Brandi pointed out an article on Kiplinger, 7 Great Careers for 2007, that lists librarian as a great job. Of course I’m biased, but I wouldn’t want any of the other jobs on the list. Considering library schools? Have a look at the rankings.

We have rearranged our trip. It is no longer a Costa Rica trip, but could more accurately be called the 3 days skiing/2 days househunting trip. We just have too much to do to spend 2 weeks in El Sud. During our trip to find housing Brandi will meet with representatives from the NCSU library to help her locate employment in Raleigh. This is an extremely considerate offer from NCSU and would eliminate one of our primary concerns about moving there. Now if only they could install a breeding population of spider monkeys on campus and it would be perfect.

I have accepted a faculty position as a Geospatial Data Librarian (job desc.) at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. I tentatively plan to start on January 24. Brandi and I will be in Costa Rica from December 22 through January 5. Needless to say we are extremely excited by this development.

Prairienet is sucking the life from my wretched body. I’ve spent about 25 hours here in the last two days and gotten very little done. The rpc exploit is taking its toll around here and thank god its not my job to develop and implement a plan to deal with it. Oh well, we get to move soon to our quiet, cool, peaceful house with only computers that work!

The new computer science building at UIUC is generating a lot of attention. See this Slashdot article, this Chicago Sun-Times article, and this Chicago Business article. Here is some information from the university about the building.

After reading Dismantling the Public Sphere: Situating and Sustaining Librarianship in the Age of the New Public Philosophy” and this recent NY Times article on the Gates Foundation I’ve really started to develop concrete reasons for worrying about technology in libraries. While posting this I happened to see this article concerning laptops replacing books in elementary school. I doubt that anyone without a serious vested interest would posit that contemporary US education does NOT pale in comparison to public education prior to the Vietnam war. I have some theories about why that is, but this is all heretical thought in a library school. Read the articles I’ve mentioned here.

Ok, it’s 0630. It’s finals once again. This morning, though, I’m leaving for a 2 day field trip to Chicago in order to look at library buildings. Things are great at the Tuttle house. Brandi graduates again in about a month.

I have been offered and have accepted the internship at Abbott Labs this summer.

I rushed excitedly to the phone this morning, saw that it was Abbott on the phone, and then had my hopes smashed (sort of). I am one of two candidates they’re considering and it may be another week before they make a final decision. Oh well. Brandi and I spent the weekend in South Bend with my brother and his family and mother and step father. My nephew was celebrating his second birthday. He’s such a happy little kid. If we had some sort of guarantee that we wouldn’t end up with a monster we might have some of our own one day.

The annual leep April Fools joke went over quite well. Every GSLIS student has a personal webpage that contains information, news, and links aimed at the entire school and personalized info for individual students. Yesterday a news link was posted on the index page.  I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t involved. I’m now worried for librarians as it has become painfully obvious to me how gullible they are. So many bright, educated people fell for it that maybe it is more a statement on current affairs than on the ability of GSLIS’ers to evaluate information.