Caveat Lector

All this time, and Caveat Lector hasn’t been a proper blog, because there has been no cat blogging!

Well, that’s quite enough of that. So here are the Goth-kitties in all their Goth glory.

Dream of the Endless

Didi

Amazon has not only fixed the publication date and shipping status for David’s book listing, they even nixed the pagecount estimate and put in the correct number.

They’re still shipping pretty slowly, but credit where it is due, eh?

I’m about to send in my registration for the Association of College and Research Libraries 2005 conference. (What is with that web page? Is there an info architect in the house? The page title should so not be “minneapolis.”)

Hope to pass out some résumés, hear some good presentations, get to know some people. Drop me a line if you’ll be there too, won’t you?

Nothing’s firm yet, but I may also spend some time in Minneapolis doing what I do best, or at least loudest—pontificate. More on that as plans firm up.

I don’t have an essay in me on Google Scholar at the moment, and very possibly not ever. Plenty of other librarian-bloggers do; go read them.

A couple of things struck me, though. One, we’ve been whining and complaining for years that nobody knows about the nifty stuff in article databases. Wham, bam, Google suddenly makes it visible, and what do we do? Whine and complain. We’ve been whining and complaining for years that nobody realizes that databases cost money, and that libraries often have access that is free to patrons. Google suddenly makes that visible (though I agree with some commentators that it ought to be more visible still), and what do we do? Whine and complain.

I love librarians, but sometimes we suck, okay?

I’m also happy about this because it makes the work of academia more visible to someone who’s never thought about what it is academics do when they’re not standing in front of a classroom. This is a Good Thing. It should spur interest in the work of the academy. It should scare up some more students. It might even lead some academics a little way into the public consciousness and out of their comfort zone.

So go Google Scholar, say I.

David will be doing two chat sessions with TheOneRing.net, one on Saturday December 11 at 5:30 pm Eastern, one on Sunday December 12 at 2:00 pm Eastern. The former chat is moderated (so you need to submit questions in advance); the latter is free-for-all.

Topic, of course, is Tolkien’s languages. Technical details can be ganked from link above.

Y’all come!

“Well, this is a bad day to go to physical therapy,” I thought to myself with mild annoyance as I waited for the bus west. “I’m not in any pain!”

My physical therapist agreed with that assessment, so much so that she discharged me. My arm’s as normal as she can make it. The rest is up to me.

The plan hasn’t changed, really. I’m going to find myself a massage therapist (there’s a small knot of them within walking distance of my house; with any luck one of them will do), keep going with the exercise and self-care, and try my best not to mess myself up again.

I hope my guarded optimism isn’t discouraging for people who wanted a miracle cure. As badly as I managed to hurt myself, improved functioning and (much!) less pain is as much as I could reasonably hope for. I’ve got that. Now I have to keep it.

I’m kind of tempted to pick up a recorder again, though. Maybe I can play for longer than ten minutes now.

Blogger’s down again; have to hold my Questions Three for tomorrow’s Information and Labor session.

1. Is Kraut and Cummings’s definition of computer “domestication” (as “that which is not work”) defensible? Training a gender lens on it seems to produce the old, old canard that only paid work is work, and household labor is not work. (I was particularly dubious about “finance” being a “personal, leisure, non-work” use of the Internet, p. 224. I don’t get paid for maintaining my household’s investments, no, but it sure ain’t leisure in my book.) I am tempted to wonder if the more “labor”-ish uses of the Internet were actually the wedge driving its use in the home. And how does the increasing contingent workforce (especially contractors and micro-businesses) play into this? Are they counted as “workers”?

   On the other hand, I can certainly accept their guess that increasing demographic heterogeneity in Internet use reflects the greater diversity of American homes as compared to the American workplace.

2. Is Mark Porter’s contention that software development invented “entirely new patterns and cultures of work” (p. 342 et seq.) anything more than wild ahistorical romanticism? This guy’s never programmed for a living, has he?
3. Postigo’s account of the AOL situation seems to imply that community effort is incompatible with paid labor (or at least with management thereof). Is that true in all cases, or was AOL just particularly hamfisted in handling its volunteer labor force?

“The rain is looking distinctly snowier,” I said a few minutes ago, peering over a curled-up cat out the office window.

The Greek is all keyed, and David is amusing himself flipping through the “snooty” book before I hand over my computer to him so he can proofread my keying. (I know, I know. If he were running OSX… but he isn’t.)

More reasons to love CSS: They gave me an XSLT stylesheet to transform the book to HTML for proofreading. I popped a nice little CSS rule into the resulting HTML file that gives all the Greek a yellow background for easy recognition. Two seconds, major proofing-accuracy boost.

And hey, I can read Greek text now with reasonable facility. Still don’t know from all these accents and breath marks and whatnot, but I’ve got the alphabet down cold finally. One of those things any half-educated person should be able to do—but I couldn’t.

I have another physical therapy appointment for Monday morning. Apparently when I missed last Monday’s, my PT left word with the receptionists to call me and reschedule. (Otherwise, the delay would have been considerable, as she would have had to get my phone message when she gets back from her holiday on Monday and then have the receptionists call me.)

Damn. That woman is the best. I am pondering holiday nicenesses I can reasonably offer her.