Getting ready for the big game tomorrow, we’ve got our basement rec room decorated and some candies (including thirteen army figures standing in for the football players with Pace to eat one symbolic one tomorrow right before kick-off!)
Shea and I keep going back and forth on it (and almost gave in today) but we realise we may be the only people in Saskatchewan not watching this game on a HDTV.
We bought our current TV nearly 10 years ago in Calgary and it still works fine so that’s what we’re going with.
When I was born, my parents were running a bulk fuel business in my hometown. I was basically raised in the office of that ESSO fuel station for the first few years of my life (which explains a lot of my current brain damage and any future cancers I may acquire!)
With the number of farmers who hung around waiting to place their orders, pay their bills or just generally shoot the shit, it’s not hard to believe, as my mom swears to this day, my first three “real” words were (in order): “clock”, “combine” and “fuck”.
At least that last one wouldn’t be forever known as my first word…unlike this kid:
It’s a fun read (as any overly complimentary article about your chosen profession tends to be!) But one thing jumped out – the concept of the secrets patrons so willingly share with library staff:
She said nothing. I suspect there might be a class in this for librarians. The essential point being: Make no comments on books being check out. Even seemingly innocent remarks like “Good luck!” with a pile of diet books or “Taking a trip?” when a patron has a stack of travelogues. She was meant to say nothing and she did that.
I still remember chatting with a librarian colleague in Calgary and commenting about how I’d taken out a potentially embarrassing book at the library (either a biography of Osama Bin Laden or the Spice Girls – I can’t remember which) and mentioning how relieved I was that the person at check-out hadn’t made any comment at all about my choice. (I think the Spice Girls bio would’ve been more embarrassing!)
She explained that it was an unofficial policy that staff weren’t to comment on any books that a patron checked out, no matter how seemingly innocuous they might be. (Not sure if she meant just in her branch or system-wide.)
On the other hand, I recently chatted with another libraryland colleague who commented about how much she enjoyed chatting with patrons about the books they were taking out. As well, libraries (including RPL) are increasingly focusing on merchandising of their collections with one element of this being the retail concept of the “upsell” which encourages staff to comment on patron choices to guide them to other materials they may also like.
“Oh, I see you’ve got a Frommer’s Guide to Cuba. Did you know we have non-fiction DVD’s as well?” which again, calls the question of how much commentary there should be at the circulation desk.
I think most patrons would like and appreciate that hypothetical upsell. But perhaps this patron just had their DVD break down after her son peed on it. (Er, another hypothetical example – that would *never* happen in real life.) And she can’t afford to replace it right now because she’s recently divorced (due to a husband who was making heavy use of the DVD player to watch a type of movie you can’t get at the library) and now she has to find a job because they can’t be a stay-at-home mom anymore and so she’s decided to try writing travel articles which is why she needs this book (but not a DVD) and those lawyer fees aren’t paying themselves and hey, all you wanted to help a patron and promote the full range of your collection at the same time. But instead, a simple comment has resulted in a very negative experience for a patron.
I don’t know – that’s an extreme example and I know some people would argue that staff need to be sensitive and make a judgment call. But everyone will have a different line and a different comfort level…on both sides of the desk. There’s also the question of whether it’s better to avoid all circ desk chit-chat at the risk of offending the odd patron here and there when the vast majority would enjoy the interaction?
I think I still tend to lean towards that “better to say nothing” approach myself – at least in the vast majority of cases.
Shea’s been wanting a Wii for a long time and it was looking like we’d get one this Christmas.
But then, she came across the XBox Kinect – a motion-based gaming system where, instead of any handheld controller, your body motions are scanned by a camera/scanner combo placed somewhere near your TV and that’s how you control the games. For example, if you’re playing a sports game and want to kick a ball, you just stand in front of the TV, kick your leg and the virtual ball on screen goes in the direction you aim.
(I’d heard about this cool new system when it was first being developed but hadn’t paid too much attention – partly because I haven’t had a gaming system for years – I think a Sega Genesis was the last one I owned while for Shea, it was a slightly more modern, Super Nintendo. I also partly ignored the news because I heard it was a Microsoft product so how good could it be? ;-))
It’s probably easier to understand what I’m talking about by watching a video…
So anyhow, the idea quickly gained hold on us. We check out some reviews, videos, etc. online then last weekend, Shea made a quick trip to Best Buy to pick one up (they’re in pretty short supply this Christmas season but she knows somebody who knows somebody apparently!)
We get it hooked up quickly (I don’t know why it bugs me so much that gaming systems are plug and play while a new laptop takes hours to set-up – install anti-virus, clear out all the pre-installed crap, configure settings for the OS, install and configure all your favourite programs, set-up networks, etc. etc. etc. On that note, apparently Apple is moving towards using iOS, the operating system that drives the iPhone and iPad, as their core operating system for all their devices including laptops and desktops. Even though it’s a bit of work to set-up a new computer, I do like that you have a lot more control than you do with an iPad or an iPhone so I’m not sure if I like this news.)
So yeah, anyhow, it works as advertised and is pretty damn cool. The games are a bit simplistic (move left, now jump, now duck) but I can imagine a couple generations down the road when the movie-quality games that you now play on consoles are available on a system like Kinect for a very immersive experience.
My all-time favourite computer game has been hockey games – from Wayne Gretzky Hockey on my old 386 to Sega Genesis NHL 94 to EA 2000 which is the last computer hockey game I played regularly – and I played that right until I got my Mac in 2007! I can’t wait for the day that the technology of the Kinect is combined with a realistic hockey game like you apparently get with EA 2011. (Hmm, we have an XBox now too. I wonder if Santa has an extra $70 to spare for that game too???)
Right now, we have one sports title for our Kinect and it has some fun games – I like table tennis and the track & field games so far – but as I said, they’re fairly simplistic. (That’s not necessarily a bad thing – hell, there are probably old DOS games that I could still play for hours!)
I’m nervous for the Western Final today as the Riders (who squeaked past BC last week) face off against their arch-rivals, the Calgary Stampeders.
There’s lots of commentary and analysis around the web – I like RiderFans.com, the Leader Post and have enjoyed The Jurist’s take on the Riders all season long as well.
Oh, and hopefully the team has reviewed this after last week’s crazy back-and-forth game!
Pace is getting very excited for Christmas this year – he “encouraged” us to put up the tree a week ago and then, the next day, decided not only that we had to write a letter to Santa *right now* but also, walk down the dark, snowy street to the nearest mailbox at 7:30pm to mail it. (Okay, I admit I gave in pretty quickly after my “We’ll mail it tomorrow!” line was met with a look from him saying “Are you serious? Tomorrow? That’s HOURS away!”)
The iPhone focused on Pace more than the letter in this photo so if you can’t make it out, he’s asking for Zhu Zhu Pets, track for said Zhu Zhu pets, a Spider-man truck and…a froggy. (Near the end of the letter, I think he saw he had more room to list stuff and started looking around for inspiration – settling on a frog-shaped container that I keep my markers in!)
Oh, and that sort of swirly-shaped thing at the top of the letter? That’s a “circle” he drew for Santa!
DiscoverReads.com is a new site that provides book recommendations based on which books you tell it you already like/have read based on a five star rating system.
I spent some time entering a bunch of books that I liked (realising that most of the books I rated ended up getting between 3-5 stars since what’s the point of reading a book that’s only going to get 1-2 stars?) Once I’d done this for awhile, I started to see that the site’s recommendations tended to just be more books from the same author or the books it recommended that didn’t appeal didn’t seem to have a way to say “no thanks”. It’s also missing the vast majority of Canadian books/authors I searched for which is a big negative for much of the reading I do.
Overall, there’s a lot of potential for a site that provides suggestions based on information you input directly about what you already like. But for the time being, I think I’ll stick with sites and databases like Amazon, LibraryThing, GoodReads, CompleteConnection and so on for my recommendations.
Today is “Have Sex With a Guy With a Mustache” Day, created (by Maxim magazine? Oh, sorry – I mean, Asylum magazine) as a way for women to support the men they love as they grow all those oh-so-sexy soup strainers in support of prostate cancer.
In related news, I thought about registering for Movember but instead, decided just to forge ahead with my annual winter beard. I did consider the idea of shaving off the beard near the end of the month – not really in keeping with the spirit of Movember – but as a great excuse to sport a Fu Manchu for at least a day or two without the embarrassment of having some feeble mustache coming in for a full month. (Apparently embarrassment helps fight cancer too!)
