Citegeist

Let’s Talk About LeBron: a modest proposal

// July 9th, 2010 // No Comments » // Random

ostrich-head
Originally uploaded by visionshare | cc:by-nc

Twitter is rife with complaints about the chatter surrounding LeBron James’ choice to leave the Cleveland Cavs for Miami. I’m here to defend those who are outraged and singularly occupied by this obvious betrayal. Why? Because it’s easy. Let’s take a quick look at what else is going on in the world:

The Oakland Riots.  I much prefer hating on LeBron to thinking about the Oakland Riots because the latter involves cops and race issues.  Police officers are scary, and race issues are icky.  If I look into my heart and mind, I might find opinions there that make me uncomfortable.  And we don’t want that.

The Gulf Oil Spill.  LeBron vs. tar-covered shore birds.  Simple: LeBron.  Aside from some indigestion in Northern Ohio, LeBron is not actually making anyone sick.  Looking into my dependence on NBA excitement (and the products it makes me want want want) does not make me uncomfortable, like thinking about my personal dependence on petroleum products might.  Nevermind that Nikes are actually made with petroleum products.  Too close to home.

The wars in Iraq & Afghanistan.  Oh it’s *easy* not to talk about these, because they started, like, years ago.  Is anyone still paying attention?  These also succumb to the distance rule–if someone dies who’s thousands of miles away and doesn’t look, talk, or believe like I do, I don’t have to care, right?  The exception, of course, is that I Support Our Troops (TM) and hope that Johnny and Jane come home soon.  Next!

The Economy. Hm…. this one is tougher, as I have opinions about money.  As in, I need more of it, and it annoys me that athletes and coaches make so much of it.  Whoops, there’s LeBron again.  It’s much easier to grouse about his inflated salary than it is to make a decision whether to support the federal extension of unemployment benefits or federal financial reform.

And with that… it’s time to settle in and watch some TV.  Specifically, some sort of science fiction, because reality is just too yucky.  Hey, isn’t there a game on?

Love, Actually

// April 25th, 2010 // No Comments » // Books, Random, Web Stuff

OK, so I’ve been thinking a lot over the last couple of years about love. The different kinds of love, who we have love for, how it waxes and wanes (or not).  Sounds pretty stupid, I know.  Sappy.  Love is for Twilight fans, readers of bodice-rippers, those who like to have Kleenex handy when watching a movie, right?  Well, no.  Love is for all of us, and the more we say so and let ourselves write and talk about it, the healthier we will be.  Let’s just say that I buy into J.K. Rowling’s view of love. Rest assured, Dear Reader, that this is all I’ll say for now on this topic.

I’ve had this video open in a browser tab on my home computer for several days:

It’s a short film (illegally uploaded, ahem) written and directed by one of my favorite novelists (and library champions), Neil Gaiman, whose novel Neverwhere I first read quite a while ago. I’ve watched “Statuesque” several times, and I have to admit that the first time, the Neverwhere fan in me was waiting for something horrible and bloody to happen.  Instead, I was pleasantly surprised at this wonderful little tale of simple love.

There is so much to, well, love about this video, start to finish, from story to music to acting to set.  My favorite bit? Bill Nighy gives a brilliant performance without saying a word.

HOApe Springs Eternal

// March 19th, 2010 // No Comments » // Random

I have no experience running or even being a member of a homeowner’s association.  Before January, I had no idea that companies existed for the sole purpose of managing such associations’ finances and doing things like identifying and paying contractors to mow “common areas”–entrances, medians, greenspaces–and I certainly had no idea that these companies earn a pretty good chunk of change.  Here it is March 19, and that’s STILL all I know about being a member of a Homeowner’s Association, in spite of having a board of directors, some of whom I even voted for.

Sometime in December, all residents in the Blackford Parkway area [map]–including many who thought they lived in the GlenEagles subdivision–received a bill for $100.  The bill was for the annual Homeowner’s Association fee.  I vaguely remember when we purchased our house on the east side of Lexington that there was a clause about a possible HOA, but we had heard nothing in the nearly three years since.  Given that the phrase “Homeowner’s Association” rang a vague bell, I decided to give it a chance and attend its first meeting, planned for January 21.

At that meeting, lots of irate people showed up and demanded transparency and experience and … honestly, it’s been so long I hardly remember it, though I did tweet from it.  Suffice it to say that tension ran high, the meeting ran long, and people left marginally less frustrated than they’d been when they arrived.

As residents arrived, we all signed in and provided contact information, including email address.  We were promised that the newly-elected board members would be given the addresses and would be in touch soon.

More than two weeks later, on February 7, I emailed the board members, whose addresses my husband had obtained from the management company.  I reminded them that I was the resident who asked for a web presence at the meeting and offered my help.  Thanks, but no thanks was the answer that I got–they’ve put that out to competitive bid, as volunteer websites are full of fail (tell that to wikipedia), a newsletter was on its way, and oh, did I want to join the Communications committee?  Well, better than nothing, I thought.

A few weeks later, the above sign appeared at the entrance to our neighborhood.  The URL went to a standard ISP placeholder page.  I was so incensed by this that I created a blog at Wordpress [http://blackfordlex.wordpress.com/] and designed free business cards advertising the URL, vowing to sticker them to every door in the neighborhood.  Then I calmed down and decided to wait.  The board is populated with working professionals, just like me.  Surely they were doing their best to get the association up and running.  I could be patient. No, really.

So, the signs have been up for more than a month now, and the web page has gone from the default page of an ISP to a “Coming soon!” page from hoa-sites.com.  So, I don’t know if it will do any good, but I’m going to email the board again, ask for an update and let them know that the WordPress site exists.  There is also now a flickr group.  Nothing may come of it, but I’ll never know without trying, and the board clearly doesn’t want to.  I’m going to be as transparent as possible about this whole thing and try not to lose my patience.

Wish me luck.

UPDATE: within ten minutes of emailing the board, I received a reply from the President to cal him.  I spent twenty minutes on the phone listening to what the board have been doing and being assured that they could not have possibly done things faster.  I repeatedly made points about open and fast communication, about the fact that the board has had access to more than 200 resident email addresses, about the message that those infuriating signs send, but he didn’t seem to get it.  He’s supposed to deliver a hot-off-the-press edition of the newsletter that is about to be delivered to all 650 households.  So, stuff is happening.

What I do

// February 6th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // My Kids, Photography, Random, Social Stuff, librarians

A snapshot of projects today that comprise the whole me.

Crochet: an afghan for a pregnant friend (25% done); an afghan for Miss 6 (95% done); an afghan for Miss 4 (65% done); an afghan for me (designed, yarn purchased).

Photography/Art: taking Art History 497, The History of Modern Art. We just finished lectures on French and German Expressionism from the first decades of the Twentieth century and will start on the Cubists next.  Also taking ART 463 – Photography Independent Study, where I will produce a set of prints in the theme of “My Trees: the Tangency of Rural and Suburban”; write a paper of some kind on sequential photography; and uh, learn how to make digital prints.  Post to flickr occasionally; shoot occasionally for work.  Have literally thousands of 4×6 and other prints to put in albums. None have been printed since 2006 for this very reason!  (small victory: I put photos from the 1930s – 1970s in an album this week!)

Writing: currently drafting an issue of Library Technology Reports on OpenURL and linking, with Jason Price.  Write a monthly column (or 2 shorter ones, or a couple of photos) for ALA TechSource.  Write this blog. Write a personal blog.  Keep a personal data diary.  Tweet endlessly.  Post to Facebook occasionally.

Work: day-to-day management and coaching for four library staff (yikes, need to update that). Daily participation in library management and administration with fellow “Coordinators” (Administrators). Coordination of the UX Team and communication/coaching for its subgroups (OPAC, SFX, LibGuides, Usability, Web Design). Weekly liaison work: weeding, selecting, communication and reference with faculty and students; occasional instruction sessions; weekly LibGuides maintenance. Other Stuff As Assigned.

Entertainment: got caught up on 30 Rock, The Office, and Death Comes to Town (Kids in the Hall).  Still watching the fourth season of Dr. Who. (Oh, David Tennant!)

Family and home: daily work and conversations with daughters and husband.  This morning’s breakfast conversation with Miss 6 ranged from IEDs at Pakistani girls’ schools to vegetarianism in protest of mass-production of animal products (which we are going to try, together; we predict we will miss bacon) to tonight’s sleepover at Miss-Best-Friend 6’s house.  Put laundry in the dryer, dishes in the dishwasher, helped Miss 6 make her first scrambled eggs.  Ken listened with groggy fascination while drinking his coffee.  Miss 4 spent this time in her room cuddling with her blankey and listening to a book on CD.  I missed her.

I am happy.

(Another small victory: a year ago, I would never have used the phrase “the whole me” because I did not think I was, nor ever could be, whole.)

On the Great White Shark of Pain

// January 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Random

There are many things to love about the novel Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.  There are probably just as many things to hate or to be irritated by.  A friend once told me that this book is kind of like that uncle of yours that you really, really like but are loathe to take to parties because he always gets embarrassingly obnoxious before the night is through.  After that description, I kept waiting to get fed up, but I didn’t.  I was momentarily puzzled by the ending and frustrated by the many unanswered questions and loose ends, but I ultimately enjoyed reading this enormous tome bit by bit, sip by sip, one exquisite and excruciating sentence after another.

I realize I’m not exactly selling this book to you, Dear Reader. The purpose of this post is not to try to do that.  The purpose of this post is to try to begin to tell The Rest of the Story, to which I referred in the previous piece.  Alas, there is no more to report of the interaction I had with Big Publishing, but there is much, much more to relate about the other, more unpleasant topic from yesterday.

I will have to step into that topic bit by bit.  I’m not sure at all that I’m ready to share some or even any of what has come before this moment.  For now, I’m content to set the stage and leave you with a passage from the aforementioned ginormous book.  The paragraphs below resonated through my soul and my past, leaving me simultaneously cold with dread and limp with relief.  Watching unspeakable torment unfold in simple printed words has rendered it a human experience, one more thing that I share with other people, which somehow makes it less scary and easier to live with.  Easier to let go.

From Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace:

Hal isn’t old enough yet to know that this is because numb emptiness isn’t the worst kind of depression. That dead-eyed anhedonia is but a remora on the ventral flank of the true predator, the Great White Shark of pain. Authorities term this condition clinical depression or involutional depression or unipolar dysphoria. Instead of just an incapacity for feeling, a deadening of soul, the predator-grade depression Kate Gompert always feels as she Withdraws from secret marijuana is itself a feeling. It goes by many names — anguish, despair, torment, or q.v. Burton’s melancholia or Yevtuschenko’s(1) more authoritative psychotic depression — but Kate Gompert, down in the trenches with the thing itself, knows it simply as It.

It is a level of psychic pain wholly incompatible with human life as we know it. It is a sense of radical and thoroughgoing evil not just as a feature but as the essence of conscious existence. It is a sense of poisoning that pervades the self at the self’s most elementary levels. It is a nausea of the cells and soul. It is an unnumb intuition in which the world is fully rich and animate and un-map-like(2) and also thoroughly painful and malignant and antagonistic to the self, which depressed self It billows on and coagulates around and wraps in Its black folds and absorbs into Itself, so that an almost mystical unity is achieved with a world every constituent of which means painful harm to the self. Its emotional character, the feeling Gompert describes It as, is probably mostly indescribable except as a sort of double bind in which any/all of the alternatives we associate with human agency — sitting or standing, doing or resting, speaking or keeping silent, living or dying — are not just unpleasant but literally horrible.

It is also lonely on a level that cannot be conveyed. There is no way Kate Gompert could ever even begin to make someone else understand what clinical depression feels like, not even another person who is herself clinically depressed, because a person in such a state is incapable of empathy with any other living thing. This anhedonic Inability To Identify(3) is also an integral part of It. If a person in physical pain has a hard time attending to anything except that pain, a clinically depressed person cannot even perceive any other person or thing as independent of the universal pain that is digesting her cell by cell. Everything is part of the problem, and there is no solution. It is a hell for one.

The authoritative term psychotic depression makes Kate Gompert feel especially lonely. Specifically the psychotic part. Think of it this way. Two people are screaming in pain. One of them is being tortured with electric current. The other is not. The screamer who’s being tortured with electric current is not psychotic: her screams are circumstantially appropriate. The screaming person who’s not being tortured, however, is psychotic, since the outside parties making the diagnoses can see no electrodes or measurable amperage. One of the least pleasant things about being psychotically depressed on a ward full of psychotically depressed patients is coming to see that none of them is really psychotic, that their screams are entirely appropriate to certain circumstances part of whose special charm is that they are undetectable by any outside party. Thus the loneliness: it’s a closed circuit: the current is both applied and received from within.

The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.

But and so the idea of a person in the grip of It being bound by a ‘Suicide Contract’ some well-meaning Substance-abuse halfway house makes her sign is simply absurd. Because such a contract will constrain such a person only until the exact psychic circumstances that made the contract necessary in the first place assert themselves, invisibly and indescribably. That the well-meaning halfway-house Staff does not understand Its overriding terror will only make the depressed resident feel more alone.

1 – a reference to a text that does not exist; possibly a reference to the Russian poet Yevgeni Yetushenko.

2 – throughout the novel, Wallace uses the word “map” to mean “life.” To be “demapped” is to be killed.  Not sure if this is a reference to that convention.

3 – one of many references to the language and lingo of Alcoholics Anonymous, at least as it’s represented in the novel.

You may have heard that David Foster Wallace killed himself in 2008.  Anyone who’d experienced clinical depression and who had read Infinite Jest was likely not surprised.  The splintered-glass details of the book could only have come from the experiences of depression, addiction, withdrawal, even psychosis.  You can’t make this shit up is the way I thought of it.

I hope that someone, somewhere takes comfort in the fact that, even though we lost Mr. Wallace (Mr. Foster Wallace?), his pain has helped someone else.

Read more:

• DFW interview from Salon.com
• “The Unfinished: DFW’s Struggle to Surpass Infinite Jest” (New Yorker)
• DFW’s Kenyon College Address: Great and Terrible Truths (NYT)
• Lost Years and Last Days of DFW (Rolling Stone)
• The Howling Fantods! a news and fan site
• Infinite Jest wiki, including an impressive compendium

The sum of me is …

// January 28th, 2010 // 9 Comments » // Libraries, Photography, Random, Web Stuff, librarians

If you know me at all personally, you know that I have a dark side, and that dark side is prone to depression, despair and self-loathing.  My problems have been so black—yet so fucking mundane—that there have been many times in my life that my only thought was escaping the pain.  This tendency runs in my family, which makes me at once electrically fearful and fiercely vigilant for the psyches of my daughters.  My purpose here is not to address the stigma of mental illness.  I inherited bad brain chemistry; would you shame me for medicating my poor cholesterol?  No. Moving on.

My outward confidence is a carefully-rendered house of cards, whole wings of which flutter to the ground after the merest of stumbles.  I am stupid.  I am ugly.  I am fat. The sum of me is less than zero.  Nothing I do or say is of any importance.  We are all our own worst critics, but my hypercritical nature knows no bounds.

Until today.

Something happened this week that two years ago would have sent me into a weeks-long depression.  It’s interesting to note that, this time, my inner voice has not withdrawn into a spiteful litany of self-loathing but has instead said, “Hey! Wait a minute. I don’t like being treated that way.”  A first, after nearly forty years of spinning highs and crushing lows.

Earlier this week, one of my photos appeared in an online newsletter, with no accompanying credit.  Fine, that happens—nearly every single time, I contact the author or other appropriate person, and they address it.  I emailed the publisher, in this case, who responded almost immediately that they take their responsibility of crediting art and photography very seriously.  A link back to my photos was added right away.  Cool.

BUT, the photo in question—which clearly had been downloaded from flickr and posted as-is—was not only licensed Creative Commons – Attribution, it was also licensed Non-Commercial.  Interpretations of all attributes of Creative Commons vary, of course, but the web page in question was not a mere blog post, it was an article published in a regular newsletter, by a very well-known industry publisher.  Pretty clearly NOT “non-commercial.”

The publisher’s response to my inquiry was to add credit to the article, saying that they had been sent a jpg file of unknown provenance (ok, that happens sometimes, too), and—rather pointedly, I thought—leaving the question of the NC attribute completely unaddressed.  “Ha! You are a meek librarian!” they roared. “We can have you for a song! You are worth nothing!”

Right. The old me would have quailed at this.  Instead, I pushed on.

Meanwhile, I contacted the subject of the photo to let her know this was going on.  She sent me the email that she had sent to the article’s author, which did not have a jpg attached to it, but had a link to the flickr page and listed my name as photographer.

Uh… what’s going on here?  Wires crossed?  Someone not owning up?

So, I pointed out the NC attribute and asked how they could address that, figuring the response would be something like “Oh, you’re right.  Sorry, we can’t pay you, but we’d very much like your permission to keep the photo with the story.”  Which I would have granted.

Instead, the response was: “I’ve taken the photo down.”  The publisher reiterated that this was an innocent mistake; they had no idea about the rights status of the photo.

Yes, I am a meek librarian.  They sure showed ME.

Screw that.

I let the publisher know that I was aware that they had been sent a link *and* my name, and that I was disappointed that this happened.  The response: We have acted in good faith.  We have taken the photo down.  What more can we do?

That’s a good question—what do I want here?  I don’t want money.  I don’t want the photo reinstated, though I would be fine with that.  What do I want?  I think I want to get to the bottom of the story, the culprit of which I suspect to be carelessness rather than malice.  I can imagine the reporter honestly not remembering the contents of the email sent by the photo’s subject, after having clicked the link, downloaded a satisfactory image and sent it on without another thought.  I can imagine—and I understand and support—the publisher inquiring and believing the reporter assurances.  We are all busy; there was a deadline to meet.  I cannot imagine that there is any deliberate lying here, or covering up.

Stay tuned for the rest of the story as I await a conclusion and reflect on what this means for redefining the sum of me.

Books read, 2009

// January 3rd, 2010 // No Comments » // Random

At the end of 2008, I posted a list of books that I was currently reading, as well as this list of books that I wanted to read in 2009:

• Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson (science fiction) (finished January 2009)
• Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen (fiction) (via DailyLit.com; abandoned after 4 chapters)
• Little Brother, Cory Doctorow (fiction) (iPod copy abandoned after chapter 2; RSS copy via DailyLit.com still unread)  Kindle edition finally read May 2009
• Exposure Photo Workshop, Jeff Wignall (finished January 2009)
• Cambridge Guide to Emily Dickinson, Wendy Martin (non-fiction) (never actually opened this one, but I had it checked out for a long time!)

Books I intended to read in 2009 (and how that worked out):

• Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky (non-fiction) (May/June 2009)
• Tribes, Seth Godin (non-fiction) (downloaded audio January 2009–still haven’t listened!)
• The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson (fantasy) read February 2009
• Hero of the Age, Brandon Sanderson (fantasy) read March/April 2009
• Wise Man’s Fear, Pat Rothfuss (fantasy) – not yet published, more than a year behind schedule…
• Until I Found You, A Novel, John Irving (fiction)
• The Big U, Neal Stephenson (fiction) (February-March 2009)
• The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson (fiction) – I read a couple of chapters
• Anathem, Neal Stephenson (fantasy) – I have read one chapter
• A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (fiction) I read a few pages.
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (fiction)
• Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace (fiction) – bought the Kindle edition on the library’s device June 2009, bought the paperback in August 2009 and finally finished it 12/29/09!
• Clay’s Quilt, Silas House (fiction)
• Deer Hunting with Jesus, Joe Bageant (fiction)
• Everything is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger (May/June 2009)

Other books I actually read, 2009:

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (audio) (January 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (audio) (February-March 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (audio) (March-April 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (audio) (May 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (audio) (May – June 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (audio) (July – August 2009)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (audio) (August – September 2009)
• Slide-ology, Nancy Duarte (March 2009)
• Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds (March 2009)
• Pro Drupal Development (read first several chapters February 2009; over my head)
• Using Drupal, Angela Byron, et al (er…)
• The Warded Man, Peter V. Brett (fantasy) (April 2009)
• Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present by Cory Doctorow (May/June 2009)
• Social Software in Libraries, by Meredith Farkas (April 2009)
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow (May 2009)
• Tales of Beadle the Bard, by J.K. Rowling (May 2009)

Books read with Miss6, 2009

• Ramona Quimby, Age 8, by Beverly Cleary (february)
• Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Blume (March & April)
• Beezus and Ramona, by Beverly Cleary (March)
• Earthquake in the Early Morning, by Mary Pope Osborn (January)
• Hello, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, by Betty MacDonald (April & May)
• Midnight on the Moon, by Mary Pope Osborn (June)
• A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engel (June)
• James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl (June/July)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl (July)
• Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, by Roald Dahl (August)
• Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (August – read chapter 1)

I lost track of these in the fall, but we also read Roald Dahl’s Witches, Clementine, gave The Hobbit a try, and are almost done with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  She reads tons of books on her own and is impossible to keep up with!

Books I’d like to read in 2010

• Warbreaker, Brandon Sanderson (fantasy)
• The Long Division, Derek Nikitas (thriller)
• Anathem, Neal Stephenson (fantasy)
• Until I Found You, A Novel, John Irving (fiction)
• Clay’s Quilt, Silas House (fiction)
• The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (fiction)

After finishing Infinite Jest, I’ve sort of been casting about.  It will be a hard act to follow.

LG Voyager vs. LG EnV-2 (Verizon wireless)

// February 3rd, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Photography, Random

If you follow me on twitter, you know that I’ve struggled with cell phone handsets over the last year. In December 2007, I bought the LG Voyager from Verizon Wireless because of its 2-megapixel, auto-focus camera, touch screen and flip-open QWERTY keyboard. I loved the Voyager, except for one little feature: occasionally and randomly, it would turn itself off and on again. This usually happened in the middle of a call. Not good. To make what could be a very long story short, I had four Voyager handsets with the same problem before giving up and asking Verizon to send me a different model, the LG EnV-2. Two of the Voyager models I had also had less-than-responsive touch screens (which probably could have been fixed by re-calibrating them, which I didn’t think of until it was too late), and the instant messaging application on the most recent one I had worked very sporadically: contacts were inconsistently marked online and off, messages would not be received or delivered at random. (NB: I still have this problem with the EnV-2; it seems to go away if I turn off “IM forwarding” in the Yahoo IM app.)

With the phones side-by-side, you can immediately see that the EnV-2 (left) is smaller than the Voyager:

The EnV-2 is not only shorter than the Voyager, it weighs less and is thinner enough that I notice the difference when I stuff it in my pocket:

You’ll also notice from the above photo that the Voyager (top) has a third button on the side. The sliding toggle in the middle unlocks the touch screen; it takes the press of a key to unlock the EnV-2. I miss the unlock button occasionally, but honestly, it was mostly a frustration on the Voyager–when trying to lock the phone instead of waiting for the touch screen to time out, I would inevitably hit the camera button (left). So it’s probably not a big deal that it’s gone.  I do find myself locking the EnV-2 by opening and shutting it quickly, instead of waiting for the screen to time out.

I was initially worried that the EnV-2’s smaller internal screen would be frustrating to use after the relatively generous space of the Voyager:

So far, it hasn’t been a problem, though I find myself using the camera less. I’m not sure it’s related to anything other than the fact that it’s been below-freezing out every day but one or two since I got it: many photos I take with my phone are outside. I recently joined the daily-photo site Momentile; I hope this changes how frequently I use the camera.

The biggest difference is the keyboard:

The EnV-2’s smaller form-factor dictates that the keyboard be smaller. The phone feels slightly cramped and less comfortable in my hands than the Voyager did, something I didn’t really realize until I picked up my final Voyager again to return it to Verizon. “Oh, that *is* better,” I remember thinking. Someone with smaller hands than I would probably have trouble hitting individual keys. YMMV. I’m used to the keyboard now, though I haven’t quite committed to muscle memory the shortcuts I need most: Messaging and IM.

I do find myself using the itty-bitty screen on the front more than I used the wonky touch screen. Text messages are short enough, and I get few enough of them at this point that it’s manageable.

To their credit, Verizon’s customer service and technical support folks were stellar each time I talked to them. They always sounded interested in the problems I was having, genuinely sympathetic, and never bored. That’s a pretty amazing thing, considering the fact that I called probably a dozen times over the last 12 months.

Books read, 2008

// January 4th, 2009 // No Comments » // Random, librarians

I was inspired by my friend Anna to write this post. The written list of books read migrated to LibraryThing when that service debuted, but it and my GoodReads catalog have become a mishmash of things read and things to read. Alas.

Full disclosure: I adhere to my own version of the Nancy Pearl rule–if I can’t get into a book after a couple of tries, I put it down and don’t look back. So far, I have not been struck by lightning. <g>

So, in no particular order:

Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson (science fiction) (currently reading)
Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen (fiction) (currently reading)
Little Brother, Cory Doctorow (fiction) (currently reading)
Exposure Photo Workshop, Jeff Wignall (currently reading)
Cambridge Guide to Emily Dickinson, Wendy Martin (non-fiction) (currently reading)
1. Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows (YA fantasy–audio)
2. The Android’s Dream, John Scalzi (science fiction)
3. Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer (YA fantasy)
4. Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer (YA fantasy)
5. New Moon, Stephenie Meyer (YA fantasy)
6. Twilight, Stephenie Meyer (YA fantasy)
7. The Devil’s Picnic (non-fiction) (did not finish)
8. Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince (YA fantasy–audio)
9. Lighting Photo Workshop, Chris Bucher (non-fiction)
10. Legal Handbook for Photographers, Bert Krages (non-fiction)
11. The Digital Photography Book vol 2, Scott Kelby (non-fiction)
12. Master Lighting Guide for Portrait Photographers, Christopher Grey (non-fiction)
13. Understanding Exposure, Bryan Peterson (non-fiction)
14. Pyres, Derek Nikitas (fiction)
15. Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix (YA fantasy–audio)
16. Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire (YA fantasy–audio)
17. Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban (YA fantasy–audio)
18. Harry Potter & the Chamber of Secrets (YA fantasy–audio)
19. Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s Stone (YA fantasy–audio) (Yes, all of them. I listen to them every year.)
20. Golden Compass, Phillip Pullman (YA fantasy) (2nd reading–did not finish)
21. The Big U, Neal Stephenson (fiction) (did not finish)
22. The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson (fiction) (2nd reading–did not finish)
23. Culture Shock Singapore, Joann Craig (travel) (did not finish)
24. Rough Guide to Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei (travel) (did not finish)
25. Sonnets: from Dante to the Present, John Hollander (poetry) (not yet finished)
26. Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (poetry) (not yet finished)

Books I’d like to read in 2009:
Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky (non-fiction)
Tribes, Seth Godin (non-fiction)
The Well of Ascension, Brandon Sanderson (fantasy)
Hero of the Age, Brandon Sanderson (fantasy)
Wise Man’s Fear, Pat Rothfuss (fantasy)
Until I Found You, A Novel, John Irving (fiction)
The Big U, Neal Stephenson (fiction)
The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson (fiction)
Anathem, Neal Stephenson (fantasy)
A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway (fiction)
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (fiction)
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace (fiction)
Clay’s Quilt, Silas House (fiction)

New Year’s resolution? To keep track as I go, and to add links and not be so lazy in 2009.

Go hug your family

// August 17th, 2008 // No Comments » // Libraries, Photography, Random

Inspecting the results

Originally uploaded by OriginalTwistedSpinster

It greatly saddens me to report that Ruth Schooley passed away suddenly and unexpectedly about a month after she started this discussion thread in the ALA TechSource TechShots flickr group. I had been struggling with how to respond to her plea for flickr users to add metadata: she’s right, of course, but I was a bit worried that her verbiage might have put people off. I was also worried about responding directly to her: again, she’s right, and if any of you knew Ruth, you would know that she was never rude or aggressive and always had a smile for anyone she met, be they library patron or fellow knitter. Now, of course, I can’t respond to her at all, not even to thank her for joining the group and trying to get the discussion started.

It seems trite to say it, and I by no means want to diminish Ruth’s passing, which was deeply shocking for all who knew her, most of all her husband, Mike, but life is too short for us to worry about how our words come out, particularly when our hearts are in the right place. So: go out tomorrow and talk to someone you’ve been meaning to get back to; stop and chat with someone at whom you normally only wave a greeting; or take ten minutes and write a heart-felt note, even a quick one. The person on the other end will appreciate it, and you’ll be richer for making the connection.

With that, I’m going to write a thank-you note I’ve been meaning to pen and then? Then I’m going to spend some serious time adding metadata to my giant library of images.