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I’ll tell you how to get access to a bunch of great digital resources, including (most likely) Safari Books Online. But you’ll have to suffer through this next paragraph of nastalgia first.

Remember a giant cabinet with lots of little drawers filled with even tinier, musty little cards with typewritten information on them? You actually had to flip through these little cards to find a book, and unless the librarian knew there wasn’t really a keyword search as much as subject browsing. When you did find the book you had find a scrap of paper to write down the call number (or Dewey Decimal number) and actually walk around looking for something, that was hopefully not checked out and filed back properly.

Right, the library, that building with a bunch of books you could borrow, read and return for practically little more than the time involved. I might have went to the library a dozen times in as many years in recent history, but it’s worth a trip. Especially if you’re like me and quicker to fire up amazon and buy than wander over to your local library’s website to see if they might have the book. You might not get instant gratification, but hey, even Amazon can only deliver a physical item overnight.

Great, you can check out books at a library. 4 paragraphs and that’s the insight?

I encourage you to check out your local library, chances are they’ve kept up with the times even though my memory of them still is fixed when I was a teen. I live in Woodbridge, VA and in the counties surrounding me, those that I can get to in an hour (with minimal traffic), most offer ebooks, audio books and tons of other great resources for the cost of getting a card. For the laziest of us, you can even apply for a card online, and simply “activate” it in the library within some time period.

So the good stuff, for N. VA residents:

Montgomery County Public Library (site)
eBooks & Audio Books including Safari. You can apply for a card online and then activate it at a branch later. If you’re a RockNUG attendee, just stop by on your way to a meeting.

Prince William County Public Library (site)
AudioBooks through Overdrive and a list of other Electronic Resources. You can’t get a card online, but you can at least download an application.

Fairfax County Public Library (site)
AudioBooks and eBooks. You can apply for a card online. There are a ton of usergroups that meet in the area, no reason to avoid a library.

Loudoun County Public Library (site)
eBooks and eAudiobooks including Safari. You can apply for a card online.

Arlington County Public Library (site)
eCollection which includes eBooks and eAudioBooks. You can apply for a card online.

I’m sure there are loads more. Even if your county library doesn’t have what you need they might have a reciprocal borrowing program that let’s non-residents still get a card.

So, what other gems have I been missing at my library? Want to share links for your county’s library? Drop a note in the comments and I’ll keep updating this post.

Istvan Hoka and I are proud to announce BDDCasts, and the Brandizzle series of screencasts that provide a “fly on the wall” perspective to how we work. We’ll create Brandizzle from “rails brandizzle” through to “cap deploy” and every step in between over a number of sessions. We practice virtual pair programming, BDD with cucumber and rspec, and we both use mac and textmate to hack code.

You can check out Brandizzle here and get the code on github.

You can check out all our episodes on bddcasts.com

To get a bit more feel for what we’re doing, check out this video:

I went to my first FreeNI meeting today. It’s a much more relaxed and open alternative to the cult of BNI type meetings. No dress code, no homework, no forced referrals, no fees (just lunch, which you pay for on your own check).

Today was a casual gathering of 8 folks (supposed to be 20-30 regularly but it is the week before school).

Not sure how much business I’ll get from this. Custom software development / consulting isn’t as easy to provide a referral to as say a realtor or accountant (I’m probably wrong on both counts, but it’s my analogy). However, it gets me out of the house once a week, forces me to interact with humans that don’t translate my gibbersh in O(N) so it’s here to stay for the future. This week and next are priming the pump for a Get Clients Now! cycle that’s starting with a virtual group around mid-month.

The only formality of the FreeNI meeting was about 15 minutes in, the first 15 minutes is just networking, signing in and ordering lunch. The meeting got kicked off and there was a round robin elevator pitch about what you did, or how others in the group could help you. Some things were:

• I sell printer cartridges cheaper than you get them now, brand or OEM. So if you have someone, or you yourself, goes through lots of cartridges I can help.
• Chilean wine distributor, nuff said, I guess
• Realtor: Be my referral agent for $500 (fee for class to get licensed) then get $250 + 25% on the first 2 referrals and 25% afterwards. So you eventually get the licensed reimbursed.

I didn’t have anything like that prepared, I’ll have to think of what to say. I was toying with the idea of “solving problems through software” or something. It needs to be tangible. I might just tell them about My Kids Party HQ which should come in handy with everyone starting school again. I need to push some marketing efforts into that.

General consensus is: BNI overpriced, too rigid, not quality referrals. Chamber of Commerce not great. So what else is there, other than word of mouth from existing clients?

It’s interesting. Finding freelance work is a full time job, doing the work is hopefully a full time job, family is a full time job. That’s a lot of jobs. Speaking of, if you’re looking for some help with ruby on rails, let me know.