They’re upgrading the backend for our catalog, right? And in the process, they’ve (accidentally, I hope) changed the style sheet and increased the font size majorly. Since the text blocks are placed on the page each relative to the one above, they thankgod don’t overlap but still, beginning with the second block, begin farther down on the screen than I’m accustomed to.

The interesting thing is, I find this almost unusable. At first I blamed the way-too-big text, which is a genuine problem, but working with a patron just now I realized that the real problem isn’t in my ability to recognize and decode the text but instead in my inability to locate the desired block of text on screen.

When I want a call number, my eyes zero in on the area where a call number would have been found before the upgrade monkeying. Instead of a call number, marked off by white space in an unlined table, there’s a jumble of letters making up part of the title/author line. Instead of recognizing this as a portion of the author/title and scanning down toward where the call number is now located, my brain instead thinks, “Wow, that call number is way munged!” And then I have to make the conscious effort to realize I’m not looking at a call number at all and begin a seek-and-find.

Funny things, brains.

So you know I’m addicted to Lost spoilers, right?

Most of this season I’d been really good at keeping myself relatively unspoiled. I would take the occasional peek, but I’d always back off before anything too very spoilerific burned into my brain.

Since the creative team behind the show have been really good about keeping the finale shockers under wraps in the past, I reckoned it would be safe enough to dive into my favorite spoiler forum over the weekend. Anything revealed there concerning the finale, I reasoned, would be a relatively minor teaser, something to whet the appetite and up the excitement without ruining the “snake in the mailbox” that has been promised.

Well. I’ll just say that it’s very possible there has been a major leak. Fingers crossed that it’s a fake spoiler (a “foiler” in forum parlance).

If it turns out to be legit, I’m really, really disappointed. I’m not disappointed because of what will be revealed, but I’m let down because–if what I’ve read is reliable–the “snake in the mailbox” would have been a really truly-fucking-awesomely amazing reveal that I almost certainly would not have seen coming.

But now I’m spoiled. Not spoiled like a lucky child, spoiled like chunky milk. Grr.

Spoilers for the most recent episode.

(more…)

So I’m sitting here at Panera, waiting for my Crispani (because “pizza” is entirely too common a word for “cheese and sauce baked on a crust”) and these three undergrads, two girls and a guy, walk in dressed in clothes awfully like those popular when I was a freshman. Specifically, they’re done up in togs reminiscent of the phase the Hippy Revival was moving through around 1993–less Earth Mother, more Cross-Country Biker.

Ye gods, I hope there’s not a 90s revival underway. Not because I am displeased by the decade’s aesthetic, really, but more because the not-quite-the-same stuff on such young kids looks wrong and makes me feel weird. And old.

He was still breathing, I think, when we pulled back and went to the black LOST screen. Maybe Jacob will help him after all.

After the (putting it mildly) letdown of the whole “Evolution of the Daleks” thing I was worried about the new Doctor Who. Then “The Lazurus Experiment”…well, I wouldn’t say it was a return to form, but it was well done and enjoyable enough that I forgot entirely about the bad taste the Human-Daleks had left.

And then the preview for the next episode…

with Cap’n Jack…

and a killer scarecrow…

and the whole Saxon thing no doubt heating up…

well, it’s gonna be a long two weeks.