I'm bored, but because it's library related it's ok, right?

bored bored bored...and crazy?

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?

Today I had to actually yell at an old man who couldn't hear me tell him when his books were due. He kept turning his hearing aid up and I kept shouting louder. I finally just handed him the receipt, pointed to the due date, and gave a thumbs up.

kooky kommercials

I consider commercials to be a great waste of time and money only because so rarely are they effective in generating more business. Most people who like Coke will drink Coke, a cool Pepsi ad isn't going to make them suddenly change their mind. Watching a woman train for a marathon in Nike shoes doesn't make me want Nike shoes, but I'll notice how thirsty she is and think gee I'm thirsty I think I'll get a Coke.
That said, I've noticed a recent trend in the last few years to bizarro commercials. These commercials advertise their product, but really random. They are usually weird, often very weird, yet I feel as if someone crawled inside my brain and created a commercial specifically for me.
Although JetBlue has been in the crapper lately and I've never even been on a freakin plane, I can't help but stop whatever I'm doing to watch its ad:



Ok, not so weird, as it is retro-pleasant with it's nod to 8-bit, but whatever.
Also, there is ad for Domino's new dessert Oreo Pizza which I think sounds disgusting and I hate Domino's pizza anyway, but the commercial interests me in the way that I try to imagine a board meeting where they've been at it all night when one guy goes, "I've got it, beards made of cookies!" and the other people patting him on the back and saying, "Jenkins, you're a genius!" I also like to imagine the commercial appearing on television in the past, say the 1950's and how people would've been like, "The hell is that?!" Granted, there are much weirder commercials overseas, but maybe we'll catch up?

More commercial weirdness:
Domino's Oreo Pizza
Skittle's Rabbit
Quizno's Rat Things
Snicker's Panda

I also enjoy very low quality local commercials.

finish line

I think the whole Learning 2.0 experience has been a positive one and I’m glad that LCPL set this up for the staff. I was already familiar with many of sites and applications we were sent out to discover, but I previously didn’t think of them in relation to a library setting.
My favorite new “things” were probably librarything and flickr. Prior to learning about flickr, I had just been hosting some of my photos on photobucket but wasn’t satisfied with the set up, etc. Flickr has not only made it really easy to share photos, but I’ve joined all sorts of photo groups which linked me to different online communities ranging from MOMA fans to alternative home décor.
I don’t know if I’ll continue to update my blog here since I have a main one elsewhere and since I don’t know if anyone is actually reading this one (according to technorati my blog is ranked 2,996,932), but perhaps I’ll keep this one alive for a little while and see what comes of it.
I don’t know if the goals in Learning 2.0 necessarily coincided with any of my specific lifelong learning goals, but I believe that any learning is a good thing. One thing I am actually interested in learning is Spanish, or at least brushing up on my unused skills from college. This area is certainly one area where knowing a second language comes in handy, especially working in place centered on the public and information. Perhaps the county could offer language classes or at least tuition reimbursement to employees who took classes on their own ;)
I think one way a program like Learning 2.0 could be improved would be to take away the deadline and post all the things at once so that people could not feel stressed and pick and choose when they want to attempt certain lessons. People less familiar with these tools could then start small before tackling more imposing things. If LCPL offered another program like this in the future I would definitely give it a go.

#22 Audiobooks

I browsed around on Netlibrary for awhile and looked at some titles although I don’t know if I’ll be downloading and listening to them anytime soon. Other than having my parents read stories to me as a kid I can’t think of any other time when I’ve enjoyed being read to. Even as a child I had those play along records and I’d be so excited to read the story for myself I would never wait for the appropriate chime telling me to turn the page. Some of my friends are really into audiobooks either for their commutes or on long car trips, but usually when I’m driving I like to relax and listen to music or zone out and just drive. I also seem to have the attention span of a fly so even when I am listening to some of the podcasts for Learning 2.0 my mind will wander for a second and then I’ll come back and be like wait, what?
My one friend really recommends listening to the Harry Potter series since the reader is supposed to be excellent, which I might consider doing since I’m trying to read them all before the new book comes out this summer and I just started book three. I also love books by David Sedaris and his audiobooks where he reads himself are supposed to be great too.

#21 podcasting

I've been aware of podcasting for awhile since some of the online journals I frequent have their own feeds, but I've never been all that excited to listen to them. I don't listen to the radio all that much and when I'm in my car or relaxing at home I'll put on cd's or records so that I can listen to music that I actually want to hear. But in the spirit of trying something new I went ahead and subscribed to NPR's story of the day podcast and added the RSS feed to my bloglines account.

#20 Youtube and the almighty $

Youtube is a very dangerous site. If you are not careful, you can get sucked in and spend way too much time looking at old commercials. On several occasions I have meant to only briefly visit youtube to look at some video someone has emailed me about and suddenly I realize that an hour has magically vaporated. Since this learning 2.0 project started youtube has been having some legal problems and just wednesday was sued by Viacom for a billion dollars. Can youtube get control of its copyright issues with so many anonymous posters? I think probably not and this will be the beginning of the end for youtube, unfortunately. If it wasn't for the amazing news footage clips, the most talked about moment of a hot tv show, or nostalgic commercials (all posted by fans who don't own the material) would anyone stick around to watch lame video diaries all day? I don't think so.
Already several clips I had placed in my favorites folder have been deleted by youtube. The hardest part is that technology is faster than the laws used to govern these things so now that youtube is a hit everyone wants to get paid. It makes sense in the way the music industry put an end to Napster because of all the illegal file sharing, (except instead of music it's the latest slap fight from an episode of the Real World) but it kinda ruins it for everyone else.