Cause of death: Library shelf

Ten points Megs! ;)

Earlier this week I was diligently writing away at my dissertation. I have really been struggling to get myself to even open the file on my computer lately because I'm so terrified about the idea of having to write it all up and finish my masters degree. But somehow, I plucked up the courage to open it and had actually started writing, when I discovered that I needed a reference. So I did what all lazy post-grad students do: I searched the net for one.

I tend to use a site called science-direct, because the papers that it turns up are the best quality in my field and are generally up to date. So while searching through this site, I came across a paper that I thought could be very useful. There was only one problem. The university doesn't subscribe to that journal.

So, being overly dramatic, I threw my arms up in horror and wailed to my lab-mates about how my life was ruined and that I might as well just give up and open a hot-dog stand because that was my only hope of succeeding at anything in life. Or something to that effect...When Megan, being the voice of sanity and in the process totally killing all the fun of wailing about the meaninglessness of my existence, suggested that I just look on Google Scholar.

I did that and discovered, to partial relief that there was no such article on the web. So I turned to the solution of the non-lazy post-grad: The library.

Our university has a library web site that allows one to search for items based with relative ease. Occasionally you wonder whether the site was actually designed by a pot-plant, given the ridiculous answers it can produce to your queries, but overall, it's really not bad. I searched for the article and discovered that it was located in one of the universities 7 libraries. Which one? I had no idea. It was in a journal called 'The Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology', which as it turned out was discontinued. The reason being that the journal had actually split into several other journals.

Now, the way the library system works here, you are directed through the all-knowing site to a particular library and given the shelf number for what you are looking for. In this case, neither the library, nor the shelf number were evident. So, I assumed that it would most likely be located at the same library where all the psychology journals live and headed there.

I arrived at the library and asked one of the librarians at the front desk if they could help me. After explaining my woes, the librarian looked up at me and, in a sweet but obviously couldn't-give-a-rats-ass tone, asked 'Have you tried looking on the Internet?'. A little annoyed at the patronisation, I told them that I had and had found nothing. They smiled and proceeded to look on the Internet and then tell me all about how they had found nothing.

Defeated, the librarian passed me onto another of her kind. This one repeated the condescending procedure, complete with couldn't-give-a-rats-ass tone and the Internet search. Eventually, having given up, and leaving me feeling a little frustrated, he suggested I go speak to the woman upstairs who was in charge of journals.

We climbed the stairs and approached her desk. After making a half-hearted attempt to explain my saga to her (I'm not kidding! He started speaking to her in another language and, with apparent frustration turned to me and said, 'Tell her your problem...'), she began to try and help me. Her first response: 'Have you looked on the Internet?'

In all fairness, she was much more helpful than the last two had been. She managed to decipher the search results on the library site and discovered that the journal was indeed held in that library. She also managed to find the shelf number for me. So, having found the info we needed, this unlikely couple, a skinny white boy and a rather rotund black librarian, plodded off to the basement of the library where the journals reside.

Once in the basement, a sanctuary for the socially inept and dust mites, we began to check the shelf numbers on the rolling shelves for the section that I sought. For those who have never encountered rolling shelves, they are a fantastic invention, essentially a set of normal library shelves set on railway-like tracks which can be pushed back and forth on the tracks. This allows the library to have many more shelves and books for the same amount of space. The only real down side is that if you move the shelves, you can only really access one section of books at a time. And, any normal person who uses them cannot help but imagine that some unsuspecting student may move the shelves when you are in one of the temporary aisles, crushing you in the process.

The pair of us eventually found the section we were looking for and started to push the shelves back so that we could access the books held within. As we were doing this, we discovered that one of the shelves was stuck! This meant that the maximum space that was available for me to access the journals was an aisle about 40cm wide. Immediately, the librarian decided that she would go seek help and left me at the mercy of the dust mites (the socially inept aren't all that likely to attack, you know, the whole 'they're more afraid of you than you are of them' saga, so you're fairly safe around them...)

Up until then, the whole book-hunting ordeal had taken up about 30min of my time and so I decided to risk becoming human paper and entered the 40cm chasm that we had created in the wall of books. I frantically scanned the book spines on the shelves before me, all the while images of some mildly surprised individual 40 years down the line opening up the shelf as a crispy, paper-thin Luke floated down from the recently separated shelves. To my horror, I realised that the book I sought was located on the very bottom shelf at the end of the aisle. I could never get to it in this scenario as that would require that I be able to kneel down, a feat impossible with only 40cm of space in which to move. Reluctantly I retreated to the outside, resolved to wait for help to arrive.

As I exited the aisle, both the librarian and I, completely unaware of one another's presence there gasped as the two of us nearly collided. She had returned with one of the other librarians and was looking to see if I'd been foolish enough to enter the aisle just as I had been exiting. After some embarrassed apologies, we turned to the second librarian for an education in moving rolling shelves. As it turned out, all we had to do was pull the shelf along with the shelf before it. So we did this and it worked! Thanking the man sheepishly, I returned to the now decently sized space that had been created in search of my book. I managed to grab it and with my librarian assistant, headed back up to the main checkout desk to take the book out.

We arrived at the desk and we discovered, to my horror, that I was actually the first person, since the libraries on campus had gone digital to even look for the book, never mind take it out. So this meant that it wasn't even catalogued in the library system. Screaming on the inside, I graciously passed the book over to my assistant librarian who, with a jolly looking smile, waddled over to the lift to take the book up for cataloguing on the forth floor.

She returned about 10 min later, after I had been asked several times by clueless undergraduates whether I would let them print documents from the computer at the desk behind me, with the tome in tow. She had managed to get it catalogued and it was ready for me to take out! Jumping for joy on the inside I thanked her profusely and had the book checked out. The whole thing had taken 45 min but I finally had what I was looking for!

I got back to my lab and scanned the article, using our school's Bizhub (I am in love with a machine...). Once I was at the safety of my desk, I read through the paper. It was only then that I realised, as I read, that the article was almost completely useless to me...

My first Wits Rant of 2008!

I too think that it is surprisingly early in the year for a rant but it appears that Wits is determined to really piss people off early this year. Good old Wits!

As I am sure many avid blog fundi's who love and worship my blog (big up to you guys!) will know, I have a particular grip with the people who run the university. That is parking. Parking at Wits has always been a very big problem. Several SRC's (Student Representitive Council) have been elected into power based on the premise that they would be the one to sort out the issue of parking on campus. All have failed dismally...

The problem is that the parking office sells more parking permits to students than they actually have parking bays available on campus. Naturally, while the parking office doesn't mind because it ensures them a steady income of money and to practically no cost whatsoever on their part, this leaves the students of the campus in a smidgen of a messy situation. The problem is always made worse at the beginning of the year because that is when everyone is on campus. All the new 1st years are around, most of which drop out by the mid-year exams, and all the postgrads feel that they must make an appearance to prove that they do exist and are working (even when they are not).

So, this year, in a flash of sheer genius that only the bovine, incompetant cretins of the parking office are capable of, it was decided that the already-scarce parking would be limited further as the staff of the small shopping centre on campus needed to have parking allocated specifically to them. So, who lost their parking you must be wondering?

Well, to compliment the bovine incompetance of the previous decision, it was decided that the postgraduate parking would be forfeit for the sake of the employees of the Matrix (shopping centre). So, the 300 odd parking bays which were available to postgrads were reserved for the 15 odd workers at the matrix. So what happens to the postgrads? The story gets better!

The postgrads, have been religated to park in the parking on the other side of campus which has always been the parking of the undergraduates. So this means that now we share all the parking of undergraduates between the undergrads and the postgrads, naturally leading to rage, conflict and the occasional bumper-bashing in the parking lots. In a vain attempt to ease the pressure on the postgrads, it was decided that the parking was to be shared between all students from 2nd year up. All first years have been told to park in a parking area that is miles away from everything. While I don't object to this, what I do object to is the distinct lack of any plan to prevent the 1st years from abusing the system and doing whatever the hell they want.

So, the current situation is thus: Postgrads all over the university are furious; many of whom are considering not coming in to campus at all simply because it is too stressful to even try. Undergraduates are fuming because their available parking has been reduced by about a third, leaving them between a rock and a hard place. The parking office is sitting on a large pile of money paid to them for parking permits and is refusing to discuss or acknowledge the problems of the other parties (personal observation - I actually went to discuss the sitaution with them. They didn't give a shit...).

Ah the joys and freedoms of the student life...

Life without light

We work very hard on field trips!

Hi all!

This post is not anywhere near as serious as the title hints. I'm just writing about how, for the last three days, I have had to camp in my own house. It is all because as most South Africans can testify, we are not all that good at grasping and understanding this concept of public service and community.

The reason why I say that I have had to camp in my own home is that we have had no electricity for the last three days! It's been insane! There was some problem and our power went out some time very early on Monday morning. I woke up to find that our house was unusually cold, despite the fact that we don't actually have any heaters in operation at the moment. I recieved a phone call on my cell phone, which incidentally was in the final throws of battery death, tried very hard to answer the call and for some inexplicable reason, couldn't. So, I got up and tried to plug my phone in to recharge the battery.

Now, usually, I do have problems getting the plug of my cell phone charger to actually make a decent connection so that I can actually charge my phone. So, this morning, when I plugged it all in and failed to get any hint of recharging it didn't strike me as particularly strange.

I sometimes like to listen to music in the mornings to wake me up a little. So on this morning, I pressed the play button on my CD player before I tried to plug in my phone. It was at this point that I noticed something odd. There was nothing happening. Not even that familiar whirring sound that usually preceeds the music. So, I sat up and looked at the CD player. That was when I realised that we had no power.

Now, power failures in SA are not entirely uncommon. We have them from time to time, however they tend to last about an hour or two at the most. This one went on for THREE DAYS! We are very fortunate however as we are one of the few families that I know that have solar heated water. It's great because it means that we still had hot water! The only down side was that we had to go and fetch the water from our pool area as that is where the solar unit thingy is. We also had to invent a new style of washing which involved getting a bucket of hot water and a sponge. You would then use the sponge to generate a kind of spray, similar to an actual shower only much less satisfying.

Then, our prayers were answered this morning! I awoke to my father sitting at a computer, checking his e-mail. The power had been restored!!! So, tonight I look forward to a shower instead of a 'bucket' as we began to call the new cleaning process. Also, I don't have to worry about concerving my battery life on my laptop! Yay!

In hindsight, it was actually rather scary to realise just how dependent we are on our electricity. It felt as if our lives had come to a complete stand-still because we couldn't watch TV or surf the web. It's rather sad really. All the same, I am thrilled to have it all back!

As an aside, I went to prize-giving this evening and finally recieved the prize for the mysterious money which I recieved a while back. It was cool! I got a post-it note with something along the lines of 'If you have any problems, please contact Mrs. Adele Katz'

Random Fact Of The Day:

Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries

The mysterious money mystery!

I've solved it! Actually, all it took was a trip to the campus bank branch and a hike up to the finance people on the 7th floor but I know where the mysterious money came from!

For those who are completely lost here, earlier this week, I received R11 000 from my university with no apparent explanation. I was alerted to this when I received a phone call from someone in the amazing (sarcasm) Wits admin world demanding that I return the R1000 that they had accidentally put into my account. As it turns out, that money is a prize that I won from the university for being one of the top TA's. The really stupid part is that they now want me to give them back their money so that I can then receive it from them as a cheque at the university award ceremony! How retarded is that! I think that at the ceremony, they should just give me little piece of paper with 'Oh, you lucky boy!' written on it and I'll act just as happy and surprised!

In other news, not really much has happened. I have been watching the news in the morning (I generally try to avoid watching the news, period) and have come to realise that cricket is certainly not the 'gentlemen's sport' as we were all lead to believe it was! I'm talking about the recent murder of the Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer. It's scary to think that people could be that serious about cricket! I mean, you can maybe understand it with one of those hooligan games, like soccer or rugby (I don't know much about Aussie Rules but I'm sure it could easily fit in here too) but cricket? What is this world coming to...

The week has been rather hectic but kinda slow at the same time. I have had lots of hastles with my 1st year students. They keep handing in work about a week late. It's really bad for them because, I work on a principal of 10% being deducted for each day that the work is late. It generally works to motivate people to hand stuff in on time, but for some reason, one student has consistently handed in really late. It got really bad with his last hand-in where I had to take off 70% of his mark! He would have gotten 80% for his work had it been in on time!

Well, I'm not sure how many of you remember my rise to fame as an 'Isidingo' extra? This Sunday is the week omnibus and I'll be on TV! Yay! I'm in two of the bar scenes; one where Maggie gets a job as a gossip columnist, and the other where Maggie gets into trouble for writing some of her stuff. You must all watch! Naturally, if you live in another country, I don't expect you to watch it...heh heh.

My cousin came over last night to work on some music for a movie he is doing as a project. He goes to AFDA, the South African film school, with a non-sensical acronym. He is studying to be a director (very exciting!) and he is currently directing his second movie. We made a track for one of his actors to sing to last night. It was so much fun! It is a kind of glam rock thing. It sounded so cool! If I can ever figure out how to post audio on this site, I'll do that.

Well peeps, that is all that I have for you for now!

Random Fact For The Day:

Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors and it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa's lips