LaJeunesse's Blog

Stefans'...

All I can say about this article is WHAT????????????????????

I never got a clear picture of what he was trying to say. He talks about language and words being so important, but he doesn't use them very well to convey a point to the reader (or a least for me).

i think that he was talking about how people in the new media writing area should use words sparingly or use them in more creative ways. This is supposed to make better use of the vechicle that they are using to show their works.

But I just don't understand what he really wants. Also there is no really conclusion for this essay. He just keeps on adding new imformation all the way to the end of the paper and that is really what got me.

I'll admit, I started skimming once I got through about half of it and didn't understand it. I was hoping that there would be something at the end that would help me understand what I just read, but there wasn't and that is one thing that I hate in writing. Hemingway did that at the end of a lot of his books too and it drove me nuts. There needs to be an ending for me.

My First Thanksgiving...

Well I actually cooked for the first time this Thanksgiving and I am pleased to say that everyone survived and all the food tasted good.

The mashed potatoes were a little bland, but they were still good. I guess I didn't add enough salt when I was boiling them.

It was me and my landlord and my dad and stepmother. We had a 14 lbs turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, biscuts, stuffing, a salad, cranbarry sauce, and individual choclate pudding pies for desert.

We have enough food left over to feed me and Ken for about two weeks, but that's ok because turkey dinner is one of my favorite meals.

the most impressive thing about me cooking though is that I didn't manage to hurt myself in any way. I have a scratch on my left hand, but I don't know when or how I got that but it is too tiny to matter.

I managed to make it through the weekend as well since we had both hockeys and basketball at home on Friday and Saturday. I got "lucky enough" to get stuck at the DECC all day on Friday and Saturday for both of the hockey games.

At least those were interesting on Saturday (more about that in a latter blog).

So my first Thanksgiving on my own was a real good one, no grandparents complaing about how I eat my mashed potatoes with a fork in stead of a spoon (proper edicit) and not much time (about 2 hours) spent with family, going through those akward conservations. Overall all it was a great time and I'm glad that I took the opportunity to learn how to cook.

We lost...

Well unfortunetly for the volleyball team they were not able to play their best match of the season and lost in three to Concordia-St. Paul in the regional final. So now their season is over and I am back in Duluth trying to catch up on work and homework.

I have to study for a test that I missed last week that I will be taking tomorrow moring at 9:30 and get all the stuff done for this class.

Plus, even through I was not here for the hockey games, I had to get the weekly notes and player of the week nominations in to the Western Collegiate Hockey Association.

No I have to get going to a meeting so i'll see you all in class on Tuesday.

Things just seem to get worse in Iraq...

Looking at the newest couple of entries on the blog I found from Iraq, it just makes me cringe.

Iraq Blog

I knew that we couldn't be up to only good over there, but I never thought that things like chemical weapons and tourture were happening.

To be fair, I guess the tortoure is being conducted by Iraq's own citizens, but our troops seem to be told about it and not doing anything about it.

This whole "war" was stupid to go into in the first place and now I just wish that there was a way to pull out. Unfortunetly I don't think that despite the fact that it would be best for our troops, it would probably mean disaster for Iraq.

If we left now I think that the torture and execution would just increase because there would be no one there to stop it. So now we have to finish the job that Bushy-boy started and help this country to rebuild and become stable again.

I jsut wish that we could send Bush and his staff over there to do it and bring the troops how, since they were the ones that wanted us over there in the first place.

Blog Concerns adn the First Amendment

On my buddy blog by Josh Brittion I found something very interesting that ties into what I was talking about in my essay.

Facebook and the First Amendment

He ist alking about an internet site called Facebook that allows students on campus across the coutnry to connect on certain hobbies that they have. The problems with this site have been popping up left and right across the country now the the administration of the colleges that host the site have started to view it.

This is what I am affraid of with blogs, there is just too much information out there about you and your thoughts that if viewed by the wrong person or in the wrong context can be used against you.

These students are getting expelled or repremanded for things that they write about the university they attend. There were two swimmers at LSU that were kicked off the team after posting negative comments about the coach. So a blog about sprots information would not be a good thing.

If a site like this can get student-athletes kicked off the team, imagine what would happen to me if I wrote something negative about the athletic director. My profession and the fact that I work for a university does not allow me to be truly honest. That is why I don't really like blogs and stuff like Facebook on line. I just don't tryst them, because you never know who is reading it and what might happen because of what you say.

I know that this country was founded on the right be the freedom of speach, but in some cases that just is completely possible without repructions.

I think I get way to involved...

As a sports information director I know that I am supposed to be concerned about how well my team does, but sometimes (like in the national tournament) I think that I get to involved.

I sit in the stands with the parents and cheer all the way through the games, and I get just as emotional as the team does with the wins and losses.

Sometimes I even cheer a little too much. Last year, when we won the North Central Regional for volleyball, we watched the tape of the championship match on the bus on the way home. I could hear myself yealling all the way through the match, and as an SID I don't know if that is a good thing or not.

I think that we are supposed to be for our team, but not that much.

Oh well, at least I get view like this to go back to at the hotels we stay at to relax me.

At least I know I do this and can try to work on it. Although I don't think now woudl be a good time, maybe I'll wait until I get a new job somewhere else. It's just too much fun to cheer with the parents right now.

Why again, oh yeah, the FREE food...

One of the perks of traveling with teh team is that you get all of your meals paid for by the school or the NCAA, in the case of this trip.

Last night we went to dinner at Green Mill adn it was a fun meal since we had won. The team even took the time to pose for a quick shot for me.

Having your meals paid for is great for a poor, starving college student like me. It saves a lot of money for more important things, like paying the bills that I have from buying food for the last two years.

So far on this trip we have gone to eat at Appleby's, Green Mill, one of the players house (breakfast today), and to Perkins twice. We will head to Perkins again tomorrow, because it is a game day ritual for us to go there. The coach even gets the same dish every time. The one time that he chose something else, we lost.

Why did I choose this job again, oh yeah the people...

On of the good things about my job is getting to know the athletes and in some cases their parents. The picture below is of one or our senior volleyball players parents. This season I have spent a lot of times cheering with them at games adn it has been great.

The Bulldogs won the first match of the NCAA Division II North Central Regional so we get to stay in St. Paul for at least one more day. The parents and I were having fun listen to the cheers that some of our parents were coming up with. Since we have a player on our team named Katie Gangelhoff and the place that we are playing at is called the Gangelhoff Center (and yes, someone in her distant family did pay for it), her parents are having a lot of fun playing off that.

I just end up laughing most of the time because of what they say and the barking that they do. It is really funny to hear a grown woman barking as a cheer.

Right now I am sitting at the gym waiting for the bus to pick up me and the coaches so we can go to dinner with the team. THis is the most boring part of the day. Sitting around and waiting for stuff to happen.

At least tomorrow during the down time we get an extra treat and get to come to the gym a little early and watch our women's basketball team play in a tournament.

Well more later, I think the bus will be here soon.

Blog: Good or Bad for Sports Information?

The Internet has become a huge part of our everyday lives. We use it everyday to check our email, do our work, and for entertainment. As we continue to learn more about what the Internet can do for us. But, where do you draw the line on what you make available to the general public?

In the collegiate Sports Information field information may be our job, but too much of it available to the general public and the media can be a bad thing. There have been some suggestions lately that think that a blog would help the field draw more media attention. This could be a good thing, but in most cases it would actually put too much information out there.

Worries about blogging....
On Jill Walker’s site (http://jilltxt.net/?p=1560) she had an entry about how someone talked about his friend and embellished the story to make it more interesting. Then the friend found out about it and was angry and posted a comment that told the true story. This is one reason why writing blogs can be dangerous. You don’t know if everything that you read is true or the entire story.

This is one reason why a blog for a sports information director probably wouldn’t work. As a university employee yo9u can’t say a lot of things that you hear. For instance if you have a player on a team you are covering that is injured even if you know that they have dislocated their knee and will be out for the rest of the season all that you can legally say is that they have a knee injury are will be out for the rest of the season.

Plus a lot of what you know happens you would not want the public to know about. As a sports information director you are there to be like a public relations expert for your team as well as a fountain of information. So if your coach goes out and gets a DWI you would not want to be talking about that because if the media found out they would pounce on it and never let it go.

Too much info...
On Jill Walker’s blog (http://jilltxt.net/) she talks about a fine line between having anyone in the world have access to your site and all of your thoughts.

She didn’t want her students to be able to view her pictures on Flicker so she removed the link from her site. If a sports information person had a site that was accessible to students and media you would not want them to know a lot of the information that you could and would probably want to put up.

For instance if you wanted it to be viewed by the media, the thing that would drive them to it would be if you had interviews with athletes. This would allow them to find out more information about them to determine if they wanted to do a feature story or not. The problem with this is that you would have to make sure that it was kept within a certain range of information because you would not want some information out.

The purpose of a blog in my mind is to have an uncensored view of what is happening in your life or the area that you are interesting in and writing about. This is not what the university would want you to do with the student athletes lives. There are some things that you just have to keep to yourselves. We are there to help the media, but not to hand them scandalous stories.

The only way that I see a Sports Information blog working, would be if it was for other sports information directors in the country. The blog could be used to help others with problems that they come up against or tips to help them with new areas that they find themselves in.

You could have an open forum that that would allow you to share tips and to ask statistical questions, but it would not be for much else.

Too much information would not just apply to the student-athletes, but the writer of the blog itself. The entries below are events that I wrote about a trip that I took early on in the season. One talks about drinking, which most schools know happens, but would not want the media to know exactly what goes on. The second has a negative tone about a bus company that we use. If the company saw this they may get angry and drop the contract with us, which would make the rest of the year’s travel very diffictult.

"Beautiful Aberdeen, South Dakota"
Why is it that every time that you decide to go out and actually have a little bit of fun on a night that you know you really shouldn't, but someone else is paying that you end up paying for it the next day.

Those times always seem like they are the ones that you all say, ok we will only say out for an hour and have one or two drinks and then go home. However, those are also the days that you end up staying for two to three hours and have five or six drinks.

This is what happened to me this weekend. I went out with the other Sports Info people that were at the tournament in "Beautiful Aberdeen, South Dakota." We had a great time, but since I haven't been out for like four months I really wasn't doing too god in the morning.

I guess that it was all worth it though, because I meet a lot of cool people and learned a lot about the other SID's at the tournament that were brave enough to go out. Plus it was worth it to go out because our team is trying to give me a heartattack by going to as many five game matches as they can this season against teams that they should be able to win in three.

We ended up winning all three matches on the weekend so it was good on that respect at least. Plus I made it back in one piece so I guess the weekend was good all around.

The Trip from H-E Double Hockey Sticks
Well...

I went to Houghton with the volleyball team on Tuesday and it was not a real fun trip.

It started out just like normal, get on the bus, try to do some studying, give up and watch the movie, same old same old.

Then the bus driver asked the coach how to get to Houghton and since I am from there I was pulled up to the front of the bus to show him the directions. How scary is that when your bus driver need directions to get to the town that you are going to.

Then we went to eat and when we got done with that the driver asked me to stay up front to show him how to get to the gym. I told him that all he had to do was to make a right out of the parking lot and then follow the road straight until it wound around to the gym.

He said that he wanted to make sure that he didn't get lost. So, feeling that it was stupid to think that you could ever get lost in Houghton, I stayed up front and guided him to the SDC.

Then the match started and it was not pretty. UMD is way better then the Huskies (as much as I hate to admit it since I'm from MTU) and they were without two of their top players. UMD should have dominated throughout the match, but they didn't.

They started to play down to the level of the team we were playing again. We ended up winning in three, but the coaches weren't exactly happy with the effort.
Plus the stats were off and they couldn't get them completely right while I was there. I finally took what they had and got on the bus late for the first time ever.
We stopped for food and then I was asked to guide the driver out of town again. Well we got about 10 miles out and the bus broke down twice. We ended up waiting it out for about 30 minutes before we could get it going again and decided that we were going to go until the bus died completely. At least there was another bus in the area that could pick us up if need be.

Well, we got to the road before the final turn and the driver said that he could make it from there. But I decided to stay put, and it was a good thing I did.
If I hadn't I don't know if we would have made it home because he missed the last turn because he was on the phone and I had to yell at him to turn around.

The bus eneded up stopping twice more for the same misterious problem before we were able to make it home.

To make a long story short it took 5 and a half hours to make a four hour trip.

Constraints, Constraints, Constraints...
Jill Walker’s hypertext essay (http://jilltxt.net/txt/FeralHypertext.pdf) talks about constraints and how they affect the original meaning behind something that is meant to be helpful.

That is how I see a blog about sports information starting and then becoming a problem.
In the field we are constrained by the university that you work for on what information that they want out about heir athletes. But if you did it on tips and advice they wouldn’t have a problem with it.

But, eventually I would see a problem occurring. That would be the interference of the NCAA or COSIDA, the Collegiate Sports Information Director of America organization.
Both of these entities like to come in and constrain what happens in the college sports world.

Recently COSIDA put forth an effort to make it so that media guides can only be 208 pages. While I personally think that this was a good thing because some guides were so hard to find information in that it was getting ridiculous, it is just a form of constraining what the field can do.

The NCAA is also known for trying to have their hands in everything. Starting in 2006 they are starting a rule that colleges can no longer have alcohol sold on the site of games. So now when you go to a hockey game at someplace like North Dakota or Wisconsin they won’t be able to sell beer.

I don’t really understand why the NCAA has to be involved in this. It is not like it is being sold to the athletes or anyone underage. So why do they have to determine whether or not you sell alcohol?

This just goes to show that a sports information blog would start out as a good thing, but then after a while someone would step up and set constraints.

What you want to say, but can’t…
Another problem with constraints is that even though it would make for interesting information. For example, the sway that fans react, or don’t react can be helpful to sports information directors around the country. However, when the information is negative the university would not want you to say anything about it.

The story below is an example of what you probably could say and what I wrote about on my blog this year. If the power-that-be were to look at this they may be upset that I would even think about publish something that the media could see that would even have the idea that I thought that there was a problem.

Student Life at UMD
So, normally I wouldn't say anything about the way that students react on campus about stuff, because it would make to many people made. But this time I would like to say something positive so I figured that was ok.

This weekend was the first real home game for the UMD volleyball team. They have played at home already this season, but that was two weeks before school started so the students weren't here, so I won't hold that against them.

Anyway, Friday's match was great! We had a crowd of 852, that was mostly students. I think that in the three years that I have been here I have only seen a crowd like that when we play Concordia-St. Paul and it is a dress up night.

These students were great though. They had an amazing energy throughout the match. And I was even more impressed that they didn't sink to antagonizing the other team. And this would have been really easy since the team wasn't doing so great at the match.
I saw a lot of other athletes at the event and they seemed to be the ring leaders for the rest of the group and that is what we need here at UMD.

I know that men's hockey gets a lot of student support, but now it is great to see the students branching out to other sports.

There was also a large contingent of students at the home football game this weekend as well.

From what I've seen so far, I think that the students are finally getting interested in stuff on campus. maybe it is because the teams are winning, but I hope it is because there is a real interest.

What might work…
The following blog is something that might work for a sports information blog. It talks about more than you can fit into a story that you write for the university and the media. This would probably only be interesting to those in the field or friends or the person writing it though, because most of the general public really only cares about the score and who had the best stats.

Greatest Game in a Long Time!
Here is the story that I just wrote about tonight’s volleyball game between the No. 4 Bulldogs and the No. 5 Golden Bears of Concordia-St. Paul.
The picture I took and risked life and limb to get, as for the second time in my life when my boss from Michigan Tech (Dave Fischer) was in the building I got smacked hard in the side of the head with a volleyball during warm-ups. I blame him for this one. I only have a slight swelling on the right side of my face and I'm expecting it to bruise tomorrow.

Anyway here is the story and the picture.

Here students pose for a quick shot before the start of the
match against Concordia-St. Paul and the second annual
Hawaiian Night. The Bulldogs had a record 1,267 fans in
attendance for the 3-1 victory over the Golden Bears.

The No. 4 University of Minnesota Duluth earned a huge regional and national victory against No. 5 Concordia University-St. Paul, 3-1 (20-30, 36-34, 34-32, 30-21), in front of the largest volleyball crowd in Bulldogs history. Students, athletes, and members of the community came out strong for UMD setting a 1,267 attendance record to cheer on the Bulldogs to their 13th straight victory.

Game one gave the fans in attendance a scare as UMD had a 12-8 lead and then started to lose steam as the Golden Bears fought back to win 30-20. Game two then started out win the same momentum as CSP fought hard and were up 25-21 before the Bulldogs took over and forced the game to extra points, eventually winning 36-34 with a kill by freshman setter Katie Gangelhoff.

After that it was pretty much all UMD. Game three was another highly contested match as CSP then fought back from a 27-24 disadvantage to force extra points for the second straight game, but this time the Bulldogs came out on top with a 34-32 victory.

UMD then pulled together to use the momentum and the crowd's support to earn a 30-21 victory in the fourth and final game of the match.

Sophomore outside hitter Kari Wolford was the top performer for the Bulldogs as she garnered 21 kills, nine digs, three blocks, and one service ace. Right behind her was fellow sophomore Vicky Braegelmann who tallied 19 kills, five digs, and one block. Junior Rachel Langseth also contributed 13 kills and four blocks.

Gangelhoff also had a large hand in the success of UMD tonight as she garnered 56 assists, four kills, and 20 digs.

Defensively senior libero Allison Boddy dug up 18 of the Golden Bears attacks and 28 of their service attempts. Junior Chelsea Meierotto was big on the serving as she had 26 service attempts and one service ace to go along with 10 digs.

UMD, now 14-2 overall and 4-0 in the North Central Conference, will now travel to St. Cloud State University for a Saturday, Oct. 1 match at 4:30 p.m.

Why Did I Choose This Job Again?

Well, now that we have reached the NCAA Tournament time I find myself asking why I decided to be a sports information director. This week has been very hectic and actually started right away on Sunday.

Here is my To Do List:

Sunday
Group Metting for class at Noon
Women's Hockey WCHA Notes and send to the league
AVCA Nominations for Volleyball Players (Took four and a half hours)
Wait to find out where Volleyball Regionals will be and inform the media

Monday-Tuesday
Work on and finish Volleyball Post Season Media Guide
Volleyball Notes
Women's Hockey Notes
Print 25 copies of Post Sesaon Guide
Women's Hockey Changing Pages
Dr. on Tuesday at 10:45 (Since I seem to like to continually fall on my knee)
Set up make-up date and time for Advertising and Promotion Test
Work on Blog project
Finish Essay for New Media Writing
Laundry
Pack for Regionals

Normally I would have the entire week to do most of these things, but since we were leaving at Noon on Wednesday, I had two days to do it.

So now I am sitting in my hotel room working on homework after spending the entire day on the bus and stuck at practice. I haven't even had a chance to get a start on my essay that is due in about 12 hours so I better start on that before I go to sleep.

Videogames as social awareness?

I would say that videogames do create at least a portion of social awareness, but it is mostly on the negatives in society.

Most of the time that you hear about videogames in the news it is because of how violent or sexually explicit that they are. This does show that what sells in our society is violence and sex, but that is not a positive thing for games to be associated with.

Game designers would probably say that they are not tyrin to promote violence and sex, but htey are definatley pointing out an dhelping increase the problem as they continue to pump out games that are based on how many people you can kill or how many cars you can wreck.

What about politics? Who would really want a gme about politics anyway? How exciting would that be?

'See how far you can drive this dagger into your best friends back just so you cna win the election.'

While there is violence and sex involved I don't think that it would have enough blood, guts and action for most game players.

Asking that videogames raise awarness amoung it players is absurd to me. When people play gmes they are playing, they aren't looking to learn more about the ills of society or what needs to be done to make it better. In fact, when most play it is probably to escape reality not to understand it more.

The Sims?

The Sim's is probably the closest game the acould be considered a story, but it is still lacking something. To me to have a story it needs to be given to others to read. I know that the Sims is on-line so you can interact with others, but you still don't have the entire part of your game available for others to view adn is really could never have an ending.

So where is the basic criteria that we have been taught since elementary schol about the writing process? What is the main event that is focused on for the game, where is the beginning, middle and end?

Everyone seems to think that the Sims was the greatest video game invention in history, but what is so special about it except the graphics.

According to Gonzalo Frasca "The Sims represents a breathrough in videogame design. For the first time, a best-selling game is not about trolls and wizards. The simulation is about regual people-known as Sims-in everyday situations in an American, suburban evironment."

So are they tyring to say that since it is based on human activty that is is some big social message.

Frasca goes on to say that, "The fact that the best-selling game of the year 2000 was about peple is a clear sign that videogames are on their way towards maturity."

I don't agree with this statement. While it does represent more like reality you can still cause mayham and distruction to yoru characters. While some may think that gmaers are thikg about he consequences of their actions. I would say that is not what is really going through their minds.

From what I have heard from people who haved played the Sims, it is actaually fun to see how much distruciton you can cause after you have built up a good society on the game.

That doesn't sound like maturity to me.

Games as extensions of stories

Games, like Star Wars, that are based on books or movies might be better if they don't just follow the original storyline, but I still don't see how these games are stories.

In Henry Jenkins essay he says that; "The Star Wars game may not simply retell the stoyr of Star Wars, but it doesn't have to in order to enrich or expand our experience of the Star Wars saga."

This doesn't seem right to me. As the game player you are creating a new version of events that were never intended by the orginal author. That doesn't seem like an enrichment of the experience of Star Wars. It is a rip off of the orginial concept.

Just like when there was a second saga written for Don Quiote by a different author, the original author got angry and wrote a real second saga.

The first rip off was a real story, but it still didn't enrich the experience of the original. If it wasn't written by the original author it isn't an expansion.

To me games aren't stories, they will always just be games. And I don't take them seriesly like I would a story written by an author.

Games as Stories?

It seems to me like these essays and our class discussions are all trying too hard to make the simpler writings into stories. It seems like because you write an email to a friend you have just written a mini story.

Well, I'm sorry to have to be the only one that disagrees, but I do.

I don't consider anything, including my html project, that I have done for this class to be a story or narrative.

If every game and all the things that we have talked about in class are stories, than to me it diminishes the respect of the real storytellers out there. If what I wrote about Patches was a story under this new definition I would argue that it would start to make the real stories insignificant. Yes, they will seem all the better if all these new things are stories, but it will turn a lot of people away from trying to find the good stuff.

Plus this would just give kids more of a cause to turn away from reading because they can now argue that they are getting the same stories out of their video games, so why do they have to take the time to read when then can just sit in front of the computer or the TV screen and get a story from a violent game that they are playing.

Frustration...

So I was trying to think abou what else I could write about the Ivahoe project and since the only thing that I can really access is the About page it doesn't help much.

It says that is about designed "as an exercise in revealing, through deformance, the multivalent narratvies embedded in literary works like Walter Scott's famous romance novel Ivanhoe."

This is getting so frustration to me. I didn't really think that this would apply to my essay anyway, but not that I can't do anything I just don't know what to think about the project.

Ivanhoe Project

I don't know what it is, if it is my computer or what, but I can't get anything on this site to work for me.

The demo pages work, but I don't understand them because I can't get an email from the company to run the demo.

I also tried to log on to the Introduction: Reflections on the Ivanhoe Game essay, but nothing on the links page will load for me.

I finally just gave up after tyring to get things to work for over two hours.

Project 2

I finally got my html site done for project 2. It really isn't much, but it gave me a needed focus for what has been happening for the past few weeks.

Patches' Site