Since I heard about the Ambient Orbs (jealous of you, EJ,) I’ve been trying to figure out different ways to take everyday information and put it into discrete or abstract, digital or analog displays. I think that finding new ways of mapping/associating/displaying potentially disjoint information will be a part of my graduate studies/research.

In the meantime, I ran across this and was very impressed. Making Visible the Invisible display at the Seattle Public Library. I want to do something similar to that, at Siebel Center, on its display wall, with IT information from the department or campus.

Friday night, before the start of a quick and fleeting (aren’t they all?) football weekend, I went to a GSLIS social event. This is significant … I’m basically doing grad school by myself. I don’t have any associations with people in the field or school, and introducing myself carte blanche to stangers isn’t one of my strong points. But, I went to a bar outside of my social circles, and met a bunch of other people there for happy hour.

Turned out to be a really great experience. I had a long discussion with one of the IS/interfaces professors, whom I know I’ll enteract with later academically, and probably professionally. I was impressed by him; out at a happy hour with students, and interested in listening to my ideas about technology and my impressions of LIS so far, and things us as CS/LIS people are doing right and wrong. I learned a few things, and hope I left a good impression on him. Part of it might have been drunken rambling (on my part most likely, maybe on his part — I don’t know him well enough to say.)

It’s tough completely reacclimating to student life, because IS is something I work in and study/experience every day. Yes, these are my professors and upper-classmen, but they’re also my colleagues. They have knowledge I don’t have, at least with terminology and history of the LIS field, but I have practical hands on experience with technology and the application of some of these pieces. I think that puts me in a unique, or at least rarer position than some of my other classmates. I worry that sometimes I presume too much of myself, and should take a humbler student approach.

And then Jeffe posts about inflated self-assessments and that’s been a strike to my self confidence. The post is funny to me because I took his class (for non UIUC-CS majors, that’s the CS theory class that is both the scariest and coolest thing you’ve ever seen. It is the class that fries your brain. It is the class whose topics or textbook you tout to non-CS people to revel in their horrified stares. It is the class that forces you to think outside normal considerations, and somehow logically argue how you got there and why it’s valid. It is the class that showed me if I can solve minesweeper (the demo game that comes with Windows,) in a logical way, I will have solved all of the impossible problems of the universe. They will all fold into one, and be answered, and the universe will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. Again. (With apologies to Douglas Adams.) Anyhow, “I don’t know.” I used that in his class.

The paper/pancakes blog post was a good, timely reminder that while I need to be critical and analytical and bring my wits to class with me, I need to be very open and understanding, and not overstep myself. If I err that way, it’s not because I’m arrogant or trying to show off, it’s that learning changes you. I feel my opinions on the readings and topics as they’re introduced to me bring a fresh perspective that maybe the teachers have long forgotten, and that I someday will forget, unless I get it out and talk about it now. I say stupid things because I want to be argued against. I think I know something about the topics, because in some ways I do, even if what I don’t realize yet is that bit of knowledge barely fills a thimble floating in the ocean.

I just hope I can do all that without making an ass of myself, both in class and socially.

Okay, last blog entry for the night, because I’m sure everyone is tired of reading (although if you read this direct from the webpage, it will show up first as you read them reverse-chronologically.) I wanted to talk a bit about my impressions of GSLIS and my first week as a student.

The orientation was pretty good, although I was a little conscious going into it of it being 6 hours long. What could take that long?? It only really went from 9-12, and then had a social hour. The orientation was an introduction to the program, the staff, the school, the university. The “tech staff” came and showed us the intra-net tools available used for classes. (Tech people being swarmy at 9 in the morning? I was impressed. It was funny — they all had their insulated mugs of coffee with them. I understand!)

After the break, the Dean talked and introduced a faculty member, which in turn each introduced the next one. It was neat to hear about their research, and see their personalities as they introduced someone else (neater than them talking about themselves.) Then the RSOs had representatives that talked, and then we broke for pizza and socializing, mostly to meet the RSOs — like a mini-quad day. My impressions?

I was glad that my knowledge of the CU area and bathrooms in the Union could be of service to people new to the area. It’s important to know the Ruebens has moved.

Librarians have a stranger terminology and love for acronyms than computer scientists do (and that’s saying something.) Confused and want to look up a library term? Look no further than the ODLIS.

There’s a lot more handholding in LIS than engineering. So many people care and want to see you succeed; they talk slow and don’t try to overwhelm you with material. I’m sure at some point I will be overwhelmed, but for now I’m really impressed with how personable everyone is (if anything, I wish they’d speed it up, but I understand they’re meeting a common denominator, which right now doesn’t include me.) It doesn’t matter if they’re explaining a course, or research, or how to check the web boards, or anything… This is a really nice group of people, besides doing a bunch of things I don’t fully understand but want to.

I went to training this week for their computer lab, which classifies me as “labstaff” and gives me 24×7 access to the LIS building and LRL lab. Boo for using their own Windows domain instead of using the campus AD, but yay for having a license for FinePrint on each machine and a printer with pre-three-hole-punched paper and a big printing quota. I took a tour of the LIS library in the main library, and even went down into the stacks for the first time!

I didn’t realize that academic librarians are faculty AP positions. I figured librarians fit somewhere in the civil service ranks. No, they can get tenure and have to write grants/bring in money like the rest of the faculty.

After the orientation, training, tour, and interacting with a few of the staff, I am really confident I’m in a good program, and in something that will be interesting and entertaining to me and that I can provide some good back into that community. That’s a pretty rare, special thing to say, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

Class? Class this week was weak, as it was mainly reciting the website and making people know about the resources available. This is going to be one of those “read these 8 papers for next week, and we’ll talk about them” classes, so without the pre-reading (which you wouldn’t have known about, unless you knew where to look online for the syllabus,) there wasn’t much “new” to talk about. I should have known better than to get a big mug of hot coffee, then walk across campus in pants/briefcase in the heat and humidity while sipping hot coffee, and then sitting down in a warmer-than-it-probably-should-have-been lecture hall. I was a little uncomfortable, and the chugging coffee on an empty stomach was making my heat race (the coffee shop in Siebel Center has some good stuff.) The final piece was a hot laptop in my lap, which I opted out of on the first lecture because there wasn’t really teaching. I _was_ very annoyed that I didn’t bring any good pens to my first class. That’s when I vowed to do everything on the tablet anyway, and for good measure, I stuck three pens in the briefcase just in case.

After class, or rather between them since the lecture was short, I walked down to the Center for Children’s Books in the basement of the LIS building. I hope that I can take the storytelling classes, or at least sit in on some of their guild meetings.

Skimming the LIS website writing this post, I ran across the student demographics. I thought the ratio of females:males was better than 1.5:1, but that’s the full program not just the first year people (which looked closer to 6:1 by my guesstimate.) The LIS website is pretty good – I’d recommend checking it out if you have time.

I did 1/3rd of my weekly reading this afternoon, and I have a 500ish word paper to write in response to all of the reading before Friday. This first unit in the class is history of librarianship and understanding information and relationships between it. My lab section was taught by one of the professors, and she seems pretty good. The room in LIS was pretty terrible, but I understand we won’t be using that one anymore.

Next week, I prove my prowess at being a crafty student by attending as many RSO events as possible for the free food. And the interest in the organization and profession, of course. I have to be careful not to overcommit myself, but I figure I can go to informational meetings. (I’m not going to limit myself just to the LIS groups. I’m considering the CS related groups too.)

A few months ago, after being accepted to grad school, I started looking for blogs and websites about students and technology/educational technology. I know a lot has changed with online resources for students since I was an undergrad. I was curious if the way students learned/did homework/took notes/etc had changed as much in parallel.

That search kept leading me across two major devices. Completely disjoint websites that I found through different avenues would advertise one or the other, and sometimes both.

So, being ready for change (knowing that a lot of it was about to happen in my life,) and having a few weeks before classes started, I found ways to implement them.

The first isn’t really a technology, it’s a methodology. It’s a personal productivity/organizational method called “Gettings Things Done” by David Allen.

Some of you reading are fresh out of college, and some are fresh into new areas of your life… One of the most important things my boss Chuck imparted to me when I started my first non-student job is that you need to learn an organizational system. The first time you work outside of someone else’s schedule (like a class schedule, etc.) you usually bottom out because you’re not used to that much personal responsibility.

I started at work with the Eagle planner, and took some seminars on that and the Steven-Covey planner/Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, so I’ve been trained in a few systems, and use pieces from them in my life. However, I knew my system wasn’t complete and I was missing things. Plus, very soon I would have to balance class and work, as well as home/personal stuff — and do that on a tight budget, meaning more planning for shopping and meals. I needed something better, and everyone was raving about how great the GTD system is. So, I grabbed the book from the library and started reading.

You know I already make lists, and am very action oriented. Sure, a “plan” is good, but things I can do and check off are great. The GTD system gives you a system to write things down/store them and organize them in a way that they’re easily available and yet not taking up space in your noggin. GTD says get everything out of your head, and then organize it. Use an inbox. Process. File. Review.

It’s amazingly effective. It gives you that peace of mind you have when you leave work right before you go on vacation, when you know everything is managed and taken care of — combined with the age old trick of putting something next to your keys when you have to remember it the next morning. It’s out of your head, so you can focus on what’s next at hand without having to struggle to remember what you’re forgetting, combined with a trusted system you can easily access and get that information back when you’re ready to use it.

Sound simple? It is. This isn’t rocket science, and we’re all probably doing some of it. GTD just gives a framework to be more effective. (Beth is probably rolling her eyes at this point in the post, because she’s heard about this system a ton. Sorry, Beth.)

Since I started a few weeks ago, I have all my filing in order. I have set action lists and project lists for home, school and work. I have physical inboxes at home and work that I work in and out of. I have a ‘tickler’ file to store things I’ll need in the future. I have a label printer. I have one email in my inbox, which I should really file but I want to watch a lecture it’s reminding me about first.

The cool thing about GTD is that it’s technology agnostic. Like paper and manilla folders? Use them, one idea per page. Have a new Palm or Visor/Treo? Store them all there. Live and breathe in Outlook? Use those categories/sections. Use a combination of all of it (like I do.) In a future post, if people are interested, I’ll talk about what I’ve come up to implement GTD.

The book tells you to take 3-4 days and sort your entire life — I just don’t have the time to do that a week before the semester started. So, I’m going for incremental improvement. Each day, I file a little more, implement a new part/section of the plan into my life. I’m satisfied. Tonight, after I’m done blogging, I’m going to do the “weekly review.”

If you’re interested in finding a new workflow management plan for yourself, pick up the book or buy me a beer. I’d be happy to sell you on it. I’ve already hooked two people, and, hey, I was right about the TiVo, wasn’t I?

The second technology that the hip students are using these days is TabletPCs, but this post is long enough. I’ll talk about my new toy under a different heading.

I’ve been envious of Tony, who’s spent the week journaling his thoughts and processes through the start of his school year. This week has been probably the most unique of mine in recent years. So many thoughts have gone through my head, so many times I’ve wanted to post them … I’m still not sure how to glue them together. I will do a recap this weekend, when hopefully I find some time to decompress and empty the mental inbox.

In a two minute recap, I had my grad student orientation at the start of the week, and I just finished my first week of class (okay, only two classes, and both this morning.) I’ve taken tours, introduced myself to people, and am trying to use all the helpful resources made available to me to make every minute of grad school count.

I’m also living alone, for the second time in my life, but under extremely different, and yet strikingly similar situations. That’s been an interesting mind wrap too.

And work, good ol’ work, is still omnipresent, and still busy.

So, there it is. It’s hard not to recount and feel like I really am “the master of my own destiny.” (I tried for a bit to find a reference for that, but failed.) The actions I do, the way I let myself feel, how I react to my environment, is all a conscious decision made by me. (Well, this week it’s been conscious, but there have been so many changes. I think in a steady-state, those choices are autonomous. Maybe we even feel ensnared by them – trapped in our own habits, and lives we’ve defined for us.) Now, I’m more consciously aware of all of this, and it’s changing me (or maybe I’m changing me.)

I guess I’ll find out, and of course, I’ll share that with you. But for now, it’s lunch time.

Even though I believe a rich life involves a little bit of doing things and a little bit of reflecting on them (blogging about them,) I’ve been more of a do-er than a report-er. There are many things I want to share with you, so buckle up – this might be a long one.

At work, we have a rediculously expensive clock system that uses GPS and FM signals to automatically set and synchronize the analog wall clocks in the conference, class, and lab rooms in the building. The carpenters installed most of the clocks last week, and, you guessed it, they aren’t working right. Some of them think we’re on mountain time, others are happy in central. I think I figured out why (with the help of the company’s 800# free tech support,) but it could take a while for the changes to make their way out to the clocks. If they aren’t all right tomorrow, I’ll walk around and reset them manually…. Exactly the thing we spent a crazy amount of money to avoid doing.

The rest of work is going well. I’m still making progress on my network transition plans for the summer. We’re rapidly approaching the diving board – enough talk, enough planning, enough trying to envision every side-effect. Just make the big changes and deal with the splash when you hit the water. I’m contemplating setting up a work blog (instead of categories in this blog,) but I wonder if that’s worth it. Certainly there’s a benefit to journaling my work experiences and learning, but to what degree? I might have to find that out. I could blog about my troubles with perl and my home directory, or the clocks, or the problems you encounter when Windows SFU can put files in place that traditional Windows file APIs cannot touch.

I’ve been trying to read more blogs, and I’ve thrown a few podcasts on the iPod. I still think a good 70% of things on blogs isn’t original – just someone linking to something else with their own little notes. That’s all well and good, but I want things that are interesting and new to me. (What did Tony’s kids learn this week?) The same old rehash, even worse when it’s audibly narrated to me, is annoying. Other than streaming new, unheard of music, or talk shows I’m actually interested in, I don’t see podcasting as being a big thing for me.

My LIS accounts are getting activated, and I’m able to browse their online webboard and resources. I’ve gotten 2-3 IT announcements from them in the week or so. I wonder if the LIS community has a different appreciation for IT than the CS community? I guess we’ll find out.

I was at home this weekend for the fourth, and we kept busy. Aaron and I went to Fair St. Louis on Saturday morning for the parade, food/beer, and airshow. Unfortunately, this airshow was all aerobatics and no military, so I didn’t get to see the big aircraft, or the perennial favorite Harrier. I also didn’t get a gyro or allegator, but I did enjoy corndogs with painted on mustard, ice cold Budweiser, fresh fried potato chips, a steak sandwich and a deep fried Oreo, which I guess is close enough.

On Sunday, Mom, bro and I drove down to the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Mom had found an australian shepherd rescue on petfinder.com that she wanted to see, so we loaded into the Maxima (now with iTrip!) and met Lori, who became the next member of our family. She’s seven years old, and is as sharp as a tack and sweet as sugar cane. She’s a little flighty, as I would expect any transplanted dog in a new home to be, but she handled the car ride and rest of the weekend just fine, even with thunderstorms and fireworks! She has some new rules to learn, and we have some old habits of hers to break, but I think it’ll work out.

I don’t regret Lori, but adding a new pet 7 weeks after Winston left us sure pokes at a still sore wound. I think Aaron, Mom and I, each on our own terms, came to the realization this isn’t Winston – as much as we wanted her to be. None of us are fond of the Lori name, and it was all too easy (and bittersweet) to slip in a Winston…and then catch yourself, and maybe cry a little. Winston’s things came back down from the attic, unwrapped with the intention of being for Lori … and after being hugged, smelled, caressed and tear-stained, were quickly put back in their storage and will be put away again.

It’s not Lori’s fault; it’s cancer’s fault. If our Winney wasn’t taken by cancer, and Lori’s previous owner hadn’t been taken by cancer, our lives would be different. We’re all hurting, and we’ll all heal. Lori is fun and smart and beatiful. Once she lets us in, and we let her in, I’m sure we’ll find peace in the happiness we get from each other. Until then, it’s going to take some growth, and that’s not always easy, even when you want/need to do it. As I was packing up my car to leave, it was nice to glance back at the front door and see a dog staring at me through the storm window again. Sure, I’m a little sad it’s not Winston, but it’s hard not to smile at bright brown eyes and a wiggling dock, you know? Pictures will be on flickr later.

I left home at sundown on Monday, and drove by at least 7 firework shows by towns near I-70.

GSLIS is developing a new website/design, and they have a new beta of their site available. This blog post is a mental post-it for me to go back and look at it. The URL isn’t exactly memorable. (It also lets me file the email announcing it out of my inbox.)

More students choose Illinois, producing largest incoming class

With a dramatic jump over last year in the percentage of those accepting admission, the UI is expecting its largest incoming freshman class ever, according to Keith Marshall, the associate provost who oversees admissions.

Due respect to the good people at the New Bureau and the admissions office, but I think I’ve heard the term “largest incoming class ever” about 6 times since I’ve started paying attention to UofI. There’s always more people accepting than you think, even when you accept fewer people. There are always fewer dorm room spots available, and move-in always sucks — it doesn’t matter if you have 4000 or 7000 incoming students.

I’ll have to ask Professor Kamin about CS’s admissions this fall. I know we’ve been cutting back on students and adding faculty to try to get the ratio down. I wonder if we’ve lightened up the restrictions and let more students in. It would be great to see more women and minorities in Computer Science.

I used to play on a MUD with a guy named Rychosis. He mailed me in 1998 and asked me about UIUC, and came to campus for a tour. I remember showing him my crappy dorm room and being so proud of it, for what it was. Well, he came to Illinois (despite my tour!) and got more degrees than I did – include a masters in GSLIS. So, I had lunch with him last week and here are my notes from our conversation. It was good to see him again, and it’s always interesting to hear what people liked and didn’t like about their school experience. My notes:

Brian Heidorn – his digital library and info system classes are good.

Core classes are mostly reading and exams. The rest of the classes have very few exams, but projects and papers.

He recommended Bruch Schatz, who I met before at a colloqium at Siebel Center.

Matt thought independent studies are cool and recommended I try it.

Matt liked Twidel’s user interface class, but he recommended I take the more advanced one. He took it after Heidorn’s class and said the ‘big picture’ to individual user jump in perspective is cool. (I remember thinking that taking CS225 and CS231 at the same time.)

He advised to beware of online information system classes. They’re mainly about using info systems, not designing/implementing them.

He recommend Schilling history of info distribution as a cool class that explores the social aspects of technology.

While looking for a book online on tips and tricks to getting the most from ipod/itunes, I found out Champaign is getting a new library. And, apparently, my sales and telecommunication taxes are going up to pay for it. Which, I presume, means I voted for it (and I probably would have,) but I don’t recall doing that. So, whoa, new library. It’s a good thing – I’m always surprised when I go in the main CPL how small it is. They’re going the Busch stadium route of building it right next to the existing one, and then imploding the old one. Look for construction to start soon and end in 2007.

And you thought this post was going to be about basketball, didn’t you?