A Few Quick Notes 377

-Today was a little on the cool side. At the moment the reported temperature is -6. Not surprisingly, I get the sense that things are a little cooler in other parts of the country. While we had a little bit of snow a few days ago, there is really not much to show for it at the moment.

-My friend Peter, a new Dal library student, is crashing with us for a night or two before he heads back to St. John's for Christmas. A few minutes ago he asked me a few questions about Dialog, a database aggregation service that is used in the library context. This really reminded me of this time of year in 2006 when I too was working on a Dialog project at the end of my first term of library school. As Dialog uses a command drive search interface it isn't particularly surprising that I wasn't as helpful as I might have been in December 2006 (I remember the concepts, just not the specific commands).

-I have been really cutting back on caffeine for the past two days. I was starting to notice that I was consuming so much that I was reducing my level of productivity. One of the major problems was that I was unable to get to sleep at a reasonable time, which meant that I was throwing my schedule more and more out of whack and not really getting more done.

Anyway, so far it looks as though the decision has been a good one and I may try to stick to my current low level of consumption (a liter of coffee a day).

-I came across some rather good news recently. It seems that my former roommate in Montreal has been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, which he will be taking up in October. While I have been incredibly pleased when other friends have been awarded scholarships and fellowships I think that none have made me happier than hearing about this award. I really think that they picked a great candidate.

-I should get back to work, I have all kinds of it to do.