If I'd wanted schoolin', I woulda gone to school. Oh, wait...

[active_apathy]

And so ends another day of learnifying. Or, rather, another day of icebreaking exercises and autobiographical soliloquies from the teaching staff.

But first, an observation. Today happened to fall between the 13th and 15th of February. Yey. This is the first one in four years for which I've been all by my lonesome, and, well, it came and went like a perfectly normal day. This makes me happy, since it seems to mean that a certain upsetting individual is no longer as upsetting.

And now, on to the day's events.

The learning today consisted of two things:

• The definitions of 'data', 'information' and 'knowledge' are all important, but are hopelessly circular and can get to be thorougly existential. And, well, no-one else can tell the difference anyway.
• Modern libraries are full of electrical things. Electrical things can electrofry you. Getting electrofried is bad. Don't get electrofried.

Also, we have a little training library set up in one of the IT faculty's teaching rooms. It has a smallish collection... which looks fairly big, when compared with the campus library. The campus library is squishytiny; while it's physically bigger than my high school's library, its collection is smaller (!). A goodly bit of its space is devoted to computers, two-thirds of which I can't use.

And I should probably buy a ruler for my cataloguing classes. Problem is, in my experience there's two kinds of rulers - ones that go bendy, and ones that break. Plastic and wooden ones break. Steel ones go bendy. Very bendy. 90° bendy. 90° in two different places bendy. I don't even know how it could've happened bendy.

My rulers don't have distances marked. They have a kind of ruler bodycount.

Comments

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

::hugs::

I say buy a wooden ruler, because when it breaks it'll be useful for smaller things that need ruling, as opposed to a bendy in two places metal ruler that will help no-one.

And now, you must edit this post to reflect your promise.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

*squishes*

Maybe I should promise to not get electrofried.

[raptor-au.livejournal.com]

Maybe your bending unit has an unsatisfied desire and is sleepbending.

Really glad you had a good Day After the 13th of Feb Day. Normally, yes, it's a very very sucky experience, but just sometimes it's full of wonderful chocolately self-realisation and caramel-filled empowerment. Nummy.

And...there was electocution?

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

There's electrofrying in the textbook. In fact, there's a drawing of an outline on the floor, with the damaged power lead from an overhead projector running over the top of its foot.

[raptor-au.livejournal.com]

But that's stereotyping outlines as clumsy and ignorant of the laws of electicity!

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I think they mean to suggest that the outline once had a person inside it.

[raptor-au.livejournal.com]

...this completely changes every crime show I have ever seen. I thought Grissom and co on CSI were actually investigating some inner-city chalk-outline gang war and just never mentioning it.

[mrpyro.livejournal.com]

The definitions of 'data', 'information' and 'knowledge' are all important, but are hopelessly circular and can get to be thorougly existential. And, well, no-one else can tell the difference anyway.

Now I'm trying to remember the differences between the three. I can remember that data is just raw facts without any interpretation (points on a graph, so to speak), and knowledge is interpreting the data so that you actually know what it means, but I can't remember where information falls.

I hear being electrofried hurts. I'd avoid it.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Data is raw fact.
Information is data that's been organised or sorted in some way, and is relevant for whatever's being done.
Knowledge is applied and evaluated information.

And then it gets a bit tricky, because those definitions are in no way absolute. One person's knowledge becomes another's data and that makes things messy.

[mrpyro.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. Kind of. It has been taught to me before: it's just been a long time, back when I was knee-high to a grasshopper*.


*It was a quite large grasshopper

[selenitia.livejournal.com]

My thoughts on today.
Tomorrow's the *day after*. All that candy goes on sale.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm...

The Day After Hallmark Day: All chocolate, half-price.

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

She's right you know.

[selenitia.livejournal.com]

And I only work three hours tomorrow! (I'm *so* hitting Walgreens tomorrow.)

El Goonish Shive has a nice Hallmark Day filler.
Its cute.

I love El Goonish Shive.

[one-bullet-left.livejournal.com]

Wow. I didn't know I had a genuine regicide on my flist. With your talent for offing rulers there are a few other countries in the world you should visit...

[mrpyro.livejournal.com]

GWB has always struck me as being a little wooden.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

First you'll have to mark some distances on him.

[xfunkydoryx.livejournal.com]

You could get one of those that are meant to bend?

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Yes; a bendyruler would certainly be useful.

*makes note to find a bendyruler*

...

*also makes note to track its lifespan on a calendar*

[shaysdays.livejournal.com]

This makes me happy, since it seems to mean that a certain upsetting individual is no longer as upsetting.

That is a wonderful feeling. Yay for you!

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Yay indeed. :)

[laurenmitchell.livejournal.com]

I am glad that your certain upsetting individual is no longer upsetting. I am also glad that you have someone to use heart icons at.

For my own part, I celebrated V-Day with Discworld injokes.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Oooh... Discworld jokes..

[laurenmitchell.livejournal.com]

Yes. On account of him playing Carrot and me playing Sybil in Men at Arms three years ago. It never gets old.

[leila82.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you should buy many rulers, so that when one somehow dies, another will magically be there to take it's place? And you could have a variety, because you never know when you might need to use a ruler that is metal to conduct things, or alternately, when you might need to measure some fallen power lines, in which case metal would not be the way to go. And clearly, the electrofri-cation nature of libraries would suggest that steel might be a dangerous sort of ruler?

Mmmm chocolate.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

It might be a dangerous sort of ruler, and doubtless you can tell me exactly why being electrofried is bad for you.

And, yes. Mmmmchocolate.