internets! I have missed yoooouuuuu!

Notes

My parents have been here for the past two weeks, and then my internet connection spent a couple of days being pissy, and then I had other shit to do. But I'm back!

Parents

It was a good visit! We did many fun things, such as go to museums (Museum of Science with Ellie's kinda-sorta-girlfriend-I-think,* two three year olds, and the dad of the of the other three year old! MFA, wherein I learned exactly how intensely my dad does museums), elbow our way through the North End (I have been to concerts that were less crowded than those sidewalks, sheesh, also who the fuck drives in the North End are you fucking kidding me), etc.

* Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with that relationship thing, so I do not have a single-word term for it. It is very functional and they seem happy! It's also kind of hilarious (but possibly only to me, because of the sheer amount of TMI I have on Ellie's life and personal identity).

Thanks to a trip to Ikea and two carloads off to Goodwill, my room is in pretty good order! This is kind of miraculous. I still have too much stuff, but A) some kind of shift has occurred that unblocked my ability to get rid of things I don't need and B) I have improved my storage capabilities.

An important note: if you are planning to rearrange some furniture, and are drawing something out on paper, make sure your measurements are correct. We were off by two feet.

Grad School

I am not sure why advising needed to be an all-day process, but it was. There was assorted fuckery related to my being listed with the wrong concentration and assigned to the wrong advisor, but I did have the proper advising experience I was supposed to. Then there was the unrelated fuckery of not enough seats in classes, the end results of which are that I'm taking core library classes in a slightly different but still completely reasonable order than I'd originally thought, and I am still waiting to hear which history class I've been placed in (they needed volunteers to take Methods some time other than first semester, and one of the alternatives was a women's and gender history course, so I volunteered, but we're being manually registered and I haven't received an email about it yet).

There were two really bright spots in my day: I think I met a friend of a former schoolmate (one year ahead of me, so we weren't really friends), and one of the professors pinged my "you are from the internet" radar. Also there was ice cream and I got to go to work for a little while afterwards.

Work

Boss is departing; she'll still be available to advise us but today was her last real workday. This makes me the second most senior employee in the archives. I am deeply unsettled by that.

I am processing a new collection... three new collections... six collections? There are three organizations who donated their records, so there will be three collections. There are six accessions right now, because sometimes they gave us stuff in multiple batches. Some stuff will need to be moved between accessions because it belongs to one of the other organizations. Sorting that out will be the easy part.

The third organization was created by the merger of the other two, which helps to explain the cross-pollination of materials and also makes it a little harder to deal with it. Furthermore, each of those orgs is the result of mergers and renamings of even older organizations, such that the final conglomerate can say it dates back to the 1800s. (The bulk of the collections is more modern, but there are items from the predecessor orgs and these are the oldest papers I have processed.) I am going to need a nice detailed organizational chart to make sure everything is housed where is belongs, is referenced where relevant, and is laid out sensibly and accurately in the finding aid. Fortunately for me, someone wrote a history of one of the orgs and all those materials are in the collection; a thank-you card to that person may be in order when I'm finally done.

(JP)

(That's supposed to represent those oval bumper stickers that usually have two-letter country abbreviations. Someone makes such a sticker for Jamaica Plain. I keep threatening to buy one for Ellie, to upgrade her Subaru wagon [Level One JP Vehicle] that now has a carseat for a small child [Level 2 JP Vehicle; can also qualify with one of those fences to keep your dog in the back] to a Level 3 JP Vehicle.)

Boomerangs has been holding a massive sale to empty the store ahead of planned renovations. I've paid them a visit every day since Tuesday; retail therapy works for me and thrift stores reduce the financial burden and potential for guilt. (I mostly look for things with violets on them. It's kind of a theme.) I also finally made it to one of our local botanicas, which I have been meaning to do for over three years (ever since we were apartment-hunting and I saw it out of the realtor's car window); unfortunately I think I kind of interrupted the owner's lunch. The botanica has a shop cat, whom I briefly petted when I walked in; I spent the rest of my time there being insistently headbutted in the ankles. Secretly I was delighted, because I almost always love cats more than they love me.

I also keep returning to City Feed for lunch. It is very pleasant to eat a ham and cheese sandwich and watch people walking by.

my thoughts on Google+

My profile is here. Yes, you can add me.

So far, I really like it? But really, I think xkcd nailed it - it's Facebook but not Facebook. (Although, alt text aside, I think I would have much better luck getting my mom to use Plus - she already uses and more or less understands Gmail.)

Other than that, IDK. It's a social networking site and I tend to prefer journaling. But it seems to allow for pretty meaty posts and comments, so yay for that. I can see myself actually using it (as opposed to Facebook, where I... read my boyfriend's status updates because I miss him).

I have four problems with Google+ so far, two of which will probably get resolved, one of which is not a major problem for me but is for other people, and one of which I really hope will get resolved but it might take a while.

1. No usernames, so the urls for profiles are long and unwieldy.


2. No Mac clients that I've found so far. Currently, I use a multi-service client; I am hoping that it adds Google+ support (so I don't need to download and learn a new app). My computer is just old enough that running multiple clients has a noticeable impact on performance; if a standalone Google+ client comes out before a multi-service client and I like that client enough and enough of my people begin using Google+ - I will more or less disappear from Twitter and Facebook.


3. Policy on pseudonyms. I'm pretty safe because my pseud could be someone's legal name (in fact, I spent most of my teenage years after selecting said pseud convinced I would change it in court one day). But this issue matters a lot to a lot of people for a lot of reasons, and if Google does crack down hard on pseudonymous accounts it will impact the shape of my social circle and the kinds of things people are sharing in a way that will bind Google+ to its "Facebook but not Facebook" status and prevent it from becoming anything better in my personal constellation of internet services - if that happens I'll probably just wander off and quit using it. They also force users to make their gender selection public.


4. Only open to @gmail.com-style Google accounts. Google Apps for Organizations doesn't have access to Profiles and therefore those accounts can't use Plus. I don't have a profile set up for my professional identity (I like to maintain some online presence under my legal name so that people looking for that aspect of me find something and aren't as motivated to digDIGdig) because that Google account can't use Plus. And, should my "real" account gain access to Plus, yay, but I will need to move everything over; I kind of doubt Google will set up some shiny "move your shit between accounts in two clicks" process.

In short, I like Plus and I'll keep playing with it even though my situation makes it way more annoying than it should be. If you'd like me to try and invite you, shoot an email to sofiaviolet@sofiaviolet.com (not the Google account you'll be invited by, but I'll get your email sooner!) or PM me on Dreamwidth and I will attempt to make it happen.