scratchpad jr. (2nd import)

I’m having Internet connection problems at home and may be off work next week, so you may not see much from me over the next 10 days. Happy Independence Day!

Yes, I know Strom Thurmond died, but I’m not dedicating my blog to him for a day. First of all, he isn’t a friend or family member of mine. Second, I voted against him every chance I had. I met him when I was in high school. I won’t tell you [...]

Rabbi Joel Levine is filing the lawsuit based on Florida’s policy that drivers must “opt out” of a system to share their personal information on driver’s records while the Driver Privacy Protection Act, a federal law, requires that states allow drivers to “opt in,” i.e. excluding everyone’s personal information unless they say they want it [...]

National Public Radio’s Morning Edition ran a great piece on the problems librarians face as they consider how to comply with yesterday’s Supreme Court decision upholding the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). The federal law requires libraries receiving federal funding to use software to filter the Internet. Many people think that current technology [...]

I have no real idea how this happened. My story about how I dyed my hair with Kool-Aid and it didn’t really work is number 6 in a Yahoo! search results list for dye hair Kool-Aid. Gosh, don’t do what I did if you want purple hair. (I still had red hair [...]

This New York Times piece talks about how some people in the business world are using blogs in their companies or for their work. Author Thom Weidlich focuses on the social angle of blogging–people who put their thoughts and opinions that might not necessarily be directly related to their jobs on their corporate blog. [...]

The Supreme Court ruled on affirmative action in a much anticipated ruling. They upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s admissions policy that considers race as a factor, but didn’t accept the University of Michigan’s policies for undergraduate admissions.
In a ruling that many librarians will find disappointing, myself included, the court voted 6 [...]

I learned last night that the Mom of my roommate, Dave, died of cancer early Friday morning.
I got to spend some time with Sue on a few difference occasions. She was a neat lady. She loved plants and gave me some that are doing wonderfully. I really appreciate how she welcomed me [...]

National Public Radio’s Morning Edition carried a piece this morning about how Senate Commerce Committee Senators Ted Stevens (R, AK) and Fritz Hollings (D, SC) have created a bill to change some of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) limits back to what they were before the recent change. Mostly, it deals with closing a [...]

(So, Vernica and I had a little conversation a little while ago about whether we should respond to each other’s blog posts on our own blog or use the comments box. The conversation happened shortly after Vernica said she wasn’t blogging anymore and happened to write a long response to my blog post about [...]