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Reading Dracula 2009 May 5

Thanks to the power of twitter, I have found a blog that is publishing Dracula in “real time.” Bram Stoker’s Dracula is an epistolary novel, which is a novel written as a series of letters or diary entries. The blog is adding new entries on a the day that it was written by the narrator “so that the audience may experience the drama as the characters would have.”

I have never read Dracula but I have subscribed to the Dracula Atom feed and will be following along. This is a great use of social media and I suspect others will publish epistolary novels this way.

Corned Beef and Cabbage in a Crock Pot 2009 March 15

I don’t normally do food recipes on my blog, but a couple people on facebook have asked me how I cook corned beef and cabbage in my crock pot. Here is how I do it. I really like the way this comes out, but as they say, your mileage may vary:

Ingredients:

Corned Beef (I like ones with separate seasoning package)

1 head cabbage

Carrots

3 or 4 white or red potatoes (I keep the skin on)

1 Turnip (optional, if you use turnips, make pretend they are potatoes in the rest of the recipe)

1 onion (I usually use red, but it doesn’t matter)

1 bay leaf (optional)

1 or 2 crushed garlic cloves (optional – I don’t bother dicing it, because I’m going to take it out and not eat it)

Water

2 tablespoons of dry white wine OR 1 splash of white wine vinegar

Method:

1.Skin and cut carrots into about 1 1/2 or 2 inch long pieces or so (less if they are thick) (optionally: cheat and use baby carrots)

2. Cut onion up into disks (about 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick… it doesn’t really matter because I don’t eat them)

3. Cut potatoes (usually in thirds, depending on size). I keep the skin on, but do what you want

4. Place onions and carrots on bottom of crock pot (if they don’t all fit, don’t worry, just put them in with the the potatoes).

5. Place corned beef on top of onions and carrots.

6. Place potatoes and any remaining carrots.onions around the corned beef.

7. Cover with water

8. Add wine or vinegar. I’ve also used beer in the past and it was OK, but I think wine is better. If you use wine, for best results place a little extra into chef.

9. Throw in bay leaf and crushed garlic

10. Turn crock pot on low.

11. Make coffee and go to work

12. Come home from work

13. About 20 or 30 minutes before you want to eat (depending on how al dente you want your cabbage) cut your cabbage into wedges. Depending on the size of the cabbage, I either quarter it or cut it into sixths

14. Place cabbage in crock pot.

15. Turn crock pot on high

16. Cook until cabbage is to your liking

17. Serve with spicy mustard and if you can get it, some nice rye bread. Note: In Binghamton rye bread is not a viable option .

Note: If you cook the corned beef all day, the corned beef will basically fall apart when you try to cut it. I like that, but you may choose to cook a little shorter length of time if you rather have nice slides. If you live close enough to work, you can get everything ready before work and go home for lunch and turn the crock pot on then.

Note 2: If I have some other extra veggies, such as celery, I might throw them in to the pot as well, but I take them out before serving.

Merry Christmas 2008 December 25

Merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you chose to celebrate) and a Happy New Year!

New Blog Theme 2008 August 27

It still needs some tweaks, but I have made some changes to my blog theme. It is now based on the DarkNight 2.0 Theme 2.0 by David Chait. I think it is pretty readable despite the black background. I still like my old theme that Greg Haase built for me, but this matches my Web site a lot better.

Using BlackBerrys and E-mail after work 2008 July 11

I just read an interesting article on CNBC.com that dealt with the issue of non-exempt employees using BlackBerry’s and other electronic devices during after work hours. The article claimed that “Workplace BlackBerry Use May Spur Lawsuits. Basically the premise is that people who use a work supplied BlackBerry after work to do anything related to their job are working and if they are non-exempt they should be paid overtime. I’m exempt so my employer has nothing to worry about, but it is something managers should keep in mind if they are issuing these devices to non-exempt employees. The article suggests having policies in place for after-work usage of BlackBerry’s and also e-mail. It was also suggested that employers either not issue these devices or ask non-exempt employees to leave them at the office.

There was also some interesting stats in the article that I can relate to. According to the article, a survey by Cohesive Knowledge Solutions showed that the “average professional spends 50 minutes a day sending emails after work.” Also a “recent CareerBuilder.com survey, 25 percent of workers said they plan to stay in contact with work during their vacations, and 9 percent said their bosses wanted them to be working or at least checking voicemail and email while on vacation.” I am sure that I am not the only person involved with library technology that can relate to these numbers. Actually, I am surprised that the number was only 9 percent who had bosses who wanted them to check their e-mail on vacation, but I guess the CareerBuilder.com survey probably was based on a broader audience of job seekers.

It is true that new communication technology has made the workplace 24/7. This blurring of the lines between work and play is an interesting phenomenon and I think many of the best systems people in libraries I know truly do lead a blended life. Working and advocating for technology for libraries (esp. those who work on Open Source Software for libraries) is part of their being. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. In fact, I think it can be a good thing (as long as ones boss understands that the effort you put into work outside of work requires some flexibility on their end as well). However, people that lead this blended life need to make sure they make time for their family, friends, and themselves. I personally have been trying to go without checking work e-mail as much on the weekends and after I leave work. It is hard because it will only take a minute or two. Of course, then you see some e-mails that will only take you a minute or two to get off your to do list, and then all of a sudden, you have easily used up the reported 50 minutes a day outside of work checking e-mails.

I think in order to make this all work and not become over-consuming is good time management skills. I think this is even more so with tenure-track (and other) positions that require publications and/or presentations. While there are thousands of time management books out there, the one I recommend is Time Management for System Administrators by Tom Limoncelli. What I like about Limoncelli’s book that I haven’t seen in the other books I have browsed it is is geared towards people with jobs that require constant interruption (think “The printer is broken!”). I also like that he doesn’t just talk about time management at work. His book discusses how to manage your personal time as well as your professional time. For someone with a blended work/personal life this is a good, and possibly only, approach. One example of how he does this is suggest that if there is a chore that you have to do all of the time that you don’t particularly enjoy and it can be outsourced at a reasonable rate and quality, you should do so. For example, if you hate doing laundry, why don’t you pay the local laundromat that offers full service to do it for you. Sure it costs more than if you did it yourself, but your time is valuable. You could be getting paid to hack code for more than it would cost you to pay someone to do laundry. As I said laundry is just an example, maybe for you it is cleaning your house or mowing your lawn, or any number of other things. Another gem in his book is the calendaring and to-do list management. I really can’t do his system justice in this short blog post, but I will say that his approach can work with a PDA or a PAA (a Personal Analog Assistant – i.e. a daily planner notebook) and you should purchase the book or take it of your local library and give it a try. It really isn’t that complicated (if it was, it wouldn’t work) but I have found it effective. The basica premise with the to-do list is to have manual intervention every day on your tasks. If they get automatically moved by your calendering software, you’ll never get to them. The other part is to make sure you don’t get these long endless lists. As I said read the book to learn how he does it.

Aral Sea 2008 April 21

Tonight I went out to a brew pub that had free wireless because someone was coming to look at my house that is for sale. It was trivia night and one of the questions was what is the biggest non-Great Lake fresh water lake. My first guess was Lake Victoria in Africa. I was correct (and in fact my iBook and I were actually was called on to confirm this). I mention this because I became interested in one of the lakes on the list of largest lakes on Wikipedia: the Aral Sea. What caught my attention was that the size of lake shrunk to 25% of its original surface area in the last 40 years. I read the article on Wikipedia about the Aral Sea and it appears that dams constructed for irrigation was the cause for this and apparently the northern part of the lake is starting to make a come back. It is an interesting read ans shows what can happen if politicians try to solve one problem without looking at what the other consequences can be.

Google Docs presentation update 2008 April 9

As my last post mentioned, I used Google Docs for a recent presentation. I found out that some things with publishing a presentation don’t work easily if you use Google Apps for your own domain. If you publish a document, it includes your domain and the URL and forces people to log in. I guess this is nice feature if you only want to publish to people in your domain, but causes issues if you want the world to be able to see it. I fixed this by publishing the document using a Google Docs account not on my domain (although just stripping out the domain URL may work as well).

I also just read a post on the Google Docs Announcement page that Export to PPT is here! This is great news as it will make it much easier to re-purpose content into other presentations.

Coffee makes you smarter 2008 April 3

I have a travel coffee mug that a good friend bought me that says on it “coffee makes you smarter.”

Occasionally I run across an article that confirms this is true. A BBC story says that “Coffee may cut the risk of dementia” and also reminds the reader that previous studies have show that coffee may lower risk of Alzheimer’s Disease. It apparently does this by limiting (or preventing?) blood-brain barrier leaking. Who wants blood-brain barrier leaking? Apparently people, who unlike me, don’t drink coffee! The article doesn’t go so far to say that coffee makes you smarter, but they wouldn’t want that to come out because they want us to think they are smarter then them. If we all drink coffee, these scientist types won’t be any smarter than the rest of us.

Natural Drain Cleaner 2008 March 31

This is a little different post, but I figured I’d let everyone know how I cleaned my bathroom sink drain using products found in most kitchens that didn’t involve toxic chemicals. I found this “recipe” in varying forms on the Internet, but what I used was:

1/2 cup baking soda
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup vinegar (heated up)

I poured the above down the drain and let it foam up (reminded my of junior high chemistry experiments) as it made a chemical reaction. After about 15 minutes I poured 2 quarts of boiling water down to wash things down. I’m not really sure the salt is needed as many recipes didn’t include it. Also some used different amounts of vinegar and baking soda, but this recipe worked for me. I also read that you can pour a 1/2 cup baking soda and a 1/2 cup salt down the drain before you go to bed and rinse it out with 2 cups boiling water in the morning to keep your drains flowing. A simple Internet search will show you other combinations to try.

To Tweet or not to tweet 2008 March 9

I signed up for a Twitter account a while back, and until today made exactly one entry into it (I made two today). I guess I’m not sure how Twitter would be useful for me. There are a couple of reasons why I decided to log into my account today and start trying to use it in order to determine if it will be useful. The first is that during the recent Code4Lib conference a few people where using it to see if they could meet up with other people. I think this would be really useful. The only problem is, you would need to know how is using Twitter at the conference so you can check what they are doing. Actually, there is another problem… for this to be useful at conferences (especially big ones like ALA), you would need unlimited text messages on your phone or it could get expensive. I guess that is why I haven’t used it yet. I have a lame phone plan when it comes to anything but talking. I plan on getting a new phone soon, so maybe I’ll get a better plan for SMS at that time.

The other reason why I decided to really give Twitter a try is based on a short discussion on LISnews about Twitter and a recent video posting on what Twitter is about on Commoncraft. I don’t think either convinced me Twitter is useful or interesting for me, but I guess it did make me think it is worth giving it a try before discounting it.