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30 JulA Day in the Life — Thursday

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Oof. So. Freaking. Hot. Makes it hard to think. But, it was a thinky sort of day and my job is kinda thinky, so thinky I did… Got up went into work, it was one of my early mornings.

  • Admin Billing 8:00-9:00 Straightening out billing stuff with a MARC record supplier.
  • Sales/Sales Support Meetings 9:00-10:00 Mtg. to help a sales guy figure out how to approach a current client.
  • Admin Billing 10:00-10:30 Send on the billing stuff for signatures.
  • Admin Overhead 10:30-12:00 Restarting computer due to updates, getting stuff ready for bugzilla bash.
  • Admin Filing or commenting on bugs 12:00-13:30 Bugzilla bug bash! w00t! Taking a look at bugs & figuring out how to put together something our awesome director can go into a meeting with to help us get some leverage for stuff that would improve the cataloging workflow.
  • MeSH Meetings 13:30-14:00 Sorting out a MeSh mess, sorted & resolved. Yay! My recommendation to resolve the issue is what the dev was thinking too & we’re golden!
  • Outsourcing Research/Gathering Info 14:00-16:00 Looking at top dbs that could be outsourced & what sorts of ‘packages’ we could set up for varying markets (mostly med as int’l has yet to be determined). What can we put together (for example, normalizing the top 25 med. databases to 100% — so MARC records and authority records for all holdings within a particular provider package).
  • Admin Overhead 16:00-16:30 Prepping for tomorrow.

I feel like there were some wasted cycles in there. Not because I wasn’t trying, but I wasn’t getting as much accomplished as I wanted to. But I feel like we made a dent in some other stuff. Then I came home, fed the cats, & met my parents & girls at the lake. I had the best intentions to go swimming today, but by the time I got there, all I wanted to do was nap. So I sat in the lawn chair & kinda snoozed without really ever sleeping while crazy beach mayhem ensued around me. Then we had a lovely dinner, ending with sweet tasty watermelon. And then we came home. It’s too hot here.

Category(s): Library Stuff, Work
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29 JulA Day in the Life — Wednesday

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Holy cow — is it Wednesday already? Where’d my week go!?

So I forgot to add yesterday that I’m also the executive producer of a couple other sites & one of them got hit hard with spammers, so I spent about 1.5 hours cleaning that up too…

But today… Took the little girls to Auntie’s & made it to work in an hour. Woo!

  • Admin Overhead 9:45-10:30 Email, setting up conference rooms for mtgs.
  • Sales/Sales Support Meetings 10:30-12:30 THE mtg & half hour to follow up on action items. I hear it all went very well. It’s hard to tell over a bad phone connection & not being in the room, but the folks that were there said it went well. Yay!
  • Incidents Incident Resolution 12:30-15:30 Normalization issue for a client libraray. Not finished with all the journals that need to be rematched to their target MARC records yet, but… soon.
  • Outsourcing Documentation/Workflow 15:30-17:00 Trying to pull together the process, priorities, and workflow for what material goes for outsource assistance.
  • MeSH Filing or commenting on bugs 17:00 18:30 MeSH taxonomy bug. Easy fix, just need to use the unique MeSH id to identify paths rather than internal tools path id & we’re golden (hopefully those aren’t famous last words! Last time I said that it was requesting recursive queries in a directed acyclic graph database… And that actually is not, by definition, an easy fix. In fact, I believe it’s impossible. These minor details…)
  • Admin Overhead 18:30 19:00 Planning tomorrow…

There was also some time spent after that sending loltaxonomy images due to a polyhierarchy issue that reared its ugly head during the MeSH thing, but that was just muckin’ around having fun. :) Then I logged off & came home. And now here I am, dreading to go inside my 95F house. It’s so much more pleasant out here on the deck, although the only light is from the laptop screen & it’s starting to burn into my retinas. Good times, people, good times…

Category(s): Library Stuff, Work
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28 JulA Day in the Life (Monday & Tuesday)

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A Day in the Life of a Library…

Whether you are a librarian or library worker of any kind, help us share and learn about the joys and challenges of working in a library. Join us by sharing details of your day for a week on your blog. Not only is this a great way for us to see what our colleagues are doing and how they spend their days but it’s a great way for students who are interested in the library profession to see what we really do.

Round 1 July 2008
Round 2 January 2009
July 27th 2009 begins the Second Annual

Eh, so I’m starting a day late. I’m the cataloging team manager for Serials Solutions. I’ve been in this position about 5.5 weeks & I’m still learning the ropes and wrapping my head around things. I think I’m getting there, but I also have a ways to go before I’ve mastered the finer details. I got my MLIS in 2005 & I’ve been working in various library environments for the last 12 or so years.

MONDAY

It’s an early morning for me. It’s warm in the house already. I get in the car & make it to work in about 35 minutes — it’s a *good* morning. Except I overslept because it was so hot, and so I walk in the door right when I wanted to get there. Woo!

  • Sales/Sales Support Research/Gathering Info 8:00-9:45 Trying to get my ducks in a row so I’m prepared for an upcoming client meeting.
  • Admin Billing 9:45-10:45 Reviewing and sorting out billing issues and changes to MARC records provider contracts.
  • Sales/Sales Support Research/Gathering Info 10:45-11:30 Back to trying to organize those ducks for the client meeting.

  • Normalization Normalizing 11:30-12:00 NORM! 29 records reviewed, two normalized. Sadly, I think I messed up both records. On the upside, one of my excellent team members caught it & promises to continue to help me out until I have it all down.
  • Outsourcing Documentation/Workflow 12:00-13:30 Outsourcing strategy overview. Completed with minor exceptions (Normalization plan, largely…). The volume of materials we have has increased exponentially & to continue providing the services at a reasonable cost in a reasonably efficient manner, we need some extra hands!
  • Sales/Sales Support Research/Gathering Info 13:30-14:00 I know, I’m preparing a lot — there are a lot of details and I want to get them right. This is tying up loose ends before meeting with one of my awesome team members who will promptly provide me with a hydra of questions… :) Also a moment of recursive brain explode-y as we contemplate how things might go with this library. They’re kind of a unique case. Everyone’s library is unique, but this one is even uniquer than most…
  • Sales/Sales Support Meetings 14:00-16:00 And here’s the hydra. For every question I get answered, five more questions pop up in the first question’s place.
  • Acquisitions Research/Gathering Info 16:00-16:15 Reviewing MARC records received from one of our international libraries that I had to do a lot of clean up on last week. Yay for learning regex! Regex is *neat*.

Leave work — the blast of hot air from the elevator warns me that it’s ridonculously hot outside. Drive in hot weather for an hour to fetch The Girls from Auntie’s. Drive another half hour to get home, pick up everyone’s swim suits, a book, and some other stuff. Drive another half hour to meet my parents & husband at the local beach for dinner. Eventually come home to a freaking hot house (91F when we got home at 9ish).

TUESDAY

Late morning for me — that means I take the girls to Aunties. Made it to work in a little over an hour round trip from my house to Auntie’s to work — not too bad, considering I usually chat with Auntie a little.

  • Sales/Sales Support Research/Gathering Info 10:00-11:00 New client agenda for the meeting I prepared for yesterday. Filling in what I can as pre-prep mtg prep.
  • Outsourcing Research/Gathering Info 11:00-12:45 Composing email response for a library who might help us with foreign language cataloging to help fill in some of our gap records. During this time, my lovely bosslady brought in the book The Time Trap for my team and me. Looking forward to seeing what kinds of things I pick up from this book…
  • Admin Billing 12:45-13:00 Responding to library MARC record resource that updated their contract based on info from our lawyer. This doesn’t appear to be a super-easy renewal. We’ll see where things go from here…
  • Sales/Sales Support Meetings 13:00-14:00 Prep mtg for tomorrow’s client mtg with my team. Because they are totally awesome, they feel confident that we’re prepared for this meeting. I still feel very new & am nervous about it, but I’m glad they’ll be there because they know their stuff. They’re really amazing & I’m lucky to have another good team. Hoorah! I’d like to bring them with me to InfoCamp & do something, but I don’t have any idea what that something might be.
  • Acquisitions Research/Gathering Info 14:00-16:30 *cries when mrk -> mrc borks the int’l records* Send stuff off to library that might help us with it. Really, this is a cross between the outsourcing stuff I’ve been working on and the records acquisition stuff. Ball’s in their court!
  • Admin Filing or commenting on bugs 16:30-17:00 Setting up bugzilla bash & NOMS. We need to organize the outstanding bugs that are getting in the way of our productivity for the director. She wants to get some of that fixed for us which would be really great. A lot of the fixes are “well, I guess we do have a work around…” but none of them are efficient & some of them are only barely functional. But other stuff has a higher priority and yada yada… so to have someone with a little more leverage say, “yep — time to add some extra resources and Get That Fixed” will be a good thing.
  • Admin Overhead 17:00-18:00 Organizing & planning for tomorrow. I know it sounds weird, but by taking about a half hour to wrap up & another half hour to plan the next day at the end of a day, it makes it much easier for me to come in and get right to work the next day. I don’t have to try to remember where I left off, what needs to be done, what my priorities are, because it’s all set up for me by my very own best administrative assistant — me, the night before. :) As I get more settled, this routine may go by the wayside a little, but at this point I’m tracking so much stuff, I think this might be How It Is for me from here on out. And in the name of productivity, I’m totally cool with that.

In the meantime, I’ve walked across the street to get a pint of blueberries & the heat outside is ugly. At the end of day I head out into the heat. Just straight home this time. Sit on the back deck & eat some fruit & chicken. It’s actually pleasant out there. I surfed for a bit as the computer was out there, then we came in to watch Deadliest Catch & Chopped because clearly we’re crazy. It’s come down several degrees in here since we came in. It’s only 90F. It was 94F when I got home. Uck. We shall see what tomorrow brings!

Category(s): Library Stuff, Work
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04 JulHey, Baby, It’s the Fourth of July

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What a relief, waking up with X in my head instead of Sousa. Sousa will take over soon enough, I fear, so for now I’ll enjoy the X.

Yesterday I went for an 11 mile ride on Elby, my electric bike. Came home and took a long hard nap — if I start riding to work (around 13 miles), I won’t have the luxury of recovering from my ride with a nap! I think this will require working up to since the round trip will be closer to 26 miles by EOD. My time is not all that fast, even with the electric assist — I averaged 10 or 11 or so mph yesterday (11 miles in 1h:1m). I’ll need to pick up the speed some too. My goal is to get to work in an hour (or less). I have work to do, kids to pick up, blah blah blah blah. I do wonder if I’ll ever make that time without showing up all bright red. I guess people would get used to it… Hopefully I don’t prove myself to be too much of a princess to do it semi-regularly.

The ride itself was pretty lovely — going past fences of honeysuckle, hills covered in wild roses, the lake. I will say that warm lake was not my favorite smell, though. I will have to get used to the seat too. About eight miles in, my girl bits were objecting. Happily my sit bones were quite content with the state of affairs though, which is an improvement. My hands & arms also didn’t freak out from the ride. Hoorah! I was dumb and didn’t put sunscreen on. I got a faint burn, but it’s gone already today — but for the future, I will be remembering the sunscreen, even if it’s earlier in the day than freaking high noon. I meant to start out earlier, but the first ride was an epic fail when I switched gears… too fast? In combo with a pause in pedaling? I’m not entirely sure what happened, but I managed to derail the chain off the front gear, and it was a bitch to get it rerailed. Things like this make me apprehensive of making a regular commute on bike, although I think it was just noobishness on my part and trying to get gears switched & being uneven, etc. It’s not like occasionally shit doesn’t go wrong in a car too, hello clutch & clutch stuff my first week of my new job…

My new job! Is awesome. I have lots to catch up on that I’ve not been paying attention to, since my focus the last five or so years has been pretty much taxonomy, but… I’ll get there. And since I’m kinda in the deep end of the pool, I’ll figure out how to swim fast. :) It’s mostly a matter of following up on the questions as they come up and making sure the information gets filed away in my brain in a way that enables retrieval.

Today I need to go hack back the roses, they’re getting out of control. I should probably do some weeding & other stuff too. Sounds like not too much — P hacked back the blackberries that were trying to take over the north side of the house. Which means I need to hunt down the sunscreen and a big hat. And thinking of going out in the sun makes me feel suspiciously like a nap would be such a lovely thing… Mmmm. Naaaappppp.

Category(s): Movement, Stuff
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23 JunThings That Make Me Happy

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I walk past a bicycle shop, a chocolate shop, a circus, and a million bazillion bicyclists on my way to work every morning & all that in reverse on my way back to my car. I’m going to suck up & pay for parking under my building for a variety of reasons (certainly not the least of which I, like the nice HR lady, am apparently a princess) but knowing the proximity to these things makes me happy anyway. My new drive to work, now that I’ve found the back roads I’ll use most of the time, is lovely and not crazy strip mall. I followed someone a good part of the way (until he turned off to head into Ballard) with a “Shut Up and Fish — The Deadliest Catch boat tour” bumper sticker on his car (Muffy Bolding, I thought of you!). He looked like a crusty old crabber too, not all fancy pretty boy. I found a new cemetery that is on my new drive into work. I wave at all the interred people as I drive past. I smile as I walk into work. I smile all the way back to my car after a day of insane information overload. I have landed in a place where there are my people, culturally (erm, and by culturally, I mean they’re library people, and lolcat people, and geeks, and nerds). I like my new team, I like my new manager, I like my new company. They’re all so excited to have me there. I really hope that I can live up to their expectations and that what I bring to the table justifies their excitement. I like M2′s googlemonsters and utter adorableness. I like that M1 is such a lovely 10-year old. I like that P seems to be settling into his new job.

/as you were…

Category(s): Stuff, The World At Large, Work
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10 JunAnd So It Comes to an End

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Well, Friday.  I’m going to miss many of my coworkers something horrible, and there’s about four or five I wish I could just stick in my pocket & bring with me, but… I can’t. It’s a small world though, perhaps we’ll work together again. And hopefully meet up again as friends (and frequently) long before we work together again.

Next week I am free! FREE!! FREEEE!!!! I have to get the front bearings in my car fixed, go to the spa, try to find a home for various things in my house, get new fish for the bedroom tank (and a new right light for the living room one)… and more stuff than anyone should probably pretend to try to cram into a week. Which means I won’t get a bunch of stuff done. Ah well. Maybe at least watch some bewitched… Heh.

So I’m just off the BG Trail at home & 13 miles down BG is where I start work come the 22nd. I want an electric bike. Really badly. It just seems like a good thing to do rather than trying to find parking or bus an hour and a freaking half each way. I know. 13 miles — 1.5 hours. LAME.

Oof. M1 wants to know what the tooth fairy does with all the teeth. We also had the discussion last night about whether or not tooth fairies were like dentists — ie, not a single tooth fairy for the entire world, but a number of tooth fairies serving a local region. This whole fairy thing is starting to get complicated! We’re on our third envelope now, although lately they’ve been leaving notes on the white board we brought home from storage. Crap. I don’t know what the tooth fairy does with all the teeth!

Category(s): The Girls(TM), Work
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23 MayRandom Saturday Update

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Hangin’ out on a Saturday morning watching the first season of the Muppets with the little girls. I think I’ve got everything done from the upgrades, except for one or two forum issues on mamaphonic, but everything else is pretty good. Now to add final touches… when I have time to figure out what those are!

P is out golfing today, leaving me with the girls. It’s a beautiful day, not entirely sure what I’m going to do with them though… not for lack of things to do (clean rooms, fish tanks, parties, etc).M2 came in this morning at 8 — I’m ready for a little nap already. My fault, I suppose, for not going to bed earlier… but really what’s new?

Probably next weekend we bring all our stuff home. I have no idea where it’s all going to go. The books in bookcases, but beyond that… We brought the teapots & teacups back already, and the hats, and a few other various bits of things… So much to go. Such a little house.

Mmmm. Yes. Definitely nap in order. And then everything else…

Category(s): Stuff
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02 MayWhat A Week

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And much of it will be left uncommented on because… because… because I just don’t feel like going into it. Some pretty terrifying, some of it ecstatically good (no, I didn’t get laid off or get a new job, no I’m not at liberty to discuss currently).

So on to the parts I *can* go into. I got a new computer! It’s *SHINY*! And NEW! And [vista aside] NEATO! And *SHINY*! And did I mention NEW! And SHINY!? Yes. The jack in the old one was starting to go & the desktop downstairs is dying a slow and painful death and, it just seemed like time. The one downstairs is more than six years old & the laptop was four, so it was probably time. Now to shift the old laptop downstairs, see if I can convince someone to let me keep the old one & install Ubuntu on it. No, I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with curiosity about that, but I am. So there.

Jaina Bee visited last night and this morning. As always, it was an excellent *FANCY* time. She brought the girls <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Explorer-World-Portable/dp/0399534601″>How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum</a>, so we had to do some things from that book. The little girls ran around like crazed monkeys, because that’s what they do. We had a lovely dinner. Eventually we put the girls to bed & then Jaina & I got to hang out and just talk about all sorts of things & get caught up. It was lovely. This morning we got up & P made pancakes & bacon, we had some tea, did a little coloring, & got kinda sleepy. We decided to get the blood flowing and went geocaching. Couldn’t for the life of us find the first cache. Tried a second cache & broke our not-finding streak! Finally! It’s about time! As fun as just finding the location is, it’s a lot more fun when you actually find the cache. We came home & it was about time for her to head on off to her next adventure.

P & M1 finished installing the new flooring downstairs. It’s SUCH a dramatic improvement & So Very Exciting! Hoorah! And now? Now it’s time to walk M2 to a friend’s house for a fancy dinner play date. She’s ready to go & I guess I’d better get that way too…

Category(s): Friends, Stuff
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22 AprDark & Stormy Night

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The wind is up, the dark has set in & I can hear rain on the roof. After a very difficult week last week… I feel good. Happy even. Tired, mind you, but happy.

I had lunch today with a friend from college & once again, I have the good pleasure to be happy to know the people I know. Easy conversation, good catching up, it was nice. Possibly even nicer than when we were actually in college now that we’re actually, y’know, *grown up*. The people who have come crawling out of dark corners in the last six or so months who have grown up into genuinely nice people has been really lovely. For a long time I was worried about meeting up with people I “used to know” — that it would be weird & awkward. And I guess sometimes it is. But I’m more willing to give it the benefit of the doubt now.

M2 has just told me that her favorite dessert is nutella with ice cream in crepes. That’s my girl! TimTheCat is making bread on my belly, earnestly. Earnestly kneady cat is earnestly kneady.

Life is pretty good. Maybe not as good as this critter has it, but pretty darn good, all the trials & tribulations not withstanding.

Category(s): Stuff
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15 AprRequiescat In Pace, Steve

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I’ve thought of him frequently in the last year. He died last night around 6pm of pneumonia complications. He was a botanist, hardcore pagan, hardcore bicyclist. Around 6pm last night as I was leaving work, I was suddenly enveloped in the most amazing floral scent, then as quickly as it came, it disappeared. I thought maybe it was the flower shop, but no, the shop smelled faintly damp & earthy & not at all sweet and floral last night. I also saw a unicyclist commuting on my way home. I don’t know what that synchronizes to, but it made me happy and very sad all at once.

I remember he had sweet snakes and the most amazing wall of orchids I’ve ever seen, still. It seems like there must have been hundreds of them. I started trying to keep orchids this past year (just the easily available, relatively inexpensive ones), I even got one to start new little buds up the flowering stalk (while the main plant got sadder & sadder), but I’m far from mastering it yet & I keep doing something wrong & they slip through my fingers. I haven’t had the nerve yet to try again & it may be some more time yet before I try again now… or maybe not. I just hate knowing I’m doing something wrong, but not knowing what (probably multiple things on both sides of too wet, too dry, too much attention, too much attempted benign neglect)…

And of course then I remember jumping over bonfires & poking geoducks & full moon walks & so much more. His passion for *being* and loving whole-y left a deep impression on my college self that has really stuck with me all these years. He’s one of my very favorite Greenmen *ever*. I may not be able to keep orchids alive but I had black pansies All Summer Long last year & I intend to again this summer. My first black pansies were from him, of course. OH! And I have a little lemon plant. Because it lives inside right now (winter & all), I’ve been hand pollinating the flowers. Yes! That’s right. I’ve been helping flowers fuck! He always said, “I think it’s really quite appropriate yet strange that we express love by tearing the sexual organs from plants and presenting one another with them.” I have a bunch of sweet little green lemons growing. And of course every time I help the flowers fuck, I think of him too, because how can one not? :) I always think of him when I hear Crazy Man Michael by Fairport Convention, too.

Michael he whistles the simplest of tunes
And asks the wild wolves their pardon
For his true love has flown into every flower grown
And he must be keeper of the garden

And now the keeper of the garden has flown too.

Category(s): Memento Mori
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