So, I have been having a lot of stomach, chest, and acid reflux issues since this summer.  I used to ocassionally have it, especially if I drank a lot of citrus drinks or ate a lot of fruit, but since this summer it has been a lot worst.  It's particularly been bad since December where it's hurting on a daily basis and not just a little bit of acid reflux, but to the point where it feels like someone is pouring acid on the inside of my chest, squeezing my chest, and/or being really bloated.  Doc put me on meds but they didn't help, finally got a new one that is helping.

Today had an endoscopy and discovered hiatal hernia, which I guess is very common.  Now,  even though the new drugs help, it's by no means a solution because it still hurts and wakes me up at night and still get really bloated.  So, I will be curious to how this gets fixed, if it does at all.  If not, then I won't be a happy guy because it makes me feel bad all the time.

Anyway,  I just wanted to share and I'm tired of complaining about it, but at least now I know what the cause is.  Oh yes,  one of the recommendations from the endoscopy doctor was to go gluten-free, so I may try this.  My sister did gluten-free for a while and said she felt so much better, so I may try it.  The other stuff it said to stay away from was not what I expected.  I expected them to say no fruits or spicy stuff, but no, it was no fatty or chocolate, or peppermint.  Now I know why I always get an upset stomach after eating a peppermint, it has the opposite effect on me than most people.  

Oh well, not much else going on.  We bought a new bed, can't wait for it get here.  It's Costco's version of the Sleep Number bed where you can adjust each side depending on your need.  It was half off and was a real good price.  Also got the blu-ray player yesterday, it's got a beautiful picture when watching movies.  You can see stuff flying around in the air, like pollen, it's cool.  

Oh yea, we got a 50s table/chair set from Heritage Square Antique Mall in Reynoldsburg.  It's really cool.    Click here for a photo.

OK, well, I'm off for now.  Ta!

I know it's been a long time since I have blogged.  I knew that would happen after L&P ended.  I just never feel that I have enough to write about.  I was sick for a while too with a pretty fierce sinus infection, lasted almost 5 weeks, and not sure I am still over it, even after 2 rounds of antibiotics.  

I think I have GERD now, so I need to see the doctor to see what we can do.  I have constant acid reflux now and chest pains from it.  UGH!

I am determined to lose some weight this year and do some exercising.  I hope that once the weather warms up we can take weekend trips to parks to walk/hike.  I also plan to get a treadmill if we get to a point where we stop having things break or sick pets.  Let's see, since September we've had to put $600 into one of the cars, $450 for a new water heater that burst, $600 down for unexpected bathroom repair/remodel, $400 for vet bill, and now we think our oven is dying.  Blah,  I hope it can be fixed, oven part won't ignite right away, takes about 3 tries to turn it on for it to ignite, range part works fine.  

Work is busy but good,  I am enjoying the new job.  Not that I didn't feel I was part of the management team at my other location, but I feel much more involved in the new management team.  There are only 3 of us over a staff of 40 some people, where there was 5 of us over 26 people at my other location.  Also being the lead of a department (ILL) is fun, but a little scary too.  It's cool to be working on a pilot project with OCLC and I was just charged with writing up a return on investment for the pilot to see if it's something we want can continue in our current financial situation.  We believe it's a cost saver, especially with increased ILLs due to lower book budgets and increased usage, because we continually get more and more ILL requests each month.  We process about 600-700 incoming requests a month, and send out about 350 requests a month, I believe that's up signficantly over last year.  I did some stats but I can't remember, something like 30% increase in requests over the same period last year.

Enough about work.  We bought a new camera as an xmas gift to us, I am disappointed with indoor shots, but it's got so many advanced features I am not used to that I am sure much of the problem is from user error. :)  I can't wait to use it outdoors in sunny weather.

I just bought a new online game, Lord of the Rings Online.  I've been playing a trial for the past week or so and have been enjoying it.  I got the game at Best Buy for half off so I feel like I got a deal, especially if I don't end up playing it too long.  I won't feel as if I wasted my money, but got my money's worth instead.

Chris is going to a funeral today of a co-worker, so I am just going to laze around today as usual on the weekend. LOL.  I really can't wait to get some exercising and weight loss in so I get the energy back.  Although it's cold out there today, so a nice day to stay in and do nothing (but gaming of course). :)

I hope it won't be another 5 weeks before I post again.  You can always catch me on twitter (swillard).  

Until next time.

Here are 10 random things about me that you may or may not know :)

1)  I am a gamer - I play City of Heroes (ALOT) and have played other online games, in addition to the Wii and Nintendo DS

2)  I played the French Horn in concert band for 2 years and trombone in marching band.

3)  I took 5 years of French but unfortunately can only remember a little from it

4)  I watch the Eurovision Song Contest every year (well since I learned about it 5 years ago) - Singers/Bands from European and Mediterranean and some Middle Eastern countries battle to be number 1.  

5)  I saw my Columbus elementary school teacher at a mall in Louisville, KY when I was visiting.  I used to live in a suburb of Louisville before moving to Columbus

6)  I am a soda freak (really? you didn't know from this website?)

7)  I have never seen a Rocky or Godfather movie

8)  I love ABBA! and The Mamas and The Papas

9)  I despise yardwork and hire someone to trim bushes because I hate doing them.

10) I hope to some day visit Japan and then the UK

I guess when I originally did L&P #3 that I was confused about what we were supposed to do.  I thougth we were just supposed to create and register our website but after going through to make sure my links are working at the end of the L&P process, I discovered we were supposed to write a blog about what we learned from the 7 1/2 Lifelong Learning Habits.  While I did watch the video,  I can't remember what was really talked about (my mind is very short term).

I went back to watch the video and the link from the L&P blog is no longer working so I can't really write an accurate blog about what I learned from it. 

I don't know if this will still count as completed or not, but I tried to watch the video but it's no longer there. 

This is the final installment of the L&P process - summarizing our experience with this project.  I really thank CML for taking this positive approach to new technology instead of banning it like so many companies do.  Our customers are becoming more tech saavy and we need to be able to keep up with the changes in way people socialize and get their entertainment/education.  This is a great way for staff to become more comfortable with popular tools of now, but if we want to keep staff educated, this needs to become a regular type of training.

One thing I noticed was some staff who were hesitant about all this start to actually enjoy some of the tools they were learning, like blogging.  I heard about some staff who didn't want to do it suddenly love blogging, now whether they keep up with it or not is another story.  I think the L&P team did a great job encouraging staff; they were positive, fun (videos), and educational (videos and hands-on trainings).  They also tried to connect those staff having difficulties with people who had a strong grasp of the product.  I know I was personally asked to help a staff member in my department with Twitter and then later that person asked me to help with RSS feeds for podcasts.  

I think the objective that I have personally seen have the biggest impact on staff is learning Twitter.  I tried Twitter at the beginning of the year and wasn't really impressed.  I only had one friend I was following and she wasn't posting very often and I thought who really wants to know what I am doing?!  So when the time came to use Twitter for L&P,  I tried again and got hooked.  Since so many people were using it,  I suddenly had people I knew at work that I wanted to follow and others started following me.  Then I started getting requests from people I knew of, but never really talked to before and I started following those people or asking to follow people I didn't know.  I've learned so much about people (personally and professionally) from following their tweets and met people I would never have otherwise really met or at least talked to regularly.

Twitter has also been more than a social tool,  it's been a learning tool.  I've seen staff tweeting from presentations or workshops they are attending.  These types of tweets can be very informative, especially if I never would have known that these presentations were going on to begin with.  One of the most recent tweet sessions from a presentations was when a staffer was sending tweets from PL's European Library tour, it was very interesting to hear what was being discussed because I didn't have the ability to go to the workshop myself.

So,  of all the L&P 23 things,  for me, Twitter has been very useful and fun.  I'd say probably the thing most people learned to do was blog.  You had to blog every experience you had and it was a consistant type of learning behavior so it probably was the one that stuck with most people.  There were other informative things, like using  Flickr, mashups, bloglines, RSS feeds, podcasts, etc.

Thanks to the L&P/DS group for giving us this opportunity and I look forward to more of these types of trainings/activities in the future.

OK, so I was on woot.com reading through some of the forums about an item I was looking at, to see if it was worth buying.  Anyway,  I found this crazy ad on someone's post.  I think this is one of the craziest things I have ever seen.

Take a look at this crazy product you could have bought.  I wonder if it's on eBay? :)

This project deals with MOLDI  (Mid-Ohio Library Digital Iniative).  MOLDI is a collaboration between different libraries in Ohio to offer ebooks, audiobooks, movies, music, and software for download.  Due the fact that everything is free on MOLDI, the collection is limited.  Unfortunately, for my tastes,  I haven't been able to find anything really interesting.  However, there is a lot of classical fiction, which would come in very handy for students or anyone who wants to read or re-read them.  It also has a lot of classical music, so if you are a fan, then you might find some music to suit your taste.

To use this service, you have to download their software - called Overdrive.  This software is easy to use and not a burden to download.  MOLDI just recently made OverDrive compatible with iTunes (as long as you are using manual sync mode).

A drawback of the site is that I had 2 items in my cart and accidentally hit back in my browser and lost both items.  I got a little frustrated.

Overall, it's a good choice for certain users who want the ease of portability and easy access from the comfort of their home (or library).

For this L&P activity, we are learning about Podcasts.  I've known about podcasts for years but really never found any that excite me too much.  I have very little patience to listen to someone talking, same goes with talk radio.  I did find one of a radio DJ that I like listening to and he has a podcast that I listen to regularly. 

I listen to the BBC 1 Radio channel on Sirius satellite radio.  It's broadcast from London (timeshifted).  I listen to the morning crew and the drive-home crew.  I have been listening to the drive home DJ for a long time, his name is Scott Mills and the podcast is called Scott Mills Daily.  By the way, if you want to hear a laugh a minute podcast, that's it.  I have the RSS feed of this on my front page.

I also have Chris Moyles' podcast in my bloglines. 

I also saw (on podcastalley.com) a podcast for Library Survival Guide that looks interesting,  I've bloglined that too so I can check it out later.

I think podcasts could play an important role in the library.  I think video podcasts could be great for the library to have on it's website.  It would be fun for parents or anyone to be able download and watch storytimes that they can play and participate with their kids.  I suggested that CML make storytime video pocasts years ago to our virtual librarry staff (I think that's what that division was called back then).

It could also be a good way to for people to hear booktalks or learn about new services (podcasts and video podcasts).

I use iTunes as my podcast directory since I have an iPod.  PodCastAlley.com looks like to be a very good source also,  I am going to check it out to see what else they have.

Our project for this L&P is using YouTube or a similar site like MetaCafe.  I've used YouTube a lot so this project is easy.  The optional part of this project was embedding videos, which I did already on the blog, so I am going to link to that post. :)  The reason I chose this video is Fred makes me laugh everytime I watch it.  I think the kid is brilliant!  Is he a future star?  I dunno, maybe.

I know CML and other libraries already use YouTube to share videos that have appeared on the news or that the staff made up to celebrate or promote an activity.  I saw a fun one on another staff's blog that was about the library her mother works at and their staff did a Library book truck routine in a parade.  I know the staff at Worthington Library posted a video because they won Library of the Year in 2007  won and the video was celebrating how happy the staff were to win it.  They danced to Thriller since they were Thrilled to be library of the year. 

So yes, the library can and does use sites like YouTube for either internal or external use.  I imagine libraries may start offering storytimes via YouTube or SRC promotion.