The Finatic's favorite team, the San Jose Sharks, beat the Phoenix Coyotes by a score of 4 to 2. Althought the Finatic's Sharks took some bad penalties during the second and third periods, they still came out on top. The win allows the Sharks to keep pace with the Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks in the race for the Pacific Division title.
The evening was very special for one of the Sharks' youngest players, Marc-Edouard Vlasic. Vlasic, aka "Pickles," turned 20 years old today and he capped off his birthday with an assist on the Sharks second goal of the night. Good job, Pickles!
The Finatic had a lot of fun at the game. The Finatic and the Finatic's mom put up two posters ("Cheechoo we Wanchoo" and "We heart Sharks"). The Finatic and co. also brought pom-poms, rally rags, and a red light similar to what flashes when a goal is scored.
Two cool colleagues from the library sat next to the Finatic- as always, Finatic does not use names of the Finatic's friends out of respect for privacy (only exception is if name is already listed on another blog). One cool colleague does a whole lot of excellent work for the branch libraries, and Finatic was thrilled to see him at a game. It was the first game for his friend, but she said that this was the best game ever. Hockey is so much cooler in person than on TV.
We laughed at the drunk guys in front of us. One of them had wet shoes as he left to climb the stairs, and he slipped and almost kissed the concrete. He made a good recovery, but this was certainly a sign of things to come. When he came back, he tipped his full glass of al-kee-hol onto the back of the guy in the row in front of him. The drunk didn't even realize it until the guy and his wife started to get a little upset and some of the people from our row offered up napkins. The drunk made a pathetic attempt to help dry the guy off, and the guy said that they probably ought to raise the legal drinking age. The drunk and his buddies left and missed most of the third period.
Well, the Finatic is tired and very thrilled with tonight's results. Tomorrow, the Finatic will be attending a home ownership fair. The Finatic dreams of owning a home in Santa Clara, Alameda, or San Mateo Counties. The Finatic acknowledges that this may be just a pipe dream, but hopefully it will not go up in smoke.
P.S. The Finatic in no way condones the use of illegal substances. The Finatic doesn't even like to take Tylenol for headaches! Besides, the analogy of the pipe dream and up in smoke is a common turn of phrase. If it offends you, you should probably get out more or build a better social armor.
Ever have a test like this?
Friday, March 30, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Sleeping Lessons - The Shins
hopefully this will work... it hasn't for each time the Finatic has tried before
The Evolution of Homer
The Finatic also loves this intro. When the Finatic was in sixth grade, the Finatic memorized all the known stages of human evolution and the corresponding physiology, time, and so on. The Finatic has always loved studying evolution, mutation, and extinction-- the Finatic's favorite museums are natural history museums, especially paleontology and paleoanthropology exhibits.
The Simpsons Movie Trailer #3
The Finatic loves the Simpsons. The Finatic was in first grade when the Simpsons began airing on Fox and has watched them ever since.
Thing 15
Well, apparently the Finatic forgot to do Thing 15. The Finatic thought that the Finatic's superpost mentioned that there were some interesting points, but the Finatic guesses that this is not enough.
So, the Finatic actually looked at all five articles. The emphasis is, of course, on librarianship. But the Finatic is not a librarian (although respectful of those who are), so the Finatic wants to know how the articles apply to Finatic's job. The most interesting points in the "Into a new world of librarianship" was that L2.0 is a trendspotter, controls technolust and allows librarians to make good fast decisions. SJPL has prided itself as a trendspotter, so Finatic can understand why SJPL is participating in the 2.0 learning. The Finatic has witnessed that learning 2.0 is controlling the technolust of many people, but not the Finatic. The Finatic is using 2.0 as a springboard to learning other technologies and finding new resources, and is almost tempted to buy a webcam, an external hard drive (min 200 Gigs), and one of those PC cards that lets a person watch TV on the computer.
The Finatic really likes the concepts brought up in the "To more powerful ways to cooperate" segment. As Finatic has mentioned time and again, the Finatic is a student. One of the greatest challenges of any student is finding ways to gather and share information for team projects. The 2.0 program has taught Finatic that there are many great resources that can be used to collect and share knowledge (ZOHO rocks!).
The Finatic recognizes the importance of building better bibliographic services. Some of Finatic's friends are in library school and they are being required to build databases before they can graduate. If they can find ways to link their databases to the tools presented in 2.0, maybe they can be released from their grad school toil all the sooner.
Well, the Finatic has to run to the desk. The Finatic thinks that this should satisfy the posting requirement for Thing 15.
So, the Finatic actually looked at all five articles. The emphasis is, of course, on librarianship. But the Finatic is not a librarian (although respectful of those who are), so the Finatic wants to know how the articles apply to Finatic's job. The most interesting points in the "Into a new world of librarianship" was that L2.0 is a trendspotter, controls technolust and allows librarians to make good fast decisions. SJPL has prided itself as a trendspotter, so Finatic can understand why SJPL is participating in the 2.0 learning. The Finatic has witnessed that learning 2.0 is controlling the technolust of many people, but not the Finatic. The Finatic is using 2.0 as a springboard to learning other technologies and finding new resources, and is almost tempted to buy a webcam, an external hard drive (min 200 Gigs), and one of those PC cards that lets a person watch TV on the computer.
The Finatic really likes the concepts brought up in the "To more powerful ways to cooperate" segment. As Finatic has mentioned time and again, the Finatic is a student. One of the greatest challenges of any student is finding ways to gather and share information for team projects. The 2.0 program has taught Finatic that there are many great resources that can be used to collect and share knowledge (ZOHO rocks!).
The Finatic recognizes the importance of building better bibliographic services. Some of Finatic's friends are in library school and they are being required to build databases before they can graduate. If they can find ways to link their databases to the tools presented in 2.0, maybe they can be released from their grad school toil all the sooner.
Well, the Finatic has to run to the desk. The Finatic thinks that this should satisfy the posting requirement for Thing 15.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Surveymonkey and Doggies
Today, the Finatic (re)learned just how easy it is to create a survey using surveymonkey. The Finatic is trying to create a survey in order to assist the Finatic's mentor with program and training evaluation. The Finatic last created and administered a survey in the Finatic's last year as an undergrad. The survey then was very small and the Finatic's team used a mix of internet surveying and paper surveys. It was a mess, even though the team only used a simple 5 point rating scale. In the end, the Finatic's team used the data when it presented the idea of a Leadership Studies Academy to professors and administrators at SJSU.
Another survey the Finatic got to administer was regarding cultural attitudes toward sexual education. The Finatic worked with a professor whose emphasis was in sex and gender studies. In that project, the team administered a questionnaire and scantrons to several classes worth of upper-division Human Sexuality students. That survey taught the Finatic basic statistics as well as how to use SPSS (Statistical Program for Social Scientists). The professor ended up using some of the data in a book comparing different countries and cultures.
The Finatic really likes surveymonkey because it will do all the analysis that SPSS and undergraduates desperate for a grade would, and it makes it very easy to send the survey out to lots of people for free or cheap.
In addition to creating a survey, the Finatic has taken in a boarder. The Finatic is sometimes a dog-sitter (and liable to squash them if that were taken literally) and is currently taking care of a very sweet, very soft, and very yappy little dog. When he is quiet he is very lovable, but right now he misses his dog mom. Not even his teddy bear can cheer him up right now.
Another survey the Finatic got to administer was regarding cultural attitudes toward sexual education. The Finatic worked with a professor whose emphasis was in sex and gender studies. In that project, the team administered a questionnaire and scantrons to several classes worth of upper-division Human Sexuality students. That survey taught the Finatic basic statistics as well as how to use SPSS (Statistical Program for Social Scientists). The professor ended up using some of the data in a book comparing different countries and cultures.
The Finatic really likes surveymonkey because it will do all the analysis that SPSS and undergraduates desperate for a grade would, and it makes it very easy to send the survey out to lots of people for free or cheap.
In addition to creating a survey, the Finatic has taken in a boarder. The Finatic is sometimes a dog-sitter (and liable to squash them if that were taken literally) and is currently taking care of a very sweet, very soft, and very yappy little dog. When he is quiet he is very lovable, but right now he misses his dog mom. Not even his teddy bear can cheer him up right now.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
SUPER POST: All 23 Things
Is it possible to do all 23 Things http://sjlibrary23.blogspot.com in less than a week? Yes.
The Finatic started to post on Tuesday, March 20, and finished the 23 Things on Sunday, March 25. Most of it was done on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.
The Finatic was reluctant at first to participate in the Learning 2.0 program. The Finatic still thinks that some of the Things were unnecessary. However, the Finatic did enjoy learning about a lot of the Things. The Finatic's favorite was learning how to post videos into the blog and how to use the Zoho tools. The Finatic can't wait to use the Zoho writer and presenter for classes, especially since the Finatic has to work on group projects where the team turns in a single paper.
One of the Finatic's favorite things about the blog is that it is now easier to share the Finatic's thoughts, pictures, and favorite videos/websites with friends all around. One of the Finatic's best friends lives in Tokyo, so now the Finatic can just post on the blog instead of sending Finatic14's friend a million e-mails a month. It's also great for the Finatic's family who live in other parts of the country.
Will Finatic use this technology for work? Probably not. Finatic is very excited about the application for personal communication and for classes, but cannot see how Library 2.0 will help Finatic catch up on incompletes, missing inserts and so on. Besides, a blog's use for advertising is only as strong as the readers who follow it. If nobody cares in the first place then blogs and other tools aren't very useful for encouraging interaction with our customers.
In conclusion, here is how the Finatic would rate each of the 23 things:
1: Read blog entry & listen to podcast- Easy
2: Pointers from lifelong learners- Easy. Finatic knows people in their eighties who are learning this stuff, but Finatic also believes that adults should not be treated like children by forcing them to learn something that is not an absolute requirement for them to retain their jobs. A good organization respects individual freedom and the skills that make them valuable. The Finatic thought that this was why Library 2.0 was voluntary, and is now confused as to why many supervisors are making this required when it takes away from time that staff could be using to accomplish projects or goals that are of higher priority. This should only be required for those who do programming and outreach (i.e. librarians), and recommended for clerical if things are completely caught up (which never seems to happen because everyone has been so shortstaffed).
3: Create a blog- Easy. Welcome to the world of Finatic14
4: Register with Virtual Services Team- Easy and done
5: Create Flick r account- Easy and done
6: Flick r 3rd party sites- Easy. Really liked the bubble editor and the Warholizer
7: Tech Related Blog- Easy since Finatic likes cell phones and cell phones are technology
8: RSS feeds- Mixed experience. Bloglines gave the Finatic a hard time with the username, so the Finatic got frustrated, but once Finatic figured out what was wrong, this was not so hard to do.
9: Library related feeds/blogs- Easy, but runs into the problem that most new scholars encounter- how do you separate useful, good information (peer-reviewed or professional) from other, less reliable sources
10: Image Generators-Easy and was able to create the image of Spidey singing his own theme song
11: Web 2.0 Winners- Very fun and easy, and was able to combine the YouTube step (Thing 20) with this step
12: Rollyo- Easy, and may be useful for creating limited searches based on a specific subject
13: Del.icio.us- Easy, and very useful for people who have system crashes or change ISPs a lot
14: Technorati- Easy, but don't really see the point when you have so many other tools available.
15: Perspectives on 2.0- Easy step... interesting comments
16: Albany & SJCPL Wikis- Liked Albany's, esp. video tutorials for wikis. SJCPL was cool for genre searches.
17: Wikis- Easy, plus it's fun to edit others if you have the password
18: Zoho- Very easy and very cool- can't wait to use Zoho for school
19: LibraryThing- Easy, disappointing because only one of the Finatic's books was
tagged
20: YouTube- Easy and lots of fun! Mixed Thing 20 with Thing 11.
21: Podcasts- Mixed- video podcasts and RSS feeds were easy, but Finatic couldn't figure out how to post an audio podcast
22: E-books- Easy- been using e-books for a while now. It's harder to teach customers how to use them because the PAC doesn't load Adobe reader.
23: Final Write-up- Well, that would be this one, so it's very easy.
You wanna give it a try?
http://sjlibrary23.blogspot.com
The Finatic started to post on Tuesday, March 20, and finished the 23 Things on Sunday, March 25. Most of it was done on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.
The Finatic was reluctant at first to participate in the Learning 2.0 program. The Finatic still thinks that some of the Things were unnecessary. However, the Finatic did enjoy learning about a lot of the Things. The Finatic's favorite was learning how to post videos into the blog and how to use the Zoho tools. The Finatic can't wait to use the Zoho writer and presenter for classes, especially since the Finatic has to work on group projects where the team turns in a single paper.
One of the Finatic's favorite things about the blog is that it is now easier to share the Finatic's thoughts, pictures, and favorite videos/websites with friends all around. One of the Finatic's best friends lives in Tokyo, so now the Finatic can just post on the blog instead of sending Finatic14's friend a million e-mails a month. It's also great for the Finatic's family who live in other parts of the country.
Will Finatic use this technology for work? Probably not. Finatic is very excited about the application for personal communication and for classes, but cannot see how Library 2.0 will help Finatic catch up on incompletes, missing inserts and so on. Besides, a blog's use for advertising is only as strong as the readers who follow it. If nobody cares in the first place then blogs and other tools aren't very useful for encouraging interaction with our customers.
In conclusion, here is how the Finatic would rate each of the 23 things:
1: Read blog entry & listen to podcast- Easy
2: Pointers from lifelong learners- Easy. Finatic knows people in their eighties who are learning this stuff, but Finatic also believes that adults should not be treated like children by forcing them to learn something that is not an absolute requirement for them to retain their jobs. A good organization respects individual freedom and the skills that make them valuable. The Finatic thought that this was why Library 2.0 was voluntary, and is now confused as to why many supervisors are making this required when it takes away from time that staff could be using to accomplish projects or goals that are of higher priority. This should only be required for those who do programming and outreach (i.e. librarians), and recommended for clerical if things are completely caught up (which never seems to happen because everyone has been so shortstaffed).
3: Create a blog- Easy. Welcome to the world of Finatic14
4: Register with Virtual Services Team- Easy and done
5: Create Flick r account- Easy and done
6: Flick r 3rd party sites- Easy. Really liked the bubble editor and the Warholizer
7: Tech Related Blog- Easy since Finatic likes cell phones and cell phones are technology
8: RSS feeds- Mixed experience. Bloglines gave the Finatic a hard time with the username, so the Finatic got frustrated, but once Finatic figured out what was wrong, this was not so hard to do.
9: Library related feeds/blogs- Easy, but runs into the problem that most new scholars encounter- how do you separate useful, good information (peer-reviewed or professional) from other, less reliable sources
10: Image Generators-Easy and was able to create the image of Spidey singing his own theme song
11: Web 2.0 Winners- Very fun and easy, and was able to combine the YouTube step (Thing 20) with this step
12: Rollyo- Easy, and may be useful for creating limited searches based on a specific subject
13: Del.icio.us- Easy, and very useful for people who have system crashes or change ISPs a lot
14: Technorati- Easy, but don't really see the point when you have so many other tools available.
15: Perspectives on 2.0- Easy step... interesting comments
16: Albany & SJCPL Wikis- Liked Albany's, esp. video tutorials for wikis. SJCPL was cool for genre searches.
17: Wikis- Easy, plus it's fun to edit others if you have the password
18: Zoho- Very easy and very cool- can't wait to use Zoho for school
19: LibraryThing- Easy, disappointing because only one of the Finatic's books was
tagged
20: YouTube- Easy and lots of fun! Mixed Thing 20 with Thing 11.
21: Podcasts- Mixed- video podcasts and RSS feeds were easy, but Finatic couldn't figure out how to post an audio podcast
22: E-books- Easy- been using e-books for a while now. It's harder to teach customers how to use them because the PAC doesn't load Adobe reader.
23: Final Write-up- Well, that would be this one, so it's very easy.
You wanna give it a try?
http://sjlibrary23.blogspot.com
Podcasts
The Finatic found the Shins music video on a podcast site. The Finatic also wanted to include some other podcasts, especially one from a jazz station in Florida, but it was more difficult than expected to load/link the podcast to the blog. This was a very fun exercise for the Finatic because even though the Finatic owns an iPod, the Finatic has never really played with podcasts. The Finatic hopes to learn more about podcasts.
Because the Finatic is also a college student, the Finatic hopes that professors can use the technology in the Web 2.0 program to make sitting through lectures a thing of the past. The Finatic especially hopes that the Finatic graduate program can use this technology to make classes more accessible for students who have awkward work programs. A podcast (either audio or video) would be great for a class, and if it was used in conjunction with Zoho writer and blogs, professors could still follow a student's progress and contributions to the class. Plus, this is great for the adult students who have work, family, and other commitments that may take away from the time spent in a physical classroom.
Because the Finatic is also a college student, the Finatic hopes that professors can use the technology in the Web 2.0 program to make sitting through lectures a thing of the past. The Finatic especially hopes that the Finatic graduate program can use this technology to make classes more accessible for students who have awkward work programs. A podcast (either audio or video) would be great for a class, and if it was used in conjunction with Zoho writer and blogs, professors could still follow a student's progress and contributions to the class. Plus, this is great for the adult students who have work, family, and other commitments that may take away from the time spent in a physical classroom.
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