Fast Food Reviews & Other Tidbits

Libraries exist to serve a community. Though most people associate libraries just with books, CDs, and DVDs that they can come to check out, often they provide a wealth of other services. Tax dollars provide support for a wide range of resources that citizens of a town or village or city can take advantage. Shelves full of reference works, thousands of newspapers on microfilm. Computers with internet connections, word processing and spreadsheet software, encyclopedias, genealogical records, and much more. Clerical and legal information. Local historical files.

Depending on the library, its budget, and the innovation of those who run it, it may offer more than or less than what’s listed here. But generally people don’t know about what is available in their local libraries.

As a service for the community, the library should find a way to communicate to the local people and let them know what is available. First, they could start with their own employees. There’s nothing more annoying with asking an employee where to find something and finding out that he knows nothing about what you’re asking for. Workers from the lowest level up should be familiar with as much as possible in their place of work.

Flash drives are one way to package this information in one place and give it to employees in an accessible format. CF Gear can help to design a layout—it could open to a page with a picture of the library and its logo in the background, with links on the side going to the various resources available. The pages could either link to online listings and descriptions or contain the information right on the flash drive. CF Gear’s quality, time-proven duplication services guarantee that all the information is placed on the flash drives properly so each one will work for each employee.

The library workers could pick a flash drive in the color of their library’s theme, and/or have it imprinted with their logo, address, and phone number. Or whatever text or logo they may choose to have on it. A logo can also be engraved with laser for a classier professional look.

Each employee could be given a custom USB drive. These could help serve as a ready reference for information, both for new employees and for old employees who need to refresh what they know. They would also help preserve the corporate identity of an organization as each person is given one. They could even contain worker-related information such as employee manuals, insurance and compensation details, and info on employee benefit packages.

If you think a little piece of technology holding a wealth of information for any employee to access would help your library, consider a bulk flash drive deal with CF Gear. Vancouver Public Library and the University of Illinois Library are two libraries that used flash drives and were very happy with the results. Check out CF Gear’s website, where you can browse through words from happy customers, an array of flash drives to choose from, and a variety of details about the company’s services.

My husband and I were able to get away for a few hours yesterday afternoon.  It was just the two of us, no children.  That just doesn’t happen very often!  We hired a babysitter that we know from our church and took off to get our Christmas shopping started.  We even went so far as to take the carseats out of the car so it really felt like we were on our own without children!  (Well, I guess the seats were taken out for extra storage but it still helped with the atmosphere!)

On our five free hours we decided it would be fun to try out a restaurant we’ve never been to before.  There were several options.  There is a buffet we’ve thought about, Chili’s and the LongHorn Steakhouse.  I think it’s always difficult to try out a new restaurant when you’ve got three children tagging along and you have no idea what you’ll be able to order for them.  We’ve been wanting to try out Chilies for a little while now so we decided this was the time to do so.

We got to the restaurant a little before 3:00 so it was pleasantly quiet.  There was no loud music blaring, no children crying and nobody for me to feed other than myself.  Having never been there before, it took us just a little while to peruse the menu and find just the right meal.  It’s so hard to choose when you have no prior experience with their particular “flavor.”  Finally, after much deliberation, we decided to go with the bottomless soup and salad and the included bottomless chips and salsa.

Since it’s not possible to push an X10 Big Red Button and have your dinner delivered in a flash, we decided to go with something light that shouldn’t take too long for them to prepare.  We wanted more than fastfood but at the same time we didn’t want to spend all of our free time at the restaurant!  Thankfully, the food did come in pretty good timing.  My husband had the chili and I had the mashed potato soup and we each had a house salad.  Everything was good but I must admit I was a little disappointed in the choices for salad dressing.  I like Italian Dressing and their citric balsamic dressing just didn’t sound like the taste I wanted.  I went with oil and vinegar which was okay but Italian would have been best!

Being as we went with a light lunch, we decided to go for a dessert.  With speed similar to the working of an X10 SuperSocket Receptacle we had our little shot glasses filled with Key Lime Pie and Cinnamon Roll goodness.  Soon we were off to finish our shopping and then to relieve the babysitter.  Believe it or not, she said she’ll actually be able to watch the kids again sometime!  My husband and I are thinking it would be nice to get out once or twice a month, just the two of us.