Dear seller: this is not a functional model

As you may or may not know, school libraries get a lot of sales calls. People want to sell us things. (And people tend to want to sell *me* things, because we've got a very healthy budget, all things considered.)

One model of this is what our Gale rep did for me on Friday: came in and spent 20 minutes showing me their biography resource center (which I am inclined to buy but want to test first). Another model is to send me a catalog of current titles of interest. Both of these models work nicely for me. The one that doesn't produced the following conversation this morning.

( See inside for a cranky-making phone call )

How to get hold of me

(Some recent blog discussions reminded me I'd wanting to do this.)

We all have tons of potential information channels these days. Here's a guide to which ones I use, and the most reliable way to reach me.

The basics
- Email is pretty much the universally best way to get my attention.
- I am not really a phone person. (outside of conversations I know are coming my way.)
- I tend to check the long-involved conversation options first (LJ, DW, email). I'm much less likely to see the character-limited ones as fast (text message, IM, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

and... in case of emergency, ignore my preferences (i.e. call if you need) just be aware that email is still the reliably quickest way to reach me.

Best way to reach me: Email. By far.
- All my email addresses (except my actual work account) pour into one central account, so use whichever one makes sense to you. (jenett at livejournal.com, dreamwidth.org, or gleewood.org all work, as does jenettsilver at gmail. As do two others tied to the legal name.)

- I generally aim at answering email as soon as I see it (it's the only way I can keep up.) Exceptions include: stuff I need to check with someone else about, stuff that's emotionally complex, and stuff that is going to take a long time to write up (more than 10-20 minutes.) I still usually turn those around in a day or three. If you don't hear back on something within 3-4 days, ping me again, please, as it either didn't reach me, or I completely spaced on it.

- I do scan my spam folders before deleting them, but stuff can slip through: if you don't get an answer in a week or so, ping me again.

Me and phones
I like phone calls when I know they're coming. The rest of the time, I take after my father, and find them very disruptive to my train of thought. (And, during the day at work, really can't easily take personal phone calls anyway: we are encouraged to follow the same limits as students when it comes to cell phones, and I'm usually out in the library anyway.)

So, my cell phone is almost always near me, but the ringer is often off (or quiet enough to be muffled in a bag from more than a few feet away.) I do check messages once or twice a day. I'm also always up for planned conversations (as a couple of people on here know: "Hey, can we talk tonight?" can work really well: I just really need a few minutes to wrap up what I was doing mentally and switch gears.)

As noted above: in case of emergency, call away. (But because the phone's often not on, I may not see it for a while. Email is faster.) If you're a person who might call in an emergency and you *think* you might need to call, I'm happy to leave the phone on more reliably. (for example, my phone was on a lot of the summer, in case of urgent Elisian needs, since I had the most readily available car nearby.)

Text messaging
I pay by the message for text messages - I don't mind them for an immediate urgent thing, but I'm very unlikely to respond by them, and please don't send them for non-urgent stuff. (And chances are, I'll see a phone voicemail about as quickly, and an email faster.)

Twitter, Facebook, etc. posts
I do my best to peer at them, but they're frankly pretty low on my time and energy priority, and I often forget to look at them for several days. (I preference towards longer more involved conversations.)

Where do I spend online time?
My basic list of 'what I read first' runs like this:

- Email
- LiveJournal and Dreamwidth. (Where I read everything on my friends/reading lists, though I may skim bits.)
- A selection of web comics (read through the Morning Coffee add-on in Firefox, and not generally taking much time.)
- Various Pagan fora (There's some variation here, and I usually make it through 2-4 in the morning, depending on how much I'm inclined to post replies.)
- And at the moment, multiple of the farming games on Facebook, because it's been that kind of couple of weeks. We'll see if that lasts.

I am generally on Gmail from work (as well as my work account), which means I read stuff in breaks as it comes in, but usually hold off on longer replies unless it's very quiet and I've got nothing else suitable for doing at the desk at the moment. This means I'm also theoretically in GChat, but see below...

Evenings is more varied, as it depends on what's going on. I read a bunch of blogs via Google Reader, and sometimes I make a run through those before work, sometimes *at* work (since a bunch of them are work-related), sometimes in the evening. All depends when I've got time. I also tend to hit another Pagan fora or two while making dinner (usually in rotation: there's a bunch I peer at once or twice a week and rarely post on: this is part of my 'being aware of common questions for use in writing the Pagan research book' plan.)

Real-time conversation
I usually only have IM on if I'm doing something where periodic distraction doesn't bother me. (Baking, for example, when I'm not going to be getting too deeply into any particular writing/whatever project.)

During the work day, I am theoretically in GChat, but effectively only for quick fairly urgent questions. (and don't expect me to be reliably available: the computer might be open, but I might be down poking around in research for an hour away from my desk, like I was today.)