Drew sent me a Pastafarian Bible. Now I can properly proselytize! Unbelievers beware!
Scientist, Model, Library tourist
Elyse Sewell came in second place on America’s Next Top Model. I know this because I spent two solid days watching it on YouTube this winter while battling the flu.
Why should you care about Elyse Sewell? Well, she’s funny, she has a livejournal, she’s smart as hell, and she visits libraries for fun. Libraries like the François Mitterrand Library.
Enjoy, and remember: Librarians can be hot and models can be smart.
And vice versa, probably. But we don’t talk about that here.
All your wireless basestations are belong to us
Locking down your in-home wireless network is like paying the cable company to take your neighbor’s money.
It’s to everyone’s advantage to fill their neighborhood with wireless access. It should be a municipal service. We benefit as a community when a resource is widely available. The tragedy of the Commons only applies when the shared commons is a limited resource.
The only people who don’t benefit from open community networks are companies who profit from the marketing-created illusion that bandwidth is rare, precious, and costly.
Do you scream at your neighbors: “get your OWN cell phone network and stop using mine!”
Do you call the cops when someone takes a shower using YOUR aquifer?
Does your radio’s signal belong to you?
Remember when it was illegal to make a free long-distance call? Were we going to run out of phonelines? Or was it because, for awhile, “long-distance calling” was the only established business model available to consumers, and eventually legislation built up to protect the market?
Once cellphones created a different profit model, did free long-distance calling stop being “wrong”?
“Ownership” of a wireless network connection is marketing, not reality.
Nobody is going to break into your computer. Nobody cares about capturing your keystrokes. There are better ways to secure your computer than hiding inside a little ComCast/TimeWarner-generated moat and trembling in fear of imaginary baddies who want to eat your bandwith.
Bandwidth is not a limited resource. You are not gonna run out of Internet.
Do you know anyone who has ever run out of Internet? No.
Get a firewall and quit whining.
Farce, fiasco
Drunken blogging is ALWAYS a good idea.
I had minor surgery today, removing a non-dangerous-kind tumor from my shoulder. So, anesthetics. And beer, which also helps.
Want to lose a pound? There’s no faster way.
I’m taking tomorrow off work to search for a car and get my shit together. It’s been one hell of a week. Hell being the operative word.
Here’s some good stuff:
- new laptop. macbook duo 2gig ram. eat my processing dirt.
- friends.
- tattoo. I’m gonna have one hell of a scar. Researching scar-covering tats is keeping me entertained. There are some wicked literary tattoos out there.
- drunk. did I mention drunk?
Love ye all. Thanks for support.
xoxo
Ericalibrarydork
Texas Update
Thirty seconds to post – I’m in a computer lab in the Austin Community College campus.
Things we’ve seen today:
Peacock in the neighbor’s yard
Peacock in the tree at Mayfield Park
Peacock with his tailfeathers up
Turtles
Agaves growing in bunches along the road
Spanish moss
The House where they filmed a Willie Nelson/Kris Kristoperson movie once in the 70’s
The Stevie Ray Vaughn Car Wash
Rosemary bushes as tall as me
Migas at Kirby Lane Cafe
Palm Trees
Blooming redbuds dogwoods dafodills tulips apple and cherry trees
People in shorts and tank tops outside a sno-cone stand
Cactus growing on the roof of a coffeeshop
Kayakers on Town Lake
Best. Excuse. Ever.
Sorry for not writing yesterday. Someone snuck peanut-laced almonds into my mint chutney, and I had to give myself a shot.
Anaphylaxis is a bad dining companion. It was a rough night.
Also? I got a new camera.
Deliver my books bitch.
I tried out Cornell Library’s book-delivery service this week. A nice stack of David Foster Wallace books quickly appeared at my workplace yesterday afternoon, and I got a friendly call when they arrived.
If you are a Cornell student or staff, you can have library books delivered to any library-location of your choice for free. For me, this means walking upstairs to our sunny little ornithology library overlooking the pond, and sitting by the fireplace for a bit.
I’m an irredeemable Amazon.com addict, so I view as a right the ability to learn about a book, click a few links, and have said book delivered to me. Imagine my pleasure at being able to do this without paying for it.
Unfortunately, you pretty much have to be told about the service to find out about it, unless you are the type of user who clicks links labeled “requests” on library websites and enjoy library jargon. Like many public services in the country, the crucial step of communicating to humans was overlooked.*
*Many nonprofits seem to say to their clients: “Look, we provide a valuable and benevolent service. You could at least be arsed enough to jump through a few design hurdles in order to discover our valuable service that you don’t know exists because of our design hurdles.”
I’m not sure, but I think the Cornell Library Patron narrative is supposed to go like this:
- A student or staff member goes into the library catalog and searches for some interesting books, thinking “Hey, I’ll go pick these up at the five separate library locations where they are housed”
- The patron adds each book to her “bookbag” (navigating a series of hurdles involving ID numbers, multiple passwords unique to the library system, and cute-not-descriptive service names) to create a list of books she wants to get.
A MIRACLE OCCURS HERE- The patron mysteriously knows that she can have her books delivered.
- The patron clicks into the catalog page for each book (students love catalog pages!) and separately clicks “requests” at the bottom of the page, knowing instinctively that book delivery is a “request”.
The patron chooses “Book Delivery Services (9996 available)” from a dropdown list conveniently located below the fold.- Assuming the patron does not receive the helpful error message “Your Patron Initiated Call Slip Request failed. This item is not available for Call Slip requests.” like I just did (Patrons Love Call Slip Requests!), she enters her ID number again.
- The patron is familiar with the names and locations of the dozens of small on-campus libraries and selects her nearest branch.
The patron knows that, unlike use of the weight rooms, climbing wall, or campus cinema, the library book delivery service is free.- The patron clicks “submit request”, then repeats the process for each item she wants delivered.
- The patron celebrates her triumph with a fine malt beverage.
Still, mad useful if you know about it.
The financial advice site Get Rich Slowly suggests using the library as a frugal way to save money on books. I agree, and am going to endure more bad OPAC design in the interest of financial progress. Stay tuned.
Cornell librarians: Please do not kill me. I’m glad to have your services. Bad online user experiences are common in the library world. I’m sure you are busy right now improving the OPAC and writing clear non-jargon filled text describing your services. Go Big Red!
New Rating System in effect
I went to see Children of Men today, which was fantastic, disturbing, hopeful, and cautionary. I cried a bit, but left not resenting the movie for making me sad.
Beforehand, we saw four trailers which ALL fell into the new Librarian Avengers Film Rating System. There was a Creepy Child Singing, Two Overly Patriotics, and a Jim
Carrey.
Beware.