goblin cartoons

This coming Monday, I will be a guest on The Walt Bodine Show at 10 a.m., on KCUR, our local NPR station. The topic will be “Libraries in the 21st Century,” which I’m always pretty excited to talk about. Not only can you listen to it on the radio, you can stream it live online and the show will be archived on KCUR’s website. So, there’s no excuse for not listening to me babble about libraries. Unless listening to me babble about libraries really isn’t your thing–but who in their right mind would cop to that?

This has not been the best year of my life, which is particularly bad as I was saying the same thing last year. It hasn’t been all sewage and shadows–I’ve had some really good times this year. But it feels like the bad has exceeded the good, in effect if not in actual instance. There’s been a whole lotta feh this year, is what I’m saying.

So I’ll gladly take this day to give thanks to all the good, to polish the sunlight and kick depression in the kneecaps.

I’m thankful that Julie and I found each other and continue to discover good things about each other. I’m thankful I get to be Morgan’s father and have her in my life. I’m thankful my parents (in-blood and in-law) are doing relatively well. I’m thankful my siblings (sister, brother and sister-in-law) and their beautiful children are doing well.

I’m also thankful this is the last Thanksgiving I’ll ever have with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their whole cabal in the White House. I will sing and dance when the Worst President Ever leaves Washington. These are bad, bad people, and I want them out of my life.

As my friend Steve Lawson says, I’m thankful for the internet and the World Wide Web. (I’ll throw in cell phones and other information-communication devices, too.) I’m not sure I would have made it through this year without the friendship of the amazing people I’ve met and grown to love online. I’ve also reconnected with old friends because of the internet. This is really a fantastic time to be alive, and I’m thankful that I am alive to live through this and enjoy it. To all of my friends, near and far: thank you.

The Huffington Post reports that when Barack Obama becomes President, he’ll do weekly fireside chats–but he’ll be posting them to YouTube.

The very idea of having a 21st century, wired, Web 2.0 President thrills the socks off of me. I’m already getting updates to the President-elect’s transition team’s blog in my aggregator. YouTube fireside chats just add to the awesomesauce.

We’re finally getting a wireless router at our house (Amazon just notifed me that it’s been shipped). I’m really excited, since it will free up my laptop. (I currently use it at the dining room table, with a cable running from the office, through the hall & into the dining room plugged into the laptop.)

My question to my friends out there is: should we set up a password to access the wifi or leave it open? My beliefs push me to leave it open, but I’m wondering if there are consequences to leaving it open that I don’t want to deal with. I realize that anyone who really wanted to could certainly break into a protected network, but I also doubt anyone like that is going to be hanging around our neighborhood. So, open or not?

Ubuntu 8.10, “Intrepid Ibex,” was officially released yesterday. I upgraded to 8.10 last night. It took 2 hours tops and was the easiest upgrade of any OS I’ve done yet. I love Ubuntu!

Thanks, Great Pumpkin! Happy Hallowe’en!

Beth Tribe tagged me, so I guess I’m It. How did I get into blogging? Well, it all started back in 2001…

I was in Milwaukee, attending GenCon (this was before it moved to Indianapolis, obviously). I was hanging out with some friends in their hotel room, the conversation flowing like some kind of fast-flowing liquid, when it occurred to me that I was the only person in the room without a blog. My friends immediately began encouraging me to start a blog of my own. “It’s so easy!” they said. “We’ll even help you get one started.” (In retrospect, it was very much like an after-school special from the ’70s, only with blogging replacing cigarettes or LSD.) When I got home from the convention, I bought a book on learning HTML, registered the domain “www.goblin-cartoons.com” (the name vaguely had to do with how I saw my prose and poetry writing at the time, and I thought it was catchy), and began blogging. In library school, I stumbled upon Jenny Levine’s blog, which led to discovering other library-themed blogs. After I graduated and got my first post-degree library job, I decided I wanted to join the ranks of library bloggers, so I changed my blog name to “the goblin in the library.” And then, of course, I recently changed the blog back to the more general “goblin cartoons.” And that, my friends, is the story of my blogging (so far).

I’m not going to tag anyone, but if you read this and haven’t written your own post about how you got into blogging, go ahead and share your story with us.

Today, I somehow found some energy and inspiration for a blog post. But rather than post it here, I’ve started a new blog on the LSW site: Humbug! The idea is for it to be a group blog, with other members and me posting to it. But even if no one else posts to it besides me, I’m thinking it could end up as my main library blog. I think this website will be changing into something else. I’m not sure yet, and my personal life is too wacky for me to make any really big plans, but…well, we’ll see.

Life has kind of been kicking me in the tush lately (which is one of the primary reasons I haven’t blogged much lately), and to be perfectly frank, I wasn’t looking forward to Tech Day this year. I just wasn’t feeling up to it. I was actually feeling pretty blasé about libraries in general (which is another reason why I haven’t been blogging much lately).

I’m happy to say I had a terrific time at Tech Day, and I’m very, very glad I went. In fact, I think this was the best Tech Day I’ve been to yet. Props to Sharon Moreland, newly established in her position at NEKLS, for her first time at organizing Tech Day. I expected Michael Porter to give a good keynote, but it was even better than I thought it would be, full of inspiring enthusiasm, curiosity and love for libraries, freedom, open source technology. Power to the people!

I had a good time hanging out with my coworkers and friends like Bobbi Newman and Royce Kitts (who deserves many congratulations for finishing library school and getting the job of Director of the Tonganoxie Public Library–both at the same time!), chatting with librarians from all over Kansas, playing video games and talking about the future of libraries. Tech Day was exactly what the doctor ordered for me.

Sometimes the universe hands you a goody and makes your day. Sometimes that “universe” is Blake Carver of LISNews, and the “goody” is a brand-spanking-new website for the Library Society of the World. Check it out!

http://thelsw.org/

It’s not fully operational yet. A group of us are trying to figure out Drupal and get content and functionality onto the site. But it’s there, and you can register and create a profile. If anyone out there in Libraryland is good with Drupal and has some time and energy to spare, let us know. The LSW needs your help.

I’m just so happy about this! Blake is such a good guy for doing this. I’m very, very excited at the possibilities of the new site. It’s LSW 2.0! Let’s have fun with this!

Bobbie Newman tagged me for this meme, and since it involves the pretty word clouds of Wordle, why would I not take the challenge? So, I wandered over to Project Gutenberg, took the text from one of my all-time favorite novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, plugged it into Wordle, and voila!

However, I’m going to be a stump and not tag anyone for this meme. Basically, if you feel like doing it, and it harms no one, go for it.