Wow…ok so its been awhile since I’ve posted, but I’m hoping to correct that now that some things have calmed down…er…sorta kinda. I wanted to take a second to post about a website I found called www.beepmystuff.com. This is a free online personal library database. It allows you to use your web-cam to scan the bar-codes on your DVDs, music, video games, books, etc and it compiles a library for you with all the pertinent information. The site searches Amazon using the 12 digit bar-code number (not the ISBN number) and pulls out all the info on your product and neatly organizes it for you. BeepMyStuff even has a lending function to help you keep track of who you lent items to. For awhile I had been considering an open source software called Koha suggested from John Wohlers. However, as John had pointed out to me this is an intensive system primarily designed for library technicians at facilities and educational institutions. The BeepMyStuff site is much simpler and gives the user multiple routes to add their items to their personal library. It not only allows you to scan the barcode, but you can search the net by Title or EAN/UPC (12 digit code) or if you have a very rare item not easily found on the net it has a manual description page that you can fill out.
The scan function is a bit tricky to use but that may be due to my crappy webcam which lacks autofocus and has a low frames per second rate. I was able to get a couple items by scan but I mostly gave up on my webcam and just used the search functions. Even abandoning the scan feature, I was able to load up 24 DVDs and books in under 5 minutes so things went very fast.
The webpage is nice and clean and easy to understand. If you use OpenID that is supported on this site for my more technical friends. BeepMyStuff also has an API in case anyone cares to do some developing. Another nice feature is the friends RSS feed which I think is a great way to let friends know what’s the new book, movie, CD etc that you are enjoying and giving them all the information they need to get that same item because it is in the RSS feed.
If anyone tries this let me know what you think…of course my library is under… kiltedbehemoth
ta — (not what you are thinking Gabi)
Ok…haven’t posted in awhile sorry about that. I’ll post more later but I thought this was very cool.
Karl hates it when his patient losses his airway and need to be intubated and placed on life support. 
Today was stressful. Mainly for Gabrielle because today was her interviews for the graduate program at Northern Illinois University in the Family and Marriage Counseling specialty. Her interviews went well but took about six hours. That was six hours I spent trying to be the supportive husband by being on campus…my feet hurt from all the walking I did. You have to pay for parking on the campus and if you leave the parking lot you have to repay and I’m cheap (and easy some say).
Will everything done we called John Wohlers and Kendall Vance who work at Waubonsee Community College Todd Library, which is relatively nearby to see if they wanted to meet up for dinner. We ended up meeting at a new sushi place in Dekalb and it was pretty good. Hehehe…sushi finally meets mid-west farmland…interesting.
It was a great dinner with friends and Gabrielle and I got to meet Kendal’s son, Ben who is a very well behanved and cool kid. All in all a pretty good day…now the stress of waiting for an answer from NIU. That my friends will take about three weeks and lets just say my fingernails are already gone 
Just found the building where the NIU kid I took care of was shot….wierd
Ok NIU has a pretty cool school supply store…huge selection of neat stuff
Tom & Jerry’s diner in Dekalb has one freakin awesome tasting gyro and now off to wander NIU some more.
I am wondering around the NIU campus and squirrels here are crazy….I mean crazy
Went into work today for 8 hours to do an observational rounding with our critical care social worker Aaron Polsky. The idea was to identify some goals and formulate a way to educate our RN staff in the hopes that collaboration between our two services could be improved for better patient outcomes. Aaron and I got some good work done today but the task is challenging. We covered a lot today, everything from palliative care/hospice services to discharge planning to extended care facilities. Sigh…unfortunately I think I’ll be using the bane of my existence PowerPoint unless I can think of a better way to educated my fellow nurses.
Still feeling crappy today and I’ve been sneezing so hard I think I gave myself a hernia. However, on a nicer note John W. came over to the house and Gabrielle, he and I went over to the Cain Offices (where Gabrielle works for her cousin and husband) and progressed further on setting up their network. We added a Drobo mass storage devise to the existing set up and now they have the capability to scan documents straight from their Xerox machine to the Drobo and it is set up in such a way that David can more easily work with the scanned stuff with his tax software. So phase one has been done and is working for them…now to set them up so they have disaster recovery and ability to link-in when away from the home or office. And there is more to be done but we are well on their way and now they can truly begin the process of becoming a PAPERLESS office.
After several hours at the office, David treated us to an Outback Steakhouse dinner…yummmm…and who knew that Outback could do a decent seared Ahi tuna appetizer.