More Things: Thing 24

I got an email late yesterday from the More Things on a Stick folks. I'd registered fairly soon after they started, and tweaked my blog a trifle, knowing that my library would be a pretty busy place at the beginning of term, but certainly I could get started on this in early March. I'd made a commitment.

And then Life happened, including a semi-impromptu spring break trip with some good things (got to see Wicked!) and not-so-good things (2+ days at airports, waiting for a flight home - the joys of flying standby.) Also a trip to the Computers in Libraries conference. So by the time I semi-started my expense report after the conference, I'd written off doing More Things. "There's only a month left," I mused. "No way I can do this." But the More Things email said, "If you complete at least 10 of the things and blog about them," I can get a bag. And they won't be doing a second round of More Things. So I'm going to try, and see what I can do.

As it turns out, I'd already done a chunk of Thing 24 and didn't realize it. I'd refreshed my blog, and due to some nudging from my Number One Fan (and Follower), I'd played with the gadgets. So I did some more refreshing, and now I'm blogging away again.

They ask, "How much have you blogged since you finished 23 Things on a Stick?" I finished in August, and according to Blogger, I had 13 posts for the rest of 2008, and 12 (and counting) for 2009. I haven't been commenting much on blogs, but I do have some blogs (and friends on LiveJournal) that I check on a regular basis. The library blog that I look at the most is Free Range Librarian, Karen Schneider's blog. She's quirky, and interesting.

They ask, "What do you like about blogging?" I like sharing odd bits and pieces of things, when I come across something of interest. I usually need something external to give me a "poke" (to use a Facebook term.) And I have to say again that Facebook has become quite the "killer application" in our household, since my husband discovered it in January, and more and more of our friends pop up on it. None of my friends from high school yet - maybe they're all on MySpace?

How I Love My Spam Filter (Not)

Ah, the joys of the Spam Filter, that interesting piece of software that's supposed to make your life easier. Ours at work is slow, p-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y slow, and I often get the "server timed out" message. So I sometimes miss a useful message.

I registered with More Things on a Stick earlier this week, and while looking at the site, was wondering if there was much activity yet. Little did I realize that with one exception, my "More Things" messages were getting caught in the spam filter. I made the mistake of looking yesterday afternoon, and have been wrestling with the filter since then to get a dozen or so messages out of there (perhaps even deleting the real spam, hmmm.) So if anyone of the More Things participants come across this blog, I have started Thing 24, but I'm not getting the messages - yet. This too shall pass, right?

This 'n' That

• Update on my Computer Woes: after taking a turn for the worse, today my computer seems better. Yesterday was a mixed bag: my second Outlook personal folder came back, Outlook slowed to the occasional crawl, and my calendar reminders refused to work - which was where I started 2 weeks ago. However, a wonderful tech has worked on my machine, and when I logged in today the Terrible .DLL Message did not come back (although Outlook was slow to load again.) I'm crossing my fingers.
• Ever since my earlier post on computer error messages, I've been saving examples for another fun-filled post. But now that I've been in DLL Hell, it's not so fun anymore. That blog posting will have to wait.
• More Things on a Stick has opened for enrollment; that's still on my to-do list. Maybe today. They recommend using Firefox to do the Things, so I have to remember this. I've gone back and forth in the browser wars over the years, but I retreated some years ago when my institution said that they only supported Things Microsoft. (Which didn't stop me from installing Firefox on my newly-leased computer this summer.)
• Web 2.0 hit our household last weekend: my husband discovered Facebook. (He did help me load a picture of myself to Facebook, which is nice. The picture I did months ago on this blog was the only digitized one I could find at the time, and it's of me and our dog.) He's still in the infatuation stage ("I have 24 friends!"), but he assures me that he'll settle down soon. I wonder...he's thinking about encouraging his mom to get on Facebook, that it might be a killer app for her. My killer app is my handheld, an antique Palm III Palm Pilot which has 3Com on its lid, bless its heart. I use it every day, and haven't migrated to the newer Palm that I was given by computer spouse some years ago because I can sync the old one at home, but not the new one.

Onward to the new week. I assume that once I get going on More Things, I'll be posting more often.

Computer Woes

I'm having a bad week. My computer has a Something. I'm not sure if it's a virus, or spyware goop, or what. Being a mere user, I am not privy to the illness that has befallen my machine. I'm told it's not even my fault, that it came through the network, and is not a result of anything I did. But it's ill. It started with my calendar, which spread to other pieces of Outlook. My preferences and personal files are gone, at least for now. I've had a wonderful tech person here several times for the past few days, and she's referred my problem to another tech. So I wait, and suffer.

It's not unlike the Bad Old Days that we tried to explain to our daughter the other day, when a child in the family was dying, and the mother wasn't told what was wrong (it might upset her, which would upset the child and delay recovery.) The child wasn't told (the child would be upset and delay recovery.) So I know there's a Something on my computer, and that I get a System32 message when I log on that ends in a .dll. We tried looking up the particular error message on the web and couldn't find it. But now I feel better knowing that Wikipedia has an entire entry on DLL Hell (DLL means "dynamic link libraries," and is a Windows thing. Learn somethin' every day, don'tcha?) Now I know where I am. DLL Hell.

Meanwhile, I've learned that More Things on a Stick is coming, starting on January 20th! I hope I get out of DLL Hell before then.