February 24, 2007

the land of cheese steak and brew pubs

Samantha and I are down in New Jersey for the weekend to visit her parents and talk about preparations for the wedding. We've come up with some great ideas so far--we're kicking around the idea of each table having its own "Dewey" theme, with a subject taken from the Dewey Decimal Classification system being the theme of the table.

Being at Sam's parents in New Jersey means that we're about 15 minutes from Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love. Imagine my joy when I found out that it's also the city of brew pubs! We went to one of them on Thursday, when we had dinner with a friend of Sam's. The name was Nodding Head, the name coming from the hundreds of bobblehead dolls they had in their case. I got to try almost all of their beers. The one that stood out was named Grog, their take on an English brown beer. An interesting beer was brewed using hops, engineered by the Sapporo brewery in Japan--can't remember the name for it, and it's not listed on their webpage.

I've also been able to indulge myself in the cheese steak, of which I've had two. I can't stop myself!

February 21, 2007

my first link! (other than Jess)

I know this is pretty bad of me, but I was looking at my blog just a minute ago and decided to see if anyone has linked to my blog (with the exception of Jess--not saying I don't appreciate it!). So I clicked on the "blogs that link here" link on the right-side column, and damned if I wasn't quoted in another blog! It was a post about the Espresso machine which prints books on demand, where I was quoted as the "thoughtful, more bookworm-ish perspective" from what I had said in this post. Hey, it's not much, but it's what I got! I just hope this isn't my fifteen minutes of fame 'cause if it is, then I'm pretty dang pathetic.

February 20, 2007

Recommendations and CRM

A month or so ago, I had posted something about Amazon's personalized recommendations going a little wonky. Now, I had heard that gmail (Google's free email accounts) had been giving recommendations as well--these recommendations were based on keywords plucked from emails that gmail users had sent and received. Well, they're not so much recommendations as "personalized" advertising from sponsors of Google's gmail. So I had heard that there were some problems with this as well, and obviously it should be so. I mean, when I write an email to someone, I'm not expounding on my shopping habits and bemoaning a lack of advertising directed towards my personal interests. Usually, I'm complaining about the weather, talking about baseball, loved ones, so on and so forth. So how does gmail extract keywords from those conversations? Well, that's the problem. And it's a problem that my friend Jess has had recently, leading him to post about this hilarious personalized advertisement he received. Jess, I just hope to god that you weren't writing about that in your emails . . .

February 18, 2007

beavers and their eating habits

Samantha's been entertaining me these past few weeks with a funny story about one of the kids in her school. Apparently when Sam asks this kid a question, she can't answer it but instead goes off with some nonsensical statement. This is a recording I got Sam to make, with my favorite nonsense response yet.

Dice-K's just a blur in the headlines

Got an email from my Uncle Dave this morning, where he forwarded an article about the Red Sox's knight in shining armor, Daisuke Matsuzaka (see the link for a good blog, Matsuzaka Watch). It got me to thinking about the two articles I've seen about Dice-K's training day appearances--well, actually about the photos that accompanied the articles. In the photos (below), Matsuzaka's a blur. Now, photographic technology is well enough advanced that we can capture most any moments without accompanying blurring, so why was Matsuzaka blurred? Well, to give a little background, Boston laid out $51 mil. to his former Japanese-league team just to sign him, and another $52 mil. for a five-year contract (not figuring bonuses paid for game statistics and other perks like the $150,000 for relocation expenses or the ten round-trip tickets to Japan per year that Matsuzaka was able to get figured into his contract). The reason that they paid all this money is because Matsuzaka's figured to be the best pitcher in Japan, where he can throw blistering fastballs and, in some baseball fan's fantasies, can even throw the mythical gyroball. So he's being touted based on his speed--he's fast, man! I can just imagine the word that went out to the Boston press corp from the Red Sox's clubhouse--Theo Epstein saying that not only does he want them to write about Matsuzaka's speed, he wants it in pictures too. Smart PR move, guys!

February 13, 2007

It's another day in Lake Wobegon . . .

So Sam and I went to see Garrison Keillor this past Sunday, at Boston Symphony Hall. It was a great hall but, as always, the seats were so uncomfortable. I think it's for the many symphonies and operas that get played there--or at least for the people watching them, because they couldn't get comfortable enough to drift off to sleep if they wanted to.


Sam did start to doze off, however, just about mid-point in Garrison's talk. She said he just had such a nice voice to sleep to . . . I'm sure he'd be happy to hear that. That, and it reminded her of when I read to her at night, just before she goes to bed. We've been reading Roald Dahl's The BFG for the past two years, because I can only get two pages into it before I notice that Sam's asleep. That and I have to preface every reading with what happened last time she fell asleep. Anyway, Sam had another comment about Garrison Keillor . . . after we left, she told me that she understands where I get my storytelling style from. Must be a Midwestern thing to tell stories that have a definite beginning, meander for an (indefinite) period of time, and, if you have the fortitude to pay attention long enough, will return to the definite beginning with an inconclusive end. It's not the story that's the point, it's the journey we take in its telling . . .

What did Garrison talk about? Well, he started off with a poem, then sang "Pretty Polly," a folk song in the tradition of the Child ballads (it has its roots in this particular Child ballad). After that he groused about literary traditions (paying particular attention to T.S. Elliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which he called "the poem that singlehandedly turns students off from poetry"). After all that, he began a thirty-or-forty-minute story which culminated in the meeting of a wedding, a funeral, Bruno the fishing dog, and thirty Danish Lutheran pastors in Lake Wobegon (the actual lake, not the town). It was great--if you want a recounting of it, just give me a call and I'll be happy to give you the gist of it. In the end, he had me laughing so hard that I was crying. It reminded me of all the times my Grandma Mack, Mom, Nicole and I would sit around, listening to his recordings on tape and laughing 'till our sides hurt. I'm looking forward to the next time I'll see him . . .

February 9, 2007

Not enough time in the world . . .

Amongst other things, there's not enough time in the world. At least when you're too lazy for your own good and don't get around to blogging for a week . . .

So my mother wrote me an email today saying she was going to catch up on my blog while she and dad drove to Chicago--hence the reason I'm getting off my duff and blogging today, because I'm sure there wasn't enough for her to catch up on.

Big news--my friend, Quinn Walker, was recently signed to the Voodoo-EROS label. He's spent quite a few years playing the part of the struggling artist and, if all goes well, he'll have some time to spend as the road-weary musician who just wants to go home and spend his hard-earned money. As a side note, I decided to play a joke on Quinn and made a Wikipedia entry for him, which is where his linked name will take you. He was very modest about it at first, not wanting to have a thing to do with it, but when I told him the wild lies I had put on there, he decided to get his hands dirty and set the record straight. You can see the wild lies here. Beware--some are inside jokes. Sorry. Here's an article that was written about his signing, with a really wacky picture to go along with it.

I've been enjoying my time back in school, taking some interesting classes: Public Library management, user instruction, and collection development and management. The pub. lib. management course is taught by a great professor who rattles our cages constantly, so that's always fun--especially so because it's Monday morning at 9.30, so it keeps everyone awake. The User Instruction course will be very helpful, as it's a type of crash-course in teaching--something that librarians do all the time. Collection development is kind of dry, but so is the professor's humor--he's British, and he likes to repeat himself. It's great, he spends the first fifteen minutes of class telling us what he's going to teach. I think he's just trying to get himself revved up. I'm sure I'll have more to say about the courses as they take over my life . . .

What else? Oh, Sam and I are going to see Garrison Keillor this weekend. Should be fun--I've been reading Lake Wobegon Days to counteract the effects of reading library texts. Wish I could tell stories like him.

Well, that's all I can come up with in the time I've alloted myself. Now I've got to go make a sandwich for my dinner tonight (I work 12-8 at the Simmons Library) and I want to stop off at the Irish bakery in town to pick up some Irish stew and brown bread for my lunch. Yum!