The Secret Life of an American Librarian

Hibernating

2010-10-24T11:30:00.003-04:00

As anyone who will see this post has probably already gathered, this blog fell by the wayside after I started school and work and comic-drawing. I was simply going to take it down today so nobody wastes any time checking it or stumbling on it from a search engine etc., but my boyfriend points out this would be counterintuitive for a budding librarian literally in the business of digital preservation.

So this blog will remain up for posterity, but I will not be updating it in the near future. Maybe in 2013, after I've graduated and started my career proper, I'll come back to cultivate it with professional-type content. Until then, I have a very active cyber-life at the Amateur Nutritionist and, periodically, Stacks.

A long farewell to all my greatness....

Stacks: The Website

2010-07-25T10:49:00.003-04:00

Instead of bogging down my blog with individual installments of Stacks, I've made good use of my ~~hours I should have spent studying~~ free time to construct a website to house them. You can now enjoy my charming wit at http://tkmarnell.host22.com/stacks/.

Stacks #4

2010-07-24T10:04:00.000-04:00

Stacks #3

2010-07-23T16:47:00.000-04:00

Stacks #2

2010-07-22T10:36:00.000-04:00

Stacks #1

2010-07-21T19:44:00.003-04:00

Well, they finally broke me. I can't bring myself to read or write another paper on library science.

I can, however, bring myself to play with Adobe Illustrator to make comics about library science. Introducing my latest hobby: "Stacks."

Click the image to view full-size:

Back in the Saddle

2010-07-06T15:36:00.004-04:00

Poor little blog--I've neglected it for so long. I stopped posting when I was let go from my position at CeDIR, and didn't get back into it even when tons of librarian-in-training-related material popped up. Here's what I've been up to:

About three weeks ago I began my first two classes for my MLS/MIS degrees. One of them, Collection Development, I absolutely love, because everything we read and practice in class is practical and will certainly come in useful in the workplace. Case in point: the big semester paper is a Selection Project, in which we hand-pick items for a new imaginary collection. Of course, it's not all fun and games--we do have to talk about budgeting and whatnot--but those 3 hours on Monday and Wednesday mornings just zip by.

The other class, Representation and Organization, is tolerable, but only because I used to be a psychology major. The course is taught by a PhD student, which I don't mind in and of itself, but she's so busy with her own schoolwork that she doesn't have time to master the material before class. Every Tuesday and Thursday night I'm treated to two hours of her voice reading blankly from a sheet of paper she printed out before class. At least she's using her advisor's materials, which do contain excellent information.

Tomorrow after noon before class, I'll buzz over to the SLIS computer lab to participate in a search behavior study. I'd like to say I was helping the researchers out of the purity of my heart or a bubbling devotion to health information, but my primary motivation was actually the $50 Amazon gift card offered to volunteers :D

Over all, I've been sufficiently busybusybusy over the past few weeks. The reading assignments for these classes are intense and time consuming, and since we meet twice a week in summer they just keep coming at me! I'm supposed to be working on one now, before I exercise and wolf down dinner on my way to the oh-so-invigorating slide-reading lecture.

I hope everyone had a happy fourth!

I usually love credit unions, but not today

2010-05-04T09:34:00.003-04:00

This morning I started wrapping up loose ends for our trip to Japan next week. I filled out the Travel Notification form for Chase, confirmed the pick-up time for the JR Pass Exchange Orders, and double-checked whether our cell phones would work in the country. They won't, which is a very good thing to know. Then I called my credit union to let them know I'd be withdrawing from my debit account overseas, and could they please put a note on my account that it isn't fraud.

"I'm sorry, we can't do that."

Why?

"We're a small institution and can't afford to take that kind of risk."

What a great "risk" it would be when I'm talking to you personally to authorize the transactions done by me, I don't know. If they were suspicious of requests over the phone, that would be one thing. But even if I drove down to the office and asked face-to-face, she said, they couldn't do it. Maybe they assume we'll be mugged in Ginza and don't want to "risk" the $300-per-day that the card is limited to withdrawing.

The chipper voice kindly explained that when the fraud detection agency sees that I've used the card at an ATM in Tokyo, they will contact me to verify that I made the purchases before locking the account. I asked if they could at least contact me by email because, as established above, our phones will not work in Japan.

"No, they have to call. But when you have problems with your account, you can call us when you have access to a phone."

Note that she said when you have problems, not if. So basically, I have no way to prevent the headache of being locked out of my account, wasting precious sight-seeing time to hunt down a pay phone capable of international calls, and pumping coins into it to prove to some disgruntled pencil pusher that I'm spending my own money. Alternatively, I could withdraw only from my Chase credit card for a 3% fee per transaction, or bring hundreds in paper traveler's cheques or money orders that could get lost with the luggage and have a lousy exchange rate. Or I could magically morph into a teeny boppper with an iPhone 3G that would work in Japan.

Or, she added helpfully at the end, I could open up a Visa Gold account with the CU just for the two-week trip, because you can place alerts on credit cards. Bank tellers have such wonderful ideas.

Nobody Expects the Registrar Inquisition

2010-04-29T11:35:00.003-04:00

This morning, as I was climbing out of the tub, I heard my phone jingling desperately in my purse. I thought it was the Cincinnati travel agency calling to set up an appointment to pick up the Exchange Orders for our Japan Rail passes (which, by the way, are a real pain to get because they don't sell them in Japan and only a handful of agents in big cities have authorization to sell them in the US). I rushed into the living room, grabbed my phone and stuck it under a mop of dripping hair to hear this:

"This is --- from the Office of the Registrar. I have some questions about your application for residency."

Uh oh.

What followed was an interrogation of sorts. They saw that I had deferred matriculation to graduate school for a year--did that mean I was trying to get around the residency requirements? My salvation would lie in proof of my commitment to the Hoosier-born-and-bred Sweetie. What was Sweetie's name? When did he and I move in together? When did we officially commit to each other? Did he share in the living expenses? Did my parents contribute to living expenses? Was Sweetie and his family the primary reason I decided to stay in the state?

After a nervewracking ten minutes rattling off dates, addresses, income amounts, and a list of other institutions I was accepted to but turned down to stay with Sweetie, --- said this:

"Okay. You'll receive a notice of approval later today."

That's it?

The way things were going, I thought I'd have to drag AMIL and her husband and Who and the cat to a hearing to vouch for me. But apparently the university isn't swathed in as much sticky red tape as I thought!

Prepaid Shenanigans

2010-04-19T16:08:00.002-04:00

This afternoon, I was reading some money articles about credit cards and remembered the $75 prepaid card Sears had sent us as a rebate for the washing machine we bought in December. I brought the balance to $0 precisely last month, so one would imagine that would be the end of it. However, when I first received the card, I rooted out and read the fine print on the website. Mastercard charges "inactivity" fees every couple of months, which may or may not still be applied after the card has been used up. I would err on the side of "would be," because once opened the account functions more or less like regular credit. To be safe, I called customer service to cancel entirely.

It only took about 10 minutes to finally get someone on the line. For one thing, the main menu does not offer an option to talk to someone. The recorded voice loops around, "If your card has been lost or stolen, please hang up and dial 1-800-blahblahblah." After a bit of confusion, I eventually hit the option to check the amount on my account, which I already knew. But after listening to the electronic voice drone about my last purchase in March, I was offered a new menu with an option for "General Information."

The "General Information" menu had options for lost/stolen cards, checking balances, and "General Information."

That General Information menu finally offered the option to talk to someone. However, it was a hidden option that I almost missed, because the line right before was: "If you would like to close your card, please email customer service at help@etc. We will respond to your request within 48 hours. [Pause]. If you would like to speak to a live representative, press #". Bingo. Someone with a soft voice and thick accent finally picked up, read me my rights, and let me cancel the dang card. After subjecting all of my sensitive information to the vulnerable air waves, of course.

But the account is closed, the card has been shredded, and I can now move on to bigger and better things.

2 Weeks Left

2010-04-15T08:12:00.002-04:00

Today is April 15th, a.k.a. "Tax Day," and also the midpoint of my last month at CeDIR. C. and S. took the opportunity to squeeze as much out of me as possible at the last moment by springing an enormous weeding project on me. I spent about 30 hours over the past few work days checking every title to see if it should go in reference, relabeling the ones that should, trying to sell the ones that shouldn't, and updating the Friends site to include the ones that failed (which is about 95%--Book Prospector is apparently much stingier than in the past). Now all I have to do is reorganize the entire Reference section that has sat neglected for the past ten years...and probably will be for the next ten as well.

In other news, I finally signed up for summer classes at SLIS, as well as the LISTSERV newsletters for the school and students. I have since come to regret that. Every day my inbox is filled to the brim with messages that have nothing to do with me. I don't mind that they advertise talks, workshops, research competitions...that's what the LISTSERV is for. However, two thirds aren't about academics at all. Examples: "We're going out of the country in June; would anyone be interested in house-sitting?" "If anyone finds a beaded necklace in the library, let me know!" "I have the texbooks for A, B, and C. Any buyers?"

I can't help but wonder if the LISTSERV was like this ten years ago, or if I can attribute its devolution into Craigslist to the recent age of Twitter. As modern type-happy-fingers do not hesitate to pester everyone on the planet about their hangovers or romantic woes, it's almost surprising that I haven't received a single message like: "Sad, sad news. One of our beloved octogenarian faculty was hospitalized today with a bad hip. Keep him in your prayers!" or "Hey everyone, this student you don't know or care about is getting married in June! Mazel Tov!" And I suppose I should be grateful that the emails are at least capitalized and punctuated correctly...for the most part.

The one thing I haven't received is the one thing I signed up for: job opportunities. I receive notifications of professional full-time positions across the country, but I was hoping at least for a, "Cataloging is looking for hourlies. 10-15 hours a week. Email your resume to Xxxx." This may be because no one is actually hiring right now, but I have just found evidence to the contrary by peeking at the Human Resources Job Postings.

Sorry to cut this short; after this discovery, I must format another cover letter.

Sneaky Fees

2010-04-05T14:50:00.004-04:00

When, as a dewy-eyed freshman in college, I set up my first credit card with Chase, I apparently accepted enrollment in the "Payment Protector Program." This lovely feature gives me the option of deferring accumulation of interest on the card by up to two years in case of disaster. Which would be great if I was the sort of person to ever use a credit card if I couldn't pay the balance in full by the end of the month. Which I'm not. I use credit cards strictly for the rewards. Even if I was lying in a hospital bed, my parents or my Sweetie could pay off that $30 shopping spree electronically from my checking account. But, as the aforementioned dewy-eyed freshman, I didn't realize this, and just said "OK" to everything the man on the phone pushed at me.

I didn't notice I had this program after I stopped using the card regularly, because the monthly fee isn't charged when you have a balance of $0. But I just checked my statement for this month and saw a $0.28 charge for a $32 balance and read up on it. 28 cents a month, whatever. But it isn't a flat 28 cents a month. It's .89% per month ("Only 89 cents per $100!" they say). So if we had gone to Japan and used the bulk of my $1500 balance for hotels and whatnot, I would have come back to a $12.50 fee. That isn't much for a single occasion, but I would prefer to use it for lunch in Tokyo instead of giving it to some big bank for absolutely nothing. And I shudder to think about people with higher limits who use their cards habitually. It wouldn't be unrealistic for someone to ring up $1000 every month if they use it to pay for rent or car/student loans or food for a big family. This someone would end up shelling out $100+ in "Payment Protector" fees over the course of a year!

So I called and listened to a girl read a spiel about how great the plan is.

Her (in extremely bored, condescending tone): "The Payment Protection Plan blahblahblahblahblah."
Me: "Okay. I'd like to cancel it."
Her: "But The Payment Protection Plan blahblahblahblahblah."
Me: "I'd still like to cancel it."
Her (still in extremely bored, condescending tone): "I need to reiterate that you're giving consent to cancel after I explained the benefits and assured you of the 0% fee on a $0 balance."
Me: "Uhuh."
Her: "I have submitted the request for cancellation. Is there anything else I can help you with today?"
Me: "Nope."
Her: "You have a wonderful day."
Me: "I will."

The Exact Same Letter

2010-04-02T16:18:00.003-04:00

I just received an email from the county library that I applied to for the third time.

Not surprisingly, it was also the third time I have received this email.

"We were fortunate to have several excellent candidates for this opening. While your credentials are noteworthy, we have decided to pursue other candidates for the position whose qualification more closely match the specific needs of this position."

How anyone could have qualifications that "more closely match the specific needs of this position" than someone who has done the same tasks outlined in the job description for the past year, I don't know. Why they couldn't be bothered to actually talk to someone who had done the same tasks outlined in the job description for the past year, I also don't know. I have half a mind to send this in response:

Thank you for the time and care you put into responding to my application. It's a great comfort to know that whenever I open an email sent by this library, it will always have the same reliable wording as previous ones. Right down to the missing "s" after "qualification."

Yours,
Tamara

Didn't Get It

2010-03-25T10:21:00.003-04:00

Well, I received the inevitable "Thanks but no thanks" letter from the MLA yesterday.

"We received many excellent applications and unfortunately, the number of grants we can support is limited."

Disappointing, but not unexpected. I've received many such letters over the past few years. Interestingly, every single one was a variant of "there were many qualified/impressive/excellent/[no adjective] candidates and [optional: wish we could/would love to award you all but] we have limited funds/grants/jackpot prizes." I know they think they're being nice, but frankly, it just makes recipients feel worse. Let's be honest: all that matters is that there was at least one person better than me. Saying there were many robs me of the tiny consolation that I might, at least, have been #2.

La sigh. At least now I don't have to fly to Washington DC to smile and wave at people in order to claim my $$$.

In other news, another reference position at the county library opened up! I sent in my application, and hope now that I'm a SLIS student, I will receive a reply other than the mass email with the same general message as the one on my MLA letter.

Productivity

2010-03-12T11:50:00.002-05:00

This is pretty much all I have to show for my accomplishments yesterday at the library:

After a fit of activity when the sun came out and everyone came back to the Institute, the clouds rolled in and business sank back down to baseline levels (which is to say, practically null).

But I promise, scrap-paper origami is not the only project I've been working on. I actually have a much, much bigger one, but I'll have to keep the nature of it mum for a while. Like a year. It will probably take me a year to finish, if I finish at all. While cyber-pressure can be good sometimes, like it forces me to eat at least one healthy dish a day so I can brag about it on The Amateur Nutritionist, in this case the shame of failure would be too great. It's the sort of project that creates expectations, and chances are very slim that I could match up to them.

So for now, you just get paper lilies and cranes.

Some Things Are Better Left Unknown

2010-03-09T12:36:00.003-05:00

Last night, Sweetie was looking up what sort of sentence his father could be facing for his recent OWI. He found that since his BAC was above .15 (way above .15) it was considered a Class A Misdemeanor. Then he saw that if this was a repeat offense, Who could be looking at a lot worse than a revoked license and some fines. So he put his name into Indiana's public online database of criminal records, and thankfully nothing popped up.

Then Sweetie, in a fit of Schadenfreude, started looking up the histories of other people for giggles. He put in his employers, his relatives, his professors, his childhood pals....eventually he started putting in my acquaintances too. He asked for C. and S.'s last names, which I gave to humor him, confident that nothing would pop up.

S, SC. Speeding. Opened 2/19/2010. Guilty plea entered 2/25/2010.

*Gasp* S has a record! I have no idea how she managed to speed over snow, but she must have been going at least 15mph over the limit for the cop to bother pulling her over. Now I'm trying to remember what was going on the 25th...I have some vague memory that S was "staying home to take care of her sick son" that day >.>

Chain of Command

2010-03-05T15:35:00.003-05:00

About two months ago, S. sent K. and me a list of assigned shelf reading that we were to do at least once every month. I hate shelf reading. So I put it off for a week. Then K. was "let go," and I put off the shelf reading for another week...or eight. I figured if anyone ever asked, I would say that I wasn't sure which section I was supposed to do now that K. was gone (even though it was perfectly obvious I'd have to do the whole collection).

It was inevitable, but the other day C. finally realized that she's my boss. As my boss, she can tell me to do something, and I'll do it. Usually she pussy-foots around a request (e.g. "Can you put this poster up, if you get the chance?" or "I'd like the stats for this call number, if you have time today. No rush.") But on Wednesday she straight-up asked me to do the shelf-reading. And I did--the books at least. Then S. reveled in the new-found power by asking me to do the videos. Darn.

I hope they don't catch on to the fact that they're paying me. Then they might expect me to work when I'm here.

A Different Day and Some Good News

2010-03-01T22:03:00.003-05:00

Today, instead of heading to CeDIR as usual, I manned a table at the Disability Awareness Month event at Wells. In five hours I only interacted with some dozen people, only three of which were actually interested in the library. All the others were students in a therapeutic recreation class that gave extra credit for gathering pamphlets with signatures from the representatives. By the third or fourth student to approach me, I had learned to identify their intentions on sight. I just grabbed a random paper and signed, cutting off any awkward exchanges of feigned interest and choppy segues into requesting my prized autograph. But I'm not complaining, because I was otherwise paid to enjoy an entire day of leisurely reading.

In other news: I spent the weekend agonizing over my waiver for the technical proficiency class mandated for my masters. I scrutinized my wording and conjured up images of disgruntled underpaid professors poring over my application for the tiniest holes. If it didn't pass, I would have to shell out $900+ for a class on skills any 21-year-old in a developed country should have mastered ten years ago ("internet browsing," "electronic mail," Windows and Microsoft operating systems...) I was mostly worried because I had no "official" experience with Unix, though a few hours with a tutorial and a shell to a box in the CS department taught me as much as I'll need to know. But today, not twelve hours after I sent the application, I received this in my inbox:

Hi Tamara:

Your S401 Waiver has been approved.

O.C.
Assistant Professor
School of Library and Information Science

End.

Well, I suppose it's good news, but it was just too easy. I half expect them to pull the rug out from under my feet as soon as I start my classes. Suspicion will linger until my advisor formally confirms my freedom.

A glimpse into the future...

2010-02-23T11:07:00.002-05:00

When I came in this morning, S. was finishing up a response to a patron who had requested some materials. She asked me to finish checking them out and put them in the mail. The two items requested were a Coulter video on social skills and a personal hygiene series. I happily wrapped them up and printed the mailing label.

Then I saw that the email the patron had sent was still open. And in it, she didn't specify which personal hygiene series she wanted--male or female. I asked S. if she had called to confirm which one. She hadn't.

So I did. The patron needed the series for her 19-year-old son. And we were about to send her videos of a woman walking girls through the showering process.

This library will be a very interesting place after April 30, 2010.

Feels like Monday

2010-02-12T10:57:00.002-05:00

Today really feels like it should be Monday instead of Friday! The Institute didn't have working power until last night, so I've been wilying away my hours at home for the past two days. It's just too bizarre to have two weekends in a row like this.

Fortunately, S. and C. consented to let me come in at 8 today and next Monday-Wednesday to make up the missed hours. As long as I don't go overtime next week, I can get up to my full 60-hours due. I wish I had thought to ask for this arrangement after my first "snow days" last month.

Now I have to do things...

2010-02-10T09:07:00.004-05:00

I struggled to wake up this morning. It's cold, it's dark, and treacherous outside.

After dragging myself out of bed, slapping together a mixed bowl of bran flakes and home-made granola (very strange, but there was only half a serving of bran flakes left), and organizing my priorities, I found this in my inbox:

"The institute doesn’t have any power, so no work today. -C."

I grudgingly concede that is an adequate reason to forego business activities. But I am sour that (a) there goes $40 and (b) now I have to do all of the chores I had conveniently been too "busy" for.

On the plus side, last night Sweetie and I reserved our hotels for the Japan trip. I had budgeted for 13 nights of about $110 each, since that seemed to be the going price for the hotels I had bookmarked. But when we drilled down to the dirty little details, this is how it turned out:

Days 1-3 in Tokyo: Hotel Villa Fontaine Hatchobori, ~$110/night
Days 4-5 in Nikko: Nikko Narusawa Lodge, ~$75/night
Days 9-12 in Kyoto: Palace Side Hotel, ~$85/night
Day 13 by the airport: International Garden Hotel Narita, ~$72

Why so cheap? There must be a catch, right? Especially since all of these hotels/ryokans are in prime locations. Well, for one thing, we turned down the breakfast/dinner options for all of them except Villa Fontaine and Narita (surely we can find breakfast for less than $12 each). For another, the Palace Side Hotel, which we'll be spending the bulk of our nights at, had a lowered rate for extended stays. This was a complete surprise, since I had just written down the top price of 9,800 yen on my spreadsheet. We actually had a bit of drama because I was too much of a Scrooge to pay $20 more than that for a place closer to Kyoto station. But when we saw it would actually be a $40 difference, that sealed the deal.

I believe most of the hotels will receive credit cards, though I hadn't expected them to because Japan is still a 95% cash-based society. Actually, that was a big point for Sweetie; he fought tooth and nail against any hotel that might not accept plastic because any ATM withdrawals for lodging would count towards our $300 daily limit (and he's wary of carrying around traveler's checks/money orders). Since I only have two cards and Discover isn't active there, I'll have to use my Visa. And since my Visa is the first card I applied for three years ago as a college student, the limit is only $1000. I'll have to call them and ask to have it raised. This doesn't make me happy--not only because it will be a hassle--but because they raised my interest rates sky-high recently despite a stellar track record.

It's a-Live!

2010-02-09T11:17:00.005-05:00

My Friends of the CeDIR Library site is finally up and running!

I braved the slush to come to work this morning, despite C's offer of a snow day. Even though it would be nice to lie around dreaming today, that doesn't get me paid. And the $45 I miss out here could pay for 4 lunches in Tokyo! When I walked in the door, I found that S1 had taken advantage of her salaried position, as C. was at the desk (by the way, S2 has literally left the building for a new office next door, so I might as well drop the numeral notation. Henceforth, a simple "S" will refer to S1).

C. told me: (a) Thanks for the effort, but we may close up early. And (b) the Friends site is up! And you know what? It uses includes. That's right, the PHP-capable server can indeed handle ALL functions in the PHP library. Imagine that.

Google Maps Directions

2010-02-08T00:40:00.004-05:00

I spent my Sunday working on the Japan itinerary. Sweetie naturally wants to visit the Tokyo Pokemon Center. I looked up directions from a nearby park:

Gosh darn. I could have saved that $2200 on airfare.

Monkey With a Typewriter

2010-02-03T12:32:00.006-05:00

Though I have been generally successful at learning some new web languages lately (PHP, some JavaScript and Scriptaculous), at base I subscribe to the monkey-with-a-typewriter approach to programming. Last night I demonstrated my ability to hit semi-random buttons until it works by helping my sweetie with his Scheme homework.

We spent some two hours staring at a problem together, trying to pinpoint what each part of the skeleton the professor had written was supposed to do. We thought we had it all figured out--one of the sections would pass a pair of (0 . odd #) to a and another would pass a pair of (even #, filler-text) to b. Since the point of the program was to add all of the evens and list the odds, it was a simple matter of adding the first parts of b (in Scheme, car b) and listing the second parts of a (cdr a), right? But no, the a that we thought was a pair returned a function. And that function had a nasty habit of calling the entire darn program within itself. Therefore, the assignment quickly derioriated into sticking variables wherever they could fit and seeing what happened.

And I'm proud to say: after another hour of slapping together every possible combination of car, cdr, adding, appending, and consing, my little monkey fingers struck gold! The solution was naturally to name another variable b^ that was the function a applied to (cdr b), then add (car b) and (car b^) for the first part and list (cdr b^) for the second. Obviously.

Finally Done!

2010-01-29T12:54:00.006-05:00

Over the past two weeks, it seems like I've been doing nothing but sort through and document all of the books we pulled from the shelves last August (well, the books K. pulled from the shelves and left willy nilly on the floor, to my great displeasure). But I've finally finished the Friends of the CeDIR Library website with a profile of each of the items:

Apologies for the poor quality image; the screenshot didn't resize well.

There are no prices on the site yet, since I didn't actually tell C. I was doing this until I was done :o If I had, she would probably have said, "Don't bother," and then I would have had to ignore those books for another year until they were finally dragged out to the dumpster. For this reason I won't give the URL for the site here, though those of you who know my mind well can probably conjecture its location.

Note the drop-down menu. I've never made one before. But because Sweetie forced me to go through that dang w3schools PHP tutorial, it was a snap! Although at first, I made the pretty big mistake of trusting some kid on the internet who put up his own "redirect" code that used window.open instead of window.location, which slowed everything down and screwed with the browser history. I should have known better, since I used location in my Marnell Station website.

And now, I think I have a well-deserved Bones episode waiting for me.

More %&$@! Bills

2010-01-25T22:22:00.003-05:00

As I was settling down for recreation time this evening, I found a pile of mail waiting for me on the couch. First I tackled the envelope from the OB-GYN I visited last summer. "Your chart shows that you're due for your yearly exam in July. There is a six-month wait for appointments with Dr. C., so schedule yours ASAP."

"Yeah, right," I sniped. "I just finished paying for the last one."

Unfortunately, the medical minions heard my snarky commentary and stabbed right back. The second envelope was an innocuous-looking letter from the Monroe Hospital, which to the best of my knowledge I had never even visited.

I allegedly owe them $497.25. About the amount, by the way, I earned for the month of December, since society kicked me out of the office and forced me to spend money on people I don't give a tinker's dam about for the sake of a religion I don't belong to.

I was shocked. Then confused. Then angry. I enlisted Sweetie to dig through last year to find out what the heck this could be for. The date on the bill is 9/16/09: the day I had a consultation appointment with Dr. W, who conducted my endoscopy. Since I paid the $30 for the visit itself, there is only one possible explanation for this outrageous sum: blood work.

I remember I had at least four tests done on my blood, to figure out if I had any underlying conditions causing my stomach troubles. Four tests for $497.25. $125 per test. Oh, my insurance helped a little: they coughed up $87.75, so the raw number was actually more like $150 per test (all with negative results, of course).

Let's tally up the total so far. $30 for the visit to a doctor who barely listened to me for five minutes before rolling off a list of standard procedures. $782 up front at the surgery center. $684 a few months later to the surgery center when the insurance fell through. Another $285 to Dr. W for sticking a camera down my throat. And now, apparently, $497.25 to swish some chemicals with my fluids to see if they turn suspicious colors. Sum: $2,278.

A quarter of my income from last year to fix absolutely nothing. I still pay $30+ a month for medicines to keep my stomach acids at bay. Plus $64 a month just to be able to say I am insured, even though it covers less than Mariah Carey's ~~lingerie~~ stage costumes. I really would be better off dropping Celtic entirely--though it wouldn't do me any good because I'd just be taxed the same amount for not having health insurance. "The health care system is in desperate need of reform! Oh look, a reform--we'll take that one. Sure, we'll trade some of our principles for it. No, no need to read it all the way through; any reform will do!"

Please restrain me if I ever get the urge to go to a doctor again. Or vote for a Democrat. Or a Republican. In fact, I think I'll just crawl into a cave and cook up theories about the innate purity of children and the superiority of social contracts over the primitive institution of law.

My Computer's Falling Apart!

2010-01-24T11:02:00.003-05:00

Gah! My laptop keeps losing bits of itself!

Last year the escape key broke off, and no amount of superglue will coax it back on. The border around the screen cracked on one side, and Sweetie had to muscle it together with screwdrivers and lots of electric tape. And just now, when I lifted it into my lap to write my Amateur Nutritionist post for the day, a bit of sharp plastic fell out. It was the section between the microphone inlet and headphone outlet, which I use regularly to tunnel workout music through my treadmill's speakers.

All of the bits inside are in perfect shape, so I'll be using this machine until the hard drive putters out, no matter how many aesthetic blemishes it accrues. But I wonder how long these computers usually last? I've had it for about three years, and I think I treat it generally well (I don't carry it around outside of the apartment or block the fans for long periods of time, though it has taken a few spills thanks to a certain squeaky-toy-chasing menace).

Out of curiosity, I just typed "laptop average lifespan" into Google and found this on Yahoo! Answers:

As a rule of thumb, the hardware in a decent laptop will be "up to date" for two years, and the laptop can be expected to have a lifespan of 4 years during which it requires 1 or more repairs, after four years it may accumulate problems beyond the capability of economical repair....If the average laptop made today were placed in a clean, well ventilated room, it could likely run for 10 years without problem if no one touched it.

Do you think I can make it last for six? I'll graduate when Carmichael (what I casually call my laptop) turns five, and I wouldn't want to purchase a new one during the hubbub of moving out of Bloomington and starting "real" jobs. It would be ideal if it could last until year 6, after my first year of professional pay.

Called to the Boss' Office....

2010-01-21T13:17:00.003-05:00

As I was printing off a sample copy of the LWV booklet for acting step-grandma-in-law, S1 came in with a somber face and said, "When you have time, come up to my office."

I gathered my courage and climbed the stairs. She said, "Have a seat."

"Am I in trouble?" I asked.

She said, "No, but there is trouble. The center director came in yesterday...."

Two words: budget cuts.

As of this morning, K. has been dropped. And I'll be working only 30 hours a week starting February: from 11am to 5pm every day of the week. As soon as S1 said that she had to cut staff, I said, "I was planning to quit at the end of April, so it would be great if you could keep me until then." To my confusion, her face acquired a ridiculously happy look as I told her about the Japan trip and wanting to find an on-campus job when I start graduate school. She then explained that the sentence that was supposed to come out of her mouth before I interrupted was that she and C. had decided to terminate my job at the end of April.

And here I was ruminating on the drive over about when/how I should tell them about my designs to abandon my post. All those worries wasted.

Slave Driver

2010-01-13T10:51:00.005-05:00

You wouldn't believe what C. made me do this morning: work.

I'm so used to having nothing to do, but suddenly she started throwing projects at me! Fortunatley, I'm agile and was able to catch each one before they fell to the ground.

First she asked me to pull every title we have on dyslexia and send her the publication dates, status and how many times they've been charged. Not ten minutes after I'd finished she asked me to do the same for ADD/ADHD. Then she wanted a well-balanced resource guide on social skills for the upcoming spring newsletter. It's a good thing I've come to know our catalog like the back of my hand.

Side rumination: I don't actually know the back of my hand that well. I suppose when that idiom originated, people wrote with pens and did chores with their hands, so they had a lot of opportunities to look at them. But I very rarely look at the back of my hand, since my eyes are focused on screens or the buttons on my time-saving appliances. Now I'm checking: I have three freckles on the back of my right hand and five on the left. When did they get there?

In any case, this morning melted away, and I just noticed that my stomach is preparing to charge the Bastille with axes and pitchforks. Time to break out the ramen....

The State Says I'm a Resident

2010-01-10T12:53:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I received a packet from the Indiana Department of Revenue: the 2009 IT- 40EZ Indiana Income Tax Return for Full-Year Indiana Residents with No Dependents. Although I've been registered to vote in this state for the past three years, this is the first time they've sent this to me. I would guess my name finally made it into the system when I registered my first car here last summer.

Now the big question is, will IU agree? Given the school's reputation for making it as difficult as humanly possible to qualify for in-state tuition, I expect them to kick as great a fuss as they can get away with before they'll lower my tuition by $650 per credit hour (yes, it is that big of a difference). I've pored over the residency policies enough to know that, though I've registered my vehicle here, vote here, pay my taxes here, obtained my driver's license here, and have lived here for several years, there are plenty of loop-holes to let them say I'm here "for the predominant purpose of education." They're very adamant that "The existence of one or more of these factors will not require a finding of resident student status...and ordinarily resident student status will not result from the doing of acts which are required or routinely done by sojourners in the state or which are merely auxiliary to the fulfillment of educational purposes" (i.e. practically everything on the list).

However, the Indiana State Government has been taking a chunk of my paycheck for the last two years to pay for soon-to-be-worthless highway projects. If they do try to give me the slip, at least I've left a paper trail.

Another Snow Day, but may be the last!

2010-01-08T12:34:00.004-05:00

At 7am, sweetie woke me up and handed me the cell phone. I peeked outside at my car, buried under piles of white, and remembered that weather.com said it would be 2° out there (with a "feels like" of negative 14!) I called C.--she didn't pick up. I called the CeDIR line--nobody there. I finally got a hold of S1 on her cell. She said she was working from home today and not to worry about coming in. So I went back to sleep.

Four hours later I opened my eyes and took another look out the window. It actually isn't that bad; the crew has been pretty diligent about keeping the walkways and roads clear (although there is still that film of white that could soon turn into black ice). I just checked weather.com again, and I'm happy to see that this weekend will probably be the last bad one of the year. Come Monday there will be more snow, but the temperature will rise to 30°...then close to 40° by mid-week! As a California native, I never thought I'd be so excited to see highs of 36°.

Snow Day!

2010-01-07T11:58:00.003-05:00

Today, after getting up early to exercise and meet with P. about the LWVIN booklet, I called C. and found out that I'm not going in today.

The roads aren't particularly dangerous but it is a hassle to walk outside. Yesterday I left my purse in the car, and when I went to fetch it an hour ago the snow was past my ankles in heeled boots (and it's been accumulating since then). C. said they'd be closing early because nobody had come to work at the Institute and business was nonexistent. It would be silly for me to bundle up and get out there, only to leave after two hours. So I get a Snow Day.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what to do with it. I can't make a move on the LWVIN design until P. gets the rough draft to the president for suggestions, and I have no pending projects. I haven't received my W2 yet, so taxes are a no-go...I suppose I could research future travel locations. Or waste more time on HGTV. Lately I've been catching episodes of Carter Can--a show about home improvement. I wish it had more educational information (like which tools to use for different cuts and grains; what to look out for when taking down walls; how to choose types of wood for furniture etc.) instead of the sappy house-owner drama that takes up 50% of the air time. This Old House, it is not.

I Hate My Neighbors

2010-01-06T08:56:00.005-05:00

In anticipation for my first Wednesday morning shift, I went to bed at 11 last night. It took me a while to settle down, but just as I was about to drift off, the neighbors came home.

And, as most considerate people do in the middle of the night, they started playing guitar. Electric guitar, with speakers. And talking. And watching television, just for good measure.

Overall, I think I have one of the best living arrangements in Bloomington. It's a single-level building, so we don't have to deal with people banging around above or below. In the two years we've lived there, we've never had to call maintenance (after the initial moving-in mold incident). It's not in the most convenient location, but the area is pretty and the rent is low. However, despite two layers of insulation between each unit, we always hear our noisy neighbors! In the first year, the unemployed group across the way kept turning up the base. In the second, the divorced man next door took solace in rock (and his visiting toddler was not sympathetic to college students on Saturday mornings). And now, we have early morning "musicians."

Ignoring it didn't work. Banging on the walls did not deter them. Normally at this point (1:30 am) I would get dressed and knock on their door, but it was 6° Fahrenheit. The best I could do was call the main office and ask that they give notice to please not do it again.

That won't do me any good today, of course. Exhaustion makes me grumpy, which makes me a bad reference assistant. We haven't had any calls or emails, so I may just pull a Dagwood in a bit....

Workload Increase

2010-01-05T22:03:00.003-05:00

"It's for the future. It's for the future."

I keep repeating that to myself as I look at the woeful sum of my paychecks in November and December. Being an hourly is dreadful during holiday months.

However, I have some good news for the start of 2010: firstly, my hours are going up at CeDIR. I get an extra shift on Wednesday mornings, which means $150 more in the bank each month! (I'm sure that one day I will look back at that sentence and try to figure out why it felt like such a big deal. To my future self: you're spoiled rotten and need to remember your roots).

Secondly, over break I secured a commission of sorts. My boyfriend's step-grandmother directs the state board of the League of Women Voters of Indiana. For an upcoming event, she would like to distribute publications with a few veteran members' experiences in the LWV over the decades. She conducted interviews and amassed material, but needs someone for desktop publishing. She actually asked Sweetie, but he likes coding better than design and I'm the one who spent a week schooling myself on InDesign.

I should probably put something together before the next time I see her, but she's been vague about the type of publication they want. She said "pamphlet," but the interviews she sent had way too much text to fit in your standard tri-fold brochure. They might be after a full booklet, but that could get expensive. She hasn't returned my emails, which Sweetie says is typical because she has a dial-up connection and ten-year-old system. So I'll have to call or visit her in person to establish their needs, budget, layout etc.

Washer Report

2009-12-31T14:10:00.005-05:00

Yesterday morning, we were woken up by a call from the Sears people that they were moving up the delivery time by an hour. We frantically moved the living room clutter to the bedroom to make room for the movers, pulled the dryer out of the utility room, and waited. And waited. And fell asleep on the couch while waiting.

A little after 1 a knock on the door woke us from our naps, and within five minutes the shiny white appliance was ready for use. The movers used nifty shoulder straps to carry it in instead of awkward dollies, so they were in and out in a flash.

Most of the hullaballoo occurred after they had left; hooking the dryer back up was a huge pain in the neck. Sweetie had to keep shoving the tube to the vent in, trying it, and watching it fall back out until he jammed it in well enough to stay put.

Once everything was settled, we gave the Kenmore 500 a try. The inside is huge!

The load labeled "extra small" is actually our typical "medium," and I don't think we have enough clothes to ever need "large." And the spin is much more powerful than we're used to. I could actually put the entire first load into the dryer at once, and after one cycle they were dry! (It's sad, but I'm used to halving everything and praying they don't come out damp.)

Re: the noise complaints in reviews, the machine probably isn't as quiet as most modern models. But it is quieter than our old one and doesn't shake violently from side to side. If we didn't have a separate utility room with a closed door and closet space between the machines and our living area, it might have been a bother. But we do, so we're very happy with the machine so far.

Washing Machine

2009-12-29T11:51:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, our washing machine broke. The "softs" (shirts, socks and delicates) ran through just fine, but when I lifted the jeans out they dripped water everywhere.

I'd seen this once before. When my sweetie's father first brought us a washer, it was similarly kaput: the agitator wasn't working. I put it back on "spin" to check--it made whirring sounds but didn't actually move. We tried restarting a small load. Twisting things. Kicking things. Nadda.

So we bought a new one.

We're actually surprised at ourselves, because we're not the type to up and buy new things as soon as the old ones go down. But the broken washer in our utility room is 20+ years old, we need clean clothes and we did the math: our apartment complex's laundry machines gobble up $1 per load. We typically do two to three loads per week: softs, heavies (jeans and towels), and sheets/blankets twice a month. We couldn't schlepp the sopping clothes back to the apartment to use our dryer (especially in the snow), so that would bring the total to $5 average per week, or $260 per year. Even considering the cost of water, if the new $400 washer breaks after two years, we will have saved money. But hopefully it won't.

We were actually planning to purchase a lesser $325 model, but the folks at Sears are wily. They don't offer free delivery/haul-away for appliances less than $400, so there would have been a charge of $65 for the service. If this had happened last year, we would have outwitted them by asking sweetie's father to come down with his truck to fetch it, but his health isn't what it used to be. So. We could buy the cheap one and pay the extra, or buy the more expensive one and take advantage of the service rebate.

We also feel a bit odd because usually, when we make a purchase as large as this, we do a lot of research beforehand. I spent several hours online picking out the perfect treadmill, and much longer for my laptop. But we just piled in the car and picked a washer out from the row at the mall. I don't feel bad about it, because frankly, we're not terribly picky. As far as we're concerned the washer's job is to wash things--not to be super quiet or 99% energy efficient. When we're older and decide to shell out for the planet-saving $1000+ machines, I'm sure we'll do our homework first.

But I did look at the reviews for this model this morning. The most common complaints against it are (a) noise, which doesn't matter to us because our dryer originates earthquakes anyway, and (b) there's no true "delicate" cycle because it has a single speed motor. Again, we don't mind because all of my "delicates" cost $10 or less and have already been shot by weekly washing with tops and skirts.

The delivery people are coming on Wednesday. Perhaps we should find somewhere to hide the Christmas tree.

Photo Albums

2009-12-27T12:20:00.007-05:00

I spent the first few days of post-Christmas winter vacation on a project I've been meaning to do ever since I finished Marnell Station: digital photo albums.

You click the album cover to "open it." Most of the work went into the graphics. I take pride in completing them with only minimal aid from Flickr's creative commons. I got some practice with PHP when marking up this one:

It's set up so that the script retrieves and pops in the next image in line, so that I don't have to give each photo its own page. I wish I had known about this magic a few years ago, when I was putting together a site for a local gift baskets shop with dozens of images. I would offer to redo it now, but the site was commandeered by unscrupulous scammers and the IC3 never did anything about it.

The other two albums contain photos of the trip sweetie and I took last year for spring break (which I slapped together back then and haven't altered) and an all-purpose Christmas section.

I'm not terribly happy with it, since it looks like a cheap greeting card, but I've already spent too much time tweaking and it suffices.

Check out my handiwork here: http://tkmarnell.host22.com/photos/. The site should expand more as I find more subjects to document (like my Japan trip next year!)

Why Bankers Are Rich

2009-12-18T10:03:00.004-05:00

I have nothing to do. After the institute holiday party yesterday, most of the staff took off for different states. The ones that didn't aren't requesting much of us, and the rest of the world has happier things on their minds than work. So I sit in the unused library and watch shows on HGTV.

This morning I alighted on one called My First Place. Young couples and high-earning singles go through the process of finding and purchasing their first home. It's a nice dose of Schadenfreude for Scrooges like me who resent their still-in-school peers who are cheerfully driving home after finals for two weeks of laziness while I'm trapped in an office. The show's participants are always naive, and it's fun to watch the horror spread across their dewy faces as they learn how far their money will go and how misguided their "fixer-upper" dreams really are.

But just now, I was the surprised one. I always ignore the string of numbers they flash up at the end of the show, but today I paid attention. The new homeowner announced that the price of the house was $212,000, they had a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 6.25%, and their monthly payment would be $1250.

The calculator in my head ran off:
One month: $1250
Twelve months: $15,000
Thirty years: $450,000!

So...what happened to the other $238,000? It couldn't all be interest! I opened Excel.

Year 1: $212,000
Year 2: ($212,000-$15,000)*1.0625 = $209,312.50
Year 3: ($209,312.50-$15,000)*1.0625 = $206,457.00
Year 4: ($206,457-$15,000)*1.0625 = $203,423.10
...
Year 30 Remaining Principle: $5,536.17

So, yes, in order to buy that $212,000 house, they indeed agreed to pay $450,000. That's insane! But apparently normal. Could they not afford to agree to a shorter time frame and shuttle less to the fat cats?

The new homeowners were both employed, so they probably made $60,000 a year. OK, they have a kid, so they sink a couple thousand into sports and school supplies and stuff. $55k.

They might spend $500 on food each month: $49k.

Electric (say $200/mo), internet and cell phones ($100/mo each): $44k.

Dutifully allotting 10% of income to retirement savings: $38k.

Insurance, car-related expenses, taxes etc. swallow up another couple thousand, but they're still a long way from zero. So what do they intend to do, buy $20,000 worth of techno toys every year? Renovate extravagantly? Vacation in the Hamptons?

If my sweetie and I kept up our current lifestyle for a mere five years after obtaining employment, we could pay cash for that house. These people must not realize how much is going to the bank as they dilly-dally with mortgages. Of course, they may move after the kid goes to college in ten years, and only sink $150,000 into the house total. But if they were going to do that, they should have pursued a fixed/APR hybrid instead to negotiate lower interest rates.

Once they reach that 15 year mark, it's money in the hole. I've read that if they paid it off early, there would be a penalty and a certain percentage of the remaining anticipated interest, too. When it's comes time for sweetie and I to purchase property, we are definitely crunching the numbers first.

Impressed...Then Not

2009-12-14T11:14:00.005-05:00

On Thursday afternoon, S2 sauntered over to tell me that she and C. discussed updating the Resource Guides for the website, and they wanted me to do the work. Then, in typical S2 fashion, she said, "When you're ready to start searching for titles, come ask me for keywords. You know, if you can't find anything." I had to turn my face away and pretend to be absorbed in my shelf-reading report so she wouldn't see that I was lying through my teeth when I said, "OK, I will."

Or not. Because, as you can see in the post "Coworker Gripes" below, her skill with the searchbar is as well-developed as the chick in my morning eggs (that is to say, nonexistent, since the ones at the grocery store are fortuitously unfertilized).

Needless to say, I didn't ask her a darned thing, though she shoved a print-out of synonyms for "paraeducator" in my face later. Anyway, she was short on the specifics, so I IM'd S1 the next day for details.

Me: S2 told me C. wants to update the Resource Guides. Which ones?
S1: All of them. It's been more than a year since we last did.

At this point, I was very confused. Because:

Me: I remember putting bibliographies together in May. It was one of my first tasks here.
S1: Really?!
Me: I found them. They're in the folder "May '09 Biblio"
S1: ...
S1: Well, that's good.
Me: ....
Me: But I'm sure we've acquired new resources since then.
S1: Yes, we have!

So I spent Friday and the first half of today updating the updated bibliographies that mysteriously never made it to the live world-wide web. This time I even integrated the selections into the HTML of each page so all C. has to do is point and click them into existence. And here I was admiring C.'s dedication to keeping information current by updating every six months. La sigh.

Marnell Station and Scriptaculous

2009-12-07T10:27:00.005-05:00

I spent my Sunday creating a new site to amass all of my blogs and social profiles etc. in one place, aptly named Marnell Station for its metaphorical similarity to a hub of convening train lines. I had a concept that it would look like a train station, with an interactive sign to each destination:

Here's a screenshot of the half-finished product. I think it worked out rather well (although I had to let Sweetie modify my original method of placing the signs where they belonged, because my repositioning left an enormous empty margin below the content).

At first, I wanted all the content to be on a single page, using javascript to reveal sections as needed. But (a) that means pressing the Back button would navigate users away from the site, which would be annoying, and (b) if I decide to put in content larger than text (like vacation photos, because Facebook and Flickr are primitive), it would take a heckuva time to load. So I separated it into different pages, using PHP as a labor-saving crutch. Then I had an idea to have some nifty animations between pages, because if I'm going to do a gimmicky graphic-heavy site I might as well go whole hog....

Enter Scriptaculous, a language I didn't know existed until yesterday. Apparently it's the language for people who are too smart to run to overkill Flash but too stupid for proper JQuery. It works as a brand of javascript that requires its own code library uploaded to the server. My server, which has almost no desirable features other than being free, didn't like the libraries. We had to use an external link, which bites because I hate taking others' bandwidth. But it works, so now when you click any of the signs except Resume, the content div scrolls down from the banner. Clicking the cute train at the bottom prompts it to scroll back up before returning to the main station (and the train choo-choos away...)

I made that train by extensively modifying Microsoft Word clip art, by the way. It's taking all of my strength of character to resist putting in whistle sounds when it's clicked.

Bugs to work on:
-Sometimes in Firefox, if you use the train to get back to the station and then click the "Back" button to return to one of the pages with the gray content box (Welcome, Porfolio, Blogs etc.), the content will remain collapsed and you have to refresh to get it to scroll back down. Potentially confusing, to say the least.

-On IE and slower computers, the content loads before the background, which wastes the scrolling effect.

-My content is sparse. I would have had a lot more to put up, but Geocities went down a couple months ago and took my old photo sites with it. Plus, I just discovered that most of the results returned on Google when I search for myself are blog posts I've written or comments I've left on other blogs, which means bits of me that aren't blog-related are severely lacking in comparison.

-I haven't put my keywords in, so no one can find me yet. But that isn't a bug; it's just laziness on my part.

Coworker Gripes

2009-12-03T20:30:00.003-05:00

Today I am not going to complain about K., surprisingly enough. K. has been good lately; I think she got her bit of the annual shelf-reading done, and once I became accustomed to checking her half of the business blogs every day to correct her consistent errors, we've had smooth sailing (she always puts the label 'book' on posts, and because the tabs on the top of the blog rely on recognizing the label 'books' I have to sneak in and put the 's' where it belongs).

That may sound like I'm complaining about K., but I'm really not. K. and I are cool. Today, I have a problem with S2.

Last month, S2 took on the project of updating a section of the library website that contains minimal information about common disabilities (autism, ADD, cerebral palsy etc.) with a few links to related resources. Today, C. forwarded me the Word documents S2 had created with instructions to write up the HTML for the site. Straightforward enough, right?

First of all, I have major beef with our website. It was supposedly redone last year, but I'm pretty sure they just slapped a new banner up and called it golden because the whole layout is done in tables. TABLES. What's more, there are DIVs inside the tables. I'd actually be fine with the unnecessary junk if it was part of a header include I didn't have to touch, but as I've written before, C. is convinced that our fully PHP-capable server can't handle includes. So I had to sort through the nonsense of <table><tr><td>[lots of menu stuff]</td></tr><tr><td><div id="main"> to get to the actual content. The "main" div wasn't even closed in any of the pages. But whatever; once the scrolling and the locating was finished I just had to delete the former references and copy in the new ones.

Naturally, when S2 made her little Word documents, she put bullet points in front of each resource to make it easier to read. Notepad and bullet points don't really get along. So that was a lot of unnecessary deleting and reformatting--not a terribly momentous obstacle, but annoying. Then we got to the golden goose of the day: C. wanted me to link S2's selected titles to the online catalog, at which point I found out we couldn't lend half of them.

You would assume that someone who has worked for ten years in a library would know how to use a catalog, but you would be wrong. S2, despite spending three weeks on these resources (according to her forwarded email), does not know that when the catalog says "available at IIDC - CCDC Reference" the book is at the CCDC office, in Reference. So all that formatting I had done went out the window, because I had to delete half of it and find replacement titles we could actually check out to people.

Two hours later, the project was finally finished, and C. uploaded the code to the site. Two minutes later, S2 sent an email to everyone in the library (no, not just me, everyone):

Can you change the titles on the Autism and ADD pages to reflect what I wrote on the sheets? The others are fine.

It must be noted that these important changes switched "ADD/ADHD" to "Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder" and "Autism and PDDs" to "Autism Spectrum Disorders." Because, you know, a lot of people accidentally wander onto the Center for Disability Information website without knowing what ADHD stands for, and someone with Asperger's would just be really confused because they're on the spectrum but don't have autism or pervasive development disorder per se. But no matter; I complied. Two minutes after that:

The Autism page is all messed up. Somehow the link to IRCA got moved next to Autism Speaks...

So sue me, I forgot to close a link quote. But you know why that really bugs me? (1) I hate self-important people who put trailing dots after complete statements, because the only reason they would is to give their thoughts more importance than they merit. (2) I doubly hate passive aggressive people who say "Somehow this happened," or "For some reason that happened," when they're really saying "You screwed up." We all know the computer doesn't just move things around because it feels like it. Simply tell me what went wrong and I'll fix it. Don't give me this snarky business of, "Well, it was probably out of your control, but the interweb fairies must have been feeling restless today and this sorta kinda went wrong."

S2 has been getting on my nerves lately because, being 30 years my senior, she feels perfectly okay with doing my job. At 4:50 she likes to start turning things off in the library section, closing the blinds and whatnot to leave me sitting in the dark for ten minutes before I had planned to leave for the day. When C and S1 are out, she'll meander in at 4:40 and say, "I think it's getting about that time!" If I don't spring into closing action she'll lean against the shelves and stare and look inconvenienced until I forfeit my last quarter hour's pay to let her leave early.

Last week I had had it, and told her firmly that I was going to wait ten minutes in case of last-minute phone calls. We've never been particularly friendly, but now it's time for cold war.

More Eye Patches and Wooden Legs

2009-11-22T14:02:00.004-05:00

I finally reported the pirates to Amazon today. I told them I had received bootlegs from the two sellers with identical letters and that they had attempted to convince me to remove my honest feedback. Then linked to some high-quality pictures my sweetie's sister took with her fancy camera (much better than the ones I posted on this blog: here's the fake FireRed cartridges and the letters in high quality).

EDIT 10/10/10: We've taken higher quality photos with a better camera. Here is a side-by-side comparison between one of these bootlegs and a legitimate cartridge we've since obtained.

I also took the time to leave some feedback for the second seller. The first time, I gave "ePulse_Shop" four out of five stars and commended their prompt reply to the problem. I received this in return:

Hi,

Thanks for your understanding and I appreciate the kind words. However, I read your feedback and you mentioned about the bootleg. Because Amazon is consistently reviewing seller accounts, therefore even the word "bootleg" appear in only one feedback can get my account suspended...I am looking for a authentic supplier and this kind of problem would never happen again. Could you please remove the feedback you just left? That would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Bryan

The slimy git actually sent this to me TWICE because I ignored him the first time. The second time I wasn't quite so generous, and simply gave "night star" one out of five with the comment, "Game was a bootleg." Not three hours later, this arrived in my mailbox:

Hi,

I noticed that you left another negative feedback after I refunded you...I understand your situation.... and if I were you, I would also be really upset if I received a pirate copy...but as the matter of fact, since I am a new seller, I have no experience on how to spot a fake game...I got the games from a local dealer and I wasn't aware of the authenticity of them....I am working on this problem and looking for other original suppliers...However, I strive myself to make my customer satisfied, that's why I offer a full refund to you without requiring the return...so as a buyer your lose is minimized....while I didn't expect you to remove the feedback first for the full refund, then leave another one right after that....it seems like you really want to stop my business...for sellers on Amazon, one such feedback and get a seller account permanently suspended, and I won't have a second chance to get back on....could you kindly remove that feedback? I can offer you extra compensation, I really appreciate your understanding....Again, I am really sorry about selling you a pirate copy of the game, that was not my intention, I want my customer to be happy....

Looking forward to your reply.

Thanks,
Janet

Awe, this time they put so much heart into it--they're obviously shocked by the piracy and working overtime to find authentic/original suppliers. I believe they'll soon turn over a new leaf. They even offered to buy me off!

I'm actually quite happy Janet went through the trouble, because now if Amazon contacts me for proof I have both this and "Bryan's" email to show them (and Janet seems to be a little confused--I only left one feedback for her, so the only reason she would think there were others is if she were one and the same with ePulse_Shop. It's like they're trying to confirm our suspicions). My sweetie says I should reply this time, forwarding the bit from "Bryan" to let them know we're on to them. I worry that if I did, they'd just pack up and run before Amazon gets through with the investigation, but I revel in the look on "Janet's" and "Bryan's" faces when they realize the jig is up.

"Business" People

2009-11-18T08:00:00.001-05:00

A phone call at the library:

"Center for Disability Information and Referral."

"Hi. I'd like to order some of your Welcoming All Children books, and see what the discount would be if I ordered 30."

"Alright. The text of that book has been transferred to CDs, along with the Spanish translation. I'm sorry, I don't think we can give you a discount."

"Why not?"

"Because we publish the CDs ourselves, so we'd take the hit for any discount."

"Maybe I should have called the publications department. Or sales."

"We have no sales department. But I can ask my supervisor."

"Can you just put me through to your supervisor? I'd prefer to talk to someone who knows what they're talking about."

[Background IM conversation:
Me: Someone just called and asked for a discount on Welcoming All Children CDs.
C: did they say why?]

"She's on the phone with someone else at the moment, but she would like to know why you would like a discount?"

"I'm a book reseller."

[Me: He's a reseller.
C: yeah...not so much]

"I'm sorry, she says we can't give you one."

"So, for 30 copies it would be the full $300?"

"Yes."

"How much for shipping?"

"10% of the sub-total."

"I can assure you it would not cost that much to ship a box of CDs. But you guys have me backed into a corner here. I guess I'll talk to my client and see what she wants to do."

Unfortunately, he called back later to buy a single copy and I had to sell it to him. I understand that businessmen have to be a little pushy, but come on. Who calls a library and insults the reference assistant because she refuses a discount on self-published materials?

He does have a point about the shipping, though. That rule was made for traditionally bound books. I might ask C. to consider modifying the policy.

Shiver Me Timbers!

2009-11-17T08:00:00.009-05:00

Remember when I wrote about the pirated game we received from a seller on Amazon? Well, the replacement from a different seller came in today.

The new one's on the left. Notice anything particular? They both say "Fire Red." BootlegBootlegBootleg.

What are the odds of getting two pirated games in succession, eh? What's more, they were incorrect in the exact same ways. They were identical right down to the fake seals and botched titles. The game came with a letter.

(Click to enlarge)

You may not be able to see it too well on first glance, but take a look at the formats. You can also click on the image to see it full-size in a new window.

The text of the first sentence on the paper to the left:
Thank you very much for your purchase, we really appreciate your business.

Aaaand the one on the right:
Thank you very much for your purchase, we really appreciate your business.

Are we sensing a pattern here (other than a common penchant for comma splicing)? The font, the words...even the little smilies match!

Well, there is a big difference between the two: the email accounts and absurdly common English contact names are totally different. So they must be independent sellers.

Or not.

In retaliation, we sent the same message we sent the "other" seller word for word, demanding our money back. "Janet" replied (and emphases are mine for later reference):

"Hi,

I am sorry about this. There are some other buyers told me about this issue
too. I got these games from a local supplier and I was totally unaware of
the authenticity of the games. A full refund will be issue to your order within 24 hours, again I am so sorry about this.

Janet"

Just for the record, here's what "Bryan" said before her:

"Hi,

I really appreciate your understanding and not leaving me a negative feedback. A full refund will be applied to your order within 24 hours, the money will be credited back to your account soon. You do not need to return the game back since its a bootleg. The game was imported from a used game wholesaler and I was not aware of the authenticity of this game. I will discuss this issue with my supplier tomorrow. Again thanks for your understanding and I deeply apologize for all these inconveniences.

Bryan"

Oh, they have artistic license, but of course they had to stick to the basic script. If hundreds of red flags weren't already dancing in front of my face, I would have sensed one when the Janet who has difficulties with pronouns and past tense spouted out "authenticity" without a hitch. "Obviously," quoth my sweetie, "Janet is the night-shift person."

As soon as we receive the refund we will report these people to Amazon to minimize the number of children who rip the wrapping paper off of hot products on Christmas morning.

EDIT 10/10/10: We've taken higher quality photos with a better camera. Here is a side-by-side comparison between one of these bootlegs and a legitimate cartridge we've since obtained.

Discover Rewards Hijinks

2009-11-16T12:08:00.003-05:00

Last month, when I learned that Discover was offering 5% cash back rewards for grocery purchases through December, I signed up giddily. Since then, I've bought some $200+ in groceries for sweetie and me. I made sure to use credit on every Kroger trip to take advantage of the rewards.

Today I signed in to check my balance. I had expected to accrue at least $10 in rewards. The actual number: $0.56.

Why?

Because Kroger is not a "grocery store." According to my statements and Spend Analyzer, it's a supermarket. Neener neener, doesn't count. Unfortunately, I'm not rich enough to shop at 'real' grocery stores, a.k.a. the local self-righteously overpriced organic-lobbying import shops.

I should have known it was too good to be true. With lame rewards programs like this, I'll just stick to debit to keep my ratio of balance to available credit low.

Pirates

2009-11-10T15:08:00.014-05:00

In a fit of nostalgia, my sweetie recently decided to apply his accumulated knowledge and experience to finally, after years of pining, "catch 'em all."

Yes, I'm talking about Pokemon, the quintessential 90's pastime of enslaving and cock-fighting cutesy stylized animals. He is diligently working through the series one game at a time. He just polished off LeafGreen and is working through XD while he waits for FireRed to arrive from Amazon.

He should have already had FireRed, because we ordered a used copy of it last week. When it arrived, he happily IM'd me at work to let me know. He slipped the cartridge into his DS to try it out. Then the IM conversation turned sour.

"The save file is ok."

Those five little words screamed one thing to him: bootleg.

When I arrived home that evening he had me examine the pirated game to teach me what to look for.

#1 There's a very obvious clock battery stuck inside, which is responsible for the "save file is ok" message.
#2 The Nintendo seal of quality is worded incorrectly and in the wrong font.
#3 The item number is missing from the inside lip of the cartridge, where it would be embossed in the factory.
#4 The title is wrong. Apparently, all Pokemon games have "Version" at the end of the particular game name, which is all one word. Example: "LeafGreen Version." "Fire Red," with a space in the middle, doesn't cut it.

Then he showed me a collection of other famously bootlegged games. Some had the wrong system printed on the box, movie characters on the cover, or bogus but amusing titles like "Pokemon Shiny Gold." I had no idea there was such a prevalence of underground pirating. Fortunately, the seller promptly refunded our money. He was unaware that his supplier was giving him dirty goods.

So now I know how to recognize a cheap rip-off of a game when I see one. Now all I have to do is train my eye to see irregularities in jewels, Rolex watches, and designer duds, and I'll be the ultimate savvy shopper.

[Update: We're now convinced the seller was aware the game was illegitimate and is a member of a ring of bootleggers on Amazon.]

[EDIT 10/10/10: Here is a side-by-side comparison between this bootleg and a legitimate cartridge we've since obtained.]

Affordable Health Care for America Act

2009-11-09T11:20:00.003-05:00

I would be the first in any group to cheer for health care reform. Since I could only find part-time work for this year, I have to cough up $63 every month for an insurance plan that, thanks to many pages of fine print, pays for practically nothing. Tightening of insurance laws = yay!

But here's where I deviate from the liberal norm: I hate the bill that passed the House the other day. I recognize that HR 3962 could do a lot of good, since it:

-prohibits pre-existing condition exclusions
-prohibits an essential benefits package from imposing any annual or lifetime limits on coverage
-prohibits cost-sharing for preventive items and services
-requires employers to offer health benefits coverage to employees and make specified contributions towards such coverage
-expands Medicaid eligibility for low-income individuals and families
-creates grants for school clinics, nurse-run health centers, influenza vaccinations for children, sex education, and parents of children with autism
-establishes a national, voluntary disability insurance program to purchase community living assistance services and supports

So what is there to dislike? Do I hate HR 3962 because I have a particular attachment to today's Medicare system? No. Because of the abortion hullabaloo? Hell no. I hate it because of an amendment to the Internal Revenue Code which will "impose a surtax on the income of individuals who do not obtain health care coverage."

No wonder the "Democrats say the House measure...would extend coverage to 36 million people now without insurance." People who don't have insurance will be monetarily penalized every April, effectively forcing them to find a plan or pony up.

The rationale is probably that people without insurance will be taking the most advantage of government services, so they should contribute more to them. But does this look like robbing the poor to anybody else? Contrary to apparent popular belief, most people who do not carry health insurance are not short-sighted spendthrifts who choose to take their chances in the world. They're people who work for minimum wage and can't afford the hundreds every year to private insurers. In a nutshell, they're precisely the people who shouldn't be tapped for taxes.

Unfortunately, thanks to the way the political system works, this bill is all or nothing at this point. I don't understand why they couldn't break it up: pass the first set of Medicare reforms, then tackle the government-subsidized emergency programs, then the internal revenue amendments etc. But no, they have to do it in one big chunk because, as my sweetie says, "everyone wants to get their pork in." Do you think an "exclusion from gross income for the value of certain medical care provided to members of Indian tribes" would slip by in a more concentrated measure? Probably not. So in order to get all the great things I listed in the beginning, we'll have to put up with this unjust tax surcharge.

Windows 7 Escapades III

2009-11-08T08:27:00.005-05:00

One of the main reasons my sweetie and I bought Windows 7 was for the much-hyped Homegroup feature. Connecting computers with the new OS is easy, croon the advertisements--"Play To can turn you into a party DJ." Just clickity click and you can play files on your desktop to any device with a motherboard.

That is, if you can get it to work. Sweetie spent 5-6 hours last night attempting to do just that.

After setting up our first Homegroup, we were happy to find that his desktop could access any of my shared files. We weren't so happy to find that it didn't work the other way around. At first, we thought we knew what the problem was. I can't turn off Password Protection on my laptop, and that might have been interfering with the data stream. Every time we clicked the radio button for "Turn Password Protection Off" and saved, it would pop right back on. Sweetie had attempted to fix this problem last year on Vista, but thanks to a certain IT guy in the Wells Library who removed a virus in pre-sweetie days, it was nigh impossible. Said IT guy had thoroughly blocked administrative access to my accounts, so we couldn't remove the Guest User passwords, change policy settings, or anything else important.

After much forum scouring, sweetie figured out how to use the magic black window to clear the guest accounts. After more scouring, he figured out that IT guy hadn't meant to block us out. He had just created an administrative password that did not meet policy requirements (i.e. a blank one), so when we attempted to sign back in the computer paradoxically thought we were hacking into it. After a while sweetie also made the connection that the desktop was doing the same thing, and that's why it refused to share files with my laptop. My laptop would happily knock on desktop's door with Christmas cookies in hand, but since laptop didn't know the super-secret handshake Scrooge McDesktop wasn't returning any favors. Sweetie changed the settings to allow accounts with blank passwords permission to the shared files, and voila.

However, though we can easily share our documents now, sweetie was still unsatisfied. He isn't really using the Homegroup feature, he contends, because the way he ended up configuring the network was really remote desktopping. The underlying network issue still hadn't been resolved, because the Play To feature was full of bugs. When I open Windows Media player to select items to send to his computer, I see his name in the Local Network menu. But when he opens the program, he doesn't see mine--though I am in "All Networks." Twice. His computer keeps picking up two absolutely unique MAC addresses from my laptop.

I asked whether that could be the root of the problem. At this point sweetie was thoroughly annoyed with the world, rolled his eyes and said, "Oh no. It isn't confusing to try to send one letter to two houses at once." He did some more typing in the magic black window, and determined that there was one MAC address for my wireless connection, and a second from an obsolete Ethernet connection I had when I lived on campus. When we first moved in together, sweetie had set up a cable to his connection utilizing that Ethernet address, and his desktop thought we were still in that cramped little studio.

I'm not sure whether he resolved that issue, because we eventually just got tired and gave up trying to make the Play To work. He might pick it back up today, not because we would really use that feature, but because he has vowed never to be "defeated by a machine."

Windows 7 Escapades II

2009-11-07T09:37:00.003-05:00

Yesterday after work, I zipped back over to the Student Union to grab one of the newly shipped 32-bit CDs (and yes, I called ahead to confirm). I finally scored one! (Although, my victory was dulled by the less-than-fierce competition. I'd forgotten what a ghost town the academic section of campus becomes on a Friday evening.)

After Friday Night Pizza, my sweetie got to work installing the new OS. It took a lot longer than it should have, because I have a teensy hard drive. He needed to come up with 12 GB! As I watched old episodes of Monk, sweetie deleted this that and the other unused thing to make space. A dead millionaire, a shot circus ringmaster, and a suffocated old man later, he finally had enough to start the process.

I didn't witness the miracle take place, because I was fast asleep by then. But when I woke up this morning I had a fully functional Windows 7 laptop. Yay! It took a quarter of the time to boot up than it usually does, due in part to the new OS and in part because extraneous bits were wiped with the new install. I promptly "pinned" my Excel documents and oft-visited websites to the task bar, and am now shuffling through my desktop icons to decide which will go where.

Later, when sweetie wakes up (I'm not sure when he finished and came to bed, but it was probably in the wee hours of the morning) we will fiddle with the spiffy Homegroup connection.

Windows 7 Escapades

2009-11-04T09:12:00.003-05:00

After work yesterday, I dashed to the post office to mail off a book I had sold through Amazon, then inched my way to the Wells library to snap up one of the parking spots from staff leaving for the day. I power-walked through campus to the Union, where blondie at Eigenmann had told me to go. Up the steps, down the hall, sharp turn into Computer Connections....

"Oh, we're out of 32 bit CDs."

I could have smashed something in the vicinity, but decided it would be unwise. The slouching CS major in the store told me to call Friday morning, when a new shipment was supposed to arrive.

The communication skills of employees at branches of the IU bookstore is astounding.

The Impenetrable Fortress of IU

2009-11-03T12:09:00.004-05:00

This morning I left an hour early for work. I parked at the Institute and walked into campus to pick up Windows 7. After the 15 minute trek, I entered a glitzy high-ceiling bookstore manned by a tiny blonde undergrad in a ponytail and too much makeup.

"Oh, we're out of the 32 bit CDs. You have to go to the Union. Sorry."

To her, going to the Union is probably a minor annoyance--a five minute detour on her way back from English Lit. But for everyone else in the world, it requires a massive amount of time and planning to scale IU's invisible anti-public walls.

As a lowly hourly at CeDIR, I own a C-level parking pass. This pass gives me access to half the spots by the main library and sports center, a couple of spots in a tiny lot at the border between campus and Downtown Bloomington, a bizarrely formed lot behind Geography, and use of the parking garages on weekends. Between the hours of 9am and 6pm every day, every single one of these options is moot. I once made the mistake of thinking a half hour would be sufficient to find a spot on campus before a job interview...how naive I was.

Even if I could actually find a space to park in these lots, the closest of my options is a 10 minute walk away from the sacred Union. My options to dig up the Windows 7 treasure:

(a) Tomorrow morning, arrive at work even earlier to park, walk 30 minutes to the Union, buy the CD and walk 30 minutes back
(b) Wait until everyone has left for the evening, steal one of the spaces at the main library for the shortest, 10 minute, walk to the Union
(c) Wait until the weekend, park in one of the garages, and walk 15 minutes to and back from the Union.
(d) Park in visitors' spots and make my sweetie guard the car while I walk the 15 minutes and back from the Union.
(e) Take a half hour bus ride into campus, walk the 15 minutes to and back from the Union, hover around for a half hour until the next bus comes to take me back to my apartment

Doesn't this seem like an awful lot of effort to go through to give them my money?

Windows 7

2009-11-02T10:52:00.003-05:00

On Saturday afternoon, my sweetie and I stopped in the student union to pick up the latest hype-driven product from Microsoft: Windows 7. Sweetie locked himself in the bedroom with his computer for several hours while I puttered about on my laptop, baked graham crackers and played on my treadmill. He emerged but once to steal away with his dinner. Eventually, he pushed the door open and let me in to witness the results.

My first intro to the new operating system was a couple of pretty lights flying around to form the Windows logo. I didn't notice any difference in booting time, but Sweetie assures me it was slightly faster than usual. As soon as his desktop loaded, I noticed a big visual difference: the icons were completely revamped! Folders containing other folders have a weird boxy icon, text documents have little "holes" to simulate being ripped from a notepad, and the internet isn't my friendly green-blue globe anymore, but a little satellite apparatus.

Sweetie headed straight for the Control Panel to explore new appearance features. The basic layout isn't altered from Vista, but they added new "Theme" features to shake things up a bit. We explored the different packages that combined rotating desktop backgrounds with special classes of sound bites--like "Calligraphy" that makes all the usual start-up and error blips sound like mandolins.

So far, the appeal of Windows 7 appeared to be focused on superficial toys, but then sweetie noticed something unexpected when he opened a program: the taskbar icon had no text! In Vista, when you open Firefox, the taskbar shows the fetal fox with the title of the page you're on next to him. But in Windows 7 you just see the giant fox, and mini-images of the pages you have open pop up when you hover over him. We discovered that you can actually move these icons around to suit your order preferences. From there, sweetie found a phenomenal feature of the OS that eliminates the need for cluttered desktops: "Jump Lists."

A Jump List is a list of files or documents "pinned" to the icon of a program on the taskbar. For example, I access my financials on Excel regularly. My options in Vista are: (a) clutter my desktop by making a short-cut, (b) access the Recent Documents list after opening the program, or (c) painstakingly open the series of folders that contain the document. But in 7, after I "pin" it to the taskbar, all I have to do is click on the Excel icon and select "Financials" to open it. Sweetie was especially excited to pin his most visited websites, like email accounts and news sources, to Chrome (unfortunately, Firefox doesn't support jump lists yet). It's like having multiple homepages!

It would be nice to have Windows 7 on my computer as well as his. I might make a detour to the bookstore tomorrow to pick up a second copy.

Money-Grubbing Celtic Insurance

2009-10-29T09:25:00.004-04:00

I just received a bill for $85 from my OB-GYN for an annual exam I had in July. At the time, I debited the $30 copay and assumed my insurance would give her the rest, since routine PAPs are supposed to be covered. However, this is what came back to me:

"Per the provisions of your health plan there is a 12 month waiting period for preventive care benefits."

Oh, I see. That's completely fair. "Per the provisions of my health plan" I give them 8% of my income every month, and in return receive nothing until my "waiting period" is over.

I'm not surprised this happened, since I did read the enormous booklet they mailed. There's basically enough fine print in there to make sure they never have to pay for anything. But the fact that it's legal doesn't make it okay--I was forced to accept the horrible terms because I can't afford anything else.

It feels like I'm being punished for taking care of myself. Now I fully understand why people are willing to forgo the doctor for years and allow cancers to fester and limbs to deteriorate. It can be more appealing to die than to deal with "caring" private insurers like Celtic (note "Quotation Marks").

The surgery center that conducted my endoscopy a few weeks ago called Celtic directly to confirm what they would cover, so the $750 I coughed up for that should be the end of it. But I wouldn't blink an eye if I received a letter next month with a bill for the other $1200 attached. If that happens, I will cancel the plan altogether and live as one of the deviant uninsured until I start school next year. There's no point in forking over my savings to line their pockets while paying every penny for my treatments myself.

"Quotation Marks"

2009-10-26T16:29:00.004-04:00

I just received this email to the CeDIR library account from one of the secretaries up in administration.

Subject: 2010 United Way Campaign
What a great group of "caring" people we have at the Institute. As of today we are up to 74% of our goal – you have donated $6,030 and our 2010 goal is $8130. This is just wonderful.

So...apparently my coworkers "care" about the community. That's not surprising, since we "work" at a center for disability "research." We're generally "nice" people. And we have a "good" grasp on our punctuation marks.

Reminds me of a fun little theme on Cake Wrecks.

I've Got A Little List

2009-10-22T14:33:00.010-04:00

I am not in a good mood today. I can't pinpoint exactly why. Maybe it's because the university is moving my email accounts willy nilly. Maybe it's because construction workers have been hammering on the roof of the library non-stop for the past week. Or maybe the stir-fry I made at lunch isn't making peace with my stomach.

In any case, the hatreds I usually bury deep down in my psyche have bubbled to the surface in the form of rolling black clouds. And if I was a pseudo-Japanese official in a satirical British operetta, the following people would be on a certain list:

(1) People who put the word "super" in front of their adjectives
"That top is super-cute."
"This cake was super-easy to make."
"My boyfriend is super-sweet."
They know that putting "ueber" in front of everything went out of style last millennium, right? Do they not know this is the English equivalent? Or are they just super-classless?

(2) People who pretend to comment on blogs
"I love [brand name] too! You should check out [other brand name]. Our website is [URL]."

(3) People who have the grammatical sophistication of kindergartners
I clearly remember the day my second grade teacher told us that apostrophes should go before the letter "s" when you make word's plural. One of my fav book's back then was "Where the Wild Thing's R." I heard their making a movie about it. It sounds super-fun.

(4) People who go on "journeys," enter "worlds," or have "messages"
Dropping a few pounds is not some kind of holy pilgrimage. The music business or publishing industry or fashion scene is not isolated from the rest of planet Earth. And calling self-assured moral superiority by a lofty, romantic name just makes you sound like you have a Jesus-complex.

This is indeed a "little" list. It doesn't even touch on people who strictly adhere to political lines or subcultures, people who throw cans into bushes, people who pass on the right, or people who play loud music in apartment complexes with thin walls at one in the morning.

It's a good thing no one has given me a a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block.

Four Years or Three?

2009-10-21T08:34:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, Newsweek ran a piece called "The Three Year Solution". Tagline: "How the reinvention of higher education benefits parents, students, and schools."

Obviously, the "reinvention" bit is a suped-up audience-drawing exaggeration. However, the substance is pertinent: higher education institutions are feeling the pressure to offer 3-year degrees and operate year-round in the interest of students' and their own finances. The article's main points:

-Modern conveniences have made long summers obsolete money-wasters.
-Tuition is rising.
-State support is falling.
-Loan programs are becoming harder to access.
-More students are coming in with AP credits under their belt, which make three-year degrees feasible.

Obviously, attending college for three years instead of four (or six, as the article cites the average to be) saves a considerable amount of money. I graduated a year early for this very reason: I didn't want to take on debt for graduate school, so I slyly diverted the funds my parents had set aside for my fourth year to the MLS/MIS. Other less capitalist reasons included:

-I was burned out, to the point that my brain stopped absorbing what it had once found fun and easy.
-Contrary to the usual argument that college gives you time to explore intellectually, my science-packed schedule actually left little room for personal development. All my energy went into problem sets and lab reports, and I had no enthusiasm left for anything else.
-Knowledge of my looming graduation forced me to buckle down. No more avoiding that second semester of physics. No more canceling out C's on Inorganic exams with A's in "Mystery, Detective, and Horror Literature." The college students who act like teenagers until that Senior "uh-oh" moment might benefit from a kick in the pants a year earlier than usual.
-A year of working in place of classes has plumped up my resume and allowed me to explore what I want to focus on in the information science field. I say "working," but it's more like an extended internship.

Now that I think about it, I'm basically following an inverted European system: a three-year specialized degree followed by a "gap year" (usually, the gap year comes before undergrad, but I needed it more afterward). For impatient types like me, the three-year plan is an ideal option. But for others, a fourth year can be necessary:

-Some people should savor the last dregs of youth. I'm lucky to have entered a comparatively low-stress sector, so the quickest possible exit from the academic rat-race made me happiest. But people who plan to sprint full-force into the corporate world ought to take some electives and smell the roses while they can.
-Limited wiggle room means you have to be on the ball about getting the courses you need. This means reading the school bulletin, devoting a couple of hours to maximizing your schedule, and watching the clock tick down to the minute that course registration opens. It also means no putting off classes that take place before you like to wake up.
-If you need to work, a full course load is hell. I tried to keep a job in a lab one semester, and my grades fell by a letter because of it. If you're on work study, slow and steady is the way to go.
-If you plan to attend graduate school in your undergraduate field, a year of scarce classes and research experience is invaluable. Get your name on some papers, curry favor with the big boys who write recommendation letters....

Whether or not a three-year degree is beneficial depends on a myriad of factors for each individual. Some people might not even know they want to graduate early until they get to the end of sophomore year and say "OK, I'm done." That's what happened to me, and I'm eternally grateful to myself for planning my first years well enough to stage an escape. While I don't think colleges should convert all of their degrees to a three-year standard, it wouldn't hurt to encourage students to think about it.

Not Evil, Just Really Disorganized

2009-10-20T11:40:00.002-04:00

After I threw my cyber-tantrum yesterday about the Comcast situation, my complaints seem to have made the PR rounds. Later that morning I received a call from a representative slightly higher up than your basic call center automaton. It turns out we won't be subjected to a cut in services after all.

Is this due to my superb negotiating skills? No, actually--the purported cut was never going to take place. Comcast recently upgraded their "medium-speed service" to the Bloomington area to adjust for the plan rollover, so our current 10-12mbps speeds will remain steady through the Insight/Comcast switch.

"But," you may ask, "if they had already fixed the issue, why would they anger their customers by telling them their speeds would drop by 50%?" The answer: they're deplorably unorganized. Originally, the representative told me the upgrade would take place in a month or two, which got my dander up because I'd still be paying $40 a month for laggy internet until they took care of it. But then she called another department, who told her to call me back to say, "Whoops, it actually happened last Friday." If I had been talking to someone slightly lower on the chain of command, chances are I never would have learned this and would still be walking around with dangerous levels of norepinephrine in my system.

I wouldn't have had to go through this if they had just put the details in the original letter. Instead of simply, "Your promotional rate will expire," which would cause panic in any consumer, they could have written, "Starting November 1st, your contract with Insight Broadband will close and we will switch you to an equivalent Comcast plan. Your new monthly rate will be $42. You should notice no difference in the quality of your internet service." Would that have been so hard?

Of course it would, because the letter-writing department would have had to communicate with the technical and billing departments. How absurd.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2009-10-19T09:30:00.000-04:00

The Good: I finished my scarf.

The Bad: The scarf is no longer purely fashionable. The sign outside Monroe Bank on my way to work this morning said 36°. I may be naive, but I don't think I should have to wield an ice scraper in the middle of October.

The Ugly: We received a letter from Comcast yesterday (addressed to a "Tamara Nguyen," but the contents still applied) to the effect that the "grandfathered Insight Broadband service we have enjoyed" will end in two weeks. We drained two hours into phone calls, internet searches, and Live Chat conversations with half-conscious drones to find out exactly what this means. Eventually we found someone with brains enough to tell us that our bill will increase and our internet speed will be reduced by half. Yes, HALF. Currently we pay $40 a month for about 12 mbps; starting Sunday, November 1st we will pay $42 a month for 6-8 mbps.

The real beauty of it? Comcast is the only provider in town. We were never under the delusion that this company is anything but evil (it is, after all, #2 on MSN's 2009 Customer Service Hall of Shame), but this is bordering on extortion. Of course, they presented us with options. We can pay an extra $30/month for a faster speed. We can sign up for one of their cable packages and only pay $20 a month for internet, plus $40+ for all the frivolous extras we don't need. Or we can call the Fishers office the week before the switch and raise hell to secure a new promotional rate, which after another year will expire again.

Scary Disconnect

2009-10-16T08:40:00.000-04:00

The day before yesterday, when I received that rejection form letter from the only library in town that would consider hiring me, I submitted my resume for a web master position somewhere else in retaliation. That night, I received a request for an interview! I had to pass on the first proferred appointment, since it was in the middle of my shift at CeDIR, but I may have one next week.

In preparation, my boyfriend made me go through PHP tutorials for an hour or two. I already knew the basics of the basics, but he gave me some exercises to practice making forms and writing to open files. Today I put the new methods to work, reformatting one of the games on the Kids' Corner website. Truth or Lie originally consisted of a bunch of HTML documents, each with a response to the answer the litte players clicked on. Inefficient, to say the least. I put in some radio buttons, and voila!

Here's where things got interesting. I IM'd C. to report. Conversation snippet:

Me [2:03 PM]:
I redid the Truth or Lie game for Kids' Corner so there's only one page instead of 21. I could also reconfigure the site with server side includes so it's easier to edit in the future. Should I?
C. [2:04 PM]:
on the current server we can't do server side includes
so no need
‎‎Me‎‎ [2:04 PM]:
Can it handle PHP at all?
C. [2:04 PM]:
yeah
just not the includes

If I was a character in a comic strip, the thought bubble above my head at this point would have read, "...."

I switched IM windows.

Me [2:05 PM]:
Have you ever heard of a server that can handle PHP, but not includes?
Boyfriend in computing lab [2:05 PM]:
No.
Me [2:05 PM]:
Apparently ours does.
Boyfriend in computing lab [2:05 PM]:
If it can handle PHP, it can handle includes.
No.
No no no no no

And then he broke.

Now, I have all the respect in the world for C. as a librarian. But saying a server can handle PHP but not SSI is like saying "My computer can handle MS Word, but it can't do the 'tables' thing" (a modification of irate sweetie's more strongly worded example). The only possible explanation I have for this belief is that the person who coded the most recent CeDIR website messed up his syntax, then assumed the resulting error was the server's fault.

Unfortunately, I have no spine. And the building is staffed by a total of four people, so I don't like to make waves. I said nothing and just updated links on the HTML files with a mass Dreamweaver Find/Replace. Hopefully, no one will want that website updated for another 10 years, because I'm sure as heck not doing it.

Digital Debate: Dubious about "Dangerous Distractions"

2009-10-15T08:49:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, the NY Times published a "Room to Debate" article series on their website called: "Does the Brain Like E-Books?" Naturally, the content of the articles had nothing to do with how the brain actually processes different presentations of text--as the snazzy-title-happy editors intimated--but concentrated on user behavior. Also, there wasn't much "debate." Every single author more or less supported the move to digital prints and offered only objection to electronic information: the distraction factor.

"We suffer from marginal distraction," said the English professor. "The young brain...will be pulled by the medium to ever more distracting information," opined the cognitive scientist. "The Internet makes words as cheap and as significant as Cheese Doodles," deadpanned the computer scientist. One author went so far as to say the way a person interacts with digital media depends on "strength of character," like Sir Percival the Innocent eluding the temptress that is Facebook.

To support the distraction drawback, two authors independently cited research that people switch tasks an average of every three minutes. Firstly, I think it's important to consider what those specific tasks were--why would you spend more than three minutes on your email account if you only have one new messages? Secondly, I would like to know which age group this research focused on. I'm generalizing from personal experience, but people who began using personal computers later in life tend to absorb everything on a webpage, whether important or not, while younger people have become adept at ignoring extraneous information.

Whenever I navigate to a new site, my brain reflexively decides whether the images on the side are shameless advertisements and blinds me to them. Our ability to filter out distracting information has almost become a liability because of the "absorption clash." For example: in my second year of college, my Endocrinology professor asked everyone to check the course website before coming to class for new lectures, lab protocols, or important notices. One winter morning, everyone visited the site, saw nothing unusual and came to class. For about half an hour, we all chatted with the AI while waiting for the professor to arrive. Then someone looked at the clock, figured something was wrong, and scouted her out in the lab, where she was prepping rat corpses. She stormed into the classroom angrily: "I told everyone to check the website! It said that class will start an hour late today!" I whipped out my laptop, visited the site again, and confirmed that there was indeed an announcement--at the very top in black 11-point font.

The episode demonstrates how those who have been constantly bombarded by distracting information eventually blockade themselves against it. I think the authors have put too much weight on the dangers of distraction. The real problem with electronic information, in my opinion, is disorganization. My blogging and coding pursuits are considerably slowed by the need to keep several articles, tutorials, and graphic design software open at once. In these cases I wish I was working with physical media. If I was dealing with cut-and-paste pictures or textbooks I could recognize which I needed with a single glance, instead of clicking through several Firefox tabs.

On the other hand, there have been times when I was studying for an exam and thought, "Oh! The insect/apple tree coevolution! He covered that in that one lecture, on that one day...dang it when was that?" and had to read through all of my notes to find a single principle. How much simpler it would have been if I could hit Ctrl-F, type "apple trees," and watch my binder magically flip to the right page like Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

All of the authors and me agree that there are benefits and drawbacks to both digital and print media. Since we're still at the stage where we need both, it's silly to support one at the exclusion of the other.

Miffed

2009-10-14T14:24:00.001-04:00

I hate form letters.

Thank you for your interest in the Temporary Reference Assistant position. We were fortunate to have several excellent candidates for this opening. While your credentials are noteworthy, we have decided to pursue other candidates for the position whose qualifications more closely match the specific needs of this position.

I'm not quite sure how much closer to the "specific needs of this position" I can get, since it's the exact same one I hold now, only better paid.

Did they even bother to interview me? Of course not. They'd rather pretend to read over some resumes (and they must have pretended, because my resume is practically a checklist of every qualification they listed in the advertisement) and select a former volunteer.

Other explanations:
(1) The hours of availability I listed weren't precisely what they wanted.
(2) I'm not a student.
(3) I'm not a mother.
(4) A desperate MLS-holder who can't find full-time work applied.
(5) I already have one job, so I don't have the benefit of sympathy.
(6) I'm not a student.

Yes, I'm pretty sure I get two strikes for not being a student. Students need money and experience more than regular people who don't have access to scholarships and sponsored internships, you see.

So, I guess there will be no overseas adventures for several years, since I have no other job prospects and start graduate school in June. At my current earning rate my funds will deplete by two-three thousand by next May, which will bring me below the boyfriend-mandated financial floor of 200% the total cost of the trip. And there's no number of beautiful cherry blossom photos that will entice me to wait tables.

Crazy Techie Weekend

2009-10-11T20:39:00.001-04:00

Yesterday night, my sweetie turned on his computer for some post-dinner browsing.

Whir, whir, black.

"Windows has failed to start."

What followed was six hours of research, panic, and a teensy bit of desperation.

Yes, it came apart. And yes, that's an oven mitt in the background--the kitchen counter is the biggest elevated surface we have in the apartment. An hour-long diagnostic turned up an error number that corresponded to "dead hard drive, must replace." My sweetie's natural response was to unplug everything, put it back together, and hope the circuitry gods would smile.

This is the all-important box. It looks so innocuous, doesn't it?

Not surprisingly, simply plugging it back in didn't work. Sweetie then restarted the computer some two dozen times, coming up with a different screen each time but ultimately getting nowhere. Finally, at 1am, I convinced him to give up and just resign himself to shelling out the $80 for a new hard drive.

We spent this morning with a big cloth draped over the elephant. We huddled around the laptop and he taught me how to use javascript to create tabs for my food blog. It took a lot more effort than expected, since Blogger is hostile towards foreign scripts (in my sweetie's words, "it thinks it knows HTML better than I do" and kept altering the mark-up with every save). But it works now! I was thinking that if I ever wanted to expand the blog, I'd have to move over to WordPress and pay their fees. Living with a computer science major really has its benefits.

The benefits became more evident later on, when his mother dropped off a Vista CD to attempt rebooting the desktop again. I was skeptical, but left him to do his thing while I exercised and made dinner. As I was stirring the risotto, I heard a celebratory shout from the bedroom.

Tada! We have no idea what happened, but the hardware is safe and sound. It's a huge relief, not only because we'll save a lot of money, but because it would have taken a painstaking week to get all that data back. The CS4 suite, all his programming-related software and games and finances...it's scary how much of our lives are stored on these machines.

Scholarships

2009-10-09T09:59:00.000-04:00

Another reason to really, really want that job at the public library: the application periods for ALA and SLA scholarships are beginning. Both require three references, and I've only held two jobs in libraries.

Technically, I could ask both C. and S. from CeDIR for recommendations, but that's kind of lame. It would be much better if I could ask J. from ILL, C. from CeDIR (as much as I like S., C. is the librarian and would carry more weight with review committees), and a hypothetical supervisor at MCPL.

The references are the most worrisome part of the applications. Other than the typical generic forms, they only ask for a personal statement (which I wrote last year for university admissions and will simply tweak to reflect my work experience since then), resume, and official academic transcripts. The SLA also asks for a statement of financial need, detailing projected yearly costs for food, clothing, transportation, housing etc. Good thing I'm obsessive about tracking my expenditures! I even have monthly and year-end reports drawn up on Excel with the percentage of spending per category calculated to two significant digits, though I doubt they'll want that much detail.

Another consideration: should I abuse affirmative action? The SLA offers two scholarships for masters students. One has a level playing field, and the other is for students who are "Black (African American), Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, American Indian, Aleutian(Alaskan) native or native Hawaiians." I fall halfway into the third category thanks to my Singaporean mother, though I don't look it unless I pull my hair back and stay out of the sun for a few months. And I have my Czechoslovakian grandmother's rib cage and hips. But it technically counts, and I'm perfectly within my rights to check the box. It just feels a little dirty.

Still in the Race

2009-10-08T12:30:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm not out of the running yet. I wrote to the county library yesterday to confirm that they had received my resume, because the last time I applied, I received an automated email a week later saying my materials could not be delivered due to an internal server error. I received a reply this morning:

Yes, you are being considered for the position of Temporary Reference Assistant. The interview team has not made a selection at this time.

All applicants will receive a response to their application--either an invitation for an interview or a letter/email indicating that they are seeking other candidates.

So there's still hope! The hope factor has increased ten fold lately, since my sweetie and I are seriously considering an overseas trip next year before I'm weighed down by the trappings of graduate school. Want to visit Japan ∴ need money ∴ need job.

In related news, The Kept-Up Academic Librarian linked to an article today outlining the plight of college grads. Apparently, the recession has caused the unemployment rate of high school dropouts to increase 99%, while the unemployment rate of bachelors-holders has increased 136%.

Apologies to anyone who found that surprising, but from my biased standpoint that's a fairly obvious bit of "news." The peers I graduated with--at least the ones I track on social networking sites--are having a heck of a time finding steady employment, while we run into my boyfriend's old dead-end high school classmates behind cash registers all over town. Walmart is still hiring, and people will always need their groceries bagged no matter how hard the times. But I can count the opportunities for bachelors-holders on one hand: the university, the pharmaceutical plant, the university, and managerial positions at Target for the particularly desperate. Plus the university, for good measure. And maybe Ivy Tech.

For now I wait for that email with fingers crossed that it's not the "seeking other candidates" version. And enjoy the finally heated but now a teensy bit stuffy office.

More Grumbling

2009-10-06T13:29:00.000-04:00

Work has been miserable lately. Nothing's changed about the job itself, but the environment stat is in the red and is dragging my mood stat down with it (Sims? Anyone?) To be precise, it's freaking freezing.

IU is in "the process" of turning on the heat. Which means the building will be 60° until next week at least. Actually, there is one room in the building which the higher-ups have graciously warmed: the bathroom. While I fend off patron comments and cuddle cups of green tea, a vent is spewing hot air into the tiny tile-lined latrine used once or twice a day.

My sweetie's theory is that IU would prefer to heat a small room over a large library section. As boneheaded as that sounds, it is the sort of thing IU administrators would do. It's along the same lines as those mass emails I receive periodically from the president, apologizing to staff that there's not enough in the budget to raise salaries this year and inviting everyone to the ground breaking ceremony for the new Fine Arts building.

Blah Days

2009-10-02T14:44:00.000-04:00

Today has been really blah. It's freezing in the office because the university won't "start the process of turning on the heat" until next week, and the space heater made the surge protector turn off. The one book request we received was unfillable (wrong citation). Everyone is on vacation, so the place is dead quiet. And I have nothing to do.

This morning I received a single phone call from a woman who wanted to lodge a complaint against one of the faculty members here (since when did the library become Human Resources? Passing along...) Other than that, nadda. I have entered such an advanced state of apathy that I just threw away a barely-licked pomegranate Tootsie Pop. You know there's a problem when your favorite candies just don't taste good anymore.

You would think having a position that pays to aimlessly do whatever I please would be enviable, but it's a shiny golden cage. At home I would be baking goodies, playing games, running around, antagonizing the cat...here I'm stuck in a chair in front of a screen waiting for the phone to ring. I can knit, or watch formulaic television shows, or read blog posts. Woo.

This weekend better make up for it. I have no idea how, since the drive-in theater is showing pathetic excuses for movies (Halloween II and Whiteout; we could go or I could spend those four hours scrubbing the floors with a toothbrush for an equally enjoyable evening). According to the BloomingtonScene there's an apple tasting and haunted this & that for the kiddies, but honestly, for all this boasts of being a cultural center the only consistent recreation available comes in the form of liquid poison.

Gripe, whine, sulk.

Productivity

2009-09-30T16:41:00.000-04:00

I've been mysteriously productive today, both at home and work. I spent this morning vacuuming, mopping, dish washing, stew-making, lint-roller-buying and Goodwill-donating. At CeDIR, I finally received a call from the programming coordinator at the Monroe County Library about our proffered brochures for the 4th Annual Art of Mental Health exhibit. Since C. is on vacation, S1's son caught the H1N1 virus, and S2 is out of town for conferences, I had complete dominion over the display.

First I compiled and printed out a resource guide of materials related to mental health we have in the library. Then I spent an hour making a pretty poster for the table. Check it out:

The design isn't mine; it's the standard for all our posters and web images. However, I had to make the document from scratch because the only electronic copy available has a horrible deep red background. The squiggles were the worst. I had to use the pen tool on Illustrator to trace the broken and bleeding ones on IIDC sites (and yes, the squiggles were mandatory; they're the IIDC icon).

After connecting to and using the color printer across the courtyard came the highlight of my day: laminating! I'm not being sarcastic; it was really exhilarating to laminate something. I'd never done it before. No one was around to instruct me, so I followed the manual and produced a beautiful, shiny and professional-looking product. Isn't melted plastic amazing?

I have to deliver the materials tomorrow morning before work, which will take time I won't get paid for, but it gets me double-strength brownie points. If I'm really lucky, I'll run into the person in charge of hiring for that reference position I applied for....

Waning Resolve

2009-09-27T08:35:00.000-04:00

I'm not very good at sticking to my resolutions. I tell myself I'll stop eating the candy in the bright orange pumpkin set out at the Reference Desk; two hours later there's a Tootsie Pop in my mouth. I say I'll give the kitchen a scrub-down this weekend; well, at least the dishes are done.

So it's not very surprising that less than a week after I declared my resolution to enjoy working part-time, I felt compelled to submit another application. It was just too good an opportunity: 20 hours a week at $11.84 as a Temporary Adult Services Reference Assistant at the local public library. I actually meet all of the requirements listed (a rare occurrence), plus the termination of the position coincides with my planned return to school next year. It's just what I've been waiting for!

Unfortunately, I might have blown it already thanks to my lousy internal editor. While filling out the online application, I wrote that I was applying for the position of "Temporary Referenace Assistant." Even when I read through the application three times to check for errors, my neural nets filtered out the "a." I didn't notice my blunder until I clicked "submit" and the words "Thank you for applying for the position of Temporary Referenace Assistant" popped up in size 72 bold font. Is this self-sabotage?

Anyway, if I manage to salvage the situation and earn myself another job, I'll have to decide whether to keep my hours at CeDIR as-is and work a total of 50 hours/week or ask S. and C. to consider hiring another student to pick up a couple of shifts. A 50-hour workweek sounds like a lot, but I really don't do much "working" at CeDIR these days. I would say 75% of my time is spent watching Korean dramas and knitting. I have a lovely scarf going.

Resourcefulness

2009-09-23T10:17:00.000-04:00

I feel very resourceful this morning.

First, I actually read through a newsletter C. had automatically given me to throw away yesterday, and found a useful tidbit to blog about on the CeDIR site: the under-advertised 4th Annual Art of Mental Health week, which will consist of art exhibits, talks, and a neat-looking benefit dance for the Mental Health of Monroe County organization. I was proud of myself for that alone, but suddenly inspiration struck as I was talking to S. this morning--advertising op! My idea to offer CeDIR brochures to display along with the exhibit at the Monroe County Public Library was well received by my superiors. Preen.

Later I needed to send an email to a patron about a book she had placed on hold, but the message wouldn't go through. My Google skills did not go to waste; I was able to locate the school district she worked for and remedy the erroneous address in the system (there was a "j" where a "g" should be). Then there was a problem with a diagnostic kit someone had sent back. We had the manuals, but not the record forms necessary to actually use them. The previous patron said she had never received them, so I must have sent the incomplete kit without realizing something was wrong. WorkFlows can't track charges past the last patron, so was all hope lost? Of course not! The imperturbable me dug around the archives until I found an old email from S. to a patron, kindly asking her to return the missing parts of the kit.

I think I'm shaping up to be an excellent librarian.

Lazy Days

2009-09-21T09:40:00.000-04:00

Confession: I'm not looking terribly hard for a second job. I check the usual listings every couple of days, but I'm not scouting as feverishly as I was post-graduation. This is partly because I'm frustrated by the constant catering to students, partly because I'm hanging on to the hope that my hours at CeDIR will eventually increase (recent advancement: they're giving me a key!), and mostly because I'm lazy.

I like my free mornings. I like being able to exercise and write in peace. I like getting errands done and maintaining a reasonably clean apartment. I really don't want to drive all over town hopping from one minimum wage job to the next. Since I left ILL/DDS, my income has decreased by about $250 a month, which is large proportionate to my poverty-level income but miniscule in the long run.

If a decent-paying position that enhances my resume pops up, I'll go for it. But for now, I'm going to enjoy my half-lazy days.

Bad Science

2009-09-18T09:44:00.000-04:00

I usually agree with the conclusions of researchers on their own papers. After all, they've spent a lot of time parsing through the data, thinking from every possible angle, and do their best to accurately represent the results of the study in order to pass peer review and the scrutiny of editors.

But once in a while, I come across a study that was so badly hampered by bias that I just can't fathom how the article was published at all. Today, for example, I read this in an older NY Times Editorial: "Now comes new evidence that the age-21 requirement has been generally effective in reducing binge drinking — except among college students." So far so good.

"The study, based on information collected over a 27-year period by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, found that binge drinking by men between 18 and 20 years old who did not attend college dropped by more than 30 percent over that period but remained statistically unchanged among similar-aged men on campus. There was no difference between college and noncollege women in the 18- to 20-year age group but a big upsurge in binge drinking by older college women."

I marvel at how skillfully that paragraph was worded. It seems like it completely supports the initial thesis, that "While the amount of binge drinking...remains high at colleges, it has dropped sharply among people of the same age who do not attend college." Its effectiveness hinges on a carefully eliminated sentence: that little "no difference between college and noncollege women" means that among noncollege women, binge drinking rose 20%.

Let's summarize the findings of the study detailed in the paragraph:

Group	Binging Up	Binging Down
Noncollege Women	X
College Women	X
Noncollege Men		X
College Men	X

Apparently, only males count when evaluating the effectiveness of a law. Or maybe the authors believe that even though the incidence of binge drinking among noncollege women rose, the incidence among noncollege men dropped enough to cancel that bit out. What brilliant reasoning.

In essence, this study was completely worthless. It doesn't show that raising the drinking age has been effective, as it purports, but it doesn't show that it was responsible for the increases in binging either. However, I do agree that "schools had better look at their own policies" when it comes to journalism students: they should be forced to take a few logic courses before they're allowed to print blatantly skewed presentations of studies.

Schadenfreude

2009-09-16T08:41:00.000-04:00

First thing in the morning I received confirmation of my 99.9% certainty:

Dear Ms. Marnell,

Thank you for your interest in the Publication Assistant position. I've had the opportunity to review your application and regret to inform you that I've chosen to offer the job to another candidate whose skills and background more closely match our needs.

I wish you the best of luck in your job search.

Search,
D.
Senior Editor

I responded to D., Senior Editor:

Dear D.,

Thank you for letting me know. If you haven't sent this form letter to the others yet, I would change the signoff from "search" to something more traditional.

-Tamara

Meehee. I feel empowered by the snark.

Not My Morning

2009-09-15T10:38:00.001-04:00

"When your stomach is empty and your mind is full, it's hard to fall asleep." -(Mental cookies if you can name the source)

This morning was simply not my morning. First of all, the above quote fully applied to me last night; my stomach is again on the fritz (doctor's appointment tomorrow!), and my brain kept conjuring up images of Adobe Illustrator and InDesign. I was nervous about the Geology interview, plus the cat's vocal chords have strengthened recently. Once I woke up and got some exercise I was in a much better state of mind--I gussied up, assembled my materials and checked my email on the way out the door to confirm where I was going.

That's when I saw the following: "Hi Tamara. K. called in sick this morning."

%$&@!

I've never typed a quicker email or made a faster lunch in my life. Then I ran out to the car, skipped my usual windshield wiping/radio tuning routine, and made some questionable vehicle maneuvers to get to campus on time. Of course, I then found that there wasn't a single open C-permit parking space within a mile of the Geological Survey. I drove up and down the library lot, the lots behind Informatics, the car-lined alleys, even the HPER lot restricted to A permits (where I was reprimanded by the booth attendant simply for existing in the area). At 10:00, the time I was supposed to be in the interviewer's office, I finally found a temporary spot.

In my pencil skirt, silk shirt and heels, I ran around the perimeter of Geology to the survey section and rushed up to the fourth floor, where my interviewer, D. was waiting. I was only five minutes late, but it was enough to ruin my composure. I struggled to sound easy-going as I handed her my sample book covers and explained how I had put them together. Most of the interview consisted of listening to D. explain what she does in the department. I did my best to let her get to know me, but it was a little difficult to get words in edgewise.

After about 15 minutes, she ended the interview by telling me she had many applicants to interview and I probably wouldn't hear back until the middle of next week. I left with the adrenaline finally draining from my veins and a profound sense of disappointment. I was 99% certain they wouldn't call me in for an interview, but I'm 99.9% certain I will not be hired.

I know I didn't give the answers D. was looking for. She asked me what experience I had with InDesign: I told her I had spent last week learning to use the program through tutorials and experimentation. Correct answer: "I've been using it for years to make newsletters/booklets/business cards for X/Y/Z organizations." She asked me what my future goals were: I told her I was planning to go into information science as a medical librarian or IT manager. Correct answer: "I have big dreams of working for a national magazine."

The job will most likely go to a bright-haired tattoo-covered art student (not to perpetuate stereotypes; I just know quite a few such art students). Maybe the silk shirt and heels were a bad idea. However, it would have been duplicitous to dress or answer her questions otherwise. It's incredibly frustrating. On the one hand, the big-hearted employers want to fill the dreams of the applicant with the best fit to the position. On the other, most of the other applicants are students with Daddy's checking account registered with the Bursar, and I'm a graduate who needs this job to pay the bills.

Afterwards I made my way directly to CeDIR to cover K.'s shift. And had a very strange lunch of peanut butter on rye bread. I really need to get some grab-and-go meals.

Follow-up: I also just learned that I was rejected from a staff position at the Wells library without an interview. No letter or acknowledgement; my IU Jobs account delivered the news. Life as a BS-holder is fantastic.

Not-so-Awesome Complement

2009-09-14T10:29:00.000-04:00

I raved on Friday about the powers of InDesign, the versatile program by Adobe used in the position I'm interviewing for tomorrow. Since then, I have branched out to explore some associated CS4 programs also called for in the job description: Illustrator and Bridge.

I must admit, after being introduced to InDesign, these programs were a major let-down. Bridge seems to do nothing more than blow-up files and let people put little stars under the previews for reviewing purposes...woo. It's bulky and slow and personally, I'd prefer to just retrieve the files directly from wherever I've saved them. Perhaps Bridge is useful for creative directors who have to review dozens of artists' continuously updated photos and illustrations, but it's useless for my purposes.

As for Illustrator, after using Fireworks for a while I can't see the appeal. Fireworks is simpler to use and accomplishes the same tasks, plus anything produced by Illustrator has a very smooth cartoony look (I have actually read that the program is recommended in comic artist circles for "digital inking" of their sketches). Since the only major difference between Illustrator and Fireworks I can detect is in the user interface layout, I asked why both were produced by the same company...as part of the same package, no less.

My tech-savvy sweetie gave me a little history lesson in response: apparently Fireworks was a web production standard sold as part of Macromedia Studio in the early 2000s. So when Adobe acquired Macromedia April 18th, 2005, the program (along with Dreamweaver and Flash) was incorporated into CS4 with some minor modifications to handle Illustrator (.ai) and Photoshop (.psd) files. None of this is news to people who have been IT-conscious longer than I have, but to me it was a revelation. A disappointing revelation: Adobe isn't comprised of programming geniuses, it's just piggy-backing.

However, the employees at Adobe did make InDesign, as well as the ubiquitous Acrobat, which is next on my list of programs to conquer.

Awesome, Unstoppable Power

2009-09-11T08:53:00.001-04:00

I have to eat my hat for the disparaging remarks I made about Adobe InDesign yesterday. After an afternoon of hypnotizing tutorials, I have come to the conclusion that this program is the most amazing thing since sliced bread (which, by the way, I haven't eaten for four days).

Yes, the interface is completely unintuitive. If I hadn't watched those tutorials, I would still be awash in a button-heavy sea of confusion. But once you know what the heck is going on, you gain ultimate control over all of your graphic design needs. InDesign is like CSS for word processing--you can manipulate everything with a few commands.

Some examples:

Paragraph, Character, and Object styles
You can assign attributes to certain groups of paragraphs, characters, or objects to apply with a couple keystrokes to any element you subsequently add. These behave like classes in CSS--altering one of the components in a group edits the assigned parameters to distribute your change through the entire document.

Master A Sheets
This is the ".css" stylesheet for your document. Any repeating element placed here will appear on every page...this includes frames, images, page numbers, guidelines, etc. It's a very useful time-saving device.

Guidelines
Guidelines are my friend. Not my best friend, but one of my good ones--InDesign automatically measures the distance between anything and everything on your pages. This makes positioning elements incredibly easy. I really wish they had these in PowerPoint when I was a student copying the same slide over and over to preserve the position of an element with changing content.

GREPs
GREPs are my best friend. They're the ultimate find-and-replace. You can do things like specify everything in a certain paragraph style prior to a colon to have certain font-weight characteristics, or all numerical digits in a document to be presented in a special font-family, or all words in italics to be set to a new character style so you can change paragraph styles without erasing the format.

The list of spiffy things you can do with InDesign continues. You can designate conditional text, import entire documents and automatically produce the number of pages needed to fit the text into your desired frames, create "book" files to integrate documents from several authors together and synchronize the styling, and and and.

Of course, I'm not a professional designer. There are probably even better programs out there, but from an amateur standpoint InDesign is really darned impressive. I'm going to spend today playing with it, creating "magazines" and brochures for make-believe companies just to feel the power.

InDesign and an Interview

2009-09-10T12:33:00.001-04:00

Last week I applied for a second job that's on the very margin of my scope of talents: Publication Layout Assistant for the IU Geology Department. The job is based solely on the use of Adobe InDesign to format publications written by the department faculty and graduate students.

Now, I applied only half seriously, not because I didn't want the job, but because I was 99% sure they would pass me over. I stated very clearly in my application that I have never actually used Adobe InDesign, and after playing with it for a while (I downloaded it as part of the CS4 Suite available through IUware to IU students) I have come to the conclusion that it is needlessly difficult to use. I'm proficient with other Adobe programs--FireWorks, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver--but the way this program functions is pretty unique. There are far too many wizards and templates, and the toolboxes are configured differently from anything I've seen before.

Sure, I can learn to use it with a little bit of time. But if I was an employer, and I read what I wrote on the cover letter (literally: "Though I have not used InDesign in a professional capacity...I am confident that I can quickly learn to accomplish the tasks I would be given as the layout assistant."), I would have clicked "delete" without a second thought. Who on earth applies for a job that clearly requires a skill set she lacks?

Maybe the other applicants aren't InDesign whizzes either. Maybe the proffered $12/hour wasn't enough to entice applicants...though it's 150% the salary I get at CeDIR. Or maybe I just managed to make myself sound smart enough to handle it. Whatever the reason, I have an interview scheduled for the morning of the fifteenth (incidentally, the day before I see the gastroenterologist). So I know what I'll be doing with my downtime during work today and tomorrow: going through these tutorials and getting a grip on this program before Tuesday.

Using Our Own Resources

2009-09-08T16:01:00.000-04:00

When I signed on to be the reference assistant at the Center for Disability Information and Referral Library, I never imagined I'd be using the resources for myself beyond broadening my scope of third-person knowledge. I don't have ADHD or Asperger's or a physical impairment, and though I do have a visual impairment, it isn't nearly severe enough to merit being called a legitimate disability.

But today I found myself actually thumbing through some volumes in our collection, because there's a sliver of a chance that I have celiac disease. I probably don't--since I know of no family history of gluten sensitivity, my symptoms are more likely indicative of an ulcer or chronic gastritis--but I know I have something. And until I can get to the gastroenterologist next Wednesday, the most I can do to create the illusion of control is inform myself of every possibility.

For September's special display, I had pulled several books on nutrition for children with special needs for the theme of "Better Breakfast Month" (yes, it's a stretch, but my choices were that or: Baby Safety Month, Classical Music Month, Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, National Piano Month, or Self-Improvement Month). You'd be surprised how many of those nutrition books are aimed at individuals with celiac disease. Well, you'd be surprised if you haven't talked to any desperate parents of children with autism recently. But I've ranted about that already.

In any case, we house no fewer than sixteen gluten-free cookbooks, ranging from a 1998 copy of Special Diets for Special Kids to the cheeky generalizations of The G-Free Diet. I spent my hours today leafing through the more recent editions, and have learned some central tenets of gluten-free baking:

(1) Sorghum, rice, millet, tapioca, oat and corn flours populate the bottom block of the food pyramid
(2) Xanthum gum is applied with a liberal hand
(3) Authors like to make living with the disease sound much harder than it actually is

Number three will probably make parents the world over rankle, but honestly, it seems that authors deliberately stretch out the list of things people can't eat to make it sound worse than it is. Instead of writing, "baked goods containing wheat," they like to list out all of the popular offending foods, as if the general public isn't aware that macaroni and chocolate chip cookies are made with flour.

Also, they like to make sweets sound essential to life. There isn't a book in the collection that doesn't have alternatives for cakes, breads, pastas, etc. Children will lead deprived, stunted lives if they can't eat what their peers do, they insinuate. Parents will clasp their hands in joy to find recipes for pancakes and spaghetti--their children have been saved!

Even the "experts" completely pass over foods from cultures the world over who eat traditional diets sans wheat. Wouldn't it be easier to simply follow one of them instead of holding so tightly to our grain-heavy expectations? An East Asian island diet, for example, based on rice and sea vegetables. Or a Mediterranean-type diet minus the bread.

Plus, judging from my morning excursion to Kroger, there are all types of aids readily available to families dealing with Celiac disease. I found rice-based pastas, baking mixes, sorghum/millet/tapioca flours, Newman's Own cookies, gluten-free candies, and a freezer section full of wheat-free bread loaves, waffles, and ice creams. All this in a regular supermarket--I haven't even visited the specialty health stores.

In short, I have learned from these various resources that a diagnosis of gluten sensitivity wouldn't be that bad. Considering all of the fates that could befall a person documented in this library, just being forced to lay off the dinner rolls is a pretty rosy one.

Google Analytics

2009-09-03T09:34:00.000-04:00

Woohoo! Readership of this blog has officially jumped from three people to seven!

Google Analytics, the coolest and most Big-Brotherish tool I have ever been introduced to, tells me that this webpage was visited 13 times yesterday by 7 unique individuals: some in California, several in Indiana and one in Illinois. I can account for relatives/pending relatives in the first two states, but not the last--so I seem to have made an itty bitty impact on this world :D

My nutrition blog is faring much better, with 14 unique visitors yesterday from Indiana, California, New York, Virginia, Arizona, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Minnesota. The jump probably came thanks to Tina at Carrts 'n Cake, who ran a giveaway to which 400+ people, many of them bloggers, entered. I ran through every single one of the entrants' blogs, and I must say--people can get really creative with food. I added a few to my Blogroll, but not as many as I had intended thanks to a browser crash that lost the open tabs I was in the process of linking.

I'm going to ask C. today if I can set up accounts for the CeDIR blogs and site, so we can see how many people use these resources and what they tend to focus on during their visits.

Skewed Expectations

2009-09-02T12:30:00.000-04:00

While patrolling my favorite blogs over lunch, I saw a post by the Kept-up Academic Librarian with the title "Questioning the Value of College in a Recession." Since I'm a prime example of a BS-holder working a single-digit salary with dwindling hours (see yesterday's lament), I clicked on the link to the complete USA Today article for some company in my misery.

The woman highlighted in the article started off with the classic story: as an eager teen she didn't consider how much college cost, moved out of state and sank herself $80k in loans because it never occurred to her how long it would take to pay them off. I commiserated. Then the author wrote this:

Her loan payments were manageable until this year, when she lost her job as an information technology recruiter earning about $100,000 a year..."To this day, I have yet to see the complete value of my education," Horn says.

At this point I choked on my stir-fry and navigated away from the page without bothering to read the rest of the article. I had already seen two pieces of total BS (the acronym that doesn't refer to my degree). First of all, I can count the number of people I know by name who make $100,000 a year on two hands. I can count the number of people on that list who don't have an advanced degree or license on zero hands. I'm not sure why the author of this article thought anyone who made six digits would garner sympathy from average $30k/year readers.

Secondly, I'm not sure what this lady expected the "complete value of [her] education" to be, but if she had common sense she would realize it has nothing to do with the debt she incurred to get it. An aspiring botanist who paid $15k a year for a state school and a botanist who paid $40k for a prestigious liberal arts college will emerge with the exact same degree. The prestige makes an impact in the hiring process, but once hired a botanist is a botanist. The $40k/year botanist cannot somehow force his/her boss to raise the established salary just because there's a bigger debt to pay. Personally, I think if that woman was able to land a $100k a year job with a bachelors alone, she got more than the "complete value" of her degree.

A few years into college, I knew that I would never make more than $50k a year. (a) I don't have the ambition or attention span to work long enough hours to break the high-earning mark, and (b) it's common knowledge that anyone who goes into academia, as I had planned to, should expect to live off peanuts. Now that I've found a definite career to pursue, this still holds true: I know that when I finish my masters degree, with up to $20k in debt, I will probably earn a little less than $40k for my first few years as a professional.

I read a lot about how young people don't understand how much things cost, but it's clear there's also a misunderstanding about how much people earn. I remember one forum poster on College Confidential who began a thread with, "I'm used to a certain standard of living, and I don't want to give that up while I'm studying for my PhD." Others responded that it was unlikely she could save enough within her time frame to live the high life for 5+ of school, even with fellowships (I personally provided the math). In return, she scoffed, "I have a license to sell insurance. I'll be making six digits a year as soon as I graduate."

Now, if you visit Payscale or any of the other salary-tracking sites, it's painfully obvious that insurance salesman make even less than I will. I'm not sure where she got the impression that her future colleagues owned Mercedes and sipped Chardonnay at lunch. Maybe television has something to do with it: doctors live in mansions by the sea, office workers gab away at gorgeous restaurants every night and journalists magically obtain spatious Manhattan apartments and thousand-dollar sweaters. Or maybe it's the parents, who gave their children the impression they had an infinite money-vault underground by mortgaging the house to go on fancy vacations.

In any case, I think it's a brilliant idea to make children aware of these things before they get plastic cards in hand. In middle school, we learned algebraic concepts like compound interest. Why not make those annoying word problems reflect life? Instead of happy exercises like, "If Johnny puts $5000 in a bank account with 5% interest, how much will he have after ten years?", textbook writers should incorporate some examples like "If Johnny puts 10% of his $50,000/year income towards a $50,000 debt with 5% annually compounded interest, how long will it take him to pay it off?" (The answer, boys and girls, is approximately 15 years, which might shock the prepubescents out of begging daddy for the latest iWhatever).

Of course, if people think children are too 'delicate' to handle problems like this, they should at least make it part of high school economics. I wasted that semester coloring areas under the same darned supply/demand graph over and over anyway.

Anger, Panic, and Contemplative Revenge

2009-09-01T12:21:00.000-04:00

I came in to work today at noon, the time when the morning shift always ends and the afternoon shift begins. K. gave me a surprised look as I walked through the door and said, "You're really early." She showed me a copy of the desk schedule, which had me down for 12:30 to 5 pm every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

If I were still a student, this would be great news--an extra half hour to do whatever I want! But I'm not, so the first thing my mind did was calculate the income loss from the change of hours. $4 per half hour ∗ three half hours a week ∗ four weeks a month = $48. The second thing it did was come up with all the things that $48 could have paid for: the internet bill, the cell phone bill, gasoline....

It took all my strength to hide my angry face behind the "accessible workstation" console while K. dallied around and gave sunshiny greetings to well-paid care-free professionals who flitted in and out of the library. K. said she didn't ask for the extra hours, S. just scheduled them without consulting her. Now, S. knows very well that I am becoming the sole earner in my household, that I was disappointed with the shift assignments when she briefed me a few weeks ago, and that I jump at every chance for extra work--even if I have to haul myself to a church on Saturday morning to sit at a booth and look pretty for five hours. It seems she doesn't care. The arrangement is zippity-doo-dah-dandy for K., but my bills will not magically pay themselves.

I spitefully emailed the Wells department I had applied to last week and informed them that I now had one and a half more hours a week to offer. Then I did a thorough search for any time-demanding job advertisements that I may have disregarded out of a sense of duty to CeDIR. If I see another 20 hours/week position pop up at the Elletsville branch of the county library or elsewhere, I will instantly abandon my welcome-mat persona and fight for it. S. can find a way to work everyone else's schedule around mine, for once.

Discouragement

2009-08-30T09:14:00.000-04:00

If I was an eternally optimistic person, I'd be celebrating right now: I may have a "semi-vacation" for the next few weeks.

K. wanted to increase her hours at CeDIR, which is understandable since she's going back to school and needs to chip away at those loans. Unfortunately, at the same time she's taking another shift, I'm being dropped from Wells. At most, I can work 30 hours a week at CeDIR for a monthly income of some $700. That would be more than enough if I were in a two-income household, but my sweetie is going back to school as well, and I'll be the temporary breadwinner for the next ten months.

Make no mistake, I bear no resentment towards my sweetie. I take care of the bills initially, but he always pays back with interest when he can work again. And I certainly don't want him to work while he's taking three computer science courses (all way over my head) and memorizing an avalanche of kanji in second-year Japanese. Anyway, I calculated that if I suddenly decided kick him out on the streets, total costs would be practically unaffected. Currently, my sweetie pays for half of the rent, internet, pet fee, electric, and water/trash bills. The first two are fixed bills, the cat isn't going anywhere, and the others I'd use only minimally less of by myself. Effectively, the only difference between living alone and taking on his costs for the year is his average $100 a month for food. Woo.

Technically, even if I don't get a second job, I have enough in the bank (thanks to graduation presents) to cover any lags there may be. But I'd prefer to save the buffer for when I start my masters program in 2010.

None of this is the "discouragement" of the title, however--it's just background. What's really discouraging is that despite the sudden overflow of library job postings in Bloomington, I only qualify for one or two. Why? Students. Of the 13 departments advertising openings on the IU Human Resources page, only one will accept non-student applications. I keep an eye on the Monroe County Public Library postings as well, but from what I've seen they strongly prefer high school students who had previously shelved books on weekends. And the only other recourse for aspiring librarians in the city, the Monroe County History Center, only accepts unpaid interns.

I understand why IU strongly favors students. It's not because it's an academic institution, but because they get tax breaks for hiring them. And I understand why the history center doesn't pay their interns. They have dismal funding and there's an excess of desperate SLIS folks like me looking to expand resumes. But understanding doesn't make it any less discouraging.

Another complication, and one that may wear out my patience despite my best efforts to remain "nice": my schedule is completely dictated by K.'s schedule. Since she has classes (three of them, which meet twice a week at most), my supervisor puts her preferences first. S. actually told me that she just scheduled K. for whenever she wanted to work and assigned me to "the rest." If K. emails a few weeks from now saying, "This is kinda short notice, but I'm going home this weekend for wedding planning stuff and need you to take the Friday shift," I'll be expected to fill in.

That's how it worked for G., anyway. "Hey Tamara, I have a parent-teacher meeting on Tuesday and can't drive in to Bloomington. Can you take my shift? Hey Tamara, I have a paper worth like 50% of my grade due Wednesday, and I haven't even started. Tamara, I have a headache today. My dog is sick. Martians stole my car." And what did Tamara do? Tamara begged J. to let her juggle hours at Wells to pick up the slack.

I could do that for ILL, since there were a large number of student hourlies milling about. But any of the other positions I'm vying for--acquisitions assistant, public library clerk--are one-person deals. I certainly don't want to end up being the G. or K. for the other clerks.

Goodbye, ILL

2009-08-27T19:32:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow will be my last day as an hourly at ILL/DDS lending. My tenure is ending without fanfare--I'll simply show up at 8, leave at 11:30, and go about my business.

I worked there for only three months, and ILL is the sort of place where droves of students wander in and out again without a second thought. Today I noticed two incoming Freshmen go through the hiring process: J. and A. went through the motions as dully and efficiently as they had for me back in May. J. described the department work-flow and student duties in an underwhelming two minute speech. She promptly shuttled the youngsters over to A., who filled out the appropriate forms and recited Social Security and bank account requirements at bewildered, unconsciously nodding heads. Hello, goodbye, see you on Monday at nine. When accepting is so easy, letting go tends to be too.

Just as when I was asked to stay past my expiration date, I'm not sure whether I'm happy or sad to leave. On the one hand, I really hated the work, as anyone with faculties more advanced than that of a chimpanzee would. No more photocopying for three hours straight, lugging big carts and journals around, and mindlessly scanning bar codes into ILLiad all afternoon. No more hiking to branch libraries to struggle with unhelpful student desk attendants and copiers on the fritz. No more headaches browsing the dusty shelves for missing books.

On the other hand, my only remaining position requires me to sit still all day in front of a computer screen with no one to talk to. I'll miss the easy conversations with my coworkers as we trudge through the stacks, staple papers together and cut out shipping labels. The office is filled with interesting, outgoing characters. A. likes to bring in homemade cookies and muffins and spend the morning telling anyone who will listen about how he perfected the recipe. E. can't say two sentences together without pulling someone's leg. And J. is the nicest pie-baking, Union newsletter-editing, politically involved grandmother imaginable. I secretly named her the academic Paula Dean.

I will miss ILL, even if I won't miss the job. I sent my resume to another department in Wells, but I don't expect it to have the nice and open atmosphere of this place.

It will pay better, though ^-^

Social Networking and Narcissism

2009-08-26T08:56:00.001-04:00

While perusing the links I recently blogrolled, I read a snippet on the Kept-Up Academic Librarian that marginally relates to yesterday's rant: a USAToday column reported that college students say social networking makes them more narcissistic.

It's easy to jump on this sort of report and shake our heads wisely at the sad state of young people these days. "Yes," we can say, "All those shameless 'drunk' photos, those self-aggrandizing status updates...clear evidence of a culture spiralling into the Devil's black hands." But note: the study says nothing about actual narcissism, just the perception of it.

A study like this is a waste of money and time, in my opinion. 18 to 21-year-olds' opinions of themselves means diddly squat for one thing; they have only grown up in one generation, so how on earth can they compare themselves to the youths of previous ones? Perception of earlier generations must rely on either media from the time period or observations of older generations as they are currently. Since the idols of Western movies, music and novels throughout the 20th century appear to me to be extraordinarily self-confident (think Cary Grant, James Dean, Kathren Hepburn, Cher, Madonna, etc. etc.) I believe most respondents were basing their opinions on how they view their elders in the present. Obviously this is a flawed comparison, because the majority of people matured somewhat between 1970 and now.

Secondly, the study made no actual tie between narcissism and social networking. The students simply said that (a) their friends use Facebook, Twitter, etc. and (b) they think people are generally more narcissistic. If the authors really wanted to draw solid conclusions, they should have created a scale for arrogance, asking the students sneaky questions like how they rate themselves in terms of looks, intelligence, or work-related capabilities compared to their peers. Then they could run stats to see whether higher arrogance scores (or "self-esteem," to be politically correct) correlate to more frequent reported use of social networking tools. Of course, that would take more effort than just being able to say, "56% of students think their generation is the most narcissistic." They'd actually have to think.

Fundamentally, I also have a problem with the concept that writing about oneself makes a person like themselves more. People assume that when teenagers log on to MySpace and post self-descriptions, they are doing their best to represent their true selves. I contend that they mostly represent only a fraction of their personalities that fits the subculture of their friends. Facebook profiles are terribly consistent, unlike actual people. A girl will either write, "I like watching movies, going to the beach, and laughing my head off with my friends LOL," or "I'm going to die while I'm young. I'm surrounded by back-stabbing, rat-racing idiots. My soul is too deep for the stone and bone of this Earth"...depending on her preferred cultural niche. She will not write, "I like watching movies. I'm in a terrible mood because my best friend asked the guy I like out. But I'll feel okay tomorrow because my dad's taking me to the beach. It bothers me that my dad is always working, but I understand that it's because of the economy."

In other words, the way a person represents themselves online is thoroughly filtered and diluted. Contradictorily, the apparent narcissism stems from anonymity. People behave outrageously when they believe they have no traceable face. Even if a forum poster regularly spits acidic word-bullets at other writers and name-calls without shame, it's doubtful they could do so when eye-to-eye with the strangers they attack. Some people claim anonymous behavior reveals a person's "true" nature, but I believe it's more accurate to judge a person by what they do when fully in their own identity. After all, we don't send people to jail for commenting on a crime report, "That pervert should have his entrails ripped out!!!" They're only a real threat if they go around actually ripping said entrails in a vigilante mob.

In short, neither the study nor the apparently prevalent belief has any merit. People have been preening and melodramatizing for centuries...the advent of digital cameras and hand-held computers has not suddenly tapped a hidden well of selfishness.

Monday Surprises

2009-08-24T15:32:00.000-04:00

As I complained below, I spent my Friday afternoon at CeDIR meticulously entering ISBN numbers into the BookProspector search engine, stacking books into big boxes, and hauling said boxes to wherever they needed to go. At the end of the day, I had sold roughly 40 of the 400 books, and had hauled the other 360 outside for disposal. The librarian then informed me that we would have to do title searches for those discarded books, since their search engine appeared to be broken, so right before I took off for the weekend I dragged them back inside against the protests of my neck and spinal cord.

Needless to say, I was not looking forward to work today. I expected another day of the same menial labor...and was so depressed thinking about it yesterday that I questioned my entire future as a librarian and seriously considered switching to law school instead (until I thought about how much more aggrivating people doing stupid things and lying about it would be than just being asked to do an occassional stupid thing myself). But when I walked in the door this morning, the librarian informed me that their search option wasn't broken; it was disabled. Therefore, she will have to find some other way to sell the books, if she does so at all. My happiness gauge instantly refilled to optimum chipper level.

When I logged in to the computers, I found several emails about requesting materials and setting up accounts. The phone started ringing and has continued to do so at a reasonable pace, and during the gaps I spent my time making an impressive banner for my new hobby blog: The Amateur Nutritionist. I was so busy that my happiness gauge didn't have time to deplete, as it usually does during the long, uneventful days at CeDIR.

I remembered something I wrote when I first landed this job: I love it when I'm actually doing the job. So little has happened lately that I had started to dislike it, and despaired over the prospect of another year's worth of boredom. But it looks like my predecesors were correct: it gets a whole lot more interesting when people come back to school.

Why I Hate Sharing my Job

2009-08-21T13:07:00.000-04:00

Yesterday the librarian at CeDIR came down from her office to tell me it was "weeding season." After I completed the 2008-2009 usage stats, she had compiled a list of books to be pulled and sold on Book Prospector, which at the time was having software issues. I went through a page or two of the list, boxed them up neatly, and planned to sell them in bulk when the aforementioned site was back online before moving on to the next section.

When I came in to work today, I found K., the other reference assistant, sitting among piles books strewn indiscriminately across the floor. She said the librarian had told her about the weeding project, so she pulled the books...all of them. All 400-some volumes. I asked her why they weren't in boxes, at least: "Oh, I hadn't gotten to that yet. And they're not discarded from WorkFlows. See you next week."

While I painstakingly went through the list to discard electronic records, I found that K. had pulled books that weren't supposed to be pulled--books and journals that were parts of series. Searching through the horde of paper at my feet for said journals has proven fruitless; there's about as much order to it as there is to the remains of the catnip-laced cardboard on my apartment floor after Luna has come out of hyper-mode.

Now, I'm sure K. thought she was being helpful. She just did what someone else told her to, after all. But if she had used a tiny bit of the gray matter in her pretty brunette head, she might have realized that she was creating a huge mess for me to deal with alone. If she had been put in charge of the project, I'd be happy to see her use whatever inefficient methods she chooses. But I'm the only person here Mondays through Wednesdays, and I'll have to clean all this up.

I promise my future employees: when I'm the head of a library, I (a) will let them figure out their own ways to deal with projects, and (b) assign one project per person unless all involved persons are present and communicative.

Mental Accounting Myths

2009-08-14T08:39:00.001-04:00

Every time I see a published article, blog, or forum thread about nutrition or obesity, somewhere along the line this message will rear its tired head: "Eating healthily is expensive." Magazine authors capitalize on this 'fact' and write headlines that blare, "Dishes that don't break the budget!" Commenters bemoan that they can't help but give their kids junk because they can't afford any better. And staticians grimly author studies that show that people in debt are more likely to be obese than their happily 6-digit-earning counterparts.

The belief that fresh fruits and vegetables are ridiculously out of reach for the average $30k-a-year Joe is deeply ingrained in our mentality. But if I look at my weekly grocery bill, it reads something like this: Broccoli $0.55, Bananas $1.05, Tofu $1.40, Rice $3, Popcorn $5, Frozen Pizza $5 etc. Now compare these prices per unit serving:

Foodstuff	# Servings	Price/Serving
Broccoli (1 head)	~5	$0.11
Bananas (5 fruits)	5	$0.21
Tofu (1 pkg)	5	$0.28
Rice (1 bag)	~30	$0.10
Popcorn (1 box)	10	$0.50
Pizza (1 pie)	2	$2.50

It's pretty obvious from this that eating a banana at snack time is less expensive than having a bag of processed microwave popcorn. Having a meal of stir-fried broccoli, tofu and rice adds up to $2 less than a serving from the frozen pizza (discounting the homemade soy/chili/garlic/ginger sauce I put over the former; but even considering it the total is cheaper).

So why do we believe the opposite? For one thing, whenever I visit discount dollar stores, I see the shelves lined with nothing but mac&cheese and pink/white circus animal cookies. People who are low on funds might shop at these places under the assumption that everything there is cheaper than average, which is flat-out wrong. My personal comparisons of the butter at Dollar General and butter at Kroger have shown the former to be 150% the price of the latter.

But less obviously, the advertising grocery chains use to sell their goods may be to blame. Walk down the snack foods aisle of the grocery store, and you'll see bright signs that scream, "Chips 10 for $10!" The average consumer will look at a big bloated bag of Lays Ruffles and say, "Wow, only one dollar for all those chips." Then head to the produce section. The sign over the bananas will read, "89 cents/lb." Now the average consumer will say, "Gosh, almost a dollar for those little things. Fresh fruits are really expensive."

Most people are used to thinking in units, not weight, so they don't realize that one pound of bananas is four whole fruits. Most people also aren't used to thinking about how much they eat, and don't realize that though the nutrition panel advertises 10+ servings, the huge bag of potato chips will probably be gone in four munching sessions. Unit per unit, the bananas are actually cheaper and have more nutritional punch. The volume and packaging just play dirty tricks to make the public think otherwise.

Of course, some "healthy" items really are more expensive, which is the fault of production companies. A box of four Gardenburgers is twice the price of a pound of ground beef, health-haloed cereals like Kashi are twice the price of sugar-coated-chocolate-rice-puffs-with-marshmallow-bits, and everything organic is a downright rip-off. Honestly, most of the items people think of when they think "health food" are just as processed as their fat-laden counterparts; Lean Cuisine frozen dinners are simply Banquets with a few calories siphoned off. The mental disparity between 'healthy' and 'regular' created by products like these causes people to do stupid things like buy frozen french fries instead of raw potatoes and flavored sugar water instead of whole oranges, thinking that the alternative must be more expensive.

End note: you might be wondering why I wrote this on a blog supposedly about library science. Well, from observing the librarians at CeDIR and Wells, I have come to the conclusion that a supervising librarian's work is 25% information organization and 75% accounting. They spend most of their time analyzing what sections of the collection to sink money into, how to get money for necessary expansions, balancing the students' work hours to take up enough of the budget so funding isn't taken away etc. It's imperative that I learn to parcel out financial truths from ingrained myths.

Other than that, the issue just bugs me.

Food: The Be-All End-All of Everything

2009-08-12T08:48:00.000-04:00

Probably since the first humanoid woke up in his cave to find himself sentient, people have been attributing magical properties to food. Ancient cultures believed certain foods made you smarter, stronger, more invincible to the elements and enemies. Victorian ladies and Tibetan mountain men "purified" themselves by depriving themselves of certain foods; whole religions subscribe to starvation as a means of penance. In its modern incarnation, the idolization of food has entered the Sylvester Graham realm of 'health.' "This superfood makes you lose weight!" scream the magazines. "Shun these foods for eternal beauty!"

Now, if teenage girls want to eat nothing but cayenne pepper in lemon juice for a day, that's up to them; they'll probably make up for it the next day at Burger King anyway. But the mania over diet selection can reach dangerous levels. A recent study summarized in the New York Times debunked a myth that has taken irrevocable hold in the autism community: that restrictive gluten- and dairy-free diets will improve symptoms of autism. The analysis of a hundred children found that there was no greater instance of digestive irregularity in children with autism than in their peers, when the pickiness of the former group was taken into account. In other words, the restrictive diets parents place their children on do nothing unless the child was misdiagnosed; the recurring tummy symptoms these parents attribute to ASDs are usually just because the kids won't eat their vegetables.

Will this study stop the flow of misinformation? Probably not. The media, as always, thinks they've just found the cure for autism. Rare personal stories perpetuate it, feeding on our unfortunate tendency to strengthen beliefs with select affirmations and forget evidence to the contrary. Worship of food has such a strong grip that our own CeDIR library has several titles on restrictive diets for children. Although we need them for those that actually have celiac disease or diabetes or lactose intolerance, the wording in the books may mislead parents of children with ASDs into thinking they should ban bread and milk too. This is dangerous to say the least.

People use every justification they can to keep food on a pedestal. This morning in the Smart Spending Blog authors enthused that going meatless two nights a week can save a family $20!!! By my calculations, this is a completely false claim unless the family is eating steaks every night. A bag of some 10 frozen drumsticks at Kroger runs around $4.50; a pound of lean ground beef is $3. There's more than two days' worth of family meals for less than $10. The "save money" angle is little more than vegan hype.

Obviously, there are certain truths to be found in the torrent of nutrition mania out there. If I eat ice cream, I get hungry an hour later from the sugar crash. Not consuming enough fiber or water leads to discomfort in the restroom the next day. But there is no golden proportion of meats to carbs that makes the pounds melt away, no food group to drop to ward off cancer, and no moral superiority to eating brown rice instead of white. What we put in our bodies is certainly important, but antioxidants and monounsaturated fats aren't the be-all end-all of health.

Not-so-Inclusive Indiana

2009-08-11T08:11:00.001-04:00

Since IU cataloging has been painfully slow lately, CeDIR hasn't received any new books or videos from them for two weeks. This means that I and the other remaining reference assistant (G. quit last week) have to scour the internet for random tidbits to maintain the CeDIR and Autism Resource blogs. This morning I found a good one buried in the Capitol Insider newsletter:

"United Cerebral Palsy released 2009 Annual Case for Inclusion: The 4th Annual Analysis of Medicaid for Americans with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. The report ranks all 50 States and the District of Columbia on how well they are providing community-based supports to Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities being served by Medicaid."

I followed the link to the report to look for Indiana's ranking on the list. I didn't have to look far. Our state was in a special box to the side for Bottom 10 States. At least we're the least bottom of the top ten bottom, ranked at #42 of 51.

This was both surprising and expected. On the one hand, I see a lot of signs that Bloomington, IN is a pretty inclusive place. Stone Belt has a strong presence here, as evidenced by the enormous photos of its administrators plastered on the sides of city buses. And before I bought Ellie the Ford Escort, I rode one of those buses daily with the kids going to the program at the YMCA for youth with intellectual disabilities. I've met several city employees and one or two grocery baggers with disabilities.

However, I've also seen that the rest of the state, except for a few university pockets up north, has nothing in common with Bloomington but the weather pattern. Drive an hour in any direction, and you'll find yourself in a sea of corn or forest sparsely populated by crumbling farm houses with "My Man Mitch" and "McCain/Palin" signs still in the ground from last November. Now, I'm neither anti-Republican nor anti-religion, but the random folks you'll meet out here tend to be extremists. I've heard colleagues at Wells bemoan that the evil seeds of socialism have taken root in Canada and their government will snatch up all the land from private citzens by 2020, and grad students at the bus station loudly deny that we owe billions to that equally evil China. Even my boyfriend's otherwise sensible grandmother firmly believes that Obama is burning copies of the Constitution and turning the nation into a shackled gun-happy police state. In other words, general sentiment does not lean towards acceptance.

But then, even if we were ranked lowly, I didn't expect America to fare well as a whole anyway. My job exists because the public has difficulty finding and accessing disability services. I have difficulty finding some information, because it's either hidden or nonexistent. A month or so ago, while I was fixing up the Kids' Corner Movies 'n More page, I spent much time racking my brains for characters on television with disabilities. How many did I think of? Four. Geordi LaForge, Carlos' brother on the Magic School Bus, the brother of the blond cheerleader on The Secret Life of an American Teenager, and a couple of doctors on medical dramas who use canes. (Note: I just thought of two more, the African American woman with a visual impairment on Early Edition and the title character of Monk. Must add.) That's not a very encouraging list, given the hundreds of television shows on air.

But the lack of selection wasn't the interesting part. The interesting part was that, while I was thinking of shows that portray persons with disabilities, all of the titles that came into my head were Asian idol dramas. It Started with a Kiss stars a fellow with undiagnosed Asperger's, and his cute love interest has a degenerative eye disease. 1 Litre of Tears focuses on a dying teenage girl, as does First Kiss. At the end of Love Contract Ariel Lin's character loses all motor control, the male lead in Ima Ai ni Yukimasu has severe claustrophobia, the brother-in-law in Love Exchange has dyslexia, the lost younger brother in Shining Inheritance has autism and the grandmother has Alzheimer's, etc. etc.

Maybe the extensive portrayal of PWDs in Asia stems from their generally fatalistic attitude towards romance (scroll down to "The Chinese"); if a heroine is going to die, it's much more interesting for her to do so from a genetic disorder like in Tada, Kimi wo Aishiteru than from something boring like a car crash.

In any case, both Indiana and America at large have a lot of work to do in the inclusion category.

Scrooge McDuck

2009-08-04T08:35:00.001-04:00

A post on my habitual SmartSpending blog this morning pulled a romanticism era with "Are we tired of talking about lattes yet?" (by pulling a romanticism I mean following the usual cycle of reactionary movements: romantics regaling against enlightenment thinkers, Napoleon III re-establishing monarchy post-tyrannical revolution, or bright accessories making a dramatic fashion comeback). As I have complained before, most article writers recently have been beating the drum of obsessive frugality. Now the dissent has begun.

Authors of this blog, the authors they ripped ideas from, and anonymous commenters have risen against the oppression of convention by reviving a previous convention: cutting big costs will save you more money than cutting little ones. Ooh, shocking thought.

Now, I'm all for a bit of rationality, and even supported this point of view in a previous post. But what irks me is that the justification they used for this basically correct argument is pure fluff. One blogger writes sagely, "If you don't keep a few treats for yourself, you'll go on a binge and spend more." In essence, they want stuff, and people are so frail that depriving themselves of that stuff will lead to certain disaster.

This is a perfectly valid approach when you're talking about something like, say, food. Bodies need food. If you don't eat enough your hormones eventually go crazy and make you eat everything in sight because, as a character in a Korean drama aptly put it: "When people don't eat, they die." But do bodies necessarily need lattes? If you don't have your "little splurges" will the psychological pressure be so great that you'll absolutely have to get to Starbucks or perish?

Some of the commenters especially worry me. "Money is worthless unless it's spent. That's its sole purpose in existing," opines one reader. "This advice makes people live in deprivation and that ain't living" agrees another. Really? It isn't real living if you don't have access to Gossip Girl? More than half of the world's population subsisting from meal to meal and cramming large families into small huts are just bags of water-filled flesh?

I'm particularly sensitive to money issues right now, and probably thinking more like Scrooge McDuck than usual, because I just spent at least 30% of my savings on Ellie the Ford Escort. I won't give particular numbers, because for all my self-proclaimed tech-savviness I'm still paranoid about giving personal information on the internet--but after purchasing the vehicle herself and six months of insurance, and anticipating registration, title transfer, and IU parking fees, a significant chunk of change is now depleted from my bank account. Plus, I had the brilliant timing of doing all this right after rent/utilities were due.

So any attempt to convince me that "You need to have a few luxuries" will not be succcessful. To me, the car that cuts my morning commuute from 1.5 hours to 15 minutes is a luxury. Health insurance is a luxury. The bread maker and cat are luxuries. Cable and cleaning services? Not so much.

The Perks of Knowing Who

2009-08-03T07:05:00.000-04:00

I had a fantastic weekend at my boyfriend Kevin's father's place, and an even more fantastic aftermath. John (a.k.a. Who, so nick-named from his teenage obsession with the British band) recently moved into a new modular home to replace the trailer that was felled by electrical fire last month. Downside: I had to sleep on a bumpy air mattress for two days. Upside: brand new stuff! Among his shiny new posessions include an enormous LCD television, fluffy carpeting, and in-house stereo system. On Friday night he bought Kevin the new Wii Sports Resort to play with visiting relatives on the said big screen TV. Then on Saturday I tagged along to Big Lots where he purchased a "majestic" living room furniture set, complete with swiveling recliner. He treated us to a sit-down lunch, then grilled burgers and corn for dinner (corn at my request...and it was the first cob I've had that was crisp and non-soggy).

Yesterday we were supposed to go to the Coleson family reunion, but Who slept in too late. I was disappointed at first, since I was looking forward to pulled pork and chocolate cake, but he gave me one of those meaty roasted chicken sandwiches from Arby's with lots of Diet Dr. Pepper so I'm not complaining (though it may not seem like a big deal, since I stopped buying soda two weeks ago the Dr. Pepper was a real treat). Then he gave us two final presents, which top the list of all material presents I've ever received from a non-relative (i.e. discounting my Powell flute, my college education, and life): his old 24" TV and a car.

Her name is Ellie the Ford Escort, and technically I paid for her. But Who bought her, replaced the windshield, fixed the air conditioner, and put on four brand new tires, so I consider it a humongous gift. Today I plan to call the insurance agent, and tomorrow I'll pick up the binder and get her registered after work. Then I'll have to get an IU parking pass--which will all add up to a couple more hundred dollars. Thank heavens for graduation envelopes. This weekend we have to go back to Who's to hand over his plates and pick up some key copies from the local hardware store, but then the car is mine mine mine.

I'm currently floating on materialistic cloud nine ^-^

Kids' Corner went live!

2009-07-31T13:24:00.000-04:00

My hours of sweat and tears have finally come to fruition: the face-lifted Kids' Corner site went live yesterday. I preen.

The site isn't as perfect as I'd like it to be: on IE the images on the main page are skewed, the menu buttons aren't exactly smooth, and the clear command wasn't working for the Book Nook pages so I had to resort to breaks between entries to keep them from floating into each other. At least it looks pretty. Here's what it looked like in March--essentially blah. Before that, it looked like this, the complete opposite of blah to the point of argh, my eyes! I think I've found a nice happy medium with this design.

Downside: now that I have successfully launched a semi-professional-looking website, my superiors are under the erroneous impression that I'm actually capable of quality web development. My next proferred assignment is to redesign the website for the Indiana Health Sciences Librarians Association, which uses codes I'm scared to death to touch. However, its current aesthetics leave much to be desired, I feel compelled to try to do some good. If nothing else, the vision of such a credit on my resume will spur me to action.

Website Woes

2009-07-22T07:05:00.000-04:00

Yesterday when I showed the finished Kids' Corner website to my supervisor, she only had one thing to say.

"It's too...old."

My 40+ man hours of diligently transferring content, composing graphics, rearranging pages, pulling tons of public domain photos and revamping the structure of the site to make it usable and editable were immediately invalidated by a curt opinion: it looked old. What constitutes new?

"Take a look at sites like Nickelodeon's or Disney's. See? They use boxes."

Boxes, apparently, are the key to an interesting design that will capture and hold children's attention for hours. I decided to investigate this mysterious power by going to disney.go.com with a goal in mind. I would find information on the DS game Tinker Bell, which according to the girl next to me on the plane last December is all the rage with fifth graders these days.

At 7:10 a.m. I went to the site. I was bombarded by a screen full of Flash and sound bits. Since I was in the Wells library, it was fortunate the sound was muted or I would have advertised to the room that I was watching a carefully orchestrated promo for the latest cute-fuzzy-desperately-pop-culture-referencing animated action/comedy flick. Pictures (in a box) of saucy-looking guinea pigs literally pop out at me, a fancy scrolling picture show of Hannah Montana and the Jonas Bros. and similarly manicured idols blinks wildly at the bottom. If I was really a preteen, I might have been sucked into the massive black hole of hype on the page, as was no doubt the designers' intent. But I had a goal in mind: find Tinker Bell.

My finely honed internet browsing reflexes caused me to look at the top of the page for a menu. First item on the list: Games. Ooh, Tinker Bell is a game. Around 7:12 I hover, and the image of the controller shimmies and sparks; how kewl. More pop pop pops of images--my eye automatically follows the trail of color. Huge image of the Wizards of Waverly Place, four mini images of yet more guinea pigs, a whole bunch of stuff I've never heard of because I don't have cable. Where is Tinker Bell? In the slideshow box of options beneath the blatant ads? I click all four screens--nope. In one of the scrolling boxes at the bottom? No, but all the other games I saw right above them were. Again. It's like they think my desire to buy them is directly proportional to the number of times I see the title (they may be clever: for kids, it's quite possibly true).

How about the equally colorful stuff above? Ooh! Selena is acting as a DJ for Radio Disney! And Demi is...talking. Must watch. [Hypothetical young girl now burns 10 minutes watching waif-like teens with an hour's worth of professional make-up application act 'just like you and me'] I eventually tear myself away to look at the options above: Johnny Depp's mug looms over three colorful bars, one of which is labeled "Pixie Hollow". Success! Kind of.

It took me a total of about 5 minutes to find the site. It would have taken me 1 if I had noticed the tiny half cut-off image of a fairy in the star-studded line-up at the bottom of the home page (which I doubt 99% of visitors would, with all the chaos around it). But I'm a seasoned searcher. A 10 year old would probably take longer, not the least because the ultimate link was not labeled "Tinker Bell" but "Pixie Hollow" (and if you've ever talked to a 10 year old, if they're looking for "Tinker Bell" all other options soar straight through their heads without making an impact).

Overall, the site is artfully arranged full of the coveted boxes, which provide a lot of visual information presented not so that kids can easily find what they want, but so they can see more things to want. Given the tight hold Disney has on parents' pocketbooks around the globe, the strategy works. But I'm not trying to sell things to youngsters; I'm trying to educate them.

Since boxes are what the supervisor wants, boxes are what she'll get. But I won't be happy about it.

Why I'm Getting an MLS

2009-07-21T16:37:00.001-04:00

During my morning news browsing session, I came across an article on MSN entitled "What's a master's degree worth?". Now, articles ripped by MSN on education are not usually noteworthy or particularly informative; I was once silly enough to read through all of Liz Pullam-Weston's "Hidden Costs of College" which details how parents can be shocked by such necessary expenses as fancy cell phone plans and football tickets, and just the other week I burned my eyes out reading a blog post by someone who insisted the solution to the gradual depreciation of the bachelors degree is standardized testing (I can no longer find the post to link here, probably because the author's cyber-presence was summarily drawn and quartered). Nevertheless, I cliked on this "masters" one to find that (a) it was terribly named, and has nothing to do with the monetary worth of a degree as expected, and (b) despite this, what it was actually about was worth looking over.

The author's main point is that a masters degree is not worth going into debt for unless you really, really need it. He outlines some main motivators, which I used as a kind of Cosmo Quiz to test myself:

1. Do you want to pursue a subject because you're crazy-passionate about it?
Well, kinda. My soul will not crumble to dust if I end up working as something other than a librarian. But it does make me happy. Consider this a check.
2. Do you feel a graduate degree will make you look smarter to people who matter to you?
ROFLs. If this was my goal, I'd be pursuing my seventh grade dream of becoming a neurosurgeon, or following the steadfast advice of my life science professors to live in a lab for the rest of my life. Definite no.
3. Do you want a graduate degree because you hope it will open the door to an interesting line of work, whose pay doesn't really matter as long as the job doesn't bore the pants off you?
Again, kinda. I do like money. But I don't need an excess of it. So half-check.
4. Do you want the degree because you think it will open the door to high-paying occupations, whose remuneration very much does matter?
More ROFLs. I am definitely aware of how much librarians are paid. Big bold "no" here.
5. Is it that, at the grand old age of 28 or 30, you still don't know what you want to do when you grow up and you'd like to take a couple years in graduate school to figure that out?
I really, really hope that by then I'm not still thinking like my shiftless 21-year-old current incarnation.

I've decided to interpret my results thusly: I'm not going to graduate school for the obviously wrong reasons. What my true motivations are in pursuing an MLS, though, aren't even listed on this quiz. In order to capture it, there would have to be the question:

6. Are you pursuing a masters degree to escape the confinements and drudgery of being a helpless underling?

I've had a lot of time to think about it through today, what with the three hours of photocopying, and the real reason I'm anxious to begin my MLS studies is because I'm hungry for power. I want to be the one to tell the hourly her little webpage looks "ancient" and make her revamp weeks of work so it looks like the indecipherable horror of big company websites. I want to have the authority to tell a certain person that Tourette's isn't an excuse to watch YouTube videos all day and leave the scanning to someone who already has a ton of other duties. I want to be able to act on my compulsion to deshelve every book in a badly designed browsing section and reorganize them so the collection makes searchable sense.

And, yes, I am motivated in part by a devotion to the organization of information. But if a love of libraries was my only motivator, I could happily work as a reference desk clerk for life. But the question pertaining to the article is, why am I working for peanuts for a year to gain in-state tuition to receive an MLS? The only direct answer is a desire for control. Fear me.

Getting my Snark on

2009-07-16T08:31:00.000-04:00

Yesterday evening, as my boyfriend and I were walking home from the bus stop, he nonchalantly said,

"Your blog post today was really boring."

"What do you mean?" I asked, bewildered.

"Well, you were talking about library layouts, instead of being your usual snarky judgmental self."

In any normal situation, this would sound like a grievous insult. But in the context of the 21st century phenomenons of Anonymous and removed-from-reality forum personalities, "embracing the snark" (as I was once advised to do by an aforementioned personality) is a somewhat misguided method of gaining respect.

Still, I was surprised by the description. I didn't think my posts have been particularly damning. I know I can verbally wield Sammael's scythe on occassion, but only behind closed doors to very close friends and family members. Otherwise, "meek" would be the word to describe my behavior. I'm the sort of archetypal female snake who says "Yes ma'am, thank you ma'am" to the customer taking out her personal frustrations with the world on the powerless 21 year-old receptionist over the phone, then who promptly derrides her self-centeredness in a snide conversation with a coworker. But I didn't know I let this side of me go public.

Reading over some past posts, they do seem to consist mostly of complaints and staunch opinionated rambles. I blame my mother for giving me too many volumes of Jane Austen and Edith Wharton as a teenager. William Makepeace Thackeray was particularly damaging. Or maybe it was Tolstoy or Thomas Hardy who sent me to the dark side of words...in any case, the majority of authors considered great and timeless were less-than-optimistic people.

I will take this opportunity to let everyone know that no, I am not as angry and discontent as I may appear in writing. My rambles let off steam and create the illusion of power and self-righteousness, but I'm really quite chipper and harmless in real life. If I were to represent 95% of my actual thoughts, my posts would read: "It's a beautiful day outside! I felt so happy seeing the flowers in bloom and hearing the birds chirp as I walked to work today. My buckwheat pancakes this morning were particularly fluffy, and my new blue skirt is so fun to swish. I love the 'apple orchard' herbal tea blend the librarian keeps in the cupboard. It smells like a B&B in New England."

But posts like that would be neither informative nor interesting. だから, I will continue to litter the screen with Snark in the future.

Library Layouts

2009-07-15T08:52:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I went on my first branch library hunt with a coworker at DDS Lending. Our route included 5 of the 27 libraries on the IUB campus. Our department regularly visits only 12 of them, since the others are either non-circulating or too far removed geographically for us short-legged hourlies to access in a timely fashion. Of the 5 we walked to yesterday, I had never seen 4: the music, fine arts, black culture center, and HPER (health, physical education and recreation). I found that each was very distinctly designed, and it got me thinking about library layouts. Here were my impressions:

The Education Library
I had been to this library before, when I was a freshman seeking out an elusive copy of The Dark Crystal to share childhood memories with my dormmates. I loved the library's, and the rest of the building's, open and breatheable atmosphere. There was ample walking room between shelves and many tables for quiet group study, as opposed to the cramped single-person stations lining the walls I've seen elsewhere. Downsides: journals are ordered alphabetically, which could be annoying to patrons browsing for specific subjects, and stacks do not wind in the traditional U fashion, but force patrons to walk to the other end of the next row to resume a search.

The Fine Arts Library
The fine arts library is situated at the top of the gorgeous IU Art Museum, designed by architect I.M. Pei. His plans are breathtaking for a museum...and utterly ridiculous for a library. The book shelves are rigidly situated and narrow, serving primarily as decoration instead of a searchable collection. The two floors are organized such that the earliest call numbers for journals begin at one end, and the earliest call numbers for books at the other. Furthermore, the innovative angular stairs are pretty to look at but hazardous to stumble down with books in your arms. Perhaps for art students who only come to the library for atmosphere, it serves its purpose.

The Music Library
The music library is the first I've visited with the futuristic automated shelf-moving system for journals. I imagine it's an enormous space saver, since all the shelves can be squished together and the press of a button opens a space large enough for a person to retrieve whatever he/she needs. However, the sheet music section left a lot to be desired. They were organized in long rows, and I mean LONG rows. Instead of being able to mentally break down categories to reduce search time, unfortunate patrons are forced to walk the length of the entire room parsing out call numbers along the way until they find what they're looking for.

The Black Culture Center and HPER Libraries
These two I have lumped together because I have no complaints. The libraries are even smaller than CeDIR, and thus easy to navigate and manage. The only slight difficulty I encountered at HPER was in searching for a requested book that was published recently, and was in a separate "New Books" section near the reference desk. However, I'm sure the increased circulation of appealing, sparkly new volumes outweighs my small (expected) detour.

Public Support for PwDs

2009-07-13T10:07:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I spotted an article in the local newspaper: "Special programs help organize vacations for people with disabilities." My first thought was, "Sweet! Something to talk about on the CeDIR Blog tomorrow!" followed by "I wish institutions helped me go on vacations too." This follow-up thought was, of course, swiftly squashed by a reprimanding one: "Bad girl. The woman described in the article worked part-time jobs and budgeted her paychecks for years to save up for trips; she didn't get special treatment because of her disability."

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of clicking on the comment section after the article. The opinions voiced there contained the disgruntled sentiment of thought #2 without the temperence of #3, magnified to the point of maliciousness. A few examples:

"Some people can't get 'entitlements' because they have too many resources, while others are off to Hawaii... The point of food stamps, housing assistance, social security, and medicaid is not to allow recipients to "save up" for luxuries."

"No 'something specials' for these burdens on us taxpayers!
Next case!"

In response to a defendant: "That's so special. I bet she's a really special person. You are special, too, aren't you? If I could I'd give you a hug, a medal and a certificate of participation."

I pray to Martel at least two of these three examples were written by trolls; nevertheless, they voiced a dissent that many might genuinely share. Americans are a very individualistic breed. For the last few centuries we have idolized the self-made man a la Frederick Douglass who achieves wealth and status through "honest labor faithfully, steadily and persistently pursued." We classify men dependent on others as effeminite, and women in the same condition parasitic. Romantic comedies deride young adults who fail to leave the nest, and aging adults scramble for beautifying products to elude that scary, inevitable loss of autonomy.

We also praise generosity to the high heavens, but the power of self-righteousness apparently overrides it. We can't help but be resentful of the missing percentage of our paychecks that appears to go to people who don't even need it. But what do we mean by "need"? The fact that pwds can go on vacations means, to some people, that government checks must be unfairly substantial. In essence, public contributions should allow persons with disabilities to live, not to live well.

I don't know about you, but I sense a profound disconnect there. As I later commented myself, do we expect pwds to stay shut up in dark boxes? We think it's enough to help them remain alive, but not to enjoy life? Granted, snorkeling expeditions are not required for happiness or fulfillment. But narrowing the field of "fair" to exclude anything beyond shelter, health care and food is unwittingly casting judgment that people physically barred from earning as much as others deserve a lower quality of life.

This probably wouldn't be a point of contention if the public felt they had control over their degree of generosity; if taxes were not automatically levied on everyone but we could opt out of contributions. Not opt in, because then nobody would--but to opt out people would have to actively face the shame of looking like Scrooge McDuck to their employers. Better yet, it would be fantastic if private organizations would take up the role of aiding pwds and senior citizens to enjoy little luxuries. Lamentably, 'fund activities for individuals with autism spectrum disorders' doesn't sound nearly as sexy as 'find a cure for cancer' or 'save the cute cuddly dolphins.'

Pet Patron Peeves

2009-07-11T13:07:00.000-04:00

Roughly 15 years ago, when I was a wee tot wearing Little Mermaid t-shirts and learning life lessons from Under the Umbrella Tree, my mother enrolled me in a local gymnastics program. The facility held an annual Halloween party, with your traditional apple bobbing and costume contests. During one afternoon lesson in October, the lady teaching us (who I thought was a lady at the time, but was likely a teenager making some pocket money), started to hype the event by telling the class stories of the fun she had when she was younger. She wore a beautiful fairy costume, she said [cue sparkling eyes of 7-year-olds], and she found a ton of neat trinkets buried in the foam pit under the climbing rope. And for the pumpkin decorating contest, she reminisced, she had taken the arms and legs off her favorite doll and glued them to the sides of a squash with a painted face and sat it on the balance beam to look like a little person.

Now, all the other girls were dutifully hyped, but something nagged me about this story. "Did your pumpkin win?" I asked. No, she answered. I was appalled. "But, if it wasn't even going to win, why would you tear apart your favorite doll?" I asked, on the brink of tears for poor Raggedy Ann. The instructor hastily assured me that it was all in fun, but I thought it was the saddest thing in the world. Rationally, I knew she could always buy another cheap doll. But I just couldn't see past the fact that she destroyed a possession for a one-time event when she could have had years of cuddles and pretend tea parties instead.

I discovered yesterday that I still think that way. When pulling journals from the shelves for Document Delivery Services, I found that someone had ripped out an entire article from one volume. I went off like an Excalibur shell on the fourth of July. My coworkers were dumbfounded by my exuberance--the requester will have to find another source, that's all. To me, it was a much bigger issue. The person who ripped out the article was blatantly selfish and short-sighted, much more so than my gymnastics instructor 15 years ago. She had mutilated her own property; this person had taken a public service away from everyone else. This is now number one on my list of signs of a bad patron:

Returning books in an unreadable state. This includes ripping pages, warping paperbacks with coffee spills, marking books with pens and highlighters, and destroying the spine so the cover falls off. I've only worked at libraries for two months and I've seen all of these, with no apologies. Some people seem to think we have an infinite number of copies of everything, and an unlimited budget to replace things. Which leads to some patrons...

Becoming angry when we do not have what they want. I've received phone calls from passive-aggressive patrons who say, "You don't have it? Well, I guess that really sucks for everyone I've recommended this library to, doesn't it?" or "[Angry sigh] You know, maybe if you'd start charging overdue fees, things wouldn't go missing." I'm sorry, but unlike the Grafton library in Wisconsin, we don't have ultimate power over our patrons and can't force them to return books.

Using me as their personal Google. My job is to provide information, and I do so to the best of my ability. But I'm not the computer of the U.S.S. Enterprise. "Computer, give me the phone number of the social security office in such-and-such city." "Computer, list all organizations in Indiana who provide such-and-such service." As a sentient being, a few of my favorite words include please and thank you. I'd prefer to hear them a little more often. Along the same lines, some patrons feel perfectly comfortable...

Treating me like I don't exist. This is probably a function of my youth, but when in the presence of other colleagues I am often seen by patrons as an animatron. A few times a patron has come into the library, stood one foot in front of my desk, and asked whoever else was present whether 'she' can pull up the user record without a card or whether 'she' can retrieve some materials for them. Likewise, I spent an entire morning representing CeDIR at an event for para-professionals, and was addressed a grand total of zero times by participants because they preferred to talk over my head to the nearby older lady from the broader IIDC.

Most of these behaviors are not library-centric. They fall under the jurisdiction of common courtesy. To be fair, 99% of patrons are very polite and sometimes give generous compliments as to the speed and efficacy of our services. It's that remaining 1% that can really ruin the party for everyone else.

More Work: Good or Bad?

2009-06-26T11:16:00.001-04:00

I received an email this morning from my supervisor at ILL Document Delivery Services, my second job (so named not so much because of the difference in the number of hours I work there, but because it is the second position I acquired), that my employment will not be terminated on June 30th as originally intended. She would like me to continue working 10 hours a week for the rest of summer.

Initial reaction: "Yay! I'm loved!" Who wouldn't be flattered that the boss has such affection for you that they refuse to let you go?

Secondary reaction: "Darn it. There goes my semi-vacation month." Come to think of it, working in the stacks is really tiring (see comparison to aerobics guru below), and I had plans to spend my free hours sleeping 8 hours a night, watching more Taiwanese dramas and embroidering a wall-hanging for my parents' new house in California.

Reaction-after-brain-kicks-into-gear: "I had promised to take over G's shift in August. How the heck am I going to fit these hours in?" I already work 25 hours at CeDIR, and will be taking G's ten, leaving only 5 hours left that I can legally work. The only way to fix this is to take longer lunch breaks and leave a little early on Fridays (oh, boo hoo).

About-face-and-justification reaction: "Well, it's more pleasant to worry about fitting hours in for another job than it is to worry about finding one at all. Think of all the things you can do with the money, and how much more your resume/recommendations will shine for it."

Determination: "Quit yer bellyaching. This is a good thing. I will need a car." There is no way on planet Earth that I can continue to jog between my two job sites through September. Fortunately, the existence of said sites will enable me to fund said car.

The World Wide Web

2009-06-24T07:01:00.000-04:00

I spent the bulk of last week redoing the Kids' Corner section of the CeDIR website. I can't link to it here because I am a lowly hourly --> I don't have access to the server --> it isn't live yet. Hopefully the librarian can find time in the next few days to transfer the files so I can start showing off.

Regardless, I learned a lot while putting it together. I was a web-design enthusiast as a preteen, back before DreamWeaver was on every office desktop. But a lot has changed since then. Examples:

(1) It's a lot easier to mess up. In my quest to make the site standards-compliant and easily editable, I have slowly adapted to divs and floats instead of my old standby rows and cells. Problem: cells can't hide, but divs do. After encountering many mystifying discrepancies between what I had written and what was appearing on screen, a thorough comb through the CSS revealed that the original designer had put in completely unnecessary "buffer" divs instead of using padding between elements, had used negative margins to mask a link instead of setting display to none, and more than one element I had intended to keep was set to position:absolute. For better or for worse, an entire site can transform from functional to broken with a couple of characters on a stylesheet.

(2) Graphics editing programs are much, much spiffier. Back in second grade, Paint was all that. The acquisition of Photo Deluxe in middle school felt like an open door to an Asimovian future. Now Adobe Fireworks has "star" tools, fun shadow effects, element outlines that look like paint splatters and patterns to splash around that range from bubbles to wood. And you can manipulate any element in the document without disturbing others, make cool gradients to have an image 'fade' linearly or radially or like a starburst, and alter any color by Hex or RGB values.

(3) There are many languages I don't know. Living with a web developer, I have been thoroughly familiarized with acronyms that make little sense to me: PHP, ASP, MySQL... at least one of them is prevalent on any self-respecting website. I dallied briefly with the first and found that it did, indeed, make my life easier once I had everything set up, but I probably couldn't replicate what I did without much head banging and boyfriend's-arm-pulling.

In short, manipulating the internet now is simultaneously ten times easier and more difficult than I remember it to be.