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Thirst

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THIRST

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Posted 24 September 2008 § Main Page § Politics ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

"All by myself, don't wanna be, all by myself, anymooorre!"

Shea's mom had a couple days off so Shea and Pace headed down to Weyburn on Sunday for a brief visit, returning tomorrow.

It's been good timing as that's allowed me to pluck away on the new Mac for a couple days without interruption – I mean, I love Pace more than anything in the world but there are times when I miss my former life too – being able to watch movies uninterrupted, sleep uninterrupted, put something on the floor without worrying about it being ripped apart, being able to get into a cupboard or go downstairs without navigating the baby-proofing safety devices we have in place.

On the flip side, I had the whole city in front of me after work today so what did I do? Go to a movie? Go to a “no kids allowed” bar for supper? Sit in the dark and do shots of whiskey until I blacked out? (Okay, I'm reaching for things you can't do once you have a baby but you get the idea.) Anyhow, I grabbed a couple movies when I left RPL and having watched “Requiem For A Dream” and am debating re-watching “The Aristrocrats”. That's it – that's my “nobody here but me, myself and I” adventure. Although both movies fall in the “disturbing and profane” category, I have to admit – I'm officially boring. An adult. A dad.

I'm not complaining though – because she's practicing extended breastfeeding, Shea hasn't been away from Pace for more than I think six hours EVER. And I'm stretching there because that was in those few short weeks when he might sleep six hours straight without waking up for a slurp. I think it may be four hours if you count how long's she's ever physically been away from him.

On the other hand, I've had a couple chances to be away from Pace for a night or two – the odd time when I was called to go to a community near Indian Head for work, I'd go to my parents' house the night before to shorten my drive the next day. When I was doing training in the far reaches of our region, I stayed in a hotel for a couple nights (that was in the far NE corner. At the far SE corner, I was able to stay with Shea's aunt and uncle so Shea and Pace came with me.) And in the one that I still regret, the night Pace was born, we weren't able to get into a private room and the nurse was adamant that there could be no one else staying in a shared room. I probably didn't put up nearly the fight I should have and ended up going home at 4am after nearly 16 straight hours at the hospital. (Luckily I did go home – all four grandparents had gotten into our liquor cabinet and were celebrating – but that's a whole other story!) I ended up having one drink with them then crashing for, oh, maybe three hours before going back to the hospital.

Anyhow, I was going to put a YouTube clip of Pace up because I haven't done that for awhile. But YouTube's not cooperating so maybe another day…

Posted 23 September 2008 § Main Page § Pace § Shea ‡ Comments (2) °

Howdy Pardner!

Pace's name often gets mis-heard as “Chase” or “Ace” or other western-themed terms. So I thought this photo from a recent birthday party we attended was fitting. (I'm also happy to report that the conversion continues – I was able to download nearly a month's worth of photos and video clips from our camera into iPhoto without too much trouble – well, other than the fact that they don't appear to be where they should be. Unless they get stored as hidden files automatically or something? And maybe it's still too new to me but I think that iPhoto pales in comparison to Picasa which isn't yet available for a Mac but a version is rumoured to be under development.)

Posted 21 September 2008 § Main Page § Pace § Photo ‡ Comments (0) °

I Am A Mac (Rookie)

Okay, more questions for whoever it is providing such good answers in my last post (they're signing their posts as “K” but I think of them as “Sweet Apple Angel of Knowledge”.

The software updates didn't fix my inability to see my full control console when doing blog posts. On my PC, I'd see buttons that could do things like add quick links to images, spellcheck (which I never used but nice to know it was there!), changing font, change the font size, etc. Now, all I see are buttons for Bold, Italic, Underline, Strikethrough, Add Link and Blockquote. I doubt this is one for whoever's reading – I'll have to ask my blog provider if they have suggestions. Perhaps a setting that I'd previously adjusted in my download of Firefox 3.0 on my PC needs to be flipped on the Mac version as well?

After I installed Thunderbird, the icon is sitting waiting to be dragged to the Application folder. I had no problem doing this when I installed Firefox so can't figure out why Thunderbird is “hung up”.

On a PC, the “delete” button erases characters ahead of your cursor and the “backspace” key deletes characters behind your cursor. On a Mac, it appears that delete erases characters behind your curso – yep – and I don't see a backspace key. Is there an equivalent?

The illuminated keyboard has come on a couple times – how does that get triggered? (Oh, I see – looks like a sensor on the caps lock key. I'll leave this question up even though I look like an idiot in case some future web searcher has the same question.)

Oh, and I should do a quick summary of my previous experiences with Macs just because…

In about grade eight or so, I remember that they got an AppleIIc in the public library in Indian Head and I spent hours there playing some really basic games – I don't remember exactly what they were but probably whatever the IIc's equivalent of Solitaire and Minesweeper were. Then, when I worked at the Saskatchewan Publishers Group, I was sent out to work with our various publisher members on mini-projects. One of these was doing some web design for the University of Saskatchewan's Extension Division putting together a web page with video clips for a documentary on Mad Cow Disease that one of their agricultural economists had produced. That page is long gone and a quick search didn't reveal any references to the video. But it was a great learning experience to spend a couple weeks at the University working on Macs when I think every other one of our publishers (with the exception of the graphic designer at a literary publisher who was a Macvangelist even back then) was on PC's. I think that's about it. Whew!

Posted 21 September 2008 § Main Page § Technology ‡ Comments (7) °

I Am A Mac!



A great response by Bill Gate$ (finally) but too little too late…

After getting the word that they would not be able to bring my PC back to life for a reasonable cost (fried motherboard – mmm, tasty!), I went out today and took the plunge. I am now the proud (if slightly nervous) owner of a MacBook Pro.

Random thoughts and questions I'll be searching for answers to in the next day or two (answers greatly appreciated!)…

– did I need the Pro? I decided to go for it for the bigger monitor, the bigger HD (I know I could've special ordered a bigger HD in a regular MacBook but I've also been waiting for over two weeks for final word about my PC laptop so I just wanted to get the new machine and get rolling.)

– where are the “Home” and “End” keys?

– on a PC, you (should) use the “Safely Remove Hardware” button when removing USB drivers, cameras, etc. Is there something similar to be done on a Mac?

– I've downloaded Firefox and it mostly looks the same but for some reason, it's not showing me the full panel of controls for this blog so this post may be in Times instead of Arial. (I think I have to do a bunch of system updates to get everything up-to-date. I'll do that after I post this and see if it fixes things.)

– how do I get something off the dashboard?

– how do I see how much space I have on the hard drive? (And is there even a right-click on MacBooks?)

Oh, and completely unrelated to my MacBook purchase, my hosting package is due for renewal today and not letting me do it online for some reason. So this blog may be down tomorrow depending on what I can do tonight. (With the renewal looming and then, my other computing crashed, I gave some serious thought to whether I wanted to keep the blog going. I think I'll keep it going for the time being and maybe re-assess again next yar.)

Anyhow, so far, nothing insurmountable and man, I feel cooler and more creative already! 😉

Posted 21 September 2008 § Main Page § Technology § Video ‡ Comments (6) °

Friday Fun Link – Deletionpedia (Sept 20, 2008)

Deletionpedia attempts to capture the tens of thousands of pages that have been deleted from Wikipedia for one reason or another.  It sometimes misses the odd one but hey, look, the page I started on Lukas Rossi is still going strong! 

If you didn't read it the first time I posted it, you should also definitely check out Nicholson Baker's piece on Wikipedia which talks about their deletion mentality.  Baker is already well-known in libraryland as an advocate for preservation of books and newspapers by libraries in an age of digitization. 

Posted 20 September 2008 § Internet § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Organization Development Specialist…

…could also be called “OD Specialist” if the longer title won't fit on your business card.  I can't remember which co-worker pointed this out to me today but I thought it was pretty funny. 

Posted 19 September 2008 § Humour § Main Page § Work ‡ Comments (2) °

Finally, An Accurate Use of Pie Charts

Statistics can be made to say pretty much anything but I don't think there's any disputing this.

Posted 18 September 2008 § Humour § Main Page § Photo ‡ Comments (0) °

Will The Future of Reference…

…Be Found in Social Q&A Sites? 

I think so.  Ask.MetaFilter.com is one of my first stops whenever I'm seeking information – whether it's technology, parenting or pretty much anything else. 

Jessamyn may not be going quite as far as me on this but she did have a recent post on the topic. 

“[It] really comes down to an elucidation of one of the first things I
learned in library school: people ask their friends to help them with
their information needs before they ask experts or professionals.”

Posted 17 September 2008 § Internet § Library § Main Page ‡ Comments (2) °

Palin Loves The Second Amendment, Not So Sure About The First

Yet more follow-up on the “Sarah Palin attempted to ban books” story – this one a bit more legitimate sounding than the last one. 

“The author of the book Sarah Palin reportedly tried to have removed
from her hometown library blasted back Saturday evening, saying the
Alaska Governor had a “small-town mind,” was an enemy of intellectual
freedom and a “disastrous choice” for vice president.”

And the New York Times does the vetting that John McCain apparently failed to do (or didn't care about what they found) with the results being not unexpected.  This story includes more on the book banning story…

“The new mayor [Palin] also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She
appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the
library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library
director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would
bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms.
Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

Witnesses
and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about
removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign
says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms.
Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed
the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong
there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book,
which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was
inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said
she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing
that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she
didn’t even read it.””

Posted 16 September 2008 § Censorship § Main Page § Politics § PopCulture § United States ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: