Month: July 2007

Categories
Personal Sewanee

Look what interupted our picnic

We’re over at a friend’s house this past Saturday for his birthday party, and Betsy and I and a friend are just lounging in the yard eating. Beautiful day, with maybe, oh…30 people eating in various places around the yard.

Guy walks up to us and says “Don’t freak out, but there’s a big snake just behind you.” I don’t think anything of it, really…country boy, seen plenty of snakes…so we stand up to take a look.

Dead, view 1

That’s the “after” photo…it was at least a 4 foot timber rattler. Biggest one I’ve ever seen, hanging out right at the edge of the yard. Lots of kids, boys playing football…I shudder when I think about one of them tossing the ball just a little too far.

See if you can spot him in the “before” shot on flickr. Or how about just the head (again, an “after” shot).

One other shot, from a different angle:

Dead, view 2

Categories
Twitter

Twitters from 2007-07-22

  • HP7 all day, with a party and dinner between chapters. ~400 pages in…will finish tonight. #
  • HP7 finished at midnight last night…that’s less than 7 hours for the book. Will listen to audio book this week…. #
  • So twits: when does the “no HP spoilers!” thing go away? I want to ask people questions!! #
  • @tinfoilraccoon: can’t seem to find the room…URL? #
  • Harry Potter will NOT be a New York Times bestseller: http://tinyurl.com/3dwhru #
Categories
Books Media Personal

The end of Harry Potter

After discussing the book today with some friends on Meebo, I came up with the perfect turn-of-phrase for the collective sadness enveloping all of us who have spent 10 years following these characters. We all suffer from:

Post-Potter Depression

Thanks everybody, I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.

Categories
Twitter

Twitters from 2007-07-20

Categories
Library Issues

Open Library

Open Library logo I’m a bit late in pointing this out, but Open Library launched it’s public beta.

I feel that I can say with little hyperbole that this is the future of libraries.

After hearing about the project from Casey Bisson at ALA Annual, I was excited. But seeing this thing in the flesh is a whole other level….my hat goes off to Casey, Aaron Schwartz, Karen Coyle, and the rest of the OL team. This is a huge step for libraries…now, give us a nice, tidy, easy to use API and we’ll be happy. 🙂

Categories
Twitter

Twitters from 2007-07-19

  • it’s a girl! #
  • Sorry to mislead: Baby due in December—Ultrasound this morning confirmed sex. 🙂 But still exciting!!!! #
  • So: Imagine BIGWIG was up to something, and needed a URL. What URL should we use? #
  • @cindi: why the lock suddenly? #
  • @stevencohen: thanks for the shout-out on librarystuff. 🙂 #
Categories
Baby Personal

It’s a girl!

We’ve put off an official blog announcement until now, but it just can’t wait any longer:

2 5-29-07.jpg

It’s a girl!!!

🙂

This is an older scan, but I haven’t had time to put up the newest ones, so…this will do as a placeholder. Betsy and I are expecting a little girl, due Dec. 19th. We are both so completely thrilled, and excited, and scared. But mostly thrilled and excited. 🙂

Here’s the rules: No Pink. No Frilly dresses. No dating until she’s 25. Got it?

Categories
Twitter

Twitters from 2007-07-18

  • Back at work, must be productive! #
  • If Libraries Had Shareholders: http://tinyurl.com/yu7mhd #
  • Setting up Twitter to post a digest to my blog, since I’ve been neglecting it in favor of micro-blogging lately…. #
Categories
Twitter

Twitters from 2007-07-17

  • getting on the UT plane, heading to memphis #
  • just like that, in memphis. Heading to Rhodes College. #
  • @librarianmer: congratulations! you rock! #
Categories
Library Issues Personal

Why ALA will never learn

Good job on the unconference. Just one fairly serious problem, at least to me. The Wiki has almost zero mention and absolutely no logos for LITA. The only LITA mention is in the text of the About BIGWIG wiki page.

This is a portion of an email that BIGWIG received as a result of being featured in the ALA Direct email after Annual, getting a bit of press for the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase.

I have lots of things that I’d like to say about this, but they all boil down to this: when, as an organization, we are more concerned with how we are portrayed than with results, I believe we’ve seriously lost our way.

I have also been thinking a great deal about the various fronts that have began mobilizing to make active change in the ALA. BIGWIG has obviously been working to move LITA in directions that we feel are important, but I admit that the bureaucracy of the whole endeavor takes some of the wind from my sails. If we ran our libraries the way we run our organizations, our patrons would be in real trouble.