The morning was a bit rough trying to figure out what I missed on the day off. Weeded through the email for the important items. Went through the ticketing system to find any quick wins. Took care of a few items before the weekly UX touchbase meeting. The afternoon was more of the same — quick tickets, a meeting for search and product discovery on the site (yes — information architecture and taxonomy are integral to that process!), followed by a company leadership monthly meeting. I can’t tell you what went on in that meeting because it’s James Bond-like — if I told you, one of us would have to perish in some odd turn of events. Ok, not really, but it’s still confidential information.

Picked up Triumph of the City from the Zappos library to read this week. Ended up making it through 3 pages before falling asleep. Did I mention how tired I was?

Wednesday started out about the same, but a 9:30 meeting. The meeting went well, especially considering I’m trying to normalize the taxonomy so that no items are duplicated (one home — and only one home — for items). Worked out a work flow for this team which will help everyone out in the future, so a win first thing in the morning. Followed that up with a quick quality assurance test on a new feature for our in-house taxonomy tool. Found an error, and worked with the fab developer to get it fixed so that it might be released tomorrow.

After lunch, it was time for the weekly data sync, where the UX team, customer service people, analysts, and project & product managers get together to put everyone on the same page. I really like those meeting since there’s a lot of good information exchanged. The three o’clock crash then happened, where I felt like I needed a 2 hour nap. Acquired an Odwalla bar and some green tea to pick up my energy again, and pushed through another few tickets before the end of the day. Tickets ranged from taxonomy additions to search items that needed to be cleaned up or redirected to a taxonomy based search rather than a raw text search. That’s always an interesting vetting process since it’s a bit balance between search (the broad gathering of products) compared to taxonomy (the narrowed gathering of products), especially since you never want to assume what your user is thinking or for what they’re searching. They’re annoying little fights at time, but they’re what keep the job exciting day after day.

Oh, yes… and over the past two days we set up a new fish tank. The old one decided that it would be fun to short out on Friday. Smoke and everything. Glad it didn’t fry the lone tetra in the tank! But now fishy has a clean new home, and seems quite happy in his new digs.

Photo: Back To Work… by Richard Holster and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license.

Since I was already in SoCal, I decided to visit with friends I haven’t seen in way too long. Even information workers need time to recharge their batteries and reconnect with those important to them!

• Finalized a classification system for books at /usr/lib. Promptly helped to open the place as well.
• Worked. A lot.
• Trained. A lot.
• Cooked a 16 lb. turkey.
• Cooked for three potlucks.
• Ran — and finished — my first 12K race. Promptly finished last in my age group.
• Ate a lot of turkey left-overs.

You’re probably thinking right now, “Yeah, so what? It’s a list of mundane monthly tasks.” True. So, what did I learn?

• Writing takes time. I’m a chronic procrastinator, so the task probably won’t get completed anytime soon if I don’t have a deadline. Midnight rocks for that reason.
• Brushing the turkey with a liberal coating of olive oil creates the perfect golden turkey and helps to lock in the juices. But baste, baste, baste!
• After these three half marathons, I need to do something else for a month to let my legs & heels heal. Plantar fasciitis is not fun. And my cats tend to steal my therapeutic tennis balls. I might find one of the four tennis balls any given day.
• People have a hard time understanding the tasks and skills of Information and Knowledge workers. There’s still the 1930′s librarian stigma, even in corporate America. Been thinking about ways to change this.
• I seriously suck at answering emails. In fact, answering some emails is akin to talking on the phone: not something enjoyable for me to perform.
• Good blog posts hit once or twice every month. The rest is drivel and fluff that doesn’t tend to serve to better society, but instead calls out our narcissistic ways.

And that, my friends, is the end of NaBloPoMo. See you in January (and maybe before) for the next round of Library Day In The Life.

I always love beta testing items, primarily because I find bugs. A lot. Repeatable.

When I worked in live entertainment (read: theatre and concerts), ever show I did I would rent one ‘unknown’ piece of gear that I had never used. A new type of automated light most of the time, but sometimes a console. I remember a new year’s eve event, which was pretty much the event from hell. My gear list was all messed up because the project manager ordering the gear thought that another person had designed the stage and used his equipment preferences. I ended up with two types of lights I had never used, along with a brand-spankin’ new console (controller) that had been on the market for all of 2 months. Not only did I need to learn the capabilities of the new lights, I had to figure out how to program a new lighting console.

This is not an easy task for a one-off event.

I ended up with blue-screen-of-death (yes, the same one Windows used to display) on the console the second night into programming. Wiped out about an hours worth of work. Restarted. Tried the last keystroke combination again. Blue screen. Third time? Same results. Panic!

Hello, bug. I guess I’m not doing that idea.

That day a sewer pipe also broke and ran under the stage area. All the cables and dimmer racks were covered. It stank. The hosers came out to wash the area down with clean water. We hoped for nothing to short out since water and electricity make very volatile friends.

The event turned out okay. I reported the bug to the console manufacturer.

I find it exciting to test out new things. Mostly because I can intentionally try to break software or sites or gear — and give ideas on how to improve it. Which is why I’m happy to be part of the T-Mobilizer program through T-Mobile. I occasionally get to test out new phones, and give feedback on them and the service received. The best part? T-Mobile wants the positive and negative. Rock. ON.

Besides, who doesn’t like having their voice hear to make something better?!?

Disclosure of Material Connection: A smartphone will be loaned to me from T-Mobile for two months for review purposes, and for free. I am an existing T-Mobile customer, and will continue to pay my monthly service fees during the review period. The opinions I express are my own and — since I’m only human — can be flawed and in no way reflect the views of T-Mobile, the phone manufacturer, or other affiliated companies. I am not required to write a positive review. For more information or a full list of phones and services provided by T-Mobile, please visit their site, visit your local store, or call their customer service line. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Photo: oops_5642 by This Amuses Me (Flickr name) and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) license.

So, I was updating events and going through people submission on the VegasTech site, doing maintenance (uh, changes) on the /usr/lib classification, and almost completely forgot to create a blog post for NaBloPoMo!

The thing is that I enjoy doing those things. Someone asked me today how contributing to those things doesn’t seem like work. It’s the passion and the knowing that it helps someone that keeps me going until midnight (or beyond) on maintaining them. If you really enjoy something, it isn’t the drudgery of work on which you focus, it’s the pleasure of doing it that drives you.

Besides, who ever said that work couldn’t be fun?

Photo: Bee Birth 1 – Chewing her way out by Max Westby and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) license.

This post is a bit of a piggy-back on to the Passions post. If I didn’t have to worry about making money and working, I’d be doing more of what I have been doing in my free time: exercising, volunteering, and creating stuff.

I’m not the type of person to sit idle for long periods of time. In fact, I’d be a downright miserable person without something to occupy my mind!

Let’s map out a typical (hypothetical) day in the life:

• Get up around 8:30 – 9:00. Take meds, check email, make and eat breakfast.
• Two hours of writing after breakfast.
• Two hours of exercise. Swimming, biking, running, weights, Pilates, yoga… anything to keep my body moving!
• Shower then lunch.
• Prep dinner.
• Two hours of volunteering for a cause or at a library.
• Two hours for painting, more writing, gardening… something to keep my mind moving!
• Dinner.
• Free time for events, social engagements, etc.
• Bed around midnight or 1:00.

I’m a fairly firm believer in keeping some type of schedule. Better planning and time structuring. And too many social events would tax me, so I need to make sure to have enough ‘recovery time’ between engagements.

What would a typical day for you look like if you didn’t need to work for your money?

Photo: another day at work by John Manoogian III and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license.

Ahhh, ideas. They come so quickly.

And disappear just as quickly.

I’ve resorted to using Evernote to record ideas. It’s on my laptop. It’s on my desktop. It’s on the work computer. It’s on my phone. And they all sync. Brilliant.

I wonder where the great thinkers find their ideas. Late nights over a few drinks? In the shower? While running? 3 a.m. in a dream? What is the catalyst that sparks those ideas? Art or music? Nature? Magazine articles? A heated conversation?

What makes a great idea great? The ability to carry it out? The impact on society? A new process? Having the idea firmly based in reality? The simple fact that it diverges from the norm?

If the ideas would only generate rapidly and I had an army of minions to carry them out, I’d be set as a visionary.

Putting my butterfly net by the bed now so I can go find my divergent thoughts. I’m hoping to catch a few good ideas tonight.

Picture: Crazy Monster has his head out the window today by explodingdog. Please check out Sam’s drawings on his website, tumblr, or support him by buying a print through his store. They make great holiday gifts!

Yes. Giant red solo cups as a costume. Wanna know how it’s done?

Here ya go!

Step 1:
Gather necessary supplies

• 6 or 10 Garbage cans (dependent on the number of people you have. You want to be able to form nicely into a triangle shape!). We went with 32 gallons, but whatever suits you. If you’re a football team, you may have to find 55 gallon drums!
• Spray paint in red (or whatever color you want your cups) and white that adheres to plastic. We used Krylon Fusion. You’ll need 1 can of color per cup, and 1 can of white per two cups.
• Rope to hold up your cups.
• A drill
• A saw — handheld hacksaw or handheld jigsaw if you want it to go faster.
• A larger ball or two to use as your ping pong balls. Can be a volleyball, kickball, beach ball… I suggest the type of ball gets decreasingly soft as the more alcohol that will be involved while wearing the costumes increases.

Step 2:
Flip the garbage can upside down and drill a starter hole (necessary) and relief holes (optional). You’ll want to leave about an inch of the base to create the illusion of the rounded bottom to the cup.

Step 3:
Cut out the bottom using your saw. The thinner and cheaper your trash cans, the easier this task becomes. Also, power tools will cut your time by about 2/3!

Step 4:
Paint the rim of your cup white. I flipped the can upside down to hit the underside of the rim first, then stood it right-side up to paint the top / inside. You don’t need to paint the entire inside of the can, but may if you’d like.

Step 5:
Paint the rest of the cup red. Doesn’t get any more simple than that. I used a piece of cardboard to keep the red paint from spraying on the white rim, or you can tape it off. Your choice depending on how meticulous you are about things such as that.

Step 6:
Let dry overnight. Do not stack yet since the paint still needs some time to cure. You can speed up the process a bit by placing them in a well-ventilated sunny place.

Step 7:
Drill four holes in the rim where you’d like your suspenders to attach. The hole diameter should be slightly larger than the rope you’re using.

Step 8:
Cut two pieces of rope the same length and thread the rope through the holes. Knot to keep from falling out. Depending on the type of rope you use, using an actual hot rope cutter (if you have access to one) or burning the ends of the rope with a source of fire (lighter, candle, etc.) helps to keep the rope from fraying — and your nerves from fraying.

That’s it. Total time to complete 6, not including drying time was approximately 5 hours for one person. Total cost between $20 – $25.

Happy human beer pong-ing as a Red Solo Cup!

Apologies for the delay in posting. Was to have gone out last Friday night… I mis-scheduled it. So… a few weeks later here’s the last post in Librarian Day In the Life #7.

Thursday and Friday turned my mind to mush. Complete and utter can’t-think-too-full blob of jelly. Thursday started out okay. Fairly calm. A few emails, but nothing out of the ordinary. The new hire class ambushed us with the standard Nerf gun wars, but no where as good as last month (Yes, this really is my workplace)! Found out that ‘tizzy’ is not a commonly understood word, especially when asking about database compatibilities. We had an ‘inning’ over lunch — two hours of team building with the UX group, this time by watching “Hot Tub Time Machine.” Food was provided (yum! Ziti, salad, and garlic knots). By 2 p.m., the easy morning took a sharp 180º turn. A ‘Hang on to your seats, boys and girls. It’s going to be a bumpy ride!’ few days ensued.

I wish I had a dollar for everytime I thought or wrote something along the lines of, “Yes. That’s in there. Please open your eyes!” All the emails were things that had been previously answered or rather obvious. Also was trying to troubleshoot a new facet that was created but for some reason wasn’t surfacing on the site. By 5 p.m., I realized that I wasn’t winning with either one of those tasks, but I wasn’t leaving work until 6 p.m. (yay, Team Challenge alumni 4 mile run w/ a froyo break!). Since we have another 2 UX people starting in a few weeks, I moved over to the adjacent desk to make room for them.

That threw everyone for a loop on Friday morning. I had a few coworkers comment that they thought I picked up and left. After the standard 8:30 a.m. meeting, it was time for breakfast and then the weekly team touchbase meeting. Of course there was a meeting room thief that left us scavenging for another room (this is commonplace for a company that’s quickly outgrowing its facilities!). Had a good talk with my one employee about wishes for our yet-to-be-selected team member. And the morning was interrupted by the new hire class graduation class. They deserve it, though. Everyone — regardless of your position — goes through a month of the same training, with just over 2 weeks on the phones taking orders. To make it through with your sanity in tact is quite the reason for celebration, especially if you dislike the telephone (like me!).

Hiring pretty much consumed the rest of my day. A quick meeting with the recruiter to see how we wanted to proceed with the open position. Organizing questions for initial phone screenings. Creating questions for in-person interviews. Screening applicants. All of that ultimately required more tea because it was overcast and grey outside. Monsoon season returned to Vegas with a vengeance this year — humid every day this week, and rain most days, too. But it was Friday, so that meant beer! Beer Fridays pretty much rock — even if I don’t drink beer. Much more of a cider gal.

Drove home. Made a homemade pizza, and munched on it while I looked for a flight / hotel accommodations for ASIS&T 2011 conference. End week. Early to bed. I was exhausted!

Photo: Week #15: Depth of Field by *Kicki* and used under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license.