To get your book, check out this web page. Be sure to tell me you want a book, how you want it signed, where you want it sent, and how you will be paying for it. You can use that page to pay via PayPal, credit card, or to email me that you want to send me a check. I will respond with the shipping information for the book. (If you are paying by check, I will respond with an invoice for the book. I will send the books out as soon as I have your check.) I will make my donations at the end of each Friday for all books sold that day.

I have always felt that the people around me make a difference. I have always felt further that they care about the good in life and support those who do it. I know that all of you are out there reading. I know that many of you don’t have a copy of the book. Here’s your chance.  Order the book. Improve your PPT skills. Make a difference. Help out a friend!

Bruce just pointed something out to me. A company called ProActionMedia has CDs that have unique shapes. They come in everything from hearts to houses. He found the link via SlashDot.

Where can you find these unique CD’s? On the ProAction Media site. I don’t have anything to do with the site, just thought it an interesting idea to pass along to all of you. Be careful, you can’t use these in slot loading drive…

Prices? Not too bad. You have to order a minimum of 1,000 CDs or DVDs. Prices start at $0.75 per CD or $1.19 per DVD and go down the more you order.

I am about to jump into the Frozen Pea Friday donation crowd. Please help me to make a donation to help find a cure for Breast Cancer!

How can you help? Buy a book from me! Here’s the deal:

I have a box of copies of Kathy Jacobs On PowerPoint sitting by my front door. Normally, I sell them when I speak about PowerPoint for $25. (The book sells on Amazon for $29.99.) I have a limited time offer for all of you that don’t have a copy yet: You can buy it directly from me for $20 plus $5 shipping. You will get a personally signed copy shipped to you. And you will get to help contribute to a worthy cause. (Offer good in US. If you want the book shipped overseas, you will need to contact me for the shipping costs.)

For every book I sell on any Friday in January 2008, I will donate $2 to the Frozen Pea fund. So, you get to improve your PowerPoint skills and you help a good cause. Great things all the way around. (And if this goes over well enough, I may extend it for a longer time.)

The details:
To get your book, check out this web page. Be sure to tell me you want a book, how you want it signed, where you want it sent, and how you will be paying for it. You can use that page to pay via PayPal, credit card, or to email me that you want to send me a check. I will respond with the shipping information for the book. (If you are paying by check, I will respond with an invoice for the book. I will send the books out as soon as I have your check.) I will make my donations at the end of each Friday for all books sold that day.

Order the book. Improve your PPT skills. Make a difference.

I made it through the Tablet PC meetup and the Blogger party. Didn’t win anything at either, but had a blast at both.

Met lots of neat people, got to see some demos of some new products. Some of the people I met let me ask them about their favorite parts of OneNote. Watch this post - I’ll be adding the audio here soon.

At the Table PC Meetup, one of the people I met was Tracy from The Student Tablet PC. If you haven’t been over to her site, check it out!

The meet up was set up by all the great people at GottaBeMobile.com. They are a totally crazy, but wonderful, group of people. The party was full of great food, great people, and great prizes. Check out my Flickr feed, pics of Splotch getting blasted should be up soon.

At the party, I got to see a demo of FlyTunes, a new site that lets you grab Internet radio and play it a number of different ways.  The basic idea is that you use your PC or iPhone to grab content that you want to listen to live or store for when you aren’t online. One of hte things that I can’t wait to see? They are going to let you customize what you listen to, clear down to “this station plays this much of your favorite music vs. that station.” Check out their sites and you may be able to win something cool.

I also saw a demo of Deal4it - This is a site that makes eBay fun again. They provide characters that talk to you about the auctions. The best part is that they have made the “Make an Offer” part of eBay’s auctions work. You don’t have to be online constantly to make it work. Check it out.

Now, I am back at the BlogHaus. Listening to a wide variety of conversations on everything from the death of the Prius to divorce to the New Hampshire primary results and beyond - way beyond. I’ll be here another few minutes. After that, I need to head over to the Hilton to pick up a package, then back to my room. Tomorrow starts early with a PhotoWalk here in Las Vegas at 6:15 am. Someone please tell me how I am going to be up and moving in time?

Thanks to PodTech and Seagate for sponsoring BlogHaus. The place to crash for part of the day was greatly appreciated!

More tomorrow before I leave Vegas. Otherwise, watch for updates on Thursday - including pictures on Flickr.

AMD sponsored the APCUG Breakfast on Sunday, where they made some announcements that went public today. Let’s see what I can share…

You can check out my pictures from the presentation in this video. There isn’t any sound to the video. Watch it while you read to see what they are talking about

What did AMD have to show us?

The first few pictures you saw were of AMD Live. being demoed. Yeah, we actually saw it running. It’s a new way of looking at and working with media, web, etc. It can grab content from your local PC, the web, or a remote server. It lets you run video at the same time you surf the web and work with other items.

Another thing they talked about was Branded Technology. AMD is moving towards “Better by Design”. The idea is working to design hardware components that are designed to work together, instead of just putting pieces together and letting them work together as best they can.

The next couple of pictures were the information that was provided about Swift and Shrive - Optimized design of systems for laptops that improve speed while reducing energy usage. I am not 100% convinced on this one, but the ideas are intriguing.

On the desktop front, the information was on Phenom… Called the first true quad core processor. Check out the pictures and let me know if you think it’s revolution, evolution, or hype.

The last few pictures are Scott and Simon, the people from AMD who presented. The big walkaway from them was that AMD Live won’t just make it easy to store, edit, and use your pictures - it will also make it easier to know where stuff is and on which machine. We will see if it turns out to be any different from the Media Center implementations that Microsoft already has out.

After this week, I am seriously considering renaming this blog to “The Exhausted Blogger”! I have finally made it to the BlogHaus and hope to spend a while sitting here chatting and blogging. I hope to hear from several of you with things you have seen and heard this week.

So, what have I seen? Short version:
APCUG was great! Met and re-met so many people that I can’t even keep track with everyone. Will be posting some of what I learned during the day. M

Saturday morning presentation on PPT went well. They didn’t stump me… or at least not beyond where I could get out of. To be honest, I was worried that some of the ringers would throw stuff at me that I couldn’t handle… but I got lucky.

Saturday afternoon was the Social Media presentation Betsy and I did. It went well, but there weren’t as many people as we hoped. We had only one internet connection, so we couldn’t hook up Chumby. We did get to show off a bunch of SocMed sites. Watch for an update there too.

Sunday after CES  Betsy and I did some screen casting. Watch for the results on The Visual Lounge in the future. If you don’t see the post, bug her!

Monday, we wandered the floor. I have pictures to post on Flickr. If I get those up, I will blog them too.

Right now, I am at Blog Haus. As soon as I post this, I am going to show Eric Engleman  what he is missing in OneNote. Should be a blast.

 Watch for updates!

You might consider the subtitle to this post: Did you know Kathy could cook?

Friday was Frozen Pea Friday. Happens every Friday. A bunch of us put on PEAvatars and work together to raise money for breast cancer research. I love cooked peas and I love a good cause, so it was probably a no-brainer that I would jump in and play.

This week, along with all the talk of frozen peas, someone mentioned that they were having meatloaf sandwiches for supper. My stomach went into craving mode. I have the world’s best meatloaf recipe. It was handed down from my mother and adjusted by Bruce and I.

This recipe is different than most meatloaf recipes. First, it has a tomato based sauce built right into the loaf and poured around the loaf while it bakes. Second, it uses oatmeal instead of bread or cracker crumbs as the extension. Third, kids love it.

When I was growing up, if it was meatloaf night, any after school activities got skipped or cut short. It is still the dish my mother makes for special occasions. Meatloaf, baked potatoes, and peas… what a wonderful meal. When Bruce and I got married, I tried to make meatloaf for him, but it never came out quite right. I was using her recipe, but it didn’t stick together quite the way it should.

I did what any good daughter would do. I told my mother to make it in front of me. :) Turns out, the recipe she had given me and the way she made it were different. If you read the recipe, you will see that it says to put the meat, the oatmeal, and the onions together and let it sit while you make the sauce. Her original recipe said to put the eggs in before the oatmeal, and didn’t let it rest. She had always made it the right way, but never updated the recipe.

From then on, whenever Bruce and I could, we made meatloaf “the right way.” When we started teaching Dutch Oven cooking classes, it became the most requested recipe. When we started doing websites, the meatloaf recipe was one of the first ones to go on OutdoorCook.com.

We don’t teach outdoor cooking nearly as much anymore. But, we still make the meatloaf. In fact, it is in the oven as I type this entry. I thought that I would share the story behind the recipe with all of you. Enjoy! Let me know if you want to hear the story behind any of the other recipes…

A twitter friend, @GlendaWH posted about Christine Kane’s blog entry, Resolution Revolution: A Better Way to Start Your Year. I went over and read Christine’s entry and was inspired. I love the idea of picking a word for the year instead of a resolution. Resolutions never get kept, or at least not very long. Instead, the idea of a single word to remind me of my on going goals strikes me as a way to focus the coming year.

Words are powerful things. A single word can make the difference between success and failure. The single word “yes” has changed my life so many times, I have lost count. The word “community” is what my life has always been about. I strongly considered both of those for my word of the year. But both of them are parts of me that I know I will continue to work with and reach for. I wanted a word that would challenge me. I wanted a word that would give me a focus for what I want to get done in the next 12 months. I wanted a word that would let me make a difference in my own life, not just in other people’s lives.  And then a word came to me…

 The word? Debt. Sounds kind of negative at first glance I know, but it is really a positive word. It has power beyond belief, if I can just keep looking at it in the right ways. To me, it means a series of hopes and dreams… Start with the obvious….

1. Get out of debt. Get the credit cards paid off again from the bills from my last surgery before the next one.
2. Stay out of debt. Not be caught in the trap of leaving money on the credit cards. Not get behind again.

That though is only half of my debt for the year. I also hope to:

1. Remember those to whom I am indebted. Those who touch my life daily and help me reach my goals. Those whose strength carries me through.
2. Remember the debt I owe to myself to fill my time wisely sometimes, but also to take time for myself when I need to.
3. Contribute to society in a way that pays off the debts of gratitude and love to those I can no longer see, talk to, or hold.
4. Remember that we all owe debts, some small some large. And have patience with those who owe me in hopes that those I owe will have patience with me.
5. Pay back the debt of energy and effort of the women in the world who have come before me and fought the good fight for equality.
6. Remember the people who build the tools that keep me connected and organized (such as I am) also have lives and goals and hopes. Show my gratitude to them for letting me help break their tools and sites.

My word for the year will be debt.  I’m going to try to use this blog to keep me honest and on focus with the word of the year. That means more posts for all of you about the tools, people, sites, and processes that help me get through each day.

Join the revolution. Find the word that will make the difference in your life this year. Share it with others so that they can help you make a difference too.

Have I got a cool tool for all you PowerPoint users out there! This one comes from Chris Hanscom, a fellow Microsoft MVP. The tool is “Whats its color,” And it is just what you need for figuring out what colors are in an image and what colors best coordinate with that image.

The site is easy to use. You provide an image, either from your computer or from the Web, and it creates a larger copy and processes it to determine what colors are in the picture. I did a few tests and was really impressed with the output.

The first test I did was on a picture I took long ago in the Detroit airport.

This one was on my hard drive, so I used the browse option on the page to grab the picture. Once you have provided the link or location for the picture, you choose whether you want a small or medium version of the picture and whether you want the background processed or not. For this first test, I picked a medium result and did not discard the background. Click the Upload and Process button and away it goes. The result?

It did a very good job of identifying the major blues in the picture and giving a nice complementary color suggestion. You can use the results to build PPT presentation templates and backgrounds around your pictures by entering the color numbers into the color picker.

My second test was an image from the Web. I used the a picture that I took in Hawaii that I have on Photrade.com.:

The result?

In this case, the processor picked up that the light brown was the dominant color since it makes up the majority of the stone in the background. I like the complimentary color choice for this one much better than the blue one.

If you are going to process a picture with a black or white background, you can omit the background from the processing. The site says that tends to give better results from the color matching. For this test, I used a picture I had taken of some fireworks. I couldn’t see much difference between the two sets of results, but that may have been because of the picture I choose.

The only test that failed while I was working with my pictures was the one I did on a png file. It didn’t like it. I re-saved the file as a jpg and it worked just fine.

In general: A very useful tool. I would say well worth checking out.

Much thanks to Kathleen Anderson (my favorite spiderwebwoman) for pointing the tool out to me. She found out about it via LifeHacker. And if you aren’t checking out LifeHacker and Kathleen’s site, you should be!

I am on twitter quite a bit… ok, I am addicted. To share with you the kind of stream of consciousness and connectivity you will find on twitter, I thought I would ramble a bit about one night’s experiences. The night in question was December 26th, 2007. You should understand going in to this, that my twitter network runs clear around the world. I have friends from the US, Mexico, Australia, Europe, and many other parts of the world.

In the process of the conversation, @conniereece decided that I needed social media rehab, since I was joining in a conversation in Pig Latin on twitter. She sent me to one of @Sass’s blogs, http://socialnetworkingrehab.blogspot.com/, where I learned that I needed to apply for rehab with INVITATIONS. So, I did. You can see the Jing of my application at http://screencast.com/t/JrQsujErt You can also find the Scribd version of the application on J.W. Sass’s blog in the Day 113 entry.

 How did we end up twittering in Pig Latin? I don’t really remember, but I know that @susanreynolds was involved. If you don’t know Susan, you should. She is fighting breast cancer and we are all supporting her with PEAvatars and donations to research. For details, check out Boobs On Ice.

While all this twittering and Jinging was going on, I also was Skyping with @BetsyWeber, of The Visual Lounge. She is always showing me new geek toys too, including  tonight’s addition of http://www.twitzine.com/ - This is a twitter based short piece ezine. I am going to have to do some playing with it, but it looks like a great way to reach lots of people with hints and tips. Maybe I need to set one up for OneNote and PPT tips!

@DavidSinger, recorded http://tinyurl.com/ywvsp8 a modern version of twinkle, twinkle. Be sure to turn the volume up so you can hear him sing it! David also blogs at http://readthisblog.net - David also turned me on to a site called LibraryThing. I am on Shelfari, which is similar, but LibraryThing sells CueCats, which let you grab the book information directly from the barcode. Talk about nifty device integration!

I can tell that my network on Twitter is growing more important to me. Not only is the number of people I follow and who follow me growing, but the frequency I twit is growing. With Bruce working second shift now, my twitter connections keep me going when I am alone. That means I don’t always get as much done as I should, but it also means I know more about what I need to do. One of the ways I can tell that I am twittering more and more is because I have made the top 100 of the Tweeterboard more than once.

I just went back and checked Tweeterboard, and I am in the top 50. At Betsy Weber’s suggestion, I Jinged that too: http://screencast.com/t/XJ4PGGav Enjoy!

I have also found more local people to communicate with via Twitter. The other night several of us found out that we are all within a few miles of each other here in Mesa.  I am looking forward to January’s Arizona Twitter Meetup, which you can sign up for on Upcoming.org. If you are curious about who is on Twitter in your area, check out the twittermap.

 In fact, looking at tonight’s twits, I heard from and talked with a very large number of the people I communicate with regularly. About the only one I didn’t exchange comments with was @DeKrazee1 from Tangler.com - and that is because she was watching cricket!

That is what I learned from just one evening on Twitter. Imagine what you could learn from there?

If you want to follow me on twitter, I am callkathy. For the others mentioned here, the twitter IDs are the words that start with the “@”. Paste that string into the twitter search box and you will find them.

Ok, you all know I love OneNote with all my heart. But I have a feature for you that I keep meaning to share and forgetting.

 When you paste into OneNote from a webpage, you know how it adds the annotation at the end? Well, have you ever tried just pasting the URL into OneNote? Instead of pasting the annotation, it pastes the URL as a live link. I love this feature.

I know - it is a simple thing. But what it means is that when I have a ton of browser tabs open, I can go to each one and copy the address. Then I move the mouse to my open OneNote page and paste. Voila - URL list for next session.

 I use this when I do research too. If I know I will need the whole content of a site, I go to the home page of the site, copy the shortcut from either a right click on the page or from the  address bar. Paste that onto the notes page and I have an instant link to the source for more information on the current work.

A real time use of this is during our monthly Phoenix PC User Group meetings. At the start of each meeting, we have a Q&A session where members ask each other for help with computer problems. When questions are answered with information from the web, the questions and the sources are put into a OneNote section. Irregularly, we gather up all the Q&A information together for publication. The information is published in the monthly newsletter and on the website.

So that you can see the difference between the annotated URLs and the regular URLs, watch this Jing: http://screencast.com/t/IKeytwwhIAd

 I am! I will be in Las Vegas from January 3rd through the 9th for two different events.  From the 3rd to the 6th I will be attending the APCUG’s annual conference. Then, from the 6th to the 9th, I will be at CES. For the entire trip, I will be staying at the Riviera Hotel.

What’s APCUG?

APCUG, the Association of PC User Groups, is a group of user groups. The goal of the organization and the conference is to help the leaders of peer to peer user groups better meet the needs of their user groups. As the president of the Phoenix PC User Group, I am going to get ideas for my group. But, I am also a speaker at the conference.

The conference is put on by volunteers. Most of the speakers are volunteers, including me. The conference doesn’t cover expenses or pay presenters. I am going on my own dime, because I think it is important to share with others.

What am I sharing?

First, I will be the speaker on Saturday morning at a session called “Stump the PowerPoint Expert”. During this session, the attendees will be asking me questions about things that stump them in PowerPoint. I haven’t got a prize yet for stumping me… Maybe one of you will donate something… I expect to be able to answer almost everything directly. Those questions I can’t answer, I expect I will at least know where to find the answer.

Then, in the afternoon on Saturday, Betsy Weber and I are presenting together on “Moving from Online Contacts to Real-Life Friends”. Betsy and I are going to use ourselves as an example of how we use social media sites to stay connected, even though we live half a continent apart.

Both sessions have the same goal: To improve how User Group leaders communicate with their members, their friends, their families, and the rest of the world.

You can see the whole schedule for the conference on the APCUG site. I guarantee it will be a great time!

And then?

Then, I get to go to CES for a few days. This is a working trip. I am meeting up with people about a number of different projects. I will be at the http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/349569on Tuesday afternoon at Cheeseburger Las Vegas.  Tuesday evening, I will be at the “It Won’t Stay in Vegas” Blogger Party at the Atomic Testing Museum.  Really looking forward to both of these events.

I expect that I will also be meeting up with many others. If you want to meet up, drop me a line either in the comments or directly.

How am I going to afford this?

As a test of a new site I am trying out, I am asking for help covering the costs of the trip. (Hey - This blog doesn’t pay all the bills, you know!) The site is Fundable.com. This site is designed to help people raise money for projects with community help. My first project there is Help me speak at APCUG

I have a goal of raising US$550 to help cover expenses for the trip. One of the cool things about fundable is that if I don’t raise the full amount, no one pays anything. If I do raise the money, it goes into my PayPal account.

I am not sure I expect to be raising money for the APCUG/CES trip. I will find a way to cover the expenses one way or another. Oh, sure, I would love it if suddenly everyone decided to kick in and make it happen.

But this is really a test. The first full project that I will be using Fundable for will be my next tour of the Arizona Alliance of Computer Clubs, happening in February. During that tour, I will be speaking on OneNote to 39 different user groups in 23 days. Watch for details on that tour soon!

I am an avid Spock user. Ok.. That’s probably an understatement. I am an extreme Spock user. I am not extreme in my network size, though it has connected me with a large number of people I would have otherwise never found again. Rather, I am an extreme user of the site to do WORK.

Recently, there has been some bashing of Spock going on around the web. When I found out that Tim O’Reilly had put together a post on Spock last spring, I didn’t think anything of it. He liked the site, for many of the same reasons I do.  Earlier this week, it came to my attention that people were using the comment area on that blog post to bash Spock.com. I no longer could stand aside. I posted a comment there about why I use Spock.

Ever since I started using Spock last spring, I have meant to blog about its existence. I just never seem to get to it. There is always something more urgent to write about. No more. Here is my opinion about Spock.com: You should be using it.

Spock has two sides to it. One side lets you keep track of all of the information about you on the web. The other side lets you search the web quickly and easily to find out what the web has to say about others. I use both sides equally, but in different ways. I use the information side to make sure that only true information about me is out on the web. I use the search side to find people who want me to do business with them, connect with them, or follow them.

Where Spock gets its information

Spock’s engines search the web  looking for social networking information about people. It finds web links, news, and other information from everywhere on the internet and organizes it by the people referenced in the information.  The engine pulls all the information together into people based pages.

What Spock knows about you

The Spock engine searches the web to find information about people, true. But in addition, you as a community member of Spock can vote on the tags o