New Year's Eve Drink of Choice

In the past it has been Boulevard, Fat Tire, and generic doesn't-thrill-me-anymore Bud.
This year:

Lots of Vodka,
A thimble-full of Peachtree schnapps,
and a smidge of orange juice.

Fuzzy navels, anyone?

Abbott, Costello and computers

I was forwarded this in an email. It's silly. But for me, it struck a chord, especially since I teach computer classes at the library and I sometimes (through mere accident) drown the students (mostly older folks) with computer lingo.
I have always appreciated the "Who's on First" skit. Now, here's Abbott and Costello in the world of computers.....

COSTELLO CALLS TO BUY A COMPUTER FROM ABBOTT

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: No, the name's Lou.
ABBOTT: Your computer?
COSTELLO: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.
ABBOTT: Mac?
COSTELLO: I told you, my name's Lou.
ABBOTT: What about Windows?
COSTELLO: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?
ABBOTT: Do you want a computer with Windows?
COSTELLO: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows?
ABBOTT: Wallpaper.
COSTELLO: Never mind the windows. I need a computer and software.
ABBOTT: Software for Windows?
COSTELLO: No. On the computer! I need something I can use to write proposals, track expenses and run my business. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO: Yeah, for my office. Can you recommend anything?
ABBOTT: I just did.
COSTELLO: You just did what?
ABBOTT: Recommend something.
COSTELLO: You recommended something?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: For my office?
ABBOTT: Yes.
COSTELLO: OK, what did you recommend for my office?
ABBOTT: Office.
COSTELLO: Yes, for my office!
ABBOTT: I recommend Office with Windows.
COSTELLO: I already have an office with windows! OK, let's just say I'm sitting at my computer and I want to type a proposal. What do I need?
ABBOTT: Word.
COSTELLO: What word?
ABBOTT: Word in Office.
COSTELLO: The only word in office is office.
ABBOTT: The Word in Office for Windows.
COSTELLO: Which word in office for windows?
ABBOTT: The Word you get when you click the blue "W ".
COSTELLO: I'm going to click your blue "w" if you don't start with some straight answers. What about financial bookkeeping? You have anything I can track my money with?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: That's right. What do you have?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: I need money to track my money?
ABBOTT: It comes bundled with your computer.
COSTELLO: What's bundled with my computer?
ABBOTT: Money.
COSTELLO: Money comes with my computer?
ABBOTT: Yes. No extra charge.
COSTELLO: I get a bundle of money with my computer? How much?
ABBOTT: One copy.
COSTELLO: Isn't it illegal to copy money?
ABBOTT: Microsoft gave us a license to copy Money.
COSTELLO: They can give you a license to copy money?
ABBOTT: Why not? THEY OWN IT!

A Few Days Later.....

ABBOTT: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
COSTELLO: How do I turn my computer off?
ABBOTT: Click on "START".............

My Top Five Blogging Topics for 2005

In following the examples of Ebert & Roeper or Time magazine, I've decided to list my top five blogging topics for 2005. So, in no particular order, heeeeere they are:

1. I've Got my Gmail! In the late 1990's I dabbled in streaming media as I pursued my MLS. This choice represents my hopes of someday producing more streaming media on a frequent basis.


2. Trading Cards. Using a program through Flickr, I was able to produce the KC Librarian Trading card. A couple of friends also produced their own in their own creative fashion: MDistressa and Ultraspark. Once again, Mr. Ultraspark, I need to state emphatically that I have no comment. We are still waiting on the library trading card for Haworth Hiker.


3. My comments from the "My Lobotomy" story from NPR radio. This story struck an emotional chord within me and my reaction was strong, sincere, and honest.


4. I've always enjoyed my talks and get togethers with AN. Here are some highlights from 2005.
   
   
   
   • Ethiopian Cuisine
   • Scholarship Hall Get Together
   • Phone Call from Seattle
   • So, what's your favorite scene?
   
   
   
   More to come? I hope so...


5. And of course, life at work. Whether it's mundane or sensational, it can get quite interesting. Examples:
   
   
   
   • Podcasting Lecture
   • Dubious Streak in the Computer Lab
   • Blogging Madness
   • Patrons can be Sooooooo Irresponsible
   • Substitute Teacher
   
   
   
   

David Letterman, eat your heart out.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!

One and done Santa display

I had the case of the "clumsies" when I was leaving work tonight. I dropped the Santa decoration I had in my office and it shattered. Once again, some words I don't normally say managed to escape my lips.

Does anyone want me to handle their precious family china?

Holiday Bliss--my take

As indicated by her blog entry (Holiday Bliss), Haworth Hiker has been enjoying her time away from work.

I have been having a wonderful time too. But I think my holiday enjoyments come differently. And in my case, I think I enjoyed the interaction that took place between PS and her father, DrB, as father and daughter celebrated what might be their last Christmas together. DrB. now resides in a full-care nursing facility and the Alzheimer's and Parkinson's has consumed him. It was sad to see him attempt to rip the wrapping paper off of his gifts and finally asking PS to help him. Still, DrB. was lucid enough to meekly say "Thank You" after every gift received. This exchanged struck a nerve in me as I was forced to remember my last Christmas with my mother back in 1990. Mom's brain tumor re-emerged a couple of months prior to the holidays creating paranoid illusions (She thought my brother-in-law and I burnt all of the furniture in the basement of her house). So, we were together in 1990 but the holiday atmosphere was not exactly festive. And as far as DrB. goes, he made at monumental effort for a man in his late seventies to enjoy the moment, but the damn symptoms of his afflictions did limit him.

On the positive side, it was fun (once again) watching niece and nephew opening their gifts this year and loudly blurting out their "Thank You's" after each gift received. C and A made some delicious prime rib and I consumed enough to the point I had to take a cat nap on the couch.

I had dessert at MS/PS where pecan pie was served. So, Christmas plus the Pearson-Sellards mini-reunion makes for a pretty good holiday break for me.

A scholarship hall get-together

I was assuming that I would be doing my normal Friday night routine-going to Shawnee to have pizza with MS/PS. But, a phone call from AN put an end those plans. AN was calling me from her cell phone. She was driving up from Parsons for a get together down at an Italian restaurant in Kansas City's Plaza and she invited me to join the party. I said sure and after scribbling down the restaurant address, I got ready.
As it turned out, the get-together turned out to be a miniature reunion of Sellards-Pearson scholarship hall residents from the mid-eighties (including yours truly). ER and his wife J were there. They now live in Albuquerque, NM. SC and his wife were there as was WK and his wife. AN, SS, and yours truly represented the singles demographic. We had a wonderful dinner at the Italian eatery followed by coffee at a plaza coffee house. It was fun talking about schol-hall memories from (gulp) almost twenty years ago.

Blowing off steam (why didn't I think of this when I was their age?)

I pulled this off from the Library Journal Tech Blog. It shows college students of the University of Michigan blowing off steam during finals. The ran through the school's computer lab and undergrad library. And no librarian "Shh"ed them.

The video will play on your QuickTime player. Click here to view.

Christmas Card from a long-time friend

I was surprised as I poured through my email this morning to receive a Christmas eCard from one of my best friends from high school. JL is passionate about many things but two things that he is very passionate about are Elvis Presley (he has tons of EP memorabilia and performs a spot-on match of Elvis music) and singing (he enjoys karaoke and has performed in the Las Vegas area).

Here's a link to a sample of his work: http://www.jimlodwig.com/card-from-Jim/

Random Notes

• HBO broadcasted the first episode of The Sopranos tonight. It's interesting to see some of the first season characters, the youth of the Soprano children, and barely any evidence of James Gandolfini's thinning hair.


• The Griefs are done, in my opinion. Although they had the talent on both offense and defense, they never really had the fire in their belly all season. Take a look at the San Diego Chargers. Marty had his team fired up against Indy.


• In another act of customer appreciation, our waitress gave us (a group of four) each a free tequila shot tonight. Who needs free beer when you get free tequila.


• My favorite news aggregator "Bloglines" is offline for a couple of days so that they can move the service to a server with more memory. This means I will be unable to receive notices when friends update their blogs....but HEY! They haven't been updating their blogs. (Hint, hint)

Being a loyal customer pays off for friend

Off and on for the past two and half years, I have spent my Friday nights going out for pizza with PS and MS. They have been going to this little pizzeria off Shawnee Mission Parkway in Johnson County. Last night, the owner of the restaurant said our meal was "on the house" because of our loyal patronage.

Heck, if I had known that, I would have ordered three or four more beers......

My Bad while teaching class Thursday morning

Ordinarily, I'd be prepared to teach any computer class. However, I completely forgot that the guys from computer services upgraded our lab machines to Windows XP and with that the Office Suite. As such, I attempted to teach PowerPoint XP Thursday with PowerPoint 2000 handouts. Not a pretty sight. I completely winged today's class as I learned with the students the idiosyncrasies of the updated presentation program. I will have to create brand spanking new handouts before I next teach PP.

On a side note, I decided to tell the gentleman with the "attention problem" that he could not videotape the class on Thursday. The reason I used was videotaping the class would be an invasion of privacy on the other patrons attending the class. I'm sure my supervisor and colleagues can think of other reasons.

Monkey business with Peter Jackson

Remember playing with Silly Putty as a kid? You would take this play clay, stretch it out and flatten it against a comic strip panel from your Sunday newspaper with the hope that the clay would take up the ink from said strip. Then you could stretch and contort said image to your heart's delight.
Well, Peter Jackson had a big container of Silly Putty and he pressed his clay upon the tale of King Kong that came out as a movie in 1933. And he stretched and twisted this icon of a movie into his own version of King Kong in 2005. And the result is a fun movie.
I think what makes this movie excel is the relationship between our heroine Ann Darrow and the giant gorilla. In the previous two movies, we just see two blond ladies scream at the top of their lungs as an oafish ape smiles and paws at them. Here we see a relationship build. PJ makes it a point that Ann and Ape make eye contact and he carries the relationship to the point where Ann scolds the ape like a mother scolding a misbehaving child or where Ann entertains the ape by juggling and doing cartwheels and backflips. So the development of the relationship between woman and beast is more clearly depicted.
Now, as far as the action.......WOW! The dinosaur scenes from this movie would put any dino scene from any of the Jurassic Park movies to shame. I have two favorite scenes from the Skull Island act of the movie (Act II). First, I enjoyed the scene where Denham and Driscoll try to outrace brontosauruses and raptors to safety. The mixing of dinosaurs and humans running was spectacular. Second, Kong battles not one, not two, but three T-rexes in protecting Ann. Again, like in his LOTR movies, Jackson does a marvelous job of blending humans and the digital-generated animals.
And of course, we come to the fight scene between Kong and the bi-planes atop the Empire State Building. Fantastic! Thank God I lived during a time in movies where digital animation makes movies fun.
I think Jackson made this movie for two reasons. First, the original Kong got his creative juices flowing and he wanted to make his Kong version as a way of saying "Thank You" for giving me a purpose in life. Second, I think Jackson suffers from an addiction of applying digital animation to help tell a story and I think he'll go through some serious withdrawal problems if he attempts to tell a story without computer assistance. Methinks he needs to go through a twelve-step program to help him with the addictions.
I decided to use the silly putty metaphor at the beginning of this post because sometimes you can stretch your silly putty too thin. If I do have a complaint on King Kong 2005, it would be that at three hours seven minutes, it's too long in length. (Bilbo Baggins would say "Butter spread over too much bread.") In LOTR, Jackson benefited from the fact that Tolkien saturated the stories with lots of detail. In Kong, Jackson takes the original ninety-minutes of story from 1933 and doubles it, stretching it over three hours. I think the story could have been told in two and a half hours.
I look forward to adding this movie to my DVD collection.

Unusual request for one of my computer classes

I was working at my desk earlier this week when switchboard forwarded a phone call to me. It was a gentleman with a request concerning the PowerPoint class I will teach on Thursday of this week. Here's what the man said:

"Yes, sir, I am enrolled in your PowerPoint class for Thursday and I have a favor to ask. I suffer from a condition where I have a difficult time paying attention and I sometimes fall asleep"

Narcolepsy, I thought as he continued....

"I was wondering if I could videotape your class so that I can play it back at home and review the points I might miss in the event that I fall asleep?"

I kind of stammered in my response. I never had anyone make such a request before. It took a minute for me to compose myself and deliver my response which was a tentative yes provided that he did not shoot any library patron and kept his camera pointed in the direction of my projection screen.

What's next? A song and dance request?

Kong premiere

The movie theatre up here in North KC will be showing King Kong at 12:01AM Wednesday morning. I work until 9PM Tuesday evening. The problem lies in the fact that I have to return to reference desk duty first thing Wednesday morning. If I went to the midnight showing of Peter Jackson's film, that would mean I would get home 3:30AM Wednesday, get two hours of sleep, and then get ready for work. In my younger days, I would be able to do it. But, not now.

So far, Rotten Tomatoes has given Kong an 93% rating and Mr. Roger Ebert thinks this is one of the better movies of the year.

Chances are I'll go Wednesday night.

Driving in this morning

The driving conditions were worse this Monday morning compared to the Wednesday afternoon of last week. Yes, dear reader, you read correctly. The temperature this morning was around 32-35 degrees but the temperature on the road was actually colder. A lot of drivers drove with (pardon the pun) wreckless abandon and, as a result, there were numerous fender-benders reported on the morning radio shows.
I almost saw a SUV do a rollover on Platte Purchase Parkway and as I drove under Highway 169 to get to QT, I saw southbound traffic moving at a crawl. And when I drove southbound on I-435, traffic was reduced to 15 MPH as there was a wreck just prior to the Missouri River Bridge. I made it to work ten minutes later than normal.

Narnia....I didn't yawnia

Went to see the matinee showing of "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" Friday afternoon. Every scene matched the images that were created in my head after I read the book some thirteen to fourteen years ago. The CGI was sharp and helped immensely with the story. Nothing looked fake here. In past CGI movies, I would see CGI characters that would not remain in proportion with their human counterparts diminishing the enjoyment of said movie. But not here......
It's good to see that Adam Adamson has the capacity to direct a movie and tell a story that is more complex that the ninety minute Shrek fare. The battle scenes were spectacular and the four children actors delivered as Lucy, Edmond, Susan and Peter.
One concern though: I had a little difficulty with the actress who played the witch. Her performance seemed stiff and reserved (at least to me) and I could not tell the difference if she was playing the part of a cold, sinister, evil witch or that of a piece of a cardboard.
That being said...I look forward to future movies from "The Chronicles of Narnia."

Dubious streak in the computer lab

I'm not proud in saying this but the computer lab has been on a streak as of late. For four consecutive days, a lab associate or yours truly has caught a person using another library patron's card.

'Tis the season for not having a clue. The two younger ladies I caught simply walked away from the computer lab gnashing their teeth in anger as I confiscated the card in question. Another gentleman had to hash his situation out with our Circ super.

I think I can sell these chumps one hell of a lemon of an automobile because if they neglect to read our rules for having a library card, they obviously would neglect reading the terms of a sales contract. C'mon people, you use somebody else's ID at the library, you lose.

Podcasting Lecture

For all of you librarian technology geeks out there, I attended a virtual lecture today at the OPAL website that discussed Podcasting. OPAL (online programming for all libraries) is a website designed for library continuing education. The Podcasting lecture has been archived on the site. And for those of you who like to use WIKI, please visit http://podcasting101.pbwiki.com. It contains the lecturer's notes about everything involved with a podcast.

A Cell Phone for Fido

I found this article in Wired magazine's website. Apparently, there's cell phone technology that allows owners to communicate with their dogs and even track them should the canine get lost. Check out "Fido's First Cell Phone."

Driving Home Wednesday night

After I cleared the snow off my vehicle:
25 MPH Westbound on Parallel,
45 MPH Northbound on I-435,
35 MPH Eastbound on 152,
30 MPH Eastbound on Barry Road,
and.......
discovering that I still have a potty mouth on the drive home.

It's not enough that we had a snow storm to endure, I had to put up with the drivers with the all-wheel drive who think they can drive at normal speed in this stuff. I laughed myself silly when I saw a tow truck preparing to load a Hum-Vee on 152 highway.

I guess I'm fortunate this time. Last February, I wasn't.

K-State has found its Prince

Well, 17 years ago, K-State hired a relatively unknown, unproven coach. Look what happened to the Wildcat football program.

Can Prince do the same thing? Stay tuned sports fans.

Patrons can be sooooooo irresponsible

It was an average Saturday at the library....lots of questions, lots of book requests, lot's of grandmothers doing their granddaughter's research.......

Anyway, I took the late lunch which meant that I didn't eat until 1:45PM. When I got back around 2:15, I was shelving the new books when I received a phone call from a young lady patron who lost her wallet while exiting the computer lab and the library. Now, I can understand patrons losing their personal items. It happens all the time. About once a week, I usually present circulation with a lost library card found in the lab, lost set of keys, etc.

But this young lady made an unusual request: Could we review our security camera shots and see 1. How she lost her wallet, and 2. If anybody picked it up. I was hesitant in my answer but I decided instead to trace her steps to see if I could figure out what happened.

So I grabbed the cordless phone and asked her to describe the exact actions she took in leaving the computer lab. She said then she stopped at the two benches under the clock to bundle up for the cold weather and then walked directly outside. As she gave each action, I scanned the floor, shelving, book displays, and even the security station to see if a wallet was at each location. I told the patron that I did not see her wallet.

I did not give her a direct yes-no answer as to whether I would access the security camera archives to determine what happened to her wallet. Instead, I told her that I would fill out an incident report documenting the fact that a wallet was lost. I did this thinking that I did not want any parties to point the finger of blame or be blamed. Simple incident--a lost wallet.

About thirty minutes later, I did review the archives which proved inconclusive.

I have been involved in a customer service industry for quite some time. And one of the axioms that I have to accept is that a patron's situation is always valid, no matter how trivial or silly or infantile it might seem to us. But, I know I have to sometimes draw the line when I feel a patron's request extends beyond the boundaries of my helping them.

Case in point from early October: I was playing the part of errand guy getting pizzas for the Reader's Advisory video cast members. I mistakenly went over to the ref desk to get a phone book to call the pizzeria. There talking with the staff was a man who earlier in the week had lost his flash stick in the computer lab. He wanted me and my staff members to canvass each and every patron to see if they found the stick....which, of course, is very impossible.

Lost wallet, lost flash stick, lost car keys......Come on people! If you're going to spend the time and energy possessing these things, then be responsible for them. Don't try to bully library staff into being caretakers for your personal items and, also, don't take advantage of us just because we have technologies (like security cameras) which might help you find your lost items.

We staff members do believe in service but we are also capable of knowing how far to extend that service.

KU Basketball

I guess I'm going through the same growing pains with Bill Self as I did with Roy Williams back in the late '80s and early '90s. The next couple of seasons will require me to be patient and understanding of the fact that Self does know what he's doing.