Umbrella

I just wanted to see if this works. I like Mandy Moore's version version of Rihanna's song Umbrella.

Final Thoughts

I kept thinking that I probably did not post enough blog entries and as I was pondering on what else to write, I focused on the little aquarium we have at home. We have three fishies, Kit, Jules and Jan (short for Janitor). I probably stared at these fishies for a good half hour and I still could not come up with anything. As I stared at them, I thought it would be nice to get a video of them moving around the little tank. I love staring at Jules, the one with splotches of black and orange. Come to think of it, there was never a time that I did not see them still...always on the move, always on the look-out for that kind hand that would throw food in the tank. Then it came to me, fish plus video equals youtube. Youtube + Dora = one more entry in my LIS2600 blog.

I read the Pew/Internet Report and I have to admit that I am one of the 57% of internet users who watch videos online. About 99.5% of the limited free time that I have to watch anything is spent not in front of the television, but in front of my laptop watching stupid videos my friends send me that they find in Youtube or else I watch my K-dramas online. I was late in the game when it comes to the youtube nation. This addiction to videos online started last year. I started watching Korean dramas in youtube and from then on, I have scoured the internet for other sites that could lead me to more dramas. I am now a frequent visitor of other sites like veoh.com, dailymotion, crunchyroll, etc. Youtube is still the most popular site. In fact, I have a friend who at age 40 just discovered the joys of computing. His current obsession is youtube and I probably get about four youtube video links from him each day. Most of them are insanely funny like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmbsSw81Uww which is a Japanese exercise/ESL class video. I've seen a lot of bizarre videos but this one takes the cake.

I remember over 10 years ago when I was shopping for my first PC (other than the Amiga from eons ago), I scoffed at the saleman's pitch about watching movies using the desktop. I cheekily told him then that the whole point of going out to watch movies with a crowd is to keep up with my busy social life. I thought then that the idea of spending Friday and Saturday nights cooped up in my room watching videos with my PC is just plain ridiculous and pitiful. Over a decade later, videos online are all the rage and yes, I am one of the 57% of netizens addicted to watching them. In fact, when I am finally done with all of the things I need to finish to graduate, I have a list of dramas and movies waiting to be watched. Does this mean my social life has turned dull as I aged...perhaps, but most likely it because I choose to stay at home to get some work done and as treats, I watch videos here and there to break the monotony of my job and my quest for my MLS.

Getting back to my fish story, I watched them a bit as the swirling thoughts and ideas fomented in my mind to turn into the rambling post I have above. Even now I wonder if these little fishies are not bored moving around the tiny tank. Then again, I think fish life in a tank is probably better than our life in this huge tank called society. At least they get fed regularly, they need not work for a meal, they have shelter...well, they are cared for regardless.

And so I bid you Au Revoir and leave you with my final thoughts...

As the end of my program draws near, I now am wondering if I will be able to contribute to society as a librarian or will I be like Kit, Kat and Jan, endlessly swimming around, hoping to impress those who watch me enough that I can get promoted and make more money to help pay for student loans. HAH...whenever my thoughts veer towards that direction, my eyes start crossing, the headache is just around the corner and then I start thinking, I wish I was a fish...

But then again, I will always dream of becoming a great librarian that will someday make everyone in the profession proud...okay, okay...so just my family will do and that's already reaching too far! :o)

Again, My thanks to you Dr. T and to Debbie. I had lots of fun!

End of Term

The end of the summer session...what a relief. I think I am finally done with my Pitt webpage (http://www.pitt.edu/~rdb2). It probably needs some tweaking but I'm not sure if there anything else I can do. I can only hope that I did all the assignments correctly and that I'll get a decent grade.

This technology class taught me a lot even after all the headaches in trying to finish the assignments. I know graduate school is not supposed to be easy but it was torture trying to do Zoomclouds and the tagging assignments. Well, to be fair, once in place, Del.icio.us, Connotea and EndNoteweb were easy to use. It was just a lot of work. But man oh man, Zoomclouds was a lot of problems! One day my cloud is there, the next day the site is in Spanish. Today, as I was publishing/uploading the Thoreau assignment Zoomclouds was acting up. I learned to ignore it, hoping that sooner or later, like the prodigal son, it will return.

Honestly, because I am working at a law firm library and if I stay in this field, I probably will have no need for most of the stuff we had to do. As I was doing the tagging assignment with Connotea, Zotero and EndNote, I kept thinking that they are ideal for academic libraries. For all that I had enjoyed the KOHA assignment, it seems like it will be ideal to use in a public library and not in a law firm library. However, I am grateful for all that I learned. I am sure I will not remember everything I learned but at least if there came a point in my career that I will switch paths and go into another field, I know I will not have a hard time re-learning the stuff. After all, knowledge learned is knowledge gained.

Thanks Dr. Tomer...for everything!

Sayonara Harry!

I have been anxiously waiting for further instructions regarding the formatting of the fragment of Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but having checked and rechecked Blackboard repeatedly the last few days, I focused on something else i.e. my incomplete grades and the essays I need to finish. To take a break, from the pressures of my life, I drove to my local Borders to check out the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Release Party. I got on the waiting list for a copy after they gave out the reserved ones. I had no intention of staying until after midnight to a copy after the hordes of people on the reserved list got theirs. I have one coming in the mail tomorrow and I am content to wait for that.





Although I go to special midnight screenings of the movie I have never been to a release party for the book. I went because I wanted to be able to say that I went to one and it was fun and interesting...but most importantly, it was my way of saying goodbye to Harry Potter and his friends Ron and Hermione and the multitude of other wonderful characters that brought us to another world as we read the books. J.K. Rowling took all of us avid readers of the series for a magical ride in the last decade and I am thankful for the diversion her stories provided. I am loathe to read the final book of the series because I hate goodbyes, I hate endings. I can only hope that the end of the story will not leave me too bereft. I know, I know it's only fiction but as it usually happens when I like a book that I read, with this series, I fell in love with the plot and I felt quite an attachment with the characters.


So that being said, I look forward to reading the copy I am getting in the mail tomorrow!


**hmmmnnn, I'm not sleepy yet, maybe I could return to Borders and see if I can get a copy with my waitlist ticket.** :o)

Getting back to the swing of things

I got back from a short vacation on Thursday but it was very hard to get back to the swing of things at work and with school assignments. I went to my cousin's wedding in Minnesota last week and after the wedding in Minneapolis, we drove 4 hours north to my Uncle's cabin by Lake Vermillion. It was an exercise in patience...no internet, no TV, no cellphone signal. All we did was eat and sleep when we were not target shooting, fishing and tubing. The cabin was in a remote area but although I missed technology on our first day in Timbuktu, after a while, I slid into the rustic living like I was born into it.

However, I realized how much I missed the high tech world we live in when we got back to the city. One tends to take for granted what one so easily gets to enjoy as I do with highspeed internet and mobile technology. When we got back to civilization, the first thing I did was check for voicemail and email. Loving rustic life or no, once an internet addict, always an internet addict! LOL!

KOHA KO NA!

In my native tongue Tagalog, "KUHA KO NA!" means, "I get it!" Some dialects say it as KOHA, depending on the regional accent. I have to say that it did not take me long to get how KOHA works. It sure seemed a lot easier than the ZoomClouds assignment. The minute I got into KOHA, it took me a few minutes to get my bearings and then I finished the assignment in about 3 hours with a few hitches. The hitches were error messages but they were not too hard to figure out, thanks to the postings of the good people in the discussion board. I hope I did this right!

"Le déjeuner des canotiers"

TOPIC: Auguste Renoir

Here's my Book list in KOHA:
(*You have to be logged in to KOHA to use the links)

In the time of Renoir / Mason, Antony. - Copper Beech Books, ; Brookfield, Conn. : - 48 p. : : Includes index. ; 29 cm.

Renoir /
Schneider, Bruno F. - Crown, ; New York : - 96 p. : ; 29 cm.

Renoir : life and works /Joannides, Paul. - Sourcebooks, Inc., ; Naperville, Ill. : - 144 p. : ; 17 cm.

Renoir / Monneret, Sophie. - Holt and Co., ; New York : - 160 p. : ; 33cm.

Renoir : his life and works /Castellani, Francesca. - Courage Books, ; Philadelphia : - 271 p. : ; 35 cm.

Renoir / - Rizzoli, ; New York : - 191 p. : : "Originally published in Italian by Rizzoli Libri Illustrati"--T.p. verso. ; 21 cm.

Renoir / Gruitrooy, Gerhard, - Nelson Regency ; Magnolia Editions, ; Nashville, TN : New York : - 96 p. : : Includes index. ; 11 cm.

Renoir / Druick, Douglas W. - Art Institute of Chicago ; Distributed by Harry N. Abrams, ; [Chicago, Ill.] : New York, NY : - 112 p. : ; 23 x 25 cm.

Renoir : a life in paintings /Spence, David. - Barron's Educational Series, ; Hauppauge, NY : - p. ; cm.

Renoir : a sensuous vision /Distel, Anne. - H.N. Abrams, ; New York : - 175 p. : ; 18 cm.

Renoir and Algeria / Benjamin, Roger, - Yale University Press ; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, ; New Haven : Williamstown, Mass. : - xi, 163 p. : : Published on the occasion of an exhibition held at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., Feb. 16-May 11, 2003. ; 32 cm.

Renoir for kids / Hyde, Margaret E. - Budding Artists, ; Santa Monica, Calif. : - 1 v. (unpaged) : : Cover title. ; 23 cm.

Renoir landscapes : 1861-1883 /Bailey, Colin. - Yale University Press, ; New Haven, CT : - p. cm.
Renoir's nudes / Cahn, Isabelle. - Universe Pub., ; New York : - p. ; cm.

Renoir's portraits : impressions of an age /Bailey, Colin B. - Yale University Press, ; New Haven : - xiii, 384 p. : : "Published in conjunction with the exhibition Renoir's Portraits: Impressions of an Age, organized and circulated by the National Gallery of Canada"--verso of t.p. ; 32 cm.

Renoir, his life, art, and letters / White, Barbara Ehrlich. - Abrams, ; New York : - 311 p. : ; 36 cm.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

Here's the link to my Virtual Shelf in KOHA:
(*You have to be logged in to KOHA to use the links)

http://pitt1.kohawc.liblime.com/cgi-bin/koha/bookshelves/shelves.pl?viewshelf=38

More than meets the eye...

I started answering the quiz when I got home last night from work, that is of course after cooking for my family of 9...yes 9 + 2 guests. It was my niece's 18th birthday yesterday and I was prompted to make this Tortellini dish for dinner. After dinner, I worked on the quiz but I had a promise to keep with one of my nieces. At 11pm we were lined up for a special screening of Transformers. I just figured I'll look at it like I am taking a break from the quiz.

Transformers was highly entertaining. I have never been that much entertained with a movie so far this year (I've been waiting to see if HP and the Order of the Phoenix will get that distinction). Anyway, if you're not familiar with the animated version of Transformers you will think that the movie lacked a storyline but for most people like us who see movies like this, we want the fire power, the action and the special effects and this movie delivered in that respect. The funny lines and scenes were just an added bonus. I just loved it when the cars transformed to robots and vice versa. The transformations were fluid and all I could mumble after the first gasps of delight was, "Wicked!"

Anyway, when we got back after the movie, I finished all but two questions of the quiz and decided to call it a night. I figured I can finish the quiz at work before the time it is due. I managed to get one of the remaining two questions done before 9am California time but between calls from attorneys and their secretaries I began to run out of time. I was on my last question at 1pm when my computer started doing funny things. I had to restart and then logged back into Courseweb only to find Dr. T's announcement about extending the time till 10pm EST because of some glitches. Whoopeee! Even still, I tried submitting around 2:30 pm and it was accepted. I

I know there is a reason why I don't usually do assignments when I'm at work. I get distracted with work LOL! I also know that I had no business watching Transformers last night and I could have broken that promise. However, my 13 year old niece (in love with Shia La Beouf) would have been devastated if we did not see the special screening and I would turn into the evil Aunt. No regrets, I'm exhausted but I fulfilled my duties to the family re: food and entertainment, I watched a very entertaining movie, and I finished my quiz although I almost failed to meet the deadline... but you know what, at the end of the day, because family always comes first... it was all worth it!