Month: February 2009

Scenes from the Reference Desk

~ brixton ~ Leave a comment

The worst part of tonight: the patron who tried to bully me into making a webpage for him for $300.  Now, it’s not that I don’t want your $300, dude.  It’s that you’re trying to pressure me into doing something that I have no intention of doing just because I’m nice and it’s my job to help people.  I attempted to make it clear that while I would help him find information about web hosting and site design, I would absolutely not make the website for him.  This went on for about five minutes, until I finally said “Look, I’m not going to make your website” and convinced him to make flyers to hang up so that he could hire cheap (aka student) labor.  Just because you’re from Africa and are computer illiterate (both things he told me) doesn’t mean I’m going to be a sucker.

The best part of tonight: a patron IM’d looking for data on social networking site usage amongst Gen Y/millennials.  Not only was I able to immediately help him – I knew which Pew report would provide the exact information he needed.  It also gave me a really good excuse to publish the still incomplete LibGuide I created.  I’m usually able to help patrons to some extent, but it’s really rare that I get a question that I can totally nail while at the same time having the patron be excited about the information I found for them.  Yay!

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~ brixton ~ Leave a comment

Ow

Sometimes you wear your contacts too much in really dry air and you end up with little tiny pockmarks on your corneas just like if you’d been in a sandstorm.

Sometimes you also feel lousy and can’t look at a monitor all day, so you stay home from work and bake bread and file your taxes and do a little work – less than you should, but more than your eyes really allow.

Sometimes a tiny and lovely guest from the other side of the world takes a bus down from New York for an overnight visit, and you get to have tea and a chat and go out for above average faux meat products and then also meet up with other friends and talk about music.

Sometimes you unexpectedly have a rather nice day!

January project: the thesis!

~ brixton ~ Leave a comment

One of my resolutions this year was to complete at least one craft project per month.  I expanded that definition to be one CREATIVE project per month primarily for this month, when I went on a craft hiatus in order to write my first draft, which I turned in about 10 days ago.  I would share pictures and stuff, but it’s really not all that interesting to look at.

February’s project, in addition to THESIS OMG PART TWO, is posting every day.  This will be split between here, Outpost505, and various other less-public outlets.  I tried to do this in November (I think) but failed.  So if there’s anything you’d like to hear about, feel free to give me a blogging prompt.

Also, new project promises notwithstanding, I realized this weekend that I need to give myself permission to be bad at things for a little while until I finish my thesis.  I need to do that, and I need to recognize it’ll be OK.  It’ll be OK because in six weeks, this whole thing will be behind me!  It’s kind of amazing to think about that.