Instead of cooking, we’re crafting, and instead of a turkey dinner,
we’re hitting up happy hour.
Can you spot anything supercute in this picture?
E and I made some things,
then we went out to a restaurant called
Bilbo Baggins for dinner, where I ate the same thing as I had pinned
to my sweater. Metasquid!
Instead of cooking, we’re crafting, and instead of a turkey dinner,
we’re hitting up happy hour.
Can you spot anything supercute in this picture?
Jason and I are crossing the Delaware bridge. We’re heading to DC for
Thanksgiving. We left Boston at 4:30, and at 7:30 we had gone about 40
miles. The Boston-inbound lane was virtually clear, and we considered
turning around. Now it’s 1am, and it’s been smooth-going. At least the
weather’s clear. That’s my Pollyana angle.
What you’re seeing is a bag of fabric, most of it from my mom’s much
larger collection of quilting material. I’m bringing it to DC, and it
will be made into small, cute things.
Via everyone I know:
1. Sonya (and Conan), 2. Apple Butter, 3. Wheatland, 4. Dragonfly’s clear wing, 5. Vintage Harrison Ford, 6. Aço és or, xata, 7. Finlandia, 8. apple crisp with cherries a la mode, 9. Richard dives under the sea, 10. Cartoon’d Wadsbone, 11. Happy camper, 12. Spring Sun on Sunday
Here’s how it works:
* Type your answers to each of the questions below into Flickr Search
* Using only the first page, pick an image
* Copy and paste each of the URLs into the mosaic maker
Questions:
1. What is your first name? (Sonya)
2. What is your favorite food? (Apple Butter)
3. What high school did you go to? (Wheatland, Iowa)
4. What is your favorite color? (Clear)
5. Who is your celebrity crush? (Harrison Ford)
6. Favorite drink? (Horchata)
7. Dream vacation? (Finland midsummer)
8. Favorite dessert? (Apple crisp)
9. What do you want to be when you grow up? (Hot Librarian – see: Richard Urban!)
10. What do you love most in life? (Wadsbone)
11. One word to describe you. (Happycamper – hey, if results come up with a giant oneword, it works)
12. Your Flickr name. (Sundaykofax – how disappointing! Nothing came up. Then again, I have a great singular name. The image is from the search term ‘sunday’.)
Jason was robbed last night. I think I’ve decided that you can’t call it mugging unless they physically assault you. He was on his way home at midnight last night – on our block in fact – when he heard someone coming up behind him. Three guys came up, one in front and two behind. The one in front did most of the talking. The guy was holding something that could be construed as a gun, but was not verbally aggressive as he asked Jason for his money.
Jason’s a smart, level-headed guy. I think he reacted exactly right. He didn’t say much, and didn’t answer questions like “what’s in your backpack”, whereas I would probably laugh nervously and make jokes about how heavy my giant 17″ laptop was.
Anyway, Jason didn’t answer questions, but when the guy demanded Jason’s money, Jason got out his wallet and handed the guy the cash – not the wallet. Then they asked about his backpack. He said nothing. They asked about a phone. He said nothing.
The guy in front of him said something to the effect of “give me your phone and we’ll leave you your backpack”. So, Jason gave then his iPhone. Then the guys left.
My initial reaction was that of vigilantism. No one threatens Jason *bears teeth*. We called the police, and auto-deactivated the phone using AT&T’s ‘press 4 if your phone is lost or stolen’.
Then we spent at least an hour thinking of all the passwords that needed changing. It’s an iPhone – it has access to everything. I did some research, and learned that there are some precautions you can take, both with apps written specifically to thwart and with social engineering like calling the phone or seeing what calls show up on your account.
Anyway, I now know about all sorts of awesome hacks to add a secret dye pack to your phone, as I am a librarian and I take comfort in knowledge.
How do I wrap this up? I’m not scared, but I am much more aware of the little things I’ve decided I should be doing to protect myself. Better encryption, maybe iRedHanded, and not walking alone late at night.
Update! The camera has found a home. A young, talented artist is going to take the camera. What do I get? Apparently, she’s painting fat ladies right now. Awesome.
Jason and I are going through our box labeled “To Ebay”, and I came across my old, new camera. After toting a 1970’s Minolta (weighing in at 7 lbs) for a few years, I upgraded to a shiny auto-zoom, adjust-the-eyepiece-to-your-prescription, autofocuses-when-you-lift-it-to-your-eye, 28-200 lens camerabot.
That was in 2002. I learned that I was a photography Luddite, and reverted to my old Minolta. This camera is fancypants, and gives a wide range of focal lengths all in one lens. (It also is a huge lens.)
Anyway, it’s not worth *that* much on Ebay, so I thought I’d see if there was anyone in my personal blogosphere who would be interested in it. I’d much rather it go to a good home.
If anyone is looking at it and seeing potential, let me know, and we can barter. I’m willing to give it up for brownies, yarn, a good back massage, or just about anything else.
Click on the photo to go to Flickr and see my notes on the kit.
In this day and age (meaning, with the technology and social web we have) there’s no reason for a giant company to make libraries pay tons of money for access to the library (MARC) records they’re helping to add. It’s like if Wikipedia started charging everyone access to use it. Not only that, it would be like if people did start paying to look at Wikipedia, AND still added content.
Watchdog.net has a petition for you to sign.
(Also, you don’t have to sign up with them to sign the petition.)
Here’s what they have to say:
OCLC, the not-for-profit that provides library services around the world, has gone too far. Originally, it was a library collaborative — one library could catalog a book, upload it to OCLC, and then other libraries could save time by reusing the catalog information. But as the price of such technology has fallen, its prices have risen. It charges membership fees, record retrieval fees, user support fees, and fees for all sorts of additional services. But now it’s gone a step too far — it wants to set the terms of use for every library record ever retrieved through OCLC, so that it can maintain its monopoly in the field. In a very real sense, they’re trying to steal our libraries. We have to make them stop — sign this petition.
For more information, see this wiki page: OCLC Policy Change.
And let the MARC records be freeeeeeee:
There’s a big set of photos taken by David Katz from the evening of November 4. They’re documentary-style images of Barak, his family, and those who came to watch the election results.
I started looking at the set, and although one of my favorites shows Barak with his feet up on the table, with perfectly-worn in soles, the one that caught my heart was this one:
Barak and his mom mother in law. Now I’m all teary.
This is a librarian at my local branch. I stopped in to pick up some
holds, and noticed she was taking needle and thread to a children’s
book (the most battered of kinds of books). It made me happy, and I
took this surreptitious photo to share.
Also, she falls into the “Over 50 Hot Librarian” demographic, and I
just hope I can look as good as she does when I’m her age.
librarian hot
