Melvil Dewey and his system

A little rain this weekend in Columbus.  1.35 inches Saturday and 2.37 inches yesterday for a whopping total of  3.72 inches of precip.  Still no "day of the worms" yet.

Seems every year there is one day when all the worms come out of the soil covering the roads and sidewalks so you drive to work by killing thousands of squishy worms.  Robins must love that day.  A Robin Thanksgiving.

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Pet peeve whine of the day - Justified.  GREAT show.  I was watching the season finale' and the DVR did not record the final 10 minutes.   DAMN IT. So it was on again Saturday night and I had the DVR set to record it.  Well, of COURSE the storm came and I AGAIN, missed the last 10 minutes when the sat went dead.

OK OK - It's on On Demand.  So I recorded it and guess what - NO FAST FORWARD!!    sigh!!
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Had a meeting with Eric the Water & Light czar and I gotta tell ya, I was not offered a fresh glass of water OR a cup of electricity.  I'm wondering if this is all a front.  I didn't even see a bubbler in the building.

I suppose the first thing out of my mouth should not have been "Why the hell do we pay so much for water!!"  At which point I was expecting to have water thrown in my face but . . . . . too expensive to waste? (notice I did not complain about electricity).

In reality this whole "water is too much" is silly.  Is it more expensive then other towns?  YES, but not by THAT much and factor in that we do not have to have a water softener or buy salt.  The reason for soft water in Columbus is unknown but it started back in the 1950s and no it has nothing to do with birds.

Our water is extremely hard in Columbus which is great for dark beer and horrible for light colored beer.  But I digress.

Many people will be surprised that Water & Light is NOT a government organization but more like the Post Office, a separate entity that is sort of hired by the city. A community owned utility and they gave Columbus about $450,000 last year, 6% of the City's total revenue.  They are the largest tax payer in Columbus.

The one thing that needs to be stressed is that Columbus has a very fast On-Site Response time, we have our own people on site within 8.7 seconds . . . well, that is the goal at least, your time may very depending on a number of factors.

Today I will tour the Department of Fire hoping I will at least get to see what an uncontrolled fire looks like and perhaps take a truck for a spin and wear a hat.

I also need to talk to Davis about DPW and The Chief to tour the Police Department.  I had a tour of the Senior Center last year and perhaps the library could give me a run down on the Dewey Decimal System which was named after Melvil Dewey.

Before Melvil's brilliant idea libraries put books in a permanent shelf location in order of when they acquired the book, not by subject but they were shelved by date.

In 1876 Mr. Dewey published a pamphlet titled  "A Classification and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library." and in March 1876, he applied for, and received copyright on the first edition of the index.   

Could you see going to a library looking up a book and then looking for the June 1976 shelf?

WELL, there ere many people that did not appreciate Melvils system because of it's complexity and limited scope of "scheme-adjustment".  In particular, the arrangement of subheadings has been described as archaic and  being biased towards an Anglo-American world view.  That's what Americans do, it's all about us.

Some libraries, particularly in Arizona are switching to the  Book Industry Standards and Communications (BISAC) system which is used in bookstores.

Fascinating.
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How about those Brewers!  YIKES!  The last time they won this many in a row was . . . . . LAST YEAR . . . . IN APRIL!! And then they went on to win 5 of the next 21 games.

Ride the streak and enjoy it while you can.