In which the universe does me a solid

Last weekend I had the stomach flu. Like curluponthebathroomfloorIwantmymommy stomach flu. It was ugly.

I think the universe decided to try for balance, and do something nice to counter the OMGIwanttodie stomach flu. It did me a solid.

A few weeks ago on a lark I threw my email into an online contest to win concert tickets. I do this periodically, if it's a band I'd actually like to see. I'm certainly not entering every contest. I honestly have to want to see the band or I don't bother.

The band in this case? Cake. It was CAKE. A band I've been listening to since late high school/early college but have never had the chance to see. And they don't come to the East Coast that often.

So I entered. Just once. You could enter every day, but I only entered once.

And then I forgot about it.

On Monday, the first day I was able to eat solid food, I get a phone call. It's the radio station running the contest. I won. I thought it was a joke. Asked what the punchline was. The nice woman on the other end of the phone just laughed and told me it wasn't a joke. Really, I was one of the winners.

Wait, what? Pause...I let it sink in for a moment.

OMFG I WON. I won two tickets to the show. In box seats. bouncebouncebouncebounce

And then she says: "And you won a meet and greet with the band after the show."

I froze. Mouth open. Holy effin' shite I GET TO MEET CAKE!!!

She gives me the details about where to pick up the tickets. The concert is Wednesday. Holy crap. I manage to pull myself together and figure out who to take with me.

So the show was last night. And it was full of so much awesome win. I have no pictures, as the band has a strict no-photography no-recording policy. The event staff were enforcing it, too (saw them throw a couple of people out).

Cake did three sets. Two main plus an encore. A nice mix of early stuff, their big hits, and a few songs off the album coming out in January 2011. Truly an excellent mix. They even played one of my all time favorites: "How Do You Afford Your Rock'n'Roll Lifestyle?" (from Motorcade of Generosity (1994)). They have no set list, choosing instead to play whatever they feel like that evening. They were clearly having as much fun as the rest of us were watching them and dancing at our seats. John kept the crowd engaged, really interacting with everyone between songs. There were moments of complete random hilarity.

Did you know they give away a real live tree (a sapling in a bucket) to an audience member at every show (info here)? And they make the person swear to plant the tree and take care of it. They have to submit pictures to their website as proof. They want progress pictures too, even if the tree dies. You can see pics of people with their trees here in the gallery. A dude named Ian won the tree at this show. A Fuji apple tree, specifically.

All around a good time.

And the people watching? Priceless. What a crowd.

The meet and greet after the show was predictably weird and awkward yet very cool. The guys actually talked to us contest winners. Mingled and chatted. They're nice very down to earth real people, which was a very pleasant thing to have confirmed.

It was an excellent evening. There really isn't another word that's better. Just excellent. Yeah, awesome works too.

But don't think you're off the hook yet, universe. This was a nice little interlude, but not change. I still need things to change. So, thanks, I had fun, but let's work on the bigger long-term picture, m'kay?

Neglect

Dear blog,

I know I've been neglecting you. I just haven't got much to say.

Actually, that's not true. I have much to say, just none of it I can say here. Let's run down some topics, shall we?

*Work (i.e. day to day): I can't talk about what's really going on. I WON'T talk about it. I refuse to think about it outside of when I'm actually at work these days.

*Career: going swimmingly. Really. I've been achieving a lot of goals recently that I had set as "sometime in the future" goals. As in, I never expected to achieve them already. I'm young, and I know it. The struggle now is accepting the positive reinforcement and accolades from colleagues and believing I can actually succeed now that I am where I am career wise (i.e. silencing the "don't f*ck it up" voice in my head).

*Dating: MEH. Just a big ol' MEH. Online dating sucks. It really does. It's going nowhere. It's to the point that lately I can't even muster the energy or interest to log in and check my account. I contact people, they don't respond. Meanwhile, those that do contact me obviously haven't even read my profile.

*Philly: I've been here for 4 years now. FOUR YEARS. I've come to the conclusion that I don't love Philly, and never will. Some (most?) days I don't even like Philly. I just don't feel at home here. I feel like I'm a half step off from the rest of the city. Like I'm out of sync.

*General: Lately I feel like I'm just passing the time, keeping myself busy. Cooking. Doing counted cross stitch. Reading. Hanging out on the balcony with my cat. Listening to the radio. Just functioning on a day to day basis. Trying to keep myself from dwelling on the negative ('cause there's a lot of it). Trying to accept that this is how things are for me right now and hope that things will change for the better sometime soon. Trying to believe that something has to give. The universe has got to throw me a bone soon. Some days are definitely better than others. But I keep putting one foot in front of the other, and taking one day at time.

So that's that. Not much I can or want to talk about. So, blog, my apologies for the neglect, but for now, that's just the way it's gonna be.

Love,
Me

Library Day in the Life - Round 5, Day 5

See: http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/ for info on the project. I also participated previous rounds in Janurary 2010 and in July 2009. You can find all my posts for this project by searching my blog's librarydayinthelife tag. You can also follow my Twitter posts @slmcdanold with the hashtag #libday5.

There is no post for Day 4, Thursday, July 29, 2010. I was at home battling a migraine, which required aspirin, water, a dark room, a cold pack for my head, and lots of quiet.

Friday, July 30, 2010

6:25am: Roll out of bed. Shower, dress, breakfast, coffee. Pour remaining coffee into travel mug. No packed lunch today. It's "food truck Friday"! All summer a small group comprised of myself and a few of my colleagues have been sampling the various food truck options in and around campus. The food truck culture here is incredible. So many delicious options.

7:35am: Walk to work.

8:05am: Login to work network. Login to email, calendar, chat, other various programs. Read email. Forward and respond to necessary messages. Scan subjects and then delete mass numbers of listserv messages. Check in with early-arriving staff. Catch up on news feeds, and library-related Twitter lists while finishing coffee. Start this post. Review my calendar. Review the scribbled to-do list I made at the end of the day Wednesday. Send more emails.

8:40am: Sent off final report for ALA committee and upload it into the committee's ALA Connect workspace. Upload other various documents and reports from my time on the committee (and as Chair) to the committee's Connect space. I have now completed all my duties for that committee. I was on it for seven (yes, 7!) years. That's a long time. But it's also time to move onto other committee work elsewhere.

8:50am: Set up new subscriptions for MARC records for an electronic book collection set. This set has lots of subsets, so I double check I'm ordering records for the right ones. I print out the confirmation screen and put it in the inbox for our electronic acquisitions person so she can watch for the invoice and process the payment.

9:00am: Review and update the spreadsheet for all our electronic collection sets. Start reviewing 3 sets of MARC records processed by my colleague in preparation for loading them into our catalog.

9:30am: Check in via IM with my boss. She sends me a document to review later this morning. Must finish reviewing the MARC records first.

10:20am: Finish looking at third MARC records file. All seems to be well. Checked report of URLs, and all is well there. Yay! We can cross this set off our list. Send email to colleague that the records can be loaded and update the tracking spreadsheet accordingly. Review email and start reviewing document from my boss.

10:30am: Remember that I told a colleague at another institution I'd email her a list of, um, challenges I encounter when working with MARC records from vendors for our electronic collection sets. Quickly make list of issues and send email. Records from vendors tend to have a lot of variation and present some interesting challenges. I always try to encourage the use of the PCC MARC Record Guide for Vendors. It's a good resource for any vendor looking to create MARC records for their customers.

Run errand upstairs to color photocopier to make copies of unit statistics sheet for new cataloging.

Remember I have to send weekly time sheet for unit to HR. Double check sign in sheet and my calendar to make sure everything is correct, and send it off.

11:25am: Back to reviewing document from my boss. I *will* finish this before lunch. Make a few comments and send the document back to her.

11:45am: LUNCH. Food truck Friday didn't go as planned. We tried two different trucks. The first one wasn't there, and the second one was closing up shop early. So we ended up at a nice sushi place instead. Mmmm. Sushi. Such a perfect light summer lunch. Filling yet not heavy.

1:15pm: Make final revisions to a recommendation for a colleague and post it to online form. This involves a small battle with the online form, which gives me an error message whenever I try to upload a file. Finally I just copy and paste into the text box and submit it. I'm hopeful for my colleague.

2:00pm: More email review. Clean out the listserv folders. Wonder again at the pertinacity of a particular listserv thread. And now there's two of them. They're multiplying. Damn Friday threads.

2:15pm: Type up notes from Wednesday afternoon's meeting and distribute them accordingly.

3:05pm: IM with colleague regarding other large collection sets of MARC records. I'm trying to do more with MarcEdit to distribute the work on these sets a bit more. Having to write a PERL script for each one, especially sets that are single-time loads, is a bit much. I attended the MarcEdit workshop pre-conference at ALA and learned a LOT from Terry Reese. Now I'm trying to replicate the things he showed us MarcEdit can do. It's a much more powerful tool than I realized. So much potential. I now have several very large (100,000+ MARC records) sized sets to play with and test the limits of MarcEdit. Hopefully I won't break anything (my desktop included).

3:30pm: Post updated version of spreadsheet tracking our electronic collection sets to the library webpage server via FTP. Nearly forgot my password. Yikes.

3:45pm: Copy monthly statistics from report posted online. Only the current month of daily statistics is kept, so I have to copy the daily stats on the last working day of each month. If I didn't have a handy dandy tickler in my calendar I don't know I'd remember to do this otherwise.

4:15pm: Week wrap up. Final email check. Clean out email listservs. Check feeds and blogs. Schedule this post.

4:30pm: Log out from network. Shut down (restart) computer. Leave work. Yay weekend!

Library Day in the Life - Round 5, Day 3

See: http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/ for info on the project. I also participated previous rounds in Janurary 2010 and in July 2009. You can find all my posts for this project by searching my blog's librarydayinthelife tag. You can also follow my Twitter posts @slmcdanold with the hashtag #libday5.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

6:35am: Roll out of bed. The cat appears to be in a good mood this morning. Following me around, actively seeking attention. Huh. Wonder what trouble she's been up to. Shower, dress, breakfast, coffee. Pack lunch. I really do bring my lunch every day unless I know I have other plans. Pour remainder of coffee in travel mug.

nearly 7:40am: Walk to work.

8:05am: Login to work network. Login to email, calendar, chat, other various and sundry programs. Read email. Forward and respond to necessary messages. Send reminder email about a meeting this afternoon. Scan subjects and then delete mass numbers of listserv messages. Check in with early-arriving staff. Catch up on news feeds, and library-related Twitter lists while finishing coffee. Start this post. Review my calendar. Review the scribbled to-do list I made at the end of the day yesterday. Send more emails.

9:30am: Weekly check in meeting with my supervisor.

10:30am: Back at desk. More email.

11:00am: Took a moment to post a comment on Librarian by Day's recent Library Day in the Life post. A comment was posted (a rather negative, attacking, inflammatory, judgmental comment) essentially saying if you're not dealing with the public directly (face to face) every day, then you're not a librarian. Needless to say, I beg to differ. I am a librarian. And I don't have face to face time with patrons. And I'm OK with that. Still, everything I do is with the patron in mind. My job is to make sure things we own or have access/subscribe to are findable. If the patron can't find what they need, then I'm not doing my job. So I constantly think about the patron, even if I don't interact with them face to face.

11:15am: Open up ALA ALCTS report form and notes from my (former) committee's meeting at ALA Annual. Reports are due at the end of the week, so I really just need to finish it today and get it off my to-do list. Pull quick draft together to be sent out for review by the committee.

12:05pm: Break for lunch and cupcakes! There's a food truck that travels around the city and sells nothing but delicious little gourmet cupcakes. Wednesday is when she's on campus. Om nom nom. Also check Facebook and giggle uncontrollably at a hilarious t-shirt found by a friend.

1:30pm: Back to ALA committee report. Post notes from the ALA meeting to the committee's Connect space for review and email report draft to current chair for review before submission.

1:45pm: More emails. This time for a NASIG committee. Resurrect the draft announcement and start filling in all the information that's been gathered and decided upon in the past few weeks.

2:15pm: Meeting at 2:30pm that I, um, moderate/chair (for lack of a better word). Leave desk early to open room and retrieve copies of documentation.

2:30pm: Meeting. Lots of discussion and the meeting runs the full 1 1/2 hours it's scheduled and a little over. Whoa.

4:20pm: Back at desk. Email check. There's an existing MARC record collection set that is now coming in a new way and the collection itself has changed a bit. I track all our collections on a giant spreadsheet, so I enter the necessary information about the changes and next steps. Basically I have to treat it like a new collection and start from scratch, from the point of setting up the "brand new" subscription to the MARC records from the vendor.

4:45pm: Edit yesterdays to-do list. Cross off things accomplished and add new things for first thing tomorrow. Chat with colleague and agree we need to meet to figure some stuff out. More email. Clean out email listservs (good heavens the AUTOCAT list went crazy today on one specific thread). Schedule this post.

5:10pm: Log out from network. Shut down (restart) computer. Leave work.

Library Day in the Life - Round 5, Day 2

See: http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/ for info on the project. I also participated previous rounds in Janurary 2010 and in July 2009. You can find all my posts for this project by searching my blog's librarydayinthelife tag. You can also follow my Twitter posts @slmcdanold with the hashtag #libday5.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

6:35am: Roll out of bed. Realize that something is up with NPR. Usually I wake up to Morning Edition and Marketplace, but this morning there is no broadcast, just static and a high-pitched buzz. Huh. I'm glad I woke up. Shower, dress, breakfast, coffee. Pack lunch. Pour remainder of coffee in travel mug.

7:30am: Walk to work.

8:00am: Login to work network. Login to email, calendar, chat, other various and sundry programs. Read email. Forward and respond to necessary messages. Scan subjects and then delete mass numbers of listserv messages. Check in with early-arriving staff. Catch up on news feeds, and library-related Twitter lists while finishing coffee. Start this post. Review my calendar. The only thing on my calendar for the day is the TechTrends ALA Annual Conference 2010 webinar. Guess I have no excuse to avoid the statistics (ugh).

8:45am: Open up spreadsheet of unit statistics and retrieve paper forms submitted by staff. Spend next hour entering numbers for last 4 months, verifying totals, and cursing under my breath.

9:30am: Open up draft annual report. Start to enter numbers. Spend the next hour-plus flipping back and forth between multiple spreadsheets, worksheets, and the report. More cursing under my breath. Realize that some of the numbers are spread over multiple different spreadsheets, as the PCC has a different fiscal year than we do (they operate on the government fiscal schedule which starts in Oct.) and some of my reports pulled from our catalog are by calendar year and not fiscal year. Dammit all to hell. I need more coffee to deal with this.

10:50am: Break to check in with staff and check email. Respond to email message from colleague at another institution regarding Provider-Neutral e-monographs and digital reproduction registry programs. Open up OCLC Connexion to view records in question. End up chatting about it via IM rather than multiple emails.

Back to statistics. Create a summary spreadsheet to pull together the statistics from various sources, including stats that were adapted from different date ranges to conform to our fiscal year report cycle.

11:30am: Meet up with a friend and walk to favorite coffee truck for iced coffee. Followed by lunch at my desk. Check email, perform listserv triage (scan and delete), read library-related Twitter feeds and check news blogs.

12:45pm: Sign in for the TechTrends ALA Annual Conference 2010 review webinar. I remembered to shut my office door, but forgot to write on the dry erase dots that I was participating in a webinar. I have no visitors all day, and then as soon as I shut my door, I have two colleagues stop by to talk to me. ::facepalm:: I must remember to make notes on those dots when I need to not be disturbed.

Listened to webinar, while taking notes, as well as monitoring and participating in the official Twitter feed (#TTwebinar) for the session. I might have some minor ADD...or is it "continuous partial attention" these days?

One of my takeaways: There's an overarching trend that's all about personalization. Users want to make it what they want to see, not what we want to give them. This extends through all our interfaces, including the catalog and mobile options.

2:05pm: Go track down the two people that wanted to talk to me during the webinar. Call first colleague and get an update on the space in basement we will be moving to for the giant barcoding project. We were in one room, but that room is being converted to rare book storage, so we'll be moving to another room next month. Several things have to happen before we can relocate, so we are currently in a "temporary" space in the now rare book storage room. Result: I now have too many keys on my office key ring.

Track down second colleague in his office and to discuss OCLC database enrichment activities and what we can and cannot do regarding formats we do not have Enhance/BIBCO authorization for yet.

Stop into tech services director's office to ask her about a spreadsheet of numbers for collection set cataloging. I work with another colleague to manage and load large sets of MARC records for collections into our catalog. Generally these sets are purchased from vendors or OCLC, and require some editing/massaging before they can be loaded into our catalog. I do the editing using MarcEdit software, and then my colleague does the loading. For subscriptions, I work with her to create a script (using Perl) to perform the edits so she can just "script and load" as updates arrive. I remember seeing a spreadsheet with our numbers, but now I can't find it in my email. Fortunately our tech services director has it and will email it to me again so I can finish my annual report.

Finally, call yet another colleague to let her know we need her staff (stacks maintenance staff) to pull another group of volumes for the barcoding project. They pull, we barcode the volumes (create item records and update the holdings), and then her staff re-shelve them. Sounds complicated, but it works well. They feed us whatever volumes/titles/call numbers they need barcoded and it also means we stay out of the way of projects up in the stacks.

Yes, this is all part of my week. It is loosely grouped under the category of "workflow and project management." This category is becoming a larger and larger piece of my job.

2:55pm: Return to statistics and annual report. Plug in final numbers. Write up highlights of changes, workflow enhancements, and Unit accomplishments.

3:55pm: Finally finish report and email it to my supervisor, along with the summary spreadsheet of statistics compiled from 4 different sources.

Review document for individually cataloging titles in an e-book collection that has no collection set option. These titles are cataloged in a different department as part of the copy cataloging workflow. My role is to ensure that we are using the correct standards and coding for all our electronic materials, regardless of format or who is cataloging them. In other words, I try to ensure consistency for all our e-resources cataloging.

4:00pm: Final email check and clean out of the listserv folders. Make to-do notes for tomorrow. Schedule this post.

4:10pm: Log out from network. Shut down (restart) computer. Leave work. I have an errand to run downtown before 5pm.

Library Day in the Life - Round 5, Day 1

And it's time for another round of Library Day in the Life posts. See: http://librarydayinthelife.pbworks.com/ for info on the project. I also participated previous rounds in Janurary 2010 and in July 2009. You can find all my posts for this project by searching my blog's librarydayinthelife tag. You can also follow my Twitter posts @slmcdanold with the hashtag #libday5.

Obligatory background: I'm a cataloger at a rather large academic library. Specifically a cataloger of electronic resources (anything online, in any format), and continuing resources (serials, etc.). I participate in the PCC program, doing NACO and both CONSER and BIBCO work depending on what I'm dealing with at the time.

Much (most?) of the cataloging for continuing resources and many online resources is maintenance work and updating of the bibliographic records to reflect current information. Changes can be anything from the frequency, to a change in publisher, to a title variation or title change. Cataloging these types of materials is like trying to hit a moving target or nailing jello to the wall. There's also the ongoing inventory maintenance on our holdings records to deal with keeping our holdings current, including withdrawn/lost/missing volumes, general edits to fix accuracy issues, etc.

I have four para-professional (or support) staff in my unit. Two that work an early shift, and two that work a later shift. In an attempt to cover the most ground, my schedule says I work from 8am to 4pm, although I usually don't actually get out of the office until 4:30 or 5pm.

Monday, July 26, 2010

6:25am: roll out of bed. Attempt to pet my cat, who's blinking at me and still curled up on the bed, and get a cranky "mrow" and swiped at in response. She then buries her face under her front paws as if she's attempting to block out the morning light. My cat is not fond of mornings. Shower, dress, eat breakfast, drink coffee. Give cat (who has finally gotten up and followed me to the kitchen) a small amount of milk in an attempt to improve her mood. It doesn't work, but she does drink the milk. Pour remaining coffee into my to-go cup.

7:25am: leave for work. It's a little over a mile to work from my apartment, which translates into about a 20 minute non-hurried walk. The horrendous heat wave has finally broken, so for the first time in about 2 weeks the walk is pleasant and I'm not drenched in sweat by the time I arrive at work.

8am: Login to work network. Login to email, calendar, other various and sundry programs. Thunderbird and Firefox both require and update and restart. Twiddle thumbs while updates process. Message light on my phone is blinking, and telling me I have two missed calls. Check messages (while Firefox and Thunderbird complete updates) and discover that two of my staff are out sick. With one on vacation, and one who's regular day off is today, that means I have no staff here today. Update HR spreadsheet and calendar appropriately and create draft of weekly staff time-off email report.

8:15am: Login to email for second time. Read email. Forward and respond to necessary messages. Catch up on news feeds, work email listservs, and library-related Twitter lists. Scan subjects and then delete mass numbers of listserv messages. Review my calendar and realize with some minor alarm and then small celebration that I have no meetings today. In fact this whole week continues the "meeting lite" month that July has been so far. This is a pleasant change, yet also makes me nervous.

8:35am: Realize belatedly that it's Library Day in the Life week again. Start this post.

8:45am: Check in with boss. Let her know my summons for jury duty arrived in the mail on Sat. I'm slated for August. There's an epidemic of jury duty lately, both within the library and my friends across the country. An awfully high percentage of my friends, colleagues, staff have all received jury duty summons lately. As my boss said: "That's what you get for voting." Sigh.

9:00am: Start reviewing records that have been merged by OCLC. I send them a long list of messy duplicate records on a fairly regular basis. These are duplicates that would not otherwise be caught by their duplicate detection and resolution software. They're largely duplicates that have been cataloged following a medley of old, interim, and current rules, often ending up with different record types and some creative title variations as a result. Once OCLC merges them for me, I go in and update the cataloging to bring it up to current rules and update the description.

Some of the records I decide to authenticate (giving them the PCC stamp of approval and a nice shiny new LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number) from my stash). This is dependent on a number of factors, including number of holdings attached, age of resource, how much information I have and how much I can trust that information, etc. All of this (authenticating or updating/enhancing) involves verifying information from the websites themselves, trying to ferret out useful information from "about" or "faq" pages like how often something is updated, who's responsible for content, or when the thing first went live online. Needless to say, sometimes this is easier than others.

I take periodic breaks during the morning to deal with incoming email and listserv messages, deal with some committee work, check the Twitter stream, and have a snack.

12:30pm: Lunch outside with a colleague. The weather is gorgeous and I need to get out of the building and away from my computer for a bit. Let me eyes take a break and give my fingers and toes a chance to thaw out. My office is always chilly. I keep several cardigans, a lap blanket, a pair of emergency cotton socks, and a pair of fingerless gloves in a desk drawer. One (or frequently several) of those items is in use pretty much every single day. I think I need to acquire a small space heater.

1:35pm: Back from lunch. Check email. Scan subjects and delete more listserv messages.

2:00pm: Resumed review of merged records. Yes, I'm likely going to spend the entire day on this. I'm a cataloger. It's my job to create, improve and update the bibliographic description of things to make sure they're findable and uniquely identifiable. If the data isn't there, no amount of fancy searching is going to find the thing you're looking for or help you figure out if what you found is what you need. So I spend large amounts of time creating, updating, or improving that data, or advising other people working on data, or supervising my staff who are also working on data. It may not be "sexy," but it's necessary.

2:20pm: Interruption to review a file of records from a vendor before we purchase them. Have to make sure the records contain sufficient data and have all the required elements for us to load them into our system. We don't want to spend money on records we either cannot use or will have to spend way too much staff time on to edit and make them work.

2:40pm: Take brief walk with spare change to raid the "snack store" kept by a staffperson. I'm in need of some chocolate.

2:45pm: Back to reviewing merged records.

3:20pm: Take break to resurrect last fiscal year's annual report for my unit and begin editing it for this fiscal year. I realize there are several months worth of statistics I need to evaluate and enter and stall out. I will have to start on the statistics much earlier in the day.

3:45pm: Back to reviewing merged records.

4:10pm: Review email and clean out listserv messages. Schedule this post. Log out and close programs. Log out of network, shut down (restart) computer.

4:30pm: Leave work to walk home in gorgeous mid-80s sunny weather.

Dear Anonymous commenter

Recently I received the following comment on my May 13, 2010 post "Common sense has left the building":

"The narcissistic person is marked by a grandiose self-image, a constant need for admiration, and a general lack of empathy for others..."

The comment was left by "Anonymous". I don't know who this person is. They could be the person who I discovered is a perpetual victim with anger issues and summarily said "buh bye" to back in March/April. They could be the individual with the profile name "MrAssMan69" [seriously...that's his username...and no, I didn't look at his profile...he showed up in the list of people that visited my profile] who I've been making fun of for the past week [how can I not with a profile name like that? how could he think that was a good idea?!?]. Anonymous could be one of several petty individuals I know who like to leave anonymous comments on people's blogs because they think it's funny to either attempt to piss them off or leave nasty/judgmental comments just to be mean (as both mean people and mean-spirited actions).

At any rate, I do not know who they are. Anonymous commenter did not provide an email. This leads me to believe that they are too much of a coward to engage in dialogue related to their comment.

So since Anonymous hasn't left me a means of contacting them or responding privately, I'm choosing to respond to their comment publicly in this post.

Dear Anonymous,

Your comment lacks context. Who is the narcissistic person you are referring to? The people who participate in online dating? Myself for having some expectations? Are you attempting to judge me? Judge online dating in general?

Because if it's me, well, pardon me for expecting someone that's using an online dating site to actually want to get to know me as a person. You know, to DATE. As in pursue a relationship with. It's kind of hard to do that unless you take some time to actually get to know someone. To that end, I have expectations (as detailed in the post cited above and summarized here):

• Expectations that someone might actually read my profile before contacting me.
• Expectations and hopes that they might actually be going into this with the same genuine intent I am and aren't just looking for casual sex.
• Expectations that they might want to get to know ME and not some fantasy.
• Expectations that they are representing themselves honestly and to the best of their ability by taking some time on their own profile.

If I'm the narcissistic one for having expectations, well fine. I don't think my expectations are all that unreasonable or even narcissistic by your definition given that this is about trying to date people.

So, Anonymous, care to weigh in? Provide some context? Reveal your identity and own what you're saying instead of hiding behind the safety wall of anonymity? It's not like this is a 12 step program where anonymity is critical to create a safe environment for people seeking help. This is a blog for goodness sake. A blog on the internet.

Also, care to cite the source of your definition?

Looking forward to hearing from you to continue the dialogue.

-Me.

Advice for ALA Annual newbies: part 2, Other

There's been lots of advice floating around for people attending ALA Annual for the first time. Sometime ago (a few years back, I think), I created a document of all the things I wish people had told me back when I attended my first few ALAs. I've now been to more ALAs than I care to count.

So, in the interest of sharing, here's my advice for ALA Annual newbies, divided into two posts: Scheduling and Other.

Other

REMOVE your conference name badge when leaving hotels and the convention center. The only reason to keep it on is if you are boarding an ALA shuttle. Please, for the love of all that is holy, remember to do this. If you walk around the city with it on you're signaling that you're a tourist and will be targeted accordingly.

Bring a bag you're comfortable lugging around with lots of stuff in it (a backpack is nice). You may or may not be able to head back to your room to get things or drop things off. You don't need a laptop or netbook unless you really want it (I haul my netbook because I type faster than I write), but make sure you have something to take notes on that's firm.

Be sure to pack comfortable shoes. This is very important. It's often quicker to walk from meeting to meeting rather than deal with the shuttles.

Dress is business casual, but with comfortable shoes. The only people you typically see in heels are vendors.

Think layers...hot outside, but the meeting rooms are often freezing (I always carry a sweater to throw on).

Bring a map of the city with you to help you navigate (the hotel map from ALA is never to scale). Don’t be afraid to use city public transit as needed.

Bring band-aids, because no matter how broken in your shoes are, you still might get blisters. Carry them with you (I have a mini first aid kit in a plastic baggie).

Bring snacks and a refillable water bottle. It's not always convenient or easy to find food, so a bunch of granola bars, nuts, and/or dried fruit can keep you from falling over from hunger. Many/most of the meeting rooms have pitchers of water so you can refill your water bottle. Also don't forget your travel mug for coffee/tea. Get your coffee/tea in your hotel or outside the convention center and bring it with you. The lines inside are long, and it's often more expensive.

Carry a stack of business cards with you (if you don't have any, buy a pack of those perforated sheet ones from an office supply place and make your own). When you get someone else's card, once you're done talking, write on the back of the card where you met them and a few notes to help you remember who they are and what you talked about. This will be helpful later when you return to work and are staring at the stack of cards on your desk, wondering who the heck these people are and why you should care.

Most importantly: HAVE FUN. Make sure you carve out some time for fun, even if it means not going to a meeting or two. Part of the conference is experiencing the city it's in.

Advice for ALA Annual newbies: part 1, Scheduling

There's been lots of advice floating around for people attending ALA Annual for the first time. Sometime ago (a few years back, I think), I created a document of all the things I wish people had told me back when I attended my first few ALAs. I've now been to more ALAs than I care to count.

So, in the interest of sharing, here's my advice for ALA Annual newbies, divided into two posts: Scheduling and Other.

Scheduling

Use the ALA Event Planner. Unless a meeting is marked as “closed”, anyone is welcome to attend. This does include committee meetings. Non ALA groups can be found under UNO. You can then export your Event Planner calendar in iCal format for importing into whatever web-based calendar you use or for your smart phone, etc. Just be careful to adjust the times of your meetings for whatever time-zone ALA is in that year.

Check the daily Cognotes for last minute changes and meeting cancellations.

Follow the ALA hashtag on Twitter (Annual 2010: #ala10) as well as various ALA divisions, groups, etc. Often you'll hear about updates to events, meetings, programs, etc. there first.

Membership in a group does not equal obligation to attend all of their meetings, not even for business meetings.

Not everything makes it into the planner, but you do have the option of adding personal meetings for those things that aren't there that you know about, such as dinners, Tweet-ups, or vendor events. Most social events, happy hours, etc. will not be in the planner. Keep an eye out for invites, postings, etc. These are valuable networking opportunities.

Don't try to go to everything; often meetings are not convenient and you don't have enough time between them and naturally there are lots and lots of conflicts. Start with your required meetings, and figure out what else you can attend from there based on timing and location.

Attend a meeting/session/program that has nothing to do with your current job, but covers a topic you're interested in personally.

Don't be afraid to stand up and walk out of a meeting to either go to a different one or because it's not what you expected. People wander in and out of sessions all the time. Conversely, don't be afraid to show up late for a meeting you're really interested in attending. Shuttles get delayed, meetings run long, etc.

Don't be afraid to skip a session to go to coffee with someone you really want to talk to instead. Those one-on-one meetings with a potential long term mentor/contact/support can be priceless.

One meeting I do recommend for first timers is the NMRT Orientation on Saturday morning. It's very helpful in getting the lay of the land and giving tips on getting around. Also good for a first time attendee are the “101” sessions put on by various ALA divisions.

Make some time to wander the exhibition hall and see the vendors. It's actually best to try and break it up into a few smaller sessions here and there (there are a LOT of vendors).

Try to attend at least some of the social events, for both vendors and divisions/sections. This does mean your day will be very long, but it's to your benefit to network at those evening socials.

Common sense has left the building

I am convinced that common sense has decided to take a vacation. Or has at least gone out for coffee.

My foray into online dating continues, and wow, I am a bit flabbergasted by some of the things I've encountered. You'd think that since this is the third time I've tried this I would have been prepared. Um, not so much.

A few things that I consider common sense (and common courtesy):

1. If someone takes the time to send you and email, for goodness's sake, take the time to write them back. Or use the little easy button most online dating sites provide to send an automated message that you're not interested. Not replying at all just makes you look like an asshole.

2. Please finish your divorce before signing up for online dating. Or, at the very least, set your relationship status as "separated" rather than "divorced." Because if your divorce is still in process, YOU ARE NOT SINGLE. Divorced is PAST tense, not current. ::facepalm::

3. Read someone's profile all the way through. Read their requirements. If you do not fit what I am looking for, please don't waste my time. I was very specific and selective about what I'm looking for, narrowing it down to the very important deal-breaking elements. I have good reasons for these. For example, I have asthma. Being with a smoker is not in the best interest of my health.

3a. Read someone's profile all the way through, part deux. I have a cat. She's a punk but I love her to death. You winking at me to indicate you're interested, only for me to find out when I check out your profile that you're deathly allergic to cats and hate them, well, clearly it's not going to work out between us. Again, please don't waste my time.

4. Stereotyping me or fixating on one specific thing is really not OK. I am not your fetish. I am not your fantasy of the "sexy librarian." Please to go away now.

5. Please take the time on your profile to do the following: proper spelling and proper capitalization (all lower case or ALL CAPS are both equally annoying). Also, please fill it out enough that I have some clue about who you are. Filling in the required space with nonsense about how you don't want to describe yourself or your interests, well, I won't be contacting you. Your profile is a representation of you. It's the first filter. Invest some time and effort in it. Making only a half-assed effort doesn't reflect well on you as a person.

Am I asking too much?

Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

"I support the Food Revolution. America's kids need better food at school and better health prospects. We need to keep cooking skills alive."

If you agree, go sign the petition Jamie is going to take to the White House: http://www.jamieoliver.com/campaigns/jamies-food-revolution/petition

Still not convinced why this is important? Here's Jamie Oliver's own words: "I believe that every child in America has the right to fresh, nutritious school meals, and that every family deserves real, honest, wholesome food. Too many people are being affected by what they eat. It's time for a national revolution. America needs to stand up for better food!" (Link)

I agree with him. Fresh food is something everyone deserves to have. Healthy and nutritious food is something everyone deserves to have. Enough food is something everyone deserves to have. The children of today are the first generation for centuries that will likely have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. And it's largely related to food, to what they eat. We need to change that.

So please sign the petition. Help make a positive change in the lives of America's children.

And dude-with-potential goes down in FLAMES

So, remember those personality quirks I mentioned that were annoyances? The ones that were sitting in the back of my head and kind of poking at me that something wasn't quite right? Well, my instincts were right. I really need to remember to listen to them more often.

At any rate, turns out those little annoyances pointed to something much bigger and much more serious. A perpetual victim (see also victim playing), complete with anger issues, among other issues that came to light. Victims are those people that blame everyone else for their problems, and take no responsibility for themselves, their lives, or their actions (past or present). Victims generally think that everything wrong in their life is someone else's fault or society's fault as a whole. They see themselves as victims of great injustice.

I discovered over the course of several conversations that he has absolutely no awareness or understanding of the concept of the upper-middle class white heterosexual male privilege that he grew up with and still has as a matter of course. Instead he feels justified in complaining about anything and everything and blaming the world for the fact that his life isn't just perfectly the way he wants it. And yet he does pretty much nothing to improve himself or change his not-perfect life. He's perfectly content blaming the world for his unhappiness.

Victims are also often (although not always) angry about the injustice(s) they face. And in this case he is angry enough that I was flinching and cringing internally at the vitriol he was spewing as my date went off about yet another way his life sucks because of someone else. He has some serious and slightly scary anger issues.

I will not date another perpetual victim nor will I live with that kind of anger in my life. You don't like your life? Well then change it. The only person that can change/control your life is YOU. The world doesn't owe you anything. Here's the world's tiniest violin, now go grow up and get a pair. I'm not going to try and rescue you or fix your life for you. Nor am I going to stick around and listen to you complain and then turn your attacks on me for calling you out on your victim behavior and anger issues.

So I'm walking away and diving back into the dating pool. Moving on.

[Side note: Hooray for personal growth and ending unhealthy patterns in my own relationship behaviors!]

Online dating...take 3

In the interest of actually getting out of the house with some regularity and meeting someone I might actually want to have a long-term relationship with, I reactivated my online dating profile.

If you're counting, this is take three for me and online dating. I swear on whatever god/gods/goddesses you want, if this online dating experience becomes the train wreck the previous two times did, well, that's it. Never again. Three strikes, and online dating will be OUT. I'll have to go back to asking, err, begging my friends to help a gal out and play matchmaker.

Also, the "creep quotient" is definitely calculable. The inevitable "divorced Catholic with 3 kids" has contacted me, as have "never been to college," "bad speller," "types in ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME" (please stop yelling at me...kthxbai), and the "conservative but not narrow" (cough...bullshit...cough) individuals. Yeah. All have been politely told "thanks but NO." Moving on.

But so far this time things are going better than in the past. Fewer creeps overall. AND I have been on multiple dates. With the same person.

Yeah. Shocking, I know. I can hardly believe it myself. I think that means things are going well. We're getting to know each other. And yes, I do want to know more, we haven't run out of things to talk about, and I genuinely enjoy their company, despite (or in spite of?) the personality quirks that have appeared. That's good, right? No major red flags, just a couple of annoyances. Not that we won't be talking about at least a few of those personality quirks/annoyances, but still, overall I think it falls on the side of good. There's potential.

So I'm calling this 3rd round at online dating so far so good. Now I have the difficult task of trying to not think about or over-analyze the dates/person (um...yeah...right...) and just sit back and enjoy the experience and see what develops.

Less vegetating...

I canceled my cable. When I moved to a new apartment in December...wait...did I ever write a post about that? No? I'm sorry. I moved. To an apartment managed by a company that's competent and actually responsive to needs. It's amazing. Also, my apartment rocks.

Ahem. Cable TV. Right.

When I moved to a new apartment in December, I had to give up DirecTV. They have a strict no-satellite dish clause in my lease. It's a bummer. I loved my DirecTV. Overall I had a very good experience with that company. But alas, I had to switch. To Comcast. Almost exactly four months later, I canceled Comcast. I had more problems with service and outages and billing (WTF with paperless billing only working if I have a comcast.com email address?!?) in those 4 months than I did in the 3 1/2 years with DirecTV. It just wasn't worth the headache. Comcast is evil.

The final straw? My cable suddenly went out for no good reason last Thursday. It worked in the morning when I watched the news and then just stopped sometime during the day. So I called when I got home and discovered it wasn't working (box wouldn't turn on) and was told that clearly there was something I did (WTF? I wasn't.even.home) and that since the sending the box a signal to restart didn't work they'd have to send someone out. The first available slot for service? SUNDAY. That's THREE DAYS LATER. Which means that unless the cable suddenly and magically fixed itself, I'd definitely be missing the new episodes of Bones and Fringe that night. I was pissed as I was really looking forward to that after a long day. Also, being without cable for 3 days meant I'd be missing my family's beloved Michigan State Spartans play Butler on Saturday. So I thought about it, and decided the so-called service I've received was unacceptable and not worth the headaches Comcast had given me the past few months. And then called them back the next day and told them to STUFF IT. Service canceled.

I watched the first part of the Michigan State game online. Thank the gods for Verizon and my remarkably reliable DSL internet and wireless service from them. I found out the final score from a TV in a bar with some friends (I may have yelled F*CK a bit too loudly when I leaned the Spartans lost). Also, Butler? DAMN if you didn't play good ball. I gotta give it to you. Pity you lost to Duke because I do think you played better ball than they did overall.

So right now I have no TV. I have an old non-digital TV so unless I get one of those digital-to-analog converter boxes I get nothing but static. I never got one because in all my previous apartments/houses/etc. I've always had to have cable as I've not gotten enough signal to get any channels otherwise. So I didn't need one. And since I'm constantly trying to get rid of stuff, I couldn't see any logic in getting a thing I didn't need and I may never actually be able to use. Oh, irony. You can be cruel sometimes.

Ultimately this means less vegetating. No more getting sucked into bad random television on the weekends. And my television watching will clearly have to be more deliberate and likely will be more choosy and specific...no more turning on the boob tube and just zoning out for hours on end and losing time and realizing it's much later than I thought and OMG why am I not in bed yet?!? Between Netflix and Hulu I'm pretty well covered if there's a show I want to watch.

Actually, I signed up for Netflix for the first time a few days ago. I know. I'm "behind the times" or whatever. I've been having fun populating my queue. Lordy there are a lot of movies and TV series I've never seen or started and never finished. Eventually I might invest in one of those Roku boxes if I find I'll use it enough.

The downsides I've discovered thus far to not having TV/cable: FoodNetwork shows are not streamed online anywhere that I can find. That truly bums me out. I'm going to have to find a new way to get my Iron Chef America fix! And I'll have to start carefully avoiding spoilers as I'll be a day behind for most shows on Hulu. But I can deal with that.

Right now I'm rediscovering radio and catching up on online reading and print book reading. I feel less zoned. I'm not exaggerating. I really do.

This does not, however, mean I'm going to actually going to start playing video games or invest in a PS-whatever or Wii-thing. Let's not go too far now.