Computers

Today, I found the TA computer lab, to which I have a key.  It was exciting because I ended up hanging out with a bunch of other graduate students and not doing any work.  But there was the potential to do work, oh yes.  I did print a couple of things.  And e-mailed cake recipes to my aunt for the wedding I'm supposed to be planning.

Since quitting my job, I'm sitting at the computer a LOT less.  Which means all my sharebros on Google Reader are seeing a lot fewer recipes and cats in their shared items.  What it also means is that I'm moving around more and seem to be embarking on a successful graduate school diet, mostly because my graduate school friends are too poor to afford chocolate to share with me, so my sugar consumption has been way down since I also cannot afford chocolate.  I'm also biking to school daily--going on three weeks straight now.

Since I'm not on the computer as much, I'm relying on my phone for e-mail and Facebook.  But since the screen is very tiny, I'm not fond of staring at it too long, so I glance at it every now and then and return to work.

I am, however, going to be spending a lot of time on the computer tonight and tomorrow.  Because I have to do research.  It would seem that my computer-time will now be spent in the pursuit of more knowledge.  Right now, I'm looking at programs that teach science and literacy together--how interesting!  It seems that I cannot escape my science peeps.

It's raining, and I'm at the computer.  Time to do some science reading and head to bed.

P.S. Graduate school rocks.

O Muse!

I hereby sing the praises of ILLiad, our Interlibrary Loan system. You see, since I'm in grad school, I have to find all sorts of articles and do more research than was demanded of me in my undergraduate days. And I've become a frequent user of ILLiad.

I love it. It's a wonderfully efficient system--I can request everything online, and they usually get my requests back to me within a week, even if it's a book that's coming from another university. And articles? This is the best part of ILLiad: they send me a PDF copy of the article, so I can both save it electronically and print it off.

It makes the research process fun and painless. My library doesn't have what I need, and I can't find it online? No problem! Just plug the information into ILLiad from the ease of my home computer (or work, usually) and wait a few days. The literature shows up practically at my door!

I'm thankful for Interlibrary loan. And I'm glad that my university has a good system, since finding articles and books is a breeze.