If anyone’s be watching my del.icio.us links, they might notice that I’ve bookmarked the most boring websites ever. They’re all about California, voter apathy, and the political circus that envelopes our golden state.

Really, I’ve just been doing research. I have two papers due next week, one which is on California, as usual. I am actually getting a head start on my research. And geese do I hate research.

It’s not that I hate research, exactly. I actually like looking things up and finding things out. But I hate having to decide what is important enough to put in the essay. And what should be left on the cutting room floor.

Anyway, the paper, if you couldn’t tell, is on voter apathy in California, and how people generally do not pay any attention to politics unless it has become a political three-ring circus, complete with a strong man and midget. While I do believe in what I’m writing about, I really have no interest in writing about it. But, such is the way school works out.

This is all really besides the point, since I wanted to write about how I am going about my research. To begin with, I am marking all the seemingly relevant sites I run across with del.icio.us (obviously). I have set up a tag bundle, to keep all the related tags together, so that I’ll be able to find what I’m looking for later in the week. If you’re interested, the tag bundle for this writing assignment is a boring “W.A.2″. Guess what the initials stand for?

Also, I’m using Google alerts in conjunction with my gmail account, to monitor the latest web postings for certain key phrases, such as California voter statistics, California elections, and California voter apathy. It’s handy, because once a day I’ll get an email for each phrase, giving me the most recent links. Very handy, since now I don’t have search the news everyday to find articles that might be interesting.

Finally, I ran across a really interesting site called Questia. It’s a large online library, which when you enter in a search term, it spits out a list of suggested books and articles. The paid version of the site allows the searcher to actually read the book or article, while the free version just lists the books/articles. The free version is still genius, because it gives you a great starting point to look for things in the local library. Especially since I never seem to find what I’m searching for using the library’s online catalog.

Well, that’s all I have for research tonight. At the moment, I’m listening to Binary Bonsai podcast #2, and damn Michael makes me laugh. I love listening to the Danish talk, and he has the perfect Danish accent. It’s there, but not overpowering. And seriously, he makes me laugh. I’d like to think if we met we’d get along great, although his being a well known blogger just puts him in a sphere so far above me.

Anyway… Back to the grindstone.

—”And I so Hate Consequences,” Mmhmm: Relient K

Tagged: coursework, internet, research on Tuesday, March 21, 2006 · 1 Comment »