ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 1996 TAG: 9610290027
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: reporter's notebook
SOURCE: MARK CLOTHIER
I'm a big fan of Elisabeth Shue.
But let me first say my interest/fascination/obsession dates well before "Leaving Las Vegas," the movie for which she was nominated this year for an Academy Award.
The downside of her new fame is I now feel the need to point that out; to separate myself from the bandwagon-jumpers, to make known I was on board for her early years: "The Karate Kid" and "Adventures in Babysitting." I sat through "Soapdish" and "Cocktail." I even rented "L.I.N.K.," a thriller featuring Elisabeth and a bunch of psychotic chimps.
The upside is Elisabeth now has her own home page on the World Wide Web, several of them actually, from which fans like myself can download audio footage, pictures, biographical text and articles about her from magazines we might have missed; long-distance stalking, more or less.
I know what's there because I tend to roam when I'm on the Internet. No big news there, lots of people do. But I do mine at work.
I've used the Internet for articles I've written. But I've also found the home pages for bands I like and newspapers around the country for which friends work.
As luck would have it (this is, after all, work), I'm not alone.
My editor Brian Kelley has bookmarked home pages for Patrick O'Brian, a favorite author and Jens Soering, a former University of Virginia classmate turned convicted murderer turned author. Soering has a book on line explaining his side of the story from which Brian steals a chapter now and then.
When not chasing down the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors, reporter Kathy Loan plays "CyberSkipper," which allows her to manage a cyberspace version of the Baltimore Orioles.
She gets points for guessing which players get hits, steal bases, boot simple grounders in big games and spit on umpires. Sometimes, in the case of the latter two, it's the same player.
The guess here is that this part-time, on-line, at-work Internet hobby might extend beyond the walls of our Christiansburg newsroom.
In 1994, for example, Gov. George Allen ordered games removed from all state-owned computers. He even outlawed them during lunches and breaks.
Allen hasn't taken a stance on Internet use, according to Mike Thomas, Virginia's secretary of administration. But the state's Council on Information Management is developing guidelines.
Daniel Tynan, an executive editor with PC World magazine agreed that at-work Net browsing is a problem, big enough that there is software on the market that allows companies to track their employees Internet action.
"A lot of people do it at work," he said. "Especially if they have jobs requiring they go on the Internet. You find a site, follow the links and you can end up in some very unusual places and, before you know it, you've spent a half-hour and you have no idea what you're looking at. It's addictive, you almost can't help yourself."
Getting local business people to admit whether they or their employees explore the Internet at work isn't as simple as asking co-workers or computer magazine folk.
Clara Cox, Virginia Tech's manager of public service communications, is using the Internet to research a coffee table book about Tech.
But before she'd divulge any at-work, nonwork surfing stories, she wanted this disclaimer added: through the Internet, she found pictures of Scott Shipp, the Tech president with the shortest tenure: 13 days in August 1880.
Shipp will now have a more fleshed-out place in the book. The library's Special Collections department has the photos.
She also occasionally reads a newspaper on line. She's checked Wimbledon results. And, during Hurricane Fran, she looked up the National Weather Service's home page to pinpoint the eye's location.
"But the places I go the most are to other universities," she said. "Boring aren't I?"
As the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library's manager of network services, Steve Helm is the library's Internet guru. The system has three branches, 60 full- and part-time staffers and some 50 computers with Internet access. It also has an Internet-use policy that allows employees Net access for personal use within reason. Personal use for nonlibrary-related business is not allowed.
"We've never had a problem," Helm said. "Libraries are unique. Information and electronic media are an integral part of what we do so our employees need to be very familiar with the Internet, what's out there and how to access it."
Wolverine Gasket and Manufacturing Co. in Blacksburg comes on line next month. The company has no plans to develop guidelines for Internet use, said plant chemist John S. Patterson.
"I'm one of six that will have access, and I'll probably be the only one using it and the only one abusing it," he said.
The folks at Roanoke's K-92 radio station have Net access. But the only thing nonbusiness related that's come their way down the information superhighway so far, according to Assistant Program Director Gary Blake, is romance.
"We get some crazy fan mail over the Internet," he said. "One of our guys has met several women on the Internet."
Sara Fitzgerald is the spokesperson for the Interactive Services Association, a Maryland-based lobbying group for interactive consumers. Her office has 10 employees, all with Internet access.
As such, she's able to phrase well the dilemma facing employers and employees.
"The Internet is a fact of business life," she said. "But you have to be careful and make sure you prioritize your time right and make sure it's job-related. But also you expect people to be grown-ups and manage themselves."
LENGTH: Long : 103 linesby CNB