It's My Turn!

Bob and I posted to our joint vacation blog throughout our trip to southern Africa. It was mostly suitable for viewing by all of our family and friends. My SIL even used it in her classroom with her 5th graders. That's WAY cool! However, since coming home, I've gotten tons of questions about our trip. I thought it might be fun to blog about some of the questions and comments I've gotten, plus some of my own experiences and misconceptions. Keep tuning in for a series of posts!

Another Thing done...checking out MySpace

OK, here's where we see how completely old and lame I really am. Seriously, I must be a total loser. I completely can't get into MySpace. I check things out for about 5 minutes and then I'm bored. So here's what I can see are the uses for MySpace in MyWorld...

• Busting hooligans at work: If you know one of the hooligans, you can often find that person's MySpace page. If you get that far, you can check out who that person's friends are. Before you know it, you have real names and can evict them from the premises when necessary. At the very least, it serves as entertainment. Also, I am really living up to my loser status by using the word "hooligan".
• Checking out people you used to know: Sometimes you can find people that you knew in high school or college, or dated in the past, or whatever. Sometimes it's interesting to see what someone is up to these days. Sometimes it's fun when you find out someone that you didn't really like anyway turned out to be as big a joke as you hoped. That was kinda mean, wasn't it? Anyway, my interest in this one wanes after about 2 minutes. Zzzzzz.

But, that means I've checked another Thing off of my list. One of these days I'll have to check out FaceBook, but I think I'll have similar results.

23 Things Commentary

As a 23 Things participant, I've been asked to reflect on the project. I'm supposed to think about how the 23 Things project has been valuable to me, to Maryland libraries, and/or the library profession in general. Part of the final week's assignment was to blog about likes and dislikes, so you've heard that all before. Recently, I've been asked to lead a library team about technology for adults. Several of the 23 Things will be potentially useful as the team looks at its charter. As for the importance to Maryland libraries? Naturally, it's important to know what's going on in the technological world. These sorts of things will steer how we do business now and in the future. I guess that's why it's important to the library profession in general. Plus, it was fun. We all need a little fun, right?

I've tackled another Thing!

It took the better part of two days, but by gum, I've managed to clean my guest bedroom, paint it, and redecorate it. Hooray! I've even managed to take some before and after pictures so everyone could see the amazing transformation. Below are the before pictures. Things are a little messy. One of my early sewing projects was making the valances for this bedroom. They used to be navy blue with a burgundy flip side. I can't believe how much the blue faded!


And now for the reveal...

It's hard to tell from the photos (lighting is so important!), but the paint is a robin's egg blue. I repurposed some sheers from my family room so I could tie the blues and greens in the bedspread together. I even managed to put pictures in the picture frames. Now I need a nap! This was one Thing that I've been wanting to do for a while, but just haven't had the gumption to do. Of course, most of the crap that was stored in this room is now stored in our home office. We've ordered a futon for that room so my niece has a place to sleep when she comes down. Sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag was cool when she was younger, but it'll start wearing thin soon. So now we've got a week or two before the futon frame comes and we need to do something with all of the junk. I probably shouldn't keep putting off another one of my Things - the yard sale. That would clear a bunch of junk pretty quickly!

Library Elf

Checking this task off of my 43 Things list took a few more days than usual. First of all, my confirmation email got trapped by the spam filter. I waited patiently until 2 PM on the following day to get my digest. I dutifully released my confirmation and was on my way to being a full-fledged member of Library Elf. Hooray! I was pleasantly surprised to see how many MD library systems play ball with them. So what does the Elf do? It sends me an email every few days reminding me that I have overdues and what other junk I have checked out. Why do I care? Well, in a way, I don't. I'm here every day and I can check My Account on our library catalog. Also, I do get those nice little emails from CCPL reminding me when stuff is due. So why do I bother? Well, first of all, it's kind of neat. Secondly, Library Elf keeps reminding me that stuff is overdue. It's really in-my-face about it. With CCPL, I only get one email and then I've forgotten by the time I get home. This morning, the Elf reminded me to get my overdues gathered and get them back (and I did!!!). Otherwise, I tend to forget. A lot.

Oh, those tricky RSS feeds...

I thought I was so super-cool by adding my Netflix queue on my Bloglines page. Everyone could see all of the movies that we were waiting to watch and could comment on my blog and make suggestions. Luckily, I happened to have noticed that any ol' schmuck could also CHANGE my queue! Holy moly! Thank goodness I noticed that little gem of info in time. I could have made my feed private, but then what's the point? Now we know.

Blinkx and you'll miss it

So I checked out Blinkx next. What it does is search for video clips the web over and compile them. I guess it's interesting, but I was looking at tv shows and stuff. I was hoping to find more free stuff. Preview clips don't count for me. Zzzzzz. So, the long and short of this is: (a) I'll have to pay $1.99 each on iTunes to catch up with Monk, or (b) I'll have to start the next season without having seen all of this season, or (c) I'll have to keep checking on when USA will repeat the episodes I've missed, or (d) I'll have to Netflix a few of the discs for Season Five when they're released. Blinkx did not help me in my Monkquest. So, I continued looking to see what else Blinkx is good for. You can see news clips that you probably wouldn't find otherwise. That's pretty neat!