Laurabelle’s Blog

Today I received (and have accepted) a job offer, by phone, from a company I have been calling ACME (and will continue to do so because I am superstitious like Dorothea). More later; I just wanted to share the good news.

Satire really shouldn't be this close to the truth. Satire may already be dead, but reality is flogging for all it's worth.

I didn’t know it then, but yesterday was Mountain Day. Mountain Day is a traditional holiday at Mount Holyoke College; on some beautiful fall day, students wake up and find out that it’s Mountain Day and classes have been cancelled. Traditionally one climbs Mount Holyoke, but whatever the activity, the holiday is always better for [...]

Get Fuzzy has been one of my favorite comics for a while, but today's comic is priceless. You've got to love someone who tells it like it is. Cat overpopulation, ironically, is a result of stupid humans. Declawing a cat involves amputating its fingers at the last knuckle. If you want a chill cat, adopt an older [...]

Another public library system begins the transition to open source! The city of Cape Town and South Africa's State Information Technology Agency (SITA) are planning joint development of a new, open-source integrated library system. Apparently they're trying to do this to save money, which is always a risky proposition. Let me summarize the strategy for you: Spend [...]

I've been playing around with What Should I Read Next? which is interesting but not fully functional. I'm not just referring to the fact that the site doesn't yet have a critical mass of data for recommendations; that's understandable. What's annoying is that the interface has some bad design choices that I don't understand. The site's [...]

Rules: Go into your archive. Find your 23rd post (or closest to it). Find the 5th sentence (or closest to it). Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions. Result: It doesn’t seem to follow any links! Perhaps not the most profound phrase I have ever uttered, but certainly not the worst out of context. Via Badger.

Banned Books Week 2005 is September 24 - October 1. Celebrate by reading a banned book! In 2003 I posted a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books (1990-2000), noting which I had read. Unfortunately, I don't believe I have read any more challenged books since then. Shame on me. The Secret Garden Bookshop in Ballard [...]

It seems there are no old photos of weather phenomena or reptiles (particularly snakes), from any part of the world, that someone won't dust off and recirculate with text proclaiming them to be somehow connected to Hurricane Katrina. Honestly, this doesn't even look like the Gulf Coast.

About midway down on the main-page sidebar, there's now a Currently reading section displaying the last three books I've picked up to read. I thought this would be rather fun. Clicking on the cover image there will take you to another page on my site with comments about the book. Clicking on the cover image on [...]