Monthly Archives: August 2004

Shingles hell, shingles hell, shingles all the way…

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A week ago I started having some sharp pain in my upper back and right shoulder. I shrugged it off as simple muscle pain, maybe from sleeping in my usual twisted position after the kids started piling into the bed with us the night before. (We need a king-size bed; a queen-size bed just doesn’t cut it anymore.) But the pain kept getting worse each day, and on Tuesday, I noticed that it started going down my arm. Wednesday, I went to see my doctor. He thought the pain could be from a pinched nerve in my neck, but then caught site of a small reddish patch of skin on my right inner elbow that had appeared overnight. He diagnosed shingles and dosed me up with medicines including an anti-inflammatory, an anti-viral, and a pain killer. Sure enough, over the next few days my arm, up to my shoulder and down to my wrist, “bloomed” with gross, and painful, splotches of shingles. For a while I was worried that it’d continue up the right side of my face. If anyone who reads this has ever had shingles, you, and only you, will be able to fully sympathize with how difficult they can be to handle. Those who are familiar with scripture might remember Job, one of my favorite characters in the whole Bible, and how he suffered with a painful and irritating skin condition during his time of trials. Was his affliction a form of shingles? If so, I have more sympathy for him now than ever.

It’s been quite a discouraging thing, in all honesty. From what my doctor said and also from what I’ve read about it on the Internet, the occurrence of shingles is somewhat unusual at my age (usually, it hits people who are 50 and over), and it is very likely that it was caused in my case by an immune system that continues to be weak, more than a year after hospitalizations for meningitis and other complications. The burden has been especially heavy for Michele in caring for the kids and all, since I’ve been unable to do much of anything for several days. I love my dear wife so much!

New library (finally) for Champaign, Illinois

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When I was a kid growing up in east central Illinois, Champaign-Urbana was “the big city” (actually, they are two separate cities). Ever since I can remember, my mother would took us to the public libraries in both cities (Urbana Free Library, and the Champaign Public Library). The current buildings for both libraries have been in desperate need of upgrades and expansions for decades. The current facility for Champaign was built in 1978. I can remember the previous building for the Champaign Public Library particularly for its insulated glass floors in the stacks. I thought they were pretty cool as a kid. (The building is still in use, but not as a library.) When the new facility opened in ’78 with a Bauhaus style design, we thought it was amazing and futuristic, “cool.” We used it all the time to check out books, magazines, and Super 8 mm. movies. (Yeah, this was in the days of 8 track stereo tapes and before VCRs were in widespread use. In other words, ancient history.) Both libraries were key in developing my love for books and libraries as I was growing up.Unfortunately, the “new” facility for Champaign quickly became outdated and worn out. I was really pleased when I read recently that a new, $29 million facility was approved and that construction will begin soon. I can’t wait to see the design and to read more about it. My family, who live in the area, still use that library quite a bit.Urbana is also nearing completion of an even more desperately needed expansion to its old facility. I’ve driven past it a few times when visiting family and like what I see.Long may library expansion continue, for these, and other, public libraries!

Carryin’ On

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I am currently reading what I think is a great book, entitled Carryin’ On and written by R. Scott Brunner. I picked it up at Borders in West Lafayette the other day ’cause it looked interesting and it was cheap (on the remainders tables). Since I find it very hard to find books I’d like to read from authors I’ve never read before, this was a stab in the dark that turned out very well. The subtitle of the book tells you about its subject matter: “…and Other Strange Things Southerners Do.” It’s a book about the cultural peculiarities of Southerners, and I have found it to be at times hilarious and other times moving. This guy is about my age and has a real way with words. He has three young kids and his family figures prominently in parts of the book. That, along with many other themes, resonates with me. I highly, highly recommend this book, and I’m not even finished with it yet!

P.S. R. Scott Brunner also wrote an earlier book entitled Due South and I intend to get that one and read it, too.

I’ve been duped

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Well, I thought I was off to a good start with this new hobby of mine, buying and selling books. I was wrong. I got really excited when I picked up a very clean 1st ed. of James Michener’s novel, The Caribbean, the other day. Checking on various Internet book sites such as Alibris, ABEBooks, and elsewhere, led me to believe that I had made a good buy for it at $8. Trouble was, I didn’t notice a personal inscription from some previous owner. When I brought the book into two different used bookstores today, neither of them wanted more than $6 for it. I’ve been duped! Now I’m thinking, maybe I shouldn’t think I know very much just yet about these things; maybe I am not going to do as well as I had hoped with this hobby…Sigh.

Readerware

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A couple of years ago, I happened to read about a software program called Readerware that was created to enable users to catalog their home collections of books, CDs, videos, and DVDs. Being the library geek that I am, and with my background in cataloging, my interest was immediately piqued. I downloaded a 30-day trial version back then and was quite impressed with Readerware’s auto-catalog feature, by which it goes out to predefined sites such as Amazon, Powell’s, the British Library, the Library of Congress, and other sites, and automatically harvests metadata about the item you wish to catalog, using a list of UPC and/or ISBN numbers that you’ve scanned into the system in a batch. Metadata can include (but is not limited to) author, title, publication information, value, and even, when available, cover images. You can pick and choose which sites you wish for Readerware to search, and in what order. You can also specify that it merge data from disparate sites into one record. Furthermore, instead of or in addition to doing batch searching, you can even drag and drop from a webpage containing information about an item into Readerware and it will auto-catalog that item on the fly. E.g. you can use Alibris or IMDB to find a record for something you own, drag the URL over to Readerware, and it’ll automatically parse the descriptive data and create a catalog record. One of the better aspects of the system’s capabilities is that in addition to the auto-catalog feature, it also allows you to periodically auto-update everything, e.g. to keep up with changing values for items you own. The cost for the Readerware bundle (there are three separate versions, one each for books, CDs, and videos/DVDs) is $75. I think that’s a real bargain.

Last week I was finally able to purchase a copy of the software and use it “for real.” Along with the software, I also received a free USB version of the :Cue:Cat barcode reader to enable me to quickly scan in the ISBN and/or UPC information needed to do the auto-cataloging. My wife and my eldest son, Keegan, rolled their eyes as I excitedly worked my way through our collections. I could tell they were thinking, “Oh great, there goes Mr. Library Geek again, wasting time on something technology related!” When I stopped scanning things in for a bit and had only one more bookshelf to do, I decided out of curiosity to review some of the prices of some of our books, just for fun, to see how much they might be worth. I was astonished to find one or two were valued at over $100 or more. When I showed this to Michele, suddenly her tune changed and she said, “What are you waiting for?! Get the rest of those books scanned!!!!” Keegan got very excited when I told him that one of the books that was valued the most was one of his game books! So we’re now singin’ a different tune ’round here. <grin>

Anyway, I think this is great software and highly recommend it to anyone! I’m inspired now to see if I can dabble in buying and selling books on the side. My plan is not to make much money, but instead, to make just enough of a profit selling other books to enable me to collect the books I really want. I see a whole new hobby opening up for me (like I really have time for that)…

Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes

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Thanks to a gift card to Borders from my generous brother-in-law, I was recently able to buy the boxed sets of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Return of Sherlock Holmes on DVD. These represent around 20 of the episodes which originally aired on TV in the 1980s. I have watched almost all of these before but always wanted to own the sets. Watching these episodes, for me, is a guilty pleasure. I think Jeremy Brett was the best Sherlock Holmes ever, even better than Basil Rathbone.

Pirates of the Caribbean

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I’m sure I’ll offend at least someone by this review, but if you have the stomach for it, read on, dear reader…This movie stinks, stinks, stinks. I fail to understand why it is so popular, except when I realize that probably the vast majority of viewers are silly teenage girls, the same demographic that made another extremely stinky movie, Titanic, so popular. I can just imagine them mooning over Orlando Bloom or Johnny Depp. That leaves the teenage boys to moon over Keira Knightley, I guess. The screenplay is terrible–you have to suspend any attempt at making sense of it–and many of the attempts at humor are just stupid. Boy, do I ever dislike this one.