Swimming in the sea of social media

I've had to stop reading about gaming, anthropology and sociology, while I work on a consulting job. I'm developing a social media campaign and training for a recruitment firm. Our first workshop is this Monday. I'm thoroughly saturated now in social media methodology. There's SO much information out there! The good news is there's such a glut of info that people can't sift through it. Enter Catherine stage right.

It's amazing how social media has developed in business and marketing. Quite fascinating, actually. Facebook can be a huge marketing tool. Check out one of the leaders in Facebook innovation, Mari Smith. She's got a YouTube channel, too. I found her through another Facebook guru, Amy Porterfield, and the Social Media Examiner. They are just two of the people I've been listening to this past week.

Before I landed this consulting gig, I picked up the book, Branding Yourself, by Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy. Great information!

One of my teachers signed my high school yearbook with the words, "Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity"--a quote from H.D. Thoreau's Walden. It's been buzzing around in my mind this past week (at least); I think they are good words to keep in mind as I swim in the sea of social media.

Reading about gaming & World of Warcraft

I've been doing some interesting reading lately. I'm listening to Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal (@avantgame), and I'm reading My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, by Bonnie Nardi. Both are fascinating. I could insert a rant here about the differences between listening to a book and reading a book... but I'll desist (for now). I might mention that I listened to Dan Tapscott's book, Wikinomics, last year, and The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman.

I have been playing more in large part to McGonigal's book. Things IRL haven't been golden lately, and oddly enough, I stopped playing WoW. After listening to Reality is Broken, I realized that perhaps not playing was not the best strategy. Interesting. So I made an effort to begin playing more frequently, and I've found it really does make a difference to me. It's at this point that I find I really wish I had a hard copy of McGonigal's book at hand. I'll get back to this in another post.

Nardi's My Life as a Night Elf Priest is also fascinating. One of the more attractive features is that this book is not a collection of essays, but an ethnographic exploration of World of Warcraft. I'm only in chapter 3, so I won't talk about this book any further.

Last year I read Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft® Reader, edited by Corneliussen and Rettberg (@jilltxt). This is a book of essays by people who actually play WoW. I would like to be in their guild!

I promise all of this is building up to something; it's still incubating, but I guarantee some sort of paper will result. In the meantime, Atzilut is level 84, and that's something to enjoy. (Edited and reposted from The WoW Librarian.)

WoW Librarian

Atzilut Dings 84

W00T!

I've been playing rather sporadically; the last few weeks have seen much more gameplay. My significant other gifted me with Cataclysm in December, and I immediately rolled a worgen, Lunebane. She's level 28 right now. I also picked up a copy of "official strategy guide". If I had realized how different this guide was from the WoW guide, I wouldn't have bothered. At any rate....

I've been doing some interesting reading lately. I'm listening to Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal (@avantgame), and I'm reading My Life as a Night Elf Priest: An Anthropological Account of World of Warcraft, by Bonnie Nardi. Both are fascinating. I could insert a rant here about the differences between listening to a book and reading a book... but I'll desist (for now). I might mention that I listened to Dan Tapscott's book, Wikinomics, last year, and The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman.

I have been playing more in large part to McGonigal's book. Things IRL haven't been golden lately, and oddly enough, I stopped playing WoW. After listening to Reality is Broken, I realized that perhaps not playing was not the best strategy for me. Interesting. So I made an effort to begin playing more frequently, and I've found it really does make a difference to me.

It's at this point that I find I really wish I had a hard copy of McGonigal's book at hand. I'll get back to this in another post.

Nardi's My Life as a Night Elf Priest is also fascinating. One of the more attractive features is that this book is not a collection of essays, but an ethnographic exploration of World of Warcraft. I'm only in chapter 3, so I won't talk about this book any further.

Last year I read Digital Culture, Play, and Identity: A World of Warcraft® Reader, edited by Corneliussen and Rettberg (@jilltxt). This is a book of essays by people who actually play WoW. I would like to be in their guild!

I promise all of this is building up to something; it's still incubating, but I guarantee some sort of paper will result.

In the meantime, Atzilut is level 84, and that's something to enjoy.

Atzilut hits 80!

Yes! I have a level 80 night elf druid! Just moments before I earned the 1500 Completed Quests achievement. I leveled when I turned in The Broken Front quest. I am so very happy. <do happy dance> <-- Gee, I ought to be able to write some code there... Signing off... May the stars guide and watch over you!

WoW Librarian

New website platform

After a bit of deliberation, I've decided to move my website (wowlibrarian.com) to a new platform. It's been in Joomla! for a while; now it's in WordPress. I've often used my website to test Joomla! updates and plugins; my website at times suffered for this. (Yeah, that's a "duh" statement.) I learned about an online sandbox for testing software packages at LITA last year. Now if I can find my notes...I'll be testing from there instead. I've just downloaded a WordPress plugin called CrossPress. This plugin should allow me to "post once, publish many". I guess we'll see in a minute. If you read this on wowlibrarian.blogspot.com, you'll know it worked. Atzilut is at level 78.5! I've been playing more regularly lately, and it's done wonders for me. Looks like I'll get to 80 before Cataclysm is released.

WoW Librarian

A Digital Native's Demands

A Digital Native's Demands

Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, I worked for a business management consulting firm in Boston, and I learned at lot. A great deal. I truly had some embarrassing times; I was, after all, a newly graduated philosophy major. Nevertheless, I learned a great deal about private industries and how they worked. It was quite enlightening, but I was not truly ready to be enlightened. I had children instead.

Now, no one can really say having children is not enlightening. It is. New lessons in humility. In hubris. In despair. At any rate, I had three beautiful, smart, talented children.

I worked at several jobs. During college, I had worked in bars, as a waitress, for a cobbler, made candy, worked a shrimp boat... there were some other jobs in there. I also worked in the print shop, on the college's literary art magazine. During my childbearing years, I worked for a newspaper, first in classified ads, and eventually as the feature editor. I worked at a bookstore; I volunteered at my children's media center; I sold craft kits; I edited a book; I did many, many things.

And then I went to graduate school. The first day after class, I was walking to the bookstore to purchase my text, and I had an intense experience. I KNEW I was doing the right thing. I just knew it. To this day, I remember walking to that bookstore, and suddenly, I felt like I was in a snowglobe... Everything coalesced, and I was certain-- more certain than I had ever been-- that I was doing the right thing. I was in the right place at the right time.

During grad school, we had a speaker from the SC State Library. Now, it had not taken long for me to realize there were job paths I really wasn't interested in. And there were places I felt I really wanted to be. Did I want to be in public services? Ah, no. I didn't know what "public services" really meant, but I was pretty certain that, if it was like retail, it was not the place for me. I felt this should be a very secret thing... I mean, after, wasn't a librarian supposed to want to work with the public? What if "they" found out, and kicked me out of library school for not wanting to work with the public? This was a disturbing thought for me. Seriously.

As it was, this was an amazing time to be in library school. Oh, sure, for some people it was a nightmare. It was the early nineties, and the Internet-- the World Wide Web-- was brand new. I started grad school after the Internet began, when we were still learning how to use Archie, and gopher, and Veronica. And then there was Netscape.

OMG!! The dreams I had as a kid were suddenly becoming true. Information was just about at my fingertips. Literally.

We had a visitor from the SC State Library, who told us what a state library was; and how no two state libraries were really the same. And she told us what the state library did in SC. I knew right then, I wanted to work for the SC State Library.

When I graduated and finished my advanced certificate, I was a little concerned. Time to start work. Those student loans would be coming due soon. I applied for two jobs: one was with OCLC, and the second wasn't even an MLIS position, but it was in a library-- the SC State Library. As it was, I was interviewed and offered the position of Automation Librarian at the State Library.

Talk about a dream come true. You see, as an employee of the state library, I would be acting as a consultant to the state's public libraries. Wow. I knew what a consultant was... remember, I had worked for a business management consulting firm way back when.

Let's talk a little about family history. I am the granddaughter of a USAF Lieutenant Colonel. He graduated from Clemson as a civil engineer, at a time when Clemson had many ROTC students. My grandfather later joined the Army Air Force, which eventually became the USAF. He finished his career as a civil servant, still in the same position. His last duty post was at Cape Kennedy.

I am the daughter of a USAF air policeman. He was the first to predict that I would become a librarian. I wasn't even a teenager at the time. He was proud of my abilities.

Suffice it to say, I have a strong leaning toward civil service.

This used to be a good thing.

It's not now.

Now, I wake up every morning wondering if I'm going to have a job by the end of the day....

(to be continued)

I Resolve

Happy 2010!

I've been thinking a lot about this post, and about posting in general. I noticed I have a few drafts stuck away; I doubt I'll go back and finish them, but then one never knows. I've spent the past couple of months clearing backlogs and preparing for new things.

Before I go further... Atzilut is now level 75. Still a long way to go til 80, but my pace has picked up.

I thought for a change I would take some time to think about some changes and some goals, not just in observance of the "new year". A few years ago, my job description changed, resulting in a strong focus on innovation, or research and development. Immediately after, other changes occurred, and I assumed additional duties. The focus on innovation was stifled by the immediacy of those other duties.
In December, I was relieved of those additional responsibilities. I spent the month tying up loose ends, and thinking about new directions for the division.

I thought about tasks I had neglected: Professional reading. Writing. Getting my hands under the hood. The most infuriating thing is those actions are exactly what prepare the ground for innovation! Not to have the time to pursue those occupations was the most difficult part of the past 18 months.

I resolve not to hoard Computers in Libraries, Library Technology Reports and Online.
I resolve to resume reading professional literature both print and online.
I resolve to write more, with Twitter, on my blog, and in the good old fashioned journal.
I resolve to meet monthly with my division.
I resolve to network.
I resolve to focus on technology competencies and training for staff.

I think that's enough. A quick Google search for definitions of "resolution" indicate that a statement identifying the resolution is not enough; a resolution involves analysis and a game plan.

I've set up RSS feeds to alert me when the aforementioned journals are available online; this should prompt me not to hoard them. (BTW, I put myself last on the routing list already, noting that I would collect them.)

The Innovation and Technology division met for the first time last week. In the course of discussion, we discovered we had some action items... it was most exciting. I have to say this is a great team.

And thus ends my first blog post of the year.

Open Source Software in Libraries

Very good, balanced discussion of OSS in libraries.

Open Source Software in Libraries

View more presentations from Sukhdev Singh.

Socialnomics

OK, I understand we can make statistics say anything, but this is so much fun!

Level 71 At Last!

Haven't had a chance to play much in eons, but finally got back to it a bit these past few weeks. Tonight (this morning?) Atzilut finally leveled. Atzi was in Valiance, picking up Grand Master training for skinning, herbalism and first aid. Also picked up the Writhing Longstaff. Well, off to bed. May the stars guide you...

Sending Out an SMS - Joe Murphy

Considers the ability to send a text message a "core competency" for librarians today.
Twitter: @libraryfuture
Tweetable: text messaging is the focus of mobile communication and info exchange. It is the most important addition to library services of our time. The role of SMS in our lives is growing. Alerts by SMS include weather, air lines, 911, politics, ordering pizza, emergency alerts and more.
More popular that phone calls. Expectation experiential gap.
Contact point, information service, portal.
Text messaging coupons... great application, but the technology isn't there yet.
Social networking: some do it better than others. Facebook isn't even quite there... you can get a message that someone wants to be your friend, but you can't friend them without going to the Facebook application.
Joe engages with ~400 text messages per day for personal communication, news, current awareness and searching.
SMS is now used for so much more than communication; it is also a major way that we engage with info. Journals, higher ed,
SMS transforms the phones in our pockets to discovery devices thru mobile answer and searching devices.
Through Mobile search services such as Google SMS, ChaCha & KGB we search the web and get answers from real people in real time.
Every librarian should have a smart phone... The workstation of the future.
Never believe a librarian who tells you that Web 2.0 is free.
Thru the mobile use of social networking sites, esp twitter and Facebook, we use SMS for seeking info from social circle.
We also use SMS increasingly for knowledge management: tracking and sharing info and resources with SMS alerts.
Libraries can stay relevant in this evolving mobile landscape by offering answer and info services via text messaging.
Joe uses ChaCha and KGB to answer his information needs.
Choosing a technology for SMS reference can be tricky but is THE major concern affecting all aspects of the service.
The major considerations for evaluating SMS ref technologies: cost, staff workflows, meeting patron expectations, flexibility of tool.
Options for tech for SMS reference: SMS/IM mashups, direct with cell phones, web based, SMS/Email conversion software
Using a cell phone is best, gives mobility, no expectation gap, least steps for staff, flexible for future services. Helps bridge the gap between traditional services and virtual services. He recommends the iPhone, but in the next year things will be happening. Security issues: securing the phone, security for the patron.
Does the popularity of twitter make it a viable option for mobile ref or is the patron needing a twitter account too high a barrier?
Get the SMS ref phone # into patron's phones and foster the connection between that contact and their needed info.
We need a carefully planned management structure for SMS ref because it's a major service shift with unique considerations.
Staffing concerns
Mobile literacy: librarians need an emerging skill set for engaging info services thru mobile devises.
joeydigits on flickr - Social Networking Competencies for Librarians
Yale University Science Libraries. @ylescilib blazed the trail...
Tips to start an SMS re program: explore tehs, plan for management, train/play, test, launch. Contact @libraryfuture for assistance.
SMS can expand all ref services and is the keystone to mobile virtual reference.
We can get a good sense of what to expect for the future of SMS ref by keeping a finger on the pulse of SMS and mobile...
Consortia/Collaborations will be important for SMS
The slides will be on flickr www.flickr.com/joeydigits
www.facebook.com/joemurphy3

This was a very exciting session. Lots on interactivity. Lots of good things to consider as we shake up our customer service areas.

Public Library Panel on Text Messaging

Orange County Library System: Gregg Gronlund ("Information . Imagination . Inspiration" on the bottom of his slides)

Tapping into the public trend; excellent customer service; innovation
Questline = their call center. Started in Sept. 1994. Separated their walk-in from the call-in traffic, so that reference librarians could focus on walk-in traffic. Reference librarians still answer reference questions. Average 15,000 calls per month. Stafing: 3 fulltime librarians and 11 full time reference assistants, manager and asst. manager. Also cross trained reference staff.
Tools:
Phone and headset. Email. Questline database. Library Catalog. Text messaging. Millennium circ. Instant service.
OLIVE (OCLS Interacrive Virtual Experience)- Video conferencing
Service determined by 1) service requsted and 2)cardholder status
Offers full service through Questline.

Text messaging through upside wireless www.upsidewireless.com. Has a microsoft office plug-in which converts a text message to an email, and vv. Has an autoresponse feature for some keywords. Zip code will get them the 3 closest branches. Gamer will get them the next gaming event at the library. Also alerts for due dates and computer classes.

Innovations @ OCLS

Use an Excel spreadsheet with codes for scheduling staff.
Training
Guidelines:
150 characters or less
answers should come from a reliable accepted source
When possible answers should include the source in the reposnse
Response time should be 30 minutes or less
Try to be thorough; the patron may not followup with other questions.
Tiny URLs don't tell people where they are going, so it's important to tell people what site you're sending them to.

Advertised a Business Text Messaging Night and a Sports Text Messaging Night. Increased the number of texts received that month.

They post a message about standard text messaging rates apply. If you're under 18, must have parent or guardian permission to text.

One format does not get priority over the other. Call center people take them as they come, but focus on finishing one before moving on to another.

Put an Ask a Question icon on every page that gave people a choice between chat or email. Increased usage from 85 a month to over 300 a month.

Good session.

A Quick Review of EBook Devices

Read an EBook week.

The Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville has a guide to ebook devices, that includes youtube videos, etc.

4.5 million netbooks sold each quarter. light, better battery life. being used as ebook readers.

Nintendo DS is being used in Japanese.

Augmented reality... Second time today I've heard this.
I'm loving these AR popup books!!

7 textbook companies have now moved to ebook format (CourseSmart)

Augmented reality coming to iPhone with iPhone OS 3.1

Cataloging Notices to Cellphone

I've missed a great deal of this one... :( I hope it's going to be online somewhere. The audience asked a lot of questions during the session-- very engaged.

http://delicious.com/tgreenwalt/handheld

Shoutbomb is granted tunnel access to Millennium, as a self-check user. Hold, courtesy and overdue reports are generated, and then automatically processed using a TCL script. The reports are then sent to shoutbomb using SFTP. Shout bomb resolves the report against a list of signed-up patrons (barcodes). Records are stored for 5 days, and then deleted, to ensure patron privacy.
Patrons text a message to the library to signup for this service.

Training staff to send text message to a phone. For example, to Verizon user, the text goes to [number]@vtext.com. Other providers are listed at SMS411.net.

Shoutbomb@gmail.com for more info.

Next step: text message reference. Issues include staff training, recognizing a SMS as it comes in and the 140-character limit. Goals: seamlessness; patron experience; staff workflow; SMS to IM gateway.

tripod.brynmawr.edu; trilogy.brnmawr.edu/trico/sys/sms.html

Web signup at DCPL..

www.snaptell.com; www.kooaba.com
QR codes
Augmented reality (AR). Snappr

http://www.theanalogdivide.com/ is Toby Greenwalt's blog.

Notes on the Handheld Librarian Online Conference

Gerry McKiernan's keynote on "Current Mobile Trends in Libraries". Much of the information can be found on his blog, mobile-libraries.blogspot.com

Digital Collections on DukeMobile iPhone app (YouTube)
Facebook EBook Readers in Libraries
Kindle app for iPhone can access Kindle content without having a Kindle. 240,000 Kindle books are avilable for the iPhone or iPod Touch.
WikiMods: wikipedia for mobile phones
Epocrates RX free prescription drug reference
Blackboard Learn for iPhone
Epocrates MobileCME
guides from U of Iowa on pdas

Is the Kindle the future of ILL? Re-Kindling Interlibrary Lon: Amazon's Kindle...
At BYU, Kindle Program on Hold (Library Journal)

Twitter Journals = Journals that Tweet SciTechMed Journals
Twitter for Libraries / Sarah Milstein
Libraries that Twitter
Twittering Libraries Wiki: Prominent Uses in Libraries.
More and more library vendors using twitter
OCLS YouTube on their mobile OPAC
Farkas has info on mobile interaces on the best practices wiki

Reference services: mediated phone reference services for the cellphone user
Skype on iPhone
SMS Library Reference Service Options / Beth Stahr

Text a Librarian http://www.textalibrarian.com/

Mobile Apps for Virtual Learning Environments
Barnes and Noble eBooks
Interactive Mobile Tutorials

Alan Kay (see wikipedia) conceived the Dynabook concept which defined the basics of the laptop computer.

First Ever Evergreen Conference

Six of us traveled down to Athens, GA, for the first ever Evergreen Conference. About 150 people from as far away as Armenia made the trek. Many people were checking things out, asking lots of really great questions, gathering facts, before deciding whether to enter the forest.

Truth be told, my mind was all over the place. We go live on May 28th, and I was thinking about data, data, data. However, I was doing a lot of listening, and asking copious questions as well.

We arrived in time for lunch at DocSuey's, a noodle restaurant. From there we headed over to the conference center to register and attend two afternoon pre-sessions. This time we skipped the hackfest; we'll save that for next year. LaBon and I attended the SysAdmin Survival Skills, and Laura and Rob went to the Documentation and DocBook demo.

LaBon said he enjoyed the sysadmin survival skills. I enjoyed the last 45 minutes. To me, it was like a high level engineering design class; I just wanted to learn to how to tune up my car and keep it running efficiently. I can't seem to find a happy medium with the sysadmin training I've had so far. Of course there is a solution for that: it does involve more work for me, though. Well, what else is new. I just luv a challenge.

Laura and Rob, on the other hand, said they enjoyed their session. I believe it... I heard laughter coming from their room. I'm just a curmudgeon.

The vendors hosted a very nice reception. Thank you! SC had a great showing. There were at least 21 South Carolinians there. About seven of us ended up at the Globe, a decent tavern, for dinner and a few. Later another large group came in, including Bob Molyneux, aka Dr. Data. Good conversation all around...

'Ware dissing the website goddess!

If there is a website goddess, I must have indeed dissed her bigtime! The story...

March 4th I received an email about one of the websites; it just wouldn't load. So I went in to take a look... Still don't know what the problem was. The database looks good. Of course, server tech support was NO help. I'm so spoiled, and don't like having to use a hosted server, although there are distinct advantages. Tech support: reload Joomla! I smile sweetly, (ok, I didn't), muttered a long string of epitaphs, (colourful ones), and started looking at how to migrate to Joomla! 1.5. Might as well. No time like the present.

So, I needed to test it on something. Note to self: in spare time, set up a test server. I decided to test it on my personal, and seriously neglected, website. Of course the migration went well. Sigh of relief. Don't go looking... I haven't reloaded my templates yet.

Time to try it on the downed site. Ha. Migration did not go well. No. Not at all. Why should it? Obviously I haven't placated the goddess appropriately. Grumph. But I'm not totally dejected; I still have the content.

As I have no time during the week to work on this, I wait and think about the changes I'd like to make to the site. No time like the present. Plan, plan plan...

On my birthday, no less, to add injury to insult, my DH brings me the phone, with such a message... I'M SO SORRY! I HOPE YOU HAVE A GOOD BACKUP! What? What??!!?

Yes, gentle readers. On another server, a different website. Gone. LOL, maniacal shrieking. (Not quite. I did in fact have an excellent backup.)

What have I done to receive such negative attention from the goddess?? Could it be the fact that I have purchased patterns and fabric for new SCA garb? Fabric and patterns still in the bag? It must be.

So website number 3 is restored. 20 minutes, natch. The rest should go so well...

If someone can tell me how to appease the website goddess, I'd be forever grateful. In the meantime... I no longer have to wonder when I should migrate to Joomla! 1.5. And I can make the changes I've been thinking about.

I think the whole thing has to do with the lack of time to devote to playing WoW. Maybe I should quit sleeping...

Why I Luv Web 2.0

As I was demonstrating Google Books to my dearly beloved late last night, I told him just how much I luv this era. All the things I dreamt of as a kid are right here, right within my reach... I was showing him the full text books available now that support our hobbies. By extension, I am also able to add to our library's offerings...

Okay, let me back up. I'm learning about heraldry for my persona in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). I've been using World Cat and Delicious to bookmark the necessary resources for onomastics and blazonry. So, as I was wandering around, I decided to put some items on my Amazon wishlist... and that led to, I wonder if these are available through Google Books? Sure enough, some of those prized resources are available to me through GB. Then I noticed that wonderful link: add to my library. One click and they were added to my Google Library.

And because I am a curious workaholic, I decided to type into Google Books those magic words, "south carolina". To backfill, we are digitizing our state documents collection; and we have this marvelous and sorely underused collection of books published prior to that magical year 1923. However, we don't have (and don't have the money for) a digitizer with a book cradle. (I know... time to write a grant or something.) I did a search in our catalog for items published in the 19th century. Then I did a search in Google Books for "south carolina", full view. Don't you know that many of our "rare" items have already been digitized by Google?? Quite frankly, I find that pretty exciting! We will now be adding an 856 field in our MARC records. Less for us to digitize... and more immediate access for our patrons. (Our cataloger is going to love me on Monday. LOL.)

I just luv this time (provided our elected officials don't FUBAR). I went into the sacred art (philosophy) -- naively, I might add -- because I was in luv with the art of wondering and of knowledge. I continued, some years later and no less naively, into library science, for the very same reason. I know we can't make people wise (not quite that naive), but I also feel we can provide the tools people need to discover knowledge, and hence to develop wisdom.

I still have the days when Socrates is buttonholing me, hounding me even, asking me exactly what is wisdom? what is the common good? ... and all those other questions he and Moses are so fond of asking....

Today, I can say. leave me alone, you old cherubed cheeked geek, and you bright horned prophet.... Just stop and look at how far we've come...

And yet, how far we have to go. Isn't it beyond thrilling??

Can they ever intersect? ...

I still think they can....

New eee pc 1000

I was somewhat disappointed with the Asus eee pc 901-- mostly the issue with the shift key. And the keyboard was very small, although I was getting used to it. However, it really ticked me off that no sooner did I get the 901, the 1000 came out. As fate would have it, I was actually able to get the new 1000, because the 901 found a home with one of my sons. They are very happy together.... At least he doesn't have to feed it.

In the meantime, the 1000 still has the same shift key issue (issue in my book, at any rate). To ensure that I would not be bored, when I bought this one, I opted to get the Linux OS (Xandros). LOL. This can be very humbling... So, after struggling for an hour with the wireless, I finally made it onto the Internet. Next step... upgrading Firefox to version 3. While I was struggling with this, Joshua called in to inquire about voicemails about the wireless. He asked the most asinine question: have you read the manual? I mean, what kind of fun is involved with reading the manual... Have you ever actually looked at the manual that comes with a new PC? Really...

However, he did point me to the Eee PC user forums, which in turn pointed me to a wiki [Tweaking for] Absolute Beginners. So that's where I am now: back in Noobville-- what an adventure!

I'm going to go check my mail on WoW, see who's online, chill, and then come back to tweaking my new eee.