Striking & iGoogle

So, the faculty is on strike and now I have some time on my hands. I've decided that instead of spend it worrying about what will happen with my student teaching I'll try to use it in a productive manner. After all this is meant to be a summative reflection on the year.

I've just been zoning out on iGoogle. This is another second discovery for me in this class. I found it first when I was in New Brunswick working in a French school. If I was caught up on my prep for the day I would quite often find myself wandering there. I'd prettied up each page with appropriate backgrounds and themes. The best was the Legend of Zelda theme for my games page. I can see how the idea of having all of your favourite sites and important information on one page would be beneficial.

No Picture? http://sha3teely.com/?cat=8&paged=2

However, iGoogle has never been more than a passing interest for me. I could be writing this post in my blogger gadget on my page, but here I am in blogger typing away because I find a lot of the features of gadgets are pared down. I can't attach files in the blogger gadget, nor the gmail gadget either. I'm not always going to want to put a picture into a blog post, or attach something in an email, but since I often do, I go to the actual site automatically. Why get halfway through something only to have to switch to finish it how I want?
I'm running Windows 7 on my laptop and have many gadgets running as part of my desktop display. Why open iGoogle and check the weather when it is already being displayed on my desktop?
One thing that does hook me is games. I can search through and add games I like and then just have them together on one page always. I don't have to go to popcap for one game and shockwave for another. As a result I spend hours going from one game to another being quite unproductive.
In the end, I believe I don't stick with iGoogle because I'm an inomad. I like to wander from site to site, to have many tabs open. I like typing in URLs or following link trails. When iGoogle brings everything to me I feel like I go nowhere. I want to be up and moving, to be dynamic, digitally fit one could say.