Off the Mark

Drinking with the Troops
From a local blog, Urbanagora, comes “Drinks with a Soldier.” I just love how some jackass commentor tries to hide behind the shield of anonymity and call the post author a liar. Certainly there are all sorts of views on this war, including those of the troops fighting it.
Perhaps if you ever [...]

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Welcome new readers
On the 14th of Jan, Blake posted a story at LISNews, The LINews 10 Blogs To Read in 2008. My lowly little blog was included in that list. I have at least 29 new readers in Bloglines, which means, perhaps, 80-120 total new readers since then. Of course, the fact that the list [...]

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Thanks to all my friends for sending their condolences in various venues. I am uplifted by your care. I’m a right proper heathen but if your views run differently and you can spare a thought for my aunt’s family right now that’d be awesome.
She was a rock for that family. For a very long time.
[I [...]

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A couple hours ago I wrote and sent off an email that I found very difficult to write.
This weekend I received an email asking me to sit on a panel at ALA to help discuss a topic of current concern to some. But, unfortunately and for various reasons, I decided early in the year not [...]

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Computer
To my few IM buddies I will not be available the next … days. I took my laptop to the shop this afternoon. The trackpad had been locking up a lot lately, and last night the whole machine just got stoopid! I’m really worried and praying that it is still under warranty. I believe it [...]

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I am assuming that most of you are aware of the current flap over the posting, printing, displaying, and reproduction of the 16-byte hexadecimal number that is one of the cryptographic keys that—with some more knowledge; the number is not in itself magical—can unlock the encryption of HD and Blu-Ray DVDs and, thus, allow for [...]

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Besides the many reasons being sick sucks … my town just went smoke-free a couple nights ago and I’m not able to go out and support my local establishments.
Actually, Urbana went smoke-free at the beginning of January and I have been enjoying the $2 pints of fresh Guinness (natch!) the last couple of Mondays at [...]

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So much for my pleasure with myself over how I wanted to use the Calhoun Report to focus on what our “response” might be. I really wanted to discuss What can we accept from it? What needs a different scope, modal verb, etc. for acceptance? What can be added? And, the big [...]

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Yesterday I received my shiny new replacement battery from Apple. My PowerBook did not need one in the first recall, but did from the second. I took the opportunity to gentle “realign” my case and you can barely tell it fell now.
Now, I’m going to need a new battery myself after that little [...]

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Siva Vaidhyanathan, of Sivacracy.net, author of several books, and NYU professor, will be at GSLIS on Thursday to deliver this year’s Windsor Lecture.
This talk will explore the ways that large-scale digitization projects such as Google Book Search affect those who research and write books. It will examine the ways full-text searches might affect research, how [...]

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