(no subject)
I'm in a better mood today. =) Thursdays are usually incredibly boring at the library since there's only a spurt of little kids right before and after storytime. But they're never looking for anything in particular so I don't get asked any questions. And then just when I'm about to start crying from sheer boredom (usually the last 30 minutes or so of my shift), I usually have two fans who come in to chat with me for a while. (I have fans! Whee! They're not even kids. Greg is in a wheelchair because he has cerebral palsy, and Mark is the guy who goes around town with him. So they usually stop and say "hi" to me. They're pretty cool. And they rescue me from utter boredom. So yeah.) Anyway, I'm still bored right now, but I got to go to storytime today, which was fun. I got to pretend I was five, which I love doing. =) And the reason I got to go to storytime is so that I can observe how Kathleen does it this week and how Mari does it next week, and then I get to try doing a storytime MYSELF the week after that. I'm going to read to little kidsies! Oh, and the reason that they're letting me try a storytime is because Mari is leaving in May, so I'm going to be applying for her job, which involves doing storytime on alternate weeks. And Mari is a Library Assistant II (I'm a Library Assistant I) and it's full-time, which means benefits(!) and, of course, more money, which is helpful for paying back loans and such. I'm not sure if I actually want the job, though, because it's a LOT of work that I'm not familiar with and I'd only be here for a year before grad school. But I'm definitely applying (if they ever get around to actually posting the job...) and then I'll decide if I want the job or not.
In other news, it saddens me that 10-year-olds are better at hacking than I am. =( See, we've blocked MySpace from the children's computers (not the other computers in the library) because of a lot of parents complaining about some of the content that was showing up on the screens. However, these little kids are quite devious and, rather than just using the other computers, have devised numerous ways of getting to MySpace in spite of the block. First they found a site that had a link to MySpace and managed to get in that way. So we blocked that site, too. And now they're using proxy sites (of which there are about a gazillion and hence we cannot block them) which allow you to get to MySpace without the computer recognizing it as MySpace. So now I have to actively watch what the kids are looking at on the computers. Grr. And then my boss also mentioned that they're hacking into the C drive and doing stuff from there (I didn't quite follow what it was she said they were doing), which they're not supposed to be able to do because we have a program on the computers that disables the start button so that you can't get to the hard drive to install things or whatever. In theory. But, of course, this is Windows we're talking about and for some reason unknown to me our computer guy has Internet Explorer as the only browser on all of the computers. And IE is linked to the Windows operating system (which is why it's so insecure and evil), so you can type a C drive location in the URL box of IE and from there access the hard drive. So I think I must make it my mission to get the computer guy to switch all the computers from IE to Firefox. Or Netscape. I'm not too picky, although I do prefer FF myself. Gah, stupid kids.
The fish tank is all dirty and gross because the fish guy came and cleaned the tank this morning. The water is closer to being clear again now, though.
In other news, it saddens me that 10-year-olds are better at hacking than I am. =( See, we've blocked MySpace from the children's computers (not the other computers in the library) because of a lot of parents complaining about some of the content that was showing up on the screens. However, these little kids are quite devious and, rather than just using the other computers, have devised numerous ways of getting to MySpace in spite of the block. First they found a site that had a link to MySpace and managed to get in that way. So we blocked that site, too. And now they're using proxy sites (of which there are about a gazillion and hence we cannot block them) which allow you to get to MySpace without the computer recognizing it as MySpace. So now I have to actively watch what the kids are looking at on the computers. Grr. And then my boss also mentioned that they're hacking into the C drive and doing stuff from there (I didn't quite follow what it was she said they were doing), which they're not supposed to be able to do because we have a program on the computers that disables the start button so that you can't get to the hard drive to install things or whatever. In theory. But, of course, this is Windows we're talking about and for some reason unknown to me our computer guy has Internet Explorer as the only browser on all of the computers. And IE is linked to the Windows operating system (which is why it's so insecure and evil), so you can type a C drive location in the URL box of IE and from there access the hard drive. So I think I must make it my mission to get the computer guy to switch all the computers from IE to Firefox. Or Netscape. I'm not too picky, although I do prefer FF myself. Gah, stupid kids.
The fish tank is all dirty and gross because the fish guy came and cleaned the tank this morning. The water is closer to being clear again now, though.