March 2004 Archives

I happened upon an interesting site today called BookCrossing. It's essentially a free, online book club. People sign up and can post reviews and recommendations of books. But the key difference (from what I can tell), is the "freeing" of the books after you read them. Members are encouraged to not only give their books away to friends and family, but to strangers as well. Leave books on park benches, in coffee shops, at the drug store, etc. The next person to find the book can enter it into the system and you can watch how the book travels.

This is a really interesting idea and it appeals to me on many levels. It reminds me a bit of Where's George - a site where you can track where your money goes after you spend it. I love the idea of spreading books around and encouraging more folks to read. Currently in Pleasanton there are 55 books in the wild. How wonderful that a little town like this has such support!

But I don't know if I can do it. I love my books. Really, I do. I get attached to them. I could say it's the librarian in me, but I think it's actually the collector. Libraries are all about sharing books and information. Collectors want to keep them for themselves (my precious books).

In any case, this does do one thing - it makes me want to read more. I'm hoping that once I'm moved in, and things have settled down, and I have created my little "reading nook" in the spare room, I will have more time to read. Or at least feel that I have the freedom to carve out time. I hope so. Because I miss reading. I really do.

On Sunday night, Erik and I went and saw Henry Rollins in his Spoken Word Tour. We saw him at the Warfield in San Francisco.

It was amazing.

I first learned of Rollins in college. I'm not a hard-core punk rock fan, but I do own one Rollins Band CD, Weight. I thought it was really cool that this hard core punk rocker, with muscles galore and tattoos everywhere, spoke against drugs and drinking, promoted women's rights, social justice, the environment, and wrote poetry. Pretty cool if you ask me.

So when my friend Jen posted on her blog that she had seen him in January, I said "I have to go when he comes to San Francisco." I'm so glad that I did.

Henry stood alone on the stage for almost 3 hours just talking. I didn't see him take a drink of water until he was almost done. The man is incredible. He is well read. Well spoken. He's funny as hell. And highly intelligent.

PeopleSoft.com is in the news yet again. We are mentioned in the latest issue of Design Interact, Communication Arts online publication.

"In a typical Fortune 500 company, designers work alongside editors, information architects, traffic analysts, merchandisers and usability experts. In meetings they fling around words like accessibility, localization and cost of publication--and they know what they mean. They plot architecture on wall-sized maps. And their business direction is always in a state of flux."

It's like they are watching me at work. That is so what my life has become. Whether it is good or not is a discussion for another day.