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Amazon: The Enabling Stalker I Just Can't Quit

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Like any consumer these days, I am a BIG fan of Amazon . And with Christmas coming soon, my doorstep will be laden daily with boxes and boxes wrapped in their familiar blue tape. Wishlists, shopping carts, and gift receipts, oh my! This will be me up until December 23rd:  Created with Bitmoji Created with Bitmoji And then after December 25th.... Created with Bitmoji  ........except without all the cute butterflies and with more tears and regret. So with all the spending I (and most of you) plan to do with Amazon, I thought I should look into just what they do with all that personal information they collect. We've all perused Amazon for that perfect dress, or birthday gift, or baby shower present, and then 24 hours later, we are getting ads for that exact same thing on our Facebook feeds. What the what?! Just what kind of stalker is Amazon? And why do they need so much information just to send me a new set of headphones, a knee brace, and a bottle o
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Image Piracy or No One Will Know I Put This Meme in My PowerPoint

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PowerPoints. Author's own image They are the   bane of every presenter's and instructor's existence. We are taught that our PowerPoint presentations must be very visual and eye-catching in order to keep our attendees' and students' attention. We are also taught that the less words and the more images we use, the better. So how do we do this? How do we find relevant or amusing images to use? Can't we just "borrow" an image off the internet? I mean, if I'm just using the PowerPoint in my classroom or at a professional conference, who's going to know?   Image courtesy of someecards.com The problem is, someone COULD know. These days, things get shared with the internet all the time. Attendees take pictures of our PowerPoint slides, they share them with coworkers, and suddenly, they are on the internet. And eventually those copied images make their way back to the original owner. If that original owner is someone like Getty I
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Into the Tech-Free Yonder...

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Over Labor Day weekend, as is our tradition, my husband and I went with some friends camping about 4 hours north of Phoenix. There is beautiful, clean air filled with the scent of pine trees, humidity coming off the trout filled lakes, and the sounds of bugling elk woven through the aspen trees at night. What you won't find is cell phone service. Commence panic. (GIF courtesy of Buzzfeed.com) I will admit, that even though we go to this place every year, I am always surprised that there is no cell service initially. Eventually this gives way to the feeling of relief. For the entire weekend, I will not feel the need to be tethered to the weight of notifications and Facebook likes. It's just me, our dog, and a hammock between those aspen trees- my own personal digital detox. It isn't until I can put my feet up and turn the actual page on a book that I am remind just how addicted to technology I really am. In a recent story on NPR , the topic of Internet addiction
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