I'm NOT Crying...

Wednesday afternoon (about 36 hours from now) my husband is getting on a plane and going home. Home is half-way around the world from here and my son and I need to stay in PA for another 2 1/2 weeks before we can join him. I am not happy about this. I have had a wonderful visit thus far and I am sure that our remaining time here will be great, but I truly wish we were all going back together. I miss my cats, I miss my home, I miss my routine, & I miss my friends (Al Areen & Knitting), and I am SO going to miss my husband the second I leave him at the airport in Pittsburgh until I see him at the airport in Doha.
And while I am not crying now, I know I will be soon.
So I need a bit of good-ol fashion musical humor to help...

My husband ♥s Linux

This is from the web comic XKCD that my husband reads. There are some that are just classic, but many are too geeky for the girl working at being a LIBRARIAN. Therefor if you are a scientist of some sort (preferably theoretical) or an IT professional, you might want to check this out. I was reading the Cathedral and the Bazaar article for LIS2000 and after about two sentences I knew that Ed would love to read it for fun (that's happened quite a bit this semester). So go waste some time either reading the comic, or trying to figure out what "man pages", Debian, or Gentoo mean...


He also showed me how to put a ♥ in the text with the help of this.

A Night in Pittsburgh

For our anniversary, my husband & I went to dinner at a great restaurant called the Sonoma Grille, and went to see the Warhol Museum. I had a wonderful time- it was so great to just hang out with him- and was surprised by the city. It's been years since I set foot in downtown Pittsburgh, but it upon first glance it looked exactly the same. But, the reality is a lot has changed for the better and it is possible to change elements of a city without the city losing its identity. We were going to visit Oakland, but ran out of time...I'll be seeing it soon anyway!

8 Glorious Years!

Today is my 8th anniversary! We get to go out without the Boy(we will miss him, but- whoo-hoo!) and have a nice night in Pittsburgh. Aside for the normal best wishes from family, when I checked Facebook today my friend Theresa (who I haven't seen in a long time, but miss very much) posted some photos from our wedding, which: she & her husband, Joe were both in, and I have not looked at in many years. I am a strong advocate of focusing on the marriage rather than the wedding, but it was so wonderful to see some of the photos again and I am amazed at how young everyone looks. It seems like I was never not married to Ed, but sometimes it feels like we were married a week ago. Anyway...
Here's to another 8, and throw in an extra 80!


This picture contains 2 of my favorite things- kissing Edward & cake

Henry's 1st Birthday Party!

Yesterday was my son's 1st Birthday party. When I was little every occasion that took place between the months of May and September was celebrated with a huge gathering of family & friends, at a pavilion in a park. It never rained (and despite the forecast for yesterday- it did not rain) and the food was always delicious even thought it was always the same: hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, pasta salad, fried chicken, pierogies & CAKE! So that's what we did and it was amazing and exactly like I remembered it. Oh, and I'm pretty sure Henry had a good time too...

2nd Try w/ Jing & Zotero

This is my smaller embedded homework assignment. I may not like my voice, but I am very proud that I now know how to embed video on my blog!

A good week for fun; not for work

Wow has it been a wonderful week- on Tuesday the 16th my son Henry Stockton turned one. Even the sentence is incomprehensible, let alone the idea that for one whole year I have been a parent. He survived! Ed & I survived! But he had a great birthday and it was so nice to be able to spend it with some of our family.
Then Wednesday we took him to get his first haircut (my husband was a bit superstitious about this one) because so many people thought all those curls meant he was a girl. (I thought it made him look like a little hockey player!) Incidentally we experienced another first that day when he vomited for the first time...
And my sister-in-law came in for his birthday as did my sister and her husband, plus we are having a big party for him this weekend and even more relatives and friends will be arriving. Did I forget anything else... oh, yeah- my Dad got married last Saturday! So the next few posts will be short & sweet.

Jing & Zotero

Well I must say that this assignment has been an exceedingly useful one. While installing and uninstalling Zotero for the capture- my husband (who is finally with us in the US) realized that it is the perfect tool for his grant writing needs. I must admit most of the time these add-ons don't seem terribly useful to me, but I will use Zotero & I know Ed will.
And while I think Jing is very cool and easy beyond words to use, I don't know how often I will have need of it. Maybe I will try to add a screen capture or another short video to my blog each week. So here is my assignment
(I hate my voice!)

Fate of Baker's American Newspaper Repository

After I finished Double Fold my first thought was- after 8 years I wonder if the collection he saved is still around? I just didn't think it would be, or if it was it was broken up.
I am happy to report I was wrong.
I found an article from 2004 that said Duke University took the whole lot.
And it really is a fantastic & large collection. I hope one of the stipulations for them taking it was that they couldn't get rid of it. But its nice to see that some academic library wanted it and Baker obviously has not given up on the profession if he intrusted it to a library after all that effort.

Facebook

There is some talk about MySpace being out of its prime with people turning to Facebook. I can see why. I have never had a MySpace account or a blog before because it took too much time. Yes, you can personalize more than on Facebook, but some people just want to post a few photos and write a line or two to old friends. Even blogs tend to make people feel like they need a paragraph at minimum, or you are cheating your readers. On Facebook there are enough people contributing bits, that you don't feel so bad when you haven't for a week or 4 months. Perhaps that is part of the reason people like open source programs- they really want to write their own programs, but just can't find the time, so they add bits. I'll have to look into that... But, I'm guessing that if that is the trend, we will all be Twittering soon. And I just found out what that was 2 or 3 months ago!

What day is it?

I have been having the worst time remembering what day it is. In Doha, the work week is Sunday-Thursday. While I have been here in the States there are multiple levels to add to my confusion: my in-laws are retired and when I am with them a weekday and a weekend are similar. My parents have been taking days off which results in the same phenomenon. My friends have young kids with no school schedule to keep you on track. And even if they did school is now out. And most important of all- I am too busy with school work to go out, which most of my friends could only do on the weekend, which would help me keep track of what day it is! I'm sure I'll get it right just before I leave PA and its Mon-Fri ways.
Separately- I am interested in working with Jing- of all the programs we will be using this semester, this is the one I hope to use most outside of class. Can't see importing a lot of references into Ref Works for fun...

Double Fold

One of the books that I have to read & write a review of (I know, I know- book reports are so 5th grade) is a work of non-fiction entitled Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper
by a fiction writer-Nicholson Baker. Years ago I read several of his works and I still own them- they are all well written and to experience a work of non-fiction as passionate and as interesting as a really good novel is something I rarely encounter. Its a book about throwing away books & newspapers. The man almost has to be a genius to make that subject a page turner. Some of his books are very racy- Vox, especially, so experiencing his writing on such a non-sexual topic has been bizarre. It has been so much fun to read this book.
I must say that I was VERY surprised to find that there is an electronic copy of this very same book available for Amazon's Kindle. I guess it only gets to be ironic when its ONLY available in that format...

Oh, I can't believe I almost forgot-


LETS GO PENS!!!

Wii will win

I used to play video games. This is something I enjoyed & still enjoy when I can. We own an XBOX & a Wii- I would own a WiiFit if they were not so expensive in Doha. I am still so impressed with that machine & the creativity behind it that I was very underwhelmed when I read about Microsoft's answer to the Wii. Don't get me wrong- no controllers has a lot of appeal, but they have had several years to compete and I really thought they would have learned from the first time around. The Wii was such a fantastic success for all the right reasons that I must also share one of my favorite articles on not just the Wii, but business strategy. Some car companies could benefit from this short article from The New Yorker, "In Praise of Third Place" written in 1996.