February 2008 Archives

A little meme that's floating around the library blogs is "what are your tech-nots"?  I just read Steve Lawson's, and Laura Crossett's I read the other day, plus a few others.  I think like some who have done this already, I consider myself pretty computer savvy, but hardly an expert.  Here's a few of my tech-nots:

• The inside of a computer is not a huge mystery to me, I can probably point out a few key components, but don't ask me to fix anything in there.  It's a good thing my hardware doesn't break down very often, I'm more likely to send that stuff into a repair shop than I am with software issues.
• I learned how to program in high school and college, and if you really want to go back far, I've been typing code into a computer since I was about 9 or 10, but ask me to program anything now and it would take me awhile just to sort everything out.  I think this is just because I don't do it all the time, if I did use those skills I could probably learn a new programming language a week.  I'm happy enough that I can look at some code and not feel like it's a foreign language, it's more like a puzzle I need to work through for awhile.
• I never got into Skype or any sort of voice chatting.  No reason, other than I really didn't have a suitable computer for such things until recently.  Now that I have one I still don't do it.
• I love gadgets, but I always feel far behind the gadget curve.  My cell phone already feels obsolete to me.  Of course this isn't a huge surprise to me either, librarians don't exactly have a lot of money to throw around at new cell phones and iPods every time they come out.  I admit I was drooling over a new phone last night.  It turns out when I do want these things I tend to want the most expensive one in the store.
• Lately we've been a little more ambitious in our tech purchases.  My husband got a PS3 for his birthday, of course with that purchase came a new flat screen TV for Christmas, we finally got cable TV too.  Well, the first time I tried to turn on the TV I couldn't figure it out.  I remember either calling or IMing my husband at work because I couldn't figure out how our 3 remotes worked in conjunction with one another (TV, cable box, and receiver).  I finally gave up and decided to not watch TV (which is probably for the better anyway).  I can turn on the the TV all by myself now but I still have to think a little too hard about the whole process.  Don't even ask me to program a universal remote, I can never get those things to work.
• I love games, but I'm not a gamer.  The closest I come is my Sims 2 obsession, and I don't even have time for that anymore.  Last night we were in Best Buy and I found 2 expansion packs I wanted to buy, even though I have one at home that I haven't played yet.  I leave that gaming stuff to my husband, but I do wish I had more time to play games.  I'm a little more motivated now that we have a decent game console now.  I was doing pretty well with Guitar Hero last night!

There's a few tricks I've learned that have helped me get to the point where I feel comfortable with technology though.  It helps that we've had computers in my house before computers were cool so they weren't mysterious machines to me.  My dad even gave me one of his to just play on when I was a kid, and that was probably the thing that started it all.  My "no fear" attitude started really young.  When I was in college I remember working in the library and we just got our new Millennium automation system.  I knew nothing about Millennium at the time, it was just another computer program to me.  I remember my circ supervisor couldn't figure out some sort of admin type thing.  I logged in under the admin password and fixed whatever she needed fixed.  She asked how I knew how to do that, for me it was just common sense and playing around, I really didn't know how to do it.  Then she said, "you really have no fear when it comes to this stuff do you?"

I'm constantly telling people at work that you can't really break these things.  I still don't think there's a problem in Millennium that can't be fixed without a little common sense (well most times) and I still have no fear.  And if I really don't know how to do something I pretend I do and I can usually learn something from my successes or failures along the way.  So no fear, and confidence have got me this far.

The other thing that occurred to me while reading through a few of the other librarian's posts is that for everything we're not good at when it comes to computers and technology, there's a lot that we are good at.  For example, Steve Lawson listed relational databases as one of his tech-nots.  Well it turns out that I can confidently say I'm quite good at relational databases and I don't even have to make it up.  For every tech-not I have, there's somebody out there in library land where they are extremely proficient in that skill.  One thing I love about the library community too is that we're willing to help and give advice in the areas where we're most proficient.  So if you sum all of our skills, there's no such thing as a "tech-not" in the library community.  If there's one skill that all librarians share, it is that we're resourceful and there's nothing that we can't do with the help of our colleagues.

In a sort of random way I checked out Borders new Concept Store today, which I had no idea they even built in Ann Arbor until this morning.  Actually I was reading my feeds and I saw a post from Tame the Web about Borders New Digital Services.  Alex and I are Borders shoppers, we enjoy going there a little too much maybe, but when we're in the mood for shopping for books that's usually where we end up.  Clicking on a few links and news articles though, I discovered that the new store mentioned in a USA Today article was the store that I knew they were adding in Ann Arbor.  It's not the closest store to us, but I was pretty excited about it opening because it is right next to the Best Buy, so we do end up out there often (yeah, maybe a little too often for that store too).  Just one more article about the new store I want to link to is the one in the Ann Arbor News, the MLive site has a video interview embedded with the Borders CEO that is pretty interesting.  The store just opened on Thursday actually, I knew that a trip was in order today.

Flickr is no doubt my favorite website.  I wasn't really into photography before Flickr, I would take a few pictures but nothing I would consider good.  I still wouldn't consider a lot of what I take good, but the community aspects of Flickr have actually boosted my confidence of lot of the pictures I do take.  A few of my images have even been selected for blog posts, websites, and tour guides, which for somebody who doesn't even consider herself a photographer, is very flattering.  I have also learned a lot from the community.  Being a musician, one thing you know is that you can't appreciate music unless you listen to a lot of it, that's why you're forced to go to a lot of performances when you're studying music.  The same holds true with anything really, if you are exposed to a lot of it, you start to realize what's good, you strive to improve your own work based on the things you find remarkable in other people's work.

Taking pictures and posting them to Flickr is fun, but I think the thing I love most about participating on Flickr are the sort of unexpected interactions that sometimes happen.  Today I was going through my email and noticed new activity on an image that I posted sometime last summer.  Alex and I were out geocaching, it was our crazy marathon geocaching day actually.  I should've calculated how many miles we walked that day, but it did feel like 10 when it was all done.  While I was on the footbridge at Bendemer Park, after we finished up a picnic we had there, I snapped this picture of two kayakers on the Huron River.  The funny thing is I remember thinking that, "I hope those kayakers don't think I'm weird for taking their picture", I wasn't even sure if they noticed either, but I liked the shot.  Anyway it turns out that one of the kayakers discovered the picture on Flickr and commented on the photo.  Thank goodness I now know that they don't think I'm weird!

The other notable "crossing paths" incident also happened last summer during our camping trip to Northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula.  One day we went geocaching in Escanaba, Michigan, in the UP, and I wanted to go visit the lighthouse while we were there.  I'm a bit of a lighthouse person, or anything having to do with the water, Great Lakes, boats, what have you.  Well the lighthouse had a small admission which also included a tour of a nearby local history museum so we went to both.  While I was in the museum I snapped my "scary mannequin photo".  As you can see it is a bit frightening, it's hard to resist taking a picture of something like that.  Well, a few months ago somebody who works at the museum found the image and mentioned that the mannequin did indeed need some help and they will be working on that during the off-season.  Of course when I showed the comment to Alex he said, "yeah that's the guy who was working in the lighthouse when we visited."  So I actually talked to this person without realizing it.

I think we're fooling ourselves if we think that this isn't a small world that we live in.  Things that we do months or years before can connect us in unexpected ways to people we may have never met or maybe haven't met yet.  I think this is a good thing!  Even the smallest action of taking a picture can be enough to make that connection or to share an experience with another person, even if it's for a short period of time.

There's a lot in the works at the moment but there are two events I wanted to highlight here for anybody interested.

Ed Vielmetti @ WSU

The student chapter of ASIS&T at Wayne State University is excited to have Ed Vielmetti of Pure Visibility in Ann Arbor come out and present to the LIS students at WSU (Ed is also known by some as Superpatron).  Details of the talk will probably come later on this blog and elsewhere but here's what we're planning.

March 6, 2008

Presentation @ 11:00 am

Lunch get together after the presentation.

Ed has a very interesting topic lined up and I can't wait to hear it!  I'll save the details for a more proper post though.  This event is also open to anybody interested in attending.

Library Camp in A2

Ann Arbor is hosting a second Library Camp on March 20th.  The first was a great success, and actually where I met Ed for the first time!

Library Camp Ann Arbor

I also noticed that the folks in Kansas are having their Library Camp the day before. 

Library Camp Kansas

March is the month for Library Camps, that's for sure!

There's a lot going on around Ann Arbor, and there's a lot we have planned for ASIS&T too, I'm really excited for the rest of the year.

I saw this Lifehacker post a few days ago and I wanted to try it.  I have a new 2 gig USB drive that I'm only using for Portable Firefox, why not?

I installed XAMPP and MediaWiki on the drive, it was actually really easy getting everything to work.

Yea success!

So what am I going to use my new wiki for?  I have no clue, probably nothing because I have about 3 other wikis in various places.  All that matters is I feel like I accomplished something tonight.

Sometimes you can remember what you did a year ago from a certain day when it's significant enough.  A year ago today I was in Springfield, Illinois witnessing the announcement of Barack Obama's run for U.S. President.  I believe it was just as cold in Springfield that day as it is in Michigan right now.  It was more than just chilly, I really couldn't feel my feet once the whole thing was over, which does make walking a little bit difficult.

There were tons of people there, but unlike most of my experiences with large crowds, this one was pleasant.  The people were friendly, happy, those of us stuck in the back of the crowd didn't even care we couldn't see the stage.  I think we all knew that we were witnessing something good, probably even historic.

So you might wonder why it took me a year to get the pictures up on Flickr?  There's no good reason, but they're there now.  So enjoy!  And definitely don't put off voting!

I honestly don't know how long we've been throwing our Chinese New Year Party now, it seems like 5 years, but now I'm thinking this is the 4th, but honestly I can only find pictures going back to 2005, so maybe it's 3?  Three doesn't sound right though, my pictures might be labeled wrong.

It doesn't matter though, it's fun every year.  We started having a Chinese New Year Party (despite the face we're not Chinese) for two reasons:

1.  We're huge procrastinators, the first year we wanted to throw a Christmas Party, but we never got to "planning" until about January. 

2.  It's hard to compete with all of the other festivities around Christmas time, so this seemed like a better solution.  Now when Christmas rolls around I can go to everybody else's parties, start thinking about our Chinese New Year party plans, and actually enjoy myself, to the extent I can enjoy myself during the Holiday Season.

This year we feasted on Chinese food and White Castle (our parties are certainly unique, to say the least), watched a few hilarious YouTube videos on our TV through the PS3 (what's a party without YouTube videos?), then played Guitar Hero.  Oh and I can't forget the hit of the party, the Champagne Punch!

Champagne Punch

• 1 1/3 cups lemon juice
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup orange liqueur (such as Grand Marnier)
• 1/2 cup Triple Sec
• 1/2 cup Cognac
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• 2 bottles dry Champagne (chilled)
• Orange slices
• Strawberries

Combine lemon juice through orange juice and stir to dissolve sugar.  Add the Champagne and stir.  Cover and refrigerate for about 1 hour until chilled. Add oranges and strawberries and serve in a nifty punch bowl.

Then enjoy of course!  The orange slices were especially yummy to munch on.

Happy Year of the Rat!

I'm just cleaning up some old email and trying a new "Blog This" plugin for Firefox and Windows Live Writer.

I guess I'm signed up for Driftr.com, an online travel community and travel blogging site.  Not much activity on my profile yet but so far I like the site.  I've signed up for a few similar sites, I never seem to follow through with adding any content on them though.  It might have more to do with the fact that I do most of this sort of thing after the fact and I have a short window of motivation for documenting events when they're over.

What I like best about Driftr is integration of my Flickr account.  That seems to be a must for any web service like this, and I'm disappointed when many of these sites make me upload photos to their site, it's way too much work to duplicate that whole process again.

Now they just need a Facebook app and I'd be happy.  I've been using Facebook to aggregate as much of these services I sign up for as I can, probably as much for me than anybody else.  It's easier to keep track of what I'm doing online this way.

I was going through the U.S. News & World Report's Best Careers of 2008 and I happily noticed that both Librarian and Usability/User Experience Specialist were on the list. But then I noticed this:

Librarian

Median Pay:  $51,400

Usability/User Experience Specialist

Median Pay:  $98,800

It's no secret that librarians don't make much money, many librarians are willing to put up with this because the job is satisfying in other ways.  This really bothers me though.  For the same degree and using the same skills I could be making twice as much.  I've been slowly sliding away from being a traditional librarian when I grow up, and I've even been advocating careers outside of traditional librarianship to anybody who will listen.  The pay scale wasn't even my motivation either, I find that jobs outside of librarianship can be equally satisfying given the right circumstances and opportunities.

I'm not saying everybody in library school needs to consider jobs outside of traditional librarianship and that money is everything in choosing a career (although my husband is now convinced of what I should be doing with my life).  I would love to see the librarian number higher though.  We do spend a lot of money to get that piece of paper saying that we're a real librarian now.  But many of the library jobs that are out there are not paid well, or they are even part time.  I know that working part time appeals to a lot of people, I certainly enjoy it now that I'm in school, but why am I paying all this money to go school only to aspire for a part time job when I graduate?  That's not what I want. 

Like I said, money is not a motivating factor for me in choosing a career. I don't require much to be happy given that I'm pretty happy now and I don't make much.  I think my point is more about value.  What is my degree worth to me?  It doesn't matter if I choose to be a librarian or anything else, I would consider carefully what my skills, time, and even my personal happiness is worth.

I thought I would give Windows Live Writer a second chance.  The first time I tried it I couldn't get it to work (I don't even remember why now).  So far it was actually really easy to set up.  I love the interface too, it's like I'm typing straight into my blog.  Pretty cool!  It also integrates my categories and tags, two things that were missing from my current method of posting.

I've tried a lot of different client applications to posting to my blog, some work better than others, mostly they were all too much for what I wanted to do.  Lately I've just been using Word 2007, which I don't mind at all.  The interface is simple, the only drawbacks seem to have been no support that I know of for adding tags and categories.  After I publish with Word I usually go in and make add the tags using Technorati Tag Generator and add the category manually.  To be honest, I'm too much of a perfectionist not to go to the Movable Type interface and mess around with the post, even if something like this works better.

I'll try using Windows Live Writer for awhile, but so far this one may be a keeper.