Less Drama, More Fun

Someone wrote my opinion way better than I did: Times Editorial on the Seattle Bike Scene

Libraryland news: New search engine the cuil

4 out of 5 librarians agree--not a research tool. Good for shopping, but not searching. I tried several searches and compared them with Google and all of the google searches were more relevant. Guess there is something to that "most popular" sites thing.

Yesterday was bike ride number 3 and I am hoping that tomorrow will be ride number 4, but we shall see.

The Boy went back to his dad's house yesterday morning and I miss him already. Teenage boys sure are messy though, and it brings it to a new level when the things that are littering the house are needle tips. Luckily with the caps on, but I think I had to raise my voice 3 times to get them picked up and it happened more than once. I went in his room last night and noticed that they were on the floor and on his desk again, so I guess I get to pick them up. Yay.

I got the LG Voyager last night which caused me to stay up way too late figuring out how to tweak it. I also spent some time this morning adding music to my microsd to play on it. Good thing I did, because the computers were freezing up this morning at work, and the neighbors were playing a really loud movie. Before going insane I turned on the tunes and tuned out the distractions. So far I am very happy with my Voyager.

Finally Trying Feevy

I am trying out Feevy, which my internet-friend Silver uses on his blog. I thought it might liven things up a bit over. Instead of just links to other's blogs, it shows the most recently updated blogs and a blurb of what they are posting about.

The website itself doesn't tell you much about how it works, and I haven't been able to get it to upload real pictures instead of the head cut-outs, but otherwise it is fabulous and, luckily, easy to use.

Tournament Gaming

I have already spent my ENTIRE paycheck...and I only got paid this morning. Sigh.

But it was worth it! Way! I got a Wii! We have a few games from xmas, but now I want MORE! Doesn't go too well with me having already spent my whole paycheck.

In other gaming news, I went to a training offered at Sno-Isle Libraries given by Eli Neiburger of Ann Arbor District Libraries. The first half was old hat, but the second half was all about tournaments, which was exactly what I needed to know about. We are having a tournament this summer with qualifiers at several branches, culminating in a final tournament. It will be limited to ages 8-18 and will be split into 2 age groups, with the finalists of each age group competing at the very end. Now that I have a Wii, I can practice... Yay!



And these guys are scored on "perfects" rather than the overall ddr score, to keep things fair. One step...all I can say is "wow."

Eli is a true gaming geek, and I can see why! I played DDR and sang in Rock Band at the training and had soo much fun. Now I want to get Guitar Hero II and the karaoke game for Wii--because they don't have Rock Band on Wii :'( I found out that the folks that developed Guitar Hero lost the rights to it after II, so III is made by someone else and isn't as good, and the original folks went on to make Rock Band--which truly rocks. Can you believe I got 100% on one of the songs I sang? And 96% on the other. I was vibrating with excitement when I got done. Guess I know Creep by Radiohead and In Bloom by Nirvana pretty well. All that singing in the car has finally paid off somewhere.

Ann Arbor District Library has a pretty amazing website, partially because it is mostly blog and partially for its simplicity. The teen tournament gaming area is really cool, and lists all of the gamers scores from the time they started playing. Here is a link to the related blog. Overall, a good use of a day.



And in final technology news, ROBBY is dying. ROBBY has been my friend for the last 4 years, and I am typing on her even now. I am not sure what made me name her ROBBY, seeing as she feels very female to me, and Robby seems like such a boy's name. But maybe it is because she is able to do things for me that require a strong mind and body, which brings a tomboy to mind. Unfortunately, the body is now failing. ROBBY's video chip is coming undone from her motherboard, and there is nothing more that Advanced Laptop Repair can do for her. They gave me a special place on the keyboard to press if she gets stuck, but that will only work for so long, and eventually her screen will go blank for good. I have already cried for her once, and I am sure I will do so again.

Daylight Moon

Daylight Moon
Originally uploaded by Srcsmgrl

One of the amazing photos I took while in Nevada. The trip was wonderful, even though The Boy and I are both suffering from different technology afflictions. He is addicted to MySpace and texting and I am addicted to IM and email. Terrible.

His addiction has led to a restriction on his phone and internet privileges. Mine has subsided and can be attributed to a new relationship. I am just addicted to this new person. I can't say how long it will last, but it seems to be mutual. And it makes me happy.

In other technology news, I finally figured out how to play music on my phone (the LG 9900 ENV), without buying the $30 software. It only took a couple of quick google searches to find the necessary information. I bought a little micro sd a couple of months ago in preparation. I figured out that it needed to be formated, and what the lock numbers were--that was a challenge--and lo! Music! On my phone! And it seems to be as good as my ipod mini shuffle, and I can see the song info...

I also called the phone company and turned off The Boy's texting and ring tones. Off. As in none.

Now I am watching Rushmore for the first time. It is quite enjoyable. I can't believe I didn't see it sooner.

Back to work tomorrow. I am looking forward to it!

Jourdan Keith and a New Events Calendar

Jourdan Keith came to the middle school in my area today. She was very engaging and a wonderful storyteller. She got the students to participate in her event very nicely. A couple of them even got up and read what they wrote for everyone to hear, which is more self projection than I have seen for a long time from a middle school student.

She started off with a story, asking the kids a lot of questions and allowing them to answer. By the end, when she asked for ideas of animals that they thought were weird, kids were holding up their hands up to answer several times. She told another story, this one a "how and why," and tied it into poetry--using haiku as an introduction or an ending for a story. She had the students use any of the animal suggestions and write a how and why story, then asked for volunteers to read to the class. Two children got up and read their ideas out loud. Everyone was polite and listened and they clapped after they were done. It was very supportive and creative.

After the poetry event, I went to my TSL meeting at GLK. I missed the first half, and the whole next hour was a sort of break. When everyone came back to order, we heard from the IT department about our new calendar. It is going to be very exciting. The old calendar, which is still up, is clunky and abreviated, not very interesting and not user friendly. The new calendar will be much more user friendly, providing the option of rss feeds and email notification for both individual events and event groupings (by age group, branch, etc). It will be much prettier and cleaner, with pictures representing the events and color coding for event types. The calendar will also allow a uniformity throughout the website, so that when an event goes on the calendar, the same description will be used on the branch page and anywhere else the event is featured. When the description is updated all of the others will be as well (can we say xml?). Yay to a new calendar day! (coming soon to a library webpage near you...)