Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:00 PM

At meeting of news librarians last night, someobody came up with another librarian who has her own action figure: Evie, from The Mummy. So, that makes three...

Meanwhile, I just feel the need to reiterate how much I love libraries. This morning, Ian and I attended a lecture on 5,000 years of board games by Irving Finkel at the Boston Athenaeum. He was really funny and fascinating. And, after the lecture, I browsed through the stacks (bringing home five books; three on aspects of Queen Elizabeth, two on book indexes and indexing), and while walking amongst the shelves and browsing the titles, I felt such a feeling of bliss and well-being -- it's hard to describe. Even when I'm in sections of the library where the subject might normally leave me cold, there's something so... sensual?... about books. Not in a seductive meaning, but in terms of touching one's senses. For example, there's a particular smell and feel to the air when one is surrounded by books -- new or old. Old books may be dustier, but it's still palpable among new books -- coming from the cut edges of the paper or something. And the sight of books as far as the eye can see, well, I find that to be very comforting. The Athenaeum is great, because though it's officially only a five story building, each floor has a ground level and a gallery, so each floor is two stories tall. [I wish I could find some good photographs of the space to show any of you not fortunate enough to be able to go in and look around the library, although for those in the Boston area, they do offer tours, and Ian and I with our memberships, might be able to bring guests in and show them around the place.] Plus, they have at least two floors of basement, and an area in the back called the drum where each floor that is normally two stories is broken into three stories to fit more bookshelves in.

I'm sorry, I'm rambling on here. I just had a wonderful time. I could probably spend hours in that library and never get bored, but due to limited parking or other engagments, we've never had much time to spend. There's just something that delights me so about being surrounded by books.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:25 AM

Bad news about unemployment extensions...

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:20 PM

Okay, so I registered for spring classes. Even though the online registration information said that people planning to graduate this May could log in at 8am, I couldn't access the program until 2pm, which is the time for people with as many credits as I already have.

However, no problem whatsoever in registering. As planned, I signed up for Organization and Management of Corporate Libraries and Subject Analysis. The first week of classes, I may also sit in on Advanced Cataloging and Classification and possibly drop the former and add the latter, depending which looks more interesting and useful.

Other than that, not much is happening in Lis-land at the moment.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:25 PM

Ian just discovered a sick but addictive little freeware game. It's called Porrasturvat - Stair Dismount. The object of the game is... well, I'll just quote from the Readme:

The legendary superhero Spector has found, to his shock, that he cannot write off all the damage he has caused to the city out of his taxes unless he proves that he has sustained significant damage in the process himself! Now it's up to you to 'help' him with this little detail..

The object of the game is to push this stick-figure character down the stairs, causing as much injury as possible. Like I said, it's sick, but strangely fun as you play around with various angles and forces and watch the "dismount" from different camera angles.

The game is available at http://taat.fi/taat/porrasturvat/ and might be worth a looksee if you're in the mood for that kind of thing.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 AM

Well, as you might guess by the time of the previous posting, I suffered a touch of insomnia this morning. I woke up sometime before 3 AM and was unable to fall back asleep until after 5:30. [I got tired of tossing and turning after an hour or so, so logged in for a bit.] I then managed to sleep until ten.

I had another odd dream in the latter part of the morning. I don't recall what Ian was doing, but for some reason, I had dropped him off and was going to park my car by Cleveland Circle and take the T home, and Ian or I would pick the car up later. As anyone who knows the Cleveland Circle area knows, parking was somewhat difficult to come by, and I finally got to the T station just as a train was leaving. Since it was about 15 minutes between trains, and I didn't feel like waiting around, I left the station to browse through a nearby bookstore-superstore (a branch of Amazon.com). In there, I was surprised to find a thick book which claimed to be the works of Elisabeth Riba-(some Polish name I can't recall). I bought it and rushed back to the train station, only to narrowly miss the next train, so I sat down to read.

Most of the short stories and essays in the book were by other people (other historic Elisabeths and Ribas) but I did recognize two tales of mine. (Nothing that I actually wrote in the waking world, one of which was a truly cringeworthy first-person narrative of Goodfellow.) Oh, and there was some family tree in the back of the book that looked like plausible names for my ancestors, though I was going to have to go over that with my father. But most of the volume were writings by other people who shared some portion of my name.

I suddenly remembered that the bookstore offered a discount to authors purchasing their own books, so went back to the store with my receipt to get my refund. Somewhere along the way, I ran into my old friend Mentor, and we chatted for a few minutes. There was also some problem with young punks throwing snowballs at the entrance of the store.

I didn't intend for this to turn into a dream journal. Normally I don't recall my dreams at all, or they're too incoherent to describe. But for the last three nights, I've had particularly vivid and narrative dreams. At any rate, I more or less came to the conclusion last night that I'll probably never actually write The Two Princes, although I may save it up for next NaNoWriMo if I think I'll have the time. And, as I realized during or after the dream, I've been published before -- the earliest I can recall was in fourth or fifth grade, where a haiku I wrote for class (and those of several classmates) were put into a second grade textbook for some Indian reservation. So the mere notion of being published isn't that great a driving force.

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:50 AM

Yesterday, on NPR, I listened to a long story about all the new airport security going into effect, and all I could think was that we're seeing a new Maginot Line. We're refighting the last war. When's the last time terrorists blew up a plane to require so much money be spent on new luggage screening? Even the September 11th hijackers didn't use explosives. Since the new screenings of passengers and carryons, has anybody or anything actually been caught aside from reporters testing the system, and people who made mistakes?

I truly believe that airplane hijacking as we know it is through -- at least in the United States. The rule of thumb used to be that passengers and crew were only hostages, and if everyone behaved, they'd all survive. But once hijackers used planes as missiles, showing nobody onboard was safe -- well, nobody's going to just accept that risk on a plane they're on. Even the passengers of the plane that went down in Pennsylvania figured that out within hours of the first planes hitting NYC. Hijacking planes may no longer be worth the risk.

But meanwhile, we're still getting all this extra security at airports. It makes a great image, and is already being used for PR purposes to show we're doing "something" in the war against terrorism, but I think it's a big waste of money and we're looking in the wrong direction. What's being done to make the seaports and railways more secure? We're still reacting to the old threats, rather than anticipating future attacks.

As I said, it's the Maginot Line all over again.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:30 AM

Another odd dream this morning. I was at some party (a holiday party) by my former department. I felt rather odd and self-conscious being there, since of course I had been laid off months ago, but for whatever reason I was there. I ate some really yummy hors d'oeuvres and petit-four-sized desserts. I remember being in group conversations with my former supervisor, although I didn't have a chance to speak with her privately about anything. [And I'm not sure whether it was her wariness or my own that was keeping us from speaking one-on-one.] I also remember having a pleasant conversation with the fellow who posts comments in my journal under the sobriquet of "Admiral" where he told me what's been going on in Lotus/IBM-land, and I told him how I was holding up with school and unemployment. So, if you're still reading this "Hi!" I miss talking with you.

Somewhat scary to realize that unless Congress acts, all unemployment extensions (my own included) expire on December 28th, barely forty days away.

In an odder and probably less productive thought, this year is 365 days long. If someone were to read 183 books in a year, they would average just over one book every two days. Last night, I read my 160th book. Yes, some are juvies, and some are rereadings, but they still count. If I were to read only 23 more books in the next 42 days, I would meet that impressive goal. I'll confess I'm tempted to try, but probably shouldn't and therefore probably won't. There are so many other more useful things I should be doing with my time. Still, it's tempting.

Meanwhile, since the story idea first occurred to me a week ago today, I've been playing around with my fairy tale of the Two Princes. Is anybody reading this actually interested? If so, I've got a bit more of an outline worked out, and I'll share what I've got of my work in progress (since I don't think I'll actually ever complete it). On the other hand, if nobody's interested, I'll stop boring you with it all.

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:15 PM

A few other random tidbits from the last several days:

• My Digital Divide paper got an A-.
• Ian and I now have a third must-see television show each week (the other two are Buffy the vampire slayer and Birds of prey): Rough science. It's a British program in which five scientists were stranded on a desert island and are given three days to perform various tasks -- such as making ice, a radio transmitter, and sunscreen -- using only what they have on hand. It's like Survivor crossed with Junkyard Wars, or a non-fictional version of the Professor on Gilligan's island. Really fun and really cool. [I particularly liked, during the radio experiment, the note on the bottom warniing: "Don't try this at home! Find out why at PBS.ORG"
  At any rate, in last night's episode, they made fireworks. Although the half-hour show didn't go into details as to what chemicals they used to make the color fireworks, that information can actually be found in the chemist's diary. Boy, he really likes sulfuric acid -- I think he's used it in just about every experiment he's done (paper & ink, ice, underwater lighting, and now gunpowder).
• Just for the heck of it, I took another one of those crazy quizzes, and the answer is so obvious I shouldn't need to even post it:
       
• I don't want to make anybody paranoid, but I just noticed while looking at my website statistics that somebody from the House of Representatives Information Systems was reading my journal. Whoever you are, I just want to say "Hi!" and "that's so cool!"
  In the six-plus months I've had this site operational, I've gotten hits from every continent but Antarctica, and I'm always impressed and happy that people around the world seem to appreciate what I write. At any rate, if any of you new folks want to say hi, post a greetings at the comments link or send me an e-mail. And welcome!

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:20 PM

I noticed recently that another group I occasionally peek into has gotten mired into childfree debates. I don't want to jump into their thread at the moment, nor do I feel like re-editing old posts into a coherent essay at this time, but I did have a very interesting and informative discussion with some childfree activists in the summer of 2000, and anyone who's interested can read my portion of the conversation, which sums up my opinions of the current state of childfree advocacy, here.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:35 AM

BTW, I posted a new essay to my Writing page on Megan's Law and sex offender registries. Since the topic has been in the news recently due to last week's Supreme Court arguments, I went back to an old Usenet discussion I had on the topic. I did some pretty good research there, if I do say so myself. Although many of my posts are still worth reading, I thought it most important to repost my analysis of the California sex offender registry for San Diego County.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:40 AM

Odd dreams last night...

Nightmare: I went to see some sort of wild animal show in the park, when a mad bull or ox started chasing me. I was running from room to room, slamming doors and trying futilely to put obstacles in the way of several tons of angry charging steak. What saved me was my father, who got in the way of danger, sometimes distracting the beast, sometimes pulling its tail to hold it back for a few seconds so I could escape, until animal control officials arrived and sedated it. Thanks, Dad.

In another dream, I was on some sort of school-like field trip to an amusement park to ride on a Vomit-Comet-type coaster which would simulate the weightlessness of space travel. Then, I was invited by the guy in the seat next to me to wander around the park. For no good reason, I had a more difficult and longer time putting on walking clothes to accompany him. By then, Ian had shown up in swim trunks -- apparently, this was a water park, and people were going swimming, so I then had to go back into the bathroom to change into my swimsuit.

And, in a third dream, I was wandering in a shopping mall for an ice cream sundae. This one, at least, I can explain -- this one probably comes because we were talking about getting ice cream yesterday, but by the time we got home, the stores were closed. :(

Since so many other people share their dreams in their journals, I thought it only meet that I share mine, especially since last night's were so memorable.

In other news, last night's request/challenge/threat to the princes in my story may have worked, because I think I found a way for them to actually have a heart-to-heart without it turning into an argument...

And in a bit of "cool beans!" Someone from a major county library system is doing a presentation for administration and library managers on the Patriot Act and asked permission to copy and distribute my paper to the attendees. Of course, I gave permission. Although employers may not have noticed me yet, it's still nice to be recognized and appreciated for a job well done.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:40 PM

Ian's Sunday game was cancelled, so we spent a very fun afternoon with some friends, socializing, having Pho dinner, and watching some very weird Flash animations, including Viking Kittens and a Kikkoman soy sauce ad. <<brr>> Be forewarned before you view them! I'm still having trouble getting those images and melody out of my head.

Over the weekend, I've continued to toy with the story idea I conceived on Tuesday. It's turning into a YA-level gay love story/fairy tale. I have a pretty clear picture of the two leads, and the history of the Kingdom. Unfortunately, the two princes are too wrapped up in their own egos to open to the other, and too well-bred to really open up to each other. Either they wind up coldly ignoring one another or they're at each other's throats. [In one extrapolation I tried to spin out, Richard is about to challenge Henri to a duel.] I'd like to ask them to either figure out some way of getting along or I'm going to stop trying to write their story.

Meanwhile, I've been having some doubts on the book reviewing idea from Friday. First of all, I generally like the books I read -- if I don't like them, I tend not to read them. And I don't feel justified in reviewing books I don't finish. Second, I tend to get sucked into books and read them quickly. This means that I often miss nuances that other readers pick up. [A reading-style that caused tremendous problems for me in literature classes: I tend to get caught up in the story rather than maintaining distance. Picture somebody wandering in the forest, when teachers/professors expect you to be flying above looking for the patterns.] Third, I generally write what I consider to be quality reviews after I have a chance to gain a little distance from the work -- and lately, by that time, I'm already two or three books down the line and the details of the first book are already fading.

Part of the reason for this is that after I finished reading my last several books, for each of which, my general reaction was an uncritical "I liked it!" I read some other online reviews. And they pointed out some valid flaws that, once I read the other review, I could recognize from my own reading, but didn't really occur to me before I read the review. So, I'm not feeling qualified to write a really useful review -- I'm reading these books for my own enjoyment and listing them primarily for my own edification (I started the list because I was having trouble remembering which book I read something in, and decided to start tracking titles; I put the list online as an exercise in HTML). I'm not sure I want to write reviews, particularly if there are so many better places for interested bystanders to get descriptions or criticism...

Anyway, it's something I'm thinking about. Comments are, as usual, welcome.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:15 PM

Ian and I had a nasty screaming fight yesterday afternoon. Ian already posted his side of things in his journal, and (a) I wanted to get my side out, and (b) it was important to me, so I wanted to journal it for myself.

In other news, some further troubleshooting of the ongoing AT&T Broadband tech problem. Interestingly enough, http://slashdot.org consistently gives me the problem, while http://www.slashdot.org works fine.