That said, if you play golf or know someone who does, you might consider placing a purchase at golfoutletsusa.com. I don’t know this company, and I can only imagine what they sell… long sticks and small white round things. But when I suddenly received close to ten email messages indicating someone in Mississippi was using my email address to place orders over the Web–though thankfully not using anything else connected to me–a calm, sweet man at the other end of the phone reassured me that my credit card wasn’t being used, explained that thiefs often cobble together information from various sources, remarked on the general perfidy of mankind (though I think he put it, “Isn’t it terrible people do these things?”), and thanked me for alerting the company he works for, which was the only company that responded to my frantic phone calls and emails.

This has been a long, strange month. In a three-week span, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, operated on, and pronounced cured. Sandy had a biopsy that had us on our toes for three weeks, but it came back clear two days ago. I have received other life-changing news I’m still processing. And last night I finally completed my last essay for the semester. I am grateful, but I’m also exhausted. And I’m almost teary over the kindness of a nice person somewhere out there on the other end of a phone line who took a moment to reassure me and to listen.

I think I’m going to do the only things I can do today: wrap up my work–oh my goodness, I still need to mail some paperwork!–see if I can’t find a fresh turkey to brine for Christmas dinner, or barring that, two steaks the thickness of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and–what else to do the day before the day before Christmas?–see the dentist at 4 p.m. If he’s up for it, so am I. I’ve even been flossing.

Happy holidays, FRL readers; may whatever stars you follow be bright.

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However, I saw Steve Cohen’s note on Library Stuff that LJ had announced its M&S list, and I actually tracked down the list.

Nice group! Kudos to buddy Michael “Tame the Web” Stephens. Kudos to all of this year’s M&S! Steve notes there are two bloggers–I bet all of them read blogs, and more than two write ‘em. Just a hunch.

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That’s librarian Marlys Maher in the Salinas Californian, in a feisty and pointed interview about the Salinas library situation, on the eve of a visit from national library leaders. She does a great job of not falling into the Internet versus libraries trap, and skilfully responds to questions about using volunteers in place of library workers. You go girl!

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http://webjunction.org/do/Navigation?category=548

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I’m establishing a Trends category for Free Range Librarian, and I’ll try to think and write more about trends in the future. (I have far more to say about subject searching, but I’m in the throes of my final project for my first semester in my MFAW program, and blogging is down there with housekeeping in terms of priorities.)

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If I didn’t have a job, and one I like (and if I didn’t know that my board would hunt me down and drag me back if I tried to leave, at least through this major development phase at MPOW), I’d be buffing up my c.v. and shooting it her way, so it was on her top pile when new positions opened up.

Arnold, dude, good choice! You rock, Gubernator! You earned your Protein-Style In’N'Out Burger for the day! (Is it possible to have that “animal style” with special sauce?)

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Big news today in the free speech community: “The Supreme Court today struck down the Child Online Protection Act as an unconstitutional government attempt to censor free speech on the Internet. ‘Today’s ruling from the Court demonstrates that there are many less restrictive ways to protect children without sacrificing communication intended for adults,’ the ACLU said. ‘By upholding the order stopping Attorney General Ashcroft from enforcing this questionable federal law, the Court has made it safe for artists, sex educators, and web publishers to communicate with adults about sexuality without risking jail time.’”

Recommended professional reading: read the ACLU’s resources on COPA, browse their list of plaintiffs, see the NY Times article, and see what EFF and EPIC have to say about it as well. Finally, browse the actual decision. Intriguing, for those of us who have been saying for nearly a decade that filters aren’t fair, don’t work, and should not be used to prevent adults from accessing the Internet.

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I finally “get” the templates (although I won’t be doing too many tweaks without extensive tutorials or model templates from the likes of Elise), the tags make enough sense that I was able to replicate my favorite features and even implement a three-column style, and I now have comment registration working properly on the forthcoming new site for Free Range Librarian. (I’m not publishing the URL just yet, since I’m still tweaking the code, but if you think really, really hard, you can probably figure it out…)

I leapt into a 3.0 installation rather rashly, primarily because I feel the need to upgrade before I start the MFA program later this month (and plunge into a 2-year work/school abyss). Despite that, my blogs never actually broke, support staff were amazingly responsive, and three days later “I” (as in, I and the Movable Type support staff) have resolved all of the issues.

While I did make it through an upgrade, more or less, if I had to do it over again, I would save all of my templates, export the data, archive the existing MT installation (I actually did steps two and three), delete the existing MT installation, do a new install of 3.0, and recreate my blogs. I had to update the templates anyway, and my choices were to install new ones and add the edits, or fiddle with the old ones. (Procrastination awarded again: I’ve been foot-dragging about moving my main blog to its new domain, so I was able to blow away that blog and start over with all-fresh files I can tweak at relative leisure). Plus one of my problems had to do with several modules that I missed when uploading the files for MT 3.0. Had I simply taken a scorched-earth approach, and put up a barebones “watch this site” message, I could have had my existing blog up and working in at least a primitive fashion within an hour of getting MT installed.

I’m one of those folks who should not execute Perl commands without close adult supervision, I’m so low-end that I’ve been using the same 20 Unix commands since 1991, and yet I made it to the other side of 3.0. I’m sure it has its bugs, some of which will no doubt be made manifest the night before a major deadline for work or school, but I’m still rather pleased that I was able to get this far, and I owe that to excellent, patient tech support from MT (and a few good tip sheets from Elise, who is a treasure).

And among other nice features, I love, just love that comment registration!

Stay tuned for FRL’s new, improved face.

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