I saw multiple Michael Jacksons, Harry Potters, Scooby Doos, and after we came inside, we watched a new Rolling Stones video. What century is this?

The stuff we offered:

- seven pounds mixed small candies (approx 250 pieces)
- 100 "better" fun size candies
- 30 character lollipops
- 40 sour pop rocks
- 50 gummy body parts
- sticker sheets
- very loud whistles

by the time we ran out, the streets were almost empty.

Scariest costume: little FBI guy
Best throwback: Radar from M*A*S*H
Most popular: princess

I dressed like a bee, Jim opted for no costume this year. Pix are blurry but give you an idea

https://www.flickr.com/photos/iamthebestartist/albums/72177720336436717/

I live in the neighborhood where most kids in the county come to trick or treat, primarily because there's a downtown event earlier in the day and the streets are empty and houses are close together. I've been giving out candy here on and off (with friends before I lived here) for nineteen years. Here's my by-the-numbers report from this year.

It was cold but not raining or snowing which made for a good/busy evening. We had our first trick or treater a bit before 5 and ran out of candy about 7

Book 78: Meeting New People. I picked this up based on Lavery's name and it was... fine. The main character, a 60 year old woman who maybe overthinks things, has been broken up with by her best friend. Now she needs a new one, but how does someone go about that, at her age and with her level of specificity about how she feels about life and other things? It's a lot of her thinking about people (and food) and how she feels about them and herself. It's well written but not much happens in it.

Friday afternoon reminder to not empty your inbox at the expense of someone else's. I live in a neighborhood that gets absolutely mobbed on Halloween and I am up for it! I have a porch to decorate, a costume to assemble, and bags and bags of candy to organize. And I los^H^H^H GAIN an hour on Sunday. I need that hour. It's no wonder I am not too concerned about my inbox.

Image credit: Florida Memory on Flickr Commons
https://flickr.com/photos/floridamemory/10573278664/

The first word sent on the Internet were sent on this day in 1969 between UCLA and Stanford. That word was "lo" because they meant to say "login" but the computer crashed.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/meet-the-professor-who-was-there-when-the-internet-was-turned-on

Just sent my library director a list of graphic design changes she should make to our new library email signature blocks (which she made on Canva).

Wanted to include this meme about why my specificity about font color and alignment is just part of my overall tech nerdiness, but I don't think she speaks meme.

Like everyone, I have a newsletter. Unlike everyone, it's on EmailOctopus and also available online at Medium without subscribing or, I think, logging in (lmk?). Latest issue is out today: good library news, library visiting, AI nonsense. If you want to subscribe, there's a link in the footer. I'll also always post it here.

https://medium.com/tilty/tilt-103-still-on-the-horse-the-race-is-improving-3a1275753a0e

Book 77: Lucky Day. First, it is pure coincidence that this is book 77. Also, I have no idea what I thought this book would be, I just knew Chuck Tingle for his heart of gold and his "pounded in the butt" books. This was a book about unlikely events, a weird bout with nothingness both real and imagined, and some truly spectacular carnage. Great plot, a little gruesome for me personally, but I was pretty sure it would come around in the end and it did. I'll definitely try some of his other books.

Another "I saw this at work" where I wondered who that person was. Turns out he was a Polish immigrant to the US who worked as an itinerant photographer all around Africa even before Roosevelt had gone there. The article had been a rejected draft on Wikipedia from May, I beefed it up, found citations and added the photo and resubmitted. This guy's work gives off major colonialist vibes but it's also very early photography of places not previously photographed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Dutkewich

Sleaford Mods have been been making music since 2007. Andrew Fearn joined the band in 2012. Despite this, the Andrew Fearn page on Wikipedia was just a redirect to the band page. The other band member, Jason Williamson, had his own page too. This is dumb, and now fixed. Bonus: there were already free images of Fearn on Wikimedia Commons so the page looks nice and it's a great one. I'm ok with more men on Wikipedia if they're artsy queer beardos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Fearn

I saw this weird little plane when I was at work and thought "What the hell was that?" Turns out it was the Emsco Arctic Tern, not findable on Wikipedia because the arctic tern article is about birds and Emsco did not have a Wikipedia page even though many of their planes did. Early aviation stuff is so wild, just men building weird shit and flying it and crashing. I grew up under the flight path of a small airport and will always have an interest in this stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emsco_Aircraft_Corporation

Drop-In Time toots were popular this week. A lot of people (relatively speaking) asked about how the setup worked. This blog post which I'd written in 2018 is actually pretty accurate to what I do today. A few changes:

- I do it at the public library now (and once a month at a senior living place)
- I will occasionally do a house call (library pays for this) or email support
- we no longer have a local adult ed program or a coffee shop where you can run a tab

https://www.librarian.net/stax/4841/ask-a-librarian-how-does-drop-in-time-actually-work/

Friday afternoon reminder to not empty your inbox at the expense of someone else's. I'm currently engaged in one of Vermont's mostly widely enjoyed competitive sports: not turning your boiler/furnace on until you absolutely have to. My bedroom has a heat pump and it is fine. The kitchen has a pellet stove and it is fine. I am typing in another room and I've only got so much time on these fingers. Have a comfortable weekend.

image credit: Preus Museum, on Flickr Commons
https://www.flickr.com/photos/56434318@N05/32856644152/

Thanks to @jessamyn 's excellent posts, I have seen several people express interest in starting a library tech drop in at their local library, which is a fantastic idea. Libraries are all about people helping people! I wanted to share a thread with a few tips for people looking to start a meetup/help group at their library.

First, check to make sure a thing like that doesn't already exist - and if it does, don't think "they have it covered" - go help! Programs like this always need more people. If they do have one already, think about how you might help get the word out, it's so hard to get the message out about these things to people who need them. (1/4)

It was a long day but with more Ws than Ls, made tougher by the fact that the library is always underheated and I was so busy my tea got cold. I ran into a lot of friends at the library and stayed to chat because even though the library was cold, it was warmer than my house. I went home with a book of Billy Collins poetry and cranked my pellet stove up. EOM

I talked him through how I did not *think* they would make you do that (but I've seen weirder VT tech things) so maybe show me? The vibe I got was that he may have been second-guessing if he was on a real VT website, or just had a use case in his head which was maybe not totally explicable. I said we could reset his password but he said maybe another day,

Last up was my friend Kevin who lost his job last week (he was also in last week because he'd gotten information on his severance package in a PDF that he couldn't open) who wanted to know if we could "get his Google password out of his phone." I said maybe, but if he was already logged in to his email why did he need it? He said something about needing to log in to the Vermont Department of Labor with his Gmail password.

Gary just wanted the notifications from the various PDF applications to stop. I mean, he didn't know that is what they were, only that he was trying to use his phone and he kept getting annoyingly interrupted by something that was talking about PDFs. Gary doesn't know what a PDF is. I deleted every scammy looking PDF app from his phone which seemed like a better option than disabling notifications.

Ray wanted to know how to scan a QR code so he could get some introductory offer from a credit card company which only had a QR code as the way to get it. I showed him how his camera could be used as a QR code scanner and how to see what it was doing. He was able to do it on his own and was able to fill out the rest of the form on his phone.