Links on the Grill

The truck farmers have arrived in Tallahassee — or, we could call them, purveyors of open-source agriculture.Â This gentleman is at Lafayette and Magnolia most Fridays and Saturdays, and his sugar-sweet, flavorful melons made some scrumptidiliumptious sorbet this weekend.

But I have been absorbed in my own “fruitful” exercises…

ALA Techsource is once again actively publishing, with several new writers and a new editor at the helm, and Jason Griffey interviewed me about my new job at Equinox, open source, kittens, etc. Happy to see Techsource’s star in ascendance once again!

It has also been a week of taxes (I often file extensions, which means my accountant and I are both a little saner when it’s “my” tax time, but that bird eventually comes home to roost), writing my last super-secret internal MPOW report (this one on Shibboleth, which I keep accidentally calling “Chimera” — was it Jung who said there are no mistakes?), and getting ready for essentially three weeks on the road, with quick scoots back to home base: New Mexico, Cape Cod, Atlanta, and Anaheim, from June 7 to July 1.

Georgia Public Library Service has an interesting position open. If you’re savvy but not a developer, don’t let the word “software” stop you; note the emphasis on project management, Evergreen, lee-ayzing, etc. Looks like a great job for someone with excellent project/people skills and a passion for quality library software!

I heard tale of the latest draft of ILS-Discovery recommendations from the Digital Library Federation by way of John Mark Ockerbloom (whose wonderfully syncopated name surely deserves a nursery rhyme: “John Mark Ockerbloom/Saw an ILS;/John Mark Ockerbloom/Said, “What IS this mess?”).

Dopplr now calculates carbon footprints for your trips. I stopped using Dopplr because it was too much fuss for the value — one more place to record stuff, not enough “network effect” to really make it social — but the personal carbon footprint calculation alone might be worth it to me. Might. Possibly. We’ll see.

I often find myself in situations where I want to record a good thought or send a reminder, and cannot write… in a car, a line at the airport, etc. Per Liz Lawley (“Mamamusings”), I finally tried Jott. As Liz says, “when you call their number it listens to your message and transcribes it for you,” then off it goes to your email or calendar or what-have-you. It’s utterly satisfying magic — I’m hooked! Give Jott a try.

Speaking of situations, I have elected to reduce the opportunities for those, and have ordered a GPS. (It was $359 the day I bought it — today it’s $413! I bet Amazon was going toe-to-toe with CostCo, which had it for $349.)

I have rented a GPS a couple of times on business trips where I had to drive in unknown areas, and it was love, love, love. A GPS changes the trip, which is its own reflective post for the future. I rationalized the purchase because some needed car repair came in well under what I thought it would be. (You see why I am not an accountant — though a high-end GPS in a fifteen-year-old Honda has its own logic. The car has outlasted at least five computers, come to think of it, and is still spry, fuel-efficient, and a comfortable ride. Go you, my little red friend.)

While looking at my accounting for last year and observing some minor billing for my web-based fax service (a great way to eliminate the hassle of incoming faxes), I reflected that I have received no faxes in the last year and sent only three (and at that, under duress — I usually persuade people that snail-mail will work fine). I coped with great slurries of faxes in California (despite my pleas and arguments to the contrary) but expect those agencies have Moved On by now.

I expect to post a little en route, and more once my “writing retreat” ends and I am romping with my baby sister in Santa Fe. We’ll see!

On to the last day of work…