Erin's blog

Karl trying out his favorite rhyme

2011-06-26T17:17:00.002-05:00

More walking

2010-04-18T22:19:00.002-05:00

Walking with the Cart

2010-04-18T22:05:00.002-05:00

Crawling for Kitties

2010-02-11T20:49:00.002-06:00

Bouncing Baby Boy!

2010-02-11T20:32:00.003-06:00

Graham Cracker!

2010-01-02T19:08:00.002-06:00

Tummy Time

2009-11-16T20:18:00.004-06:00

Karl Laughs!

2009-10-07T20:18:00.002-05:00

2009-09-09T06:56:00.002-05:00

New Camera!

2009-02-07T13:37:00.002-06:00

Dad got us a new camera last night, and we've been busy taking pictures of the kitties (what else would we be doing?)

Aren't they cute?

I Wish I Weren't Able To Do Basic Math

2009-02-05T23:04:00.002-06:00

I'm just about through with media again. There's really only so much I can take before I have to go cold turkey to preserve what little faith in humans I still have. Sometime you just gotta block it all out.

Back and forth on this stimulus bill is what's got me really annoyed at the moment. And since I can't read yet another short essay proving just how little economics people know, I decided to actually dust off those critical thinking and research skills I supposedly use professionally each day.

Yep, I actually read the text of the housing tax credit amendment. Then I did some math. And then I sent my thoughts to Nick, who did yet more math (see how this math thing spreads like a disease, reproducing itself as it travels via social networks? Dastardly stuff!).

The interesting thing you might notice, if you look closely, is that this is a stimulus designed to deliver to biggest bang to the upper middle class. Everyone is shouting $15,000, but no one wants to mention the 10%. This is really easy math here: a 10% credit that tops out at $15,000 means that the benefit not only stops at the first $150,000 in the home price, but it also delivers less than 15 grand for houses that cost less than $150,000.

And then there's the tax credit part. This baby isn't a refund. And you can only stretch it out over 2 years. So if you don't pay at least $7500 in federal income taxes each year, it doesn't matter how expensive a home you bought.

I don't think I know a single apartment dweller (aka potential homebuyer) who pays more than $7500 in income taxes to the fed in a year. They must all live in Manhattan.

So, for a single person earning $40,000 gross, you'll have to subtract the standard deduction, medicare/social security payments, 401k contributions and student loan interest (and any other deductions they may have). That leaves a taxable income level that pushes your home purchase tax rebate to less than $4,500 each year. Nick calculated that a married couple would have to earn more than $55,000 in TAXABLE income to receive the full benefit. That implies either a pretty sizable paycheck, or a couple who are so behind on their retirement contributions that they should put any tax rebate money they get into cat food futures.

When they roll out things like this for the "middle class," I start to wonder how many people I know who are actually IN the middle class. Oh well, at least this provision isn't alone. It can sit right next to the mortgage interest deduction as one of those things that middle class people can't live without even though they don't have enough money to actually use them.

Rain in Cali

2008-12-25T12:22:00.002-06:00

So, I've finally gotten around to posting another blog post. Nick and I are here in Cali, at the 'rents, watching the drizzle mist the windows. Not the most spectacular weather, but a heck of a lot better than what we leaft behind in MN.

The worst part of a rainy Christmas day is that you're pretty much stuck inside the house. Perhaps I'll make some tea, read the cozy mom's checked out from the library, and stuff my face with more Yule Log (I make a mean Yule Log!).

Only two more days of vacation before work in LA.

Coming Home!

2008-09-24T12:27:00.002-05:00

Yesterday's dinner plans kept going awry. The French restaurant we wanted to go to was fully booked by an event, so we had to look for an alternative. That's when we decided to go to a Jamaican place. So we all board Marta to get there, only to find that the place is shut down. So back on Marta to the next stop in Buckhead, where we wandered basically from one stop to the next in search of food.

Thankfully we finally settled on an Italian place (we'd started this process at 6:30, and didn't get to a table until 8:00). I don't know what it is, but add some academics and some bottles of wine, and suddenly you've got a three hour meal. I didn't get back to my room until 11 pm.

Thankfully, this colloquium is now over as well. I've packed up the library, and I'm getting myself ready to head to the Marta station. Even with a gas shortage in the city of Atlanta, at least the Marta goes to the airport!

Hotlanta!

2008-09-21T15:04:00.004-05:00

Here I am in Atlanta, enjoying the beautiful weather in the snazzy Marriott Renaissance. It's actually a pretty nice hotel. No refrigerated towels in the workout room, but there are balconies in every room, so I can get real fresh air! Plus, we're within walking distance of tons of restaurants, which is always very nice.

I'm starting to think that Atlanta is my favorite place to go for Colloquium. You can't beat a town with lots of good food, nice hotels, and decent weather. I also rode MARTA from the airport, which was fantastically easy and fast.

Last night Sommer and I went to Shout for dinner. Thanks to Google Maps (which seriously mis-labeled Shout on the map), we ended up walking about 3 miles before we actually got to dinner. Still, despite being 30 minutes late for our reservation, it was a great meal.

Sommer had sushi (and sake), while I went for a more traditional salmon dinner. We split a dessert medly, with the most amazing molten chocolate cake. Even if the service was pretty slow, that cake was worth waiting for.

As you can see, it's a bit trendy, and we were a little horrified by the number of bachelorette parties (we counted 5 during our stay). It wasn't as good as the YO Ranch Steakhouse in Dallas, but still pretty good.

With two more nights out before we head back, I think we're going to go to the French American Brasserie for some more posh fare.

But we couldn't leave without going to the Varsity! I can see it from my hotel room, and the only reason we haven't gone already is the Saturday Georgia Tech game. Nothing like hordes of football fans to make a quick trip for hotdogs impossible.

I'm already practicing my order, so I'll be able to respond right away when they call "what'll ya have?" My only dilemma right now is cheese or no cheese on the chili dog.

5 Nights, 6 Days, 17 Portages

2008-08-24T18:17:00.005-05:00

Dad finally dropped off the pictures from the BWCA, and I've uploaded them to shutterfly. We look remarkably clean and rested in the photos.

I like the portage view from under the canoe. Dad took this picture after I had portaged a short distance - there was no way I was going to stand there with a canoe on my head after carrying it half a mile. And I did both 180 rod portages on this trip.

Here's how happy I am to be portaging a measly 30-rodder:

And, despite seeing two bears . . .

We had no unfortunate encounters. Perhaps it's our excellent bear bag hanging skills!

I have to say we're such old hands that we made pretty good time. While boyscouts kept passing us on portages, we managed to pass them on the open water. And we also, somewhat miraculously, never flipped the canoe.

Maybe next time . . .

Back in Civilization

2008-08-18T16:27:00.003-05:00

I made it back from my BWCA trip, and will shortly have pictures to prove it. I'm reliant on Dad sending me photos from his camera, the only one we had on the trip.

It was a pretty good trip all around, even though I managed to get some major bruises in the course of one of the portages.

Meanwhile, back in civilization, I received photos from my trip to Dallas. Here is my favorite picture of one of the librarians (not me) being carried back to the hotel by a writing faculty member. She couldn't walk the mile back in her shoes. You'd think we were students by the look of this!

This is why most librarians choose sensible shoes - to avoid embarrassing photos on the web!

Goodbye, Dallas!

2008-08-06T16:25:00.003-05:00

I'm sitting in the Continental President's Club at the Dallas airport, enjoying the refreshments and the wireless internet. It's good to be leaving Dallas, finally, but it is a bit unfortunate that we're heading out just as the temperature has dropped enough to make walking around town bearable.

Despite the heat, a bunch of us went to the Y.O. Ranch Steakhouse in the West End on Monday night. It was by far the best meal I've ever had at a colloquium, and probably the best restaurant meal I've had so far in 2008.

I started with the house salad, which was an astonishingly delicious combination of greens, candied pecans, goat cheese, and apple. Sommer and I split the mixed grill, with a buffalo filet mignon, elk chops, and quail. I also ordered the Gouda mac and cheese and a piece of chocolate cake with raspberry coulis.

Luckily everyone was willing to share, so I got to try a taste of the pheasant ravioli and what was very likely the best pork chop on the planet. This was the first expensive meal I've had all year that was actually worth the price.

It was so good, in fact, that I might actually want to come back to Dallas, just to eat there a second time. It certainly is preferable to Orlando, which was a dining wasteland. Ditto with Lansdowne and Anaheim. At least the next trip to Atlanta will be near The Varsity. Not fine dining, but hopefully good.

I shall not succumb to blog fade

2008-08-04T08:16:00.005-05:00

After talking to the much more consistent blogger of Wordlustitude this morning, I'm making a concerted effort not to let my blog just fade away.

It still feels like I do so much blogging on my work blog, that blogging here is redundant, but in reality, the two blogs are completely different. At least I haven't bored anyone here with my opinions on Wikipedia and Cuil - I just bore people with fat dogs and African violets.

I'm in Dallas right now, which really doesn't have much to recommend it. Welcome to Dallas, where we shot a President! Or, Dallas, where the sun can set your clothes on fire.

Seriously, it's been over 100 every day that we've been here, and it'll probably stay that way until we leave. I'd never go outside, but the hotel is so freaking over air-conditioned that I have to stand outside between sessions just to get full circulation in my toes.

We're staying at the Hyatt, which is connected to the most architecturally interesting building in Dallas: a giant, concrete dandelion. You can eat dinner in it. Yep, that's what Dallas has to offer.

At least I'm able to crawl out of bed early enough to get a spot in the hotel gym (and Hyatt does have those refrigerated towels). Plus, I can watch hulu in my room, and thereby avoid all of the cable news channels, which seem to make up all the television channels available in hotels.

I can't wait for my vacation next week!

We're overrun by pets!

2008-07-09T22:11:00.004-05:00

The fat dogs are back - and will be here on and off for much of the summer. At least the 'rents have their house on the market. There is an end in sight.

Today we got our newest member of the household - the fish. He seems happy enough, despite the cats.

And so far we're all surviving the heat. Although I was a bit worried about Tasha puffing away in Monday night. I guess 85 degrees inside is a bit much for a fat dog.

I think I've been blogging for work too much; I just can't get into blogging here. That, and there really isn't that much going on these days. I dragged Nick to a Swing class on Thursday - I think he's nearly got the basic Lindy down. The rest was a good refresher. Now I just have to goad him into Contra on Saturday. I mentioned English Country dancing and he looked a bit sick. I guess I'll leave that one for now.

Other than that, I'm devouring The Ghost Map, which is fabulous. And tomorrow is my first book club meeting at work. So far I only have three people (myself included) who have actually read the book. We'll see if there are any surprises tomorrow. I guess three's better than nothing . . .

It's Finally Summer!

2008-06-25T17:41:00.003-05:00

I can tell it's summer again, because it's 83 degrees inside my house. It never seems to be the perfect temperature - always too hot or too cold. I probably need to move to a more temperate locale.

Fat dog is here again, since she's been banished from the new carpet house due to he own poor behavior. She's been good so far, and the kitties have tolerated her. Except for one incident at 3 am on Monday.

I recently enjoyed "Is Google Making us Stupid?" in the Atlantic Monthly. Nicholas Carr apparently forgot that we've always been stupid. It's just more interactive now. Of course, that led me to the more interesting article American Murder Mystery, which makes the shocking point that inner city crime is not actually caused by density. It reminds me of all the epidemiologists who talk about crime as if it were an infectious disease . . .

And then there was this: "Fuel Prices Shift Math for Life in Far Suburbs" in the New York Times. It's full of comments about how suburban schools are always better than urban ones - another myth that I'm sure will be disproved soon. C'mon, it's all about the parents, anyway.

That said, I'm hoping that those exurbanites don't move into my neighborhood. Exurbanites live in the exurbs for a reason, and the last thing I want is for them to turn my urban neighborhood (which is the only place you can live an urban lifestyle) into a recreation of the suburbs. They could tear up the sidewalks to increase the size of front lawns, push out buses because the stops encourage loitering and take away on-street parking space, or zone out corner businesses because they interfere with the "residential feel" and lack parking lots.

Hopefully the houses are too small around here to be appealing. Plus, I'm walking down the street a lot, and perhaps I look hoodlum enough to scare them off. At any rate, for the moment I hear mostly birds chirping outside my open windows. I don't want it to become the noise of leafblowers and SUV engines filling my house.

It's so inconvenient when losers keep winning!

2008-06-04T21:11:00.004-05:00

I haven't bothered to write much about the current election in a while, but the last few weeks have had me shaking my head. I'm just astonished by the treatment of Hillary Clinton's campaign by many in the party and the press. For so long there has been the constant drumbeat of calls for her to quit. The insults took nearly every form: she's a sore loser, she's wrecking the Democrats' chances, she doesn't have support, she's the candidate of the old (read: racist/losing) Democratic party.

Now I'm not a big Hillary fan. I actually think she's only marginally less bad than Obama. My favorite candidate dropped out long ago because nobody liked him but me. Oh well. But let's stop for a minute and think about what we've done in the process of vilifying Hillary.

The party made a gigantic, colossal, ridiculous, horrifying mistake by nullifying the Michigan and Florida primaries. I don't believe that they should have taken results from the primaries as they were done (that would certainly not be fair to Obama in Michigan), but they absolutely should have called "do over." The cost of new primaries and the precedent of special treatment is far less of a concern to me than the near disenfranchisement of so many primary voters. This isn't Zimbabwe or Kenya - we can redo a primary in a fair manner that would get to the actual preferences of Michigan and Florida voters. Their voices are not being properly heard, and in a primary where even Montana managed to be pivotal, it should have been done.

The attitude of the media and the party has done a great disservice to women. I remember the day I realized as a child that my grandmothers were born into an America where they couldn't vote. I now wonder what we will say to our collective granddaughters when they learn about the first really viable female presidential candidacy. How could a woman have won so many primaries and still be so consistently be called a loser (and she won them right up to the end)? The labels used in this campaign were not the language you hear in any other close race - no nail biting or neck-and-neck. The moment Obama won Iowa the new press meme ran rampant: She's lost! Now she must crawl into a hole and disappear! Wait! Why is she still here? She must be ruining everything!

It's quite disingenuous for people to keep going on and on about Obama's campaign as being a shocking, surprise victory as well. I remember the 2004 convention. Anyone who saw that production was well aware of the collective gush that followed his speech. And the gush kept happening long after that. It would have been surprising if he hadn't managed a very successful run for the candidacy.

And now there has been so much focus on the question of racism, it's nearly tarred every Hillary supporter out there. The claim that Hillary represents the "old" Democratic party, which started long before the talk of door-to-door campaigners hearing racial slurs, is particularly damaging to the party. Treating Hispanics, women, and blue collar workers as if they are all part of Strom Thurmond's Democratic party only pushes people away. And it sorely misrepresents the true base of the party. Are we now to think that women aren't the backbone of the party? That Hispanics aren't a growing electoral force? That working class people, who have been hit incredibly hard by the economic changes of the last decade, shouldn't be a major focus? Get real.

And just how are we going to explain this one to the next generation? "Well, you see honey, she may have won a lot of votes, and she may have kept winning primaries, but not all of her votes could really count, and some might have been from racists. And by continuing to win, she just got in the way of the real winner. So, what you should learn from this is that if you are very close to winning, but it's not 100% sure you will win, you should just give up so that people will still like you."

So here we are; Obama now gets to preside over a party that has spent several months devouring itself. It wasn't the long campaign that did the damage, or even the candidates, really. Candidates are always going to try to spin things in ridiculous ways. You just have to ignore that and move on.

I blame the press and the party regulars. They turned this from a constructive fight about minor policy differences into a destructive battle over who really counts as a Democrat.

Adventures with Fat Dogs

2008-06-04T20:47:00.003-05:00

It doesn't take long before there's some sort of adventure afoot with the fat dogs. Today we were on our evening stroll and just a block from home I looked down at Tasha. Although her face was complacent enough, there was blood everywhere!

She had worn down a nail on her front paw to the quick, and with each step blood was spattering across her stomach and down her hind legs. We got her home and I had to try to wash off the blood while Nick ran to Walgreens to pick up some first aid supplies. In the time he was gone, the bleeding mostly took care of itself, but we still had to bandage off her paw in case it started again. We wrapped it up nicely, and she seemed to tolerate it just fine. You can see our handiwork here:Only a few minutes after this picture I left Tasha alone to file some papers. I should have known that the dog who loves to eat kleenex wouldn't be able to resist gauzy bandages. She had the bulk of her bandage halfway down her throat before I could pull it out.

So, we wrapped it up again, and then sacrificed one of my socks to be the bandage cover. So far she hasn't taken to eating socks, but I'll keep my eye on her!

Fat Dogs are Visiting

2008-06-03T22:00:00.003-05:00

To make sure that the new carpet isn't ruined at the 'rents, I've got the fat dogs for a few days. We'll see how this goes - the cats are already pretty ticked, and it's only been half an hour so far! At least it's warm enough that they might not want to all sleep in the bedroom with us. Six beings in a 10X12 room is a bit too cozy for my tastes!

What do you mean, no flange?

2008-05-27T21:56:00.003-05:00

So, on Saturday morning the toilet came up. We were sure we'd find something pretty questionable down there, based on our general experiences in this house and the puddle of water that formed on the basement floor. We weren't (were?) disappointed; the last person to install the toilet did so without using a toilet flange. They just stuck a wax ring onto the top of the drain pipe and dropped the toilet on top. Then they screwed the toilet to the subfloor.

Needless to say, non-standard toilet installation is not a good idea. In the decade that toilet was sitting there, bit by bit the floor rotted due to water not quite getting into the drain. So Nick & Dad spent the better part of Saturday morning digging out what was rotten and getting a flange put in place.

By the time I got home it was time to actually install the toilet. That wasn't as easy as we'd hoped, and we had to make a second trip to the hardware store to get an extension for the socket wrench. Somehow I got the job of reaching around the toilet to try to attach the tank to the bowl. I'm obviously just a weekend warrior - I had to rethink which direction an upside down "righty-tighty" was several times. Still, it's finally in. Here's the new (and incredibly tall) toilet in the bathroom, and the old (shall we make it a rabbit-proof planter?) toilet in the yard.
Now I just have to paint the sections of wall that were unreachable when we had the old toilet. That is, of course, if I'm not spending all my time working elsewhere. I have another Saturday shift at work, and every moment I have free seems to be spent working at mom's. Saturday afternoon was painting the exterior of her house (while Nick helped dad with the deck), and Sunday was painting the interior. Thank goodness I took Monday to work for myself, or I'd still be microwaving in the dining room, wearing dirty clothes, and crawling over piles of tools everywhere!

I even took enough time to play with Moxie and her tent. After sitting on the floor for three years with almost no activity, this tent is now Moxie's favorite toy. It's already been through one repair, and needs a second stint with my sewing box very soon.

So, what's next? I've still got to go through everything we took out of the basement and get that space set up. I've put in my order for a new laundry shelf, which I'm hoping Nick will get done over the weekend while I'm at work. I've also got to get our last boxes out of the storage locker and all the junk sorted and moved out of the spare bedroom. We have to move all the furniture at mom & dad's over the weekend and there's supposed to unload a bed that'll be going into that spare bedroom! Right now I can barely get through that room to water the plants . . . I guess I know what I'll be doing when I'm not watching LOST this week. That, and figuring out how to stuff an old toilet in a Chevy Malibu.

Three Down, How Many More To Go?

2008-05-20T05:54:00.003-05:00

First the drain tile in the basement (no water yet . . . it works!). Then the plumbing extravaganza (pipes, chimney lining, shut-off valves, and water heater). Finally, the new kitchen counter and sink. I thought that all would go smoothly with the tile at least. How difficult can it be?

We have learned it can, in fact, be quite difficult. First came the electrician to install some under cabinet lights. We (fools that we are) thought that would be a simple job lasting a couple hours. No such luck. The curse of the handyman special came back with a vengeance. Our kitchen electrical was so confused and not up to code that it took the electrician a day and a half to get it all sorted out. So, as you can imagine, that one ended up costing about four times what we'd hoped. Instead of actually counting up the real job, you can just estimate our electrician costs by the number of outlets we end up with in the end; it's about $300-$400 per outlet. Of course, our first call to an electrician was far less than that (only about $50 per outlet), but that electrician came to fix up our bad wiring job. Apparently we are only slightly bad electricians, whereas the previous handyman electrician was a real loser.

Of course, the budget busting electrical work came before the actual counter tops. The tile went in pretty well, with no major hangups until the finish work. Then came my beautiful, Kohler cast-iron, special order sink. It didn't fit in the hole. It wasn't that the hole was cut too small or too big. It was the actual cabinet that was too small. The deranged gnome who built my lower cabinets 2 inches too shallow also built the sink cabinet about two inches too narrow on each side. You can't fit a fabulous cast-iron sink into a space with cabinet walls infringing on it. The bowls don't fit inside. You also can't fit a snazzy stainless steel sink, since there's no way to clamp it in place. Goodbye beautiful sink (and $35 in restocking fees). Hello cheesy acrylic.
And since no home improvement stores provide handy specs for their goods, there's no way to figure out which awful sink will actually fit unless you either look at every possibility on the sink manufacturers websites, or open up the sink, flip it over, and measure it yourself. We did a combination of both. At least the acrylic sink fits.

Then we had to install the faucet and drain pipes. Nick failed to look at the big red letters on the side of the plumbers putty - the ones that say DO NOT USE ON PLASTIC - so we installed the drains and faucet using the wrong stuff. Finally Nick was sent out to get some silicone caulk and we had to go through the process of uninstalling and reinstalling . . . at 10:30 on a Sunday night!

And then, finally, we had our new counters, sink, and lights. It's really lovely, and now all I have to do is try to keep it from being ruined!But wait . . . There's more! As soon as we were done with the kitchen, I went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. Before I could even switch on the light, my foot landed in a puddle. I have never wished I had stepped in cat pee so much in my life. Unfortunately the cats have all been relatively well-behaved. The puddle was actually water that seeped from the base of the toilet. It looks as though our wax ring has failed. And to top it off, the mechanics in the tank seem to be off: there's a constant sound of refilling unless you manually lift the float at the end of a flush.

Now, pulling up the toilet to replace the wax ring wouldn't be so tough, but remember, Satan's handyman worked on this house. The shutoff valve won't budge, and instead of being bolted in place, the toilet was just screwed to the subfloor. And those screws are completely rusted. Nick is going to attempt to replace the valve, and he's already memorized what Menard's carries in their plumbing section. Once that toilet is up, we don't know what horrors we'll find. And that damn thing is the ONLY TOILET WE'VE GOT!

Wagon Train!!!

2008-05-14T22:14:00.005-05:00

Kelly & I went to check out the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Wagon Train as it went through Saint Paul. Here are some pics:Tomorrow they start tearing out the kitchen counter tops. No more ugly multi-colored tile. We're almost done with the major jobs for this year (I hope). And, finally, here's a bored kitty with an African Violet.

Basement is Halfway There!

2008-04-10T18:26:00.004-05:00

The drain tile is now in, and I'm halfway through scrubbing walls and repainting (not to mention hauling everything back down the stairs. So, in the meantime, here are my pictures of the work in progress:

And now with the cement in and the paint up (at least in half the basement).

Next week plumbers! And then I'll finally be working on projects that you can actually see, like new kitchen counter tops. And molding. And windows. Any the garden (it it that time again?).

How did I get so busy?

2008-03-19T16:54:00.005-05:00

Back when I was in grad school, I would fantasize about how wonderful it would be to be done. There'd be nothing but time on my hands to read, be crafty, clean . . . but somehow I seem as busy--if not more so--as I was back in those dark days of evening classes and literature searches. (Oh, wait, I still search for literature.)

Image from Flickr

The last few weeks I've barely been home in the evenings, even when you exclude my work trip to Virginia. With Nick gone the last few days I've not only not been home, but it seems like the whole house has entered a time-warp where everything stays exactly the same. I'm not there to clean, but I'm not there to mess either.

In fact, when I discovered that the phone wasn't working last night, I had no idea how long it's been down. That, plus the whole woman-at-home-alone /horror-filmesque-plot-point, made it a rather surreal experience. Luckily Moxie is my cat in the coal mine - if she doesn't act frightened, then there can't possibly be an intruder lurking behind my shower curtain. This was especially important the night I went out without locking the door. So, Nick not only cooks, but he locks up behind me as well.

I did shovel the snow, though. Nick doesn't manage that one very well ;)

The funny thing about having no phone service is that you're really stuck. I couldn't call the phone company about it (obviously) and I couldn't look them up online either. When I did call them this morning they gave the whole "we'll charge you up to whazoo if it's an internal wiring problem" spiel, so here I am, no phone, and stuck trying to figure out the source of the problem before I call them to fix it. Good thing Nick'll be back with the cell phone soon. Being incommunicado while home alone makes one really want to reach out and touch someone. Lucky for Nick he can sleep through most conversations - and does so nightly in front of the t.v.

Speaking of t.v., I love my digital converter box (with the one exception of it making it tougher to Retro TeVo my favorite shows). Seven channels of PBS is fabulous. And the three episodes of Eastenders per week starts up soon - I'm in television heaven. Thank you wasteful, pandering demagogues of Congress!

Why don't I care when memoirs are faked?

2008-03-07T14:42:00.003-06:00

It seems that the last few years have seen several high-profile cases of faked memoirs. And each time I find myself interested in the details, but also puzzled by all of the hoopla. Now, I get my undies in a bunch every time I hear about plagiarism, but that seems different to me. Of course taking someone else's written work and pawning it off as your own is wrong. Insert "television" for "written work" and you can see how it directly resembles theft in the cops-and-robbers sense.

But making up a memoir? No one is out any money because they've had their own endeavors stolen by another. If not being the writer of the life portrayed were wrong because the person who actually lived it isn't benefiting, then biographers are consistently and permanently in the wrong. But many times the fake memoirist isn't even stealing someone else's life, they're merely playing pretend and neglecting to put the word "fiction" above the ISBN on the back cover.

Printing a false "truth" is hardly new. In fact it seems to have been a preferred literary model in the 18th century. Dangerous Liaisons, Moll Flanders, the Castle of Otranto: these are all faked works that falsely purported to be real, and while they fooled some, they were not shredded for it. In fact, many of my favorite works of fiction are memoirs.

So why are we so angered by this long-standing genre? Are we so wedded to a world of anecdote that we can't understand the problem of drug addiction without a Million Little Pieces to make it real? Is the only thing keeping us from being Holocaust deniers the ability to peek into the diary of a young girl? That would be far more worrisome than a fictional life story.

Or is there just too much shame in being labeled a fool? Are we collectively terrified of being Blair Witched? We place such an emphasis on the individual in America that maybe being tricked by a memoir is just an unforgivable sign of weakness in ourselves.

Personally, I kind of like being tricked this way. The faked memoir shows a slyness that is appealing -- it doesn't hurt me to believe in a life not lived. I certainly don't rule my own life by example of a memoir any more than by a novel. Both can illuminate how I see the world and how others experience it. Isn't that the point of fiction as much as biography? If there must be mendacity in the world I would rather it be between the pages of a memoir than in the content of a scientific research paper, or in the mail that comes to my grandmother.

So, perhaps I should content myself with Thackeray's Barry Lyndon, a lie on so many levels. A fake editor brings us the fake memoir of a man who never lived, but who nonetheless feels the need to lie about the true events of his life in order to protect his own, completely fictional, ego. Thank goodness for his Million Little Duels . . . I can't imagine a better joke in reality.

Kirk wishes he had pursued a different career . . .

2008-03-06T07:42:00.003-06:00

as a librarian. Why would he want to be a Starfleet captain when he could know how to find everything in the universe?

I suspect Picard actually was a librarian at heart.

Things are happening . . .

2008-03-01T16:41:00.006-06:00

We've had a parade of laborers around here as we start to get down to brass tacks with all the remodeling. Plumbers, tilers, and concrete installers have been coming through with their quotes. It looks like we may actually get some things done around here. And then I can say goodbye to the ugly kitchen countertops for good.Aren't they ugly?

The orchid is finally coming around, too. It's about time.
And the cat's are being their usual naughty selves, as you can see by Moxie's worrisome interest in my orchid. But I guess they're cute enough to keep around for a while.

Finally, a day off . . .

2008-02-21T11:21:00.002-06:00

Kind of. I've still got some work that I need to do, but at least I've had the time and freedom to do some cleaning around here. Well, picking up, if not dusting and scrubbing.

And I managed to read most of my latest Economist. Oh how I missed real news while away. There's nothing worse than cable news channels, and that's just about all we had at the Conference Center (that and 800 channels of ESPN . . . not sure which one I find the least appealing).

At least my lack of t.v. news did give me some respite from this interminable presidential campaign. Every time I watch any coverage, I feel a bit like I'm on a death watch. It doesn't really matter who wins, it's going to be major letdown, culminating in a lackluster one-termer. The right hates Clinton so much, I wouldn't be surprised if they're already drafting articles of impeachment, just in case they get the chance to use them. And McCain and Obama keep making promises that any reasonable person knows are doomed to failure. McCain probably has the best chance of surviving his broken campaign slogans, but that's mostly because only about 5% of his supporters actually like him. The rest are just holding their noses.

Seriously, does anyone believe that we can really make it through the next four years without raising taxes? Oh, sure, we can try; let's just sit back while we create a complete and total budget disaster. And what's up with the near messianic love of Obama? He's a politician, folks, and most of what he's spewing is pipe dreams. Remember when everyone loved W? When he was a regular guy, who would bring compassion and dignity back to the office of the president? When his approval ratings were around 80%? Umm, how many months did that last? And how hard and low did he fall?

Oh, well. I should probably just gird myself for the inevitable. There will be an election that votes in someone who is supposed to fix everything, someone who will assuredly work across the aisle for consensus. And then people will slowly realize that what they thought they were voting for can't really happen. And then there will be anger and despondency. Perhaps America will "lose its innocence" again for the bazillionth time.

Maybe if we're lucky--really, really lucky--something truly awful will end up killing lots of us. That will give the president (and countless governors) an opportunity to make a stirring speech about coming together and moving forward. And everyone will be happy again, sending approval ratings through the roof.

Let's just hope that bird flu or a hurricane doesn't kill off all the speech writers. . .

Peanut Butter Jars are Falling from the Heavens

2008-02-16T21:38:00.003-06:00

While walking back from the grocery store this morning, Nick & I were surprised by something falling to the ground just in front of us: an empty peanut butter jar.

It came out of nowhere, falling down to the ground at the base of a tree. Some enterprising squirrell must have snagged it out of the recycling and hauled it up the tree. Those little buggers are getting pretty smart.

Not long after that, just as we were trying to leave for the airport, something went thud in the car and we were left with no steering. Trying to scrape another two years out of this car is starting to look questionable. It's good I live close to the bus line.

I'm now in Virginia at the National Conference Center, which is, as they bill themselves, a "city within itself." It's pretty confusing around here: rooms have this complicated lettering and numbering system, and I'm not sure how I'll find breakfast yet. At least I had a good dinner with some tasty profiteroles at the end (not here, but at a "lifestyle center" down the road . . . this place is a sea of strip malls and townhomes. A bit too stepford for my tastes.)

Tomorrow I start with reference appointments and teaching sessions. We'll see how my advanced session goes. . . they'll be taping it. Yikes!

Well, I'm not dead yet . . .

2008-02-10T18:45:00.001-06:00

Well, it was bitterly cold out there. While the temperature wasn't too bad (on Saturday at least), the winds were definitely fierce. We were going to camp on the hill between Long Lake and Lake Neilson, but once we got there it was obvious that the wind was charging off of Long Lake and nearly creating a whiteout at the top of the hill. In the picture at left I'm lounging in the windbreak I built on the slope facing Lake Neilson. While it did break the wind, we decided to all sleep in the parachute on top of the lake instead.

We hauled a picnic table down to the lake for cooking, and everyone spent the afternoon building shelters. There were 7 quinzes, one "bunker," and two parachutes for the 34 of us (9 adults, 25 boys). We did send one boy back before dinner due to the windchill, but the rest of us toughed it out.

When we first left for camp it was a balmy 15 with light winds and snow showers. By 4pm the temperature was starting to drop by about a degree every half hour. We had reached zero before dinner was done cooking.

Inside the parachute wasn't so bad; it blocked the wind and the chorus of snoring around me drowned out the sound of the lake ice cracking beneath us. But, somehow I managed to press the wrong buttons on my watch and I ended up thinking it was much closer to dawn than it really was. It was a terrible moment when I realized that while my watch read 7:52 am, it was actually nowhere near that late, and I'd have to continue debating whether I should risk getting up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.

I decided to wait, mostly because I couldn't imagine trying to zip myself back into the bag when it was already covered with frost. Not long before dawn I could feel that the air in the parachute had gotten much colder. When I finally got up at about 6;30 it was -18 outside with winds of 30 - 40 miles an hour. It was a very bitter walk to the latrine at the top of the hill. Thank God it has walls.

Unfortunately, it didn't warm up very fast, and with windchills that were probably at -50 for much of the morning, we decided to break camp "fast." That meant no breakfast and no warm drinks (or any drinks). Most of the adults went to get the cars so we'd only have to cross the lake before climbing into a warm vehicle. Dad & I stayed behind. It took so long to get the boys up and going that I started to lose heat in my torso. Apparently three hours of -50 and no breakfast is about my endpoint. Being sick didn't help much either. I trudged across the lake and climbed into a truck and waited for the rest of the crew to finish up (2 hours later).

So, here I am, back home and sore as hell. Apparently shoveling for several hours is not the best thing when you've already coughed yourself into sore chest muscles. And my knees are unbelievably sore. I'm not sure why that is, but I'm guessing it's because I was shoveling uphill to help build a quinze. It must have been the up and down on the steep hill carrying shovelfulls of snow.

All of my pictures are from Saturday, since the cold temperatures killed the batteries in my camera. Which is good, since we all looked pretty haggard this morning. Dad had icicles hanging from his eyelashes, and my hair had sneacked out from under my hat, become frozen with my breath, and created a humorous "beard" around my chin.

Busy, busy, busy . . .

2008-02-06T16:58:00.000-06:00

I've been taken to task for hardly blogging at all lately. There's not much to say, except I'm so busy that I'm behind on work projects, behind on cleaning, behind on French, and behind on just about anything you can imagine. I've only kept up to date on meals.

I did half my civic duty last night by going to the caucus and being part of the straw poll. The caucus site was a complete madhouse - there were cars parked up and down every street, crowds trying to push through the halls, and a lack of enough sign-up sheets. Plus, those shoe boxes that passed as ballot boxes made me a bit nervous. At least Highland Park Jr. High was somewhat organized. It sounds like Macalester was just completely beyond the pale.

I left quickly(?) last night so I could get home and do some laundry for Winter Camping. I can't believe that I've got to spend the whole weekend doing that, and then turn around for five days of work followed immediately by a flight and five days of work. Blech.

At least I did ultimately figure out whom to support in the caucus. It involved reading a lot of candidate Issues pages and then figuring out what level of stupid everything is. I almost never think they say anything good. There's just stupid pointless and stupid dangerous. And the list is getting so long I may need a spreadsheet. Personally, I'm amazed that on the two biggest issues of the campaign--Iraq and the economy--I agree with 0% of the candidates. So much for voting my conscience. I also don't like to vote for the reasons that most people cite: change, experience, inspiration, looks. I also despise the coverage of elections:

Talking head 1: Let's cut to this 3 second quip that may determine the future of America.

Candidate on screen says something banal that somehow seems hilarious because a politician said it.

Talking head 2: Ha, ha, will that resonate with voters?

Talking head 1: Well, poll results show that Candidate A has rounded the final corner, but Candidate C is now a nose ahead of Candidate B. If Candidate D hadn't lost his jockey in the last turn, this could be a very different race. If Candidate B or C comes up with few more pithy and meaningless phrases, either might just win the triple crown.

Erin: Dammit Nick, I'm so sick of this shit.

Nick: I know. Let me make you dinner.

I guess it all means I'm screwed. Oh well. I'll go back to reading debate transcripts and complaining to Nick through the shower curtain every morning.

I'm Back!

2008-02-01T15:30:00.000-06:00

I know it's been a long time. I intended to update my blog once I got back from Italy, but it just got so darn busy. I've barely had time to keep on top of washing clothes and paying bills.

I do have a giant collection of Italy pictures up on Shutterfly. That was one thing I managed to finish right when I got back. They're all overcast, but what can you do? The weather is the weather.

Around here the weather has been atrocious. We dropped by 49 degrees in 24 hours this week, and now I'm dreading a return of the deep cold for next week's winter camping trip. Especially now that my cough has bruised my rib.

And the cold has driven the rabbits to desperation. They ate an entire rhododendron and a mock orange. These weren't tiny bushes, and now there's almost nothing left. Here is a picture of what little is left of the rhode:

Now, to top it all off, the sink has developed a giant crack across the bottom. If only we could have decided on a new counter top, the sink would have been replaced months ago. Oh well. At least I'm 100% sure I won't be buying a composite sink.

But I still have to decide between stainless steel and cast iron. And the counter? Still don't know.

And I haven't even decided which candidate to support at the caucuses. . .

New Year's Resolutions

2008-01-01T18:35:00.000-06:00

I don't have much to resolve this year, but I think I'm going to have to make a concerted effort to read novels again. I just can't seem to get through Tristram Shandy - the latest Economist keeps arriving just as I finish the old one, and now I have The Dirt on Clean beckoning me as well. I've also got a Maria Edgeworth sitting around, collecting library fines.

Perhaps I should also resolve not to get library fines.
Yeah, right.
Who am I kidding?

Watching Charlie Wilson's War

2007-12-27T20:17:00.000-06:00

I did go to a movie on Christmas, since I managed to get out of baking a cake and we all had some time on our hands. We decided on Charlie Wilson's War after a short debate about seeing that or Juno. I'll probably go to Juno with Kelly anyway, so this worked out well.

It was a pretty good flick, as far as dark comedies with superstars go. Mom didn't find it funny (which doesn't surprise me), but Nick & I did. I know that some reviewers have been put off by the quick roundup of the lack of support for Afghanistan at the end of the move (and the war against the Soviets), and I also felt that it missed something at the end. But it wasn't the tacked on bits about the Zen master and the unintended consequences of ditching your "allies." Instead, it was the naive manner with which they portrayed Wilson at the end. I mean, come on! this guy had been in Congress for a while; I can hardly believe he really was surprised that everyone would just walk away once there were no more Soviet helicopters to bomb. He really never asked "so, what happens once the war's over?" during the course of rounding up weapons and money? Geez.

But, then again, maybe that really is how it was. It's the "what happens next" that gets you in trouble, and that's what people always ignore until it's too late. I was reading something stupid in Commentary today about "no one" anticipating something or other (I can't remember exactly what it was . . . perhaps it was the rise of the Taliban and their anti-US stance). And all I could think was: get real, plenty of people could see this coming.

So, if anyone is surprised by any of the following, I'm just going to tell them they are an idiot in no uncertain terms. And this is a short list, so there may be many other idiots coming:

Civil War in Pakistan

Violent ethnic/religious uprising in India, goaded by the BJP

Ethiopia getting bogged down in a two front war

The entrenchment of al Qaeda in North Africa, including more bombings in Algeria, and probable violence in places such as Morocco, Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia

Growing charges of authoritarianism and diminishing democracy in South Africa, along with political instability caused by Zimbabwe's economy and SA's support of Mugabe

Housing-based recession (in several other OECD countries as well as the US), with increasing disparity between the middle class and the rich, along with a strong push to free states from balanced budget requirements

Who knows if any of these will happen. Just saying that we shouldn't be surprised if they do.

Now, what will really surprise me? Whatever Americans choose to dump all of their money into next. They've done stocks and houses. I just can't quite wrap my head around what they'll pick next. Art/antiques/collectibles, gold, and foreign currencies are the three that seem most accessible, but they also don't seem very likely to snag more than a few true believers. There's got to be something that will fill all those get-rich-quick desires and then explode into a giant catastrophe by 2014. But what?

Video IM Disasters

2007-12-27T20:07:00.000-06:00

For whatever reason I can't get the video IM to work on Windows Messenger. It's very annoying.

So, to cheer myself up, I've turned Saskia into a LOLcat.

moar funny pictures

I'm sure she'd be horrified if she used the internet.

Nothing like working after a holiday . . .

2007-12-26T21:30:00.000-06:00

Boy was today one of the quietest days on record at work - even worse than last Friday. At least I got part of my desk cleaned up.

And I'm still getting over my inability to get a new water heater. Here's hoping the old one manages to survive until we can get all the plumbing updated. And Sears better get my credit card bill refunded soon, or I'm going to get pissed!

And in my bit of complaining, I want to say that I'm really sick of getting DVDs of shows through Netflix and only having 2 episodes! I know this isn't Netflix's fault, but it's freaking annoying to have to get five separate discs just to watch 13 episodes. Somebody tell Al Gore how wasteful it is!

Next, a Water Heater

2007-12-17T18:17:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm nearly done with replacing nearly every major appliance in my house. The new water heater should be installed on Friday, and then I should be able to take a breather and actually spend money on making my house look better.

I'm seriously sick of home maintenance.

And the cat's keep attacking my holiday decorations. I think I need some people revenge--like this:
Some days I can has cheezburger is the only thing that makes me smile . . .

Cat Vacation & A New Oven

2007-12-08T14:56:00.001-06:00

Well, the kitties are on their mini vacation (it's listed on their very own google calendar - they're very up to date technologically). I hope they don't hate me too much when I pick them up tomorrow.

The new oven is here! It looks a lot like the old one, but we managed to get this one level. Now we're waiting for the fridge. It should be here within the hour. That will also have to be leveled and somehow crammed into the back hall closet. To get the old one out, we had to take off the doors (of the fridge and the entryway). You can see the fridge door in the picture below. Oh, the joys of old homes. . .

At least the plants love it. I've got more African Violet blooms coming, and the Christmas Cactus that used to be at my grandparents is blooming once again. I wasn't sure it'd like my house as much as their apartment, and despite blooming like mad late last winter, here it is, blooming again. And this time it's just in time for Christmas!

Things you hear in the shower in the wee hours of the morning.

2007-12-06T21:25:00.000-06:00

As per the usual, I was listeng to MPR in the shower when Marketplace Morning Report came on. It was about the mortgage crisis (of course), and in almost a passing fashion they mentioned that Moody's was predicting a 30% reduction in home values by 2009.

30%!!!

I'm gonna have to pull out my secret librarian powers and try to corroborate that one, 'cuz it just seems too remarkable to be true. A 30% reduction in home prices would send the Twin Cities market back to some time in 1999 or 2000!

While prices have gone a bit crazy in the last few years, it's hard to imagine that a median home in the Twin Cities is actually only going to be worth about $145,000 in two years. If you imagine that a home should cost about 3 times the buyer's income, that would put the median home at cheaper than the median household income in this town can afford. Now, that just doesn't seem quite right . . . especially since a big chunk of the bottom of the income scale doesn't buy any homes.

And if it were true, we're in for a shaky few years. My guess is that there is a huge chunk of the home-owning crowd who has at least 70% of their home value in the form of a mortgage or other loan. Loosing that much ground would send thousands of people upside down in the lending sense. Would banks foreclose? What a mess that would be.

To be honest, even in the most heated housing markets on the coasts, it's hard to imagine a 30% drop in prices. If you could buy a house in Santa Barbara for $6-700,000 there would be a mad dash - and rising prices once again.

So, I wonder how the other parts of the first world who have crazy housing markets are doing. Do they watch news reports of our downturn and wonder about their own fates? England has already had a run on a bank (how It's a Wonderful Life of them), and Australia's booted their PM. Seems it could just get more turbulent at any moment. . .

North American Union?

2007-12-05T17:25:00.000-06:00

Seems that the Ron Paul crowd is all worked up about the possibility of a North American Union. They're out in force to ridicule a recent article posted on Newsweek, which doesn't take the threat of a European Union-style multinational government very seriously.

So, they're concerned about a government based on border-crossing highways, a single currency, free movement of goods and people between states, and a unified system of tarrifs? Well folks, we already got it. The Founding Fathers thought it up.

Maybe these folks miss the days of Michigan and Ohio fighting their own wars, or multiple currencies across the many colonies. Can't say that I do.

I gotta wonder, what exactly do these folks think would happen if we joined a union with Canada and Mexico? (Not that it's likely - there's too great a social and economic divide to even imagine it right now.) Personally, I think an open border and single currency would be a real boon to the Mall of America, since it would be easier for Canadians to spend money there . . . especially when the dollars are proportioned as they are. Besides, we're already crawling with illegal Canadians. They're hard to ferret out!

The Cake that Broke my Oven

2007-12-03T09:19:00.001-06:00

Here's the guilty cake. It was pretty tasty, though.

The Green Thumb Strikes Again!

2007-12-01T16:14:00.001-06:00

Apparently, ignoring plants is one of the best things you can do for them. This orchid was handed to me after it had given its flowers to a wedding bouquet. (It had also been damaged when a closing door snapped both the stems and the sticks supporting them.) I stuck it in my east window along with all of my happy African Violets and basically forgot about it, except for weekly waterings of course.

It spent all summer growing a new leaf, and I periodically wondered if it should be repotted, if the stems should be trimmed off, or if I should move it to a new location. But I never bothered to do anything.

And now, if you look at the stem on the left you'll see that it's growing a new stem. It looks like I may actually get blooms! And the cats must find the taste horrible, since the orchis has no nibble marks, unlike the snake plants that are contantly ragged and stringy from chewing.

Plus, the mini African Violet looks like it's getting ready to bloom again. Boy, there's nothing like an east window. I'll post pictures of them both in bloom if they ever get there.

Mazel Tov, Snow, Burns, Broken Ovens, and Alarms

2007-12-01T09:47:00.000-06:00

Today, while waiting for the light rail, I noticed some interesting graffitti in the shelter: someone had scratched "mazel tov" into the plastic window. It made me laugh a little.

I was in the shelter because it's showing like mad out there right now. Which concerns me a little, since I baked the equivalent of 4 cakes yesterday (they are in the form of one two tiered cake and one sheet cake). Those cakes need to be driven to a party, and there better be at least 50 people there to eat them!

In the process of baking those cakes I was burned by a hot pan I was trying to hand to mom. And I was so focused on finishing the cakes that I didn't stop to run cold water on the burn.
Why was mom involved with the cake baking? Because my oven died. Right after I finished baking the first 10 inch layer (I thought it took a long time to bake). I guess I should have expected this - it was a "hot" oven by about 76 degrees, so obviously something was terribly wrong with it.

So now I get to shop for a new stove(we fixed this one once before - not again when a new one is only a bit more expensive than a repair bill). Hopefully I won't set off any alarms in Sears like I did this morning in the Skyways.

I tried to take a peek at what was in the window of the Nina Bliese Gallery, and suddenly the alarm is blaring. No one seemed to care, so it may still be squeeling away when I finish my reference shift.

Now all I have to do is successfully transfer a two tiered cake to Rosemount and decide what finish I want for a new stove. But that means I have to figure out what I want for countertops too . . . ack, so many decisions!

I'm on Facebook now

2007-11-29T17:35:00.000-06:00

Yep, there I am. I've been thinking about doing it for a while, because it seems that as long as everyone is so gaga over it, I might as well know what it is.

What it is, is a mess. There doesn't seem to be much of anything there that you can't do in other ways (what is a wall except a cross between email and IM?), most of what is there is pretty lame, and once you have much on your page, it's suddenly as messy as my dining room table after I've left Nick home alone for a week.

So, we'll give it a go and see if it's still worth any time once the novelty of getting new friends wears off. Perhaps I'll fall in love with Scrabulous. For the moment, I'm still feeling that banking is the online activity I like best.

Stupid 2.0 is more interactive!

2007-11-28T22:08:00.001-06:00

Yesterday was the SLA libraries 2.0 talk from Stephen Abram. Not much new, and I always leave these sorts of 2.0 talks wondering "who cares?" I mean, it's just more ways to be just as we are. So, now I have a facebook account, on top of my IM account, on top of my personal blog, on top of my work blog, on top of my Bloglines account, on top of my Flickr and YouTube accounts, on top of my Citeulike and Delicious accounts. And does this actually make my life easier/better/more interesting? Not really.

And does it make us any smarter, or at least better informed? I'm still waiting to see evidence of that. I think of my great grandfather reading the Congressional Record on his farmstead in rural Montana, and boy, that's a lot more informed than your average Delicious user. Just think, in 1860 when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumpter everyone thought the war would be quick, easy, over in a month or two. Now, after the invention of the telephone, the interstate highway system, email, cell phones, IM, Twitter, and on and on, the vast majority of Americans believed in March 2003 that war would be quick, easy, over in a month or two. Seems to me we just get to spread our flawed opinions in a slightly faster, and more digital manner. So we learned of the 2005 Tsunami in minutes and it took hours for people to hear about the eruption of Krakatoa? Did that really change anyone's response? (Oh, I would have cared, but this news is six hours old!)

French class seems much more informative and useful. And it's SOOOO 1.0. We actually sit around a classroom, read from a textbook, and attempt to form sentences in front of each other. C'est la vie! (Which reminds me, I do intend to practice my tiny bit of French in a blog post one of these days. Beware French speakers, there will be butchering of your tongue!)

What a busy month!

2007-11-26T19:15:00.000-06:00

Seems like a whirlwind! I barely got back from Orlando and I was out the door to New York. Back from New York and it's time to drive across Wisconsin for the holidays. Add in oral surgery (boy, fake bone is expensive and painful), and you've got one packed (and expensive) month.

That's why I don't feel bad about letting Nanowrimo slide. I beat last year's total, so at least that's good.

So, here's me at the New York Public Library.

Vodcast from the Tap

2007-11-05T21:43:00.000-06:00

5,000 baby!

2007-11-02T22:10:00.000-05:00

I can barely believe it! I've made it past the 5,000 mark on just day two. If I can push ahead to a strong finish this weekend, I may actually be able to finish my 50,000 by the end of the month without spending the entirety of Thanksgiving writing.

And, let me tell you, writing this terrible prose is almost as bad as reading it.

Will it work this year?

2007-11-01T23:14:00.000-05:00

Once again I'm trying to do NaNoWriMo. We'll see if this year is any better than last. I've already beat last year's total, but that was pretty easy with only 1600 words in last year's novel.

It's certainly terrible this year, but it's more fun to write. So maybe I'll get to 25,000 this time. I'm not counting on winning yet, that's for sure.

Colloquium Fun!

2007-10-28T20:51:00.000-05:00

Here I am in Orlando . . . working the long hours and eating hotel food. I'm almost halfway through, and the suite is nice. But I'm here so little, it's almost not worth it. Tonight I'm sitting in the living area, watching tv #2, just so I can feel like I'm getting the full use of the room!
I've been swimming in the pool two nights so far. I think it's a colloquium record for the librarians!
And now for a funny picture from icanhascheezburger.

Boy, talk about being a Librarian!

2007-10-17T19:16:00.000-05:00

Today I finally posted my weird database search experience on one of the listservs I'm on. One day I was searching for information about SWOT analyses and I went into ProQuest's ABI/INFORM. Since I didn't want to see any actual company SWOT analyses--I was interested in finding articles that explain the process--I did a very basic search so that I could identify the marker of a company SWOT and figure out how to remove them from a second search. To do that I searched just SWOT. I thought that would be simple, and then I got my results back.

Sure, there were some articles out of the 3000 that used the word SWOT. But the vast majority were highlighting a few different, and very unusual, words instead: wonk, nerd, and grind. What the heck was going on? At first I thought that the database just didn't like my acronym, but a search for TQM was spot on. Then I became more puzzled.

The other librarians couldn't give me an answer (okay, they laughed at me). So I brought it to the listserv, and then suddenly it all started to make sense. One of the librarians mentioned that Swot is British slange for a nerdy person. Now I had a link between swot and nerd. Well, it stands to reason that wonk can be viewed in the same light. We use wonk almost exclusively in it's policy wonk form, but it may actually be a broader term.

But GRIND? That required an internet search, and lo and behold, after all the dirty slang usages is a much tamer one: someone who is mocked for being too studious. So, there you go. ABI/INFORM, which is set at our library to search related terms, has gone a little overboard. It's now adding british slang to BUSINESS SEARCHES! Someone there has got to have a weird sense of humor (humour).

Speaking of odd humor from across the pond: Tristram Shandy rocks so far!

Back in the Groove

2007-10-16T20:12:00.000-05:00

Since my last post was all about keeping my energy consumption low, I think it's appropriate to start up my posting again with a bit of an energy complaint. There is some numbnut at Walgreens who goes out every morning at 7 a.m. (I know because I'm standing at the bus stop at that hour) and starts up his obnoxious leaf blower. Now, it's not just annoying because of the hour, and because it's a mostly pointless endeavor, but these days he's out there making a ruckus when it's RAINING! He can't possibly be accomplishing anything - everything is plastered to the ground! It's just noise for noise's sake.
At least I'm back to reading with some sort of regularity. For so long I was reading almost nothing but newspapers and the economist. I ended up with $11.50 in fines at the library (largely for books I didn't read), and my list was looking really pathetic. Almost no books read all summer!
Part of the problem was what I was reading. It just hasn't been a good summer for books for me. Not since Cat's Cradle in the spring, really. So I just got a Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart (not his best, I have to admit), but it was just good enough to get me back to normal. That's especially good since my last novel for fun was The Countess of Dellwyn by Henry Fielding's not-so-talented sister Sarah. The first chapter was fantastic. And then it sucked. For ... four ... whole ... books. At least it was only two hundred pages of yuck, and I plowed through to make way for Murakami.
Now I can start Tristram Shandy, which was available from the library in a very handy purse-sized edition from the '50s. It's 600 pages, but they should be fun pages, and the tissue-like pages are light enough to make it on the bus every day. If only I could bring myself to hack War and Peace into little pieces - I love what I've read so far, but I just can't stand carrying it around. The first 100 pages nearly threw my back out! What I wouldn't give for an original serialized version in a magazine . . . maybe the Economist. And then all would be perfect!

I Made It!

2007-09-29T12:19:00.000-05:00

Since it's the end of September, I think I can say that I've officially made it through the year without putting in the air conditioner at home. Although we didn't have any record-breaking temperatures this year, we did have more 90+ days than usual. Quite impressive, if you ask me. All that money I saved on electricity - I am betting it's actually more than the extra cost of the water I used to keep my new plantings alive through the drought. Now, if the bonsai tree makes it through the winter (and the rabbits don't eat my poor little bushes), it'll be a pretty successful year for the garden!

Hmmmm -

2007-09-22T13:50:00.000-05:00

Okay, as I was writing the last post I noticed my Economist Pocket World in Figures. I may have become slightly addicted to it, but it has such interesting tidbits.

The US is 9th in GDP per person and 12th in car ownership. New Zealand is both the top country in terms of car ownership per person, and also tops on the environmental performance index. The US has by far the largest rail network in the world, but we don't even register in the top 20 for rail passengers. The Germans beat Americans in terms of tourist dollars spent, and that's total dollars, not per person! With only 83 million people, I wonder how many are on vacation at any given time . . .

Bonjour, Messieursdames!

2007-09-22T13:42:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why it's been so long since my last post. I guess I've been a bit busy since French class started. Even with only one night a week, it still takes away from the little free time I have. Still, I'm really enjoying it.

I'm also going to blame the Economist, which I spend far too much time reading. And then to top it off, I've started reading books that are reviewed in the Economist. It's a bit inbred.

Boy, this is a dull post. To spice it up, check out the new ad campaign by Wyoming Libraries. Very funny, and it's caused quite a stir in the library listservs.

Duck in Duluth!

2007-08-23T19:45:00.000-05:00

Photo Montage

2007-08-23T19:32:00.001-05:00

Wedding Video

2007-08-23T19:14:00.000-05:00

Dangers along the Mississippi

2007-08-01T21:05:00.000-05:00

Here we are, just a few days since two sewer workers were swept to their deaths in the Mississippi, and another disaster has hit the river. I was at Dairy Queen when someone told us that the 35W bridge collapsed. I never drive along that stretch (I stick mostly south of the river in Mpls, and far east of 35W in St. Paul), so I actually had to look at a map before I was sure of where it was.
People keep saying that you just don't see that type of thing in Minnesota. It's repeated over and over by witnesses in the Strib. But obviously it can, and apparently does happen here. Maybe that's part of the problem. You always hear Minnesotans saying that the bad things that happen elsewhere just can't happen here: no earthquakes like San Francisco or hurricanes like New Orleans. Only tornadoes, which never take out major portions of infrastructure. Perhaps our sense that it won't ever happen to us has made us complacent about our civic works. Or maybe you just can't ever be sure, and no amount of monitoring or engineering will make it perfect. Every bridge is a one-off affair, and we can't crash test them like a minivan.
It's remarkable how much you just have to trust that the things around you will work. As if I don't get nervous enough riding along on the lower section of the Washington Ave bridge as it is! Tomorrow will probably be twice as crowded and just as creepy.
Check out the Strib's photo gallery.

"The longest and the shortest wedding I've ever been to."

2007-07-30T17:49:00.001-05:00

After a tense 45 minutes waiting for a judge who never arrived, Dad called Pastor Dan and the wedding went on as planned only an hour and half late. Then, ten minutes later, it was over. If not for that one snag, it all would have gone as planned.
Since we 'crowd sourced' a lot of the wedding activities, it'll be a little while before I have a picture album to link here. We're waiting for pictures to be uploaded and emailed around. I"ll then pick the best - there are already over 160 photos. Also, Kelly needs some time before she can get the video done. I hope to have that online relatively soon!
For now, you can see an initial selection of photos at my shutterfly album.

Hello Visitors!

2007-07-27T22:29:00.000-05:00

Now that I have the Clustermap, I've become a bit obsessed with my far-flung visitors. How do they come here? What do they think? I've had the ability to see who's coming in via Sitemeter for a while, but it wasn't until I had that array of red dots growing on my map that I really began to become excited. It's just a shame that I added the map after the visits from Brazil and Australia. I keep hoping for representation from every continent!
If you stumble upon (well, I'm sure you can't find me through Stumble Upon) my blog from elsewhere, go ahead a post a short comment. This is just a blog, after all. And as long as you don't fill up too much space, it'd be interesting to hear from you. That goes for my friends who visit as well.

Beating the Heat

2007-07-25T17:53:00.000-05:00

Even with temps hitting the mid nineties, and a heat index over 100, we're still only 86 inside. If we can keep this up, we might make it the whole summer without hauling up the air conditioner! Although I think it is starting to mess with my body - I just have enough time at night to get accustomed to the heat and then I have to sit all day in the freezing air conditioning. And just hauling the sweater home the half mile from the bus stop makes my poor arm sweaty. . .

Universal Careful

2007-07-24T17:58:00.000-05:00

I'm a fan of universal health care in the countries that have it - it seems to work great for them. But at heart I'm a realist (pessimist, perhaps) about what is possible, and I just can't see universal health care working in the United States. Not because there's something fundamentally wrong with a single government system (it's got flaws, of course, but so does every other system), but because there are some fundamental aspects to Americans themselves that can't be ignored.

1) Universal Health Care is expensive. Of course European countries pay less in total for their health care (and it's reasonable to say that many of those countries provide better care to the bulk of their populations than we do), but their costs are all lumped in one big number. Americans pay piecemeal, and piecemeal means we never have to see the whole cost. Heck, most Americans couldn't tell you what the total employer plus employee costs are for their own health insurance, let alone the entire nation. And with 300 million people, the total cost of American universal health care would be phenomenally huge. We can't wrap our head around the cost of the Iraq War (200 billion or so really isn't that much). Can you imagine 1.2 billion for health insurance every year!?! (That's the cost if we spent what Ethiopia does per person for health care.) How about a more reasonable number - say we pared down to just $4400 for each of us (what a former employer said was their cost), we'd hit $1,320,000,000,000! Of course that's less than we spend now, with all of our varied plans or lack of them, but that's beside the point. That many zeroes would sap a lot of public support fast.

2) It's easy to underfund. England's been doing it for ages, and the U.S. has a fine history of underfunding all sorts of things. We're busy underfunding Katrina relief as I write today. With the giant numbers of the previous point to back them up, the more conservative and libertarian members of Congress would be happy to cut, slash, and drown the whole system in a bathtub. Europe doesn't have the same political culture - and we shouldn't forget that.

3) Government programs are a favorite way to control others' moral lives. Food stamps are full of rigid rules because we can't imagine the poor ever deciding for themselves, and universal health care would be just the same. The reason Medicare is largely free of this is because every woman on Medicare is menopausal and people are comfortable turning off the machines when the patient is 90. Imagine Terri Schaivo and the HPV vaccine fights magnified a hundred times. Brace yourself for the rhetoric: "why should my tax dollars pay for Pap smears for sluts?" Even when they pay cash we can't help tsking the drunks who get kidney transplants. Now any and every medical condition will be fair game because "we" are paying for it: fertility treatments, cancers with potential behavioral causes, birth control, birth defects with potential maternal or genetic causes, STDs, injuries due to abuse, injuries due to carelessness, etc.

4) Existing universal systems aren't posh enough for our taste. For those of us who know the numbers, it's so tempting to see the dollar amounts for European health care and imagine a big cut if we made the move, but it probably wouldn't work out that way. Europeans are content with a lot less posh. In fact, they'll even share rooms! I've seen American hospital rooms that are larger than whole apartments in London or Paris. Those nice digs cost money, as do full body scans, 3D fetal sonograms, and waiting-room aquariums. In America success is visible - in a fancy car, big house, and marble countertops - will we trust a hospital that doesn't look successful? And how happy will be be receiving care there?

5) We're pretty damn sick compared to other places. We've got a lot of uninsured people just waiting for a chance to receive care. We've got more poor, and more rural people without much in the way of access today. The second we insure these people, there will be a surge in demand. And that could last several years. Of course it could make Medicare cheaper, as those in their early 60s stop putting off treatment until they're pretty far gone, but it'll be pretty pricey to get up to speed.

6) The government will start to look at public health issues as a bottom line reducer. That's great, right? Well, sure, until they start handing out all sorts of rules and regulations that we don't like. And it'll be a pretty big fight on our hands as we try to debate a few billion saved on heart disease and diabetes versus a fat tax. C'mon, you really want to eat your cake, and buy it cheap too. Just as some businesses have responded to health care costs by banning smoking near entrances and pressuring staff to start exercise programs, the government will do the same. And that's not something Americans are used to putting up with. A significant number of us still bristle at seat belt laws or required home smoke detectors. Suddenly everything has the potential to be a government health care cost saver from gun locks to hand washing.

7) We don't expect it to work. We've believed for years and years that it won't work. It's just a recent blip that we've found the current system too expensive. The second we're on universal care every wait or list or restriction will bring our minds right back to 1994 and HillaryCare. Statistical increases in infant survival or broader availability of preventive care can't compete with perception, and we're primed to perceive it as a failure.

I know this is pessimistic, but I'm not totally without hope. Some states are full of people willing to pay up and judge the system by the same criteria that Europeans and Canadians do. And those states should go ahead and do it. Just don't expect what's good for Massachussetts to be good for Mississippi, even if Mississippi "needs" it more.

Kitties in the Tub!

2007-07-20T20:52:00.001-05:00

Library Schmibrary

2007-07-19T17:43:00.000-05:00

This article from the New York Times made it's way into my inbox via the ALA newsletter, and I just have to wonder, what are they thinking? A library in Arizona has done away with Dewey (call numbers on books, that is) and shelved according to Barnes & Noble. Apparently this is supposed to make younger patrons happier, since they can now just browse through based on subject.

But, ahem, that's what Dewey was designed to do. Only now, instead of browsing your way through a small collection on a specific topic, you have to wade through EVERYTHING. Okay, this may work out okay for this pissant little library in the middle of nowhere, but how can any substantial library even begin to serve its patrons this way? I get annoyed enough at my local branch because all the novels are in alphabetical order (how am I supposed to stumble upon more 18th century novelists when they could be a hundred linear feet apart?). I've actually scanned the LC shelves at my old college library for new authors and then tried to look them up individually in the public library catalog. Even a big Barnes & Noble has a paltry collection in political science or biology. An average urban library can have dozens of shelves where a store has only a couple.

And that's where the problem lies. Book stores are about brand new books. Libraries are about collections that have been developed over years. Sure, some library patrons are fine with whatever serendipity presents them, but others actually want to find something specific, and for those people, trolling one segment of a number is far better than wandering through everything under the sun.

The problem with the Dewey Decimal System is not that it is outdated (because it's more than adequate for what most public libraries need), but that it presents people with a visual reminder of their own ignorance. If you don't understand Dewey, it doesn't actually hamper your ability to pick up a book as you saunter along, but it does remind you that you don't really understand why it was shelved where it is.

I guess that those of us who can't stand the thought of wandering around trying to find a single volume can always make the library staff do it: I'll pick mine up at the Patron Request shelf. Lets think of it as a bit of job security for paras.

Passing Judgement on McMansions

2007-07-18T12:47:00.000-05:00

The Austin Chronicle had an Am I a McMansion or Not contest, and you've got to see some of them to believe them. While I can't imagine living in a giant house (old or new), it seems only a fraction of newly built mansions have anything even approaching an aesthetic sense. That'll be readily apparent when you view the pictures posted for the contest. Some of the houses aren't ginormous, they're just out of keeping with the neighborhood by 1000 or so square feet. Others are just such gigantic monstrosities that I can't imagine anyone wanting to live nearby. Seriously, I've seen oil refineries with more aesthetic value than some of these.

The other interesting thing about this contest is that there's actually no way to tell just how large the houses are from the pictures. People love to point out huge old homes as somehow being exempt from being ugly, but in reality, it's kinda tough to find an original Victorian that's above 7,000 square feet. Most of them fall into the 3,500-5,500 category, and it's their architectural styling that creates the impression that they're larger. Troll a real estate website and check out the numbers - it's eye-opening.

But what really makes me wonder in all of this, is why people are so interested in just the square footage. The detractors tend to hate the hideous, with the greatest opprobrium leveled against the giant and ill-proportioned. But why would someone building a 8,000 square foot house decide that proper proportions, consistent styling, and careful material choice don't matter? Are they just aesthetically blind? Or do they care so much about the size that anything else doesn't matter? I walk around my neighborhood and see just terrible houses - and most of these are infill or remodeling jobs. There are 70s suburban-style split levels turned on their sides and sandwiched in, homes that keep getting larger as you move backwards in the lot (a homeowner's version of "big fish eat little fish"), and others that create a timewarp of 30s craftsman followed by 80s modernism. Others just build a giant garages (3, 4, 5, how many can I get if I don't pull a permit?) that fill the entire backyard. And yet those people still need to park on the street.

Apparently we need all this space for our stuff, but our stuff can't possibly be worth it. Maybe one or two percent of the population is housing a museum-quality collection of something in their back rooms, but most of us are just housing crap we haven't bothered to get rid of. And now that it's all coming from China, where it's been made in 15 minues or less by a person making a dollar an hour, it can't possibly warrant the extended life-span we insist on. At over $100 a square foot in nearly every community in America (up to $1000/sqft in the most expensive neighborhoods), that's a lot of money to spend storing old sweatshirts, unused exercise equipment, and VHS tapes. In my neighborhood, going from 2 bedrooms to 3 can be a $30,000 option. That's a lot of money for a "scrapbooking room."

Any thoughts?

Global Literacy or Idiocy?

2007-07-11T20:59:00.000-05:00

Newsweek must have spun their non-news wheel again and landed on that trustworthy holier-than-thou wedge that suggests yet another story about what people think they know, but get wrong. The funny thing this time is not that more people can name Jordin Sparks than John Roberts, but that some of their own questions are iffy, belying their own focus on the popular rather than the substantive.

First, their question about how many countries have nukes was an adventure in patriots vs. realists, and fear-mongers vs. skeptics. The first seven are pathetically easy: US, Russia, England, France, China, Pakistan, and India. None of them deny, all have done obviously successful tests. Next there's Israel, which, please remember, officially has nothing. Does acknowledging that they do make one as dangerous to the state of Israel as Mordechi Vanunu? (Aside: Isn't it interesting that when Vanunu tells the truth about his government's activities, it lands him in jail, but when Libby lies about his, he gets a get-out-of-jail-free card . . . ) And then there's North Korea, which should really just be awarded the Participation Ribbon of nuclear proliferation. Their one test threw off some radiation, but most analysts say that the bomb test was a bomb (in the it-didn't-really-work sense). So is it really fair to add them to the list when they probably couldn't hit a internet cafe in Seoul with what they've got?

And then, in the most bizarre question of any You-are-Dumb test I've ever seen, they ask if we're winning the fight against Al Qaeda. Here's how they summarize the results: "roughly half the poll's respondents (52 percent) think that the United States is losing the fight against (bin Laden's) terror group, Al Qaeda, despite no military defeats or recent terrorist attacks to suggest as much."

What an interesting thing to say when Al Qaeda is floating around all over the place, and has successfully executed or planned attacks on our allies on a regular basis. The idea that we must be winning because there hasn't been an attack in the U.S. is preposterous (Napoleon to troops: We must be winning the invasion of Russia! How do I know this? Not a single Russian attack has been made on Paris!) The funniest part is that as I'm typing this very post, the top story on the Newsweek website is "The Return of Al Qaeda: A New National Intelligence Estimate Raises Concerns that the Terrorist Group is Growing Stronger." That raises a fascinating possibility:
Newsweek's editors think that we're winning, but implying that we may be losing sells more magazines (and they wonder why 52% think that's true).

But, of course, that question relies on a belief that I just don't share: that you can really tell who's winning or losing a struggle with terrorists when you're stuck right in the middle of it. Sometimes you can't even tell for sure when it's over. So, who's winning: ETA or the Spanish Government? Who won: the British Parliament or the IRA? Even before the first NATO soldier arrived in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda had a nearly decade-long history of attacking intermittently with long stretches between operations. It is far too easy to mistake a tactical decision on their side for a success on ours. And with an ever-expanding list of affiliated organizations we could destroy Al Qaeda only to find ourselves deep in the muck with it's varied brethren. It seems to me that when you have doctors signing on for terrorist operations, you can't plausibly say the movement is on the outs. Declaring victory against Al Qaeda is a bit like declaring victory against the water in my basement: every time it rains and the floor stays dry, I'm a bit more confident, but it'll take a lot of rainstorms before I can be sure.

No, but yeah, but no, but yeah . . .

2007-07-11T20:46:00.000-05:00

My newest obsession is Little Britain (I know I'm way out of date, but it has to do with when we find things at the library . . . and as everyone should know by now, I'm so horribly behind in my Netflix queue, I've barely made it out of the 70s).

Anyhoo . . . if you haven't seen it, you absolutely must! Lou and Andy are my favorite, and now that I've read that the older you get, the less you can identify humor, Little Britain is proof that I'm still young at heart! Now I just have to count my moles . . . I hate turning 30!

Photos from ALA

2007-07-07T10:56:00.000-05:00

I've finally uploaded my pictures from Washington DC. Check them out - they are librarian free, but full of the Library of Congress!

On another note, I subscribed to the Economist and now I'm getting junk mail from the Cato Institute. It's a long letter (by junk mail standards) and includes an encomium from JOHN STOSSEL!!!! I can't imagine anything less likely to impress me (except, maybe, financial advice from Robert Mugabe's finance minister).

When East Africa beats the West

2007-07-06T12:22:00.000-05:00

Several African countries have already or will shortly be enforcing plastic bag bans. This includes Zanzibar, Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya. Check out this great little story on the BBC about why Uganda has decided on a ban.
Seems to me that if American environmentalists want to finally get rid of the plastic bag from our shores, they can take a hint from Africans: the flying latrine. Okay, you don't have to do it yourself--farm this one out to the pooches--but imagine what would happen if every empty plastic bag was quickly filled with poo and then thrown as far as the arm could toss it. If it were up to me, I'd add fire to the mix, but that's probably not safe . . .
On a related note, a former owner of my house purposely buried plastic bags in various parts of the yard. It was a real bitch to clean out, and probably exacerbated my drainage problem in the basement. Sheesh, if you're going to use an artificial barrier, at least have the good sense to buy something suited to the job!

Freeware that's worth it

2007-06-27T21:00:00.000-05:00

I just added Zotero to my Firefox browser. It's a reference management software that seems to be pretty snazzy. Although it is not portable, it's got so many nice features that I can't help but be excited. I'll have to check out how easy it is to export references to Word!

Is it hypocrisy or hilarity?

2007-06-21T20:12:00.000-05:00

In vetoing the latest embryonic stem cell bill the president stated that "destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."

What a peculiar thing for him to say, considering that saving lives was precisely the justification he gave for starting the last two wars (the killing part goes without saying). It's the basis for both the mushroom cloud and the liberate Iraq lines of reasoning. In fact, killing others in order to save lives is the 2 second definition of the Just War. Anyone remember the days when we were totting that one out? And it's the only "patriotic" explanation EVER given to explain the nuclear bombing of Japan in WWII ("threatening the Soviets" may be a plausible explanation, but it doesn't win you friends at a 4th of July parade).

Maybe it would all be okay if it were Iraqi cells . . .

Reading Lolita

2007-06-21T20:00:00.000-05:00

I just finished Reading Lolita in Tehran for my book club. In one of those happy coincidences, there is a flurry of articles about Iran in the press these days, so I've been able to compare RLIT's view of the 1980s against the contemporary situation. It reinforces one of the themes of the book: whether one should remain steadfast in one's beliefs, or bend a little in order to survive. At several points in the book Nafisi regards the small concessions of the regime as being inconsequential changes compared to overall repression of women. Yet, I keep wondering, isn't lasting change always a bit on the incremental side? In our democracy, which Nafisi prefers to Iranian autocracy, our major law-giving institution, Congress, was purposely designed to be slow to change. And women's rights in America have been two centuries of fits and starts, with a lot of slower social change alongside the leaps of legislation. Perhaps there is still so much of the revolutionary in her, she can't abide any remnant of the revolutionary in the other side. And what happens when two sides lock themselves into a battle of all or nothing?

Why is this so funny?

2007-06-20T19:45:00.000-05:00

Card Catalog Rant

2007-06-20T18:38:00.000-05:00

It's happened twice this week, and frankly I'm sick of it. Someone will start complaining about how much easier research was back in the days of the card catalog . . . and they haven't the slightest idea just how IGNORANT that makes them sound. Not in the sense that they don't know how to use the new, electronic databases, but they don't have a CLUE what academic research has looked like for the last century. Sure, in the past you could go to the library and thumb through a drawer of cards, pick out a title or two, and fetch the books off the shelf. And that was a perfectly reasonable way to do research--if you were in the 11th grade!
Real scholarly research has been dependent on peer-reviewed journal articles for decades and decades. In the old paper world that meant spending hours flipping through paper indexes--a different paper index for every single year. Interdisciplinary subjects could push you to several different indexes, one for each year.
It's not fun, and not that easy. I know. I've done it. You thumb through five years of indexes and then suddenly realize that maybe another subject heading might have been better. Do you go back? Do you pretend you did? Just picking the subjects is an adventure in futility. There's no natural language to help you out, no guide to the inner thoughts of those indexers except for that volume of alphabetized words. You have to search an index to search the index! Not to mention the fact that once you find your subjects, and see those beautiful entries listed beneath, you have to scan through all of them. You can't just tell the index to winnow the entries to precisely the ones you want. Why miss out on all that fun?
It makes me wonder why anyone would wish for those tactile, paper days. I still love to read a real, physical book, but reading is a sensual pleasure. Finding journal articles is a task, like scrubbing the toilet. It needs to be done, and can at times be satisfying upon completion, but no reasonable person wishes to throw away a faster, simpler way to do it. It astounds me each day that so much is now at my fingertips, that I can change my mind about a search term or focus, and have a new list of results in just a second or two, that the whole thing can be repeated at the drop of a hat, and that I can repeat it all at the drop of a hat.
I wish all these people would suck it up, spend the 20 minutes learning the technology, and stop pining for a Masters degree that is as research intensive as freshman English.

ALA Conference

2007-06-18T14:14:00.000-05:00

I'll be off soon to ALA. If only I could decide what to attend!

False Alarm and What We See

2007-06-16T17:02:00.000-05:00

I've just started reading False Alarm, which is about the culture of fear that we seem intent on living in. It's generally a good, if somewhat thin, treatment of the subject.
But it contains one of my great pet-peeves about supposedly observant authors: he assumes something that is not actually true. This typically happens when normally academic or scholarly people (it's a doctor in this case) imagine something about the quotidian world around them that is easily debunked by casual observation (regular people do this as well, but they have less claim to authority). In this case he is remaking on the irrational fear of lyme disease in a patient when he mentions that the patient lives in Los Angeles, which he says has no deer. But, of course, there are deer in Los Angeles. I have seen several in my few trips to the city. Has he never been to L.A.? Has he just not bothered to look at the hills along the freeway? Does he just assume that there aren't deer in major metropolitan areas?
I found the most glaring example of this in an article in Smithsonian several years back. A professor who took his students around Boston specifically to encourage them to look at the world around them mentioned that he knew that all ironwork in the United States is now coming from India based on his observations of manhole covers. Yet, if he had bothered to come to the Midwest and peruse our streets he would have immediately been disabused of that notion. I have seen civic applications of ironwork from Neenah Foundries (located in Wisconsin) in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio. Many examples are in older neighborhoods, but I have seen some in relatively new suburbs as well. While this doesn't prove that the foundry is in business today, it must have been when the streets were laid.
I guess it's all a matter of where you look.

Updating LibraryThing

2007-06-16T16:55:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to add the books I've read to library thing, and also add some meaningful tags about the themes I find interesting. It's been so long since I've read some of them that it's hard to remember which book had what . . . it's funny how a single author's works can start to merge in my mind. It's also hard to go back and add tags to the books I've already entered, not to mention reducing the number of words in my tags while retaining meaning.

New widgets

2007-06-15T15:37:00.000-05:00

I've finally learned how to IM, and now I have added some cool widgets to my blog. Check out the meebo window on my blog, and also the sitemeter. I'm so excited - maybe someone will visit!

I've also learned how to put search engine shortcuts in Firefox. I can now search Google Scholar or Google without having to open up the window. Very cool.

2007-05-31T13:51:00.000-05:00

Using Google Docs & Spreadsheets

For this week's Library 2.0 exercise, I'm trying out Google Docs. If I've done this right, I'll be able to post it to my blog and take a look at it from there. I've read through some of the Google Help screens, and it looks straight forward enough, but that's no guarantee of success. I just figured out how to sort incoming messages in Outlooks, so I'm a bit technologically behind.

As you can see, I'm trying a few more complicated options. Here's a link to my blog, for instance. I just learned that unlike in Microsoft Word, I have to reposition the link - highlighting the text for the link wasn't enough.

I've also published a small spreadsheet.

I have noticed a couple things:

you need to watch what you label on the spreadsheet, since Google creates the title line. That means giving the sheet a name and not putting the title in the first cell.
The title for my blog post didn't come through - when I edit the blog posting I see no title. There is what appears to be a title on the post itself, but it is slightly different.
What I put into Google Docs was very WYSISYG in my blog, but the spreadsheet looks different in the non-edit mode.

Progress on the Green Front

2007-05-27T20:05:00.000-05:00

We've finally moved all of the orphaned plants back into the backyard, and we're starting to fill in the new beds. I've uploaded some pictures to Flickr. Check them out at my Flickr Account.

Technorati and finding blogs

2007-05-18T10:27:00.000-05:00

I got a little behind on my 2.0 projects and neglected to look at Technorati until today. I don't feel like I really understand what I can do with this yet, but I signed up anyway.
I was able to find my friend's blog and mark it as a favorite. I'm hoping someone else will extend the courtesy . . .
I also was able to use the popular links to find a blog about members of Congress who are trying to live on the amount of food a person can buy with a week's worth of food stamps. They're highlighting how little money that is ($21), but they haven't really talked about the other constrictions on food stamps. Not only does it have a dollar limit, but it severely limits you in terms of the types of foods you can buy. I'm not just talking about banning candy bars, but also favoring certain parts of the food guide pyramid over others. For example, you can buy vegetables at a farmer's market, but not at the grocery store. Perhaps this is one reason (beyond price) that grocery stores in poor neighborhoods have been found to carry fewer fresh, healthy foods.
At any rate, I wish the members of congress luck, since even they seem to know that they are somewhat privileged in their weeklong stint. Check out one of their blogs here: Congressional Food Stamp Challenge.

Baby African Violet

2007-05-12T21:56:00.000-05:00

I planted the leaves way back at the end of November, and just last week I saw the first bit of new growth appear. I don't know which leaf had the baby, or if it's two babies, or even if these two leaves came from the same plant or two different ones. I guess I'll have to wait until it blooms. I also repotted the suspected parent so I could bury the neck that had formed. Let's hope it survives its trimming and root disruption.
I looked at a website today to check on what I should do about the neck, and it mentioned that rooting these can be so intoxicating that the african violet gardener ends up with a million little ones filling the house. I can totally see that happening to me. It's even more fun than rooting pothos. And now I want a pink one. Anyone want to put in an order?
Next I have to trim the bonsai, which is a lot more stressful than this.

LibraryThing

2007-05-11T10:58:00.000-05:00

I fell a bit behind on my 23 things this week, and neglected to try LibraryThing and Rollyo. I have seen LibraryThing before, but this is my first time with an account. Here it is (and oh, so nerdy). LibraryThing

Fall & Winter

2007-05-07T18:02:00.000-05:00

Here are my new paintings from Laura.

Laura's Paintings

2007-05-07T16:31:00.000-05:00

Here's a painting by my best bud of ages and ages (yikes, I'm getting old!) that I took off her MN Artists webpage. It's going to have to stand in until I take some photos of the two she just delivered. Yes, after five years of waiting, I have the first two of my four seasons series.

Now I just have to get them on the wall.

A New Look . . . AGAIN!

2007-05-03T16:25:00.000-05:00

I think I've changed the template about three times for this blog (once every two posts, I guess). I even added a picture of myself that I made using Portrait Illustration Maker. It's a pretty fabulous tool. Try it yourself: Illustration Maker.

I know, I know, I'll stop now. . . maybe.

Social Bookmarking

2007-05-03T16:16:00.000-05:00

I've kind of skipped ahead to some bookmarking sites, thanks to the presentation at ARLD on Monday. I've signed up for CiteULike and Furl, just to see how I like them. I'm not sure how useful these will be, since CiteULike doesn't play with many of the databases we have, but we'll give 'em a whirl.
The really crazy part of it is how blank your mind goes once you have logged in for the first time. There I am with a brand new Furl account and I can't think of a single website I want to add, even though I've spent so many unhappy moments in the past wondering "whatever happened to such-and-such a site."
Perhaps I'll just give into my inner web nerd and only have a short list of extremely useful sites. I heard a report the other day about what the most popular uses of the web were. I can't remember what they were, but I'm sure it was along the lines of socializing with friends, porn, and videos (not necessarily in that order). I turned to Nick and said my favorite use of the web was banking. He didn't seem the least bit surprised . . .

My RSS Feeds

2007-04-27T15:53:00.000-05:00

I have successfully added a link to my bloglines account, so now you can see my RSS feeds. They're not very exciting, but you can take a look at the few I have out there.

Fence & Garden

2007-04-23T17:53:00.001-05:00

Fence & Garden
Originally uploaded by ebrothen.

Here's my newly built fence from last summer (along with the construction debris from the neighbor's major remodel). I just hope all those plants come up again this year!

Canal in Utrecht

2007-04-23T17:52:00.001-05:00

Canal in Utrecht
Originally uploaded by ebrothen.

Here's a view down one of the canals in Utrecht. When the Rhine changed course the city of Utrecht saw a sharp decrease in the water level, allowing them to line the old canals with warehouses. Many are now restaurants and bars.

Starting up

2007-04-23T13:42:00.000-05:00

I thought I should start a new blog as part of my 23 things. It seems to be working just fine . . .