Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:50 PM

So, I was abstracting my articles for class this afternoon when I discovered several major errors in one of them. The report involved a statistical analysis, and all the conclusions were interpretations derived from data displayed in one table. And comparing the author's analysis with the table, things didn't add up -- literally! We're talking errors in basic addition of single-digit numbers, and several of her results were off.

The author has a Ph.D. in and is a professor of library science. The journal bills itself as a "refereed journal" where "[a]ll papers are subject to a double-blind reviewing process." And after all that, along comes little ol' me, just an average library science student. And I found several errors in basic arithmetic in one of their published articles.

I don't know whether to feel proud of my inherent QE skills, or embarrassed for those involved in producing and publishing the article for not catching it before it hit print. Oddly enough, I don't have any doubts in my mind that I could be wrong about this.

Unfortunately, this discovery caused big headaches with the assignment, because abstracts aren't supposed to deviate from the source text, I couldn't avoid including those conclusions, and I didn't want to perpetuate the errors. I raised this question in my paper, so hopefully I'll learn more about the typical procedure for such cases. And I clearly documented the errors I found, which consumed far more time than I should've taken on all this.

Needless to say, I also emailed my professor about this, asking her somewhat cheekily whether I could get extra credit for the discovery and inquiring how one goes about publically correcting published journal articles.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:30 PM

Since I'm sure you're all dying to hear how the new job is going...

It's been great. Not only have I finished all the training manuals (from four separate one-day courses), not only have I I've already answered two customer support questions and researched two others (then handing them back to the more senior rep to verify), but today I found my first reproducible bug, verified by QA. No, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the software -- I'm just that good. [I also noticed a typo in the training workbook, which I have to tell them about.]

It feels really wonderful to be useful and appreciated, and to be in a situation where one can really shine. Tech support has changed a lot since I was last doing it fulltime. For one thing, much more is being handled through email, which is really good. [All the customer issues I handled today were email queries.] For one thing, it gives you more time to research the question and craft an answer, rather than being on the spot with somebody breathing impatiently in your ear. For another, email enables customers to send us screenshots, or even their files (data or configuration), more quickly and easily, reducing some of the twenty questions guesswork I used to go thru. Although I haven't talked with my manager or coworkers about timeframes yet, privately I suspect that I'll be given a phone shift by the end of next week.

The office is located in a small office park about three miles from our house. Ian drives me to and from work, and though that's still a little rough, so far it's been nice. Right outside our building is a small pond with a fountain in the middle. At my interview, I noticed two swans and was told they had been specifically brought to the pond. It was a gorgeous day today, so I ate lunch at the bench beside the pond, watching the swan (only one today) chase away some ducks and preen and groom itself, while geese rested nearby and some other ducks were wandering around. Even with the highway noises behind me, it felt very peaceful and bucolic.

But ducks and geese are fairly common, and I grew more accustomed to swans last summer at the lake here in town. But we had a truly nifty nature encounter this morning. You see, my building -- next to the pond -- has windows all the way down to the ground. At my second interview, I noticed one of the swans posturing against its reflection. Well, today there was an honest-to-goodness wild turkey there! Just hanging about a few feet from the front door. I heard from some coworkers that it (Ian thinks she) just showed up a couple weeks ago. Ian actually parked the car to get out an look at it. [Here's his account of the encounter.] Big sucker, too. I had more time to gawk when I went outside for lunch; it was pecking at the grass between my building and the next. I'll try to bring my camera someday and snap some pictures to show y'all.

And so, that's how my week has gone. You may notice one item missing from all this -- school. Three more class meetings before graduation (Amy Tan will be commencement speaker) and this job is consuming so much of my energy that there's not much left for schoolwork. I think I'm going to get an early night's sleep tonight so I can make a big push over the weekend. I think it's gonna get grueling, though.

PS: A couple bits of cool entertainment news to share:
New trailers have just been released for Legally Blonde 2 and Charlie's Angels 2. Both look fun; I can probably wait for video on the former, but the latter -- Wow! I think I watched the Full Throttle trailer three times, including frame-by-frame for the ending bits. It's a stunner!
I just found out that the Boston Lyric Opera is playing Die Fledermaus for the next several weeks. I really want to see it, but I think the only workable showing will be the last one, on the 13th, after my final class.
Finally, don't forget about Manor House, starting Monday on PBS. And I just found out about another impending PBS 'reality' show: Warrior Challenge, in which modern soldiers and police officers try their hand at reenacting the duties of their historic counterparts -- Vikings, centurians, knights and gladiators.

And, really, that's all that's going on in my life. Honest. I've been reading some of the political news, both funny and disturbing, but don't have the energy to post about it at the moment. [Besides, so many other blogs are covering these stories that at the moment, I haven't any new angles to add.] Anyway, take care folks. Good night!

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:15 PM

I just realized that yesterday was the one year anniversary of the creation of this journal. I'd noticed it coming up and intended to write something up on the journal's birthday, but I got busy yesterday and forgot. Anyhow, it's interesting to look back at that first post and see how much has changed:

I'm not sure how long I can or will keep this going

Well, it's been one year so far, and everything's still running strong...

my concerns run the gamut from it becoming all-consuming to me losing interest,

At times, I've gone through spurts of blogging that have seemed overzealous (my attempt at straight newsblogging earlier this year was a bit too much). Other times, real world events have either been too absorbing or too private for me to blog. But I think overall I'm maintaining a healthy balance.

from unintentionally offending people to boring my readers. Maybe nobody'll care and this is a strictly solipsistic exercise

I think I got over this fear. <grin> The only people I really worry about upsetting have been employers (and potential employers). As for being boring, I no longer care so much. I am trying to inform and educate and entertain, and I'd like to be read, but I also recognize that I'm writing this weblog for my own benefit, too.

maybe people'll care too much and I'll acquire stalkers

That hasn't happened yet. The site is getting a fair number of visitors, and I'm on a few people's blogrolls, but no unpleasant consequences. I still take reasonabe precautions -- I don't post my street address, for example -- but I'm not actually worried.

For the future, I want to move this off Blog*Spot and onto osmond-riba.org. I also hope to get some comment fields up soon so any readers can talk back.

Done and done. I've also added a syndicated feed in the last year, and there are other features I'm considering for the future.

this is an experiment in progress

And, it still is, though not in the same way as I meant that statement originally.

I now think of myself as a blogger and have referred to myself as such to other people. This kind of self-identification means I'm not likely to give up blogging so easily. I'm still playing around with the journal stylistically: format, focus, functionality... But those are matters of how I blog. I've already answered my original question of whether I'm capable of doing so.

Here's to another successful year!

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:40 PM

So, as I mentioned yesterday, the trainer gave me the manuals for two full-day training courses and left me to go thru them on my own. I finished Level II this morning at 10:45, and the only reason it took me that long was that I spent so much time playing around on my own.

Where am I with the product? Let's put it this way. Yesterday, a coworker showed me a really nifty site: Library Bookmarklets. Find your library from the list, drag the link onto your browser's link toolbar, and then whenever you're on a book's webpage (say, for example, its Amazon record) this nifty applet will look it up in your local library. Pretty keen, huh?

Now, you may not know this, but my books read pages are all generated from a flat-file database in Lotus 1-2-3. I record a few pieces of information, and it formulaically generates the HTML fields.

Well, this evening I created a database in our company's product, listing all the book records with American ISBN numbers (not UK ones, not blank ones) with buttons to look the book up in Amazon, the BPL, NOBLE, Minuteman and the Boston Athenaeum. Plus another button will pull up the cover art from Amazon. I never used the product before Monday, and I don't even know JavaScript (yet!) -- I just manually hacked around with the Bookmarklets and a couple sample scripts in the help file.

After I told my manager that I finished the second book -- said that they ask most new hires to explore the product by creating a simple database for their 5 favorite books (or movies or recipes or whatever) with reviews and borrowing information. I think I'm going to knock his socks off when/if I show this to him tomorrow. [I've also created several other databases in the last two days: out of my Quotation page, in order to categorize and sort them; as an inventory of all the manuals, books & disks I've been given at work; and yes I did convert my indexing homework, though I very quickly realized that my old way was superior.]

I think I'm a good fit for this place. :) And, while all this may sound like a lot of work, I haven't had this much fun in a long time. I keep commenting here on what a geek I am, but that's mostly about my interest in weird historical arcana.

I've been having so much fun figuring this software out that I don't entirely want to leave my cube in the evenings. Not only haven't I been checking the news and blogs and journals as often as I have in the past, but right now I'm not really missing any of it. [This means that if there's anything you expect me to pay attention to, you should probably e-mail it to me.] Unfortunately, this is also severely cutting into my time for schoolwork, and deadlines are approaching faster than an oncoming train.

Anyway, hope y'all are having fun as I am.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:50 PM

Now, this is more like it. The trainer is working with external clients today, so has left me alone with the training manuals. I'm nearly done with the first one (and that's after many many digressions just playing around with the thing). Ooh! I'm having fun.

I have to fight a terrible temptation to move my final indexing project from the relational databases I've been using into this product. I've got too much work left to do to start messing around with the tools! And yet... some of the thesaurus features here would be so much better at the thesaurus-side of things... Argh!

BTW, one other thing on my calendar besides school and work. And, since some of you might be interested, I'd better mention it while there's still time to register. Next Monday at MIT will be a one-day program titled It's Not Just Google Anymore: Blogs and the Latest in Search Engines. Three librarian-bloggers, two search engine experts, one day only. It sounds so cool! If I weren't so drained from lack of sleep, I'd be utterly psyched about going. Mind you, I may be utterly exhausted from schoolwork (the final 'regular' assignment for class is due that night at 6) but not only am I fascinated by the topic, but I've been a regular reader of several of the panelists, whom I'm looking forward to meeting in the flesh. Glee!

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:28 PM

Well, I suppose it's lunch hour now, so it'll be safe to post.

When I arrived, my supervisor showed me around and introduced me to lots of people whose names and positions I can't recall. Although I've got a "buddy" to show me the ropes, most of this morning has been spent at my computer, customizing it to my liking. Gd, but MS Outlook seems bulky and clunky. I still can't quite figure it out. [Then again, I come from Lotus Notes-land, and I mastered that, so this should be a breeze. But right now it looks like just a mess -- too many settings all over the place to make sense of.]

I'm still trying to decide within myself how far to go with the machine in terms of using the office-supplied applications or bringing in a few of my favorites from home (right now, I'm really longing for Lotus Organizer, Opera, and NoteTab). Don't want to customize things too much and risk conflicts, on the other hand, I want to get comfortable... It's something for me to consider.

By the way, as I customized my machine, I noticed a few sneaky tricks on the part of certain other software manufacturers:

• In the middle of AIM install, there's a teeny checkbox to make Netscape your homepage -- checked on by default, of course! I caught it and turned it off.
• And in IE6's search feature, there is an option to customize and choose a search service other than MSN. Needless to say, Google, their biggest competitor in search, isn't on the list.

Tricky, ain't they?

Anyway, this afternoon, I've got my orientation with HR, where presumably I'll get my badge and such. And for now, I probably ought to stop posting to eat my lunch.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:40 AM

I start work in about twenty minutes. (I was told to come in at ten on my first day so they have time to get ready for me) I'm dressed; lunch and briefcase are packed. I assume that today will be start with a lot of HR stuff (had to dig out my 25-year-old passport), and then I'll get into the nitty-gritty of learning the software. Fun, fun!

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 AM

Thanks to my friend Browngirl, I discovered just in time Manor House -- by the creators of 1900 House. 19 people recreating a 1905 manor house, both upstairs and downstairs. I've been poking around the site, reading the supplemental historical and behind-the-scenes material. This looks so cool! [For Bostonians, the show premieres Monday, April 28 on WGBH]

Also, via TudorHistory.org, I discovered -- too late to catch any of the viewings -- Food TV's Eat Like A King about dining in Henry VIII's court. At least I can view the site which has recipes.

And for these dishes or others, I recently found Kosher Venison.com. Yup. Glatt Kosher venison. Anybody in the Boston area care to go in on an order?

Finally, for those of you who don't read LiveJournal, I've started a thread on the weirdest Passover food you've seen in the stores this year. If you can think of anything really strange that hasn't been mentioned, please post your own responses.