Holiday Slog Blog, Week 1

Motto: Fine Whines, my Speciality

Fri, Nov 21: As of 11am today the holiday slog starts. No, it's nothing to do with the usual holiday stresses -- family, meals, parties, gifts, money (as in, where are we going to get the money.) This has to do with the fact that as of 11am, I am the only librarian at my library until December 26. That puts me on the reference desk for 6.5 hours out of the 7 we are open, five days a week. Yes, the librarians are in an employee union, but no, there are no limits on the consecutive hours a librarian can be on the desk, and there is no minimum staffing requirement in order to open the library. Even with low patronage, the long shift is exhausting or stressful, apart from any special problems that come up.

What better way to cope than to whine? I'm going to update this post for the "week" of Nov 21 through 26 -- followed by two days off for Thanksgiving and then two-more for the weekend. Then I will do a new post for week 2, and similarly update it. I know my thousands of fans will want to keep up with all the breaking news.

So I started the day with a mall walk: I got to the mall in front of my library early enough to do a complete circuit of the two floors. This is part of my "exercise more" approach to stress. Then, hurrah, my boss gave me some chocolate, and, in line with "dark chocolate is good for stress" I ate some of it, but in line with "don't stress eat" I only ate two squares. I've got the rest tucked away, in the hope that I will forget I have it. Further stress pre-emptive plans to be undertaken as time allows: rearrange Netflix list to move all comedies to the top. Find funny books to read on the commute -- the ones I have at home, and, thus, may be too familiar with to laugh at too much, are Bill Richardson's Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast; Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters (sic; my favorite line: "The Crystal Palace heaved into view;") Leo Rosten's The Education of Hyman Kaplan (asterisks between each letter of HK's name omitted) and later sequels; and Rosten's revised, or new version, of The Joys of Yiddish --but maybe mordant humor isn't quite what I want. Maybe a reread of Brigit Jones's Diary, and a first-time read of the sequel --- I recently saw both of the movie versions -- plus the Bachelor Brothers' sequel.

Monday, Nov 24: Relaxed, rested, I return to the library, to discover that the front door key won't work, because, yet again, the archive that shares our space did not fully close the door after letting someone out after hours. The good news: at least the door isn't openable without a key, as was the case several times before. I got in using a side entrance, thus setting off the burlar alarm, and then ran quick like a bunny to get upstairs to enter the code to shut it off. Then I phoned to call off the law enforcement responders. I shall count the quick run as part of my exercise to reduce stress plan.

Wednesday, Nov 26: The "week" -- Friday, Monday-Wendesday, has been pretty stress free. Entertainment was provided by the person who came in to the library via the mail room, then, when she was told that she is not authorized to enter that way, asked if it would be ok to leave that way.

Automatic generation and human fertilization

One of the blogs on my Feevy list is "Lords of the Blog," the site for the peers in the British House of Lords. (As the upper chamber in Parliament, that House differs in substantial ways from the United States' upper legislative chamber, the Senate, not least by being far more upfront about its members thinking they are related to God.)

The November 5 post by Lord Taylor of Warwick, Seek and ye shall Fund, summarized his speech in a debate on the British economy. Like all the posts on the site, it was followed by a heading "Possibly related posts (automatically generated.)" The top link was to "Human Fertilization and Embryology bill."

Precisely what that bill would have to do with the posting about the economy is unclear, (possibly because I didn't link to the bill to read it,) but it's pleasant to think that the machine's pick is a bit of humour related to the second sentence in the last bullet point in Seek and ye shall Fund.

Election over

I mailed my absentee ballot on Monday, October 20th.

Since mailing it in, I've received only one piece of mail re: who/what to vote for, plus one phone call that left a message about supporting one of the ballot measures. There was also a group of people on a corner one evening waving signs about supporting that same proposition. I expect more mail will be coming in soon. All too late for my attention.

This is the third election where most of the mail I've received has arrived after I mailed an absentee ballot. Given the high number of absentee ballots cast in California, I think candidates/parties/supporters need to rethink their mailing strategies.

Company doesn't live up to its reputation, and I'm glad

Yesterday I went hunting for a replacement AC adaptor for my portable DVD player -- the one that came with it had died.

I went first to a small chain with electronics: Hi-Fi Hovel or something like that. It had lots, but none that were 9v 2.1 amps.

Just for the heck of it, because I was already in the store to buy some sweatshirts, I also looked in the electronics section of a big-box general store, but it didn't have one either.

So that left the dreaded national big-box all-electronics-all-the-time store in my town. I had heard from several women that it has a reputation for not being very helpful to females, so I wasn't looking forward to it.

Turns out it didn't live up to its reputation. When I asked the concierge or whatever one calls the directional desk, one man called back an employee who had just walked away, and asked him to take me to the right shelves. That employee took me there and found a universal adaptor with a range of voltages and amps. He opened it up, showed me, at my request, how to set it for 9 volts (turns out, you just move a switch to "9," duh) and, looking at my old adaptor, pointed out the correct tip to use on the new one-- a good thing, as I would have chosen another. He did all of this without giving any sign of annoyance or condescension.

So points for that chain. I was in and out quickly, and, it turns out, the item was elegible for a rebate. Next time anyone says anything about that chain providing sexist service, I'll speak up in its favor.

The best part of all: I finally got to watch the final disk in Foyle's War.

Put a necktie on your cat when it's job-hunting

The State of Missouri has set up a recruiting site and job fair on Second Life. They recently made their first hire, an IT employee. The employee first appeared at the virtual job fair as a "small cat with a red bow tie." Perhaps because of the cat's tie, he got an in-person interview (no report on what he wore) and then got the job. The moral of this story is to be sure your avatar wears business attire (to the extent possible, given the avatar) to any virtual job fairs.

It's National Punctuation Day!

Today is National Punctuation Day -- see http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2008/09/24/happy-national-punctuation-day/!

Within that post is a link to an article that will cause heart palpitations in any lawyers you know who deal with contracts: an extra comma in a contract resulted in an increased charge of 2.13 million (Canadian) dollars to one of the parties. I hope whoever typed/word-processed that contract for the party getting the extra money got a bonus of some sort.

If you're looking for an appropriate way to celebrate, try making this resolution: I will not automatically put an apostrophe before the final 's' in a word, unless it indicates a contraction, or a possessive. (Yes, such a resolution is legal.)

Did Larry Ellison Listen to Me?

On September 27, 2007, I did a post in which I suggested, moderately facetiously, that server farms, which consume large amounts of electricity, might offer free or almost-free gymn services to the surrounding population, so the exercise bikes in use could generate some power for the server farms.

Today the SF Chronicle has a story about Oracle OpenWorld, Oracle's annual customer conference in San Francisco (see http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/21/BUOR13189Q.DTL.) In an effort to be a bit greener, there will be exercise bikes available that, when used, will generate the power to charge the user's laptop or cell phone (or, I guess, both.) "If they peddle hard enough, these folks will generate extra energy that Oracle will capture and use to help power the conference."

I am all aflutter at the thought that Larry Ellison might have read my blogpost -- hope he also read the November 16, 2007 post where I thanked Oracle for providing free museum admissions to the public at large during that year's conference. (Mr. Ellison: any chance of repeating that next year?) Or maybe, like me, he just got the idea from the dystopian movie Soylent Green, in which Edward G. Robinson peddles a bike to generate a bit of electricity to light a small lamp. (Let's hope the rest of that movie isn't coming true.)