Fini

Due to my changing job responsibilities and numerous serious personal issues (I’ve been out of work for a month on medical leave) this blog has run its course… That and one of my coworkers discovered @ the Library, put two and two together and called me out on it. Not to worry she’s very cool and didn’t blow my cover but I always told myself that when a coworker discovers this blog it would be time to quit… And so it is.

I thank all of my readers for spending time here over the years, it has been a lot of fun and extremely cathartic for me. I sincerely hope that you enjoyed my adventures… as painful as the were (and are) for me.

Be well everyone! and Rebecca…

We really should do drinks sometime 😉

Woeful

Patrons

So the other day I stopped off to get the newspapers like I do every now and again for the Library when I overheard the guy in front of me stating his case as to why he should be allowed to buy a pint of vodka at 8:30 in the morning… You see, apparently the liquor stores don’t open until 9:00 so a convenience store is the clear choice when you simply cannot wait another 28 minutes to get your alcohol fix.

Makes perfect sense!

After I made my way back to the office I relayed this story to the assistant director and she laughed. I told her that we would probably be seeing the guy at some point later on during the day @ the Library…

As fate would have it he never showed. He was no doubt patronizing another classy establishment in town.

On The Road

Exhibit “A” here on the left was left near the Library’s restrooms. The bag contained a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. Sadly, someone, presumably a vagrant, forgot their dinner. If I learned nothing else by reading Kerouac’s On The Road it was that if you have bread and peanut butter you will never starve… Unfortunately someone undoubtedly went hungry that evening.

In other news I’m still largely off desk so the stories that I’m relaying I heard from my coworkers. First there was the guy who roamed the Library while carrying a lava lamp, LOL!  don’t think anyone ever saw him before or since but the entire time he was in the Library that day he never let go of his lamp.

Then there was the lady who signed in to use the Internet. She logged on and then draped her scarf over the monitor so that she couldn’t see anything on the screen yet sat there staring at it for about an hour. When her session ended she demanded more time. Realizing that the woman was a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic without hesitation my coworker allowed her more time. She smiled, thanked him for the extra time and then immediately turned and let the building.

Bawhahahah!!!

Fire & Urine

Two things have transpired over the last several days, one of these things I witnessed first hand and the other was conveyed to me by a coworker. Several days ago my coworker told me that a patron walked up to him while he was working at Reference and told him that the trash can next to our main entrance was on fire.

Nice! I’m just glad to report that no harm was done to anyone or our building.

Yesterday I noticed an old vagrant fall asleep while sitting near our central stairwell. Normally we wake people up who fall asleep, but in the deep winter we generally cut the homeless some slack… I mean, we’re talking the teens here, in Fahrenheit. Anyway, nearly an hour later the guy woke up and I watched him stagger his way over to the Reference Desk (which he used to steady himself), then along the wall and into the restroom. The entire time I was thinking, “please don’t die.”

Anyway, a few minutes later another coworker came by and alerted me to the fact that “one of our chairs is soaked in urine!” I knew which one it was immediately and then told my colleague all about the staggering man. The Assistant Director came by a while later and moved the chair out of the way… She didn’t think the “Do Not Sit” sign that we crafted was enough.

Happy New Year!

This month has been a real bitch for me in every way… And in many ways a fitting end to the decade of suck. May better days lie ahead for us all.

Way To Converse

Walt at Random just published a book that analyzes the library blogosphere and @ the Library made it into Chapter 5: Conversations (But They Still Blog). The book is entitled But Still They Blog: The Liblog Landscape 2007-2009.

Who knew that we were such great conversationalists?

Does Droid?

A post from Blyberg.net really got my attention (not an easy thing to do these days). It’s entitled Droid + Barcode App + Google Books . My cellphone contract is just about up and I’ve been considering an iPhone, or a Blackberry, but the fact that the new Droid can scan an ISBN and then do a full-text keyword search within the book is astounding! Indeed, these days (or the days soon to come anyway) it may just be the “killer app” for librarians.

I have a few questions though for anyone in the know. What kind of desktop software is available for Droid and how good is it? One of the reasons that I’ve been putting off switching information appliances is that I have a lot of stuff in my PDA, and I mean a LOT of stuff!! I was an early adopter of PDAs before they became phones and I have everything from the usual address book and such, to passwords and much much more… It’s even my checkbook now (encrypted of course). So anyway, I need to be able to extract ALL of the information currently in my phone, back it all up on my computer, and migrate it over to whatever I wind up with.

Will Droid do this? Anyone, anyone, Bueller, Bueller…

Goings On

Over the course of the last month my job responsibilities have changed tremendously guys. Therefore, there have been no posts. There have been no posts because I haven’t worked with the public for weeks now so there isn’t anything to post. With any luck I’ll be working with the public again in the near future and have some stories to tell soon. Until that time however, there isn’t going to be a whole lot to write so just hang in there until the time comes…

40 Days Of Silence

Early on today as I was working the Reference Desk one of our regulars arrived and immediately handed me a note that read:

Sorry I don’t mean to be rude but I took a vow of silence for 40 days

OVER [i flip the note]

Can I please have the local newspaper Woeful Thanks

I read the note, said “sure,” and handed the guy today’s paper. He smiled and walked away.

This particular guy a homeless veteran, but he isn’t an Irregular. He chooses to be homeless even though he has steady part-time work, and he is consistently polite and respectful of the Library staff and our materials. Although he most certainly leads an unconventional life he is always a decent guy.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I Got Paid to Look at Porn Today

Sometimes the duties required of a librarian absolutely astound me.

Over the years I’ve been a plumber, a furniture mover, and an all-around problem solver. Today however, was a new one even for me…

Allow me to back up a bit here. This situation began about a week ago when our Childrens’ Internet computers lost their Internet connectivity. I quickly diagnosed the problem and fixed it, however my solution apparently circumvented the filtering that we use only in the Childrens’ Department.

[aside] I’m not a fan of Internet filtering. It gets in the way of serious research and it’s against professional ideals. That said, I have absolutely no problem with filtering only the Children’s computers. I have no problem with this because as long as a child has permission from a guardian that child can use the PCs anywhere in the building… And all other computers are wide-open allowing unfettered intellectual access to information.

Anyway, the specifics of what ensued I cannot reveal as they would most certainly out my true identity. What I can write, however, is that after a full day of attempted fixes on my part, which consisted of altering various network settings time and again, and then checking to see if these changes actually worked, I got to see quite a bit of porn as there is no other way to test a porn filter than to visit porn sites to see if they are blocked.

… My job is very strange, even when I’m all by my lonesome.

Spanking It

A guy was arrested in a Kentucky library for spanking off to the WWE online:

It’s always nice to know that others share my pain…

Weirdness

As if anything isn’t weird @ the Library.

Anyway, today a guy I never saw before came in to use the Internet. This particular guy was in a wheelchair and he went about his business without any indication of abnormality whatsoever. However, once his Internet session ended he began roaming around the reference stacks kind of orbiting the area until he came to rest facing us at the Reference Desk…

And rest he did.

He sat there looking at us for almost an hour. He sat and he sat just watching us from only about twenty feet away as we went about our business. It was VERY disconcerting. After a while… What seemed like an eternity actually, he rolled on into the restroom and then rolled out of sight.

Strange.

Library Vixen – NSFW

Totally not library related and absolutely NSFW but I just wanted to show a little link love for Library Vixen who just added me to her blogroll. Somehow I can’t help but think that if I took that job in Napa we would have “met. We librarians all deal with our chosen occupation in a multitude of ways, some of us do the liquid lunch, and others do the nooner… But every one of us has some way of coping with what we’re subjected to as public servants on a continuous basis. LOL, and I’m not saying that this is what Vixen is doing here, but if it was it would be a damn good coping mechanism. Either way it makes me a whole lot less Woeful.

Cheers Vixen!

For The ZenfoPro

Oxford fucking Ohio… LMAO!

Jumanji

I was calling reserves today and got a guy on the horn who is either a worker at a zoo or is playing Jumanji as there were all kinds of tropical bird noises and ape noises coming from the background as I was telling the guy that his book arrived. I almost commented on it but with the way my week has been going I thought it best to quit while I was ahead.

Later on, after numerous problems with our Internet computers Cochise and his gimp squeeze stopped to tell me that “she” is insane and that she threatened their lives and that Cochise is said to have a court date in a bordering State but that that doesn’t matter because Cochise isn’t a resident of that State and that means that legal action cannot be taken.

[blink] I have NO idea WTF they were talking about!

… And that she has been institutionalized before and is on multiple medications including Paxil and Zoloft and that they are getting spammed with crazy emails including threats, and they are being called incessantly and that they have changed their email addresses before because of this yet it continues…

At this point I’m numb. I listened to all of this bewildered as it was like I walked into the middle of a conversation that was none of my business yet there I was. I said things like, “that isn’t cool,” and “you should save those emails,” not knowing what they wanted from me and hoping that they would leave quickly so I would no longer have to feign interest. Ultimately I told them to go to the courthouse where the law library is, then I wished them luck.

Now I’m drinking scotch…