And here are the items I have checked out from NCSU:

I have actually read a little bit of each of these books except for the books by the two Jonathans: Chronic City (Jonathan Lethem) and Eating Animals (Jonathan Safran Foer).  Those two just came in and I will be picking them up tomorrow.  My goal is to actually finish a couple these books before they are due or recalled!  Maybe I will get a review (or a haiku review) written for one or two.

That last item listed is actually a Flip camera which I am borrowing to get some experience using a Flip and to learn how our tech queue system works from a patron perspective.  My general feeling is we have way too many systems for our patrons and we need better integration.  However, it is one of those things where solving the problem is a lot harder than complaining about it.  The interlibrary loan system, for instance, is a different vendor than our regular card catalog system (aka the “ILS”), a different database type, and has different data formats.  Just getting books from the two systems to appear on the same page (not even in the same format) takes some effort.  I am starting to look at these different pieces since we hope to eventually create mobile instances of all these tools and it is quickly becomes pretty overwhelming…but would be very satisfying to solve!

E and I have had a somewhat lazy day with a trip to the farmer’s market & WSM and then back home for some school work.  I briefly freaked out because I realized I didn’t get a form into school on Thursday but I think all will be okay.  Classes for next semester are online, registration begins in in a week or so, and I am very confused about what I want to be when I grow up…or at least what I want to be in two years.

This is pretty cool! Here are the directions.

I think there are also a lot of possible images out there on Google Book Search that are in the public domain to be harvested for note cards or shirts.

Did you see the new iPods? I really like the little nanos but I am still happy with my newly outdated 5g video even though it is getting filled. However, my next tech purchases will be a new cell phone (likely not an iPhone) and, perhaps, a Chumby.

I have mostly everything worked out for me except for the bus system. When I left campus, I got on a bus and ended up only halfway home when the bus came to the end of its route. Someday, when I have the full knowledge of my IS degree behind me, I would like to sort out the Chapel Hill bus system’s resources. As far as I can tell, there are at least three different sources of information including:

• the Town’s site with basic schedules and maps
• a general triangle area bus planner site where you can put in two addresses and it routes you along the fastest route
• NextBus where you can track the locations of all the buses in real time.

However, all of these potentially useful tools are on totally different web pages. There must be a way to display all of this data on a single page with a clickable map that is linked to real time bus information and future schedules. The other issues with the bus is that most of the bus stops have very little information about what bus will arrive when. They have all of this real-time bus data but there is only one bus stop that displays when buses are arriving. They should at least have a phone based bus info system where you text message a bus stop number and a bus name and get the next arrival or something…perhaps this is a project for the future?