...for the last 50 years of her life!

(I can't help but add a slightly snarky, "Well, I guess that means there's hope for everyone!" )

On a related note, for someone whose very name is synonymous with sainthood, er, she wasn't.

I've had lots of links, pics and videos lately so why not a rollicking ramble through things happening recently in my life for a change?

Pace
...is a drool monster and we figure he's starting teething.  He's 15.3 lbs at 3 months and wearing clothes that are sized for a 6-9 month old.  He sleeps 5-6 hours at a time which is the best thing EVER.  He's a lot more alert and human now - playing with his hands, focusing on faces for extended periods.  Oh, and he's giggling and laughing up a storm and I can't help but wonder why, from an evolutionary standpoint, didn't babies develop the ability to laugh and smile at birth instead of needing a couple months for it to happen?  I'd be much more likely to save a happy baby than one who cries and bawls non-stop.  That's just asking to be left for the wolves.   Speaking of danger, Pace went for a boat ride today.  He lived.

Shea
...is loving being a mom and living in Weyburn with her parents during the week.  As you can tell by Pace's weight, breastfeeding is going exceptionally well.  Her Facebook addiction is only growing stronger. 

Work
It's hard to believe I'm about to begin my sixth month of an 18-month contract already.  Mostly because of Pace, this summer has flown quicker than any I can remember.  I've said before that I won't write too much about my work but I will mention that I'm dealing with everything from kids with head lice to regulations governing regional library boundaries and all points in between.

Garage Sales
Shea and I love going to garage sales but haven't all summer, again, for obvious reasons.  But this weekend, we went Thursday night in Weyburn, Friday night on the way into Regina and then all day Saturday with Shea's brother and his girlfriend.  I bought a crapload of books (as usual).  Pace also got a Spiderman doll and an electric guitar toy that I already find annoying, even though I was the one who bought it for him.  Best rule for garage sales?  Put up balloons people!

A Tale of Two BBQ's
Shea had her end-of-summer work BBQ last night and I had mine this afternoon at Nickel Lake Regional Park just outside of Weyburn.  Both were good but Shea's was better in a way because she hadn't seen many of her co-workers since starting her maternity leave and many hadn't met Pace yet (who was a total angel for three hours.)  Mine was better because we had steak instead of burgers.

Television
What's that?  Seriously, the only TV I watch lately is the news at noon and at 6pm (because Shea's parents do) plus the occasional episode of The Daily Show.  That's it.  We do try to rent and watch a movie or two every weekend though whether we can get through them is always up to Pace.

Books
I do get to do some reading done though probably not up to my usual book per week average.  I've just started Sixpence House about an American couple who move to Hay-on-Wye, a Welsh town with 1500 people and 40 bookstores.  Very good so far.  I also read The Starfish and the Spider about the concept of leaderless organizations which was also really good.  In fact, it's a shock to be a guy who all of a sudden reads and enjoys management books having spent a lifetime as the guy who would probably make fun of those who do so.

I guess that's it.  Later...

I got this off the PLG listserv.  There's lots of talk in libraryland about what the future of libraries will be so I thought I'd pass along one person's tongue-in-cheek (?) take on the question...

There was a time when we were mere purveyors of books and periodicals and related media -- and, by extension, of ideas and viewpoints --  and the "go to" people for finding information and referrals to just about anything that might come up.

Thankfully (and partly thanks to the wide availability of online material and search engines), those days are behind us forever, and  
we can now focus on our long-neglected social responsibilities.

Every librarian, as a steward of the public trust, has a duty to eliminate race and income inequity, promote diversity, and serve the needs of downtrodden and oppressed people everywhere who do not have voices with which to speak.  Every librarian, as an employee of government, has a duty to be an agent of social change, fulfilling  
the role of government as repairer of wrongs and nurturer and caretaker of its citizens.

At my library, we, too, struggled with balancing the high cost of books and periodicals with the cost of the social services we wished to provide. Every year was another balancing act that left no one particularly happy.

Then we had our epiphany.

In the digital age, books and periodicals are irrelevant, and viewpoints and ideas are dead.  These things are emphatically NOT what our patrons want or need.

They want computers and games.  They want food.  In some cases, they want and need beds and showers.  Above all, they want our help, and I do not mean help to find a copy of Tale of Two Cities.

So we got rid of our books and periodicals.

Every one of them.

I am now happy to say that we offer a wide array of social services unimpeded by the worn-out, tattered cultural baggage of bourgeoise society.

We have on-staff, onsite social workers and psychiatric therapists.   

We offer space for lawyers working pro bono.  There is space for weekly visits from county health services staff and space for child  
protective services functions.  We can treat people with substance abuse problems.  We can shelter anyone needing respite from abusive  
relationships, and we can shelter the homeless, thanks to generous contributions of bedding from local furniture retailers.

We were able to greatly expand the restrooms and add full showers to those facilities.  We have expanded the coffee shop to a full-service cafeteria, with free or reduced-cost meals (eligibility certified by the former reference librarians). We have partnered with local second-
hand stores to provide a full line of clothing and shoes.

All these services -- and many more I haven't even mentioned -- were made possible by the simple expedient of eliminating the books and periodicals!  Remember that you save not only the cost of the items and subscriptions, but the considerable cost of cataloging and looking after them!

We are entering a new and exciting phase of librarianship in which we truly help people in need -- even offering them the good parenting  
they never had -- and move beyond the narrow viewpoint of merely freely offering access to the word in all its forms.

It is a brave, new world!

And we are free of books, and the inordinate amount of tending they took, forever!

-- Joe Schallan
     New Phoenix, Arizona

The ALA recently released a survey of rural librarians with all kinds of interesting, enlightening and downright depressing comments and statistics.

As someone who willingly chose to work in a rural library as my first job over a city position, this survey also hits close to home (although I do believe that the situation in Canada for salaries and working conditions is much better than in the US for the most part.)

(via the always jam-packed ALA weekly e-newsletter which, unfortunately isn’t online)

A couple variations on Pachelbel's Canon...

Of course, that's the equivalent of saying you beat your grandfather in the 100 metre dash but still...they're just getting around to a cover story on the latest trend in cyberspace, Facebook while my article for CLA's Feliciter on the very same topic came out a couple months ago (though it wasn't a cover story either so I guess it's really a tie in some ways.)   more »

We had this discussion on my blog once already.  But anyhow, since it's one of my personal grammar crusades, here's another article on the history of using "they/their/them" as the first-person singular instead of the contemporary but much more awkward "he/she" convention. 

"...for most of the existence of the English language, ‘they’ was used as the accepted singular gender-neutral pronoun. The use of ‘it’ was reserved for objects, as it is today, but for people the pronoun of choice was they/their/them.

So how did this all change? Courtesy of the English Parliament."

Damn Interesting » When They Became Him

List of acquired tastes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(I'm proud to say that "cilantro" and "clamato" were two additions I made to the list although cilantro is still one I don't have a taste for - I think I have that enzyme thing where it tastes like rotted hell "an unpleasant soapy taste and/or rank smell" to use the terminology I took right from the Wikipedia cilantro entry.)

I turned on the end of the BC-Calgary game on Friday to see a wicked back and forth tussle ending with the new (?) overtime format where the teams play two "mini-games", each team starting at their opponent's respective 35-yard lines with regular rules in place to as they attempt to score.  The game ended still tied after both teams managed to score majors on each of their possessions for each mini-game. 

Then last night, Pace and I were settled in to watch the Riders-Eskimos game.  It's another exciting back and forth game with first place in the West in the balance if the Riders win.  Then, near the start of the fourth quarter, the CBC feed goes out.  I wait as long as I can stand it but finally turn it off, my mind deadened by the "Just For Laughs - Gags" program they put on while the feed was out. 

Half an hour later, I log on to TSN and see it reported that the score didn't change and the final is 32-27 for Edmonton.  Darn.  So close but so typical for the Riders who embody Saskatchewan's "next year country" mindset - just like our agricultural sector which so often looks like it'll have a great year but always failing to deliver due to early frost, too much heat, too much rain, not enough heat, not enough rain, plagues of locusts grasshoppers - you get the idea. 

But then today, I get a call from my parent who were camping near Yorkton last night. 

"Tell me about the storm last night," my mom says.
(Hmm, that's a strange question.)
"Well, it was a pretty big storm, lots of thunder and lightning but no big deal really.  We didn't even go out to watch - went to bed early." 
"You didn't lose your power?" 
"No.  Didn't even flicker.  Why?" 
"The power went out at Mosaic Stadium.  I thought you guys would've lost power too." 
"No.  I was watching when the CBC feed went out but thought that was just them.  You mean the whole stadium lost power?"
"Yeah."
"After the game was over?"
"No, they restarted the game.  The Riders won."
"What?"
"The Riders won."
"I saw on TSN's web site last night that they lost."
"No.  The power went out in the whole stadium for an hour then they restarted the game.  There were still people in the stands and the Riders ended up winning."

By this point, I've made my way to my laptop and check and yep, somehow TSN reported the score when the power went out as the final.  But in reality, 8000+ fans stayed for nearly an hour in the darkened stadium with a full bore prairie lightning storm happening until the game was restarted, just before officials were ready to cancel it. 

How insane is that - on so many levels?  That the fans stayed?  That the Riders rallied to score a final TD to take the game?  That they're got their best record at this point in the season since 1976?  Pace (who resembles a linebacker more and more each week) was inspired to put on his gear today to celebrate...

As I write this, I've been blogging for nearly a year a a half on a pretty much daily basis, I've written 662 posts and have received an average of one comment per post (two if you count the fact that I reply to almost every single comment I receive.)  I get quite a few site visitors (although I'm still not prepared to share the number for some reason, especially considering some of the other stuff I've shared over that same time period.    I will tell you that it's more than 10 per day and less than 1000 per day.)

Because of all that and because of the main weaknesses of blogs is that they're in reverse chronological order (usually) which means the more I write, the less likely someone is to go back and browse through the blog to find informative, engaging or humourous posts (I wish I had a "random entry" button like Wikipedia does - anybody want to whip up the javascript to do it for me?), I thought I'd go back to day one (February 28, 2006) and work my way through all 662 posts, trying to pick out some of my favourites that aren't library and library school related (I already have another spot for those but I did update my "Unofficial Guide to Library School" with various posts I didn't add there when I first wrote them.  I'll try to add to this page when it is warranted.)

Baby
First Photo of Oscar

Guess Who's Pregnant?
- we announce that we're pregnant with perhaps the most disturbing photo ever to appear on this blog.

Oscar Comes Home

Oscar's (Pace's) Heartbeat
- A YouTube Video of Shea Having A Doppler Test of Pace's Heartbeat

Pace Is Here
- announcing the birth of our first child

Smaller: The Story of the Disposable Diaper
- really just a link to a Malcolm Gladwell article but so interesting, I'm putting it here.

Humour
A Plea for Saskatchewan Separation
- a trip to Montreal inspired me to post this tongue-in-cheek essay I wrote as an undergrad.

Shea's Career vs. Jason's Career
-  a humourous comparison of nursing and librarianship

You Should Have Come Home Earlier
- I'm out drinking after my final class and get caught in a blizzard.  Shea pinch-hits to keep my "daily post" streak alive and gets a lot of great comments on top of it!

Your Next Candidate in Souris-Moose Mountain Is...
- I briefly considered running in the federal election...until I remember what day it is.

Miscellaneous
10 Books on Books
- I have a lot of lists on this blog so will only include a couple favourites on this page.  There's a  list category as well if you want to see all of my "list posts"

2006 End of the Year Meme
- using a couple different memes to summarize my year, this is something I hope to remember to do each year. 

How To Boost Your 'Books Read' Count Really Quickly
- some thoughts on how many books a person might read in their lifetime.

I Swear
- one of my favourite Friday Fun Link posts.

Is There A Universal Book?
- another post that generated way more discussion than I ever expected (and led to me posting the question at Ask MetaFilter as well.)

Myths of the Developing World
- this is how you do a presentation!

Public Humiliation (aka The Public Library Game)
- as a new grad who was extremely interested in public libraries, I decided to try to name the ten top level Dewey categories.  I end up getting 5.5/10.

Sometimes I Post Just To Say I've Posted That Day
- this post gets, by far and on a continual basis, the most hits of any page on my site.  I have no idea why.  It might be the reference to Darth Vader and Eminem, it might be that somebody has somehow managed to embed an invisible porn gallery. 

Suggestion For A New Statutory Holiday
- I won't say I called it but I did foresee the implementation of Family Day in Saskatchewan by a few months.  (Now, if someone would only take up my idea for "You-Day".)

The Concept of Alphabetization
- one of my favourite Friday Fun Links ever

Warriors and Wusses
- some thoughts on the (contradictory?) idea that you can be against the war but support the troops

Personal
About Me - A Timeline of My Life
- this is linked from the blog's header but I thought I'd stick it here as it really is a favourite post plus maybe the single post I've put the most effort in to of anything I've ever written - thinking back over personal milestones during my lifetime, talking to my parents and confirming dates, digging up and scanning appropriate old photos. 

And Now, I Am A Librarian
- I accept my first position post-FIMS

Dad's Filing Cabinet
- a slightly sentimental post about family, passing on traditions, and attempting to impose order on the world to understand the world.

Eulogy for Grandma Peet

Eulogy for Grandma Hammond

Eulogy for Grandpa Peet

My "Co-op" Is Over (Ten Best Things About My New Job)
- looking back at my first four months as a professional librarian

My IQ Is...
- 130 (according to a CBC test anyhow)  Plus a critique of IQ testing and my own theory of multiple intelligences. 

My Myers-Briggs Personality Type
- or save yourself a clicky and know that it's ENFP as it has been since I first took the test in 1997

My Political Compass
- you probably don't have to read this blog very long to figure out where I stand politically.  But this shows you in handy-dandy chart form. 

Technology
A Failed Experiment
- my first attempt at creating a new entry in Wikipedia for the Spirit of Librarianship award gets deleted in very short order. From this entry, you can click on "A Failed Experiment 2.0" which was the following day's post and contains more thoughts on this process. (By the way, the page I created for reality TV blip, Lukas Rossi, as a quasi-protest is still going strong !)

All Walls Crumble in Time (Thoughts On Setting Up A Facebook Account)
- my wife joins Facebook giving me a chance to reconsider the process with a fresh set of eyes

Crackbook Musings
- random thoughts and links to Facebook-related information

E-Music vs. iTunes
- I hate DRM.  That is all. 

Facebook's Dark Side (and Some Thoughts On Why I Blog)
- mostly about sharing information versus retaining your personal privacy

Firefox Extensions I Use
- interesting but out of date now as I keep adding (and occasionally deleting) extensions all the time.

Five Easy Ways To Improve Facebook

Five More Easy Ways To Improve Facebook

Yet Five More Ways To Improve Facebook

Five Things Google Could Learn From Wikipedia (and Five Things Wikipedia Could Learn From Google
- my first ever submission to Digg (which got me 11 Diggs - yee-haa!)

Google Ad-Words Experiment
- I briefly delve into the world of online advertising to promote my blog.

When Did Facebook Replace E-mail?
- although I definitely wasn't the only one to observe this, I was just ahead of the curve on this idea and this entry got a lot of links from elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Wikipedia allows anonymous edits but it does track the IP of anyone who makes the edit. So a Cal-Tech computer grad student, inspired by news last year that Congress members’ offices had been editing their own entries, and curious whether other organizations were doing anything similar, developed a program to make it much easier to see the affiliation of anyone who made edits to any Wikipedia page.

This has led to numerous revelations about corporations like Fox News, organizations like the CIA and individuals such as staffers for a current US Presidential candidate abusing the intent of Wikipedia

(via MetaFilter which has lots of other links I didn’t include in this post)

This looks pretty wicked...

Google is apparently setting up a health site. Google Health Screenshots are now available online. 

On a related note, I've talked about RateMyProfessors.com on this blog before but have you seen RateMDs.com which is similar except when somebody gets a 0 rating, that usually means they've killed somebody or otherwise, majorly screwed up.   Kinda puts FIMS in perspective, no?

Shea was rapidly catching up to me so I've spent the last couple hours ping-ponging from person to person's friend lists on Facebook madly adding people I know (and knew and wish I knew). 

Here are some random thoughts from the process...

- In "The Tipping Point", Malcolm Gladwell uses the term "Connector" to define one of three types of people who create situations where ideas/products/whatever "tip".  Finding someone who has this characteristic (Kitty Lewis from Brick Books with her nearly 400 friends after only a few months on Facebook is a good example) is a great way to lead to lots of others you will know.  (In all modesty, I'd probably put myself in this category too.  I'm sitting at over 400 friends but probably 1/4 are people I've never met but that I connected with via my Saskatchewan Mafia group on the site.  Actually anybody who has over say, 200 friends on Facebook - that they do know in real life - is probably a good bet to be a connector.)

- that also makes me think what the optimal number of friends to have on Facebook?  I'd suspect it's close to the figure cited as the ideal number of people to have in a community which was presented in a similar book to Gladwell's called "The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Surowiecki.  That number was somewhere around 150 and after that, the claim was that you were stretched too thin trying to maintain and track all of the various relationships that your group/community will fall apart. 

- If I were to analyze it, I'd say I have three main "circles" of friends - "librarians/library students", writers/publishers" and "high school/college/hometown" mixed with assorted others who I know in other ways.

- the number of friends I have is partly a reflection of my personality (I "collected" friends long before Facebook existed simply because I'm interested in pretty much everyone I meet.) and partly because I've lived for significant lengths of time in three different provinces, often in positions where I was in a spot that was a sort of "hub" in some ways (especially at the Writers Guild of Alberta where my office was one of - but definitely not the only - main hubs for activity relating to all kinds of literary events in the Southern half of the province.)

- I'm debating doing a longer post on "The Most Famous Person on Facebook" but let me just say that once you start seeing who (and I say this with all due respect) mid-level Canadian authors link to that you start finding well-known authors (notice how I didn't identify which writers I class in each category in case they read this? ).  Which can lead to authors who are also singers.  Which can lead to rock stars.  Which can lead to NHL hockey players.  Which can lead to sitting Canadian MP's who used to be hockey players.  Are all of these profiles legitimate?  If I just did a search for "Wayne Gretzky" and a legit looking profile turned up, I'd be doubtful.  But because of the chain of connections that brought me to some of these celebrities (and the fact that privacy settings were often ramped up quite high), I have very little reason to doubt that they're not legitimate. 

- this leads me to other thoughts about the nature of celebrity in our culture.  What does it say about celebrity (which is based in large part on someone being removed and remote from the plebians like you and me ) when, for example, the singer with a Canadian rock band that had a few hits in the early 1990's is directly connected to a woman I went to high school which means there is only one "step" between us?  I have some problems with Facebook but how it may lead to a "flattening" of our societal hierarchies is one potential good thing. 

- I wonder what it will be like for somebody like Pace (assuming Facebook is still around) where you grow up with a site like this always being a part of your life and by default, everybody you know being on it instead of the mixture that I get - a lot of surprises but definitely not everyone I've ever known or even everyone I would expect to be on the site. 

Anyhow, just some random thoughts, way past my bedtime on a Saturday night/Sunday morning. 

I just had it brought to my attention that Bloglines isn't reading my feed (and hasn't since July 18 - wow, my birthday post helped knock out part of the Internet!).  If you subscribe to this blog via Bloglines, hopefully you've realised this and are checking in directly or reading this via another RSS reader (Google Reader is popular and I personally use NetVibes).  I've started doing some investigating and hopefully I can get it figured out soon. 

Also, I've updated the Spirit of Librarianship page as promised in a recent entry.  I also created a Facebook group for former nominees and winners so if you search for Spirit of Librarianship, you should find it. 

I've written before about my interest in Digital Footprints, the information about ourselves that is online, both intentionally and unintentionally.  This is an interesting series on the same topic (though he calls it Digital Breadcrumbs.) 

This letter is the very entertaining response from a smaller Australian book distributor when an Australian bookstore chain tries to charge them to make up for the "unacceptable profitability level" that stocking their books creates.  (Wouldn't that be great in any business?  If you're not making enough profit, charge your suppliers to make up the difference!)

A discussion of library fines at Librarian.net.  I've mentioned in passing that the system I work for doesn't have overdue fines and I think that's about one of the most progressive ideas libraries can pursue.  There are some who say that it's charges for losses and damages that are the real barriers for a lot of disadvantaged people but I think those two issues are intimately related.  Put another issue on the list of "topics I wish I'd written about in library school but never did."

Spock is a new people-centered search engine.  It's a good idea in concept but quite lacking otherwise, at least so far.  For example, I'm definitely not going to give anyone my LinkedIn password just so I can "claim my profile" on your site.  So for the time being, I think I'll continue to use Facebook to find people from my past. 

(Speaking of, this is probably crossing that line between things I should keep for my personal journal and things that are appropriate for the blog but I feel compelled to mention that I stumbled across the Facebook profile of the charitable young woman to whom I lost my virginity to many moons ago.  I wasn't stalking her (honest!) but she'd joined a Facebook group for a resort area near my hometown that we'd both grown up with and the only reason I recognized her while scrolling through the list of group members was because she listed her maiden name (or may be going by a hyphened name now - hard to tell.)  To be honest, I haven't searched for any of the women who've been similarly charitable to me in my past - not sure why that is and I don't feel like doing the self-analysis needed to figure it out, thank-you very much.  Still, it's yet another way that Facebook can re-unite you with your past in ways you least expect.)

Putting Things In Perspective - an interesting article espousing the idea that, no matter what you're doing and how mundane it may seem, you should envision yourself as an elderly person looking back on yourself doing it and no matter what the activity is, you'll appreciate it more. 

We did a day trip across the border to Williston, North Dakota on Wednesday (it's a long story as to why we had to go mid-week, I'll tell you over a beer sometime) and the highlight for me was finding an old department store that had been converted into a place that sold all kinds of antiques, collectibles and souvenirs on the main floor.  As for the basement...well, the sign said "books downstairs" so I was expecting a few old copies of Readers Digest Condensed Books, maybe a bunch of shelves stuffed full of tattered Harlequins.

Instead?  The entire massive basement was crammed with books of all shapes, sizes and ages.  Although it was lacking in newer books, the selection of strange and obscure older titles more than made up for it.  Plus (and this is huge), there was not a single employee in the basement at all so I had the equivalent of the entire basement of a typical city department store (think of the Bay or Eaton's that every city in Canada has downtown for an idea of the size) all to myself!  (I'm honestly surprised I'm not still there.)

This is a photo from the stairs leading to the basement.  It's a bit dark and doesn't really do the place justice but hopefully gives you a small sense of what I'm talking about.


They sold their books by the pound on a sliding scale - up to 5 lbs was $0.99/lb.  6-10 lbs was $0.89/lb.  11-15 (which is what I walked out with - hey, no different than carrying Pace, I figured) was $0.79/lb.  In their language/books/writing section, I found a number of old LIS textbooks which are all pretty cool to page through. 

Here's a sampling of the titles I bought...
"Intro to Cataloguing and Classification 5th Ed." - Wynar (1976)
"Planning College & University Library Buildings" - pamphlet (1981)
"So You Want To Be A Librarian" - Wallace (1963)
"Guide To The Use of Books and Libraries 3rd Ed." - Gates (1974)
"Supervisory and Middle Managers in Libraries" - Bailey (1981)
"Library Work With Children" - Broderick (1977)
"Educating the Library User" -  Lubans (1974)
"Building Library Collections" - Duncan-Carter (1969)

Total damage for all of these plus a bunch of other books on everything from parenting to philosophy to non-fiction classics such as Studs Terkel's "Working"?  $12 and change. 

Oh, and the teasing title for this post about every librarian's fantasy?  Just a little theory I came up with at FIMS and which was fleshed out by many of my colleagues I tried it out on, namely that, just as every English major is a closet writer, all librarians secretly want to own and run a used bookstore. 

The end of the semester at FIMS looms and for various students, the end of the program is near as well.  On that note, Michelle L. has a list of Library School Advice from an Almost Librarian that's worth checking out.  

Congrats also to Barb Janicek who won the Spirit of Librarianship Award for the Summer 2007 semester.  (That's a nice segue because Michelle won it the semester before and now I have double the reason to finally update my Spirit of Librarianship page!) 

Hearing the news is also kind of bittersweet in a way - Michelle and Barb were two of the closest friends I made at FIMS but after next semester, my connections to the place will be all but done as I'll have been away from the place for a full year (!) and so, for the first time, will not know any of the incoming students. 

Okay, that's not completely true - I'm (virtually) meeting the occasional incoming student who stumbles upon my blog and contacts me.  I'll also have connections via various part-timers who are still around.  And even the line of close friends winning SoL might not end - I've got high hopes for the newly minted Master Philosopher, the returning Quinn Dupont to sweep to SoL glory in his final term at FIMS!

TinyURL is a useful site that helps convert some of those mega-long URL's that some web sites give to their pages into something that's way more manageable. 

The site doesn't re-use their shortened versions and doesn't delete them (although some you click on may be expired at the source) so naturally, somebody has come up with an algorithm to view random TinyURL pages

After five random tries (not counting expired pages), I got:
1. a Bible passage about adultery
2. a guide to shopping in Dallas, TX
3. an aerial photo of a beach in Spain
4. a job posting at Cornell University
5. an E-bay auction for a Dell laptop

It's a great time waster to see all of the pages that people are converting (often to e-mail to others).  If you like looking in people's windows late at night, you'll enjoy this site! 

"Bailing Again" - Fred Eaglesmith

I'm standin' on the corner of a pair of country roads
I am carvin' out my daddy's name on a little stone
And though I couldn't always talk to him, but if was here today
I think I'd know exactly what to say

CHORUS:
I'd say the weather's been hot
The hay is almost in
And if it holds my next week
We'll be bailin' again
The wheat is good
The corn is high
Sure could use your advice
On how to raise a couple o' kids
I'm tryin' to raise 'em just the way you did

I'd tell him 'bout that early frost early last fall
And how for awhile it looked like we wouldn't make it at all
I'd tell him how it all worked out just this past spring
And if he was here I'd tell him everything

CHORUS

My daddy never said goodbye
One day he just up and died and left me here to go it all alone
And sometimes I wish I'd hear his voice
Helping me to make that choice between giving up and carrying on

CHORUS

I'll try to raise 'em just the way you did.

(Disclaimers: My dad's still alive, I do talk to him regularly and I'm not actually