Tag Archives: Indianapolis

Earthquakes and cougars and bears, oh my!

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We certainly live in interesting times….

I’ve written a couple of times before about the weirdness of cougar (a.k.a. mountain lion) sightings where I live. Last week a cougar was cornered and killed by Chicago police on the North Side. Yesterday everyone was abuzz about the news that another cougar had been sighted early in the morning by a security guard at a large business, as well as by a few other people. Although the Chicago Tribune didn’t specify which large business, I can tell you that it was MPOW. Freaky. No cougar could be found when people went looking for signs of it based on the report, but many people are certain there’s another one out there. I don’t know what to believe. I mean, who would have ever thought one cougar would be found here? Well, that turned out to be true, so it’s not hard to believe there is more than one. But the weirdness doesn’t end there…

Early this a.m. I get an email from my brother who lives near Indianapolis, asking me and another brother who lives in central Illinois if we felt an earthquake. I didn’t but my family in central Illinois sure did. It was the biggest earthquake in the area in 40 years, a 5.2 on the Richter scale. Weird. Now I’ve been in a few earthquakes before, one of which was when living in central Illinois and another time when I was visiting Los Angeles (that was the Northridge quake). But still it is a little weird to have it happen and on such a scale. Later there was a fairly significant aftershock felt throughout the region.

When on a conference call with a colleague in Germany this morning, I was telling him about these strange events. He marvelled about it and then mentioned that something similar had occurred in southern Germany last year, when a wild bear started frequenting urban areas and had to be shot eventually.

Adventure to Carmel

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We just got back from our trip to the neurologist in Carmel (a northern suburb of Indianapolis). It was quite an “adventure.” We left the house in plenty of time but with an almost empty tank of gas and no real clue as to the exact location of the doctor’s office. The appointment was scheduled for 10a but we had arranged to meet my mother and Britta, my eldest niece, between 9:30a and 9:45a so that they could take the kids to a park while we were at the doctor’s office.

We got to the general vicinity in plenty of time but for the life of us could not locate the doctor’s office. We spent 40 minutes driving around looking for it and tried several times to reach the office by cell phone. There was a constant busy signal so we couldn’t get through. This whole time, the van was driving on fumes and I was anxious that we would be stuck by the side of the road somewhere. Plus, we were worried about my mother and Britta waiting for us, wondering where we were.

Sigh. Such is our life. We were quite stressed out by the time we were found by Britta, who guided us to the right location. We were told by the attendant that since we were a half hour late for our appointment, the doctor could only see Michele for a short time.

In spite of apprehension about going to all this trouble for nothing, we were pleased with the doctor’s visit. She seems to be genuinely concerned about Michele’s condition and asked lots of questions and did a quick examination.

One mystery that she cleared up for us related to our understanding from Michele’s regular doctor’s receptionist that the MRI showed nothing. Fact is, it confirmed what the CT scan showed, which was described as a dark or obscure area in Michele’s brain. I have no idea why we were told that the MRI showed nothing. The neurologist believes it is a cyst or dead area that Michele may have had since birth or at least, for a long time. She doesn’t feel it is dangerous. She didn’t rule out the possibility that it may be growing and may play a part, but she thinks it’s doubtful. It is located in the basal ganglia on the right side of Michele’s brain. She will monitor it over time.

The neurologist ordered some more blood tests and also scheduled a 48-hour in hospital test that is basically an EEG given over a long period of time, including during her sleep. She also scheduled Michele to be seen by a neuropsychologist since Michele mentioned some memory problems as one of the symptoms she’s experiencing. This person will help determine which area of the brain might be affected.

The upshot is that we do not have any significant answers yet, but we weren’t expecting to have any. The doctor told us that Michele’s symptoms could be caused by a wide variety of things, even something as weird as a particular kind of virus or an undiagnosed strep infection. We just have to wait and see what these further tests will tell us.

After the doctor visit, we met up again with my mother and Britta and went to a nearby park to have a picnic lunch. It was in a beautiful location overlooking a little stream in a wooded area. Britta is getting ready for her upcoming wedding in about a month. It was great to see them.

Crisis point

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Just wanted to note that things reached a crisis point last night. Michele, in addition to her shakiness and all, was having stomach problems. Then I started throwing up. I have the stomach flu again, like I had just a week ago. I’m not able to eat anything still.

At our request, Michele’s parents came this morning and her mom plans to stay several days.

Our doctor told us yesterday in the late afternoon that he was referring Michele to a neurologist in Indianapolis. We haven’t heard yet as to when that appointment will be.

Yes, we bought one

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Yes, we bought a PowerBook G4 15″ laptop while visiting Apple’s Indianapolis store this past weekend. I have had a bit of buyer’s remorse but what pushed me over the edge to decide to go ahead with the purchase was something Michele said as we were outside the store, debating what we should do. She basically said something to the effect that if we bought it, at least we would guarantee that we’d use it. That has so far turned out to be quite true. The new laptop is already in high demand! Along with the laptop, we bought an Airport Extreme Base Station (802.11b/g) and it is SO COOL to be able to move freely around the house and yet still have high speed Internet access.

A few other factors or reasons for buying this now:
- greater demand on Internet/computer access at home (Keegan wants to be online more, so does Michele)
- laptop provides needed flexibility for Michele while she’s coping with the children during the day (e.g. the iMac is located at the other end of the house from the living room)
- if I have to do work at home, which is quite often, the laptop enables me to be nearer to the rest of the family yet go upstairs to our bedroom and shut the door when absolutely necessary
- I plan to begin my PhD next fall and felt that this would be a good tool to have for that

I am really impressed with this machine’s capabilities. They are simply incredible. When I took it to work for the first time yesterday, it took me about 10 seconds, max, to get it set up to use our wireless network there, and about 10 minutes, max, to set it up to quickly and easily browse the Windows network in use at Taylor.

TPAS project log (or plog)

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Yesterday Matt set up a project log (or plog) for TPAS. Check it out! This was Dan’s (my library director’s) idea. Matt, Dan, and I were quite excited about the success of the exploratory meeting we had with some other institutions within our consortium last Friday regarding TPAS, and this was something he suggested during the trip back home from Indianapolis. I think it’s a great idea. Trouble is, I’m becoming addicted to this whole blogging thing and now I have another one to contribute to! My oh my, am I in trouble…

Indiana-isms

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As someone who is still adjusting to the vagaries of living in rural Indiana and who still doesn’t take kindly to being called a “Hoosier,” I thought these Indiana-isms, sent to us by friends and whose source is unknown, were pretty funny. They are funny because many of them are very, very true. In our two years here, we have experienced many of these. That’s scary!

If you are a Hoosier:
* You think the state bird is Larry.
* There’s actually a college near you named “Ball State.”
* Your feelings get hurt whenever someone points out the acronym for PurdueUniversity is PU.
* You’ve never met any celebrities.
* Your idea of a traffic jam is ten cars waiting to pass a tractor on the highway.
* “Vacation” means going to Indiana Beach or Holiday World (Santa Claus,IN).
* You know several people who have hit a deer.
* Down south to you means Kentucky.
* Your school classes were canceled because of cold.
* Your school classes were canceled because of heat.
* You’ve ridden the school bus for an hour each way.
* You’ve heard of Euchre, you know how to play Euchre, and you are the master of Euchre.
* You’ve seen a running car, with nobody in it, in the parking lot of the grocery store,no matter what time of year it is.
* You end your sentences with an unnecessary preposition. Example: “Where’s mycoat at?” or “If you go to the mall I wanna go with.”
* You install security lights in your house and garage, then leave both of themunlocked.
* You think of the major four food groups as beef, pork, beer, and Jell-O salad withmarshmallows.
* You carry jumper cables in your car regularly and your wife/girlfriend knows how touse them.
* You think nothing of it in spring and fall to be stuck behind a farm implement drivingon the roads. You just hope it’s not a hog truck or a manure spreader.
* High school basketball games draw bigger crowds on the weekend than movietheaters, IF you have a movie theater.
* Driving is better in the winter because the potholes are filled with snow.
* Newspapers have international news & headlines on one page but requires six forlocal sports.
* You can repeat the scores of the last eight NBA games, but, unless the MVP is aHoosier, you are not sure who he is.
* You can see at least two basketball hoops from your yard.
* The biggest question of your youth was IU or Purdue.
* Indianapolis is the BIG CITY.
* Getting stuck by a train is a legitimate excuse for being late to school.
* You know several different definitions as to what a Hoosier really is.
* Everyone knows who the town cops are, where they live, and whether they’re athome or on duty.
* To you, tenderloin is not an expensive cut of beef, but a big, salty, breaded piece ofpork served on a bun with pickle.
* You’ve been to the covered bridge festival
* You have no problem spelling or pronouncing, Terre Haute
* You don’t know what a real pacer is but get upset if they lose
* People in your area REALLY like NASCAR.
* You know all four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, construction.
* You actually understand these jokes and forward them to all your friends in Indiana.

Open source ILL form

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When I got back from my meeting in Indianapolis late this afternoon I was able to talk with Paul, a student who has worked for me for a couple of years and who graduated this past weekend from Taylor. He and the third student who works for me, Ashley, were the ones who got engaged last week. Paul is finishing up a long-term project to completely revamp the Java-based Interlibrary Loan (ILL) form that we’ve been using at my library for a couple of years. Our goal was to make it more functional as well as user-friendly. The original form was called ILL Wizard and was developed by a student at Olivet Nazarene University’s Benner Library along with a good friend and colleague of mine, Craighton Hippenhammer. Craighton made ILL Wizard freely available as open source and he and I have talked back and forth about it and what we’d like to change. I’m a few days away from making our own customized version of this original form available via SourceForge and hope to announce it on www.oss4lib.org as well. I’ve been a big proponent of open source for a while. This project is particularly gratifying because it will be the first time my library and institution will contribute (hopefully more broadly useful) software to the larger library community via open source.

Paul has done great work on this and I am excited to see this project near completion. Oh and by the way, Paul is currently looking for a job so if anyone reads this posting and has need of a good IT-system-analyst kind of employee who has library experience, please contact me so that I can put you in touch with Paul. He needs a job and he’d be a great addition to your staff!

Trips here, there, and everywhere

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This week is an “interesting” one. I have all-day meetings every day. Yesterday I was in Indianapolis, today I’m going to a meeting in Cincinnati, tomorrow I’m back in Indy, Thursday I am going to a meeting in Ft. Wayne, and Friday, I’m back in Indy again. It’s only Tuesday and I’m already tired :-) The meeting I’m going to today is about using blogs to promote library services, and it’s being held at the offices of the Greater Cincinnati Library Consortium. I’m not sure I’ll learn a whole lot but the topic is one I’m quite interested in, plus my boss is going with me and we’ll have a chance to discuss a lot of work stuff on the drive there and back.

Trip to Indianapolis to attend consortial meeting

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Yesterday was a pretty long day for me. Our library is part of the PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) consortium and we had a consortial meeting yesterday at PALNI HQ, which is at INCOLSA’s offices. (INCOLSA is yet another library consortium but one that has a broader, statewide membership.) The meeting was the first-ever meeting of a group called the PALNI Aleph System Librarians. Since PALNI libraries share an integrated library system (Aleph 500 ver. 15.5) and since a big load is borne by designated system librarians at each member library in terms of the daily management of the system, this was quite an important event.

The reason it was a long day for me was that I was asked to give a presentation on macro software (I’ve attached the Word document here Macro Express.doc) Taylor has already purchased for use with Aleph, and I hadn’t had a chance to prepare anything up until the last minute. I was up at about 4a, got to work at 5a, and worked on the presentation until it was time to go to Indy at around 8a. After the all-day meeting, I then had to work the evening reference desk until 10p.

Anyway, the meeting was quite a success, in my opinion. I finally was able to put faces to names as I hadn’t met most of my counterparts before in the 23 libraries that make up PALNI. I also thoroughly enjoyed getting to meet one of the PALNI systems analysts face-to-face for the first time, someone with whom I have spoken on the phone and emailed back and forth for a long time, but had never met in person. Plus we as a group came to some important decisions about the system and how we’d like to manage it. This is a great first step to leveraging the power of a group to addressing the many complexities and demands of our implementation of this new system.

Adoption process

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Keegan got his report card yesterday. We noticed that he has gone down hill a little bit in some areas, but overall, he did well. He’s on the honor roll again at school and he will be honored at a dinner hosted by the school in a few weeks. Still no word about the adoption report from Indiana Child and Family Services, though. It’s sitting on some supervisor’s desk waiting for her to review and approve it. Once that’s done, it will be submitted to the court and then a court hearing will be set as the last step in the whole process. I can’t wait for this whole process to be done with. At work, we’ve been praying for Mark Cosgrove, chair of Taylor’s Psychology Department and husband of Jo Ann, our ILL person, who was diagnosed with a brain aneurism last week. He is in Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, awaiting the proper time for surgery.