Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 6 minutes!
Granted, "Form, Die" ruins the joke a bit.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



Thanks for the replies, all! Yeah, I suspected I should be ignoring the "die", but I used to work for a used CD store back when those existed in the late 90's, and we filed those bands under "d" (so that's how I have them on my shelf). I will not only correct that error, but use it as a nice bit of introducing-the-song banter when playing tracks by those bands. Eg., "Now the name of this band is Die Haut, but I'm playing it tonight instead of 4 weeks ago because (blah blah German definite article blah)". Thanks!

PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
The inability of iTunes to ignore el/la/los/las in titles is a continuing source of frustration for me. I’m firmly on the side of ignoring articles in every language when alphabetising.

My Lovely Horse
Aug 21, 2010

I retag all my music files before they go into the proper collection that serves as Winamp's library folder. I remove any article that simply designates plural (The Beatles, The Rolling Stones; also Die Krupps), I leave any article in that accompanies a proper noun (The Cure; Die Haut). My unscientific reason is that it looks weird having just "Cure" in your list of artists, but not "Beatles". I also fill in the ARTISTSORT tag without any articles or indeed spaces or special characters, it's also where I enter artist's personal names surname first, and I intend to figure out one of these days how to get Winamp to sort by that field.

ante
Apr 9, 2005

SUNSHINE AND RAINBOWS
It turns out, the librarians were the weirdos in public libraries all along

DerekSmartymans
Feb 14, 2005

The
Copacetic
Ascetic

Antivehicular posted:

I recall a very old (and non-SA) message board thread from an adult-video-store clerk who cited the VHS version of this problem as the worst part of her job. Seems legit.

Keyboard goop.

DerekSmartymans
Feb 14, 2005

The
Copacetic
Ascetic

quote:

there he is again, palm-slapping the glass like he's trying to get a Chronicle of Riddick VHS in there

:vince:

DerekSmartymans
Feb 14, 2005

The
Copacetic
Ascetic

mercenarynuker posted:

I would play Encarta Mind Maze as OTJ training

Sounds like Scientology to me. Operating Thetan: Justice.

Just give Karl Urban a real gun and send him to Clearwater.


Edit: j/k about that. I don’t need any more Mormons visitors, either.

Quad-edit: didn’t realize I was talking to myself. I just found/read this thread and didn’t peek at the end. You can tell by the time stamps on the posts not being one after another 🤥

DerekSmartymans fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Nov 9, 2019

DONT TOUCH THE PC
Jul 15, 2001

You should try it, it's a real buzz.

JacquelineDempsey posted:

I got tapped to do a radio show, and I've decided, as a former library serf, that the theme is gonna be "A thru Z". Every week I'll bring you stuff by the letter [whatever]. I'm having a blast sifting and ripping my collection of CDs, but one thing is nagging me: I have a lot of German bands. Do I list these under "D" because they are Die Haut, Die Krupps, etc, or under the [whatver the band name is after the German equivalent of "the"]?

This reminds me of the anger people had at us sorting Icelandic and Japanese authors according to the nations custom, oh the anger people directed at us for putting Yrsa Sigurðardóttir under the Y and not the S and them getting even more huffy when we pointed out that it would be improper for us to put it under the S.

Oh Falsehoods people believe about names!

DONT TOUCH THE PC fucked around with this message at 12:29 on Nov 15, 2019

DeadFatDuckFat
Oct 29, 2012

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.


DONT TOUCH THE PC posted:

This reminds me of the anger people had at us sorting Icelandic and Japanese authors according to the nations custom, oh the anger people directed at us for putting Yrsa Sigurðardóttir under the Y and not the S and them getting even more huffy when we pointed out that it would be improper for us to put it under the S.

Oh Falsehoods people believe about names!

We use CARL as our software. Everything has to be in caps. The software also can't correctly handle when someone has more than one last name, so last names have to be hyphenated or just smushed together. This software is garbage. Do not let your library systems switch to CARL X. Also look at the stupid web address for the company that makes it https://tlcdelivers.com/

occamsnailfile
Nov 4, 2007



zamtrios so lonely
Grimey Drawer

DONT TOUCH THE PC posted:

This reminds me of the anger people had at us sorting Icelandic and Japanese authors according to the nations custom, oh the anger people directed at us for putting Yrsa Sigurðardóttir under the Y and not the S and them getting even more huffy when we pointed out that it would be improper for us to put it under the S.

Oh Falsehoods people believe about names!

Our university system has like a twelve character limit for first names. In 2019. Instead of making the first name field longer, we instead have an internal "full legal name" field that can be used for printing diplomas and transcripts and whatnot, but the truncated name will still appear every time you log into your university account or use other basic systems. Good job, university.

T-man
Aug 22, 2010


Talk shit, get bzzzt.

My alma mater was apparently still running partially on FORTRAN mainframes in 2015.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

That's actually kind of comforting. There's a lot less to gently caress up. Like, a system written in FORTRAN in the 70s will certainly still have bugs, but by now all of the bugs are known and possibly even documented and nobody is going to download a patch with a zero-day exploit or suddenly find their drivers are now obsoleted or whatever.

Plus, some 70 year old programmers are poor and still need work.

DONT TOUCH THE PC
Jul 15, 2001

You should try it, it's a real buzz.

T-man posted:

My alma mater was apparently still running partially on FORTRAN mainframes in 2015.

In my post librarian career I had to support FORTRAN-77 at a physics institute :gonk:

Leperflesh posted:

Plus, some 70 year old programmers are poor and still need work.

That reminds me of a story from one of my programmer colleagues, who relayed a story from his programmer grandma (yes he was a third generation programmer) about how an ex-colleague was whisked away from a mountaintop in his retirement by a company that needed his ancient programming skills to unfuck a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 6 minutes!
I remember Andrew Eldritch once going on a rant about how his drum machine still runs software from the 80s because it just works.

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



occamsnailfile posted:

Our university system has like a twelve character limit for first names. In 2019. Instead of making the first name field longer, we instead have an internal "full legal name" field that can be used for printing diplomas and transcripts and whatnot, but the truncated name will still appear every time you log into your university account or use other basic systems. Good job, university.

Continuing this derail I started (sorry, y'all) --- that bit reminded me of a mildly amusing story about how my high school's IDs and report cards got printed back in the late 80s. First names got truncated at six letters. So everyone named Christopher, Christian, Christine... Yeah, we had a whole lotta teenage messiahs running around upstate NY at the time.

Leperflesh
May 17, 2007

my mother's first name - not her first and middle, not her first and last, her legal first name as a child, was "Mary Christina". Her school stuff always truncated that to "Mary Christ".

She went by Tina from the age she could first talk and did not recognize that as even being her, when she was really young. Really confused the nuns at the catholic school.

Jet Jaguar
Feb 12, 2006

Don't touch my bags if you please, Mr Customs Man.



This has been such a great thread to read.

I've done several library stints: worked at the gifts unit of my university library for years, had a summer job as a page in the city library. Then after college I was the computer wrangler for a bunch of classrooms in an academic library, which later became working for the systems librarian.

Academic libraries are weird. I miss the office with a door, but not much else.

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34



Leperflesh posted:

my mother's first name - not her first and middle, not her first and last, her legal first name as a child, was "Mary Christina". Her school stuff always truncated that to "Mary Christ".

She went by Tina from the age she could first talk and did not recognize that as even being her, when she was really young. Really confused the nuns at the catholic school.

Now I've got this stuck in my head:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcCzEB_-NTs

Freudian
Mar 23, 2011

I never posted my story here.

I volunteer at my local library - community-run because of budget cuts, vote Labour, tar and feather Tories and yellow Tories, etc etc. Most of the staff are women in their 60s and above, because who else has free time at 11am on a Thursday morning? (other than me).

So that morning, the phone rings, and a guy is asking if we take donations. The donations processing corner is kind of overstocked at the moment, but I never like to say no to free books. He says he'll be round later today.

I come back from a bathroom break to see a big guy bringing in a giant cardboard box. Which he dumps on top of two other giant cardboard boxes. "I'll get the others from the car," he says. The librarian on shift with me comes over and asks if I've had a phonecall this morning that I forgot to mention. I consider moving to Mexico.

By the time he's left, there are six huge boxes filled with books. We can barely even find space to put the boxes - luckily I find some space under the shelves in the children's section.

We decide, okay, let's open the boxes up and see what condition they're in. If they're all yellowing then we have an excuse to just dump them out. So I open one of the boxes, and pick out a book. It's in good condition - white pages, no dog-earing - and it has two men on the cover with their nipples out. I turn over to the blurb and it's Amazon gay werewolf porn. I pull out another book. Nipples out, gay werewolf porn. Every book in that box is either an old bodice-ripper, Amazon self-published gay werewolf porn, or one single copy of the Idiot's Guide to Yorkshire Terriers, which for some reason fills me with more dread than anything else.

Like I said, the only people we tend to have in at this time on a Thursday are women in their 60s and above. None of them have ever seen anything like this before. One asks, "is it explicit?" I open up one of the books, see the words "rhythmic stroking", close it, and say "yes". They ask how I know what gay werewolf porn is. I don't know how to answer. Then someone asks, "are all the boxes full of this?" This is when I remember that I put the other boxes in the children's section. Thank god, we don't have any kids in, because the answer is "yes". There are six large boxes of gay werewolf porn and bodice rippers in our library, and in our children's section, because of me, and the library coordinator is coming in this afternoon. Someone is suggesting we put them in the bin, someone else is suggesting we leave them on the doorstep of a nearby library, but I realise the only way these books are leaving the library before the afternoon shift, when the mums and kids will start to come in, is if I phone the guy back and ask him to please take away his six boxes of werewolf porn.

To his credit, he agrees to take them back, but only if I leave them out by the gate. While I'm bringing them out, I have time to think, and I remember he had an old man with him when he brought the boxes, who seemed very upset about something. I can't verify any of this, of course, but I think A) this was his dad, and B) this was his dad's entire porn library. The boxes were gone by the time I came off shift, and I hope the dad managed to keep his favourites.

So that question from the job interview - what was your worst mistake and how did you fix it? I now have an answer.

number 1 snake fan
Jul 16, 2018

Freudian posted:

I never posted my story here.

Incredible

DeadFatDuckFat
Oct 29, 2012

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.


When I first started working for the public library, there was this homeless dude who never wore shoes and never spoke because he had taken a vow of silence. He would communicate via small handwritten notes. He once gave the staff coconuts.

JacquelineDempsey
Aug 6, 2008

Women's Circuit Bender Union Local 34




Agreed! Thanks for posting that!

DeadFatDuckFat posted:

When I first started working for the public library, there was this homeless dude who never wore shoes and never spoke because he had taken a vow of silence. He would communicate via small handwritten notes. He once gave the staff coconuts.

I must know more. Like, how many coconuts?

The shoe-less factor reminded me of a situation we had with a group that rented our theatre regularly. They were a southeast Asian religious group, the name of which escapes me now, that, as part of their services, went around barefoot. I remember going to the asst director and asking, "uh, is this okay?" because I grew up thinking every public place pretty much has a "no shirts, no shoes: no service" policy. I didn't want to dunk on someone else's religious beliefs, especially a minority group, so I checked first. She dutifully contacts the county attorney that handled all our weird questions, and turns out we didn't really have such a policy --- it had never come up. The end decision was: they could take off their shoes in the theatre, but if someone had to come out to use the restroom or whatever, they had to put shoes on.

That attorney probably loved getting calls from us because it was always bizarre questions that no doubt relieved the tedium of day to day stuff. (I would, at least.) "Hey, we have a patron who wants to bring her parrot in, claiming it's a support animal?"

I can't remember if I posted this story or not... a BIG debate was had about whether or not people could bring guns in (we're an open carry state). The ultimate decision was patrons could carry, staff could not. Lots of heated board arguments about that one.

[now I have "This is America" stuck in my head]

DeadFatDuckFat
Oct 29, 2012

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.


I think it was just a couple coconuts. Pretty sure the staff there didn't do much with them because wtf. That particular branch has a lot of problem patrons. Just a couple months ago, they caught a guy trying to steal someone's phone and when he left, he threw a big ol rock through the glass window in the kids area, shattering the window. This was in the middle of the day. There were kids and parents right there. Really hosed up.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
Y'all are making me really, really not miss libraries.

I'm still in touch with a former coworker from my last full-time library job (public library), and according to her that particular library has only gone further downhill since I was fired. We'd all been praying our manager would get fired or reassigned.

Turns out, someone was listening. And a finger on the monkey's paw curled up.

nm
Jan 28, 2008

"I saw Minos the Space Judge holding a golden sceptre and passing sentence upon the Martians. There he presided, and around him the noble Space Prosecutors sought the firm justice of space law."

JacquelineDempsey posted:

Agreed! Thanks for posting that!


I must know more. Like, how many coconuts?

The shoe-less factor reminded me of a situation we had with a group that rented our theatre regularly. They were a southeast Asian religious group, the name of which escapes me now, that, as part of their services, went around barefoot. I remember going to the asst director and asking, "uh, is this okay?" because I grew up thinking every public place pretty much has a "no shirts, no shoes: no service" policy. I didn't want to dunk on someone else's religious beliefs, especially a minority group, so I checked first. She dutifully contacts the county attorney that handled all our weird questions, and turns out we didn't really have such a policy --- it had never come up. The end decision was: they could take off their shoes in the theatre, but if someone had to come out to use the restroom or whatever, they had to put shoes on.

That attorney probably loved getting calls from us because it was always bizarre questions that no doubt relieved the tedium of day to day stuff. (I would, at least.) "Hey, we have a patron who wants to bring her parrot in, claiming it's a support animal?"

I can't remember if I posted this story or not... a BIG debate was had about whether or not people could bring guns in (we're an open carry state). The ultimate decision was patrons could carry, staff could not. Lots of heated board arguments about that one.

[now I have "This is America" stuck in my head]
Government lawyer here. We love this poo poo.

grassy gnoll
Aug 27, 2006

The pawsting business is tough work.

Cythereal posted:

Y'all are making me really, really not miss libraries.

I'm still in touch with a former coworker from my last full-time library job (public library), and according to her that particular library has only gone further downhill since I was fired. We'd all been praying our manager would get fired or reassigned.

Turns out, someone was listening. And a finger on the monkey's paw curled up.

There are always more librarians, and they are always worse.

But the good news is, the bigger a piece of poo poo they are, they more likely they'll be promoted!

occamsnailfile
Nov 4, 2007



zamtrios so lonely
Grimey Drawer

grassy gnoll posted:

There are always more librarians, and they are always worse.

But the good news is, the bigger a piece of poo poo they are, they more likely they'll be promoted!

Unfortunately not unique to libraries, but public sector employment can mean a particular piece of poo poo is allowed to stink for a loooooong time.

Halloween Jack
Sep 12, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 6 minutes!
Working in a library got me interested in becoming a librarian. But I quickly realized that people who get the full-time jobs never leave, and even when they retire, their positions aren't filled. And this was at the library of a T14 law school with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Halloween Jack posted:

But I quickly realized that people who get the full-time jobs never leave, and even when they retire, their positions aren't filled.

My first real job in a library, albeit paraprofessional, I had to leave. I literally couldn't afford to live anywhere within an hour's drive on the peanuts they were paying me.

DONT TOUCH THE PC
Jul 15, 2001

You should try it, it's a real buzz.
The reason I have the job that I have (IT administrator), is because the library made it clear they would never have enough money to pay me a living wage and then hosed up the tax return forms in such a way I had to pay back 3000€ in a year and then blamed their administrative gently caress-ups on me.

(I got it back after a year, after being denied clemency, because one guy actually looked at my dossier and found that I shouldn't have been hit with the fee)

Captain Mediocre
Oct 14, 2005

Saving lives and money!

Do American public libraries still require qualified library certifications? My area has completely given up the idea, I think largely because qualified librarians would expect too much pay.

I've just become a library manager with an unrelated degree (after a few years as a library assistant) and there's only a handful of people I know who are certified and all are nearing retirement.

My new library also has no end of weirdos. The homeless ones I can work with but the worst are the faux academics writing huge tracts of worthless bullshit on the computers every day, expecting you to support their research at every level and endure their insane delusions of self importance.

DeadFatDuckFat
Oct 29, 2012

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.


Captain Mediocre posted:

Do American public libraries still require qualified library certifications? My area has completely given up the idea, I think largely because qualified librarians would expect too much pay.

I've just become a library manager with an unrelated degree (after a few years as a library assistant) and there's only a handful of people I know who are certified and all are nearing retirement.

My new library also has no end of weirdos. The homeless ones I can work with but the worst are the faux academics writing huge tracts of worthless bullshit on the computers every day, expecting you to support their research at every level and endure their insane delusions of self importance.

My county does require librarians to have a MLS.

I'd much rather deal with uppity dudes as opposed to the homeless lady whose "service" dog will growl, bark, and bite people or the dude who is either insane/on drugs that talked extensively about how Simba on the cover of the children's library books he was holding was God. Yesterday kinda sucked.

Still better than dealing with middle schoolers though

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

Captain Mediocre posted:

Do American public libraries still require qualified library certifications?

Depends on the library in my experience. Typically it's either have an MLIS, or have X years of experience in libraries.

DONT TOUCH THE PC
Jul 15, 2001

You should try it, it's a real buzz.

DeadFatDuckFat posted:

Still better than dealing with middle schoolers though

My branch was close to a very upper class high-school (sons of diplomats and CEOs), those kids were the worst.

Eat the rich and their children.

DeadFatDuckFat
Oct 29, 2012

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.


DONT TOUCH THE PC posted:

My branch was close to a very upper class high-school (sons of diplomats and CEOs), those kids were the worst.

Eat the rich and their children.

I usually don't work at the branches that are next to middle schools anymore. I read about an incident at one branch last month where there was basically a middle schooler mini riot. Word had gotten around that two girls were going to fight and they were entering and exiting the library. So of course they were followed by a hundred screaming classmates with their phones out waiting for them to go at it. Patrons were getting shoved out of the way by a sea of students. Of course the cops took too long to get there and were very disdainful of having been called over "nothing"

Cythereal
Nov 8, 2009

I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.
I may no longer work in a library, but I do still work at a university. And today I once again confronted an enraged professor engorged with bile over me... doing exactly what he told me to do. It's still true that the surest way to further outrage a professor is to respond to "Don't you know who I am?!" with "Nope."

Fortunately, my boss is awesome and concurred that the professor's apparent lack of knowledge of what the words "annually" and "monthly" mean was our problem but not our fault.

DeadFatDuckFat
Oct 29, 2012

This avatar brought to you by the 'save our dead gay forums' foundation.


Cythereal posted:

It's still true that the surest way to further outrage a professor is to respond to "Don't you know who I am?!" with "Nope."

Oh man, is this the academic library version of "muh taxes pay your salary" :bahgawd: . I always think that argument is hilarious. I mean, I pay taxes too, but that still doesn't mean I can walk onto an army base and drive off in a tank

Scarodactyl
Oct 22, 2015


DeadFatDuckFat posted:

"muh taxes pay your salary" :bahgawd:
(Bane voice) And this gives you...power...over me?

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

therobit
Aug 19, 2008

I've been tryin' to speak with you for a long time

DeadFatDuckFat posted:

Oh man, is this the academic library version of "muh taxes pay your salary" :bahgawd: . I always think that argument is hilarious. I mean, I pay taxes too, but that still doesn't mean I can walk onto an army base and drive off in a tank

I would love to see boomers say that to people in the uniformed services.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply