Summer moves along

The Sweet Pea Festival is over, a sure sign that summer is marching on! We're in to the thunderstorm season now - I love it, except when we lose power for extended periods (18 hours a few weeks ago - lots of trees down along the road to our house).

I think tourists are also moving along, and most of the foreign students too. It's almost back to a normal Saturday at the library!

I just spent 3 days at Boulder Hot Springs, at a Montana Library Association board retreat. It's been a few years since I've attended one of these - I enjoy being more involved in the association again (this time as the Montana rep to the Mountain Plains Library Association). It's fun to meet up with old friends and get to know some new faces. I'll travel to Denver in October for an MPLA board meeting - I don't know as many people on this board but am looking forward to making new friends!

Jon-Erik Update: the free wireless internet at his temporary residence is incredibly slow so he's pretty frustrated! I don't want to keep harping on the need for a job when we talk so don't know where he might be in that process. I guess I need to be a little more specific and find out what he plans to do if Aug. 31 comes along with no prospects!

Big Changes

It's time for a new era in our family - Jon-Erik, the younger son, is moving to Portland, OR this week. No job, no permanent living arrangement, but when you're 25 these things aren't so critical. He's done a lot of research, arranged for a 30-day apartment, looked at the transportation options and applied for a few jobs. So he's all set, and we'll drive out in a month with his small accumulation of household items. I admit to being very envious of his adventure!

Playtime for me too

Now that lots of staff have created their blogs and are really getting in to the Web 2.0 learning, I made more lessons available. When I first took the course myself I didn't spend as much time playing as I wanted, so this is a good opportunity to go back and do more!

Today I added a Library Thing widget to my blog, to display book titles on my shelf. I found the code easily enough but wasn't sure how to get it into the blog. I finally just decided to look at the Meebo widget, and pasted the Library Thing code in there. It looks like it worked!

If only everything was so easy - I tried to figure out how to add the Google widget Mike Price mentioned from MSC - personalized for our library - but couldn't find that anywhere.

Maybe I'll go make myself a trading card now!

Summer continues

More blogs from the staff - they are doing great! It's fun to see the learning process, and how they are able to see practical uses for many of the social networking tools in their personal lives.

I read today of a committee, spread out geographically, using Skype for conference calls to plan activities - that sounds like a great use of technology. Our family uses Skype too - it saves cell phone minutes!

Even more fun - my son and I can play some Nintendo Wii games online, just as if we are sitting in the same room. Another favorite of ours - online Scrabble. I won't even consider playing anyone else - we just play for fun.

Fun stuff!

It's really summer - we are enjoying the heat for sure! All sorts of visitors are here; the Wally Byam caravan folks seem to be gone now. They all appreciate the library and internet access, though.

Tomorrow we'll lose a stubborn computer - it won't shut off at night! So it gets a serious time out with the IT experts.

Staff blogs are coming along - I'm hoping more will start the lessons next week.

Busy Busy!

I guess the lack of recent posts is a good indicator of how busy this month has been. We are definitely enjoying summer (lilacs are done, peonies are coming) and the foreign exchange students are getting used to our computer system. The time/print system upgrade didn't go well, but we have just about recovered - one little glitch still remains. But without glitches, what fun would we have?

My favorite time of year is coming: the new Fiscal Year! Time to order supplies! Spend money while it's available! Then organize everything so we can find it later.

Some of the staff have started the technology training - there are a few blogs already, and several are using IM around work for quick questions instead of phone calls. Hopefully people will see the value of learning new things and trying new ways of doing things.

Not complaining

We spend a lot of the summer wishing for rain, so I'm trying to be positive about all the moisture we're having now. The yard never stays this green for so long, and the flowers seem happy (ducks too!). This isn't that unusual - I returned to Bozeman in 1989 for MSU graduation and it was cold and rainy that June, too (MSU was on quarters then so graduation was later). So I pretend this is Seattle (or Ireland, as someone else suggested) and enjoy using my umbrella, which normally is neglected.

Staff training update: hopefully this week we can have people begin the first lesson or two. I will be working on later lessons to get them ready - things like Flickr and YouTube. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's blogs!