ALA
Ok, today was the ALA exhibit at McCormick Place in Chi-town... so I had to get up early... which I don't like doing. The trip there was an hour and ten minutes, not bad for Chicago traffic... we get to McCormick Place and out of our nicely air conditioned into the stifling heat (in reality it was like a 30 second walk but still), and we actually get inside, and we have to pull out our badges (but most of the staff dont' realize this) to get into the exhibits... most of the staff are all clumped together... while Jewel and I just keep walking right along, let the rest of the staff ask for help....
anyway, I didn't realize how big the exhibit hall was huge... there were so many exhibits to see, and so much free stuff you wouldn't believe it... Free books, bookmarks, graphic novels, product literature, and the like.... Jewel and I ended up with 3 full bags each... I must have 15 or so books... all free... some advanced copies, some not... I'm going to keep the signed books for myself....
I ran into a former librarian he works for a shelving company... I like the shelving, it moves for space saving... it would work well in archival areas.... our main library has a basement that I think it would work well in....
We ended up walking around the entire exhibit area, many places twice, but I'm pretty sure we saw every exhibit that was available for us to see....
the product that I want the most is the Canon scanner we saw a demo of.... it can scan up to 25 pages per minute in black and white, and 13 pages per minute in color... it comes in two parts that would allow somebody to buy just the scanning portion, or just the flatbed portion.... and a bonus is that the USB cables comes with the scanner (not typically done in today's market).
I did meet Bill Barnes of Unshelved. He seems nice... I would have liked to have bought all three of the Unshelved volumes, but I do not have the money right now....
Lunch options for the day were minimal, McDonalds, or we would have had to lug all of our stuff around the city (no way was I doing that, I don't think Jewel was going to either) So Eric, Jess N, Jewel and I all went to Mickey D's for lunch, but Jewel managed to spill her drink all over the floor, I saw it happening too...
Jewel and I were in search of "bling" today, which was a flashing button that we couldn't find....
The trip home took almost 2 hours, and we went from I55 to Illinois 126... although we had several opportunities to use alternative routes... but we ended up going down 59, which wasn't too bad until we got close to home...
It was my first time going to ALA exhibits, but I have been to exhibits in DC if you recall. It was also Jewel's first time going to ALA, she had a blast, despite the heavy load of materials we were carrying...
Well after ALA, I still had school... I stopped to get gas for my car, and it took 50 minutes to get to school... never good... I would have gone up to labs, but I didn't feel like walking up the stairs, after driving for that long, and walking all day, so I just sat and talked to two guys from class....
And that's where I'm at now, typing this up... I'm going to wait for a little bit and take a quiz, maybe I'll post on that tomorrow... we'll see...
There's supposed to be a meeting tomorrow morning at 10:00, I'm not sure if I'm going to go... we'll see... it is a scheduled day off, so I will see what I decide... I do have my alarm set, but I might just turn it off when it goes off.... who knows...
Off topic: On the topic of school, I need to buy a switch for next class, buy the books for next class... and I need to sign up for classes.
I'm planning on starting a page of stupid quotes...