Kyle Banerjee's Blog

Reports are circulating in the technical press that the premium notebook computers will start coming with 4GB of memory standard rather than 1GB as they did at the beginning of this year.

That might sound like a good thing, but I heard no mention of disclaimers saying that 32 bit Vista or XP (i.e. the operating systems practically everyone uses) can’t access all this memory, nor will you notice much performance improvement over having a machine with 2GB inside.

If you think this problem will go away when we’re all using 64 bit operating systems, there’s a good chance the consumer market will never make that move. Trucks might need more wheels than cars, but if you mount duallies when you don’t need them, you will hurt performance and increase expenses.

Similarly, more memory can actually hurt performance if you don’t actually need it because of the resources necessary to manage it. Speed junkies would be better advised not to run programs they’re not actually using.

Keiko has really had a rough week. She’s had 3 seizures and her condition has deteriorated steadily. When she’s not lying looking only half alive, she wanders aimlessly while bumping into things, and won’t eat. In addition, she spontaneously falls over and doesn’t care about her favorite toys, foods, or activities. Knowing that she can’t possibly be having any fun, I made the heartbreaking decision to schedule her final appointment at the vet.

Despite the fact that I’d already thought a great deal about this before going in, Dr. Lindsay talked me out of it. He explained that the increased dosage of phenobarbital she is taking could also explain her coordination problems. Enzyme levels pointed to pancreatitis which would both make her very sick and not make her want to eat.

It’s possible that the bladder cancer has worked its way to the spine and is interfering with her control of her hind legs, and/or that brain damage from her tumor and the last round of seizures is causing serious problems. However, he thinks there is still real hope that things will improve significantly on their own and that it is too early to throw in the towel.

Dr. Lindsay has been an incredible vet from the very beginning. The first two times he helped us for emergency appointments during off hours, Keiko wasn’t even a patient of his, and he wouldn’t take payment. I once heard someone at a party who knew him personally and professionally describe him as “hard core.” He’s been a vet for over 30 years, but he somehow makes himself available when you can reach no one else. He favors low tech common sense approaches, and his advice has always been good.

Keiko’s a very tough girl and has been beating the odds for some time, but eventually it will be too much for her. However, Dr. Lindsay thinks her chances of having a bit more time are decent. She’s in terrible shape right now so she will spend next week, including Christmas, at his practice where she will rest and be under observation. I’m no fan of aggressive measures (a euphemism for acts of desperation unlikely to lead to success). That being said, if you’re going to lose, it’s better to go down swinging.

Recently, Dorothea Salo delivered a blistering critique of library-created institutional repositories. Her basic point is that our IR service model is driven by a failed ideology, we ignore peoples’ real needs, our tools are hopeless, and we don’t deal with funding or other practical considerations in a realistic way. In addition, she charges us librarians with not eating our own dog food since we do not do what we try to convince others to do. In two words — we suck.

What has been interesting is the response to Dorothea’s comments. A lot of people are glad she’s speaking up.

I believe in emphasizing the positive, but I’m glad to see our profession might finally be getting ready for an open discussion on how we can move things forward. We do many good things, but our profession has a disturbing habit of pretending we are dizzy with success when we are reeling from spectacular failures.

The “how we done it good” articles and presentations that permeate our professional communications are not harmless. I once let a journal editor talk me into putting a positive spin on a method I used in one of my own projects and originally reported to be unworkable. A couple years later, I learned the article was required reading in a library school class — a student contacted me wanting more detail so she could copy my method. I’ve been asked to put a positive spin on sections of several other writing projects when my assessments of methods, services, or products were less than glowing.

We need to recognize our limitations. As a profession, we pretend we can solve more than we can. We cannot compete with companies like Google, Amazon, or a number of others on their own turf. If we make pathetic attempts to mimic these services, our users will simply ignore us. We must accept that some companies perform certain tasks far better than we will ever be able to and adjust our services accordingly.

At the same time, we need to not be afraid of taking risks or let past failures make us fearful of decisive action. The only way to succeed is to try. Most things worth shooting for are hard, so logically, there should be many failures. Rather than pretend they are successes, we should learn from them and move on.

The success of user created content in the blogosphere, Wikipedia, YouTube, and other venues has been welcomed as the democratization of information. However, I’ve been wondering if the success of these things isn’t because our information flows have become screwed up.

When formal channels can’t be used the way they should be, people seek alternatives. During the Communist era, the Soviet citizenry couldn’t find meat, toilet paper, and other essential goods in stores. To satisfy their needs, they turned to the shadow economy. I can’t help but notice that Americans now use a very similar method to find the information they need most.

Just as the planned economy failed the Soviet public, the channels we should be able to trust are failing us. Consequently, a growing number of people rely on the blogosphere, cocktail parties, and other places where the information and ideas are exchanged much more freely. Like their Soviet counterparts who knew better than to waste too much time looking in stores with empty shelves, these people largely ignore the mainstream media, the professional literature, and other traditional sources of information.

While many see this as a positive development, it reminds me of the old style Soviet economy when it was in its final throes. People all but gave up on the government stores and turned to bartering and the informal markets that sprung up everywhere to meet their needs. Eventually, the old system collapsed.

Just as Soviet citizens had to constantly hustle for butter and sugar that they knew couldn’t be found in stores, we turn to yahoos on the Internet and seek offline conversations for critical facts and honest assessments about people, methods, products, and organizations we can’t get from reports, presentations, articles, and conversations that appear on record. That we need to do this is symptomatic of inadequacies and problems in the formal channels.

If you think about it, a party is just a meeting with no agenda. Yet if you ask people if they want to go to a meeting, you will get a very different response than if you ask these same individuals if they want to go to a party — even if the same people are attending, they expect to talk shop the entire time, and you’re trying to tap them for designated driver duty.

Why is this? One explanation could be that the chances of learning something useful or interesting is far greater. This explanation also describes why people don’t pay attention to key reports, but they go out of their way to read blog postings on the same subject. Anyone who makes their living providing information services should be taking notice….

Now that the temps are dropping and I’ve been spending more time in cold rain, I’m finding myself ravenously hungry all the time. It’s not for lack of food. Last night, I ate almost double what I normally do (a feat I would usually consider impossible). For breakfast this morning, I couldn’t resist supplementing my normally large breakfast with a a 350 calorie Ensure-type drink.

For lunch, I found myself famished again so I decided to try a new Mexican place. I noticed a burrito called a “gordo” (literally, “fat one”) on the menu. According to the description, they combine multiple tortillas into one giant 28″ tortilla and fill it with good stuff. I asked the owner if it’s actually possible for one person to eat. When he said he’d seen people try, I couldn’t leave that challenge unanswered.

I’ve seen some big burritos, but the gordo topped them all by a considerable margin. Even if it had been cut in half, it still would have been huge. I should have asked what was in it, but there was easily a pound of beef, an equal quantity of rice and beans, somewhere between a half pint and a full pint of sour cream and guacamole, and lots of veggies. Heck, the tortillas used to wrap the gordo were formidable by themselves.

The best part about it was that it was not only huge, but it was one of the best burritos I’ve ever eaten. I could tell that all the veggies had been chopped fresh, everything had been well-prepared, and the balance of flavor was excellent. And yes, I did finish it, but it wasn’t easy and the owner actually seemed disappointed that I succeeded. I do not intend to attempt to eat another gordo. Some things only need to be done once.