Also known as Job Security. (Believe it or not, there is a very sturdy desk under there. Somewhere.)
Tag: work
Staff Meeting Doodle
gel ink in steno pad
6 x 6 inches
This must have been the week for meetings. First, it was yearly evaluations (oh noes!), then the monthly tech services meeting, then today, our little unit meeting. The main topic of discussion in the last two meetings (well, the most interesting to me personally) was the new handling for series statements. Exciting, huh?
Word of the Day: Queueueueueueueueueueueueueue
Folks, the word is kyoo, not kway. WTF?! Every time I hear it mispronounced, I get a mental picture of a line of boats gently bobbing, dockside, which is not at all the same thing as a stack of books in one’s to-be-cataloged backlog.
Kthnxbye.
Vast Tracts of… Books!
I’ve cataloged 124 items* so far today, and it’s only 2pm. Can I go home now?
*That’s about 15 items per hour, not accounting for breaks. When we were told last year that one of the candidates for Dean of the Li-barry said that copy catalogers should be doing (if I recall correctly) 11 books per hour, everyone got up in arms about how no way, no how, nuh-uh could anyone work that fast. Um, yeaaaaaah.
Crane
A new construction crane appeared last week, at the big dig behind Business/SPEA. It has a red and white flag on top, which I assume means it’s a sovereign nation.
The view is of the northwest sky, so the pink band in the top photo is the Belt of Venus, not the sunrise. The bottom photo was taken about 20 minutes later, after the sun had risen.
And that’s about all I saw of the sky today. I spent almost the whole day up in the stacks, pulling books for the Google Books Library Project[1], and there aren’t any windows up there. There’s not much in the way of air conditioning, either. It was hot and stuffy and dusty and pretty much the opposite of enjoyable. But it’s a neat project, so I’m glad that I get to help out with it.
It also means that I was finally able to justify buying an iPod. I have resisted, because I hate the evil Apple empire even more than I hate the evil MS empire. Resistance, however, is futile. Or something. It should be here on Tuesday, so hopefully I won’t have to do another marathon book pulling session sans music. I think my brain might turn to pudding if I did.
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1. I once had a raging asshole tell me that library workers want to make it difficult for the public to access information. If I live forever, I don’t think I’ll ever understand how the hell anyone could come to that conclusion. It’s pretty much the polar opposite of everything that libraries and library workers at every strata strive for. We want our patrons to find the information they need as quickly and easily as possible. That’s why libraries are participating in things like the Google Books Library Project. Duh.
Going to the Dark Side
I bought an iPod. The price was right (20G iPod Classic kit for $99, which is half the price of an 8G Shuffle), and since I’m participating part time in the library’s Google Books project, I need music to listen to while I pull books from the stacks. Otherwise, my brain might collapse into a black hole.
I still hate Apple with the heat of a thousand suns, though.
Name Your Price
I got asked to do another cat sitting job. It’s for three weeks in September, which is kind of long, but I sat for these cats for two weeks last summer, and it went fine. I’ve had numerous shorter jobs for this client over the past couple of years, so except for the length of the job, this is all completely routine. Except that this time, when asking me if I could do the September job, she said, “Name your price.”
What does that mean? Is she thinking I’ll cut her a break, because it’s a large job? Or does she think that I’ll want more, because it’s a large job? I just want what I normally get, and if gas goes up significantly, I intend to add a fuel tax. (The fuel tax is something we’ve discussed and come to an agreement about already, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s part of any future jobs I do for them.)
I have no clue what to tell her, if and when she asks again what I’m charging.
God, I hate negotiating fees. I sat for the ex-wife of another client a couple of months ago, and when I went for the initial meet-n-greet, she asked what I charged. I told I’m flexible, but I usually get $15/day if it’s just one visit and $25/day for two (See? There’s already a built-in bulk discount!). That doesn’t seem out of line to me, considering how much boarding costs[1]. But maybe that’s high? Because when I told her, she was taken aback. So I repeated, “I’m flexible. How much do you normally pay your other sitter(s)?” We did finally come to an agreement (I think it was $12/day for one visit), but I don’t think I’ll get any repeat business from her.
Hrmf! This is the sort of annoying crap that keeps me awake at night. Hopefully, she doesn’t think she’s entitled to the Friends’ Discount for the September job, cuz that ain’t gonna happen!
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1. The cheapest I’ve seen locally is $10/night per cat[2]. So $20/night for two cats, which is slightly cheaper than my “two visits per day” rate. However, cats being what they are, it just seems to make more sense to leave them at home, instead of stressing them out by boarding them.
2. That’s at Canine Companions, and let’s just say that I wouldn’t board my dog there, much less my cat. Maybe things have improved lately? I heard some rotten things about them from coworkers, and when I used to go in there to buy feed, the lack of supervision of the outdoor play area did not favorably impress me.
What I Learned Today
According to Catalogue of banned publications cinematograph pictures and records from 1st August, 1968 to 30th June, 1980, the movie The Return of Count Yorga was–for some incomprehensible reason–banned in Malawi.
Other banned gems include Sweet Sins of Sexy Susan and Mondo Teeno.
That is all. As you were, comrades.
Illiterate Horndogs
I just went down to the cafeteria (I required a caffeinated, carbonated beverage). It’s freshman orientation, so the library is swarming with families. On my way back up the escalators, there was a mother and father in front of me. The guy was behind the woman, and he was grinding on her! And since I was behind them–meaning, lower–the, um, action was right at eye level.
Alsotoo! The same couple passed not one, not two, but three signs stating that there is no access to the 3rd-5th floors from the escalator. If you want to go to those floors, you have to go back to the 1st floor and take the elevator. The 2nd floor hallway dead ends at a locked door (the entrance to tech services), at which point I told them that they were probably in the wrong place.
Learn to read, people!
Title of the Day
Proterozoic unconformity and stratabound uranium deposits: report of the Working Group on Uranium Geology. Organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency, edited by John Ferguson.
US$246?!!! For a book on uranium deposits that was published in 1984?! And what I find even more mind boggling is that there is a copy listed on Amazon.
red paper boat 