This is most likely the most beautiful comic book cover I have ever seen. (The story’s pretty good too.)

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Comic book art
Book signing @ CIL2007
For those of you that still don’t own a copy of Blogging and RSS: A Librarian’s Guide and will be attending Computers in Libraries in April, I will be doing a book signing at the Information Today booth. It will be during the afternoon coffee break on Tuesday from 2:30-3:15pm. See you there!
This isn’t an alarm clock blog
But it may seem like one lately. This one’s tag line is “wake up and smell the coffee”. Yes, you can take that literally.
Coffee Blog
No kidding. There’s a new coffeeshop in Murray, UT (a southern suburb of Salt Lake City) named “Coffee Blog”. Talk about two great things rolled into one. Unfortunately I think they just recently opened and nobody has discovered them yet as I was the only customer and had the feeling I’d been the only one for several hours. The guy who served me was pleasant and the background music was enjoyable. I also have to give the place kudos for their honesty on the menu board as they described an americano as “espresso diluted with hot water”. I ended up getting a very tasty pumpkin spice latte but didn’t hang around as I was off looking for some dinner. If you’re in town check ‘em out. (There’s a few more photos of the place in my flickr account. Just click on the photo to the right to get there.)
Airplane announcements
1. On a Southwest flight (SW has no assigned seating, you just sit where you want) passengers were apparently having a hard time choosing, when a flight attendant announced, “People, ! people we’re not picking out furniture here, find a seat and get in it!”
2. On a Continental Flight with a very “senior” flight attendant crew, the pilot said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve reached cruising altitude and will be turning down the cabin lights. This is for your comfort and to enhance the appearance of your flight attendants.”
3. On landing, the stewardess said, “Please be sure to take all of your belongings. If you’re going to leave anything, please make sure it’s something we’d like to have.
4. “There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane”
5. “Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”
6. As the plane landed and was coming to a stop at Ronald Reagan, a lone voice came over the loudspeaker: “Whoa, big fella. WHOA!”
7. After a particularly rough landing during thunderstorms in Memphis, a flight attendant on a Northwest flight announced, “Please take care when opening the overhead compartments because, after a landing like that, sure as hell everything has shifted.”
8. From a Southwest Airlines employee: “Welcome aboard Southwest Flight 245 to Tampa .. To operate your seat belt, insert the metal tab into the buckle, and pull tight. It works just like every other seat belt; and, if you don’t know how to operate one, you probably shouldn’t be out in public unsupervised.”
9. “In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, masks will descend from the ceiling. Stop screaming, grab the mask, and pull it over your face. If you have a small child traveling with you, secure your mask before assisting with theirs. If you are traveling with more than one small child, pick your favorite.”
10. “Weather at our destination is 50 degrees with some broken clouds, but we’ll try to have them fixed before we arrive. Thank you, and remember, nobody loves you, or your money, more than Southwest Airlines.”
11. “Your seat cushions can be used for flotation; and, in the event of an emergency water landing, please paddle to shore and take them with our compliments.”
12. “As you exit the plane, make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses.”
13. And from the pilot during his welcome message: “Delta Airlines is pleased to have some of the best flight attendants in the industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!”
14. Heard on Southwest Airlines just after a very hard landing in Salt Lake City the flight attendant came on the intercom and said, “That was quite a bump, and I know what y’all are thinking. I’m here to tell you it wasn’t the airline’s fault, it wasn’t the pilot’s fault, it wasn’t the flight attendant’s fault, it was the asphalt.”
15. Overheard on a n American Airlines flight into Amarillo, Texas, on a particularly windy and bumpy day: During the final approach, the Captain was really having to fight it. After an extremely hard landing, the Flight Attendant said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Amarillo . Please remain in your seats with your seat belts fastened while the Captain taxis what’s left of our airplane to the gate!”
16. Another flight attendant’s comment on a less than perfect landing: “We ask you to please remain seated as Captain Kangaroo bounces us to the terminal.”
17. An airline pilot wrote that on this particular flight he had hammered his ship into the runway really hard. The airline had a policy which required the first officer to stand at the door while the Passengers exited, smile, and give them a “Thanks for flying our airline.” He said that, in light of his bad landing, he had a hard time looking the passengers in the eye, thinking that someone would have a smart comment. Finally everyone had gotten off except for a little old lady walking with a cane. She said, “Sir, do you mind if I ask you a question?” “Why, no, Ma’am,” said the pilot. “What is it?” The little old lady said , “Did we land, or were! we shot down?”
18. After a real crusher of a landing in Phoenix, the attendant came on with, “Ladies and Gentlemen, please remain in your seats until Capt. Crash and the Crew have brought the aircraft to a screeching halt against the gate. And, once the tire smoke has cleared and the warning bells are silenced, we’ll open the door and you can pick your way through the wreckage to the terminal.”
19. Part of a flight attendant’s arrival announcement: “We’d like to thank you folks for flying with us today. And, the next time you get the insane urge to go blasting through the skies in a pressurized metal tube, we hope you’ll think of US Airways.”
20. Heard on a Southwest Airline flight. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing and if you can light ‘em, you can smoke ‘em.”
21. A plane was taking off from Kennedy Airport . After it reached a comfortable cruising altitude, the captain made an announcement over the intercom, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Welcome to Flight Number 293, nonstop from New York to Los Angeles . The weather ahead is good and, therefore, we should have a smooth and uneventful flight. Now sit back and relax… OH, MY GOD!” Silence followed, and after a few minutes, the captain came back on the intercom and said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am so sorry if I scared you earlier. While I was talking to you, the flight attendant accidentally spilled a cup of hot coffee in my lap. You should see the front of my pants!” A passenger in Coach yelled, “That’s nothing. You should see the back of mine.”
Thanks G!
IL2006: Day Three Wrap-up
Last day of the conference and I woke up tired. That’s not necessarily a bad sign as it was not unexpected. Plumes for coffee, by myself this morning as others decided to sleep in. (This also was not unexpected.) Morning keynote then off to the wikis souble-session. Lunch somewhere; I honestly don’t remember where. (Oh yeah, it was the free lunch that I rushed through before doing my book signing at the Information Today booth. Duh!) Then back to the conference center for “social softwr” and blogging tools.
Liz Lawley’s closing keynote was on gaming and I did ask her a question about her thoughts on what we’re doing at the Second Life Library 2.0. I didn’t blog it at the time as I didn’t want to be typing as she was answering my question. What she said was somewhat unexpected yet thought provoking. Basically, she doesn’t feel that SL is a game at all (I agree) as there’s no “point” or “goals” for the “players”. The more interesting point she made was that she feels that SL is “the AOL of virtual worlds”. In other words, it’s where companies and people will get used to things before moving on to the next stage, as may did with AOL before moving on to the Internet. Thanks Liz! I enjoyed your response very much and I’ll be thinking about what you said for a while.
I then went back to my room for two hours to relax and watch the first two eipsodes of Torchwood(!). At 6:30 eleven of us met in the Marriott lobby and headed off for some great Sushi at Ko-To. (If you want spectacular sushi at reasonable prices without all the “fru fru” atsmophere, Ko-To is the place to go in Monterey!) $265 dollars later (plus tip) we were all stuffed and looking to head back to the Crown & Anchor. There more merryment was had, “goodbyes” and “see you in March”es were shared and I finally succumbed to the exhaustion, leaving about 10:15.
This morning I’m waiting to meet up with an OCLC researcher to talk about social software for an hour or so before heading back to San Francisco for a 2:30pm flight. I’m assuming that I’ll blog about the meeting when I get a chance and will definitely post some final conference thoughts in the next 48 hours.
IL2006: Day 2 wrapup
Yesterday was just as fun as the rest of the conference. I started with my usual coffee and WiFi at Plumes followed quickly by the credit card crisis. The opening keynote with Clifford Lynch was not nearly as entertaining as the one with J.A. Jance was but, despite some people finding him predictable and boring, I enjoyed it. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)
Two sessions later I was off to a very quick lunch fish & chips at Britannia Arms with Karen and Michelle. The rush was due to the fact that I needed to be back for my Flickr presentation with Michael Porter. Turns out that our three non-US co-presenters were not just from out of the country but were actually out of the country. They all had sent in pre-recorded talks during which Michael changed the slides at pre-determined times. Yes folks, this was a surprise even to me! However, it all worked out great and, since I was the last in line for actually presenting, it did make sure that three of the five of us didn’t go over their allotted time.
Michael and the others did the high-level stuff about flickr and I did the “fluff”. But all my stuff wasn’t total fluff. There was an audible “wow” when I showed what the Westmont Public Library was doing with flickr and their new acquisitions.
I then attended the MySpace & Facebook session in which I learned a few new things that I’ll be checking out when I get back. (Maybe I’ll even get a Facebook account…) I had my power strip with me today and at one point there were eleven laptops in the room’s front row with seven of them plugged into my powerstrip. I was planning on attending Meridith’s RSS & Javascript Cookbook session but it turned out that most of what she was covering I’d done in my pre-conference so I decided to go back and collapse in my room for a while.
From 6-8pm was the speaker’s reception up on the top floor of the Marriott. Great nibbles and conversation were had by (I assume) all. I did get a short vid of the Monterey Bay while the sun was still up. (The narration turned out horribly but I didn’t want to bother to redo it.)
After the reception many of us ended up back at the Crown & Anchor for dinner, libations, and conversation. I finally gave up at about 11:30 and crashed back in the room about 12:30am.
As exhausted as I am this morning, I can’t stress how much I enjoy going out with everyone. On one level, networking with everyone here and meeting new people makes the conference more worthwhile than the official sessions. For those of you that are here through tonight and haven’t gone out with others yet, please do so. Despite how tired you’ll be tomorrow, it is definitely worth it.
IL2006: Day 1 Recap
It was a totally full day as expected. I started by waking at 5:30am and heading down to Plumes for coffee & WiFi. Karen and Michelle met me there and then we all headed to the opening Keynote. J.A. Jance was an interesting choice but she told the moving story of her life and ended with singing. The standing ovation even had her get back up and sing another song! How’s that for a totally unexpected keynote?
I spent the morning attending sessions and those I’ve already blogged so I won’t repeat them here. I caught up with Greg Schwartz for lunch at India’s Clay Oven and headed back for another session or two.
I finally caught up with Rachel Singer-Gordon and got her to let me into the yet-to-be-opened exhibitors area to get me a copy of my Blog/RSS book. It looked great! Information Today was now down to just 49 copies at the conference.
At 3:15pm was my session with Lori Bell and Tom Peters on the Alliance Second Life Library 2.0 project. The room totally filled with folks standing in the back. The presentation went great and I almost lost it on stage laughing so hard when Lori started talking about the “sex and gambling” in Second Life and how InfoIsland was a haven from “all that” for some. We did have time to take a few questions and I believe we answered them to the audience’s satisfaction.
I then relaxed, checked my e-mail and headed off to the evening exhibitors reception. I caught up with too many people to name beyond the usual suspects. I also finally met Amy Reeve from IT who got my book through the final post-editing stages of publication. During the reception I saw at least five copies of my book sold and I’m sure they sold more than that while I wasn’t looking. If everything goes well, they’ll all be sold and everyone will come back for the book signing on Wednesday.
Then I was of to Isabella’s for dinner with the Second Life crowd. A few of the regulars showed up along with some newbies. One of them was Rowan who said she’d signed up for SL right after our talk and was interested in helping as soon as she gets off Welcome Island. Jenny Levine was also at the dinner and filled some of us in on many of the “quirks” of working at ALA.
Then we crashed the gathering of the “Five Weeks to a Social Library” gathering down at the Crown & Anchor. There ended up being about 20 people there and I met many more new people. I finally ended up back at the hotel about 10pm to crash.
(This morning my company credit card doesn’t seem to be working. I need to make a phone call.)
Internet Librarian: Day -1
Sunday was wonderful. Up a little early due to the time change and off to Bay Books across the street for coffee and free WiFi. (The connection in my room, still wouldn’t work.) Caught up with Karen Coombs for some breakfast at the Bagel place up the street and then some more coffee at Cafe Noir next to the theatre. (They’ve got 54Mbps WiFi but don’t take credit cards so bring cash.) Back to the conference center to pick up my registration materials and badge. A quick check of the Internet connection in the room for my pre-conference worked first try so I could relax and have some lunch with the workshop attendees. There I met up with Karen Burns of the South-West Iowa Library Service Area, and two of her librarian/board members.) Of course, I’m in my white RSS polo shirt and we has mannicotti with red sauce for lunch. Back to my room to change my shirt and I was off the my pre-conference. On the way I caught up with Frank Cervone, Darlene Fichter, and Jane Dysart for a few minutes.
My RSS session went almost flawlessly. Right at the start the bulb in the projector decided it was too old but Bill Spence came to my rescue and replaced the bulb. I ended up with an almost full room of about 30 students and they all asked an amazing number of high quality questions. Finally, one gentleman in the front row raised his hand and said “since you’ve only got ten minutes left, could you just cover the highlights of the last five tools you still have to show?” I’ve never had a workshop go as quickly as this one did. Thanks to everyone who attended. (I’ll post the PowerPoint later but the (ugly) test page that was created to demo many of the tools I covered can be found @ http://www.travelinlibrarian.info/rsstest.html.)
After the session I caught back up with Karen Coombs and Michelle a coworker of Kren’s from University of Houston. A brief hi and chat with Jenny Levine and Karen, Michelle and I caught back up with Karen Burns and her crew for a Greek dinner at Epsilon. I was actually back to my room by 8pm, finished reading Bob Woodward’s State of Denial and off to sleep. (Yep, that’s why I’m up and blogging at 6:30am.
Photos are up-to-date in flickr and the opening keynote’s at 9. cu l8r.
Internet Librarian, Day -2
It’s Sunday morning in Monterey, CA and I’ve found my way across the street from the Portola Plaza Hotel for some free WiFi so I can finally uplaod some photos, a video, and make this post. Yesterday was an interesting day…
I woke up to snow in Denver and didn’t notice it until I opened up my back door to head out to the car. The plane taking me from Denver to San Francisco had been sitting all night at DIA so a total de-icing was required. Somehow we let Denver 30 minutes late but got to San Francisco only ten minutes late. (Don’t tell me those “estimated flight times” aren’t being manipulated by the airlines to make them look good.) Anyway, I got my rental car quickly (thank you National Car Rental for giving me executive level in our program as I was totally able skip the long line @ SFO) and hit the road down to Monterey.
I decided to take the scenic route so I headed down US280 and cut over to Half Moon Bay on CA92 to take CA1 south to Monterey. Well, as the computer in the car told me when I got to Monterey, I’d averages 31.5 mph the whole trip. 100 miles took me about four hours. The two worst spots were CA92 where I never put my foot on the gas pedal, and Santa Cruz where everything was backed up again. The problem on CA92 was a large pumpkin patch and fall festival in Half Moon Bay that had traffic backed up for miles. In Santa Cruz, your guess is as good as mine.
The speed of the traffic did allow me to get some good pictures on the way (in the flickr photoset of this trip) and I did stop at Pescadero State Beech and got some great photos of the coast and a video of some waves coming in. (Posted to my YouTube account. Links at the end.)
I check into the hotel, got to my room, logged on to their DSL connection and agreed to pay the $9.95/day fee. I did a search, downloaded a file, typed in the URL to upload my vid to YouTube and everything stopped. Their system would no longer give me a valid IP address and despite a tech coming to help me try to fix the problem for 30 minutes, nothing was to be done. I don’t believe it’s my laptop (as that it’s working here but not in my hotel room) and I desperately hoping that it’ll work in the room where my pre-conference is this afternoon. I’ll be getting to the room 1.5hrs early and meeting the tech there to see what happens. Cross your fingers everyone.
I then went to dinner with Karen Coombs (University of Houston) and Jason (Montana State University, Bozeman) for some Sushi, a great walk down to Cannery Row, coffee, and some spectacular conversation about conference politics, wikis, blogs, servers, and book writing. I wasn’t up as late as I could have been but later than I should have been.
A full eight hours of solid sleep later, I’m up and taking it easy for the morning, catching up on the uploading and e-mail, and waiting to see what’ll happen when I try to use my laptop for my session.
As promised earlier in this post, here are the links to my YouTube videos and to my flickr photoset for the conference.


