I talked to a local IT manager recently about his library’s planned migration to Google Apps. He’d emailed me late last week, saying he’d read my article on the subject and wanted to discuss it with me. We talked for quite a while and, during the conversation, they brought up the fact that Gmail may be E-rate eligible. I had not even considered this – even after learning that Amazon’s cloud services may be eligible.
This is one of the great things about being willing to share what you know – I, at least, always learn something from the people I’m ostensibly teaching or providing knowledge to. I’d like to say that my willingness to share what I know is purely selfless – a true act of generosity, but in reality, it benefits me as much as it does (hopefully) the people I share with!
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The week in Tweets
- @cclibrarian Recipe and pattern storage – if you have the Evernote client on your phone/netbook, you have everything with you when u travel! in reply to cclibrarian #
- @wawoodworth Customer service. in reply to wawoodworth #
- Oops, I'll try again… Customer Service #andypoll What training would you want every staff member to have? Go. Answer & RT! #
- Alex and his band uniform [pic] http://ff.im/pFsyf #
- @dullroar It is utterly amazing what these kids can do while beating on a drum. Marching on a wall is child's play… 😉 in reply to dullroar #
- @mstabbycat Yes. Will I be able to? Probably not. Alex has a thing on Saturday in St. Louis that I should go to… in reply to mstabbycat #
- It is a gorgeous – truly gorgeous – day outside. Coolish, lovely breeze… you know what that means, right? Yep I'm off for the day!! #hooky #
- @lilaclee Notes – Soundpaper and SundryNotes, text/spreadsheet Office2 HD for docs in Google and Dropbox storage. RDP for remote PCs #iPad in reply to lilaclee #
- Q&A: Janrain's CEO Discusses OpenID in the Federal Government http://ff.im/pLaXv #
- Step-by-Step: Creating Your Blogging System http://ff.im/pP5RM #
- Lunch – especially when Mom pays – is always a good thing! (@ IHOP) http://4sq.com/3VZ8ds #
- A little wine, a little knitting & a little people watching. Little Hills Cobblestone White = yummy (@ Little Hills Winery) #
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The importance of disaster planning
Friday night we had a big storm come through Jefferson City. Power went out in places, tree limbs were scattered about, that sort of thing. At the library, we must have gotten some kind of power surge that knocked out one of our Universal Power Supply units and did some damage to its connected server. This is when I’m glad to have done the work involved in creating a disaster plan!
The server is still functional – it’s handing out IPs and such, but I can’t log into it at all, which means that if I didn’t have a disaster plan which lays out the hardware, software and network configuration of each server, I’d be hurting right now. As it is, I’m pretty lucky. It works well enough that I don’t have to rush configuring the replacement server and I just happen to have an extra server around, so I don’t have to order one.
As disasters go, this one was pretty mild. A fast trip to the library on Saturday morning to reroute the electrical connections and restart, then everything was going again. Heavy duty work can wait until I have time to do it this week. That’s nice – and it’s all due to my disaster plan!
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The week in Tweets
- @AgriBlogger LOL – I've almost done that! I'm sure I will actually finish the transaction someday and then wonder where my file is… 😉 in reply to AgriBlogger #
- DON'T GET Plants vs. Zombies for the iPad!! I would have wasted my whole weekend playing, but my son kept stealing it to play it himself! #
- FF is down. I came here and had a moment of panic when I thought Twitter was down. I was shaking, but now I can tweet and I'm all better. #
- Whew. There for a minute, I thought I'd actually have to do my homework! #
- @lilaclee Yeah!!! – yours came really fast, didn't it? #iPad in reply to lilaclee #
- @lilaclee I got my accessories first, too. I thought that was just mean, personally. That keyboard dock staring at me, but no #iPad .. #
- How People Are Signing In Across the Web [STATS] http://ff.im/praXb #
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Musings on the future
I’m coming up on the final classes needed to complete my BSIT (Bachelor’s of Science, Information Technology) degree. Now I need to consider what I’m going to do after that milestone is reached. I’m considering (while whimpering about student loans) going on to get a Master’s degree (in Library Science? In IT? In ???) but that will put me at paying back my student loans just about the time my son goes to college and I have to start paying for that…
Basically, I’m trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up. I’m excited about finally graduating from college, but now I have to consider what I’m going to do after that. I’m positive I’ll stay in IT, but as a librarian? As something else? This grown-up stuff is hard. Can I opt out?
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Addendum to the iPad post
Last night, the iPad earned it’s keep. I got home, tired and cranky at 10pm, after doing all the last minute running for the first day of school stuff that my son needed. Once I got there, I remembered that I had a paper due that night and that our cable modem has been in and out all day – it must have been cranky, too. I considered getting my netbook and running to the library to park outside until I could get the paper uploaded, but then I remembered that my iPad is a 3G model. I pulled up the Dropbox app, found my paper and emailed it directly from the Dropbox application to my teacher. Then I went to bed.
I’m definitely keeping it!!
P.S. I got a comment from a friend of mine last night thanking me for posting that because she’s thinking about getting one, but she got a netbook instead. I’ll tell you all what I told her – this is not a replacement computer, it’s too limited, but it is a handy little device to have around and something that I’m very glad I got!
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A weekend with the iPad
There have been a lot of blog posts about people’s personal experiences with their new iPads, but I wanted to add to the noise and write one of my own… I got my iPad (32G Wifi+3G) on Thursday and spent the first day and a half (Thurs and Friday) on cloud nine – enjoying the fact that I had one and filling it up with applications. I did notice, because someone asked on Twitter a couple of weeks ago, that brand new, without a single app on it, it had only 28G of space free. I was OK with that, though – I was in lurve!
The first apps I got were the utilities that I use all the time, Evernote, Dropbox, Kindle and Netflix. I connected my email (Gmail, of course) to the email application that came with it, replaced the Calendar app (which will only sync with Outlook) and got an app that will sync with Google’s calendars. On the suggestion of a family member who had an iPad, I picked up RDP (a VNC client) and a couple of other utilities. On the suggestion of a friend who has an iPhone, I got an astronomical identification program and a game or two. I also picked up PacMan and Osmos (a very nice iPad specific game that has entertained me greatly over the past few days).
After I’d gotten some familiarity with the machine, I got a PDF annotator (Noterize) a sound/notes application (SoundPaper) and the WordPress application that I’m using to compose this post.
One of the first things I did after I got my iPad was to hook it up to my computer and sync it with iTunes. I noticed that the machine came fully charged, but not fully up-to-date – it took a while (almost 2 hours) to do the syncing thing.
So far, I’ve used it to keep up with my friends on FriendFeed, get Facebook updates (pushed via the iPhone Facebook app) and to watch my Netflix streaming videos. As a content consumer, the iPad is damn near perfect. It’s heavier than I (or anyone else who’s gotten a hold of it) expected and it caused some left arm aching on Friday as I got used to having it set on my arm as I watched or played with it. With the prop-able case, though, that is pretty well an occasional thing, because I can just set the case up to hold it for me if I’ve got a flat surface nearby.
Getting content on it is more difficult. I keep all my photos on Flickr, not my computer, so there is a distinct lack of pictures on my iPad (so far) and I own no other Apple products, so I don’t have a lot of native content in iTunes to transfer over. Typing this up without the dock + keyboard accessory would be difficult. Short bursts of text (FriendFeed comments, for example) are fine – any more, though, and a full keyboard is pretty necessary.
Saturday night, though, I think I made my biggest mistake – so far – of my iPad owning time. I bought Plants vs. Zombies. This would be a complete time sink for me, except for the fact that my son has discovered it and I’m having a hard time getting a hold of the iPad today (Sunday) all day… I may have a problem in the future, making sure that my iPad stays mine! I’ve picked up a few other games, but I think that PvZ is going to be the killer app on my iPad for a while.
The upshot of this post is that I’ve decided I was not completely remiss in being so excited while waiting for my iPad to arrive – it’s just as exciting to have it in hand as it was to anticipate it. Content creation is difficult (Google Docs support would be lovely, too), but not impossible, as evidenced by this blog post. I got some of my Flickr pics on it and the slideshows are just gorgeous – even reading PDFs is really pretty on this screen. The games that I’ve tried are fun and utterly beautiful on the big screen. I’m very pleased with my purchase and think that this will be a useful item to have around for a long time!