Amanda Goodman

Projects Moving Forward & the Process Behind Them

Amanda — Thu, 17 May 2012 03:23:07 +0000

Today I had an open schedule so I was able to focus on four projects that had been neglected: nailing down the process of transferring eBooks to the 3M eReaders and teaching three staff members this process (only a dozen more people to go!), finally getting my files uploaded to my Github repository (the terminal kept shutting down/going blank), working with the teen librarian to discuss her portion of the website redesign, and starting to gather information for the About page revamp.

I continue to worry over the web redesign since there is so far to go. Right now I’m working with each department’s information architecture. We meet a couple times to get everything laid out on the table and then I started sketching out plans and asking for feedback. They send me samples of designs that they like. I then go to work on the test site to see if the concepts we have created work in a real setting. Once that’s done, I transfer it over to the live site and send instructions on what they need to do to complete the transition. This goes fairly well until they get bogged down in completing their part of the project.

Another aspect is that I do not know what the visual redesign is going to look like yet, therefore I am trying to build within the constraints of the current site. I have a few websites’ homepages printed out on my desk to look at, but so far nothing has really jumped out to me. I also found out that Twitter Bootstrap is not a perfect fit with Drupal thanks to some coding issues. My boss believes the community is working on fixing this so that there will be a base theme for us to work on in the future.

Digital Signage Everywhere

Amanda — Wed, 16 May 2012 02:07:22 +0000

As mentioned in the previous post, it was a family weekend which culminated in me feeling like I was going to toss my cookies everytime I took too deep of a breath. I’m usually healthy thanks to years of working with the public, so catching a bug always takes me by surprise.

Friday
With that in mind, I spent most of Friday finishing up the digital signage for my Library’s fundraiser. I hear they were marvelous and I wish I could have seen them. If you also saw my blog going haywire with posts marked private, that was because I was giving a hands-on demo to WordPress with a local organization at work. I am trying to introduce patrons to the benefits of a CMS and this just so happens to be the most accessible WordPress site to me right now. So thanks for the comments asking about what was up, everyone!

Monday
I dragged myself in for precisely two hours. In that time I produced six panels, answered some computer questions, and started processing videos. I was only too grateful to drag myself up the stairs and out to the foundation to wait for my ride.

Tuesday
We have some gaps in the computer labs schedule so today I spent most of my time in there. In between patrons I managed to transition all of the Children’s Library’s online resources to the new content type and… I don’t even remember now. I’m sure it dealt with emails and social media. There was also a conference call to learn about new 3M stuff (I need time to go work on this!). When that call ended early, I was free to work on converting another Nook Color to an Android tablet and ordering new software and hardware for another project. In the background, I started processing video footage. I wish iMovie would import it faster…

Dollbaby at Sixteen

Amanda — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:27:41 +0000

Dollbaby on the Couch

I do not remember my sixteenth birthday (the next three are much easier to recall), but I do wish I would get to remember Dollbaby’s sixteenth birthday. In my memory bank, I wish I could look back at this day and think of the things we would have done; taking a photo of her wearing my Sweet Sixteen necklace, feeding her extra food, singing Happy Birthday over and over, and trying to decide on an appropriate present for someone who has seen it all and survived it all — I had given her a pink brush for her first birthday. I would have spent the day leaning on my elbows and sitting on my calves as I played with her on the bed. She would have been covered in kisses, her belly rubbed and just now without closing my eyes or trying too hard I can hear her purr and feel her pushing her head against my hand.

This is all the year where the first vet had originally predicted she would live to quite easily with diabetes. Never for one day would Dollbaby suffer darkness, be mistreated, and instead live a full life where every day she was treated as the most precious being in all creation. However, that horrible person decided to destroy her.

Unfortunately, Dollbaby’s heart is not humming underneath my ear anymore. However, I will keep celebrating her every year for even though she is gone, for each passing year marks how my life was transformed by her. She was stolen but no one can take away the impact she wrought.

Happy birthday, my darling Dollbaby. Let’s meet again.

Family Here

Amanda — Fri, 11 May 2012 03:26:32 +0000

…so I’m supremely exhausted from entertaining.

Wrote up a web post about the books I presented yesterday.
Worked on digital signage for the fundraiser on Saturday.
Met to discuss the Adult Technology Classes — no more summer classes after this year!
Researched mono sound on a VHS tape, a VCR, and importing it all into a Mac.
Started work on a new mini website for work.
Talked with the user research person who is coming next month.
Tried to figure out how to theme this Drupal Views’ table. I still need help.

Book Talking

Amanda — Wed, 09 May 2012 23:57:46 +0000

Let’s get the mundane out of the way: updated social media, finished processing a video, met with the second fellowship nominee (she’s very nice!), listened to a webinar about responsive web design in Drupal, made a digital sign, look up images for the website, researched VCRs, and did testing on our 3M eReaders — this one was very exciting since two boys were very interested in what was going on and they were showing me how to use the software for something they had never seen before in their lives.

What this post is about is the one thing I dislike about my job: recommending books to this one group of older ladies. The reason being is that I have vastly different tastes in reading materials. On the other hand, if you get me near the teens, I can gush with them about novels featuring strong young women fighting to a make a difference in the world. It’s frustrating, but…

She’s Okay

Amanda — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:41:43 +0000

This morning I tricked Celeste into the cat carrier. However, before that, I had the awful task of clipping off the last thing that Dollbaby’s name was attached to. In total there were three vet tags on the carrier (regular vet, emergency hospital, ultrasound hospital). That last day, I did not even get the carrier but gently ran Dollbaby down the stairs to the vet and for the first time in either of our lives, I left the carrier behind. Changing out the towel and then holding the carrier that Dollbaby has ridden in these last several years was hard. So on the way to the vet, I put my fingers through the bars and yelped when Celeste would push against my fingers till they bent backwards against the metal. She meowed often and then was silent while I filled out the paperwork.

The good news is that she’s okay with no strikes against her in her tenth year. This is the first time that I’ve ever received good news from a vet.

At work I did my monthly paperwork (timesheet, credit card statement, reimbursement). Then I ran about doing last minute small things, working on video editing, looking for the Maurice Sendak (RIP today) videotape from when he came to my library’s centennial celebration. When I checked on our summer classes, I discovered that they did not fill up so maybe we’ll do something different next year. Then there was the monthly communications meeting and we got out early! I spent that bonus half hour pouring over website things with the reference head.

I had an hour to scramble before going to the Book Group Expo. It was a smashing success with a mostly full auditorium. I uploaded a few shots I took to Facebook. I only noticed one aspect of the event that I need to make sure to fix for next year. Marianne, the ringleader in all this, singled me out at one point which was super awkward.

Then I settled into the world of the computer lab. I wrote some documentation, emails, and did some research in-between patrons. Not a bad day overall. It was raining as I walked to the train but even that was pretty nice.

Project Book Groups Done

Amanda — Tue, 08 May 2012 01:14:11 +0000

Today was Monday which of course means creating digital signage. I think I lucked out with making only eight or nine. I then completed the Book Groups pages. This particular project involved a lot of back and forth as sometimes I had to draft emails, set up Google Docs and Gmail, and create signage for this presentation. Tomorrow I will be at the Expo to be on hand in case anyone has any questions. However, I think the simplicity of the page should be self-explanatory enough. There is only one thing left to fix, so I’ll try posting on some forums tonight for help.

Our big fundraising event is this Saturday so I hit upon two further ideas for promotion. One is to share photos of some of the auction items on our social media. The second is to create a set of special panels to be shown only on the day of the event. These panels would list our accomplishments this past year and some of our goals for the upcoming year. I need to do some fancy talking in the next day or so to gather all the data I need to make the panels.

Finally, I edited together a podcast from unusable visual footage and processed video from another event. With a little luck, I’ll have that video posted first thing tomorrow.

Work in Progress: Moving Locally

Amanda — Sun, 06 May 2012 14:57:47 +0000

So my cheap webhost is not cutting it for my side project. So I’m now moving it to my local machine since it is 99% for my own usage. The directions on this page for XAMPP are dead simple to follow. You have to do a little mental tweaking since they are a bit outdated, but you’ll quickly see the holes.

Next up, I copied the modules and files (for me, just photos) over to the new location. The images were located in sites/default.

Hectic Friday

Amanda — Sat, 05 May 2012 02:46:15 +0000

This morning I had to go to the Home Depot to pick up a special screwdriver so I can remove the back of a Nook Color. This would be for the one where the microSD card slipped behind the back panel. Just as I was sitting down my purse on my desk when I arrived, my phone rang. A patron needed help. So out the door I ran and all my projects for the morning easily fell like Dominoes as one thing after another kept me from staying on track.

My projects:

Finish the Book Group Expo poster.
Met with my boss.
Covered the computer labs.
Mostly finished the Book Groups website (some CSS is acting up but hopefully I can fix that on Monday).
Showed the appropriate person how the new Android tablets work (spoke with cataloging to get them reassigned in the system).
Create a Book Groups panel.
Fix a mistake in the panels.

Anxious Morning

Amanda — Fri, 04 May 2012 03:23:01 +0000

I was awaken very early this morning by my oldest cat being very ill. Her state was such that I was afraid to leave her, so today I worked from home. I left just long enough to pick up some of today’s work projects and then returned to my desk. She is doing better now and my mind was at ease with her asleep across my lap while I typed. Other people have human children, but I have been a cat mother for almost sixteen years.

So, from home I worked on rooting then converting three Nook Colors. In one of them, the microSD card slipped out of the slot and down inside the device, so I have to pick up a special screwdriver so I can open up the back to retrieve it. I also finished up a poster for the upcoming Book Group expo which also meant some more web work on their website section. Most of my emails were back and forth with that group as we compared notes. I also copied and pasted text from a PDF onto a web page which meant I had to format it. Since the event is next week, I went with two simple tables with zebra rows. This process was tedious and long, but I think all information about the event is now available.

The new thing I learned today was how to network map my work’s drivers to my home computer when I use VPN. Next up I need to see if Ubuntu will allow me write access to the web server…

In the end, a day working from home meant that it was easier for me to get carried away and work longer. The change of pace was nice, but it also made me anxious not being able to walk over to see people as needed. So I installed Pidgin so I could quickly contact people.