Task #8

I agree with the sentiment that copy right laws are draconian. I also really like that word.

I did not know about this at all, but it is amazing. Did anyone else see jamendo? It's amazing. Browsing around by tags is so cool. French independent phyloxera, and Brazilian psicotropicdelica, and other stuff I don't have a clue what it is. Wow.

And I did know about NIN's last album being released as DRM free. When you download it you can even get the CD insert to print out and assemble yourself if you're so inclined. When it came out, it reminded me of Radiohead's "In Rainbows" album. They released it independently and you were allowed to pay what price you wanted for it (including $0.00) before they formally signed to a different label and released it. So that's the same thing, right? Or are copyright laws different pertaining to it since it was done differently and is no longer available as a free (or reasonably priced) download?

Also, just a related thought that popped into my head, if you ever buy vinyl from the Saddle Creek record label, you get a code for a free mp3 download of the album along with your luscious wax discs which is a rather nice thing for them to offer.

Task #7

I decided to sign up for a Goodreads account. This decision was made primarily because when I visited the Boulder account I looked at Stacie's page (I tried to visit Davetoe's account, because it reminded me of our own Dave Goe, and he had a baboon for a picture and I'm fond of primates, but I wasn't hip enough for access to his page) and I too wanted to take the never ending book quiz. I had a score of seventy percent after fifty questions. I'm not very well versed in Shakespeare.

I think that it would be a suitable compliment to our current site and facebook page. (Although, I also like Betsy's staff pick shelf. Wouldn't it be nifty if that was one of the perks you received when you became a regular employee? You could get three slips a month to fill out with a brief description of the book, or why you like it, or whatever short blurb you wish and you could add to that display. Plus we would get the added bonus of knowing who suggested what which I personally think would be interesting.) I probably wouldn't contribute too much to an online goodreads account (have you read my previous posts?) but a real life "good reads" shelf would be very cool.

(This post is dedicated to parenthesis.)

Task #6

I was actually lucky enough to have Cari show me these sites once before, so I'd actually navigated around a bit on them already.

While on the New Staff module I looked into the cataloging area and learned the basics of what goes on in the magical building across the street. The customer service 123 was very nice. I liked their assumption that if you are getting perfect scores then you are highly annoying (and other such entertainingly trivial observations).

And so it goes.

Task #5

I've logged into my library account before to place multiple holds but had never used the book bag. For some reason I kept getting logged out of my account and that was rather irksome. The book bag however was very easy to use and convenient because, aside from not being continuously logged out, you don't have to click where to send each item every time. I think that this would also be easiest for patrons to use at home.

Now I have some James Brown and Tito Puente items to look forward to which is nice.

Task #4

So I'm a wee bit of a Luddite and have no desire to ever make a Facebook or other such networking site page. I'm snobbish and find it abhorrent. It's like an illiterate sea of cold, despondent, idiocy that allows people to blather on about things that they don't understand or on things that are completely superfluous and do so all in unabashedly poor English and obnoxious abbreviations while having no real meaningful interaction with the outside world; like pale, sun deprived tapeworms suckling a robotic teet. Like, 4 reel, eye hate et. LOL!!!!!

(Feel free to point out anywhere I make grammatical and\or typographical errors; I realize that that's kind of what I'm asking for with that opening)

Now, that having been said, I decided to visit the facebook pages of Barack Obama and Josh Penry. There was something odious to me about signing a virtual cast for a Supreme Court judge who, one, is a stranger I don't know, and two, doesn't have any broken bones. Josh Penry's strange widow peaked baby face continues to creep me out as it always has.

So, why do I think that this horrible thing is so popular? Well, I believe that we have all installed a fear in older generations that the "technology gap" will leave them behind in some obsolete world where as they grow old no one will be around to change their colostomy bags because we will all be twittering as they set helpless in a nursing home. This coupled with the fact that the younger generations, i.e. my peers in age, are mindless, consuming fools who will gobble up anything with a shiny package that is preceded by the letter "i" in it's name. So, when companies like Coca Cola need to ensure that they will have a loyal market and be hip, they turn to where teenagers and twenty-somethings are, so the internet. When you want to be the super cool political candidate and you want that massive untapped demographic of young voters that never seems to have any high percentage of turn out, you turn to facebook to reel them in. It boils down to subversive mind control tactics to manipulate your voting and buying habits.

This is an evil, banal scourge that is hurting our language and our bodies. Where will future cyborg generations (because you know the iBody is coming in only about twenty years with high speed wifi enema and itunes storage in your left kidney) get vitamin D? There are only two natural sources of it - the sun and mushrooms, and mixing fungi with a hardwired body is a bad idea, like athlete's foot mixed with a trojan virus.

So please, I'm begging you all, walk away from social networking sites. Go out and really spend time with someone to show them that you care. Actually talk to someone to find out what they think. Monitor politicians' voting records to see what they stand for and read the text of bills to know what they actually contain. We desperately need to stop this strange social trend that's isolating people and cutting off the outside world.

Task #3

I missed the first question right away. I knew you could find it on the library catalog page and so I put that down as my answer without looking. Wrongness is what you get when you're too lazy to look into the other options I suppose. I got all the rest of the answers correct though, giving me a 93 1\3 %.

Also, like Carol, I couldn't find the place for when the foundation was started so I guessed. So that one was just luck, but now I know.

Task #2

So like most people who ever venture into the back check-in area I was already familiar with Pandora. I had not, however, ever used lastfm.com. I liked that the latter did not require any setting up of an account. However, the web design was ugly and very unappealing. It was also having issues while I was trying to use it and kept crashing. So I'll be sticking with Pandora while crashing through courier bins.

On a related note, when I was listening to Pandora earlier today I typed in the band Melt-Banana. They're a fun, hyper-active Japanese noise rock band that provides a welcome pick me up in the lazy, hazy, cloudy morning; something akin to the whirring buzz saws transmitted through a megaphone. You know, happy peaceful music. The station of course dabbled into other similar artists' catalogs. One such band that I hadn't heard before but that I quite liked was Boris.

And so ends task number two.

Task #1

I've completed the first step; I made a blog.

I would also like to take a moment to officially state that I do not in the least bit enjoy quiches.