Library Humor

I love Rhymes with Orange!

The not-really-a-break Spring Break

I've been on Spring Break this week! Woo hoo! Or is it boo hoo? It's true, I don't have classes on Saturday of this week. However, I still have plenty to do. This is how I've spent my spring break:

• Instead of getting right back to work on Monday morning I took the day off from schoolwork and got busy with writing the registration form for camp. It needed to be done by March 1st. OOPS.
• I went to the gym on Monday morning because I could. The sauna was so toasty warm I almost fell asleep in there.
•  On Tuesday I started researching for an upcoming paper due on 3/20. 
• Volunteered at Hatfield Public Library Tuesday afternoon.
• Wednesday morning found me back at the research. Finally settled on a topic and emailed my prof. She's so excited (?!) about my topic (RFID in libraries) that she wants me to present to the class. I'm pretty excited about my topic too but now I'm wishing I'd picked something dull and ordinary.
• Paid bills, filled out paper work for health insurance from the Commonwealth, mailed my passport for renewal. ($75!) Cleaned off my desk in the process. Have you ever noticed how your virtual desktop is far easier to keep tidy than your physical desktop?
• We went to the annual spring flower show at Smith College on Wednesday afternoon (see tulips). It was such a lovely afternoon we took a walk along the Mill River in Northampton after sniffing flowers. And because I wasn't in a huge hurry to get home we went to the Forbes Library while we were in the neighborhood. I picked up a cute-looking graphic novel I was hoping to read this weekend but Mom's visiting so I don't think that'll happen.
• Trevor had a meeting on Wednesday night so I plopped myself on the couch and watched Jon Hamm (of Mad Men) host SNL on Hulu.com on my new MacBook. It was really funny! 
• Thursday morning I was back at the research. Saved all the articles I want to print to my flash drive and drove to South Hadley to take advantage of the free printing at the GSLIS office. Ate my lunch while printing articles for the paper due 3/20. Chatted with a fellow student who was also experiencing a not-really-a-break break. 
• I got my hair cut! Found a stylist at Ochoa in South Hadley who is trained in the curly girl method of cutting hair. 
• Went to the gym Thursday on my way back from the haircut. Went to the co-op after the gym on my way home. 

That's it so far. This is my plan for next week:

• Read about a dozen articles ranging in length from 1-21 pages for the paper due 3/20. 
• Write the 5 page single-spaced paper due 3/20.
• I'm still researching my topic for a short assignment due 3/20. 
• Study for exam on 4/3.
• Read the usual chapters and articles for classes on 3/20.

Looking forward to my "real" break when the semester is over on May 8th!

Miss Me? Part 2

Well, it's been a whirlwind of technology impediments for the past 2 weeks. That wire? That's the phone line that brings DSL into our house.

First, my trusty circa 2004 Mac iBook started acting flaky on me totally out of the blue. It was experiencing "kernel panic" which made me feel all panic-y about my laptop that's been my trusted friend and gateway to the "Interwebs" since November of 2007.

So, I brought my circa 2004 Mac iBook to a local Apple authorized dealer and repair shop and they kept it for 5 days! (2 of which were a weekend) I was in the midst of writing a paper for one of my classes. I got up in the morning, ate breakfast, showered, packed a lunch and drove 25 minutes to S. Hadley to use the computer lab at the Simmons GSLIS West office every day for 3 days. I even started getting a bit territorial about "my iMac". I even went so far as to add a few things to the Firefox Bookmarks toolbar that would make creating citations from a website so much easier. I am a tiny bit embarrassed to admit that I even kicked someone off "my iMac". I was becoming such a regular there that the Assistant Dean laughed at me on the second day in a row when I was there to continue working on the paper. 

On Monday I went back to the local Apple dealer to check in and they said they would call me that afternoon. They also had a refurbished laptop for sale. It was installed with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard). My circa 2004 Mac iBook was a refurb which I bought in 2007 from a reputable outfit in Florida. My iPhone is "refurbished" (cost me $49). I'm in favor of "recycling" so I normally don't have a problem with refurbished equipment. However, this time, I was severely disappointed. I started writing a paper for a new assignment and got about 4 pages done. The next morning it started acting really flaky and the screen would just go black. I could barely keep it stable long enough to save my paper to my flash drive. I packed it up, brought it back and said, "I made a mistake. What I really want is a new MacBook with an Intel processor."

I bought a brand new 13" MacBook with the newest operating system, Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6, installed. I also bought iWork (word processing, spreadsheets and slide presentations) for $79 (there's a $30 rebate). In the end, I paid twice what I paid for the refurbished laptop. With the Intel processor I'll be able to upgrade to new operating systems.

So I brought it home and did a two-hour software update. I went to volunteer at Hatfield Public Library that afternoon and had a great time shifting and weeding the non-fiction collection. It snowed on Tuesday evening. It was that wet, heavy snow that we get this time of year. I woke up on Wednesday morning to no power and no DSL. A branch knocked down the phone line that brings DSL into our house. Here I was with a brand new laptop and now power and no DSL! That afternoon I went to my gym and used their power and DSL to work for about an hour. We went to our public library the following day to get caught up on email and, for me, on-line research for another paper.

It took no less than 5 communications with my Internet Service Provider (starts with a "V",  sounds like "horizon") to get them to understand that someone needed come to my house to fix the downed phone line. A technician showed up on Saturday morning at 8am (one hour before my on-line class), and said, "Is that your phone line down out there? Do you think that's why your DSL isn't working?". "Yes," I replied. "They didn't tell me a phone line was down...." And then he grumbled, "Verizon is idiots." (oops! Told you who my ISP is!)

It was fixed within an hour and I was able to participate in my on-line class on Saturday morning without borrowing my neighbor's wifi. As soon as I was done with my class we packed up and drove to Cambridge for the rest of the weekend. But, that's for another post. You'll have to wait.