Words from somewhere in the Lawn

About once a year I seem to have to learn a lesson that one would think I should have already learned: once spring hits or even nearly, mow the wretched lawn when you get home. Don't let it sit for a couple weeks because you feel lazy; don't skip the sunny day because it's too hot, and then skip the rainy day because it's too wet (although certainly a rainy day is too wet, so do it first!).

All of this driven home because I have mowed for about 4 and a half hours today, not counting the time spent walking to the hardware store and back for a mower spark plug. And there are still 2 spots out front that were too high/dense to finish cutting today, as well as the parking strip on the side that is not as bad but is only about half done because I worked most of the time out front except for when I ran out of gas and had to go to the back to re-fill: then I'd mow the side on my way back out to the front.

Also, the stupid mower (the machine, not just me) is years old. It goes well enough on normal one-week grass, but it bogs right down on the 3-4 week denser stuff. I think much of the weariness I feel now is from pulling the tortuous start rope every time the thing bogged down in spite of my efforts to mow small bits and keep it running.

I'm off to bed to sleep the sleep of the exhausted if not the just.

May I help you? Pretty Please?

Geoffrey House, M.D., drug abusing television show character, update of Sherlock Holmes, and Uber-diagnostic magician says, "People lie." When he's trying to help them and needs information relating to the personal world of their medical history, relevant actions and symptoms he doesn't always (usually?) believe them for that reason.

When patrons come in certain that such and such an item isn't on the shelf where it claims to be, I will look up the item record to see when the item last moved. If it was recently enough that we should still have it in the collection, I'll ask if I may go check the shelf and see if it was misshelved. (Because they just told me it wasn't there, and why do I doubt them!)

Another variation on the theme happened when a patron came in and told me that we don't have a book she used to come in and use. "Why can't you buy a real book that people use instead of all the novels that aren't real. I don't see why my tax dollars are going to buy stupid novels when the book I need isn't here." The book in question was Court Rules. She wanted me to get the web address for Court Rules so that she could find the information she wanted. (And didn't I know that if everything went to the Internet, we wouldn't need libraries any more because who needs to pay for a nice building if everything is online?)

Well, I gave the patron the web address and she took it out, reminding me that at this rate it wouldn't be long before we don't need libraries any more, think about it!

I decided to look on the catalog, just for my own edification. WE HAVE THE BOOK!!! I expected the larger branch might have it and the patron didn't want to go there, and as it is reference it wouldn't want to come here, but we actually have the book! If only I had looked anyway. If only she had asked if we had it instead of rebuking me for not having the book, I could have found it. And of course, she was gone from the building and gone from the parking lot when I checked out there, just in case.

Like House says: People lie.

#26 Reflections of a Chocolate Bunny & 27--One more Thing

3169_ChocBunny "I'm thinking, '27 Things, but
at least no one bit off my ears!'"
Originally uploaded by YorickWell.

Ah, I remember that Learning 2.0 project, 27 things to learn and play. In terms of affecting my lifelong learning goals, I couldn't say that it has, because I'm always looking to learn new and amazing technologies--at the level of playing.

As in, "What do you play?"

"Oh, I play the cassette player; I play the MP3 player; I play the CD player." (I actually play the guitar as well, but that's a litter deeper than I would say I can do with technologies. I also play the word processor, but I don't play assembly language, C, C+, C++, nor any of the other current computer languages. I do dabble in HTML, of course.)

Having said that, L2.0 has assisted my lifelong learning goals in that I have now done several things I hadn't done before even if I had known about them or not. I had never put any photos online--although having gotten a digital camera in late December, it is likely I would have posted soon, but this program provided the impetus (not to be confused with the Pompitus [of Love] which is a mysterious phrase in a song lyric that is not clearly defined, even at this moment! Oops: This just in.
http://www.algebra.com/algebra/about/history/Pompitus.wikipedia is an article about what the word means and where it probably came from. Amazing). I'm also easily distracted at times, and the multiple lessons and exercises assisted me in the sense that I had no time to get bored by anything. (I hope the readers take longer than I deserve to become bored with my blog entries.)

I've been captured by this blogging thing. And the ability to start posts off with a picture, somewhat like an allusion to illuminated manuscripts or to stick a picture in the middle of a post to illustrate some point or just to relieve the readers' eyes from all this text has been great fun for me. I think the combination of Flickr and Blogspot is much better than either of them by themselves. I'm also pretty addicted to LibraryThing, although I must say my cataloging much more resembles copy-cataloging than original cataloging. (When I see a book in someone else's LibraryThing that I've read or own, there's a button that allows a signed in user to just add the book to her own library catalog! Whoooo hooooo!!!)

I've been surprised at how easy some of these Web things are; I've been surprised that some sites (like Myspace) strike me as less useful than I had hoped.

Moving to the next landing of this controlled wandering, I can say that I had enough help when I needed it, but I didn't necessarily feel that I was approached as much for help as I had imagined I might be. Most of my colleagues either had a different schedule from me or else didn't need much help (or possibly found me less than approachable, but people I've asked have said that's not the case.) I have had a few people ask questions, just not as many as I expected.

Improving the format or the concept:

I think I would have appreciated a written transcript of the podcasts (although, someone would have had to have transcribed them and that would have been a drag!). I don't quite know how to justify that feeling--I listen to audiobooks all the time, I listen to other mp3 files on my Palm. I guess that it has to do with perceptions of time pressures: I felt I needed to keep moving to the next activity, to the next lesson, and the information at the speed of sound (podcasts), was slower for me than information at the speed of sight (text, duh!). Also, the one time I had to use dial-up access, even the loading of the website and the loading of the links was slower than I could endure. I used dial-up for longer than many people, but now that I'm on faster connections at home and in libraries, it is a stress to operate at the speed of dial up. (Although one thing libraries should keep in mind is trying to have alternative services for those with slow Internet. The text-only version of the catalog is one of those dial up compensations that I think is still a good idea.)

One other format improvement would have been if the progress logs had had room for more than one URL, given that several weeks actually comprised two or three of the 27 Things each. The current progress log required that these two and three things be in one post in order to list the response in just that one URL.

I thought the concept of Learning 2.0 itself was sound, albeit somewhat second-round trendy. But I'm more of a second- or third- stoner* myself in relation to technology, so the drifting close to "me too!" nature of this program was probably just right. (*allusion to the proverb/quotation "[L]et ... him cast the first stone.")

I would like to see similar training opportunities when some new library-relevant technologies emerge, but I think we should try to come up with some steps or protocols for determining which things should be explored and taught, and which things are likely to be analogous to 8-track tape technologies. Libraries that had vinyl disc collections, that had (and have) cassette collections, and that have CD collections turned out to have guessed/bet right for the most part. Any libraries that had 8-track tape collections, I think probably had them go obsolete sooner than it was worth to have them. It's easy to say, but we should avoid adopting 8-track tape technologies.

In closing this ever-so-long post, I'd like to thank my parents, without whom I wouldn't even be here. And if I could go back in time and tell me stuff, I'd freak out. Er, no, that wasn't the question.

If I could go back in time and tell me to either participate in this program or skip it, I'd still tell me to participate. I'd also tell me to be careful of typos in naming my blog's URL so that I wouldn't lose all my readers when I fixed the typo of the URL and then no one could find where I had "gone."

#27. One more Thing.

At first I couldn't think of "one more thing." I re-read the wiki article on Web 2.0. Still nothing else. Then I gazed at the comments on the KCLSU #27 blog entry, and someone mentioned Second Life. An excellent example of how this collaborative can work: other people working together can help give ideas that we recognize as great but we might not have thought of on our own. (I'm thinking of a Venn Diagram here with overlapping and discrete areas of coverage.) So, anyway, my one more thing would be training and collaborative activities in SecondLife (which I had briefly looked at earlier in the program but didn't proceed on my own yet, because of so many other choices to look, learn, and play with.

Ooooooooooooooooooooohhh! Shiny!

Non-27things Post / Sometimes I hate the world I live in.

`Not an actual picture from the story.
Actually a night picture from Dublin.~

Last night I was driving home from work. Given the two hundred mile commute and my 40-mile bladder, I stopped in at the rest area to empty said bladder, mooch a free cup of coffee and a couple cookies and be on my way. Normally it would be just a quick stop and then I'm on the road again (sorry, Willie).

This stop was longer than usual. While I stopped, I finished listening to a radio episode of Selected Shorts: it was the short story by Audrey Niffenegger "The Night Bookmobile." Then all I needed after all was the coffee and cookies.

Up at the volunteer hutch between the bathroom buildings, a young woman was telling the coffee volunteers that she's out of gas and she ran out of the house without her driver's license or wallet. The volunteers ask me how far the next exit is--like I would know!!

I explain I just drive between Seattle and Portland and I get off at rest areas and I don't really pay any attention to actual exits. The woman has stepped back and is trying not to cry and listening, but it doesn't sound helpful. Then some trucker steps up and tells me that the next exit is only ten miles to the south, I say thanks, but I wasn't the one who wanted to know, I was just here for some coffee.

The volunteers look back to me and say, "Oh yes," and they take my cup and give me coffee. They say, "we can't really leave here; we're dropped off, and he can't drive because he has Parkinson's." (Which explains something else that I had noticed, namely that the man had an old scar, rectangular-looking running from the one side of his head, across and above his forehead and back the other side of his head towards the back. It looked rather like a temporary lid had been put in, but you don't like to ask about those things. [some kind of brain surgery was and may still be a palliative treatment for Parkinson's])

Anyway, the woman went over to the pay phones and put some money in and dialed and then waited, hung up and the change dropped back. So I asked (since I have a cell phone), "Is there anyone I can call?" I know, it sounds stupid, but I didn't know what else to say.

She said, "No, I've tried calling, but no one's answering, and my family is out of state on Spring vacation. My girlfriend called me up to come pick her up, she's finally getting out of a bad situation and I just ran out to my car and started out and didn't bring my purse or my wallet or anything. Then I noticed I was low on gas, so I turned around and idled into here."

I have to say here that I am really, really suspicious of people in need at rest areas, and especially people with gasoline issues at rest areas. I mean, how did they even get there if they don't have gas? And if you give them money to help get them back to Arkansas or Montana or New Mexico or whatever isolated outpost of Americana they claim to be from, how are they going to actually get gas if they're out as they claim!!!

But I ask her, "If you got a lift to the next exit, do you have anything to put gas into?"

"No," she says, "and I don't have my wallet even, I ran out of the house without it. I might have enough gas to get to the next exit, but I don't want to chance it and have to walk in the dark on my own."

"Would it help if I followed you to the next exit?"

"Well, if you wouldn't mind...."

"No, that would be fine. I'll follow."

She goes down a ways to her car and I go to mine. I get in and start up and let her drive past, then I pull out behind her. No doubt to improve gas mileage, she's going 60 in a 70 zone. But I follow at a safe distance anyway--but not so far as to make her think I'm abandoning her. We turn off at the next exit and there's a gas station. There's also a car following me through the exit off the freeway, so I'm starting to sweat bullets in 45 degree weather, hoping that someone back there isn't getting ready to put them back in me. She turns right toward the gas station, I turn right, the third car turns right. She pulls into the gas station parking lot, I pull into the gas station parking lot....the third car drives past.

Man, I hate being a coward!

Anyway, I get out, she gets out. I ask, are you going to be okay? And she does start to get red-eyed again and mentions that she still doesn't have any money. (and you're thinking, well, duh!! nothing changed in ten miles except she's at a station instead of ten miles away, but she didn't suddenly come into possession of the wallet she said she left at home!!)

And then I wrestle with my thoughts: I hate being stupid, I hate being in a position of being taken advantage of by a con artist. On the other hand, if she's acting she really should be on film or stage because it doesn't look a bit faked to me. On the other hand, it's not like I have expert social skills in knowing when someone is really telling the truth or faking crying. On the other hand, I really want to help if the need is real and I can help.

Oh well. I decide given how bad gas prices are, offering to fill up her car would approach painting the word "Sucker!" on my forehead; also given how bad gas prices are, offering anything less than $10.00 of gas might not get her any meaningful distance towards home and her wallet where she needs to get so that she can start her trip over right and fill herself up.

"Listen," I suggest,"I can't fill up your car, but if you drive over to the pump, I'll go in and have them put ten dollars on the pump. Would that be enough to get you back home and you could get your wallet?"

"Yes. And give me your name and address I'll send you the money in the mail."

I go inside and pay the cashier.

I come back out, and she pulls down the hose and puts the ten dollars in her car. As she's filling, she says again, "If you just write your name and address on a paper, I'll get the money back to you."

"Thanks, but if you'll forgive me, I think it's okay if you just keep it. You, know I...."

"No, I understand...strangers, right?"

"Yeah, right." Momentarily, I think about offering to give my email address, but she doesn't really want a conversational relationship, she just was in an awkward and embarrassing position and didn't want to be thought of as somebody trying to con or cheat ten bucks of gasoline from a gullible stranger. And it seems self-evident now, but I hadn't thought about it until I read it recently somewhere, but it's ungallant and NOT selfless to try and make some deeper acquaintance out of helping somebody. It's like taking advantage of THEM. So I just ask again, will that be enough to get you home or to your friend? She says, I'm going home and get my wallet, and then I'll go get her. She'll be there, because she told me she ran down the street."

"Okay, then. Well hope it goes okay." (Literature is what we have to save us from the boredom of what dull real people actually say. That, of course was not literature.)

As I drove back on to the freeway, I thought again how much I hate that I would even have any reason to think someone might be trying to trick people out of money at a rest area; how much I hate the several minutes of fear as I thought it might really be a scam with a confederate following in the car behind me, waiting to spring the trap and perhaps even thump on me as they decide what they're going to take from me or my car. And I worried whether 3.324 gallons of gas would really get her where she was going. (It was an older Toyota; figure around 20 miles to the gallon, lower bound and she'd have about 66.48 miles, not counting whatever fumes she had still had in the car before she added the gas.)

So I was replaying everything, second-guessing whether I had really helped enough, was I a mark in a con, was the real con getting my name & address (which she didn't do) for use in a later, bigger con or identity theft? Then, on the radio, Harry Chapin came out of no where and sang "Taxi."

And I felt better. It is, of course, making too much of it to think "it was a sign." But having said that, Harry Chapin is just a comfort in so many ways. He was philosophical, sophomoric, philanthropical and inconsistent. His song coming on just then make me think that what ever had just happened was as okay as I could make it, and to quote from Dick King-Smith's book, Babe, the Gallant Pig, "That'll do ...That'll do" (118).

Week 6: Three true things--12, 13, and 14.

Learn about tagging and discover Del.icio.us.
12
1. Done. Looked around and made an account. also used the 27things account.
2. Saved some sites that had been saved by other people. Save a site that wasn't save by anyone else yet. (Ummmmm, you don't get to see that account.)
3. I can see creating book marks organized by topic (tag)--job hunting, global warming, Soupy Sails--but given the changing nature of Web info, I wonder if a web search at the time of need wouldn't be more helpful. I do like the idea of accessing my bookmarks from anywhere, but I think I'd want to use the account option that allows me not to share my saved book marks with other casual, spying users.

13. Technorati.
1. Claimed my blog.
2. Did exercise one, two, and three. That was easy as promised, although the claiming was a little bit less easy than the just looking around.

14. Library Thing.
1. Looked around, created an account. I didn't have one before.
2. Added five books. Took more time than I thought it should (my slow fault).
3. My library thing is here: http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=library-of-origin&shelf=shelf
I feel happier about my book that has fewer other people already listing it than some of the other books that have thousands of listings.

A Long Expected Part III

(Allusion to "A Long-Expected Party." You know the book...)

Okay, finally a note about a new TV show. (While it's a good idea in public speaking to tell the audience what you're going to say, say what you said you'd say, and then tell the audience that you said what you promised; in blogs and other serial written material it can be a drag, a burden, an obligation hanging nastily over your head.)

The show is Raines. It stars Jeff Goldblum as a police detective with mental issues. If you never watch TV, you can skip this entry, but then again, it might be fun to know some pop culture without having to go through actually exposing yourself to the disease. heh heh.

Anyway, in a structuralist look, Raines is rather like a cross between Monk, Medium (and Ghost Whisperer), early Crossing Jordan, and maybe a dash of House thrown in. That is, Raines talks to the dead murder victim(s) whose death he is investigating. The Monkian aspect is, however, that he's really imagining/hallucinating them. Nevertheless, like in Medium, they won't go away until he has helped them out by finding their killer and maybe some other deed he intuits that they'd want him to do if they really were haunting him. (The dash of House is that many of his acquaintances think he's a jerk, but to some, he's so good at what he does that it's to be endured, and to his ex-partner, at least, Raines is a likeable jerk.) The Crossing Jordan aspect is that he re-imagines the crime events and they're shown as scenes that happened or might have happened. (CSI did that first, and Crossing Jordan's role-playing with her father was a riff on that, and now Raines is a riff on a riff.)

Golblum, like John Wayne before him, is very good at playing variations on a particular kind of character. If you liked Goldblum in any of the following: Independence Day, Jurrassic Park, Buckaroo Bonsai; then you'll probably like him in this. If not, then even if you do watch TV, this may not be the show for you. Since it's the haitus-replacement for ER, that could be a really cruel fact of life if you are an ER fan.

In my case, I've never started with ER, so I'll have no problem watching this replacement. (Or rather taping it to watch the next day, since it would keep me up later than I prefer.)