Month: October 2006

Ode to Library Patrons

Thank you Heather,”When I became a librarian I was woefully under prepared for the mess that awaited me beyond the library door. I’ve been a library patron, but the libraries that I frequent are quiet, studious places filled with lovely library patrons who read books and do research on the computers.

Thank you Heather,

“
When I became a librarian I was woefully under prepared for the mess that awaited me beyond the library door. I’ve been a library patron, but the libraries that I frequent are quiet, studious places filled with lovely library patrons who read books and do research on the computers. The library that I work at on the other hand is a mish mash of the ignorant, the indigent, the clueless, the rude, and my personal favorite the aromatic.

Please find somewhere else to spend your miserable time. I’m sick to death of dealing with you. Why is it that no one understands that the library is not a homeless shelter, free baby sitting service, social service agency, video arcade, peep show, or an other of the 999 other inappropriate uses that you have for it?

To the smelly homeless guy that is always asleep by the magazines: For the last time, no you cannot sleep in the library. It’s a rule that we had to make to keep people like you from sleeping all day in the library. I feel bad for your situation, really I do, but I also know that you can get free meals, a place to sleep and a shower if you just stop at the shelter that is 3 blocks away from our front door.

To the guy who asked me if we could keep his extra malt liquor in the staff fridge: No, in fact if you bring it in here I’m going to call the cops. Not because I’m a tight assed bitch, because that’s the rules, dude. It’s called public intoxication and it’s illegal.

To the girls who smoke pot in the bathrooms: Yes it was me who called the cops. No that doesn’t make me racist and no you can’t come back. I don’t care that it’s going to rain. When you get arrested in my bathroom you can’t come back, even if it means you get wet.

To the parents of the children who are running around screaming: You make me want to run around and scream my head off too, but I don’t, I control myself, why can’t you control your offspring? When I was a Children’s Librarian we called it using your inside voice. Try it.

To the parents who tell your miserable offspring to come to the library after school because you choose not to find a babysitter/daycare: We are not a free babysitting service. Yes, we have nice books and computers for the kiddies to use, but you need to come along with them. Otherwise I will get their information from their library card and call social services. It’s not my job to watch your brats.

To the 99.9% of computer users who don’t have the faintest idea how to use the Internet: I’m happy to help you get started, but I won’t help you beyond that. We have a lovely (and free) series of classes to teach you, but I have others to help and I can’t hold you hand all day long so that you can sell your shit on EBay. I also can’t help you file your divorce even though the courthouse told you that I would. I’m not a lawyer, I’m a librarian, so I can’t help you out.

To the man who just told me that Wisconsin sure isn’t like Illinois: No shit Sherlock. We like it that way. If you and your trophy wife hadn’t allowed your spoiled brat of a daughter to be drinking at Country Thunder you wouldn’t have to pay that $400 ticket that she got. Yep, underage drinking is illegal in Wisconsin, and nope, I’m not going to agree that it sucks. I’ve worked both here and in Illinois, and even though patrons here get under my skin I’ll take them any day over the soccer mommies in Lincolnshire. Suck it up, pay the ticket, don’t let your daughter drink until she is 21 and get out of my state.

To the people who want me to hold their hand and show them exactly where the book they want is: Don’t look at the piece of paper that I’ve written the call number down for you like it’s Sanskrit. Can you count? Then you can use the Dewey Decimal System. At least try to find the book because there are 15 other people waiting for me to solve their problems for them too. I know that they teach this stuff in elementary school, so try to figure it out on your own. But since I like you because you are actually looking for a book, if you really can’t find it come and ask me nice and I’ll help you.

To the people who want me to fix the computer so that you can spend 15 hours a day chatting, playing solitaire, looking for your one true love, etc. online: Don’t get me wrong, I like the Internet. I just don’t like it when you are sitting around doing nothing library related every single hour we are open. That means that people who have an actual research need can’t get to the computers, so no, I’m not going to help you solve why it’s hung up. Don’t you have something else to do with your time – like work maybe? I know for a fact that the McDonald’s just up the street is hiring, maybe you should apply. By the way, I know how to fix the problem, I’m just not going to help you because I hate you, so I will always turn it off and make sure you have lost everything that you have done so far. Consider yourself warned. Lots of people hate Bill Gates; I hate him for his philanthropy. I wish I could throw the patron computer out the door and drive over them with a dump truck.

To the people who check out books, DVDs and CDs and never bring them back: I hope you die. Seriously. You are the worst people in the world. There’s a technical word for people like you – thieves. Won’t you be surprised the next time you get pulled over and your car is impounded because I’ve sworn out a warrant for your arrest. Yep, theft of library materials is a crime, and I intend to start having it enforced. So to those self-righteous religious zealots who stole all my sex, Wicca, true crime books so that they couldn’t corrupt others, beware. Or if you stole them for your own collection, I hope you don’t want to renew your driver’s license or plates. Those materials belong to everyone, not just you. That’s what we mean by public library.

To my co-workers: Stop bitching because I have two desks and you have to share one with two other people. There are a couple of reasons for this. I don’t really have two desks; one of these so-called desks is the reference desk so I guess by that logic you have two desks too. One of them is the circulation desk. Enjoy your newfound space. Second, I’m a full time employee, so I am entitled to a private workspace (especially in light of the fact that you are never here at the same time as the people you share with). It’s in my contract, you can check. Third, I outrank you. I have a master’s degree to your GED. Yes, I’m 30 years younger than you are, but we all make choices in life. It wasn’t my choice to get knocked up in 1968 and then take a low paying job at the library that you have kept for the past 37 years. We all make choices and I guess you made yours. Also, I have way more work and way more responsibility than you. You might think that checking books in and out and getting them to the right place on the shelf is hard work, but guess what it’s not. If you want to do the budget sometime, or deal with the patrons who don’t want to pay their fines, then we can talk about a challenge. Until then, shut up and do your damn job!

To anyone else I have forgotten: If you’re not sitting quietly reading a book, magazine or newspaper, or using the Internet to do homework or research, chances are I hate you too. I’m not going to go out of my way to help you. Five years of being treated like crap by the general public have seen to that. It’s not personal, you just suck.

So basically if you are a nice, well-mannered person, welcome to the library. I’m glad that you are here. I will bend over backwards to make sure that your information needs are met. If you are a jerk, a pest, a leech, or any other kind of pariah, I will go out of my way to make sure that you leave the building as soon as possible, hopefully with some kind of police escort. You’ve been warned.

Sincerely,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Librarian

“

Original Post – http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/mil/97473665.html

The 100th Post

For my 100th post, I give you the following:George Bush goes to a primary school to talk to the kids to get a little PR.After his talk he offers question time.One little boy puts up his hand and George asks him his name.”Stanley,” responds the little boy.”And what is your question, Stanley?””I have 4 questions:First, why did the USA invade Iraq without the support of the UN?Second, why are you President when Al Gore got more votes?Third, whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden?”Fourth, why are we so worried about gay-marriage when 1/2 of all Americansdon’t have health insurance?Just then, the bell rings for recess.George Bush informs the kiddies that they will continue after recess.When they resume George says, “OK, where were we?

For my 100th post, I give you the following:

George Bush goes to a primary school to talk to the kids to get a little PR.
After his talk he offers question time.

One little boy puts up his hand and George asks him his name.

“Stanley,” responds the little boy.

“And what is your question, Stanley?”

“I have 4 questions:
First, why did the USA invade Iraq without the support of the UN?
Second, why are you President when Al Gore got more votes?
Third, whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden?”
Fourth, why are we so worried about gay-marriage when 1/2 of all Americans
don’t have health insurance?

Just then, the bell rings for recess.

George Bush informs the kiddies that they will continue after recess.

When they resume George says, “OK, where were we? Oh, that’s right:
question
time. Who has a question?”

Another little boy puts up his hand. George points him out and asks him his
name.

“Steve,” he responds.

” And what is your question, Steve?”

“Actually, I have 6 questions.
First, why did the USA invade Iraq without the support of the UN?
Second, why are you President when Al Gore got more votes?
Third, whatever happened to Osama Bin Laden?”
Fourth, why are we so worried about gay-marriage when 1/2 of all Americans
don’t have health insurance?
Fifth, why did the recess bell go off 20 minutes early?
And sixth, what the hell happened to Stanley?”

Addicted

because the 5 shelves in the living room are full.You know the following sequence by heart: 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 16384 32768 65536 131072You read The Tao of Programming…and relate.You need an intercom for downstairs to tell your parents / girlfriend / wife / whatever to get you more JOLT.When you take a break from programming, and program.When you can say with a great level of confidance that you have written more lines of code than english.You wake up in the middle of the night with the solution to your coding problem.Your 4 year old son has seen you login and out of Windows and Linux so much that he can do it himself.You are the only one who knows what the difference is between a coder and a programmer.You have more groceries inside your keyboard than in your fridge.You have a toothbrush next to your monitor.You watch a tv sitcom and think “I could write an algorithm that writes the scripts for these things”You sit stuck at traffic lights and work out a more efficient algorithm for them, based on road orientation, sensor placement, time of year, time of day, weather and local sporting events, in your head.The people you respect most you have never physically seen or spoken to, but you always bow to their knowledge.Your family informs you than you should go and make some more friends …so you start coding AI routines.You consider ‘drinking caffeine’ and ‘sleeping’ to be synonyms.You can write ‘Pong’ in any language for any OS (or even NO OS) in under 4 minutes.


You Know You’re Addicted to Coding When…

Triple espresso’s start tasting bland

You have nightmares about COBOL and ADA.

You have good dreams about multiple inheritance, factories, and compilers that support partial template specialization.

Instead of using MS Word, you type your essay for school in HTML using NotePad.

School? What’s that?

You can multiply a 32 bit binary number by a 6 digit hexadecimal number in your head.

You laugh at movies that show programmers at work.

You walk outside and wonder why the sun doesn’t make a lens-flare in your eye….

You get withdrawal symptoms if you’re away from a computer for more than 3 hours

(Lines_of_Code) / (Hours_of_Sleep) < (Number_of_Energy_Drinks_Consumed) Every time you look at your clock, you see a power of 2 (6:40, 1:28, 2:56, 5:12, 10:24) You’re pressing CTRL+S every 5 minutes, in every application.. You end each line you type with “;”, even plain english ones; You code your own support software for the digital camera you just bought When your significant other mentions having kids you lecture her on the disadvantages of multiple inheritance. MSVC opens on startup. Whenever somebody asks you to do something, you try to think of a way to write a program that would help you. You have 2 bookshelves filled with programming books in your room… because the 5 shelves in the living room are full. You know the following sequence by heart: 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048 4096 8192 16384 32768 65536 131072 You read The Tao of Programming…and relate. You need an intercom for downstairs to tell your parents / girlfriend / wife / whatever to get you more JOLT. When you take a break from programming, and program. When you can say with a great level of confidance that you have written more lines of code than english. You wake up in the middle of the night with the solution to your coding problem. Your 4 year old son has seen you login and out of Windows and Linux so much that he can do it himself. You are the only one who knows what the difference is between a coder and a programmer. You have more groceries inside your keyboard than in your fridge. You have a toothbrush next to your monitor. You watch a tv sitcom and think “I could write an algorithm that writes the scripts for these things” You sit stuck at traffic lights and work out a more efficient algorithm for them, based on road orientation, sensor placement, time of year, time of day, weather and local sporting events, in your head. The people you respect most you have never physically seen or spoken to, but you always bow to their knowledge. Your family informs you than you should go and make some more friends …so you start coding AI routines. You consider ‘drinking caffeine’ and ‘sleeping’ to be synonyms. You can write ‘Pong’ in any language for any OS (or even NO OS) in under 4 minutes. You get drunkhighotherwise intoxicated just for a different coding experience. You think of sex as an algorithm. Sunshine genuinely hurts your eyes. You actually feel like crap from getting 8 hours of sleep, that just so unnatural You can’t help but squeeze math and research topics in while sweet-talking to a girl. You have a “hacker’s manicure” (i.e. huge calluses on all your fingers) When you die you want “Hello world” carved into your headstone You keep old computers around and boot them up every once in awhile for the nostalgia. You would like to have an Aibo to see if you can run Linux on it. Your mother phoned you to see if you were still alive, and you responded “ping”. You look at your old code and cringe You got a D in Computer Programming class because you where coding a plasma effect instead of a “Hello World!” program You read books on quantum physics and time-travel to relax. When someone asks you your favorite color, you give the RGB code in binary. No one else can ever use your computer, as it is tweaked so much only you know how to use it. The first time you use another person’s computer it takes you less than 30 seconds to completely disable all useless programs from running at boot and uninstalling all the ad-ware the fools had on the system. You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends who are addicted to coding.

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Facebook Group – Dell/Apple?

So this afternoon, I signed into my facebook account and of course had an ad from Dell on my homepage. It was for the group “Dell Survival Guide” which I subsequently joined. Tell me, under Gadgets/Gear, is that a Dell computer 😉

So this afternoon, I signed into my facebook account and of course had an ad from Dell on my homepage. It was for the group “Dell Survival Guide” which I subsequently joined. The funny part is that after I joined, I looked at the page and saw this. Tell me, under Gadgets/Gear, is that a Dell computer 😉