If you are willing, please participate in the survey we are using to accrue the data:
https://www.psychdata.com/s.asp?SID=145365

It is a bit long, granted, but your willingness to contribute will help us to examine the relationships among all the variables. Thanks in advance!

In addition to taking classes, I will continue to work at Key Point as a psychotherapist and to work at Loyola as a graduate/teaching assistant. Weekends will be spent with my nose in a book (or pdf file) or writing papers. My apologies to my family and friends, but the fall semester will be over in December. That’s the month (or perhaps January), when my newest grandchild will arrive!

I started thinking about what we take for granted. It is extremely rare for earthquakes to hit our part of the country. While we may have a hurricane coming this weekend, we are not usually in their paths. Other parts of the US as well as other countries deal pretty routinely with earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, brush fires, tsumanis, and other traumatic events.

One of my professors researches spirituality and trauma. I have been very interested to see how people have been commenting on social networking sites and how many have questioned whether God has intentionally sent some kind of message via this hurricane. Personally, my experience is of a loving God who does not have a vengeful agenda. What are your thoughts about this? Have you lived through a natural disaster, and if so, did it impact your image of God?

If you are an educator and have used social media to connect with your students, I would love to hear from you. What insights can you share with me?

I have no problem installing tech tools so I set up the new modem, and, at first, everything seemed fine. The Internet was available, and the connection even seemed a bit faster. Then the problems erupted: My iPhone was not showing my network as an option, and my wireless printer could not find a connection. I tried to re-establish the network and thought perhaps there was an issue with the operating system since I am still learning Windows 7. Thank goodness for my son-in-law who helped me realize that “new and improved” modem did not have wireless capability. Grrr! Why would they send me an improvement that did less than the modem I had before?

I called Comcast yet again. The service rep did his best, but I was not a happy consumer. I had to order a wireless router (for about $10). Granted, they are not charging a monthly fee (yet), but I find this completely unacceptable. That is why I am sharing this with my followers here, on Facebook, on Twitter, and elsewhere. Have you had similar experiences? Please share them with me.

Addendum: Wow, after I sent out a tweet, I heard back immediately from @ComcastMelissa. I am super impressed with her courteous and concerned response. She explained that I should have been sent a letter. That would have helped, but even so I think a better policy would be to replace a modem that had wireless capability with something similar, rather than having to go through a multi-step process.

Tony is an accomplished academic and author but is still down-to-earth and very easy to talk to. He graciously spent several hours chatting with me and expressed a genuine interest in my current endeavors as a doctoral student. I was glad to learn he has a blog called Hope Today, as well as a hope web site. His basic message is that “hope matters.” In light of recent tragedies such as the earthquakes in Japan, I think his work is worth sharing.

That said, I also think there are lower level addictive behaviors such as what I’m currently struggling with: Angry Birds! That game has drawn me in to a point of total absorption. Although I appreciate the mathematics and physics necessary to play the game successfully, what I find especially motivating is the sense of satisfaction I achieve whenever I can keep those silly green pigs from grinning at me.