I have been working daily at the library since a week ago Friday, shifting around 30,000 books. Most are moving around 100 feet, and we have carts to carry them, but I still have to pick them up and put them down twice each. Often there is bending and stretching. The result is sore muscles. Every day I come home exhausted and have a beer or glass of wine, and a tall glass of water. You sweat like a pig while doing this work. I take a shower afterwards. Who knew that being a librarian means sweating like a pig and needing a shower afterwards?
I've discovered quite a few really interesting books as I shift around the non-fiction and oversized. There's some great ones on home building. If I were in county government with a too-small middle class, I would be lowering the fees for new building permits and setup a method to scale those fees to the house size so it is actually possible to move here for less than $500K. Lots of poor and middle class retirees should be able to live in a small house, if such houses had a financial reason to exist. Too many of those built here are 3-5 bedroom mansions for very large sums of money. Most of them have 3 car garages. Up here that's actually a good idea, but the local tiny houses only really need a 1-2 car garage.
The books in the oversize area contain building plans completely appropriate to the area, including some really nice Victorians. We really need more of those here. The Modernist ones mostly suck, and in time they look stupidly crass, which drags down their value, whereas Craftsman Bungalows hold their looks and value and as we become a post-car culture they will become much more obvious living in the long-term. Particularly since it seems that a thermite battery isn't going to happen. A pity. Lithium polymer is better than nothing, but only just. For the cost, a Scooter is better, and requires less maintenance.
We really need that sort of thing. I have found that adapting to poverty is mostly a matter of resignation, that reality rejects white males until something needs doing, and then we matter until that thing is done, at which point we're told to die again. Small wonder the dream of white males is to go to places with no other people, build our own stuff and deny entrance to the hateful sexist and racist buggers that want to steal it from us. I'd rather burn it down than give it to them. And the haters insist they deserve it because "You didn't build that".
Someday, with sufficient knowledge and the right voice for each character, I will be able to do a good job writing a novel for the California we deserve, one with buildings like in Italy, with hurricanes and rainstorms and heavy tile roofs, and narrow streets because we will become pedestrians again, walking to the train station or bus stop, no longer pretending to be relevant in a car culture that has died. My own car is dying and will stop running soon enough. This is sad, and expensive, since all this work I'm doing won't pay for repairs. Soon I'll be bicycling to this volunteer job, and won't that be a hassle in the afternoon heat? Sigh.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Community College vs Public Libraries
Public Libraries are very popular with the public, but they are commonly underfunded and the jobs are aggressively fought over, mostly by women, some of whom are the sort who do not like men at all and are allowed to be militant with their beliefs without fear of termination. This sort of problem is not one I can solve. This is unfortunate, but its how things are. Childrens libraries are usually run by mothers with young children, which is fine. Teenagers would be better served by people like me, but the people who hire librarians would never believe the revolutionary idea of talking to teenagers like adults rather than condescending at them like children. So people like me are never hired to run YA libraries and teenagers avoid them. The good news there is teenagers still like scifi, at least the male ones do, and female teenagers get recruited into militant lesbianism after plentiful exposure to self destructive victimization porn, aka Vampire Bodice Rippers (Meyer and Carriger) which are the majority of female teen books today. I wish that weren't the case, but the exception are mutant rebel murder porn like Divergent and Mockingjay. As expected, teen boys hate that crap. As a proto-librarian in training I've TRIED to read the girl stuff just to understand it, and I don't get how this qualifies as okay for teen viewing. Its murder porn. Its the worst of humanity, and its brainwashing teenagers into victimhood. They would probably read it anyway, however. Teenage girls are all about self-harm, after all. This is why they grow up to be neurotic cat ladies surrounded by pee and rotting newspapers.
I'm really good at helping the elderly, but libraries do not hire for that, even though they should. Should is one of those words that's a long way from reality. So unless I discover a county library that is run by sane people instead of the usual militant feminists and communists and mothers of young children (thankfully the majority of the staff), I am looking at some real challenges in getting hired due to being male rather than the other gender and its pretenders and outliers that go into the wrong restroom. Librarianship is interesting in that it is a bastion of sexism and discrimination against white males. This is odd because many books aren't inherently gendered, though Romance novels certainly are.
I already know that one should NEVER volunteer at a college, because once you do, you can't be hired there. Volunteering at my county's public library has guaranteed I won't be hired there either. I do more work than the paid librarians do, and their snide remarks about my work being too efficient seems to be feeding politics I want nothing to do with. A pity, but at least I know this is not the place to seek a job anymore. Same with Placer County, which is even worse. Places that purport to believe in literacy are the last to pay for it.
So I'm looking at other places with libraries. Most will require me to move elsewhere, being too far away. I know that Chico State is a proper college, but they offer a library science MLIS program and have a huge university library. It is a tempting backup to the San Jose State program, and probably worth more in the job market than SJSU's sheepskin. There's proper job experience. I suspect I'd gain something working the local college library, only the local college library is run by a college that's at least halfway crooked. So I'd gain additional reasons to dislike their communists, always sheltered in colleges, and that's exactly how evil persists. It has a place to go that's safe. The Sacramento Valley largely comments on the communism in Chico, and the money flowing into the community there is significant compared to the general poverty of everywhere else. If I went to that school I'd get a lot of work experience in a university setting at their library, which would be useful. Might even pay for housing. More expensive than here. But a lot more options.
If I get some volunteer time at the local college library, that could lead to paid work at a different college library down the road. I notice that rural towns sometimes have a community college, for all the high school graduates that want to leave town and have a better life than wage slavery or child rearing and drug addiction. Rural community colleges are very focussed on achievement towards escape from poverty. Someone as goal oriented as me might be a welcome employee at the college in Redding, for example, though that town is accused of having real violent crime problems.
Finding all the opinion pieces masquerading as "scholarly" with traces of statistical citations are rather common. Finding truth among all the chaff is the hard part. Perhaps students will want that? Or is pointing out all the conflicting statements contrary to the communists? Will they fire me, or do they get knifed by the local lumberjacks who hate communists more than I do? Considering that Jefferson State is proudly anti-communist, if they actually break away from California I'm exactly the sort they want. My interest in non-fiction maintenance manuals and cookbooks is probably a big plus, since those are all about making your money worth more by lasting longer. Jefferson is likely to remove all the self destructive stupidity of the vicious communists in Sacramento and allow all sorts of public experiments with private funds, rather than private experiments with public funds. So experimental cars instead of collegiate hooker training. And CNC and machining would make good sense there compared to art galleries and advanced communism. Diesel mechanics, not golf carts.
Finding a library that will hire a white male conservative atheist is my goal. People like me have to be valuable somewhere. The entire country can't all be communists and cultists, can it?
I'm really good at helping the elderly, but libraries do not hire for that, even though they should. Should is one of those words that's a long way from reality. So unless I discover a county library that is run by sane people instead of the usual militant feminists and communists and mothers of young children (thankfully the majority of the staff), I am looking at some real challenges in getting hired due to being male rather than the other gender and its pretenders and outliers that go into the wrong restroom. Librarianship is interesting in that it is a bastion of sexism and discrimination against white males. This is odd because many books aren't inherently gendered, though Romance novels certainly are.
I already know that one should NEVER volunteer at a college, because once you do, you can't be hired there. Volunteering at my county's public library has guaranteed I won't be hired there either. I do more work than the paid librarians do, and their snide remarks about my work being too efficient seems to be feeding politics I want nothing to do with. A pity, but at least I know this is not the place to seek a job anymore. Same with Placer County, which is even worse. Places that purport to believe in literacy are the last to pay for it.
So I'm looking at other places with libraries. Most will require me to move elsewhere, being too far away. I know that Chico State is a proper college, but they offer a library science MLIS program and have a huge university library. It is a tempting backup to the San Jose State program, and probably worth more in the job market than SJSU's sheepskin. There's proper job experience. I suspect I'd gain something working the local college library, only the local college library is run by a college that's at least halfway crooked. So I'd gain additional reasons to dislike their communists, always sheltered in colleges, and that's exactly how evil persists. It has a place to go that's safe. The Sacramento Valley largely comments on the communism in Chico, and the money flowing into the community there is significant compared to the general poverty of everywhere else. If I went to that school I'd get a lot of work experience in a university setting at their library, which would be useful. Might even pay for housing. More expensive than here. But a lot more options.
If I get some volunteer time at the local college library, that could lead to paid work at a different college library down the road. I notice that rural towns sometimes have a community college, for all the high school graduates that want to leave town and have a better life than wage slavery or child rearing and drug addiction. Rural community colleges are very focussed on achievement towards escape from poverty. Someone as goal oriented as me might be a welcome employee at the college in Redding, for example, though that town is accused of having real violent crime problems.
Finding all the opinion pieces masquerading as "scholarly" with traces of statistical citations are rather common. Finding truth among all the chaff is the hard part. Perhaps students will want that? Or is pointing out all the conflicting statements contrary to the communists? Will they fire me, or do they get knifed by the local lumberjacks who hate communists more than I do? Considering that Jefferson State is proudly anti-communist, if they actually break away from California I'm exactly the sort they want. My interest in non-fiction maintenance manuals and cookbooks is probably a big plus, since those are all about making your money worth more by lasting longer. Jefferson is likely to remove all the self destructive stupidity of the vicious communists in Sacramento and allow all sorts of public experiments with private funds, rather than private experiments with public funds. So experimental cars instead of collegiate hooker training. And CNC and machining would make good sense there compared to art galleries and advanced communism. Diesel mechanics, not golf carts.
Finding a library that will hire a white male conservative atheist is my goal. People like me have to be valuable somewhere. The entire country can't all be communists and cultists, can it?
Gender Biased Workplace
Libraries are supposed to serve all patrons who walk in the doors. The ones who roll in the doors too, on wheelchairs. We are supposed to provide them books to read. Help everybody find education or entertainment. I volunteer at a library that has spent most of a decade with budget cuts, despite serving a relatively rich area with $500K houses being average for retirement. Rich retired people expect good government services.
The library, to the patron, works. They don't mind all the books unshelved. They don't mind the long delays from reporting a scratched movie to its getting back on the shelf. These are rich people, for the most part. They will order it on Netflix, no big deal. Netflix will send it to them. Overdrive does the same with books. For the cost of overpriced librarians with menopause and paranoia issues, striking out at their coworkers with neurotic random accusations, you can fund an enormous amount of ebook and audiobook download content. For the cost of dealing with a person, you can afford to replace them with 24/7 services that don't wear out, don't require a person to handle or check in materials or inspect or leave weird useless codes they came up with, psychotically without telling anyone.
Yesterday I spent two hours polishing DVDs because the audiobooks I'd like to clear back onto the shelves had 12-19 discs and the same librarian just wrote "polish" on them, not which disc needed it. And its usually one of those dozen plus that needs polishing. So there's audiobooks on that shelf now for nearly two months because the DVDs have a higher payback. The DVDs get borrowed. The audiobooks are less frequent. And once an audiobook gets scratched, they will skip forever. Polishing sometimes works, or reduces the skip duration, but it isn't removed entirely. This is a reason I think all new audiobooks should be recorded, but this isn't my library to run, and archival standards I think are rational aren't happening here.
Last week I learned that the library where I work was using funds to put brand new books into a robot in North San Juan. The robot will take their library cards and drop a book in their hands, and return the book too. Sounds neat right? In North San Juan, everybody is growing dope, and few of them shower more than once a year. Those brand new books are going to get smudged and saturated with dope smoke and worse and will be ruined. Thousands of dollars of books are going into this machine, in a place where paying a local to run room-sized library makes more sense, even with limited hours. They don't have a school. San Juan has a bar, and their market is called Mother Truckers, and its on the dirt road out of town, on the Ridge where the growers are. NSJ is all about comfort zones, and crazy. They have shootings there, and home invasions by jilted Trimmers seeking revenge after an unpaid summer of work, and the results are often deadly and don't get back to the sheriff. Somebody gets shot. Somebody gets buried. That's the kind of place The Ridge is. And they're not going to take well to a robot kiosk.
I know that the county library is a girls club. I know that half the women working there are menopausal, and many of them need retirement. I know that the few men working there are volunteers, like me, and the ONE man paid by the county as a librarian has had his life threatened at the nasty library in Grass Valley, and there are no apologies coming from the head librarian or the police depart that didn't show up for two hours, despite being two literal blocks away. I'd like to say this indicates the library is broken, these mistakes and spending problems... but for patrons it works fine. For patrons this is a good library. As a patron it has excellent books and a good selection to read. It doesn't matter about its management choices or destructive willingness to participate in only partly funded expenditures that divide their time and reduce their job satisfaction, making them lash out against coworkers. The library is fit to be tied, under the surface, but the patrons only see that it has nice books.
So it works and nobody knows it is broken. And they might even get money for hiring employees someday, but I expect that patrons will turn that down. After all, it works. As far as patrons care, it works. For my own sanity I'm there once a week and not getting much appreciation. Unhappy people complain, and you can't have a conversation because they're extremist Liberals despite most donations coming from Conservatives, which is NOT what you'd expect. I think there's a future for a conservative MALE librarian, which is why I continue my education, but I don't think there's a future in this county's library. A single token MALE employee and over 50 paid females? Duh. Of course that's gender bias. It is painfully obvious bias. Radical lesbians and man haters think they can do whatever they want, and with the married librarians unwilling to say anything, you have a hostile work environment. I will never work there because I can see its a hostile work environment and its mismanaged, with unfinished projects everywhere. With contrary and illogical policies meant to attack volunteers and ridiculous bias enforcing attacks on those who do the work by those who don't? Sorry, that just isn't a future I want any part of. This is a shame. I don't think the Friends of the Library want things this way, but that's how it is. This is another example of a no-baby-dirty-bathwater situation. Throw it out? Well, the patrons wouldn't understand there's a problem, and you'd have to build back a working model after tossing out the trash. Sigh. Too much effort. Start over elsewhere.
The library, to the patron, works. They don't mind all the books unshelved. They don't mind the long delays from reporting a scratched movie to its getting back on the shelf. These are rich people, for the most part. They will order it on Netflix, no big deal. Netflix will send it to them. Overdrive does the same with books. For the cost of overpriced librarians with menopause and paranoia issues, striking out at their coworkers with neurotic random accusations, you can fund an enormous amount of ebook and audiobook download content. For the cost of dealing with a person, you can afford to replace them with 24/7 services that don't wear out, don't require a person to handle or check in materials or inspect or leave weird useless codes they came up with, psychotically without telling anyone.
Yesterday I spent two hours polishing DVDs because the audiobooks I'd like to clear back onto the shelves had 12-19 discs and the same librarian just wrote "polish" on them, not which disc needed it. And its usually one of those dozen plus that needs polishing. So there's audiobooks on that shelf now for nearly two months because the DVDs have a higher payback. The DVDs get borrowed. The audiobooks are less frequent. And once an audiobook gets scratched, they will skip forever. Polishing sometimes works, or reduces the skip duration, but it isn't removed entirely. This is a reason I think all new audiobooks should be recorded, but this isn't my library to run, and archival standards I think are rational aren't happening here.
Last week I learned that the library where I work was using funds to put brand new books into a robot in North San Juan. The robot will take their library cards and drop a book in their hands, and return the book too. Sounds neat right? In North San Juan, everybody is growing dope, and few of them shower more than once a year. Those brand new books are going to get smudged and saturated with dope smoke and worse and will be ruined. Thousands of dollars of books are going into this machine, in a place where paying a local to run room-sized library makes more sense, even with limited hours. They don't have a school. San Juan has a bar, and their market is called Mother Truckers, and its on the dirt road out of town, on the Ridge where the growers are. NSJ is all about comfort zones, and crazy. They have shootings there, and home invasions by jilted Trimmers seeking revenge after an unpaid summer of work, and the results are often deadly and don't get back to the sheriff. Somebody gets shot. Somebody gets buried. That's the kind of place The Ridge is. And they're not going to take well to a robot kiosk.
I know that the county library is a girls club. I know that half the women working there are menopausal, and many of them need retirement. I know that the few men working there are volunteers, like me, and the ONE man paid by the county as a librarian has had his life threatened at the nasty library in Grass Valley, and there are no apologies coming from the head librarian or the police depart that didn't show up for two hours, despite being two literal blocks away. I'd like to say this indicates the library is broken, these mistakes and spending problems... but for patrons it works fine. For patrons this is a good library. As a patron it has excellent books and a good selection to read. It doesn't matter about its management choices or destructive willingness to participate in only partly funded expenditures that divide their time and reduce their job satisfaction, making them lash out against coworkers. The library is fit to be tied, under the surface, but the patrons only see that it has nice books.
So it works and nobody knows it is broken. And they might even get money for hiring employees someday, but I expect that patrons will turn that down. After all, it works. As far as patrons care, it works. For my own sanity I'm there once a week and not getting much appreciation. Unhappy people complain, and you can't have a conversation because they're extremist Liberals despite most donations coming from Conservatives, which is NOT what you'd expect. I think there's a future for a conservative MALE librarian, which is why I continue my education, but I don't think there's a future in this county's library. A single token MALE employee and over 50 paid females? Duh. Of course that's gender bias. It is painfully obvious bias. Radical lesbians and man haters think they can do whatever they want, and with the married librarians unwilling to say anything, you have a hostile work environment. I will never work there because I can see its a hostile work environment and its mismanaged, with unfinished projects everywhere. With contrary and illogical policies meant to attack volunteers and ridiculous bias enforcing attacks on those who do the work by those who don't? Sorry, that just isn't a future I want any part of. This is a shame. I don't think the Friends of the Library want things this way, but that's how it is. This is another example of a no-baby-dirty-bathwater situation. Throw it out? Well, the patrons wouldn't understand there's a problem, and you'd have to build back a working model after tossing out the trash. Sigh. Too much effort. Start over elsewhere.
Wednesday, April 1, 2015
Courses
My coursework in Library Technology continue. I read papers, textbooks, articles, use online tools for research or cataloging (which is much preferable to trying to do it manually), and I write papers and do projects and turn things in for grading. There's even quizzes and midterms. And this is for credit, at a properly accredited school. This is important because my investment needs to be paid off in a job at some point. Even people I dislike politically and socially still deserve the right to read. And maybe by reading, they'll learn something important, maybe even change their mind. That isn't silly, since the sharpest capitalists are the converted hippy pot growers. They invest their time and money, and they sell for a profit. So much for hippy love. Sweating on a hillside all summer really strips away your BS, and A/C isn't free. These are the people I serve at the library, and its pretty amazing. I have shelved, several times, books on building underground eco-bunkers, which are bunkers loaded with carcinogenic chemicals and mold spores that will ruin your lungs and kill you, often in soil that's saturated with mercury and arsenic, both of which are poisonous and drive you insane. Which explains a great deal. Old pot smokers sometimes trigger their schizophrenia. I saw one of those at the market today. Communism fails when you have your own comfort and survival in one hand, and death along with the person you pretend to save in the other. Not very nice, and its a lesson you learn or die from it. That's just how things are. Up here you learn that lesson sooner than later. There are SO MANY object lessons to observe, after all.
Once I get through with this program, I'm applying for the Masters program and get started there. Hopefully I can start that next January. I will want to apply this summer, once I have the grades, and I'll be talking to the counselor at the University to verify this with an agreement for passing the courses for Summer and Fall semesters, which gets my GPA where it needs to be to qualify for the school. Lots of A's after all. I need them. With that degree, and my work experience as a volunteer, I should be able to work for a proper wage at a paying library that has a real budget. Or even a remote and very cheap living library in a place like Sierraville or Portola or Alta. Maybe even Ashland, at the university. Imagine getting paid real money to run a library in Oregon? That would be okay, I think. It would be a real change from what I'm used to, and maybe that would be good for me, as well. The internet Trolls are irritating, and they love to pick fights with conservatives and constitutionalists. They are easy targets, after all. However, what they are doing is the sort of childish crap you'd expect. Meh. I really wish I believed in the future of this country, but at this point I believe in regional strengths, and think we should all worry about those the most. Our region. Our nation is full of cancer, and its dying. Our region will live on when the nation is history.
Once I get through with this program, I'm applying for the Masters program and get started there. Hopefully I can start that next January. I will want to apply this summer, once I have the grades, and I'll be talking to the counselor at the University to verify this with an agreement for passing the courses for Summer and Fall semesters, which gets my GPA where it needs to be to qualify for the school. Lots of A's after all. I need them. With that degree, and my work experience as a volunteer, I should be able to work for a proper wage at a paying library that has a real budget. Or even a remote and very cheap living library in a place like Sierraville or Portola or Alta. Maybe even Ashland, at the university. Imagine getting paid real money to run a library in Oregon? That would be okay, I think. It would be a real change from what I'm used to, and maybe that would be good for me, as well. The internet Trolls are irritating, and they love to pick fights with conservatives and constitutionalists. They are easy targets, after all. However, what they are doing is the sort of childish crap you'd expect. Meh. I really wish I believed in the future of this country, but at this point I believe in regional strengths, and think we should all worry about those the most. Our region. Our nation is full of cancer, and its dying. Our region will live on when the nation is history.
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