Today I was struck down by The Grippe. Don’t know what I got, all I know is that after laying around sleeping and feeling miserable all day I’m now almost at the point where I’m merely bone tired instead of clinically dead. Lots of hallucinations, mostly involving mountain lions, this video, transistor circuits, and Sarah Palin. I’ll spare you the boring details but will mention in passing that there is nothing worse than falling asleep and dreaming you’re still awake and can’t fall asleep.

I picked up a copy of The Art of Electronics from our local library (via interlibrary loan). It is good, very good, but does have rather more math than I would like. Dense, in terms of information content. Several times I read a section and did not understand it, only to discover that I missed a key sentence in a previous paragraph. Since my studying electronics time usually corresponds to “watch the child while the wife gets precious introvert time”, I miss key sentences with depressing regularity.

I still do not fully understand transistors, and I am still trying to wrap my head around the difference between a voltage source and a current source. However, I now have a pretty good idea of what an emitter follower is, so watch out.

I mentioned our local library above. Our library is the wave of the future; all other libraries I have experienced until now are Stygian hells of illiteracy and backwards-ness. Our local library is enormous, with meticulously landscaped grounds and soaring architectural details. It has a conveyor belt for the book return, as well as a fuel cell. The children’s section has a puppet theater (with bins overflowing with puppets of all sizes and types) and by itself is easily larger than our previous library as a whole.

It also is difficult to browse. Instead of dense stacks of long shelves which lend themselves to serendipitous discoveries, the library has decided to cut the stacks in half, and cram the space between with odious technology. Placing the computers amongst the books means I’m constantly dodging and weaving around a horde of slimy looking men gaping at as-scantily-clad-as-they-can-get-away-with women, sad looking technologically inept men pecking their way through the state unemployment website, and zombie-eyed teenagers updating their facebooks. All of these people have cell phones that go off every couple minutes.

Speaking of the lingering death of the silent library, I had a chuckle the other day as I was waiting in line to check out. A large Somali family (the mother, three boys, and a girl) came in and within seconds the kids literally erupted, screaming at the top of their lungs and running around in circles, while the mother wandered over to an open computer. The librarian working at the service counter got up with a look of Concern on her face, but at second glance the look was not actually Concern, but rather a humorous mix of Aghast, Determination, and White Liberal Fear Of Making a Culturally Inappropriate Comment. (Let me be perfectly clear: I have complete respect for our hardworking public servants, and if me and my fear of confrontation was working the service desk that day I would have hid under my desk until the tsunami passed.)

One more thing while we’re on the subject of libraries. A few months ago a librarian friend of mine suggested that my wife and I take more advantage of the local library’s children section and children programs. We have done so and I have never received such terrible advice in my life. Let me explain.

Our library with the enormous children’s section does not have shelves for the children, they have these child-high bins and drawers. So what happens when we take our book-obsessed-but-not-able-to-actually-read toddler to the library? She grabs a big stack of shiny, colorful books which are impossible to read. These books have no narrative, no plot, just a jumble of words and meaningless sentences, and many of them only vaguely stick to the theme they claim to be about. A book with a single sentence on each page (or less!) is pure torture on the seventh or eighth reading. Books with Licensed Characters are the worst. I love the idea of getting her used to the idea of a library, and I believe strongly in an individual’s right to read what they wish. But, while I’m doing the actual reading I think I’m going to have to act as Parental Censor more often, lest my brain leak out of my ears the seventeenth time Elmo spots turquoise diamonds on the carousel.

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