Sales Tax Holiday!

This weekend is Virginia's annual Sales Tax Holiday weekend, good on school supplies under $20 and clothing under $100. It seems like it might be a good weekend to go shopping!

Web site with potential

I read about TripIt today and it sounds interesting. When you travel, you send all your confirmation emails, itineraries, etc... to it and it organizes them and creates one big itinerary for you, which you can then access from anywhere in whichever format you prefer. You can then share itineraries with friends to see where your schedules overlap. Web 2.0 for travel, I guess. It might be worth checking out next time you travel! (via)

No wonder I'm so spoiled

As I've left Cleveland and moved to Syracuse and now Washington, DC, it's annoyed me how awful the public libraries are. I guess I grew up just taking library services for granted and I won't lie that it's probably one of the reasons I became a librarian. Here's another article that proves my point that the libraries that I grew up with are the cream of the crop. On a list of the Top 25 Most Modern Libraries in the World (the WORLD, not just the US), the two libraries I always went to as a kid are both on the list under the technology and innovation category. (via)

Cake Pans! At a Library

This week's AL Direct has a story about how a library has Wilton cake pans available for checkout and even has them in their online catalog. Turns out the library is the Reed Memorial Library in Ravenna, OH, part of the Portgage County system. Although the library apparently won't offer them for InterLibrary Loan, they do allow outsiders to get library cards to check out the cake pans. It's not that convenient for my friends/relatives back in Cleveland, but it's not that inconvenient either! So if you want to bake a cake in the shape of an object or famous character but don't want to spend the money to buy a cake pan you'll only use once, this is a great alternative! I bet a lot of the pans are discontinued too.

In other TV-viewing news...

I just got a Slingbox! I'm very very excited, as I've been interested in them for at least two years. At my current apartment, we decided to not get cable, and while it's been fine for the most part, I also do really miss it at times. But now I can watch the cable from my parents' house via my computer! The picture is pretty awesome. You can control it via a remote control image that shows up on your monitor and is identical to the actual remote control. Plus, it only costs the amount of the set-top box. It was pretty easy to set it up, too. Last night, I was excited to be able to watch the Project Runway Season 5 premiere. And next week, I'll be able to watch the second season of General Hospital: Night Shift. And also cool is that I can now watch Indians & Browns games that air on Cleveland television!

Just when I get near the end...

I've been semi-addicted to The Hills, the MTV reality show about a few girls living in the Hollywood Hills, and watched Season 1, Season 2 and part of Season 3 online in the last month to six weeks. Luckily for me, MTV.com offers every episode for free. Or, I should say offered. As of today, they took down almost all of Season 3 and left only the last four episodes! The Season 3 DVD comes out on July 29 so obviously they felt that no one would buy the DVDs if the episodes were all available for free online. Which, perhaps not, but I also know A LOT of people who do not watch TV online at all. And they've had them up this long. It just annoys me as I was so close to finishing Season 3.

So, anyway, I cannot end my obsession and get caught up on episodes until July 29th. I've already added the last two discs to my Netflix queue.