Ok, Ok. The meme has inhaled me. I can hold off no longer. I’ve been tagged on Facebook too many times and even on Twitter, some of my favorite tweeps insist I cannot escape.

So, you probably know the drill by now:

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your home page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.

Of course, like my friend the fabulous Colleen, I chose to break the rules and just post it in my blog so I can share it around to Friendfeed (oh yeah, I should check that site once in a while, shouldn’t I?) and other digital places I once had time to visit. (Remember me, teh Internet? Oh hai!)

1. I am the Brewin’ Librarian…. but I rarely have time to brew any more. I hate to confess this, but in the last two years I’ve probably only made about four batches of beer (and one didn’t turn out well– first time in 10 years!). Also, I drink more red wine than beer these days, and except for at conferences, I don’t actually drink very often at all.

2. From the time my daughter was 2 until she was 7 I was a single dad. I didn’t really know that much about parenting or children, but I worked hard and asked a *lot* of questions and she seems to have turned out alright. =)

3. During that same time I returned to school as a “non-traditional student” and received my undergrad in political science. I did this mostly to live off of student loans so that I could keep my parenting schedule open and flexible. I was fairly unfocused at the time but was tired of sales and restaurant management and needed a change.

4. When I first went into library school, I knew I loved libraries but I wasn’t entirely sure it was the right field for me. I primarily did so to avoid paying off my massive undergrad debt (see above). However, I have since found that librarianship has brought happiness and a fulfillment to my life that is only rivaled by being a dad (although libraries are still distant second to that).

5. I am a certified ballet Dad. When my daughter was younger, she was very interested in ballet and I did everything I could to support it. I swallowed my pride and asked for scholarships, I moved my own school/work schedule around hers, and I learned more than I thought I’d ever know about an art form previously bewildering to me. On the day before her first recital, she accidentally tore off some of the sequins from the bottom of her tutu. Although I can’t sew for the life of me, I sat in a restaurant that day, sewing up a child’s lavender tutu and did a pretty damn good job of it. I consider this one of my greatest accomplishments.

6. I got my first computer at age 12, it was one of those old TRS-80s with 4k RAM that you had to program in BASIC, and run off of a cassette drive. Later, I took it apart and upgraded it to a whopping 16K RAM.

7. For years I was part of the “Elite” BBS hacker scene. I ran a series of BBS boards, founded and ran a network of BBSes that spanned 7 countries. However, I was never a “black hat” type hacker, I was only ever interested in learning what cool things I could do with a computer or network– I’ve never caused any harm. This was WAY before the Internet.

8. However, once I heard of the Internet, like every good little hacker, I promptly managed to “borrow” an unused Washington University student’s account to gain access. This was before you could purchase an account. As soon as I could purchase Internet access, I did so, mostly because I had drifted away from the hacking and BBS scene by then anyway.

9. Like most computer geeks, my diet growing up was terrible. I could probably eat pizza three times a day. Sadly, although I struggle with this, my diet still has not improved as much as I’d like it to.

10. I have memorized the lyrics to probably hundreds of songs. I seem to have a knack for it. People used to joke that I could pull out a song for any occasion. I know the lyrics because when I’m alone in my car, or with my daughter, I sing constantly. However, I *highly* doubt you’ll ever hear me singing in public. Last year at Internet Librarian, I was positively mortified at the thought of doing karaoke. Well… until I saw Stephen Abram’s video.

11. If I had my way, all schools, offices, government buildings, etc. would start their business day at 10am, not at 8. Starting the day at 8am is just uncivilized.

12. I am addicted to coffee. And no, I don’t see it as a problem. I have done the research and as far as I can tell the one Mocha I have to start each day is having very little negative effect on my health. I keep it pretty strictly at one Mocha a day. If you see me drinking a latte in the afternoon or evening, look out– I’m getting ready to party!

13. I am gaming librarian partially because I feel it is a professional obligation. In truth, while I enjoy games, I really don’t feel like I have enough time to be gaming a lot. However, I do enjoy Civilization IV to the point where I have to watch myself from being sucked in for 2 days straight.

14. I love technology, but I don’t think it’s nearly as important as being nice to each other, having clean air, providing affordable health care, etc. Perspective, people, perspective!

15. I grew up in an extremely backwards Pentecostal church that not only believed that the world was going to end in 1989 (it didn’t) but hated homosexuals, people of color, etc. To this day, I am pretty suspicious of religions.

16. Because I didn’t fit into my surroundings as a child, I spent hours and hours and hours in the library. Eventually my reading habits caused me to be kicked out of the house. I left home at age 17 and slept under the bleachers of my high school football stadium. I went to school every day and work every night because I knew education was my future. I graduated from high school with honors.

17. Although I’m an old school punk rocker from the 80s, somehow I ended up going to about 8 or 9 Grateful Dead shows before Jerry died, and I’ve been to more Phish shows than I can count. I don’t like to just be stuck in one box—musically, or otherwise.

18. I spent about 10 years of my life essentially “homeless”. During this time I was neither destitute and most of the time I was not miserable. I was exploring the possibilities of alternative lifestyles and gathering material for writing. I’ve slept in abandoned buildings, tents, caves, in trees, vacant lots, you name it. I met an amazing array of people and traveled almost all of the country during this time. I took temporary jobs in whatever town I landed in– often day labor positions– and learned about a side of America few understand.

19. Despite my amount of traveling, I have never been to “the South” other than (grudgingly) Texas and Florida.

20. I grew up during the height of the great 80s punk rock scene. I saw Black Flag, Naked Raygun, Big Black, the Circle Jerks, MDC, Operation Ivy, and a slew of other bands in tiny little clubs. I used to party with the Smashing Pumpkins when they were nobody. Still to this day I can’t resist getting into the mosh pit when a good band comes around– I just do it wearing a black suit instead of a spiked leather jacket.

21. I rode a skateboard daily from age 9 until age 25. I used to be pretty good– just on the edge of competition quality until the 90s broke open a whole new class of tricks. A couple of years ago, I pretty much gave it up. It hurts a lot when I hit the concrete now and between that and my bad knees and ankle it’s just not as much fun anymore.

22. To make up for my loss of skateboarding, when I moved to Colorado about 9 years ago I took a job at the local ski resort for the first winter before I went back to a “real” job. I learned to snowboard and in one season progressed from a total novice to a back-country junkie. I still love it, although I’ve slowed down a bit and stick mostly to ski resorts and the blue and black runs.

23. When I was 18, my Grandma (who was not a part of our crazy church and did her best to expose me to other things) took me to what is now the former Yugoslavia for my high school graduation present. Her parents had come to the U.S. in the early 1900s from there and spoke Serbo-Croatian in the home. We both wanted to see the place our family came from. It was lovely, and the people were kind. But when I spoke to the young punks and anarchists over there, they warned me that trouble was brewing. Two years later, the country was torn apart by civil war.

24. One of the most profound experiences of my life was getting off the plane in communist Yugoslavia and realizing that the people, and their way of life, were really no different. To this day, I remain stubbornly unconvinced that capitalism is always “good” and that communism is always “bad”.

25. Although I always expected to be a writer. I found that the truth is…. I hate to write. I feel like my vocabulary is poor and my ideas predictable, and I just hate making myself sit down and slogging it all out. That’s why my blog is lonely and this list took forever. =)

Tag! You’re it!

So, I’ll admit it… I was trying to be the last person to post about Internet Librarian 2008. I’ve been holding out. But finally, I can’t stop myself…. must…. blog…. about IL.

Internet Librarian was like coming home. Everyone was as techie (or more) than me. We all had our gadgets, our online presence, our favorite things to share and play with. It was great!

In contrast, all too often in libraries I’ve found there is little emphasis on, or appreciation of, technology– and while I am the first to admit that technology must have a purpose, it must make life easier, to be hostile to technology in a library today means that you are distancing yourself from our users in a way that could quite possibly threaten the existence of libraries in the future.

But I am more optimistic than that. I believe that libraries will adapt, grow, change, and empower our users to learn about and make use of information technologies in all their forms. That will (hopefully) always include books, but it will also include art, games, story-time, community gatherings, video workshops, podcasting, and….. well, we’ll see about that. =)

After Internet Librarian, it was quite a shock  two weeks later to attend the Colorado Association of Libraries conference. While IL had blogger’s table at the front and back of every room, and it seemed like everyone was carrying a mobile device of some kind (see the photo below), I saw none of this at CAL.

Thanks to Laura Crossett for the photo (http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/)

I find this odd. Colorado is one of the leaders in technology adoption. In a recent opinion poll done by The USA Today/Claritas it was found that 4 out of the 25 top counties for “early adopters” are found in the front-range of Colorado. The Boulder County area is known as the “Silicon Flatirons” because of the number of tech companies located here. I don’t have to tell any library folks the importance of understanding, and reflecting, one’s community. All of us– public, academic, special, understand this as crucial to our mission.

So I have to ask…. what happened? Colorado was once a leader in library technology.

Well, it’s not all that bad…. There is a lot of support in the area for change and development in our libraries. One of our outstanding library technology leaders is Sue Staples of the High Plains Library District who has done a fantastic job of transforming her library’s online presence and encouraging technological exploration and innovation with the Colorado library community.

Steve Lawson of Colorado College and Joe Kraus of DU have gotten together a Web 2.0 & Libraries Round Table under the auspices of the Alliance.

The Colorado State Library has done a little work at exploring whether the development of an Open Source ILS project similiar the Georgia’s Pines program is viable. This was one of the projects I highlighted as part of my poster presentation at CAL 2007 on “Open Source and Libraries”.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the efforts of one of my fellow CAL Leadership Institute members, Victoria Petersen, who is doing some really cool stuff not only in leading CAL’s Second Life Interest Group but just generally being fabulous down in Mancos.

And of course, he hardly needs mentioning, but who can possibly not be impressed with a library director like Jamie LaRue who not only is willing run Linux on his own machine, but was willing to try adopting open source software on his library system’s public workstations as well. Jamie is definitely an example of someone who is pitching in and lighting fires in Colorado’s library community.

These are only a few examples of the great work being done in Colorado currently (and many apologies to the MANY I left out), but I hope we see more.

So, Colorado peeps…… who else is doing the cool stuff? And where do we go from here?

THAT will be the subject of a post soon. HINT: If we have all this tech knowledge and enthusiasm around– why don’t we use it?