The Blogger's Best Friend

I'll tell ya what, I am definitely learning new stuff in this exercise. I am in the generation that totally fell through the cracks in terms of the internet and technology. Here's a scenario--when I started library school there was no internet as it exists now, but by the time I finished 18 months later, netscape was born and I was using it at my first (part-time) library job. Wanna laugh? One of my core competencies for technology in grad school was knowing how to FTP! I don't even remember exactly what that stands for, but I bet no one needs to know it anymore! Anyway, I am young enough that I grew up with some computer technology (I remember the old floppy floppy disks for PCs but I used a Brother word processor until my senior year in college) but old enough that I am having to educate myself on pretty much everything internet related, unlike every kid entering middle school these days. It's the reason why it's not second nature for me to explore all this new stuff on my own, so I'm glad to be led along through all these exercises.

Technorati was totally new to me, but I love the idea of being able to link a blog up to the bigger world so people know about it! I mean, why go to the trouble of blogging if no one but you is going to read it? Except for the whole cathartic diary-esque thing. But still. And of course, if you are blogging with a purpose, you really want to get people hooked up. I am not laboring under any delusions of people adding me to their rss feeds or anything, but maybe someone somewhere will think what I'm writing is worth reading, or at least more interesting than staring off into space. Of course this means that I have to go back and do tags for all my blog posts. Tagging is still not second nature to me, but I see the value and I've just gotta try to remember to do it! I'm a librarian, this sort of thing should be a piece of cake--don't we love subject headings?

Revvin' Up for a Rant

Ugh, I have actually been dreading blogging about this, because I know I sound like lead grouch-keteer under normal circumstances, but there's no avoiding it. This is October, known to many as breast cancer awareness month or Hispanic heritage month or even just the 31-days-of-Halloween month, all of which are good things. But for me, October is the month where, year in and year out, one or more of my various and sundry pieces of technology craps out on me. This year is no exception, as my computer crashed on October 7 and I have spent the last two weeks trying to recover all the things I lost. The good news is, I haven't lost anything tremendously important except hours of my life sitting trying to figure out where things might be hidden. Last October my cell phone died--just died, no new batteries or anything, which meant I lost pretty much every phone number I need. Two years ago in October of 2005 I really lucked out, as I got a new computer from Gateway which had all kinds of problems and required no fewer than 3 angry phone calls to their customer service department (this actually ended up getting me a free flash drive for my troubles, so that wasn't too bad). The reason I got the new computer that year was because I got an iPod nano for my birthday, which didn't work with my old computer's Windows 98. That nano was returned less than a month after I got it (also in October) because it wouldn't hold a charge. That very same month, my work computer contracted some virus which resulted in my having to get a replacement computer there, too. So I am basically the angel of death to anything with a plug. My only consolation is that we are almost to the end of the month, when it will be safe for me to watch TV again.