Oscar nomination for an Inventor and his Dog

Well, Haworth Hiker, "Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit" got nominated for best animated film going up against "Corpse Bride" and "Howl's Moving Castle." Go Nick Park!!!

Sunday in the library

It was amazing to see when JP, our beloved custodian, opened the doors to the library this Sunday that 40 people walked into the library. I guess the simile would be that patrons poured into the building like water pouring out of a broken damn. And where did these patrons go? Mostly to audio-visual and the computer lab. As a matter of fact, I had to assist TF at open as one of his lab machines froze up on him. He had a line that extended back to circulation. Audio-visual was a beehive of activity. Not only did staff have to check out videos, they had to assist a patron who spent two hours at the microfilm machine looking up sports stories from a 1990 Kansan.
As for reference, we spent most of the day looking up answers for homework questions. Guess what fellow Adult Service staffers----It's American Indian tribe homework time again! Also, I got plenty of use out of the CIA World Fact book and the World Book encyclopedia as a couple of students had questions about Argentina.
Yes, they came in all shapes and sizes this Sunday. I need a Corona. I deserve a Corona.

In case you didn't notice....

Googgle finally put a "delete" button in their Gmail service, as of January 20th.

Random Thoughts

• It looks like I will be heading to Seattle, WA in October. My uncle timeshares a sailing boat and he has invited me to go sailing with him around the Puget Sound and San Juan Islands. He has been sailing for about twenty years and can't get enough of it. This will be the sixth time I've been to Seattle and the first in twelve years and the first time during fall weather.
• With the celebration of many January birthdays, it looks like my holiday eating season continues. I hope it ends soon because I want to return to my regular eating routine of pizza and beer.
• In March or April, I will be teaching a brand new class at the library--"Advanced Internet: Bloglines and RSS Feeds." My hope with this class is that more than the senior citizenry attend. I feel people from all demographics might benefit from this class. I showed the class handout to work colleagues and they like the concept of this class.
• JG and I are working on a focus group for the library with hopes that patrons will attend a meeting we have planned in the near future. The community West Wy serves has undergone changes since I've started in 2000 and the focus group can give us indicators as to how we can adjust library services.
• Finally, TG has given her approval for the library to start a Reader's Advisory blog. At work today, I will work on a proposal for TG on the blog's operation. If it goes well, I was told that the other branches may participate. Now, to come up with a name for the blog. Any suggestions faithful readers?

More Toys for KC Librarian

I said this about getting a cell phone and I'll say it again about another item: I must be the last person on my block to buy an MP3 player. But I'm enjoying it immensely.

Meanwhile, I am starting to experiment with Audioblogger, a cousin to Blogger. Click the entry below to hear my first recording (requires QuickTime). I do have to dial long distance to post audio but costs won't matter because I'm on cable.

KC Librarian Sings......Ha! Just Kidding

Reliving my 1983 Colorado River Experience

Recently, I have been coming across various forms of media talking about the Grand Canyon. This includes the cover story from National Geographic Magazine, a story about Colorado River sediments from a travel magazine, and a Naked Planet documentary on PBS. The Canyon is geology’s best story, ever. Thanks to the power and tenacity of the Colorado River, a visitor to the Canyon gets to see some of the oldest formations on the Earth.
During the twentieth century, man has taken steps to attempt to tame the forceful Colorado by building dams. The two dams that bracket the Grand Canyon are the Glen Canyon dam, built in the ‘50s and early ’60, and Hoover Dam, built earlier from Roosevelt’s programs to help deliver the U.S. from the Great Depression. It’s the Glen Canyon Dam that I give focus to today.
About a year and a half ago at my library’s staff inservice, our branch manager asked us to stand up and say something about ourselves that would not be normally known otherwise. My hidden secret was I rafted through the Grand Canyon as a seventeen-year-old in 1983…..but that was only part of the tale. I rafted through the Grand Canyon during the great canyon flood of 1983.
My uncle and his three sons picked me up late night at the Flagstaff, AZ airport in June 1983. My uncle was alumni at Wooster College in Wooster, OH (as was my mom) and through his connections was able to schedule this 10-day rafting trip with a rafting excursion company via Wooster’s geology professor who went on these rafting trips yearly. On the way to the KOA campground, my uncle and sons talked about their visit to the Glen Canyon Dam, which is above the Grand Canyon and discussed in wonderment about the large discharge of water coming from the dam. The El Nino weather pattern had a pronounced result on the Rocky Mountains that year producing 210 percent of the annual snowfall average. Yes, I said 210 percent.
As a result, water was in danger of flowing over the Glen Canyon Dam wall in addition to going through the dam’s normal intake-outflow pathways. But still the water was coming. The unusually warm weather melted the snow faster than what the dam could contain. As a result, the engineers had to open the dam’s two bypass tubes. To put this into perspective, on a normal precipitation year, the Glen Canyon Dam releases about 2,700 cfs (cubic-feet-per-second) of water. When my uncle and cousins saw the dam, it was releasing 70,000 cfs. And, of course, the Colorado River rose 25 feet above flood stage with the increasing water.
Our raft trip would go on as scheduled. The Wooster professor prepared us for the fact that some of the rapids in the river would be smoothed out because of the flooding and that some of the rapids would be more violent. The trip started off without major event. The river took us into the canyon, its walls going higher for every mile rafted down the river. During the second day, we rafted up the Little Colorado River and spent the afternoon swimming and hiking and getting better acquainted with some of our travel mates (about 60 people in our group). The Little Colorado River was a memorable day for two reasons. First, we got to swim, cliff dive, and frolic in the LCR’s cobalt blue waters. But second, after our fun and return to the main Colorado, a helicopter flew overhead a dropped a bottled message to our lead boat.
The message had two parts. First, a man was killed trying to kayak through Crystal Falls Rapids, which we were to encounter on the next day. And second, the engineers were still having trouble with the large amount water at Glen Canyon Dam and they had no choice but to release an additional 29,000 cfs of water into the canyon meaning the river would rise another twenty feet. Wow! 99.000 cfs. Imagine the discharge of water coming out of that dam!
The decision was made by the captains of each baloney boat in our group that all rafting guests would portage (or walk) around the Crystal Falls while the boat drivers went through the Falls. We were lucky in the fact that there was a large sand bar not destroyed by the rising river. Everyone had their cameras out as we attempted to get pictures of the boats negotiating the gigantic waves of Crystal Falls.
Even though the river was now considered flooded, we still managed to take some of the day hikes that the rafting company had planned for us. This included a trip up Havasu Creek close to where the Havasupi Indians dwelled. But, the three main boat drivers still looked tense as we continued down the river. There was still one major rapid we had to negotiate: Lava Falls Rapids. And this time there was no portaging around it.
Lava Falls is the most violent rapid in the Grand Canyon. And the rising waters of the Colorado River did nothing to quell the violent rapids. Going through the rapids means a dramatic drop of eighty feet in quite a short time. As a rafter goes through the rapids, he or she must avoid the rocks that are hidden by the raging waters.
I was on the second boat to go through the falls. By all indications, the first boat went through without incident. We went through enduring the onslaught of water (image getting into a water fight where you have a thimble of water and your opponent has the world’s largest fire hose) and the baloney boat going through its gyrations as it adjusted to the contours of the rapids.
The members of the third and last boat were not so lucky. Three members of that boat were bucked off into the river. Two of the members were easily retrieved after the boat cleared the rapids. But the third person, a gentleman in his mid 30’s, was caught by the river’s undertow for two minutes and I’m guessing for him it seemed like an eternity. When the boat finally retrieved him, he had water in his lungs. Fortunately, two ladies in our rafting party were fully qualified and capable nurses. We stopped at our planned post Lave Falls rendezvous where the nurses were able to give first aid. The amazing thing that I’ll always remember about this gentleman is the fact that when he was in the water, he clutched tightly to the sunglasses he was wearing and when the boat pulled him from the river he was still clutching his sunglasses—still intact after this dramatic experience.
The rest of the trip went without incident. When we made Lake Mead, we tied the boats together and enjoyed about three hours worth of sunbathing. When we arrived at the end of the boat trip, the respective boat captains broke out into a makeshift game of baseball using paddles as the bats and fresh fruit as the baseballs, obliterating an apple or orange upon successful contact. No doubt they were looking for a release of tension after this arduous journey.
I “Googled” “Glen Canyon Dam” and “dam water discharge” to see if there have been other years since 1983 where the water discharge was phenomenal. Nothing. As it turned out, 1983 was a freak year for the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. And I was in the right place and the right time to experience it.

Boxing movie and Kiefer's show

I'm taking a break from watching Cinderella Man--borrowed from the library. Opie has another fine movie. I must admit Paul Giamatti is one hell of a character actor.

Meanwhile, a quick check in Workflows shows that the fourth season of "24" is not yet part of the collection. It is on order. An-tici-pa-tion is making me wait. (Eat your heart out Carly Simon).

A Coach named Herman

No doubt, he'll light a fire in the Chiefs defense and he plans to leave the offense scheme alone. I just hope I can get through his press conferences, replete with cliches and metaphors, without gagging.

Girl Scout cookie time

This year I'm buying from two sources: AN's daughter and my niece.

Better share my thin mints with my coworkers.

50 Gadgets from the last 50 Years

I pulled this off Library Journal's Tech Blog.

About two weeks ago, PC World list the top 50 gadgets from the past 50 years. Here's the top ten:

1. Sony Walkman (1979)


2. Apple iPod (2001)


3. Tie--ReplayTV (2001) and Tivo(1999)


4. PalmPilot (1996)


5. Sony CD Player (1982)


6. Motorola Startac--"Design matters as much as functionality" cell phones(1996)


7. Atari Video Computer System (1977)--Pong, anyone?


8. Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (1972)--Remember those Polaroid commercials with James Garner and Mariette Hartley?


9. M-Systems Diskonkey (2000)--These little bastards still don't work on the PCs in our computer lab.


10. Regency TR-1 (1954)--aka, The Transistor Radio--I used my TR for Royals Baseball back in the '70s.

Also making the top 50 were Texas Instrument's Speak and Spell (1978), Texas Instrument's SR-10 (Handheld Calculator)(1973), Milton Bradley's Simon (1978), and, for guys who waste away their weekends watching sports, the Zenith Space command (TV's first remote control)(1954).

Does Silly Putty count as a gadget or is it just a toy?