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Randomly Tuesday afternoon

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So this post can seem vaguely work-related (since…um…I’m at work) here’s a lovely picture of where my new office will be in May. Enjoy with me my view through the window of one of the oldest dorms still standing on the campus.

Now for stuff:

  • I don’t really want to live in Montreal. It’s too cold and the politics are too complicated. That said, if I had a place in Habitat, I might consider it.
  • Speaking of Canada, is it sad that I listen to so much Canadian radio that Sleep Country Canada is the first place I would go to look for a new bed?
  • Also speaking of Canada (I do that a lot), you probably have Can-con regulations to thank for the fact that anyone still remembers (or plays) songs like this. But I love anyplace where people actually call in and request Martha and the Muffins.
  • What is Frank Lloyd Wright’s relationship to Anne Baxter and Lincoln Logs? Read this and know the truth.
  • The perils of historic preservation.
  • Related to nothing above: I made a really good meatloaf Sunday night.

Now for more random photos:

Got to attend a presentation by the author of one of my favorite books last week. That was fun.

I’ve been a librarian for over three years but this was the first actual book display I’d ever helped with. My second-in-command (pictured above) gets most of the credit, though.

And now I’m off to a two-hour meeting that will no doubt be every bit as exciting as this post was…

Customer servitude

I know it’s too easy ranting about the post office, but damn, what a staggering level of incompetence they exhibit. They do a great job of delivering unprofitable letters on Saturday at forty-odd cents a pop but they really blow it on the added-value stuff that might actually make them profitable if they did it correctly–like the express package I should have gotten yesterday but will be lucky to see by Monday despite my having followed their instructions to the letter to have it redelivered today. I can’t even track the damned thing. And don’t get me started on the phone call to try to determine its status.

The sad thing is that I’d actually been trying to use the postal service again over the past few years. After my last two run-ins, though, I’m swearing off for anything other than the basics. Mistakes happen but these involved too many distinct levels of them.

Additional awards for staggering incompetence today go to my doctor’s office and the fine folks in Target’s pharmacy department but that’s a rant for another day. Suffice to say that it does not fill me with confidence that my pharmacist can’t tell me which prescriptions have or haven’t been filled and that my physician’s office barely seems to give a shit one way or the other.

Maybe I’m just in a bad mood and should go to bed. Yes, that would be the wisest course.

Randomly Monday afternoon

It’s President’s Day in the US, Family Day in Canada, and just a plain old non-holiday Monday in campus. We take President’s Day and Veteran’s Day the week between Christmas and New Year’s, as George Wahington intended.

Random stuff:

I’m cold and am now going home.

Close to the end

After more than two years and many starts and stops, I’m finally almost done with Phase One of my massive home video archiving project. This is seventeen years of video–nearly three terrabytes–that’s now completely digitized and organized into folders by date. It was no small task. I’ve shot lots of video over the years in multiple analog and digital formats. And I still have all of it, save for a defective tape from 1995 (shot in North Carolina) and one from 1996 (shot in Minneapolis and San Francisco) that I lent to an ex many years ago and never saw again.

I started working on this project right after Mark moved back to San Francisco and kept working on it off an on through the pretty thoroughly miserable two years of personal and family drama that followed. It may not have been the best timing since a virtual walk down memory lane was probably not exactly what I needed at the time. There were a few times when I stopped because things were getting too intense–I was in no mood to listen to romantic banter or my parents in healthier times–or because I didn’t have time, or I was experiencing equipment failure (e.g. the G5), or whatever other reason. All in all, it was sort of like watching my middle age unfold as sort of a documentary. And it wasn’t an altogether bad one, I suppose.

Phase Two will involve making MP4 versions so that I’ll have accessible copies in one consistent format. At that point, I’ll probably complete an index of sorts as well. Yes, I’m a geek and an archivist. If you didn’t already know that by now, you’ve obviously not been paying attention.

A few important realizations:

  • I’ve never been terribly social, but I’m even less so than I used to be.
  • I used to smoke a whole lot.
  • Radio used to suck less than it does now, but not by much. Particularly in places like Winnemucca.
  • I say incredibly stupid and repetitive things while driving.
  • When I look at video from the past few years, I can really see those forty pounds I’ve lost since September. I like that.
  • I hope that my love affairs with Pittsburgh and Los Angeles never go sour.
  • I used to be able to have my way (date, cavort, etc.) with lots of really cute boys. Not quite sure what happened there. OK, I have an idea what happened…