Saturday, May 21, 2011

Dealing with Crazy today

Today I had two of my more paranoid patrons to deal with.

Crazy1 is totally paranoid. He thinks that people are messing with his computer or that people who sit across from him at the library computers are controlling his computer. It's crazy. He's also in the middle of lawsuit against his landlord who he believes has broken into his apartment, stolen his stuff, and tapped his phone and internet. He then believes that his lawsuit against his landlord was thrown out because the judge was a member of his former church which he was excommunicated from for being gay. Oh, did I mention he is an author? Anyways in what I believe to be  uncharacteristic for Crazy1, he has decided to create a facebook account. I am honestly surprised at this but hey what the heck. So he's set up his facebook account and he doesn't understand how facebook works. So I'm helping him out by trying to explain the difference between his profile and his author page. He wants to join groups and then invite all those members to be his friends. I'm trying to explain to him that he can't really do that. One, you don't really have access to a group or page's members and two, people don't usually want to friend you if they don't know you. He kept going on and on about how his page doesn't have any personal information on it and it's just fine and I'm trying to explain to him why it's not fine and how people don't want to share THEIR personal information with him. It would be easier for him to try to promote his page and let people "like" his page rather than friend him on facebook. Le sigh. I don't know if he gets it. But I'm regretting letting him know that I have facebook knowledge. All my coworkers were smart and feigned ignorance. Smart smart smart people!!!

Crazy2 is this guy that has been coming in for the past year or so. He is always doing research on the computers and is accessing databases and ejournals from a school in Alabama. That's fine and great and all. But he also is extremely paranoid. Today he came up to me and told me that last Fall he had us send in a request to our IT department about a virus that was preventing him from accessing certain journals via his school's library. I was very skeptical about this situation but he was adament that our IT department fixed it. I had him show me how he accessed his journals and sure enough there was an issue where the page did not load after a certain point. I even replicated the problem on my computer at the reference desk. But the thing is, the guy wouldn't listen to me. I tried to explain to him that, I'm pretty technically savvy and it honestly seems like a connection problem with the libraries site. In fact there was even a warning at the top of the page that users were having issues with the school's private network. A network that allowed remote access. Some how he thinks this is a virus and it's computer warfare and that our IT guys since we're in CA and have a heavy military presence will have the knowledge and capability to fix this issue. I tried to reiterate that it honestly seems like an issue with thier network and that he should contact that school and see if they are having issues, but he thinks that we can solve this issue. Or at least our IT guys can.

The thing is, the guy claims he is a PhD. And in fact I can see that he has had some very scientific papers published. But he is convinced that his issues are caused by computer viruses and computer warfare. He is convinced that our network goes down because we are being attacked by viruses and terrorists. In reality our network goes down because our system is pretty antiquated.

Oh the library <3

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine

When I was in 6th grade Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and 1 teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. I can specifically remember watching the TV in school that day in Mrs. Hamud's 6th grade class. I don't know why we were allowed to watch it. It was on in the background but I can vividly remember watching it. I remember going home that day and watching the coverage at home and seeing the students running from the school. I remember seeing the SWAT guys. And I remember the ongoing coverage after the shooting, the Trenchcoat Mafia, the fact that they listened to Marilyn Manson, and how violence in music and the media might have caused them to do this horrible thing. 


Mockingbird is the story of an autistic girl who loses her brother to a school shooting. She's trying to navigate her life as an autistic person who doesn't like change and has trouble with seeing emotions in others when a beloved family member is taken from her. Although her brother's death is devastating, it allows Caitlin to progress as a person. Her search for closure ends up bringing her more than just closure but the ability to recognize emotions and empathy for others.