- The rice crispy treat I got this morning at the Nervous Dog coffeeshop
- The Far Side comic on the wall of the Nervous Dog
- Chuck, who rode his motorcycle this morning and gave me a lift
- Erin, who told us where to get Hip Work Shirts for Chuck (Nordstrom Rack – Colma)
- My mom, who sent me a package of old Beekeeping books and embroidery
- The coffee I drank, which prompted me to write this
14 Weird things I’ve learned this week
- Queen Bees are expensive
- It’s damned difficult to find a cat-sitter in Ithaca
- Johnathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love me Yet
is, so far, an absolutely perfect book
- Tom Phillips is an artist who did a really great book painting featuring fictional books with titles stolen from Shakespeare
- Roccapulco is a salsa club in San Francisco. I’m going next week with my friend Jake
- The Lunch Meeting is the gold standard for interviews at eBay
- You can randomly teleport somewhere in Second Life and end up getting juggled by a large pink elephant
- Hotels in San Francisco are way cheaper than hotels in NYC. Jobs in San Francisco pay way better than jobs in NYC.
- All it took for me to get my finances in shape was to get some software with a decent interface
- The only cure for pregnancy-induced hypertension is childbirth (hi clay!)
- My friend Josh has taken over things digital at the NYPL
- Adobe CS3 will steal your soul with its compelling beauty
- Google Analytics has a new interface that will steal whatever bit of your soul is leftover after Adobe gets done with you
- Half of you people are still using Internet Explorer. I’m saddened. Please, for the love of all things holy: Use
Oldschool Metadata |
Jr. Beekeeper’s Association
Maggie and I visited the bees this weekend. She’s five and wants her own hive. No one ever told her that she’s supposed to be afraid.
We cleaned the hive, inspected for mites, and took out some honey frames. Her family watched proudly from a safe distance, and took this picture of Maggie pointing out a drone.
Life is good.
Amish Pony Cart and a Premature Deploy
Today was big and full. I’m tired, so here’s a list for you. Bullet points are less intimidating.
- I crashed our application today by accidentally deploying to Production rather than my localhost. Oops. But then I fixed it and felt all cool with my mad Linux skillz.
- I’m staying out at my friend’s farm, and this morning I woke up to giggling girls downstairs, local organic bacon and fresh bread, fresh carrot/ginger juice, friendly German shepherd dogs, showtunes, and the nicest snowy upstate NY vista you could hope for.
- Within 12 hours, I asked for and got $5000 from my bank for a new car. Frightening.
- I helped my friend’s daughter watch Sesame Street.
- I helped my employer research how to sell animal sounds for Second Life folks. Advice welcome.
- I drove out to Amish country in a veggie oil-burning truck and saw a tractor museum while helping my friends pick up a forklift that they bought on Ebay.
- We got pulled over for speeding, but were let go because the cop liked the veggie oil truck.
- I waved at Amish children playing in the street with a Shetland pony cart.
- I watched the sun set behind as a mile-long V of migrating geese flew overhead.
- My cow-orkers grilled outside at lunch for the first time. Someone brought venison. Fun was had.
- The pond outside my work window froze last night, and dozens of geese spent the day sliding on the ice with huge leathery feet.
- I received a kind text message.
- I set up my new laptop.
- I helped make a timeline for an NSDL grant.
- I patronized a 4-H bake sale and volunteered to do a beekeeping talk.
- I learned that rolling back to a previous version in Subversion is a pain.
- I stopped taking pain meds and the Frankensteinian curved laceration on my right shoulder has proven to be no trouble at all.
Goodnight. More adventures tomorrow as I travel to Pennsylvania to pick up a car and my motorcycle learners permit.
Stay tuned.
Research Obsession
I haven’t mentioned this before, but I have a rather librarianish habit. I get on research kicks, usually to no end except my own edification.
For a month or so, I’ll just get on some topic and won’t let it go. I’ll read books on the topic, surf it when I’m supposed to be doing something else, and bore you with conversation about it.
In the past, I’ve become a mini-expert (knowing just enough to be dangerous) on the following:
- The Northern Cities Vowel Shift
- Beekeeping
- The use of scientific imagery in cosmetics advertising
- US Copyright law
- Yiddish and Zionism in the 1940s
- Japanese cooking
After watching An Inconvenient Truth, I’ve been in a state of semi-panic. I’ve researched hybrid cars, veggie cars, rentable solar panels, household wind energy, and biofuel. I’ve swapped out our lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, covered our windows with plastic, and turned down the thermostat. We bartered webwork with our friend Lexie, who does home efficiency evaluations (hire her!). But we still have a long way to go.
Point being, I thought I might start share some of the stuff I dig up. I’ll title the posts Research Obsession so you can skip ’em if you don’t care about the Poetry of William B. Yeats or whatever it is I’m currently nuts about.
Graduation Bucket List
I found this list from a year and a half ago. I was half-drunk and coding a webforum for my PHP class. I made a list, oh so long ago. Here it is…
List of things I want to do after graduation:
_____________________________________________
- Learn Yiddish
- Finish reading Sophie’s World (Done!)
- Make the webforum decent and secure (
- Overhaul Librarian Avengers (Half-assed overhaul complete)
- Start looking into Art schools and Computer Science departments. (maybe in a few years…)
- Re-dye blue streak in front of hair for Librarian Job Interview Shock Value (Done!)
- Start doing 5k runs again (or 3k…3k is good…)
- Write old friends
- Move to warm place
- Develop a drinking habit
- Read!! Read!! Real books! Things I care about!
- Start buying music again
- Start ballroom/swing dancing again (Done!)
- Visit Erin in San Francisco and Jenny in St. Paul (Too broke. Thanks homeownership.)
- Stay with Jessamyn West for awhile and help with chores
- Plan the next Librarian Avengers ALA party. Book Klezmer band.
- Re-pot my plants
- Build a hive for the honeybee and live alone in the bee-loud glade (Done! Thanks Yeats!)
- Romance my boyfriend (ongoing)
- Buy impractical shoes (Done! ow!)
- Think impractical thoughts
- Raise a dog (soon)
- Rescue an old cat (soon)
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Notes from the field: Beekeeping
I removed some frames of honey from the Cornell Organic Farm beehive last week, and in the process I managed to get stung three times on the hand, so there was no typing for awhile. Still, I didn’t get the worst of it. My partner got stung in the head twice, causing one side of his face to swell up to Muppet-like proportions. I do this because it is such a peaceful, meditative hobby.
