Drooooool..........

Hot Library Smut. Go there. Salivate over these pictures. Buy the book for yourself. I, myself, think the Real Gabinete Portuges de Leitura Rio de Janeiro is the most gorgeous one of a lot of gorgeous images.

(Get yer mind outta the gutter... it's totally work-safe and not what you think.)

How can it be only 95°? My thermosensors must be off, it felt a lot warmer than that when I was outside a few minutes ago.

Consolidation Time

...Maybe.

I'm thinking about consolidating the blurbs I post at You Don't Look like a Librarian! into this blog, and keeping that as a place for the talks, columns, etc. Keeping both updated (which sometimes leads me to double posting) - and publishing a separate XML feed for that site - just seems like a bit of overkill, not to mention that there are better ways to spend my time than double-posting things. Plus, it's always fun to redesign a site!

Speaking of talks, I'm confirmed for SLA 2007 in Denver. Look for the track titled "Spectacles: How Pop Culture Views Librarians" in a conference coming your way, and please consider marking it as a "Must Attend" on your conference schedule!

It's a piffling 92°.

Thanks Again, I Needed That, Too

Star Trek Inspirational Posters. Read. Laugh. Repeat. (And see if you can get the fight song out of your head afterwards!)

Feh. Cloudy and 92° but no rain in sight.

Thanks, I needed that.

This is a much better use of treadmills, IMHO.

Techie Women

Thank you, Roy!

Roy Tennant's August 15th Library Journal column titled "The Gender Gap" has some nice words -and suggestions - for equalizing the gender inequalities in technical library situations. As a techie gal myself, I agree with what he's seeing; the first IL conference I went to in 1999, I felt like a rarity (I'm happy to see the balances evening out a bit), and for a very long time, I was the only gal in the gaming room or programming user's groups. Even in library school, I was the only techie in my class - let's hope that more women move into technology in libraries!

Currently 93° and only 30%Rh. No rain today, I think!

Updated later the same day: Holy cow. I sat down to try and catch up on blogs and this topic - gender issues in technical/systems librarianship - is quite the hot one. Many posts, many comments, in many places, with many things to think about. (On the up side, I found out about a new group/listserv/thing, Code4Lib, which I plan on joining.) Upon pondering, I don't know if I've been lucky, or just adapted so much I don't notice anymore (which is not necessarily a good thing) - I haven't faced any kind of "You can't do that, you're a girl!" situations in the workplace in a very long time. (And when I did, I stepped up and proudly wore the title "Bitch" for confronting the engineer in question.) Then again, if situations like that have arisen and I didn't notice them, is that good or bad? Much to chew over....

Froth. Sputter. Spit.

Good lord.

I shall follow Wandering Eyre's and Walt Crawford's leads; no link love here. Instead, I'll link to Jane's post "Really? More of this?" (she provides further links). I'm not as calm as she is about the original column. Nice of the mag to put up a counterpoint (but they only did so after the hubbub hit the fan, so to speak, and it isn't nearly as comprehensive in coverage or rebuttal as it should have been IMHO), but really - either this writer is a troglodyte, or trolling. Either way, it got my back up.

Feh. Forbes should know better.

I even like the shoes

Shoes for the Poor Librarian, from Manolo's Shoe Blog. Amusing little fashion posting; I may have to read more of the blog. (I don't know why I'm surprised that there's a blog just for shoes...) Thing is, I really like those recommended boots... and I do need new shoes for fall... hmm.

Currently 86° and 47%Rh. No rain today, I think.

Poor, poor Pluto

Well, the IAU has spoken and we're down to 8 planets now. As noted here before, the fate of Pluto and other orbiting things of its size has been under discussion for a while now; it appeared that we might jump up to 12 planets for a while, but instead we've dropped down to 8. That's too bad IMHO - I always liked little Pluto with its ginormous moon, looping around out there -

You can read many news releases about the decision.

It's been odd working at an astronomical institution and not having this be the buzz of the hallways. I guess that's what happens when most of your staff are either solar or extragalactic astronomers. The planets are in that in-between zone that I don't think anyone here actually studies....

Random Thoughts of the Day

What is up with Blogger these days? I have to jump through nine hoops before I can get to my dashboard - and now it's like all the style sheets have gone missing, and it's slower than a really slow thing. Hmm...

I have to nuke my home computer and reinstall everything from scratch. It's gotten so bloated with Microsoft products that it's almost unusable. On the up side, I'm getting 200GB external USB drives for about $20 each - they'll work nicely as backups! If it weren't for the fact that I need Windows and all its accoutrements for work, I'd just install Linux and be done with it... ah well. My next machine will be a Mac, dang it!

The weather forecasters are threatening us with a lessening of the monsoon. I know we've been ultrasaturated but it's so nice to not have the mountains on fire this summer - and to actually have seen water in the rivers! That's only happened a few times in the 20 years I've lived here. (Yes, this month marks my arrival in Tucson 20 years ago, from Belgium. It was 117° the day I got off the plane... I shall never forget it. Between the culture shock and the environmental shock, who could?)

Currently 86° with 55%Rh. I don't think it'll rain today, it'll just be sticky.

River Running

River Running #1,
originally uploaded by desertlibrarian.

I made it out to the Rillito today at lunch to get some shots. I wish I'd been able to get out this morning when the storm was actually occurring; then again, it probably wouldn't have been very safe. Now I can prove that sometimes, there really is water in our rivers! Very cool. (Of course, this much water at once really puts a strain on the city - but that's another topic for another time.)

Still cool and cloudy with a 50% chance of rain tonight. It'll be nice to have the windows and doors open to the fresh air! (Not that I don't thank the gods of air conditioning on a daily basis...)

Can we just paste over the affected sections?

"Pluto dodged a bullet today. " In an article on the New York Times website titled "For Now, Pluto Holds Its Place in Solar System", Dennis Overbye reports on a plot afoot to change the definition of planet and, possibly, instantly expand our solar system to more than a dozen planets. It's weird to think about Pluto not being the last planet. I'd always kind of hoped that we'd discover more planets, but it never crossed my mind that they might be planetisimals that got promoted. And when I think about all the science textbooks that'd instantly be outdated, I shudder....

Reading this article ("This will be the talk of the town in Prague") was a nice break from feverish review document preparation.

The day continues to be lovely with overcast skies, 85° temps and 50%Rh.

Stormy Weather

Usually, when monsoons arrive, they build throughout the day then unleash the lovely rain on us in the late afternoons and/or early evenings. Today, however, we all awoke to a surprise - grey skies above us and thunder crashing in the distance. By the time of the morning commute, the city was being hammered with serious rain; it rained almost 2" in just under an hour at my house (based on my very scientific measuring cup on the back patio).

That's a lot of water all at once for us, and the ground is already saturated from earlier rains (another non-usual occurence for us, usually we're gasping for rain) so the flooding in the streets has been interesting. The washes around my house are roaring bank-to-bank, and I can only imagine what the Rillito River looks like (aside from actually having water in it!) - think I'll run by at lunchtime and take a picture or two!

Right now, it's a truly beautiful and cool 76°, with a whopping 80%Rh.

School's Starting Again

And the way I can tell this is because the hordes of kids who apparently can't read but can drive cars have returned. One way street? "But I get to choose which way that is, right?" Do not park here or your car will be towed? "Hey, has anybody seen my car?" Sheesh.

I won't even start on the be-iPod'ed (or be-cell-phoned) student who's looking at the student paper, a map of campus or the latest People and steps off the curb and into oncoming traffic, from between parked cars, without looking up once. I'm surprised more students aren't flattened the first week of school here. Sheesh.

*mumble*grumble* Those darn kids!

Only 90° and 44%Rh. Not much gonna happen today, I think.

New Use for RFID?

TUSD is testing out a program (on a few school buses) that'll track students when they get on and off the bus, where they are at noon, and when they're dropped off. Now, it seems that a few local school districts (not TUSD) are testing out another program that'll text-message a students' parents if he or she is missing from the morning roll-call.

While most of me thinks these are both useful tools - along with metal detectors, it's sad that we need them but good to have around - a small part of me wonders if this is the start of a larger "track everyone's actions and locations at all times" program. I mean, if you get students used to the idea, they'll grow up thinking it's perfectly normal, and suddenly we're in 1984. (And since I try not to rant about politics here, I'll leave it at that.)

Hmm.

Currently 88° and 50%RH. Tough call on whether it'll rain or not, but I'm betting not.

The End of the Hiatus

Sorry, to the few folks who actually read this blog - I should have mentioned I was taking some time off for vacation. (I actually didn't vacate much, I worked the whole time on home repairs; we're putting a new floor in, and the old floor had to come out, baseboards out, floors patched, walls patched and painted.... you get the picture.)

I'm back now, way behind but catching up, and will begin sharing my oh-so-deep thoughts with you again!

Currently 86° and a disgusting level of humidity. I love the monsoons when they happen, but dang, the sauna-ness before they hit is nasty!