I like this holiday because I think it is important to spend time thinking about all of the blessings I have received in my life. I am thankful that Jesus sacrificed himself for me. I am thankful to know His loving kindness and tender mercies.

I wonder where I would be without my wife, Michele. And how grateful for my four children as well as extended family. I am thankful to have a job and to have many friends.

Who could ask for more?

The recent election results here in the U.S. have contributed to a deep funk. My attitude and thinking have been mostly negative and as a result I haven’t been a great person to be around, virtually (e.g. on Facebook) or in person. I have even managed to offend others, which is never ok.

I think I invested way too much in the recent election and I’ve come to the conclusion that it was a waste of time and energy.

Earlier this week in the late afternoon I went to the cafeteria at work to buy a cookie because I had very little for lunch. My manager noticed this and as I walked past him I held up the cookie and told him I needed it to sweeten my sour disposition. His immediate reply was, “You need a bigger cookie!” That was pretty funny.

- Michele cuts everyone’s hair (she is very good at it even though she hates doing it!)
- I have started to take the train to work instead of driving
- We get a lot of our groceries from Aldi
- We save a bit of money on postage by paying almost all bills online
- We shop at Goodwill especially for clothes for the kids but also for me
- We pay attention to special deals that we read about on the Internet (e.g. Craigslist)
- Michele subscribes to email from Freecycle and we’ve managed to get quite a few things that way including a dryer, couch, and even a popup camper
- Michele always has an eye for closeout bargains at stores we shop at such as Target
- Michele is very talented when it comes to making things and many times that is how we come up with presents for birthdays and such for family and friends
- We decided long ago to get rid of our land line telephone service and use our cell phone service exclusively
- Within our family there are many children at different stages of growth and so we frequently benefit from hand-me-downs from others
- I absolutely despise doing it but I iron all of my clothes that need it rather than spend money at the dry cleaners
- We are trying to limit the number of times we eat out at a restaurant (mainly by not eating fast food takeout from places like McDonald’s)
- Michele enjoys going to garage sales when she has a chance
- We heavily rely upon local libraries for books and movies
- When feasible we buy things in bulk from Costco or Sam’s Club
- IKEA is one of our favorite stores and we always check their “as is” section and get needed furniture for hundreds of dollars less than regular prices
- We rarely go to see movies in the theater
- I make use of Gasbuddy and other similar services to find the cheapest gas possible
- We make heavy use of the option provided by my employer for a flexible spending account (FSA) for pre tax savings on medical expenses

Last but not least, we simply don’t go anywhere if money is tight so that we won’t be tempted to spend money that we don’t have.

Basically a team of people met earlier this year to figure out how we could address the following issues:

• Make better use of our SFX linking
• Help our users know, earlier in the process, when we have something available in full text
• Help our users save time and money by avoiding unnecessary document delivery charges

My library has a heavily-used web form that our customers use for inputting document delivery requests, 99% of which are for journal articles.  We charge for fulfilling their requests (average charge across all orders including regular charges mixed with higher priced rush orders is between $20-30 per article request).  We also know that a fairly significant number of article orders received via this web form on our site are for articles that we already have available in full text, at no additional cost to our users. Our library averages about 100 such requests per day.  The typical workflow is that a user inputs citation information into the form, clicks on a Continue button, is presented with a confirmation screen (with the ability for the user to modify or change information in the form), and then a Submit button for completing the order process.

Our idea was to add new functionality between the initial order form input screen and the confirmation screen, such that the article citation information would be used to dynamically look up our holdings in SFX and, if a valid match was found, a new SFX full text link would be presented in the confirmation screen telling the user that full text was available online.

This new functionality sounds simple but involves a lot of complex stuff behind-the-scenes.  In particular we were concerned that the SFX link presented to the user needs to work as close to 100% of the time as possible.  Anyone who uses any kind of OpenURL service knows that full text links are not as stable and successful as users wish.  The last thing we wanted was to present this new option and then give the user a bad experience and turn them off if the link, when clicked on, doesn’t work.

As already stated, I am thrilled with the results. Extensive testing has shown that this new functionality works well. The end result will be significant cost savings for our users. A very conservative estimate puts savings at more than $20,000 per year.  One of the things we built into the project is a method for specifically tracking use of the new functionality so we’ll be able to have exact figures rather than estimates over time.  Below is a screenshot of the new functionality.

And the really cool thing is that with the coding we’ve done behind-the-scenes, this project is only the start of what we are able to do.

On the positive side, we had a good time visiting with my brother Dan in Milwaukee yesterday.  We went to California Pizza Kitchen for lunch — the first time I’ve ever eaten there. I really enjoyed a — get this — pear and gorgonzola pizza.  It was delicious!  The rest of the afternoon was spent sitting idly and/or napping (one of my favorite pasttimes), and then I went to a nearby Pick ‘n Save to buy roast chicken, salad, challah bread and other stuff for a nice supper.  We got home around 8:30p.

I find current news in this country to be quite depressing, although not surprising.  We’ve all lived in the proverbial house of cards for years and years.  In addition, I believe whatever moral compass this country ever had — if it ever had any — has gone completely haywire and we are reaping the rewards of that.  An example is the extremely nasty political season, one which I think is by far the worst and most extreme of any that I’ve ever experienced.  I’m not happy with either side of the political spectrum but there is absolutely no way that I could in any good conscience vote for Obama/Biden. I’ll just leave it at that.

One of the things that I always struggle with and particularly at times like this, is the fact that as a follower of Christ, I need to place my hope completely in Him.  I try to remember Psalm 20:7 among other Bible verses.  I think one of the worst aspects of American evangelical Christians is a weird and twisted belief in achieving their goals via political ends. Like the U.S. is the true “promised land” and our country is God’s beacon to the rest of the world.  This is not to deny the fact that we have been incredibly blessed in this country and that a huge amount of good has come from it.  (Any good that has been done has come from the wellspring of Judeo-Christian values, in my view.) But the thought that we Christians should try to legislate morality at a time when we have long since lost our own moral compass and live exactly the same as everyone else, just makes me want to weep.

I’m sick and tired and overwhelmed. I worry about providing for my wife and children.  I’ve always struggled to be positive rather than negative in outlook (ironic, isn’t it? since I profess to believe that God is fully in control.)