More mini blogging

Today's netbook accessory purchase was a lime green laptop sleeve. I spent a great deal of time debating on a sleeve verses a traditional computer case; the sleeve will let me put the netbook into an already existing travel bag. Buying the 11 inch netbook instead of the 10.2 inch version meant having to move up a size for the sleeve. It's not much of an issue since now there may be room for my mouse and the plug.

On another topic, a new episode of NCIS meant I missed who got booted off of Dancing with the Stars! What happened to the results show being in the 9 pm time slot? Looks like it was Buzz.

Mini blogging

A quick stop after work garnered a logitech usb mouse and several 2 liter bottles of diet Pepsi, both on sale (thank you very much). The Pepsi was a nice compliment to dinner, and the mouse a necessary component for my HP mini. I've begun the process of adding bookmarks, what needs to be loaded and/or downloaded to this machine (without getting carried away), and considering other purchasers (case and maybe a cheap microphone). 

Harry Potter & Celebrity Apprentice

Not a big fan of Celebrity Apprentice, I was oddly intrigued this evening when I happened upon the episode featuring The Wizarding World of Harry Potter scheduled to open at Universal Studios this summer. The task required players to create and present a 3-d exhibit to studio execs and HP fans. I thought teams both were a bit condescending when presenting to the fans and wonder how much they really knew, or even researched, the HP experience.

They are blathering in the boardroom as we await the "winner" and subsequent backstabbing and firing. I'm going to search YouTube for new HP movie trailers.

It's here, it's here

Waiting for me when I arrived in the library this morning, after a two hour technology committee meeting, was a lovely box from HP! I had a few concerns when the box inside the box rattled, but a quick peek inside assured me all was well. I gleefully inserted the battery and connected to the jumping through set up hoops; registration, running system updates, anti-virus updates, and downloading Mozilla took more time than anticipated.

My initial impressions? After getting beyond the sheer fun of a new toy, I am having a few issues with the keyboard. I did not realize how heavy handed I have been, it's taking some time to adjust. I am happy with the various ports including USB, HDMI, and SD (allowing me access to upload this photo without problem). The true test will be it's first conference trip in a week or so.

It shipped

My netbook shipped on Monday. In five to seven days I will have my new toy (er, computer).

I've spent a bit of time pondering one of the reasons the netbook is significantly lighter than my laptop - excepting the obvious 17 inches verses 11 inches - is the lack of an optical drive. Since I have no plans to burn cd's or watch movies, it was not much of an issue. I can always watch television on hulu (Stargate SG-1, Bones, Warehouse 13, and Eureka). Something I did not consider was loading software on said netbook.

Luckily, my laptop has Sync Center and the netbook is compatible. I should not have a problem with my wireless connection.

Netbook ordered!

I placed the order for my netbook this evening. I have a little over two weeks until my next conference and should have the computer in my hot little hands prior to departure. Even better, there will be opportunity to load my ISP and play for a while. It will be much simpler to present, attend, and teach online while attending conferences - and not drag my work computer or personal laptop along for the ride.

Yes, yes, yes, I did change the blog template again. I like the book shelves, but am not thrilled with how long it takes to load or the fact that IE seems to hate the image.

Dithering over netbooks

I have had my wonderful HP Pavilion dv7 Entertainment laptop for ten months now, as was the case with my ten year old HP dinosaur, it has been problem free. I love my laptop. But ... I find myself a bit greedy. I have several conferences on my schedule for spring and would like to take a computer; a computer that is significantly lighter in weight and considerably less in price than my laptop.

My price point would ideally be under $400. I've looked in brick and mortar stores, online at QVC and HP, and kept a close eye on advertisements in the Sunday papers. At this point, I like the selection direct from HP. However, since I have dithered so long choosing the components to meet my personal specifications and having it arrive before the first conference, is not an option any longer. To be honest, I'm not sure is a bad thing. Enter the HP Mini 311 pictured here, it has an 11 inch screen, runs Windows XP (I'm not sold on so many of the net books with Windows 7 Starter), has a built-in web cam, and weighs under four pounds.

HP says it's ready to ship within 24 hours. I can at least wait until payday to decide.

Super Bowl Ads

The Steeler's are not in the Super Bowl (don't get me started), but there is no denying one of the best commercials ever features "Mean Joe Green."

This evening I found this one on Yahoo's Super Bowl Ads page! The Yahoo videos were ruining the sidebar (for some odd reason) so both videos were replaced with YouTube videos.



Punxsatawney Polamalu? Oh, my ...

It's pink

Working with graduate assistants and student workers I have opportunity to form relationships and grow with a dedicated group of people. After all, it takes dedication to go to school, manage your extra-curricular activities, and give quality time to a campus job. The intrinsic make-up of higher education institutions mean students move on after three of four years (once they're hired, they generally stay), but the ebb and flow mean as they graduate, others are hired. Even after the requisite letters of reference are written, there are always a few you stay in touch with over the years.

Last week I got an unexpected gift in the mail from a former GA; a pink snuggie, complete with free book light. It made me smile, but not as much as the phone call on Thursday and the opportunity to learn a bit about the new job.

(And yes, this really is an "at lunch" post. It's my Sunday evening on reference duty!)

It's baaaack

It was back in my spam folder on Friday afternoon, even after blocking the email from delivery. This time, the 2010 edition of the Global Directory of Who's Who is at stake. I suppose my invitation to the 2009 directory, though ignored, was worth repeating.

You were recently chosen as a potential candidate to represent your professional community in the 2010 Edition of Global Who's Who.

We are please to inform you that your candidacy was formally approved January 4th, 2010. Congratulations.

The Publishing Committee selected you as a potential candidate based not only upon your current standing, but focusing as well on criteria from executive and professional directories, associations, and trade journals. Given your background, the Director believes your profile makes a fitting addition to our publication.

There is no fee nor obligation to be listed. As we are working off of secondary sources, we must receive verification from you that your profile is accurate. After receiving verification, we will validate your registry listing within seven business days.

Once finalized, your listing will share prominent registry space with thousands of fellow accomplished individuals across the globe, each representing accomplishment within their own geographical area.

To verify your profile and accept the candidacy, please visit here. Our registration deadline for this year's candidates is January 31st, 2010. To ensure you are included, we must receive your verification on or before this date. On behalf of our Committee I salute your achievement and welcome you to our association.

Sincerely,
John Franklin
Vice President, Research Division

The Global Directory of Who's Who
4250 Veterans Highway, Suite 2050
Holbrook, NY 11741, USA
Phone: (631)588-8600

Once again it notes in a blase manner there is no cost associated with being listed and neglects to mention the exorbitant charges and hard sales for the book and online access. It's worth posting new and old(*) links to this particular offer.

• Complaints Board – Global Directory of Who’s Who
• Ripoff Report: The Global Directory of Who’s Who (2008)*
• Ripoff Report: The Global Directory of Who’s Who (2009)
• The Unsponsored Link: Beware the Global Directory of Who’s Who*
• Writer Beware Blogs: Victoria Strauss Beware Who’s Who *
• Better Buisness Bureau Report*
  

In my mailbox

Today must have been mail day for library journals; in my mailbox were the most recent editions of College & Research Library News (January 2010), American Libraries (February 2010), and ALA Graphics (Spring 2010). I've only briefly perused the titles, but there were a few things that caught my attention.

ACRL Insider provides a great overview of the journal and includes full text where available. I was particularly interested in Professional Development on a Dime and Social Media: A Guide for College and University Libraries. The Fast Facts section included interesting statistics on Missing Web References:

"According to a new case study, “the number of [W]eb citations (in research papers) has increased from 41.60 percent of all citations in 1998 to 53.32 percent in 2002. But a substantial quantity of [W]eb citations (32.09 percent) was found to be missing.”" -- Gary Pattillo

American Libraries (the February edition no less) is often geared more to public librarians, but there are always one or two things that are adaptable to the academic venue. Faces of Circulation is a particularly timely to discussions I had with our head of circulation earlier this week and the often prevailing feeling of many non-librarian professionals.

"The main point is that every position in the library is necessary to help all workers perform their job efficiently. Circulation staff are valuable to the service of a library and should be treated that way." -- Toccara Porter

The author is honest, and blunt, about reasons for penning the article and I do not disagree with her description of events at the circulation desk as I have witnessed the same. But, I have to wonder.

Library practicum flashback

Random channel surfing this evening I spotted Gloria Gaynor performing I Will Survive on an award show. As soon as she came on the stage the audience went crazy singing along. All I could think of was the video I'd seen while student teaching - doing my library practicum - at a senior high school in the Pittsburgh area. Someone's husband sent the video via email and we watched it in a computer classroom. It still makes me laugh. Just as she starts enjoying herself ...

A new toy

This evening I am waiting for my Christmas toy, a Garmin nüvi® 255W, to finish it's discussion with my computer and download the free map upgrade attached to my registration. I tried yesterday, but after four hours the process stalled (yes really, four hours). I logged in again after work this afternoon and it is telling me there are still three hours left on the download. This better be a seriously fabulous free map upgrade.

I have several presentation's pending this spring, so the navigation will be useful going to the airport and locating hotels and conference centers in-state. It was amusing listening to it "recalculate" several times on the way back from holiday break as I did not go where it thought I should; a few back roads and short cuts made her a bit snarky.

Update: 1/5/10

I've had to restart the map upload process again and am not pleased. Here's hoping third time is indeed the charm, it is currently under one hour of download remaining for the first time.

Storytime memories

A Halloween tradition, it was treat bag week for my student workers; a fun selection of sugar. As with other holiday's, it meant an increase in student teachers looking for appropriate picture books to share in the classroom this week. Almost every appropriate pumpkin, fall, Halloween, and slightly scary picture book is currently circulating. Helping students find story time holiday books always takes me back to my days in the public library as a children's librarian. Here are a few of my favorite read-alouds for Halloween, since I have been an academic librarian for over eight years, these titles are older (oldies but goodies).

• Froggy's Halloween
• The Hallo-Weiner
• The Little Scarecrow Boy

And my favorite, Big Pumpkin, by Erica Silverman (drat). "They pulled and they tugged and they tugged and they pulled ..."

out of the habit

I am chagrined to admit it has been eight months (yikes) since my last children's literature book review (A Penguin Story, 2/11/09); or, for that matter, a book review of any kind. Once a pleasurable past-time, even an ingrained habit of sorts, writing a review has become a hurdle to overcome. I have put aside several books in the last month with good intentions. Each of those titles has been returned to the library, more than one overdue.

This evening I have a book in hand (actually on the end table) and forty-five minutes until NCIS.

day late, image short

Ironically, Wordle crashed my computer last evening (the blue screen of death on my new laptop, I was no happy) while attempting to create a new project for the post. I made the above image at lunch this afternoon.

nu jurnL nu toys

Or, in English, new journal new toys.

I picked up the September issue of School Library Journal late this morning while taking a break from web work before lunch. My plan was to take a few minutes to begin perusing the book reviews and place a few juvenile books in a cart for purchase. I didn't get very far; an impromptu visit from the boss took time, but did see their site of the month. Or, in this case, sites of the month. Two of them caught my attention.

transL8it!
"transl8it! (trans-late-it) is simple to use. Just type in your SMS, text, emoticon, smiley, slang or chat room lingo and let transL8it! convert it to plain english -- OR -- type in your phrase in english and convert it to SMS TXT lingo slang!"

Wordle
"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text."

I experimented with Wordle before (see A Picture's Worth) using blog posts to create word art. I included it as an emerging technology option for students to investigate for classroom use in a course this summer, some of the resulting posts were very interesting. Earlier this month I read a blog post that lead me to another interesting visual, 100 Days of Twitter Turned Into Pictures. Now I am wondering how a compilation of Twitter posts would appear as a Wordle.

As for transL8tit, I used it to create this post title.

Presenting Ideas

It's that time of year, time to try and enhance my portfolio/vita by submitting presentation abstracts for conferences. I presented three times during the last academic year, once locally at an interest group, once at a state level conference and once nationally. Late this summer, I declined an invitation to present for the first time. Why? I re-wrote the project on which I had based my abstract making the presentation irrelevant (oops).

I met with a COE professor earlier this week to discuss submitting for a spring conference. I have presented with her before and she quite simply hates PowerPoint. We have something planned, so all is well, but I was intrigued after reading a post on Argh Ink this morning featuring Ignite (check out the comments for more discussion).

"If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers." - Ignite

After searching a bit, the story telling element seems to be key. As with any other presentations it relies on preparation, quality information, and visual elements are key. I have been on the short end of a panel presentation on more than one occasion, forced to significantly whittle away my prepared discussion, and wonder if this might be one way to eliminate that problem.

• Slideshare: Ignite Presentation Tips
• How to Give a Successful Ignite Presentation
• YouTube - iGNiTe's Channel
• Presentation Zen: The Ignite Presentation Method
• Wikipedia: Ignite (event)
  

So, I'm curious

My personal library contains hardcover and paperback titles I read, read, and read again. There are very few books in the collection with only a single read to their credit. Case in point, after galloping through the most recent Jayne Castle book, Obsidian Prey, I proceeded to read and enjoy it a second and third time. A rough estimate of the pile of new books on my nightstand is upwards of five; yet, I am currently reading and enjoying my collection of J.D. Robb titles.

Today's title is Witness in Death, by my count the tenth book in the series. Not quite half through the book, Lt. Eve Dallas has made her first trip to the chief medical examiner's office meeting with Dr. Morse (p. 130) regarding a suspicious death. I will digress for a minute; the latest book in this series is Promises in Death. Though I happily admit the book I am reading is usually my favorite, Promises is one of the best entries in the series. It features one of my favorite secondary characters, chief medical examiner Dr. Morris and the murder of his lover.

It has been some time since I perused the paperbacks in the series, so as I was reading Witness, I initially thought the introduction of Dr. Morse was a typo. Continuing through the chapter, he continues to be Dr. Morse - not Dr. Morris. Now I am curious. Are there two medical examiners in the series? If not, when did Dr. Morse become Morris? Guess I will have to move through the next few and solve the mystery.

@ the library, summer reading

It has been a number of years since my last venture into a library for summer reading. Sadly, summer reading at an academic library is nothing like summer reading in a public library (though under the right circumstances it could be). This morning I took my niece to her scheduled summer reading program at the local public library. There was a group story time for second and third graders, two different craft tables, and naturally, time to choose books to read.

The best part was watching the children interact with each other; all of the girls sat at one table and the boys another. Their story time leader did not specify seating, nor did the craft/activity, the children segregated themselves with little thought or planning. It was a definite study in eight-year-olds; the boys gossiped like a group of little old ladies discussing movies, Wii, and playstation, while the girls worked quietly finishing the task at hand. I am still wondering what the "B" word in the movie was, but all-in-all found my morning very educational.