My new HP desktop came loaded with game demos, most of which I will never play, but I got curious about them last week and started clicking around, which is when I found Diner Dash, which is the happy story of a woman who was so frazzled by her ordinary office job that she had to run away from corporate life and wait tables for a living.
That sound you hear is my forehead, hitting my desk.
I don’t know who invented it, but I would like to shake their hand. Its like a dream come true: here’s a database that can find any book in the world, and no matter where it is located, a copy will be sent to you, free of charge, and you can keep it for 3 months.
Currently waiting for:
Next up on my list: every other book ever written :)
I know, I know - lots you cannot see the spiffy (thanks, Grandma!) header graphic. Apparently, I have to upgrade wordpress for it to show up again. So, that is on the to-do list - but its pretty far down the list!
A few of my faves:
A comprehensive list of April Fool’s Day nonsense (including past years), can be found at the April Fool’s Day On The Web Repository.
On a HigherEd specific online forum, a post that was meant to exhibit how odd academic life looks to non-academics told the story of a recent proposal defense. I am a consummate lurker there, although I don’t have a login, which is probably for the best, because the post that took my breath away describes how the Chair of the student’s committee decided to invite the defender’s husband to her proposal defense. And I cannot quite wrap my head around that. Does he also invite the wives of male students who are defending their proposals? If he does, well, consider my feminist ire placated. But I suspect that he does not, and I cannot understand why the responses to this post don’t start out questioning why a woman’s Chair would invite her husband to what is, essentially, her workplace and her professional life.
If the student herself had invited her spouse, well, her choice. But that her Chair decided to do it without her knowledge makes the action very different, and not a little patronizing. This notion of spousal deference always hits a sour note for me, probably because I live it every time I make a major purchase, or generally try to conduct business with a man when my own partner is in the same room.What is next, really - should women bring notes from their Dad in to school, giving them permission to attend, which was often the case as little as 40 years ago at some schools?
Dear R1 Institution,
Please accept this note as permission from me that my daughter be allowed to READ BOOKS and WRITE STUFF. Call me if she gets uppity, or starts thinking on her own - we try not to encourage independence in her, in the vain hope that she will come to her senses, drop out of school, and marry a nice doctor.
I would never be able to spell the word definitely. Well, until this site came along. Sadly, with an URL like that, I doubt many people can just type it into a browser and go, because it is one of the 100 most mispelled words.
When will this happen? Ummm…….yeah. Maybe spring break? for now, it sits here being ugly.
Everyblock is both fascinating and scary at the same time. It filters an assortment of local information by location so you can keep track of what’s happening in your own neighbourhood, right down to your own block.
I just ran my own address, and even though it didn’t find much for my exact street, I am astonished by the depth of information pulled in from the surrounding area - business licenses, a murder (murder!), lots of theft under $300, some narcotics (marijuana under 30 grams) charges and one possession of crack(seriously?), some real estate information, etc. What is especially surprising is the huge number of sources being aggregated, from a Chicago Public Radio story looking for Pakistani born Chicagoans reactions to Bhutto’s death to police records (one of my neighbours was murdered? what!?) to a “missed connections” ad on Craiglist, to city business licenses, both large news papers, and what appears to be fire department logs.
On the one hand, great aggregator. On the other hand, how much information do we need? Sometimes I struggle with aggregators - I am overloaded with things I don’t need to know, but as an information junkie, want to have just because I can have it.
The bonus, of course, is that I live in an area of Chicago often referred to as being rough, yet the crime for my neighbourhood is much, much more mild and run of the mill than for the gold coast, which I checked after my own. Chock full of sexual assaults, cocaine, and other serious crimes.
Some great visualizations of how Flickr works, via Flickr, naturally: a simple version, and below, a more complex one, via Bryce Glass at soldierant.
