I think that all who work in libraries feel passionate one way or another about a big issue that faces us: Tape or Staples? Both sides have merit, but neither will give an inch. As a result, it can end in flame war debates that have you wearing out your delete button.

Instead of tying up the inboxes of librarians, why not make a fashion statement at your next meeting or conference?

click on photo to enlarge

Your statement could not be bolder! Plus, wouldn’t you like to avoid the uncomfortable position of discovering that you are sitting next to somebody that feels envelopes should be so laden with recycled tape or doesn’t care if people are cut by rogue staples?

Operators are standing by!

This weekend we will be taking a roadtrip with Syd to a family reunion. It’s roughly 5 hours by car each way. We do not have a DVD player for the car and don’t plan on getting one.

I don’t want to pack all of her toys, but I want her to be occupied. When you travel with toddlers, what are your essentials? What do you leave at home?

I need to start making a list. Input, please

I see all sorts of political things get passed around thanks to the wonders of social media. Some of them make you stop and think, some of them make you scratch your head, and some of them just rile you up for whatever reason.

There is a new one that I’ve seen being passed around lately with captions such as “Proof,” “I Knew it!” and “Scary!” It has me wanting to bang my head against the wall. Here you go…

Scary book! Everybody HIDE!!!

I mean, look at that title! It is clearly anti-American! I’ll bet that it’s all about how this fine nation will fall in a Jihad of Glory. You can tell by the author’s name. It’s totally a terrorist name. Obama reading this book can only mean one thing, he really IS an American Hating Muslim!

I wonder how many people that have passed this along have actually looked into what this book is about. Let’s take a look at one of the reviews listed here on the Amazon.com page for the book…

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. When a book proclaims that it is not about the decline of America but the rise of everyone else, readers might expect another diatribe about our dismal post-9/11 world. They are in for a pleasant surprise as Newsweek editor and popular pundit Zakaria (The Future of Freedom) delivers a stimulating, largely optimistic forecast of where the 21st century is heading. We are living in a peaceful era, he maintains; world violence peaked around 1990 and has plummeted to a record low. Burgeoning prosperity has spread to the developing world, raising standards of living in Brazil, India, China and Indonesia. Twenty years ago China discarded Soviet economics but not its politics, leading to a wildly effective, top-down, scorched-earth boom. Its political antithesis, India, also prospers while remaining a chaotic, inefficient democracy, as Indian elected officials are (generally) loathe to use the brutally efficient tactics that are the staple of Chinese governance. Paradoxically, India’s greatest asset is its relative stability in the region; its officials take an unruly population for granted, while dissent produces paranoia in Chinese leaders. Zakaria predicts that despite its record of recent blunders at home and abroad, America will stay strong, buoyed by a stellar educational system and the influx of young immigrants, who give the U.S. a more youthful demographic than Europe and much of Asia whose workers support an increasing population of unproductive elderly. A lucid, thought-provoking appraisal of world affairs, this book will engage readers on both sides of the political spectrum.

Scary stuff, huh? Oh, wait? It’s not a book about the fall of the United States? It’s actually positive and pro-America? This Fareed Zakaria guy is actually a well known Indian-American journalist, the editor of Newsweek International, a Newsweek and Washington Post columnist, weekly host for CNN, and a New York Times bestselling author, not somebody looking to kill Americans? Oh…

Perhaps this one in particular just rubbed me the wrong way as it was about a book. This book is being portrayed as something dark and sinister, and it is totally not true. There is nothing wrong with reading this book (or any book). Would there be these kind of posts going around if he were reading the latest by James Carville?

I can respect those with views dissimilar to mine, I really can. Don’t agree with his politics? That’s cool! The country needs both Yin and Yang to succeed. Some of my best friends and beloved family members are way on the other side of the political spectrum as me, and I love them anyway. I love getting into intelligent and jesting political debates. But really, if you are going to pass around shocking photos of reading material choices of your chosen hated politician, you might want to verify that it really is something shocking.

At the library, we use a flat panel TV to advertise various library programs. I make “posters” in Microsoft publisher, and then save them to a flash drive as a JPG. I plug the flash drive into the TV, and it displays the advertisements as a photo slideshow. Pretty awesome!

I just ran into a strange problem. I made a slide to advertise an upcoming Wii party featuring The Beatles Rock Band game. I used the photo from the album cover With The Beatles and found a Beatles type font. I kept it in b&w, and it came out pretty cool. Here it is…

The odd thing is that this slide will not display on the TV. I am baffled. I’ve tried saving it as various file types, and even then opening with another program and attempting to save. Nada. I only get errors. I finally tried saving a screen cap of it, and that will display. But, then it isn’t quite big enough to fill the screen due to low resolution. It comes out like this…

… instead of filling the screen like this…

I wonder if it is sensing something from the photo or font and not displaying it due to copyright issues? I am baffled. Any ideas on how to get it to display full size, or why the screen cap would work and not the original? The original is 2484 x 1397.

Thanks for any input!

A friend called me this morning. She and her husband live in the country, and were coming home late last night. They saw a truck near their place, and were surprised to see what they thought was a fawn running alongside it. They soon realized that it was a tall, thin dog. They wondered if it was somebody running their dog. We see people do that around here and it scares the crap out of me. The truck stopped and they thought that they were going to let the dog back in, when they tossed another dog out of the car and ran it over. The truck then sped away. It happened so fast that they didn’t get the license plate number, but they did get a description of the truck. But, I doubt that will lead to anything.

They called the county sheriff’s department, and they sent out a deputy. The deputy told them that there was nothing that they could do with either of the dogs, and was just going to shoot them. The injured dog probably had a broken back and needed to be euthanized, but there was nothing wrong with the first dog. My friends took the dog home with them, but they had to drag him away crying from his friend.

He spent the night with them, and actually climbed into bed with their 14-year-old daughter. He didn’t like their younger son touching his feet, but was otherwise very good with him. They have three ACDs and a Beagle, plus cats and ducks, and really couldn’t keep another dog, so they called asking what to do with him. Our only shelters in the area are pretty limited intake, but I told her to call them just in case, and be sure to tell the story. It’s not like she was somebody just looking to dump a dog. One of the shelters was willing to take him. It’s one that is very low-kill that works with the dogs, and places them unless they are quite dangerous. He’s cute, and I am sure that he will get adopted.

So if you are in the NW Iowa area and are thinking of adopting a cute dog, here’s the cutie that should soon be hitting the adoption floor at the Humane Society of NW Iowa.

I need a home!

I’d like to think that the person who did this could be caught, but I doubt it will ever happen