Amybeth Hale - Research Goddess

Thank you to all of you who have already sent support and words of encouragement for my upcoming trip to South Africa this November. Even though the trip is still 4 1/2 months off, I am getting more excited about it each day!

My first deadline is coming up on July 15th - I must have 1/3 of my total trip cost collected, which amounts to $1000. I’ve had good support up to now and I just have a little more to collect to get there! I realize that $3000 total sounds like a daunting number, but EVERY contribution helps. I do mean that - $5, $10, anything that you can spare is so much appreciated. Also, if you cannot help out right at this moment, I will be able to accept contributions up until November, so if timing is an issue there are still 4 months to go! If you are able and willing, please go here to make a contribution online or to find information for mailing in a check.

My goal is to have as many people involved within my network as possible. I’ve worked hard to grow this network for the past several years and I would love nothing more than to put it to work for a good cause.

For more information on this endeavor, please visit my Go Mamelodi! page on my blog, or you can go to the Crossroads site to read. Thank you for your support, and I hope to make my goal of $1000 by July 15th!

Just a note to let you all know that I may be sporadic in my posts over the next two weeks. I flew from DC to London over the weekend and from London to Prague on Sunday, where I currently will be working for the next week. I am at the Hilton Prague Old Town at the moment with a lovely view of the Powder Tower from my room, and in walking distance from some cute little cafes. Next week I will be working from our London Waggener Edstrom office.

I read Scott Williamson’s post today about how to beat high gas prices, and I fully agree Of course, I can speak on this because I’ve been a telecommuter for about 2 years now….for those of you who want to find cheap gas in the meantime, use this nifty little zipcode-based local gas locator from MSN to find out which station currently has the lowest prices. Here’s a screenshot of my local area. The green gas pump shows the lowest price while the red pump shows the most expensive. Most locations are updated daily. Hope this proves a useful tool!

In case you haven’t visited my blog recently, I added a new page a few days ago (see the link and the graphic to the left). I am going to be visiting Mamelodi, South Africa this coming November with a group of people on an aid trip to build homes, plant vegetable gardens, and transfer sustainable skills to the people there. Please read the page for some more details on the trip; I am very much looking forward to this! I’ve been on aid trips like this in the past to Jamaica and Mexico City and have been wanting to participate in another one, and this is right up my alley. Please read, pass along to whomever you want, and support if you so choose!

Anyone who owned a Commodore 64 or played arcade games in the early 80s will appreciate Pontiac’s new commercial - remember the old Spy Hunter game? This is a lovely nostalgic look back to where my love of computers first began 

Thanks for visiting the NEW Research Goddess blog! You probably noticed on the old site that I mentioned I’d be moving and changing my look. I will still be updating the content, but I wanted to start pointing traffic here in the meantime. There are a couple reasons I’ve decided to do this: the first one is that my old URL was spiresearch.blogspot.com, and since I’m no longer with SPI (SearchPath International), I thought it was about time I stopped using the name Secondly, I want to remain true to the “Research Goddess” name that I came up with when I started blogging (thanks to Jim Stroud for helping me come up with a cool ‘brand’ for myself!), so here we are!

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Hi everyone - I would like to make you aware that I will be changing the URL of this blog very soon, as in the next 2 weeks. For those of you who have subscribed via Feedburner, you’re cool. However, if you have subscribed using the spiresearch.blogspot.com address, make sure to bookmark your RSS using http://www.amybethhale.com/ now. This is where my RSS is automatically directed to. You can of course always subscribe by email by filling out the field to the right.

Please make sure to do this in the next two weeks as spiresearch.blogspot.com will no longer exist once the transition is made, and I’d hate for you do lose your feed! Thanks everyone!

As if Yahoo! wasn’t already getting enough bad press with its impending layoffs, today Terry Semel severed his last ties with Yahoo! as he officially stepped down from his role as Chairman. I can’t imagine that will do anything to ease the minds of the employees who are already unsure of whether or not they’ll have a job next month.

If you work at Yahoo!, it might be a good time to freshen up your resume, just in case…

LOVED this when I read it this morning! Please check out Virginia Shea’s book Netiquette….for now, here are the ten rules of online interaction!

Rule 1: Remember the Human

Rule 2: Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life

Rule 3: Know where you are in cyberspace
Rule 4: Respect other people’s time and bandwidth
Rule 5: Make yourself look good online
Rule 6: Share expert knowledge
Rule 7: Help keep flame wars under control
Rule 8: Respect other people’s privacy
Rule 9: Don’t abuse your power
Rule 10: Be forgiving of other people’s mistakes