puzzling

I told my friend James that the puzzle hunt was like nerd Easter because everyone gets dressed up in their nerd finery and congregates at the nerd holy land (MIT) and gets to geek out together. We laughed about it at the time. The next day, after we’d all had a little sleep, James came up to me and said “You know, your metaphor is not quite right…” and explained why it wasn’t [churches are local to a region, we had people from all over the place and remote people]. We thought a little bit about better metaphors but didn’t come up with one. It was a big thinky weekend.

So last weekend was the MIT Mystery Hunt which, you may remember, I did last year. Last year our team came in second, this year we were third. I don’t know how many teams there were last year. This year I heard there were thirty-seven. That’s not bad, though really we’d like to win. I took more of a leadership role this year and did a lot of the exciting “calling in to headquarters to confirm answers” and “updating the wiki” parts. It was more fun than it sounded. We had a team of somewhere between 100-200 people. The hunt started on Friday at noon and, unlike last year’s hunt which was over by about 2 am Saturday night, this one ended at 8 pm Sunday. This meant the wrap-up was on Monday and I got home late Monday night, just in time to be around for one drop-in time (two students) and some un/re-packing and then I left early Wednesday to head back to the airport to go to SFO.

Almost everyone on our team had a really good time. We had several librarians, a lot of programmers, at least one lawyer and a few students. Our team had absorbed another team and so there were a lot of new faces both locally and remotely. We kept our work and communications on a combination of a mailing list, a giant wiki, a series of jabber chat rooms, Google docs and spreadsheets, about ten chalboards, some whiteboard material stuck to the chalkboards, and bits of paper scattered all over the place. The team running the hunt communicated with us by phone, email, their web site, and in person. It was a busy net of data transfer. This was especially so for me. I’m used to all the data buzzing back and forth in my day to day life, but not so used to sending and receiving it in a room full of people typing.

My one regret — besides the fact that I don’t live my whole life like this — was that I could not figure out what was necessary to swim in the inviting pool that I passed on my way to the classroom/clubhouse. From what I hear, it’s the robot pool, a pool for aquatic robotics, but I bet I could find a way to swim there. Next year.

Update: a few other posts about the hunt with more details.

Eric Berlin, the hunt leader talks about why parts of the hunt were so screwy and what was going on in the year before the hunt.
The graph that showws us — Codex Bodley — in second place for a lot of the hunt.
Another hunt post-mortem.
Another post-mortem from an organizer, otherwise known as “that guy from Wordplay”

good choices made a long time ago

[sometimes I read my own sent email and I just like it]

Hello,

My name is [$NAME] and I am a high school senior. Two days a week I volunteer at the local public library and am very interested in making a career out of the library field. I read your blog (librarian.net) whenever google reader tells me that you have updated. Today I found out that you attended Hampshire College, the school which I shall be attending next fall. I was wondering if you could tell me about your experiences there.

With immense appreciation, [$NAME]

Hi,

I went to Hampshire sort of a million years ago [1986-1990] and Helaine Selin from Hampshire was my librarian role model because she could find things online [when online was fancy services you had to *subscribe* to mainly] that I had no idea existed. I was there when Adele Simmons was president. I lived in Merill dorms, then Prescott, then Dakin dorms, then Prescott again. Over the summer I lived on campus two out of three summers. I only lived about an hour and a half away so I could go home often if I wanted or needed to, but didn’t go home that much.

I studies linguistics with Steve Weisler and a few other people in the CCS school which I think is called something else now, and creative writing with Lynne Hanley. I took (well, passed) 16 classes the whole four years I was there. I graduated in four straight years which is unusual. I took classes at Amherst, UMass and Mount Holyoke as well. I got to take a writing class at Amherst from David Foster Wallace who is actually not much older than I am.

I always felt like Hampshire was where all the weird kids from every high school wound up and some of them decided to outweird everyone else and some of them decided that since they were now in a group of weirdos, they could just be themselves. I was part of the latter group. It was a strange time. There were a lot of protests over political correctness types of things. There was a takeover of one of the science buildings. It was the year after Andy Hermann killed himself live on public access TV which was a long time ago but still seems like a big deal. You can read more history from about that time at this link. Tim Shary and I went to Hampshire together.

http://library.hampshire.edu/archives/shary/Sharyhistory.html

Fascinating stuff.

I did some extracurricular things. I was part of a film and video club. I was on the volleyball team. I was an artist’s model. I worked at the Farm Center. I threw parties and helped bring bands to campus. I was part of the motorcycle collective. I sort of fit in at Hampshire and liked it there. I am still in touch with MOST of the people I lived with my senior year there and I’m always surprised when I run into other Hampshire people my own age in different places that they are interesting and have done interesting things with their lives. Despite my having enjoyed college well enough, it was in no way the “best times of my life” which I think is entirely okay.

As far as academics, I was pretty self-motivated and this was in my favor. I saw a lot of people drop out because they just couldn’t keep doing work when there weren’t grades or professors hounding them. I think some of those people were better off not being in college but for some of them Hampshire just wasn’t the right place and maybe another school would have been.

It’s an interesting place filled with interesting people. This is the good news and the bed news. There are a lot of people with a lot on their minds. Creative arty types but also just moody melancholy types, or both. There was a suicide or a suicide attempt every year i was there and a lot of drug-and-alcohol fuelled drama that may be typical for colleges but hasn’t been part of my life since.

I went on to library school at the University of Washington at the school they now call the iSchool. It was less of a big deal then, but I was able to get in with nothing but my GRE scores and that stack of recommendations that they call a transcript. I didn’t have any trouble segueing to graduate school. If anything, I felt it was LESS rigorous than Hampshire and all the focus on GPA seemed silly and missing the point of education. I have a weird collection of jobs now that make me pretty happy and I live in rural Vermont in a place not unlike Amherst and rural Massachusetts where I grew up before college.

Lastly, you know those scary dreams about being in some school hallway and realizing you have a test you haven’t prepared for, or a speech you have to give that you didn’t write yet? I never, ever, have them. I think that alone makes me feel that I made the right decision about college.

Jessamyn

what was swum – the last wrap-up post for 2007

I apologize in advance for the extreme wonkiness of this post, again.

swimming 07

So, swimming the length of Lake Champlain didn’t quite work out, but I did pretty okay. As of June, I was ahead by about ten or fifteen miles. However I pulled my shoulder swimming a little too much and then took to my bed for about a month. Well, not exactly, but I didn’t swim in any case. September saw another few weeks out of the pool when I tried to get tricky and do that breathing-out-of-both-sides thing I hear is so popular in freestyle nowadays and pulled some muscle I didn’t know I had. In any case, by the Autumn it was clear that I was either going to have to go full-out towards completing my goal and risk further injury, or go walk around in the leaves some. I made the obvious choice. I still managed to put in 82 miles this year which is less than I’d hoped but pretty awesome in my opinion.

I swam 111 days this year for 82 miles total which is about 3/4 of a mile per swim.
I swam 130 days last year for 79 miles total (it says 80+, I don’t know why I said that, wishful thinking?) which is about 3/5 of a mile per swim.

This year I was away from home even more than last year. I’m calling this all a success. I got special swimmers’ shampoo from my sister for holidaytime and I’m on my fourth swimsuit since this all started way back in Summer 2005. I am also a lifeguard, though it doesn’t come up much. That is the year in swimming.

My year in cities and towns, 2007

There have been a few of these annual lists before this one — 2006, 2005. My guess, if I had to make one, is that this year marks the apogee for me travel-wise and I am likely to get closer to my own home in 2008, maybe. Then again I thought I’d make another post in 2007; I do know that “penultimate” does mean “second to last” and not “best.”

I travelled out of the country five times last year and out of North America twice. I stayed in 38 locations in 45-ish guestrooms and I took 59 photos of them. I was away from home 95 nights, it looks like. This is why I do not have a cat. I did manage to have seventeen houseguests though; charming, every last one of them.

I didn’t do what I did in 2006 and set up a home away from home for the purposes of hiding out. This year was largely work travel, but mostly pleasant work travel at that. Here’s the list for 2007 of places I stayed that were not my house. As before, stars indicate multiple visits to the exact same place. Numbers indicate number of distinct guestrooms at each location. If you’re a frequent business-type traveller too, or any type of traveller really, you might want to check out Dopplr a sort of social software type site for people who move around a lot. I’m on it under my usual name.

Somerville, MA * (2)
Hooksett, NH
San Francisco CA (2)
Manhattan, KS
Perth, AUS
Adelaide, South AUS
Robe, South AUS
Port Fairy, VIC
Geelong, VIC
Melbourne, VIC
Sydney, NSW
Randolph, VT
Kittery, ME
Brooklyn, NY *
Crystal City, VA (2)
Baltimore, MD
Dodge City, KS
Washington, DC
Suffern, NY
Sturbridge, MA (2)
Burlington, VT *
Barre, VT
Boxborough, MA
San Juan, PR
Ann Arbor, MI
Antrim, NH
Manchester, NH *
Westport, MA *
Portland, OR (2)
Seattle, WA
Tatamagouche, NS
Halifax, NS (2)
Antigonish, NS
Truro, NS
Victoria, BC (2)
Lansing, MI *
Dubai, UAE
Abu Dhabi UAE

Thanks as always to the people who put me up or came to visit or had a beer with me on the road or here.

penultimate 2007

I figure I have another day before I make a big list of stuff from 2007. Books and beds mostly. It’s been a banner year for beds and only so-so for books. I always worry when I haven’t been reading much that maybe I’m Done Reading Books and from now on all I’ll be doing is scanning stuff from the Internet and leafing through magazines. So far this has not been the case, though reading was down last year even though air travel was up. I think this may be because movie downloading was also up and as you know my Watch More TV/Movies resolution in 2007 went pretty well.

In fact, it went so well that I’ve been chosen to be a Nielsen Family for February 2008. This, even though I 1) am not a family and 2) told them on the phone that I never watch any TV. Apparently as long as you have a TV, you can be a Nielsen Family. Anyone who has pet shows that they would like me to promote in February, please let me know. In exchange I will give you copies of all the great movies I have been watching, though many of them are DVD screeners or subtitled in German.

I got back from a week down in Massachusetts today. I spent time with my sister, mom, stepmom, and dad in roughly that order and had a good though exhausting time. That’s four people, but seven cats and a dog! Since we’re not real xmas celebrators and everyone in the family is, to put it politely, quirky, figuring out how to honor non-existent family traditions and forge new ones is always a little challenging. I had a great time eating candy with my Mom and sister, cleaning my Dad’s basement with him, having dinner with my stepmom and taking photos of my sister’s loom and her using it. I rode a lot of buses and subways and got a lot of rides to various places.

As always when I get home I’m amazed at how quiet and dark the place is. Sound great? Well the house next door — a sort of copy of this one that the parents who lived in this house built for their children next door, less fancy, similar footprint — is for sale. 210K gets you an 1894 Victorian with three bedrooms and a mother-in-law apt in the back. If you’ve been contemplating a back to the country move, think of Bethel!

totally different stars

My friend Colin Lingle read a story at one of my open mic parties which were semi-regular occurences when I lived in Seattle. I liked it so much I asked him if I could put the story online and he said yes. The title of this post comes from it, the story is called The First Thing. I think the sentiments he expresses are very familiar.

So I’m in Dubai and it’s wonderful and pretty foreign feeling. I took a very crowded flight here which was full of mostly non-Americans and was a little too tightly packed to read all the Wikipedia articles I’d saved about the place. I still haven’t read them. I watched a lot of Doctor Who and the Simpsons movie. When I lived in Romania I remembered visiting Turkey and getting off the train in Istanbul after a long and crowded trip and being amazed that the place smelled like food and … something … instead of garbage and sewage. Dubai smells like flowers and grilled meats and heady incense and someplace else. I type backwards into the Google box. A few sites I like to visit are blocked entirely. The call to prayer wakes me vaguely at 5 am and I’m not sure why I’m awake.

Today is my big talk and the workshops I’m leading, so I’ll feel a lot more settled once they’re behind me and not looming and I’ll be sure to let you know how they are. To work off a little extra nervous energy I went swimming last night in the next door pool. I don’t think I’ve ever been swimming outdoors in a pool at night before (ponds and lakes, sure, but it’s weirdly different doing lap swimming much less wearing a hot pink bathing suit outside in a Muslim country) and, like most other experiences here — besides my morning coffee which I’m enjoying as I type this — it was familiar and yet totally different.

represent

A very busy week is wrapping up here. A very busy week is starting tomorrow. Today is a missing empty day between them.

Last week I went to Providence to give a talk that I briefly mention on librarian.net. It was about agitprop which is a topic that I always assume people know about, but apparently they don’t. It’s just a shortening of agitation/propoganda, the trick being that you need to both explain your good ideas but then urge people towards them. It was of some use during the Communist Era and activists often use it as a tactic. So, this talk that I gave to a bunch of librarians and information scientists talked about my activist background and the idea of getting people to do the things that you think are a good idea. In this case, I meant using new technologies (where “new” still means stuff like email, lord help us all) as well as changing things in a traditional culture generally. I even got to talk about William James and his “genuine option” idea which is one of my favorite hobby horses. It was one of the most heartfelt talks I’ve given in a while because I didn’t have to pretend that I wasn’t some sort of anarchist, or that I don’t really have an issue with the corporatization of librarianship. I got to talk about the danger of palliative technologies that stultify us and make us soft in the face of decreasing social liberties and increasing government nonsense. I was happy with it.

Then I drove home on Thursday in a rainstorm to greet the skiiers that were staying at my place. I belong to a few “hey come stay at my place” websites, most notably Couchsurfing.com and HospitalityClub.org. People rarely take me up on it, but I feel that regular deposits into the Cosmic Karma Bank keep my good luck flowing. So, I got home and was unpacking when my incoming guest called and said he’d be in around 2 am, not 11 pm as he had earlier hoped. I was exhausted and barely awake as it was so I left some lights on, left a note taped on the door with information on where the guestrooms were, and went to sleep. I woke up briefly in the middle of the night hearing footsteps and then woke up in the morning to young men in snowpants wandering around cooking and packing on their way to Killington. They were nice guests who mostly did their own thing and I did mine. They were gone this morning before I fully got out of bed.

I only mention this in detail because I feel like I get inundated with oogy boogy talk concerning just how much risk there is in the world nowadays. My bank tries to make me afraid of identity theft, my insurance company tries to make me afraid of fires and floods. My students’ computers try to make them afraid of their computers being “at risk” when what they are really dealing with is more of a Norton Protection Racket than anything else. There is risk in taking a shower, risk in eating seafood, risk in leaving your car unlocked, and risk in talking to strangers. We hear about these risks all the time, seemingly constantly. But there are also rewards too: being clean, eating tasty food, ease of access and the fact that real people are more interesting than abstract free-floating anxieties. I just figure every so often someone should tell the good stories.