Although I’d really pulled back on my involvement lately, I’ve gotten a lot from CLA over the years.
Here are a few of the main things that jump to mind…
– drove a van of students from London to attend the CLA conference in Ottawa in 2006 while I was in library school
– attended a couple other conferences after I started working at RPL (Montreal, Edmonton)
– represented public libraries on a committee to redesign the CLA web site
– won 2nd Place in CLA’s Student Essay contest back in 2006 (or was it 2007?)
– a FIMS alum donated a $50 CLA gift certificate when I won the Spirit of Librarianship Award
– did I co-chair the CLA Emerging Members group or am I completely mis-remembering that? I think I was just heavily involved but not as a co-chair?
– was asked to present to the CLA Emerging Tech Group during the Montreal conference…
I consider myself pretty tech savvy so people were often surprised to hear/see that I was still using an iPhone 4S that I got in Fall 2011 as my smartphone.
There’s a few reasons for this but the main one is that the phone still worked well enough for the most part and I’m not a huge fan of the planned obsolescence that is built into so many of the devices we use these days (not just technology – everything from appliances to clothing seems designed to not last as long as it should.)
Funny enough, it was that move towards planned obsolescence that probably finalized my decision to get a new phone, something I’ve been thinking about for quite awhile. But when I read an article that Apple was facing a class action lawsuit for forcing people to upgrade their hardware to run newer versions of their operating system software and, as a result, they’d quietly built something into the latest update (iOS 9.2?) that actually made older phones run faster (quietly because if they admitted this, they’d be admitting guilt in their law suit), I decided that maybe I should upgrade my own iOS, something I’d stopped doing probably a couple major upgrade cycles ago.
But of course, given my crappy old phone, the upgrade got half-way finished then my phone crashed. When it came back up, the phone went into “Searching” mode but couldn’t find my carrier. I tried a couple things including a reset and a restore from backup but nothing fixed the issue. I went to SaskTel to see if a new SIM card would resolve things and that didn’t work either. So, even though I’d been thinking about it for awhile, I made a fairly spontaneous decision to upgrade.
I also did a couple different things – instead of going for the latest and greatest, I decided last year’s model (iPhone 6 instead of 6S) would be sufficient based on what I’d read of the differences between the two phones. I’ve also always been a fan of buying as much storage as you can – whether for desktops, laptops or now, smartphones – but again, they only had a 64GB in stock, no 128GBs and knowing I needed to walk out with a working phone, I rationalized both the cost saving and also that my life is increasingly moving to the cloud – most of my music coming via streaming services instead of local on iTunes, photos & videos stored in the cloud and optimized locally, not needing to have as many games apps on my phone since both kids essentially have their own devices now, etc. So perhaps I could get away with staying with a 64GB model (which is what my old phone had.)
I took the phone home, did a restore from backup and was pleasantly surprised how easy it was and how many settings came over as well (most apps just needed passwords re-entered). It also realised how many workarounds I’d been doing on my old phone that now worked…
Apple Photos never worked properly with my old phone like it did with Shea’s newer iPhone 6 Plus (and Sasha’s new iPad Mini that Santa brought her for that matter)
I’d stopped using Bluetooth with my Pebble smartwatch because it seemed to suck my phone battery dead really quickly (although the battery also died relatively quickly, even without bluetooth enabled)
the 30-pin connector on the phone was “loose” and had to be connected just so to actually charge the phone
I didn’t realise how small the iPhone 4S screen was until I started using the iPhone 6 (I didn’t go for the Plus like Shea did who has basically stopped using anything else and now uses her smartphone as her main computing device)
That size has a trade-off and I still miss how the iPhone 4S “fit” into my hand and allowed me to easily reach every corner of it (I’m still not in the habit of using the double-touch feature to shrink the screen to better reach all parts of the screen.)
I’m sure there’s other advantages/disadvantages of the move but overall, very happy with the change and of course wondering why I put it off so long (tight-fisted Scottish heritage may play a *wee* part!) 😉 Of course, if I’d made the jump around Christmas when they were really good deals, I might’ve saved even a few more dollars.
Oh well, I’ll do another post on Boxing Day in 2020 after my next upgrade!
Does anyone else find the idea of caucuses weird (especially how the Democrats do it where you show your support publicly and others try to convince you to support other candidates?)
It also seems like there’s an inherent bias to people who can afford to give up an evening – harder for the single parent or the college kid with an evening job to attend.
Final Republican Results are: 1) Craze Cruz 2) Trumpet 3) Rubio Widely being spun as a win for #1 & #3 and a loss for long-time front runner, #2 (though there’s an argument this could be better for him in the long run then taking #1)
Time will tell and *all* predictions are off
I mean, I watch CNN but I also hate CNN – the intentional/unintentional bias (at one point, Clinton was at 49.8 and Sanders was at 49.5 and they showed it as 50-49. I mean, if you’re going to round up one, you should round up both, no?)
I also hated how they instantly started making predictions based on exit polls which are beyond meaningless if history is any indication.
But if you listened to CNN, you’d think 100% of first-time caucus goers were voting for Sanders and 100% of repeat caucus goers were voting for Clinton.
There are people who will vote for Clinton simply because she’s a woman/they want to see a female President. I keep wondering if Sanders could offset this by taking the unprecedented step of announcing who he’d pick as his VP AND that he intends to only serve one term? There are rumours that she might be appointed to the Supreme Court but I wonder if someone like Kamala Harris would fit the bill? (Er, that’s obviously just if you’re trying to check off boxes on the “identity politics” scorecard with no eye towards picking someone to offset Sanders’ weaknesses – eg. foreign affairs – or to represent one of the regions that usually decide the election – Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania. Oh, and never mind.)
It’s probably worth a separate post but a battle between a centrist, establishment candidate with a family history in politics and an outsider socialist staging an insurgent campaign using innovative Internet tools and exciting the grassroots feels somewhat familiar. 😉
Don’t have the link right now but if they were to pick the most representative state to begin primary season taking into account demographics, religion, income and maybe 1-2 other factors, Illinois would be the best place to start, not Iowa.
Did I mention how I alternately find the Republican field clown car hilarious and Stephen King’s nightmare-level horrifying?
Another reason I hate CNN – every couple minutes, there’s BREAKING NEWS! that’s not.
Marco Rubio’s speech sounded the most like a victory speech of all of them and he came in third (true, Sanders/Clinton tied but I thought Cruz would be a bit more arrogant. Maybe he’s maxed out?)
It’s far-fetched but someone proposed that there could end up being a four-way race – Cruz wins his nomination so Trump runs as an independent, Sanders wins so Bloomberg sees a big empty eight lane highway right up the middle so he decides to run as a third-party centrist candidate.
Following up on yesterday’s post, John Scott capped an amazing run that, if it was a movie script, would be rejected as too unbelievable – starting as a joke write-in candidate for the NHL all-star game, getting traded and demoted, his all-star berth in doubt, fighting back against the powers that be, both directly and with the support of a huge fan backlash to play in the NHL All-Star game where he not only didn’t embarrass himself but managed to score a couple goals, captaining his team to victory in the mini-tournament, helping make the most memorable all-star game I can remember, and (again) become a successful write-in candidate to win MVP over the three players picked by the league!
I mean, his wife who is pregnant with twins, said she didn’t want to jump too much during the game in case she induced labour with the babies being due any day – that’s like something a movie studio would cut as too unrealistic!
People can stomp their feet and claim “it’s embarrassing to the league and the All-Star Game” all they want. But, the game features a Velveeta cheese fountain, celebrity coaches no one has heard of, and most importantly it’s an exhibition game.
[Scott] has become the saviour of the All-Star Game, and legions of people have become fans of Scott, the every-man who is living his dream with a smile ever-present on his face.
The NHL All-Star Game is about to start and before the game even happens, it’s been one of the most eventful in memory.
It all started with a couple journalists suggesting it would be funny to encourage people to vote for one of the “worst” players in the NHL in the open fan vote, Phoenix Coyotes’ enforcer, John Scott.
Then, another wrinkle – the Phoenix Coyotes (the team he was on when voted in as an all-star) traded him to the Montreal Canadiens who immediately demote Scott to the AHL, raising questions about whether he was still eligible to play (and if this was the intention of the trade via a backroom conspiracy brokered by the NHL who still feared being embarrassed at one of their showcase events.)
Scott himself pointed out in later interviews that this trade was *highly* unusual in that enforcers rarely get traded mid-season when their team is winning. Family matters rarely get factored into trades but on top of everything, Scott’s wife is nine months pregnant with twins which adds insult to injury.
(But if there are hockey gods, they’re paying attention – Phoenix who were playing above expectations all year have had a losing record since the trade. Montreal has fallen from being one of the best teams in the league at the start of the season to a non-playoff team!)
Anyhow, all of this leads to an enormous backlash from fans who resent their vote being manipulated this way – whether they voted for Scott or not. The majority of NHL players, all-stars and otherwise, plus coaches and others in the game are also supportive, knowing that enforcers do one of the most difficult jobs in sport and also that the NHL shouldn’t take its fans for granted in such a blatant fashion.
The NHL realizes they have a public relations disaster on their hands and backpedal, saying they meant to have Scott at the game all along, that any comments anyone made about his kids are “irrelevant”, and that they’re excited about having him involved.
During the saga, Scott pens an amazing essay, “A Guy Like Me”, which, if you read nothing else in this post, you should click through to read.
In it, Scott reveals he’s not another lunk head fighter but that he’s a trained engineer, that his idol who he alway wanted to emulate was superstar, Ray Bourque, and that he knows the job he does is brutal, frightening and necessary.
To my mind, this is 100% on the NHL – not the fans who voted for Scott, not the media, not Redditors nor anyone else.
The NHL allows a fan vote so they should live with the results. If people brigade the vote to pick someone who’s eligible but not “deserving”, guess what? That’s been happening as long as the Internet has had polls. Some are binding, some aren’t (ever see the final list of who gets voted for each year in Time’s “Person of the Year” poll? Ever see it match who actually gets picked?)
Plus, it’s supposed to be a fun event. So why suck all the fun out of it, even if it’s mischievous fun? (But when have the suits in the corner offices ever understood that?)
Anyhow, not having done anything to preemptively prevent this situation (how about limiting each team to 3-5 names on the ballot and no write-ins if they want some control over who gets picked?), the NHL should’ve embraced the vote and turned it into a way to promote the game and the players (basically what’s happened anyhow because of their ham-fisted meddling.)
Oh, and I said it’s 100% on the NHL but Arizona and Montreal appear complicit and I would be very happy if neither made the playoffs this year as punishment from the hockey gods!
Doesn’t anyone remember Trump and his words with John McCain?! This [veteran] is talking about how tough it is being in a war. He is standing on a stage with [Donald Trump] a man who ridiculed a POW for no good reason for being captured and tortured in a war. Trump’s supporters are incredibly delusional.
