30.08.03

We lost all our entries from the August 26th when our blog host decided to use old backups when reinstalling their server.
However, Mitch was able to find them again (thankgoodness for Google cache) but a lot of our links that we put in our entries are missing. So, bare with us. We’ll get them put back in eventually. Right now we’re going to eat some steak at Montana Mikes.
-C

My good friend and supervisor, Beth, made a comment to my last blog on
filters (CIPA). Take a look, she has some interesting things to say as
always. Beth is my mentor and has been my greatest inspiration to pursue a
degree in Library Science.
-C

The USA PATRIOT ACThas been threatening the library world since it was past in haste a mere fourty-five days after the Sept. 11 attacks. What is so frightening about this legislation is that it eliminates the checks and balances needed to protect many of our rights. Effecting libraries most is Title II, Section 215 which allows the director of the FBI, and basically anyone else he assigns, to apply for a court order requiring a library or any such facility (even a bookstore) to produce whatever tangible documents they request without a warrant or probably cause. In a book titled Lost Liberties: Ashcroft and the Assault on Personal Freedom by Cynthia Brown a study is mentioned, done by the University of Illionois’s Library Research Center revealing that “in the year since the September 11 attacks, federal and local law enforcement agancies visited at least 543 libraries to requestinformation on patrons. Approximately 10 percent of the requests that were reported referenced Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT ACT.” (45) What is even more disturbing are reports that our government have been less
than honest regarding this law. Check it out.
-C

Mike and I met while attending art and design college in Savannah , Georgia.
Despite our complaints, some of which included a badly run administration
office, sticky heat and annoying tourists, Mike and I have very fond
memories of our time there. As one of the few cities that survived the
Civil War intact, Savannah’s historic routes run deep, one of the reasons it
draws so many tourists every Spring (although the publication of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil probably helped too). However, it wasn’t
always so. On her visit, Lady Astor, remarked that Savannah was “a
beautiful lady with a dirty face”. It is just in the last 20 years or so
that the city has gone through a kind of rebirth, most especially with the
preservation and restoration of its historic district. It’s historic homes
made it a wonderful place to pursue my degree in architectural history and
provided a picturesque setting for Mike to pursue his in photography. We
also had a chance to actually work in one of these homes the Owens-Thomas House Museum as tour guides. As one of the oldest and best examples of the Regency
Style in America, I would highly recommend visiting this museum if ever in
Savannah. I was required to write a senior thesis for my degree (Bachelor of Building Arts). It took me over a year to complete. My thesis committee have been more then patient with me, thank goodness. My topic was on the stave churches of Norway, specifically, portal(fancy term for “doorway”)decoration. I’m thinking I might try to put my thesis on my blog as a pdf file, but I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Anyway, there a little more about me and the monkey.

Found a couple of really great sites thanks to a good friend of ours–Beth
(last name withheld to protect individual). Just thought I’d post them here.
I love games and so this area of the blog will reflect that. Hopefully the
longer this blog stays up, the more games and other Fun Stuff I’ll post.
Anyway, here’s couple to get started:

Orisinal Games

Runescape haven’t played it yet but it looks like a cheaper version of
EverQuest. Which I’m all about, I loved EverQuest, but it took up too much
time and $$$.

-M

I was informed by my lovely wife that I would NOT be able to have any input
whatsoever as to the design of this site if I do not add entries. So here is
what will probably end up being a lame entry. I have just finished
redirecting traffic from our newly acquired domain (www.huggin.net.) to
here. I wish it was the other way around, but i don’t know that much about
this stuff. Huggin by the way, to all of our American readers is not an
abbreviated version of Hugging, it’s actually a Nordic/Scandinavian
legend/story about two crows, I believe, Huggin and Munnin (say the “o’s”
sort of like “ooh”) Anyway, carleen or Mitch ( Munnin.net ) can tell you
more about it.
Web design is going well. I’m getting really psyched about this stuff, and
the best part is, about 80% of it is actually sinking in. A few more days
working with it and I should have a fairly good understanding of Cascading
Style Sheets. Which, to the uninitiated, is basically a way to make HTML
easier to modify. It creates a file to which you can reference all your web
pages, and instead of modifying each individual web page, you modify the CSS
file and it modifies all the pages for you (Sweet!).
I am now a week into training on a new machine at work. I will now be
running a snap out collator, check out some pictures of it here:

Snap Out Collator

Anyway, that’s my blog for now, got too much to do. For once in my life I
can’t say that I’m bored, it’s pretty nice.

-M