No, I don't work here

I visited six stores today, most of them in search of a replacement ergo keyboard. At three of the stores, customers mistook me for an employee. At Staples, it was an easy mistake as I was wearing a red shirt. But that doesn't explain the other occurences. In one store, it happened twice! I must look like helpful person or something. Or maybe it was the look of frustration that confused them...I hit Staples, Circuit City, and Office Depot before finding the keyboard I wanted at Office Max. And even Office Max didn't have a model on display. The staff helped me open a box so I could test the keyboard before purchasing it. Some stores wouldn't have done that.

It'll take time to get used to the feel of this keyboard. It's the MS Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000--all the other stores only had the older model, in white, no less. I miss my touchpad and the feel of my old keyboard. More than anything, I miss the large enter key, but this MS 4000 model is far nicer than the older MS ergos. I love the zoom feature and the handy shortcut keys, especially the calucaltor button. Some of the keys I'll never use, but it's nice to know they are there if I need them. I need to read the help file to see if I can reprogram the mail button, which opens Outlook; I prefer using Outlook Express.

For now, I've removed the 7-degree reverse slope attachement. I'll give it a try after my fingers have acclimated themselves to the feel of the keys. They have a week prep time for NaNo.

It's such a relief to ditch my backup standard keyboard. I spent more time than usual correcting dyslexic typing errors. At least with an ergo, my long fingers don't trip over themselves as frequently.

Book-hunter classifications

An excerpt from The Book-Hunter, written by Scottish historian John Hill Burton (1809-1889), first published in 1860.

To afford the reader, however, an opportunity of noting at a glance the appropriate learned terms applicable to the different sets of persons who meddle with books, I subjoin the following definitions, as rendered in D'Israeli's Curiosities, from the Chasse aux Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avisés of Jean Joseph Rive:--

"A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing in title-pages and colophons, and in editions; the place and year when printed; the presses whence issued; and all the minutiæ of a book."--"A bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements."--"A bibliomane is an indiscriminate accumulator, who blunders faster than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy."--"A bibliophile, the lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears to read them for his own pleasure."--"A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping them under lock, or framing them in glass-cases."

The accurate Peignot, after accepting of this classification with high admiration of its simplicity and exhaustiveness, is seized in his supplementary volume with a misgiving in the matter of the bibliotaphe, explaining that it ought to be translated as a grave of books, and that the proper technical expression for the performer referred to by Rive, is bibliothapt. He adds to the nomenclature bibliolyte, as a destroyer of books; bibliologue, one who discourses about books; bibliotacte, a classifier of books; and bibliopée, "l'art d'écrire ou decomposer des livres," or, as the unlearned would say, the function of an author. Of the dignity with which this writer can invest the objects of his nomenclature, take the following specimen from his description of the bibliographe:--

Blingo search engine

Just learned of a new search engine, Blingo, which is affiliated with Google. Blingo gives you 10 chances per day to win prizes, and if your friends win, you win the same prize. I tried to paste a button here, but it won't paste beyond target equals top, and the referral code is a nuisance to type.

Odd book titles

This week I came across a few unusual book titles while proofreading for Distributed Proofreaders. The first : Men's Sewed Straw Hats by the US Tariff Commission. I wonder if there's another edition for woven hats and what not...although, it's hard to believe there's an entire book about taxing straw hats. Another odd title: Hemp hurds as paper-making materials. I didn't read the text, but the summary says you can make paper from the flax-like material in hemp. And the last one: A Treatise on the Cohabitation of the Faithful with the Unfaithful. I'm guessing it's about religious faith, rather than infidelity; whatever the content, I'm sure there's heavy religious overtones. Many of the old texts preach morality. For instance, I proofed a book-length essay called Usury which used frequent Bible citations as evidence of the evils of usury.

NaNoWriMo sign-ups begin

The NaNoWriMo site must be inundated with registrations. Earlier today, I had trouble signing up, and this evening the server is down.