The Totally Radical Thread for Crotchety Old Bitches

edited 28th Nov '10 9:05:26 PM by Charlatan

My sisters are librarians. The services that their libraries provide keeps becoming more important to their constituencies and the funding shrinking.

Some days I think that the thing to do is reduce the salaries of the the upper 5% of an organization first, then start looking at everything else.

@drunkscriblerian: But there aren't any drunk hippy girls on a deserted island !

oh but blackcat their jobs are so much more important and they deserve their pay in their contract over their dead bodies. Yeah our city has the problem on top of ADDING MORE FREAKING BRANCHES!. Our Library director lacks the ovarian fortitude to step on the corrupt city councils and mayors collective dicks/ovaries and make sure we have funding to A. Keep servicing a growing populace using the libraries and relying on them for both job searches, resumes, technical help, access to literature, and other basic similar services.

They even went so far to take Pages, Computer Pages, and one other job I have long since forgotten and glommed them all together for the same shitty pay rate. (Saw it coming and got the fuck out of there) Yeah I still laugh because they haven't replaced me yet. The new job is something like Library Service Assistants who are expected to help work the clerk desk, cash register, shelve books, provide comprehensive technical help at the user level for both staff and patrons, and any number of tasks the branch managers care to have them do. None of the managers or upper echelon rank and file of the libraries have taken pay freezes or cuts like those below them.

It was bad enough that Mike Fayhe damn near killed the Omaha Public libraries. They literally run on skeleton crews and increasingly less.

@Kino: Yeah, true..but the island I'm thinking of isn't deserted, people do live there. Not too many cute hippie girls but at least there'd be whiskey and peace of mind. And no drama.

Just yesterday I found out about this, too. Have all the officials forgotten that a library is also used as a place to simply read and enjoy books?

edited 28th Nov '10 9:19:45 PM by Yuanchosaan

Yuan. I weep harder for Texas every few months. I have the urge to purge the state for the good of the U.S. and the Species as a whole.

The Comments by some suppose educators also high lights how poorly they understand things like original research and the fact that not everything is online and never will be.

edited 28th Nov '10 9:24:06 PM by TuefelHundenIV

A theater organization here once did the following: eliminated a job that paid about 15K a year, cut back a second job from about 35K to 20K and reduced benefits because the recipient was old enough for medicare, and then when the third member of the group quit because the first two people were his dad and sister replaced all of them with one guy who was not paid anything anything even close to the highest paid job any one of them held. The managing director makes a healthy chunk of change and 5% of his income could've really helped out with paying for one those other jobs. And that father, sister, brother combo are talented and dedicated professionals. RAWR.

@Tuefel L I thought you were in Hawaii?

I think Dorkus is in Hawaii. I am in Nebraska. I pretty much lived in Texas for 3 years and was not pleased with the state of their education system.

I'm consuming cheap Argentinian red wine: three dollars at Ralph's down the street. Not too bad for three bucks. Great to cook with, too, though powerfully flavored so you have to use the right things.

Found $20 while walking the dogs. That kind of stuff never happens to me.

Lucky!

Clearly, I need to walk the dog more.

I found $50 on the floor at school once.

It was then promptly confiscated, and if you think I'm kidding, you've never been to my school.

You know I'm usually in favor of full disclosure and keeping things on the up and up. And I am really big on Freedom of Speech. This Wiki Leaks thing really bothers me. A lot.

edited 29th Nov '10 3:39:45 PM by blackcat

You can tell that I'm extremely immature, because I found it hilarious.

I would agree with it more if it had uncovered more in the way of sensitive/alarming documents than simply covert insults. As it is, it's like the Wikileaks crew is being almost as petty as the politicians.

Well they have uncovered things like that in the past, haven't they?

I don't much keep up with Wikileaks, and get most of my info is secondhand from other folks.

Charlatan: They don't go looking for stuff themselves, they just receive information from whoever decides to leak it.

Yeah, but in cases like this it's like they feel exposing idiots/scoundrels in the system justifies a constant quest to turn U.S. classified info inside out.

I am not exactly fond of either side most days. Note my reluctance on the issue of file piracy and witness my mindset in action.

@Tzetze: Oh. Well, this post is irrelevant now. :U

ON TO TECH/SOCIETY CLASS, THEN. LATER, SAPIENT BEINGS!

edited 29th Nov '10 3:46:30 PM by Charlatan

Yuan. I weep harder for Texas every few months. I have the urge to purge the state for the good of the U.S. and the Species as a whole.

-Coughs-

Ahem.

The recent Wikileaks thing (the diplomatic cables) really don't seem important enough to justify leaking them, I think. There are no shocking revelations in there. No admissions of serious wrongdoing that I can see. All there is there is evidence that US diplomats speak frankly about their not-so-flattering opinions of world leaders & other people they deal with. Which is what they SHOULD do. I don't want diplomats who won't ever admit to having an opinion because it might get "on the record".

Nothing in there is worth the risk to the person leaking it, nor the ruffled feelings of those spoken about unflatteringly.

*shrug*

I know plenty of people who were SHOCKED AND APPALLED by the whole thing.

Band practice in a couple hours, for a couple hours. Hopefully I have clean pants. I really didn't think this out.