Hair

In the break between my 9 o'clock class and my 10 o'clock class I made a quick stop to the bathroom. While I was washing my hands, I saw this guy who was adjusting his hair in the mirror. He had a kind-of-faux-hawk going on, and he was making it so that the sides of his hair were identical. Once he was satisfied he paused and smiled a little bit, nodding slightly to himself. I could imagine him saying, "Oh yeah...it's symmetrical, baby." The funny thing is, I couldn't even tell much of a difference. It was as if moving a piece of hair half a centimeter would either make or break his whole self image.
I was laughing to myself about this when I realized that I kind of do the same thing. It's kind of embarrassing, really. I worry that if one side of my head of hair looks more curly our if the top is more flat than the sides, I look like a complete clown. It was then that I realized that the little adjustments I make with my hands--either smoothing or fluffing--don't make any difference at all. People can't tell. I look like a fluffy haired person either way. Needless to say, this has liberated me in a small way. I don't waste the 10 seconds after the shower any more. I just rub my head with a towel and my hair does its own thing.

4 AM

Our baby falls asleep for the night sometime between 10 and 11 pm and she gets up at about 4 in the morning each day. I usually go and console her at the time, and if she continues to cry I change her diaper. If that doesn't help, I figure she's hungry and I feed her some milk that we stored.
It's a pretty good little system we've got going. The only problem is that sometimes I don't think too clearly at 4 am.
For instance, I think I was getting a little sleep deprived because I started to hear voices. First, I thought I heard the baby crying and when I checked on her she was sleeping pretty deep. Then I thought I heard Katie calling my name really loud and then I looked at her and she was sleeping. It was kind of creepy, so I woke Katie up and asked her if she was dreaming or calling my name, and she said no.
This morning at about 4:45 when the baby fell back asleep, I crawled back in bed not looking forward to 7 am when the alarm goes off. Then it hit me: if time goes forward and music comes out of the alarm clock, maybe if I sang music into the alarm clock then the time will go backwards!! I started to hum a little bit, but the sound of my own voice woke out of this crazy stupor. I felt ridiculous. I'm just glad that Katie didn't wake up to me singing to the alarm clock.

Found

I was working on some homework last night in the library when I noticed a piece of paper on the desk I was working at. I picked it up and looked at it, and this is what it looked like:
It's a piece of paper with four call numbers written on it, and one of the four numbers was crossed out. This paper reminded me of something that Lisa told me about, where a guy goes around collecting notes and shopping lists and photographs and tries to learn a little about the person who left them behind. I was pretty curious, so I decided to look up the books on this paper. Here they are:

1. TK 5105 .888.R67 = Information architecture for the World Wide Web by Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville.
2. Z 666.5 .B38X = Information architecture for information professionals by Sue Batley.
3. T 585 .M68 = This wasn't in the catalog.
4. QA 760 .D26 M35 (this was crossed out) = This wasn't in the catalog either.

So maybe that was a little creepy-stalker of me, and the books were a lot more boring than I thought they would be, but it was kind of fun the do a little investigative work.

Here's the book that I mentioned earlier. It's called Found, by Davy Rothbart. Maybe I will convince the library to buy it. It looks kind of interesting.

Spam

Sometimes I really like reading my spam. Especially when my spam is from scammers from Nigeria, telling my that I am next of kin to some general and are contacting my to give me his money, and the only thing I have to pay is "the $150 (United States US Dollars) courier fee. Take note of that."

I think the best spam I ever received was from Mr. Kofi Annan himself. Enjoy:

"How are you today? Hope all is well with you and family?,You may not
understand why this mail came to you.
We have been having a meeting for the passed 7 months which ended 2
days ago with the then secretary to the UNITED NATIONS.
This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of
the world, the UNITED NATION have agreed to compensate them with
the sum of US$ 100,000. This includes every foriegn contractors that may
have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an
unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to
Government probelms etc.
We found your name in our list and that is why we are contacting you,
this have been agreed upon and have been signed.
You are advised to contact Mr. Jim Ovia of ZENITH BANK NIGERIA PLC, as
he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your
Cheque/ International Bank Draft of USD$ 100,000. This funds are in
a Bank Draft for security purpose ok? so he will send it to you and you
can clear it in any bank of your choice.
Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone
number/your correct mailing address where you want him to send the
Draft to you.
Conatct Mr. Jim Ovia immediately for your Cheque:
Person to Contact Mr. Jim Ovia
Email: jimovia_77@yahoo.com
Thanks and God bless you and your family.Hoping to hear from you as
soon as you cash your Bank Draft.
Making the world a better place
Regards,
Mr. Kofi Anann
Former Secretary (UNITED NATIONS).

I would never have thought that Kofi Annan would stoop so low…

I also like how he misspelled his own last name.

ِِ

Errors Run Amok

There was quite an uproar at work today.

We received an email from the subject librarian in the Science Reference today stating that the APA Publication Manual was riddled with mistakes and falsehoods. I remember ordering 8 copies of this style guide on Amazon earlier this year for reference desks all around BYU campus. It turns out that there was about 30 pages of errors in this book, mainly having to do with the placements of commas, how to cite URL's, when to use brackets or parenthesis, and so on.

Anyway, students and professors alike at acedemic instituitions across the nation were justifiably angry with the quality of the manual, so much so that the APA decided to recall all of their books and republish them, all on their own tab. I can't even imagine how much that will cost them.

So my boss sent me to the different reference desks in the BYU Library to pick up these manuals, but there was one missing. Turns out that a student checked it out. I hope he/she realizes that there are some issues with it before he/she turns in his/her research paper. (I hate that there is no neutral third-person pronoun in the English language.)

If you want to read an article about this issue, look here. It also has a list of all the corrections that were made. Some of them are pretty ridiculous.

NaBloPoMo

So since Olivia's been born, I've been considering either just deleting this blog ... or writing in it again. A few times I almost just got on the computer and just deleted it. I just don't like it when projects of mine are "unfinished." I guess that doesn't make much sense for a blog, because there is no end, but whatever. But then I saw my brother and sister-in-law announcing that its National Blog Posting Month (if if you're in a hurry you say NaBloPoMo). It's where you basically commit to writing every day for the month of November. And that motivated me enough to pick it up again. At least for another month.

I make no guarantee about the quality or quantity of writing, but I'll try to make it enjoyable to read. Ha!

Baby's here!

She was born this morning at 3:56 AM. 7 pounds, 7 ounces. Katie was in labor for about 20 hours before they did the C-Section. She and the baby are doing fine. Katie is exhausted, though, so it will be a little bit before we can have visitors.
Stay tuned for pictures!