Hey gang, check it out, I’m infamous. Something I created this past week has been picked up by the :”Tame the Web” blog, which is a pretty well respected blog for the library world.

Tonight, I managed to twitter enable our library catalog.   Now, if you find a book you want to recommend to your friends, just click the “tweet this!” link, and fill in your twitter username and password, and click “tweet”.  As if by magic, the item is tweeted, complete with a link to it in our catalog.    Yup, I’m a geek!   Twitter folks, try it out at:

http://library.waubonsee.edu/catalog/

I signed up for a twitter account this morning.  Looked over the API, and by 9:30 had integrated parts of it into the library website.  Staff with twitter accounts now display their current “tweet”  on the library website.  Not one to be satisfied with that…  I created a new program for use in our library system that now automatically “tweets” every time someone checks out a book from the new book display.

Follow the Todd Library at: http://twitter.com/wcctoddlibrary

I’m now also on twitter… As usuall cap60552 is the id.

A few years ago I attended a library conference in Nashville at the gaylord opreland. During the conference there was another conference dealing with industrial water equipment.
Tonight I was sitting at the bar talking with my new friend Gordon. A coiple came in fresh from their vacation in nashville. Gordon mentioned he had been there a few years ago for a conference. They asked about the conference, and he mentioned it was an industrial water equipment conference. My ears perked up, and I began to question him.
I should not have been shocked, it was the same conference. We both sat at the same pub, enjoying the same musicians. Really, what are the odds!?
My life, pretty good actually…

Happy birthday to !!! Many happy returns!!!

Last night I was sitting in the living room and the cold wind was blowing outside. Once again, I could feel the chill coming off the windows in the living room. I tossed and turned all night after I went to bed. I wrestled with making a decision. The old windows in the living room are single pane, leaky, and in need of caulking yet again, a project I hate. The alternative though would be to spend a lot of money on replacement windows. Finally I convinced myself I was being irrational by “justifying” ignoring the ancient single pane windows and I feel asleep satisfied in the knowledge that I had decided to call someone for a quote. When I awoke I dreaded the idea of making the call, but got on the computer and did research. I finally decided on going to the showroom of an area window, siding, and door expert and explain the situation them, and let them explain what they could do for me. After spending a good 45 minutes showing me my options, discussing in detail what they would do to the house, etc, my mother and I decided to give them a shot. We really cannot afford to replace all 9 windows at the moment, so we are starting with the 5 worst ones.
Next Friday the measurement tech will be out to measure the five we chose to replace, and we will go from there. I hope I haven’t made a bad choice on this. I’ve looked up the company, and there’s mixed reviews on the net about them, however there seemed to be a lot more positive reviews than negative ones.

HA! Engrish seems to pop up everywhere anymore. The image below is from a catalog of a well known computer supplier.

It was spoken often that today will be a day that people will speak of for years to come. A day spoken of with phrases such as, “where were you on that historic day?” yes, it is historic that we have elected the 1st black president, and that’s the last I intend to ever mention that aspect of his presidency. It should not be mentioned or used at all. There is a long road to January 20th, and these next few months will lay the groundwork for what has been touted as a presidency for change. It is may hope that it will be that change that defines the look back on history

Where was I? I was at the pub with friends watching the election results on a big screen tv.

Where were you?

Just wanted to share, I voted.

I was surprised to see how busy it was at the polling place.   One of the election judges, who has known me since i was in grade school, said they actually had a line outside the building when they opened.   That is very rare in Somonauk apparently.

Pictures are up, you can see them all in my gallery, some of you might recognize a few people…

Here is one of the more fun shots of the kids all having a conversation with my skeleton puppet. I can see from the pictures, that I do have some work to do on rounding out his shoulders, and making his neck look better. Over all most of the interactions were nice, I scared a few kids, had interesting conversations with a few others. Gave educational advice… Really… If you are taking advice on education from a 9 ft skeleton, you might want to see a licensed therapist. Sadly, like every year there were one or two interactions that broke bad. The worst of all was the 12-14 year old punk that thought it would be funny to jump on my back. The skeleton puppet is basically an aluminum framework built into a backpack. All told, when clothed, it weighs around 50 pounds. I wear this for nearly 5 hours straight. So a 150 pound kid jumping on my back 3 hours into the night is NOT a welcome addition. Sadly, he did this after sneaking up on me… And as a result I bellowed “GET OFF!!!”, thrashed, and then instinctively donkey kicked him about 2 feet behind me into a tree… “Oh my god! He kicked me! He Actually Kicked me!!!”, he moaned as he limped away. I turned to him, and told him to get off the property, and don’t come back. “…And next time you might want to think before sneaking up on someone and jumping on them!” His friends, of course, started taunting me, to which I went into my full outside voice, (I’m actually amped in the puppet so the voice comes from the head and not from the chest) magnified by the amp, shouted “GET OUT OF HERE!!!!” and charged them at a full run. They screamed, ran and didn’t stop running until the next block. Hopefully they ended up with some laundry to do…

My favorite comment of the night came from two women parked in an SUV across the street enjoying the show, “I’m 82 and shes 56, and we are not to old for Tick-Or-Treating!”

I had a lot of great helpers this year, my usual two co-workers, Zack, and Christopher got here very early, and helped with the setup, which was a godsend. The Gardner family, and stevejamalso arrived a few hours early to help out with the final setup. All of the reliable help made it possible to actually have everything done, and working with time enough to eat and get dressed before the start of Trick-Or-Treating. The extra help made tear down go lighting fast. It was incredible to have such a great team and I consider myself very lucky.

Thank you again to everyone who helped out, showed up to watch, said kind words, or just stared in awe at the sheer spectacle of the event.