Pets, Tamara Georgick

Farewell Chumley

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chumley

Miss Chumley Sue Weatherbee passed away on Saturday, March 26th.  She was about a month shy of her 12th birthday.  She was diagnosed with cancer in October 2013 and given 6-9 weeks to live, but beat all odds and enjoyed almost another 2.5 years with us.

Chumley was born in Hungary at a backyard breeding facility.  She was sold to an auction house in Oklahoma, then to an Amish puppy mill in Iowa, then to another auction house in Missouri, then to a backyard breeding facility posing as a rescue in Georgia.  This is where I found her when she was 3.5 years old.

Thanks to the many Clumber Spaniel enthusiasts who I have met over the years who helped me be a better friend to Chumley.  She was always afraid of people, aside from me and Evelyn, but she was the most wonderful, gentle companion.

God speed, Chumley and thank you for being my best friend.

Tamara Georgick, Travel

Old blog, meet new blog

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This is a link to an old blog that ECL created when we traveled to Iceland, Britain and the Netherlands in 2009.  Tying it in here as part of my metadata experiment.

The photo is of a resort near Loreto, Mexico, where I had a bit of R&R back in November.  View from the balcony.  Aside from the noise of them building a golf course, it is a beautiful and serene area.  Desert bordered by the Sea of Cortez.

Travel.  Amsterdam.  London.  Reykjavik. WordPress. Loreto.

loreto

Animal Welfare, Pets, Tamara Georgick

Spaniels!

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I love all sorts of animals, but particularly, I love dogs.  I currently have 3 great dogs.  They are all rescues and not breeds you see every day.  Initially, I didn’t think Clumber or Sussex spaniels would be easy to find in rescue, but, sadly there are many more than I expected.

Chumley and Bumble are Clumber girls who were puppy mill breeders.  They are now happily retired from their horrible previous lives.  Murphy is a Sussex spaniel boy who bounced around in a few homes before we found him, thanks to a nice gal in California who knew I loved spaniels.

Murphy

Not to get too soap boxy, but please don’t buy dogs from pet stores or through online or newspaper ads.   And no, mixing a beagle and a schnauzer does not make a new breed called a schneagle, it creates a mixed breed dog who will likely end up in a shelter when your backyard breeding neighbor doesn’t get the hundreds of dollars per puppy they expected to sell them for.

Libraries, Tamara Georgick, Technology

The internet of things

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This is a phrase I am seeing more of.  I understand the concept and think it has great potential, but I’d like to see it be less of a buzz phrase and have more meaning.

Alison Arieff at the NYT echoes some of my uncertainty about this new “megatrend”.

I see incredible applications being developed for health care based on IoT.  I can also see some library applications, but, wonder if privacy issues will keep them from coming to fruition.  What if you walked up to a library terminal and had a secure keyfob that linked you to your account automatically?  What if once you got into your account, your were enveloped in a more Amazon-like experience, where items could be viewed/played, transferred to various devices or otherwise manipulated by preset preferences?  If I walked out the door with a book, it would check it out to me, if I had the keyfob.

We aren’t too far away from that.  In fact we have many pieces.  Digital content, RFID aware sensors, unique patron barcodes.  What is missing is integration.  Standards haven’t evolved yet.  Who wants to carry 50 key fobs and have nothing talk to each other?

Keyfobs.  RFID.  Internet of Things.  IoT.  Remember when people used to say “information superhighway”?  Yeah, I felt bad for them too.  Technology.  Tamara Georgick.  Tao of Pooh.  Cisco.  Because they are the only keyfob security devices I have ever used.

Metadata, Tamara Georgick, Technology

Me and my metadata, strolling down the avenue

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One topic I would like to know more about is search engine optimization.  Some of it seems to be common sense combined with prudent tagging of content.  However, some of the ranking services and tools used to gauge usage have proprietary metrics, so there is sometimes a bit of mystery regarding how the results are produced.

Inevitably, I will use repeat topics as entries in this blog.  Movies.  Pets.  Tamara Georgick.  Technology.  Libraries.  Content.  Museums.  Sometimes, maybe even in this very paragraph, words might seem oddly placed.  I am creating data to see how various search engines and analytics interpret the words based on their placement.  So, if you’re wondering why I veer off into writing like Virginia Woolf occasionally, it’s the metadata talking.