Ok, so tech I can do...

I'm really not entirely tech inept.  There are some things I can manage to do quite easily, and some of it I actually manage to teach to other people.  In addition, some parts of the tech world I participate in that don't really require skill so much as just, you know, doing it.  Some of those things...

• Microsoft Office:  I started teaching Office 2007 from the moment I first saw it.  Luckily the first question was just something about how to print with it, but I spent a lot of last semester introducing students to it.  (I'm not as good with, say, Access or the finer points of Excel, but if it's in the Help file and doesn't involve math I've never seen, I can probably figure it out.)


• Gaming:  I'm genre limited, but I do game, I am an officer in a World of Warcraft guild, and I still tear up to some of the Final Fantasy music.  (Although not as many of the tracks as off the LotR soundtracks.)  When I say genre limited, it's because my gaming interests are mostly D&D games (Neverwinter Nights, Pool of Radiance, etc.), Diablo/Diablo II/expansion, the Dungeon Siege titles, Knights of the Old Republic I/II, Final Fantasy titles on the PlayStation, and things along those lines.  I also have a weakness for Typer Shark and Chuzzle online.  (Chuzzle, where you collect little puffballs' eyes in a bottle for bonus points and sometimes turn some of the little puffballs into puffballs of rage, which explode and take out their peers.  It's totally a terrorism metaphor, somehow.)


• Digital imaging:  PhotoShop I do not, but I can use a scanner, pull pictures off a digital camera when I actually use it, and rotate/crop/adjust images.  (I prefer Corel Photo-Paint, because it was free with my printer 9 years ago.)  I've only dabbled with AVI's, but I did manage to make video clips for a class project.


• Databases:  I may not yet be the be-all/end-all of search terms, but I can pick up how to get around a database's interface and how to limit/filter a search in it fairly quickly, as well as things like the fastest way to search an individual title/issue in a database, and how to navigate linking software to articles in full-text in other databases and open-access or publisher's site hosted journals.  I didn't really think much of being able to do this until I really started working with undergraduates and realizing that not everyone could.


• Web design:  I'm not the best at site aesthetics, but my XHTML, CSS, smattering of PHP, meager XML, rusty ASP, and such are all self-taught (in Notepad).  I downloaded and installed the blog software myself (dude, it's WordPress, it's not hard), and I did the same with the (unused) phpbb boards I used to have.  I still use frames on the main site mostly because I haven't felt motivated to redesign it with CSS and scripting for the menus.


• RSS feeds:  I'm on my second feed reader (which is giving me far fewer errors), and I have some in IE7 at work (since, probably for server space, they've disabled RSS feeds in Outlook there).  I've fiddled around with the feeds just enough to know that I prefer IE's feed method over Firefox's, which isn't that bad, since I read with a reader at home, and don't have Firefox at work.  I haven't tried making feeds yet since the only part of the site I update often (the blog) already has them built in.


• del.icio.us/tagging:  I'm not huge on tagging (I like it, just haven't done a ton), but putting all my bookmarks into del.icio.us has been really handy, and the tags make them easier to navigate.  (Tags are built into WordPress without plugins now, but I've just been using the categories.)  I can definitely see how user tagging within the OPAC could be a huge boon to students, although I do worry that it could also lead to some groupthink or shrink the number of sources people look at if someone tags an item for a certain class/project/subject (although when people already have to deal with all our books on a subject being checked out because of a class assignment, maybe not).  How things got tagged and what subject areas were hot enough for students to tag could affect collection evaluation and development, if it were used heavily enough to produce usable statistics.


• Digital music:  Amazon's mp3 downloads are fantastic.  I don't have an iPod or iTunes, and I generally use Winamp for my music.  Amazon's license lets you burn a copy to CD for your own use and such.


• Google Maps:  It used to be MapQuest, but Google's site is so much cleaner.  MapQuest also sent my brother on an hour's worth of wild goose chase in Indianapolis.  The street view is pretty neat.  I think I actually saw that job advertised last summer.


• Wikipedia:  I took Google off my Bookmarks Toolbar shortly after discovering Wikipedia (I don't remember how, whether it was an article about it or just via a Google search for some topic).  I'm aware of its failings, but for most of the information I was Googling, going straight to Wikipedia is just faster.  For some things, though, I go to...


• IMDb.com:  For almost all movie related information not involving plot details, I hit up IMDb.  I actually used it for rough statistics for a project on Westerns (to estimate the number out there, by year).  I don't have the pay-version available, but even without it, it's one of the most useful ways to see who was in a movie, what else an actor did besides that, what a director's done, and other details of that sort.


• IM/messaging:  I use Trillian at this point, partly because AIM's ads got so annoying and ICQ took so long to load, and partly because I do have AIM,  ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo! ID's and family/friends/acquaintances that use various but not always overlapping services.  For voice chat at this point, it's exclusively Ventrilo, and only for gaming.  I've used internet phone services in the past, but that was to talk to my husband before we were living in the same state and were spending 3-6 hours a night talking.


• The Palm phone:  I have a Treo 650.  It was a hand-me-down; my husband upgraded his phone, and I went from a little flip-phone with a camera that I got because my previous phone was starting to die and it was $25 to a phone that syncs with my Outlook and lets me play Sudoku.


• Mailing lists:  I'm on several, mostly library related, and I generally find them useful.  I can do things like set them to digest and signoff without just telling the whole list that I'm trying to leave.

Okay, that's probably not everything, but it's what I thought of readily.  I'm more of a software person than a hardware person; my husband is the one that knows things like bios details and voltage settings and what kind of RAM you need for various models of motherboards.  I can do things like assemble furniture and change bicycle inner tubes and put oil in my car, but I haven't really played with electronics hardware much.