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I'm sooo close I can taste it.

The biggest problem with this final quarter of school is I've already checked out. I started working at Lux (rock) a couple of months ago and it almost seems moot to keep putting effort into an endeavor when it's ultimate goal has already been achieved. My final class is the CMS class which has become something of a slow death march. The content is pretty interesting (although not as mind shattering as I might have hoped, I guess I just have way more experience in this field than I previously thought), but the class takes place in the evening and is 3.5 hours of PowerPoint pain. Bob, the instructor, really needs to re-evaluate his pedagogical methodology. You don't want your students to spend 2 hours in a dark room being talked at. I'm tellin' ya friend, it just don't work.

My portfolio passed the second reader. That was my final graduation requirement. Whew. If you are so inclined you can see it here. The user is reader and the password is portfolio. I'm not sure why I password protected it other than it was something to figure out how to do in a Unix environment (and thereby distract myself from actually writing the damned thing). There are a couple of personal anecdotes in there (nothing that hasn't been described on this blog though), but whatever, it's done. Done-diddly-done, as Ned Flanders would say.

I'll write something about my job here one of these days soon. It's pretty cool and pretty challenging. The first few weeks I was there I would rather forget. Not that I didn't do well, it's more about the project I was working on required 60+ hour work weeks. That has mellowed out, which is good. I don't mind putting in the hours from time to time, but when it becomes a constant requirement of a job something has to change.

My new goal is to work smarter, not harder.

School started back up on Tuesday, looks as though it's going to be an interesting quarter. I'm taking the LIS 549A Digital Libraries (class that will cover topics like namespaces, schema, schemes, RDF, OWL, Topic Maps, MetaData and the Semantic Web. Very cutting edge stuff. We'll dance around the edge of what is currently being implemented and what are possible future solutions for organizing information on the WWW.

I'll be in the 2nd quarter of the LIS 549 Content Management Systems (CMS) and if I take all 3 I'll get a pretty little piece of paper at the end that says I'm a CMS expert (or some equally fitting title).

LIS 550 is the last of my core classes, its Information in a Social Context which should be interesting at the very least. Talks about things like Privacy, Copyright, Intellectual Property and as an assignment our group will be writing a policy statement for a metropolitan library based on the USA Patriot Act. I'm curious to find out more about it to see what is fact and what is hersay.

Finally I'll be taking LIS 598-Special Topics. It's on search technology. Hmmmm... if I didn't need one credit I'm not too sure I would take this but again, at least it should be interesting.

It's almost over and boy oh boy will I be glad. Even though this quarter was a complete and total drag on so many levels (Saturday morning and Thursday night classes were a large component) I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned quite a bit. I had no idea I would be as interested in Knowledge Management as I am now after taking a KM class. The Content Management class was also quite informative, but too full of busy work. We had to do defenitions! It was like being back in Jr. High.

I'm very much looking forward to the break and taking some time off before it starts up all over again.

More later and more pix from my trip in September. "Why so long to put up your pix Dave?" you may say. Have you seen them yet? Then don't worry about it, they will still be new to you.

Good god. I let myself get way behind in the readings for this class so I spent this whole weekend catching up. I have 2 more articles to read (about 20-30 pages) and I'm right back in it. I can't say as I'm really enjoying this class, which is too bad, it would make it a lot easier and more enjoyable.

So far, this quarter in general has been kind of a drag. I don't know if it's the fact that it's winter and I'm not snowboarding (which was the saving grace of winters in the past) or if I'm just not into the classes I have. It's kind of surprising that I'm not enjoying the Information Systems class more because it's right up my alley.

Anywhoo... this entry is mostly just a diversion, I really should be reading more about the exciting world of Bibliographic Control, but it's getting late. I have learned the hard way not to try to read any of this stuff past 10:00p.m., it's a sure cure for insomnia.

I think I've earned a little Xbox time.

I created a forum for fun and sport (alright, I guess I was just bored) in the hopes that some of my Info homies start to use it. I'm a discriminating internet reader (heh) and it would be good for me to have a place that is all about stuff I want to know about (or at least from people I like to know).

Anywho, it seemed like a good experiment and a worthwhile use of time while I was on Christmas break. I have a little experience with this forum software from a previous install but that was an older version and a couple of things have changed.

Perhaps at some point I will describe some of the difficulties of getting open source software, that has been created with the expectation of running in a Linux environment, working on a Windows IIS server. Geez, they don't always make it easy do they.

You can find it here. I haven't gotten around to doing any customization yet so it still has the lame WinXP logo (I have no idea why they added that to a custom skin!?!) but the logo will prolly be the first thing to go.

forum.optica8.com

Damn I'm a crappy writer. I'm almost done writing a paper on a Human Information Behavior (HIB) model that I've created for my LIS 510 class and it has been worse than pulling teeth. Ever since I was a kid I have always experienced excessive anxiety about writing papers. It would seem, as this blog is testament to, I have no problem writing simple narrative or fiction. I just get all fuggered up when I have to write about something I've researched. When I asked Stuart (the professor for whom I work as a research assistant) if he had any advice he first looked at me with a look on his face as tho he wanted to say 'You had better get over that quick kid as you have about 2 years of writing ahead of you!", but he didn't. He actually gave me quite good advice, to write what you know and the way you know how to speak. Don't get all caught up in the jargon and language of the IS discipline. Melinda said similar things (she's quite a good writer herself) and has been very supportive and I guess that makes the most sense so far.

I've talked with a couple of other students and it seems that a lot of them are in the same boat so that makes me feel a little bit better. In fact, whenever I'm feeling a little bit of grad school anxiety all I have to do is poll my fellow students to find out that I'm exactly where I should be.

Which is usually just barely keeping my head above water.

I spent the whole weekend getting out from under the mountain of reading that I had let accumulate. It's not that I have been blowing it off but the last week there was quite a bit of it. Now I have about 3 assignments to juggle, all of which will be coming due in the next 3 weeks.

Like they said in orientation, 'It's graduate school, if it were easy everyone would do it.'

When I first started bartending I used to have work anxiety dreams after an especially rough night. All bartenders have them at one time or another; A fight breaks out just as the bar is closing, you can't get the taps to turn off and beer is running everywhere, it's well after closing time and the bar is completely full of people while the liquor control agent is walking in the door. You know, the kind of dreams you have when you are on the border line of losing control.

I had my first dream about school this morning, gratefully to a much lesser degree but non-the-less interesting. It primarily consisted of wandering around the grand stair and reading room at Suzzallo Library. It's not often that I remember my dreams so I thought this one worth remembering.

Anyway, considering I'm putting off reading and working on a paper, I had better get back to it. Ah yes, procrastination my old college chum.

In the iPod :
The Chameleons UK - Script of the Bridge
Back 2 Mono vol 2 - Phil Spector et al.

At Work :
The Replacements - Please to Meet Me
The Flaming Lips - Hit to Death in the Future Head

At Home :
Handel - Water Music
iTunes - Various DJ streams