What year are you calling from?

The desk phone rings and I answer it and the patron asks to be “connected to” the city library. I inform them that I can’t directly connect them, but I’ll be happy to provide them with the number (though I am wondering if they looked up our library number why they didn’t look up another one?).
The patron replies “ok” and I start reading off the phone number when simultaneously in my ear I hear “beep boop beep beep!” I stop giving the number and say, “Uh, you can’t be dialing while we’re on the line, you have to wait until I finish giving it to you and then hang up.”
There’s a pause. “Oh,” the patron says. Longer pause.
“Why don’t you write the number I’m giving you down and then call it,” I suggest.
Another pause. “Oh ok, hold on, let me go find a pen.”

I have never had a phone transaction quite like this and find it hard to imagine that this person has lived their life without knowing how properly use the phone. Who starts dialing while someone is talking? How did they think this transaction would work?

Romance and copious amounts of vomit

I just Googled the phrase life is a series of down endings and the first return was a Google book page for Jane Eyre, which seems appropriate.

In other classical literature downer news, I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies the other day and felt it fell short of its full potential with the promised "ultra-violent zombie mayhem" just barely making an appearance. Still, in general it was an amusing read and the dining scenes at Hunsford and Rosings Park received quite a few lolz, even though I thought it borrowed some from Dead Alive.

The Wikipedia Problem

I'll admit that I'm a Wikipedia fan, but as an information professional I get tired by how many people use it as an unquestionable authority for information or research. I must tell at least one high school student every day that Wikipedia is not always reliable and that they really need to look into their sources.

Perhaps this recent news story will wake up some people to the problem: Irish student's Jarre wiki hoax dupes journalists.

In a slightly related note, yesterday I was bored at work and playing around on Wikipedia and was reading Glenn Danzig's entry which contains a link to Danzig's supposed Twitter feed which is either really sad or really funny, but maybe a bit of both.