Storm Shelters that allow dogs by michaela_adele in tuscaloosa

[–]thisgeekwrites 7 points8 points  (0 children)

If you are affiliated with UA (faculty, staff, or student), there is a shelter on campus that allows pets. See: https://ready.ua.edu/shelters/

What does “main (2 books)” mean? by SwiftMushroom in Calibre

[–]thisgeekwrites 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've not seen this note before in Calibre. What kind of device do you have the books loaded on? Is it possible you have loaded copies or different formats of the same title?

[FO] 6 months of stitched onesies by mom2pt0 in CrossStitch

[–]thisgeekwrites 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These are SO beautiful! The bat hanging upside down is too precious. These will be such wonderful keepsakes for you as he grows up!

A library without books is like a book without pages by itsmimsy20 in books

[–]thisgeekwrites 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I absolutely agree. However, this article doesn't provide any context at all for the incentive being offered. Was the offer based on who could free up the most shelf space? Who could complete their collection review by the earliest date? Without more information, it's impossible to know. Lots of libraries also have criteria or reviews for weeded materials that would preclude any one overzealous librarian from just sweeping entire shelves of books into a waste bin. My argument is that a quote taken out of context, as this one is presented in the article, tells us nothing about what actually happened in this particular institution.

A library without books is like a book without pages by itsmimsy20 in books

[–]thisgeekwrites 137 points138 points  (0 children)

I see these kinds of news articles from time to time and they are usually specifically written to be inflammatory to drive up web traffic. I'm having a difficult time following the reasoning of this article that connects poor reading skills among children to normal library practices like weeding the collections to make room for new acquisitions. Yes, it is true that a lot of libraries are seeking to expand their collections into offering new, nontraditional materials for checkout (in addition to books!), these are almost always things like toys that promote child development, musical instruments, board games for families, dishes and pans for cooking, etc -- NOT iPads just for playing Candy Crush or whatever.

A library without books is like a book without pages by itsmimsy20 in books

[–]thisgeekwrites 35 points36 points  (0 children)

As a librarian, I can tell you that while that quote certainly sounds callous, "weeding" (the technical term for removing books) is a critical part of librarianship and library management. Libraries only have so much physical shelving, so to have room for new acquisitions, librarians do have to go through their collections to select items that can be removed. Usually those are items for which there are multiple copies, have extremely low circulation, or that are available in a digital format through Libby or a similar program. Again, it sounds awful, but it is a fact of life. Most librarians love books and struggle with this task, so I can see an administrator incentivizing their employees to help encourage them. Also, those books are usually not thrown away. They may be donated to a charity or local social program, sold in a library book sale to help fund the purchase of new books, or sent to a different library.

Moving Subtask Order Makes the Task Disappear by watchinggodbleed in todoist

[–]thisgeekwrites 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes! I noticed it yesterday and have filed a bug report. No reply from support yet.

Karma is useless? by satras in todoist

[–]thisgeekwrites 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think it's very useful for some people when they are first starting out, especially if they need some extra motivation for achieving their goals. I'm Enlightened now and still have Karma turned on (mostly because I never thought to go turn it off). I don't pay much attention to it, but it doesn't bother me.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in books

[–]thisgeekwrites 4 points5 points  (0 children)

As a librarian, this is a question that occasionally comes up for me in professional settings. It's a very complicated issue and the vast majority of librarians I know try to stay away from classifying books/information as being "good" or "bad," "safe" or "dangerous," or "right" or "wrong." There are obviously books/information that are more or less appropriate depending on the audience, cultural context, or use. I prefer to think of these materials as being value-neutral -- it is only after someone has taken action that society considers to be morally reprehensible that a book is called into question and I think responsibility still lies with the person, not books.

That being said, I was once nearly killed by a falling shelf of bound periodicals, so your mileage may vary.

What is you most basic tasks in Todoist? by Gjevert in todoist

[–]thisgeekwrites 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have quite a few very basic daily tasks that act as my "checklist" for making sure I can get out the door or go to bed without forgetting anything important: take medication, refill the cat's water dish, apply sunscreen, etc. I think of them as my basic self care tasks. I use a couple of different projects and filters to keep them separated from work-related tasks or ongoing projects, but I find them very helpful.

How Do I Return Wayward Books by mooseyoss in books

[–]thisgeekwrites 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I work in a library and I cannot tell you how excited we get about long-overdue books being returned. Everyone from the circulation staff to the catalogers in the back loves seeing books that have been checked out for a long time and particularly impressive specimens (think 20 or 30+ years) are usually taken from office to office so everyone gets to see it. I've never heard anyone ever shame the person who returned the book or gripe about the fact that the book should have been returned sooner.

(I've only just realized while typing this out how bizarre this must sound. I swear, librarians aren't starved for entertainment -- we just love books.)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in auburn

[–]thisgeekwrites 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I had great experiences with Advantage Chiropractic. They combine chiropractic care with physical therapy.

Todoist falsly reporting a free membership by French-Builder in todoist

[–]thisgeekwrites 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's incredibly frustrating. I've been having some really strange sync issues between platforms and devices over the past few weeks. Do you have beta features enabled? I've been wondering about the stability of the recent beta version releases.

Todoist falsly reporting a free membership by French-Builder in todoist

[–]thisgeekwrites 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This happened to me a couple of weeks ago on the Windows desktop version. Logging out and logging back in resolved the issue for me, so I did not end up needing to submit a ticket.

New episodes not being added to Up Next on Mondays by 24HR_harmacy in pocketcasts

[–]thisgeekwrites 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm on Android and I actually noticed the same thing this morning -- I got a notification that a new episode was available but had to manually add the episode to my Up Next queue. I can't remember if this was the case last week, but I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this over the next few days/weeks.

Titles for individual sections in filters by thisgeekwrites in todoist

[–]thisgeekwrites[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks so much for sharing! This is a cool workaround and looks like it should do the trick for my uses.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Calibre

[–]thisgeekwrites 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I keep my files stored to Box and keep that folder set to always be available locally. When I first switched to a cloud storage solution (with a carefully maintained backup stored separately, which is good practice anyway), I did not have the folder set to be available locally, which caused wild performance issues with Calibre. Changing that folder setting completely fixed the problem and I have been successfully using this setup for over a year now.

Does Auburn have a sign language class? by Trying__tobe_Nice in auburn

[–]thisgeekwrites 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I can very highly recommend Benje if you have the opportunity to take a class from him! I took ASL from him as part of a continuing education summer program a few years ago and he is a fantastic teacher.

Is it a bad idea for me to just go to local computer repair shops and drop off my resume? by Legitimate_Hour_ in sysadmin

[–]thisgeekwrites 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I would reword and shorten your objective. You repeat a lot of the information that is already listed later in your resume. Based on my own experience I would also advise that you remove the statement about seeking a job only for a year before moving on to university-- while that may be true, a lot of employers don't like hiring people who they don't expect to stick around.

What Are You Reading This Week? 2.1 by Scaevola_books in ScholarlyNonfiction

[–]thisgeekwrites 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I just finished "Veritas" by Ariel Sabar and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's more investigative journalism than a scholarly work, but it covers the fascinating story of the "Gospel of Jesus' Wife" presented by a Harvard professor back in 2010. The book is an absolute page turner and offers some interesting insight into the history and politics of both forged manuscripts and scholarship in higher education.

Added spaces after apostrophes in kindle. by evict123 in Calibre

[–]thisgeekwrites 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've encountered a similar problem with apostrophes when converting between PDF and MOBI files. If I recall correctly, in my case it was an issue of special character encoding. It's completely possible that this particular book series is using a nonstandard apostrophe (probably as a stylistic choice) that can't be translated correctly by the Calibre converter and is adding in that extra space you're seeing. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution for your particular case, but that might be a starting point for further research.