Why is it that when I'm looking for staples at work I always overlook them, despite the fact that they have the word, "Staples" blazoned across the box? It's because Staples is the store they were purchased.
I've always wondered if this is intentional. It doesn't matter, I can never find it when I go looking for them anyway.
We got our gps unit back a couple of days ago, we were going through geocaching withdrawal I believe. We had planned on doing a huge geocaching thing on our way to Illinois but we didn't have our gps unit :( I think if Alex doesn't have to work tomorrow we're going to go out and get a few geocaches.
The unit seems to be working alright but I had to fight with the darn thing to get it to unlock properly. I'm still not even sure I did it right. I guess we'll know for sure when we go out again :)
I, like the rest of the world, have a MySpace page, but I kinda hate MySpace so I've been messing around with Vox. Vox is prettier, easier to use, and just all around fun...it even works with other services, like Flickr.
I'm trying to grow my neighborhood so here's my Vox url: http://heidigoseek.vox.com/
MySpace is great if you want people to find you, but it looks like with Vox you need to work a little harder to create your network.
Take a look around and feel free to add me as a friend if you decide to join. I know there's a million of these social networking sites, I probably have an account on all of them now...you almost need a part time job to manage all of them :)
Usually Christmas is spent divided between Alex's family in Illinois and my family in Ohio. I'll be visiting with my family over New Year's.
It was a nice Christmas so far, I got one of these and this. I have the MP3 player loaded with music already, I have yet to install the expansion pack for my game though...maybe I'll do that tonight. I am behind 2 expansion packs, I got a gift certificate for Target as well, I'm thinking that I'll spend that on my second expansion pack. Then I have to make a resolution to play more Sims this year...things have been so incredibly busy and I hardly have time to play anymore.
We discovered the joys of waiting until Christmas Eve to go shopping for gifts. Seriously, there's nobody out and the people who are out are nice. Plus things are still on sale. I like that. The second round of Christmas shopping comes after Christmas...the second best time to go Christmas shopping...after Christmas sales rock! Although I have a list of things I want to buy for myself. I'm terrible this time of year, I tend to buy more for myself than anybody else. This is also the time of the year that Alex and I buy our electronics. Why the heck not?
Alex's brother and sister-in-law bought a Wii, we got to try it out at their house this week. It was fun to play :) I kick butt at bowling.
It's good to be home though. I always enjoy coming home after a long trip. This next week won't be so bad, I have to work on Saturday but then I get Sunday through Tuesday...nice!
I just have to say, WOW! It's this kind of stuff that makes me never want to leave Ann Arbor!
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
Woo Hoo! I had ordered it to make sure the library got it and it came today. I was also excited that they ordered 4 copies...usually when I request books to purchase I'm lucky to get them to get more than one for the system. I don't even care that I'm reading about 3 other books right now, I can't wait much longer to read this one!
Found via Lifehacker .
All I have to say is, "it's about flippin' time!"
Found first on Lifehacker, an article about How to Network for Introverts via Businesspundit.
This isn't just great info for business people, it's great info for librarians! Hey, you can't deny the fact that there are more introverted librarians than extroverted ones.
Of course, there's nothing I would rather be than an introvert...live it up!
Flickr never ceases to amaze me. Reading on Lifehacker I discovered the Calendar View of my photos.
To get one for yourself all you need to do is type in this URL http://flickr.com/photos/heidigoseek/date-taken-calendar, replacing my username with yours. It's super sweet!
Although it appears I haven't taken any pictures in December yet (well I have I guess I haven't uploaded them).
I've been wanting to try out Project 365 next year, Flickr Calendar View would be awesome for that! I'm all into this photo stuff now (mostly thanks to Flickr), I've been wanting a new digital camera too. My mom was also telling me about this photography challenge in Toledo yesterday on the phone...I looked up the info online and it looks pretty flippin' sweet. I've been thinking about signing up because I would love to just wander around my hometown and take pictures of stuff...
One of the jobs that came across the student list at school is an "Emerging Technologies Librarian" at Eastern Michigan. I'm not looking for a new job right now, but if I were this would be what I want my job title to be :) It's perfect!
I can understand parents and schools being all up in arms about MySpace. Parents and schools get all up in arms about a whole mess of things they don't really understand, as history has kindly showed us.
This article about a library banning MySpace makes me sad and a little bit angry.
Administrators looked at the site and decided it did not serve educational purposes. And most MySpace.com users weren't going to the library to check out materials or do research, Van Berkel said.
I think the "educational purposes" of a public library are only a small part of the purpose of a library. What about your informational purposes? What about your mission to allow open access to your patrons? Are these things not considered a part of your library's mission?
I believe blocking any site on a library computer is a form of censorship. The library is determining what is acceptable according to them, not the patron. This goes against everything that I believe a library should be and should stand for. The purpose of a public library is access to information for people of all ages.
A couple more points I would like to make. One is MySpace is not only used by teens, a lot of adults have MySpace pages, many use it as a way to meet new people and online dating. Does this mean that online dating sites should also be banned from library computers? Many adults, including myself, use it as a way to connect and reconnect with people that I know or have lost touch with...many of whom live miles away from where I am now.
Now consider this, yes, a lot of teens do use MySpace...it is also known that teens are the hardest patrons to keep coming to the library. Teen experiences in public libraries have a direct effect on how they will view the library when they are of voting age. If they have bad experiences they may not be so supportive of libraries when it comes time to vote for millage. What you do now may have a direct effect on your library in the future...think about that. Do you think banning the things that teens do now (MySpace, games, etc.) will keep them coming back to libraries as adults?
If this library really cared about their "educational purposes" it would use that as a reason to educate its patrons on social networking and MySpace. One more quote from the article, this one from Linda Braun, past board member of YALSA:
"Our role as librarians, educators and parents is to teach teens how to use social networking sites safely and successfully," said Braun, who is now a consultant in New York on technology for libraries and schools. "It's up to the libraries to talk to the community and get input."
Social networking is here to stay people!
I mentioned before that our GPS kinda broke this past week. I called the Garmin people and they said, "oh that's easy to fix", basically I was supposed to download the software and reinstall it. Yeah it was so easy to fix that now it's really broke.
Installing the software seened like it was going to work until the very end of the whole install process. The Garmin software erased our GPS completely and then just said it couldn't finish (oh thanks!) Now we can't even retry installing the software because the unit is completely erased and won't turn on!
I might have to send the thing in after all :(
I have to enjoy this moment because I just looked at my class grade. I got a 101% for the class I just finished up. I've never been an exceptional student before so I'm pretty psyched about the fact that not only can I pull off an A+ in a graduate school class...I've also maintined a 4.0 GPA to this point.
If you knew the sort of grades I would get up until now, you'd understand why I'm so happy with my grad school performance. I suppose it helps that I'm finally doing something I love though too.
This is a conversation that happened outside of the graduate library at school. A man was walking up the sidewalk, I think he was eating a salad or something. He stopped momentarily then he saw me coming the other direction and said, "A black squirrel". I looked at where he was pointing and laughed. I told him that this was actually the second one I've seen today, the other one was outside the other entrance of the graduate library...I doubt it was the same squirrel.
Anyway, the man said, "that is actually the first one of those I've ever seen." I laughed again. The he paused and said, "only in Detroit!" and continued to walk down the sidewalk eating his salad.
Now every time I see a black squirrel I'm going to think of Detroit.
Today is the last day of class for the semester, luckily I did my presentation and turned in my paper last week so I'm already pretty much done! It was a good class, just a lot of work. I got a lot of great resources out of though, I spent most of the weekend trying to update my WSU site with my class projects (not live yet).
Things are a little better financially, we got some financial aid from UMich yesterday, we're using that to pay my class that I'm behind on. Once I get that paid today I can register for my Winter classes (yippee!) I think next semester should be fun and maybe a little challenging. I'm taking two classes (one more than I usually take). One is Multi-User Computing Environments, I get to learn the joys of Linux and Unix. This actually really does excite me. We have a Linux computer we never use, maybe I can finally put it to use! We're probably going to get a lot of financial aid coming our way actually, I'm thinking about using some of that to buy myself a new laptop. I have a new HP all picked out, I was thinking about turning "The Beast" into another Linux machine...although I have to make sure my new one is up and running before I completely wipe out the old's OS...maybe I'll dual boot it too, who knows. Alex wants a desktop for this but our old desktop is even too slow to run Linux and we can't hook that one up to our internet right now (either wired or wireless).
The second class I'm taking is probably going to be Digital Issues. This is a seminar class, I expect it to be a lot of work. I'm supposed to have a lot more credits done to take this class but the prof said he'd make an exception for me. I love this topic though and I'm completely excited about researching it all semester! We'll see if I change my mind after class starts, but I even have a good idea of what topic I want to research already :) I get really motivated when I can research and discuss topics I'm really interested in.
In other news, our GPS unit broke. We turned it on one day and it just beeps at you with a screen that says "software missing". The message boards say this is an update gone wrong but we didn't do any updates. It's just been sitting in our "geocache bag" since the last time I used it. It's still under warranty so hopefully we can send it in and get it fixed with little problems. We want to get the thing fixed as soon as possible, some days were really cold to go geocaching but this past weekend would've been great to go out. We were also talking about "caching along a route" when we go to Illinois for Christmas...we might not get a chance for this now. We were actually going to use it to get ourselves to a party on Friday, the routing feature on our GPS is awesome...I hate printing maps now.
The library is giving us a million days off of work, other than the fact that half of those days will be spent in Illinois and not at home shut off from the rest of the world (which is what I'd rather be doing), I will probably enjoy what little opportunity I have before I have to start thinking about being responsible again.
This is a test for WriteToMyBlog.com.
This darn thing has been in my bookmarks forever and I couldn't get the right settings for Movable Type. It looks like I finally got it now! WriteToMyBlog also integrates Flickr Photos now...totally cool :)
A co-worker sent me this article from the Onion this weekend. It was too great not to share.
