Ask.com

Ask Jeeves has abandoned its butler and become Ask.com and now offers some new features. I played around with their mapping feature a little bit and it seems pretty cool. For one thing, you can ask for 'walking' directions rather than just driving directions. I am not sure that this capability is in any other mapping site and is certainly convenient. You can also just pick a point on the map and it calculates the address there. Also, the zooming in/zooming out feature is a sliding scale, rather than the preset 'city,' 'region,' etc... that are on Mapquest and Yahoo! Maps. I guess Google Maps features that too, but I personally hate Google Maps. I find that the directions they give are often horrible. One other thing I liked about Ask.com Maps is that it saves addresses for you along the lefthand side. So, if you want to go from point A to point B to point C but then also want to see how to go from point A to point C directly, this is much easier and viewable all at once.

Ask.com also apparently has a 'search desktop' feature, which apparently is all the rage these days. Google Desktop is a similar feature available. Personally, I don't have the need for this - yet.

The Ask.com toolbox is nice, too, and collapses if so desired. Its quicklink options are useful, in my opinion. Ask.com has, and who would have thought this possible, an even more streamlined and simple interface than Google does.

Wrong number

So I'm here in the computer lab on campus doing homework and job-searching when my phone rings. Okay, it happens. It's a 440 number, which means it's someone from Cleveland. Okay, it happens. I say "Hello" and the guy asks for "Cheri" (or "Sherry" or "Sherrie" or "Shari" possibly) and after some confusion, we realize that he has the wrong gal. I have to say that I've never had the experience of getting a wrong number where the person was actually looking for someone with my name. I imagine that happens more often with someone who is named like Bob or Mike, but, hmm, kinda weird.

Librarian at Subway

There's a job opening for a librarian at Subway. Yes, Subway, the restaurant chain. It's on this page. It's more of a librarian in the sense of organizer, someone to keep order of their records, rather than a librarian in the more scholarly sense of the word. Still, who knew Subway had librarians?

Busy bee

I haven't checked in here in over a week and well, that's because I'm bogged down with homework. And more homework. This is my hell week of the semester, with major assignments due in every class... luckily, it's come early this year and I really don't see any big problems for the rest of the semester. Things are spaced out well from here on out.

I am probably farther along with the assignments than I typically would be (since I am a top-notch procrastinator) but still have a bit to do, particularly for the 1-hour presentation I have Monday night. I hope to get a paper written tonight (it's actually written; it just needs to be reread/edited/improved) and another part of my PowerPoint presentation for my classification class done tonight and then the weekend will be spent finishing up that latter assignment and going crazy on the 1-hour presentation.

I've spent copious amounts of time on campus this week, taking advantage of the high-speed Internet access there, although I did decide on MSN dial-up service here at home. MSN offers 3 months free... and since I'll probably be moving in 3 months, it works out perfectly! Today, there has been major winds. leaving thousands and thousands of people in Syracuse without power - yep, I was one of them. My power went out at about 8:30am and, from my calculations, didn't come back on until about 5pm. I wonder what that means for my refrigerated items - luckily, I haven't been to the grocery store in weeks so there are few items in the refrigerator.

As if that wasn't enough drama, I've been highly distracted by a certain person who I have realized that I have a major crush on. There are self-help books for everything and I wonder if there is one entitled "How to get Over a Crush" or something like that because although I do subscribe to the theory that some crushes can be rather harmless and actually good for a person (say, for instance, my crush on Tom Cavanagh), this particular one that I find myself in the middle of is VERRRRY bad for me. Ugh.

Oh, and on top of that, I got rejected from two jobs this past week, too.

Good-bye AOL

My free AOL access finally came to an end, after seven months. That's not bad, considering it was only supposed to be for 50 days. But now I'm stuck trying to find another cheap option. Dial-up services are ridiculously expensive compared to DSL or cable modem services. I mean, I found a dial-up service for $28.95/month. Who would pay that for dial-up these days? I realize that some people still don't have access to any type of broadband... but still, there are cheaper dial-up options than that!!

Anyway, if anyone has any ideas about cheap dial-up, let me know!

I know what I did last summer

In doing a post for one of my online classes, I found this link to a Library of Congress bulletin from October that has a story about the internship program I was in last summer. So here's the link to it. There is a picture of all of us interns, although I am barely visible in it. Tall people in the back, just like grade school.

Word of the Day: vade mecum

n *1: a book for ready reference : manual 2: something regularly carried about by a person

I thought this word - or phrase, technically - might be appropriate for a librarian so I'm putting it here to potentially remember it!

Librarian- Kuwait!

There is a job opening for a librarian in Kuwait (via Monster.com). Exclamation point theirs.

Great!! Let me send my resume!! I sure can't think of a more ideal place to work than the Middle East!

Here is an added bonus that I don't see on every job posting:

"Work Schedule: 48 hours per week, varied days. Some overtime may be required."

It's a 48-hour workweek and overtime is still required!!?!??

Nightmare

Not that I don't love my mom and all that but I can't imagine anything more unfun or dreadful than doing this when I was a child.

Bird crap

This will be a lovely topic.

Umm, so, in the parking lot for my apartment building, there were some parking spots that I immediately upon moving in marked as 'undesirable' and try my damndest to avoid. These spots are directly under trees where the quietest but apparently most full of shit birds reside. Therefore, when you go to your car after having parked there overnight, your car is marked with bird crap. Unfortunately, lately it seems that everyone in my building has made the same realizations and try hard to not park in those spots and I've been stuck with no other option!

Yesterday, I did not go anywhere and, therefore, my car stayed in the undesirable spot not just overnight but overnight twice!! When I got to my car this afternoon, there was SO MUCH bird crap on it that it looks like a white car, when actually it is dark blue. It's really disgusting. I'm just hoping it rains tomorrow like it says it is supposed to and some of the crap will "wash" off. Yuck.

Crash

I did get a chance to watch Crash today and it was a pretty good movie, I'll admit. It's one of those where everyone's lives intersect in some weird way and the people who are bad guys maybe really aren't all that bad and the people who are good guys are maybe really not all that great. It's realistic. There is also a LOT of racial slurring, which is supposed to make everyone stop and take notice, I guess. That's what the behind-the-scenes vignette told me. I mostly thought, "Wow, nice, the open-mindedness" (dripping with sarcasm, of course). I will say, though, that I am highly surprised that Matt Dillon got nominated for Best Supporting Actor from that film. It's not that he was awful; it's just that his role is really pretty small.