... the New Genre Sticker

I finished reading Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb today.

It has turned out to be quite the controversial book - stirring up all sorts of genre ghetto-ising talk from the librarians when I said that it should be a family saga because it was all about the generations of the family struggling to live together and fretting over the potential loss of their Magic Ship.
The words "Magic ship" were barely out of my mouth before Supervisor S and Sister Serials began emphatically shouting "Fantasy! Fantasy! Fantasy! If there's Magic it's Fantasy!" with the rest of the workroom rhubarbing along like a frenzied mob trying to oust me from their "proper" reading vicinity.

Well I think that if Crime novels can have their Gun, Detective and Sneaky Man then Fantasy can have it's sub-genres too, so I present to you the Fantasy Family Saga genre Sticker:


This should make sure that Fantasy readers are able to more accurately determine which flavour of Fantasy they will be reading.

... the Painstaking Search

(246 Alternate Title: Thing #9 Finding Feeds)

I've just persevered my way through many, many, many feed searches on Feedster, Technorati and Syndic8. The lack of results was uninspiring but I persisted because I wanted to find a feed to add to my site, and fill in another box on my progress chart (which is the special dog treat of this 2.0 stuff), and I wanted one that shared some things with mine.

In the end I found a couple using the Bloglines search - which I heartily recommend as being much more user friendly and successful than the others.

• The first site I actually stopped to read was Library Monk- the Blog of Dan Greene, a sporadically updated site (which makes me feel better about my infrequent updates) that touches on IT in the library with small updates on the personal life.

• From there I bounced through to The Shifted Librarian which has a scary amount of postings and references on to other blogs and news sites

• Which is how I found Librarian Idol by an Australian librarian in Darwin. He has only recently begun but already has a level of content that puts me to shame. He writes some thought provoking stuff and has also created a reasonably funny youtube video.

... the Infinite Floorboarding

Well Handy Dad and I got another six boards down yesterday. It takes so long to prepare for them!
To cut around doorways, for a really good finished look, is very fiddly as well. My estimate is another four to five full days to finish up and start living in the new place.

Anyway here's a slightly blurry phone photo of the living room:

Oh and I have another caution: when testing the join between two floorboards do not use socked feet - this only leads to splinters.

... The Floorboards

(Oh and Go Live Day!)

I have been kept very busy with the ongoing renovations at the new place - and the upgrade at work. One room is floor boarded and even has some furniture sitting in there. It has ended up being a tad bouncy since Handy Dad and I put them over the carpet underlay and a layer of thin floorboard underlay. The idea was to have more of a soundproof layer but it may just put more stress on the joins.

The upgrade at work has gone relatively smoothly, although there is a crescendo of talk about the speed of the new system (patience Miss Amanda, patience), allowing me to take Go Live +1 Day off to commence the aforementioned floor boarding while Supervisor S handled the glitches of the day.
The glitch list is in constant flux as new glitches are added and others are removed but I'm happy that it's staying quite small and may even be starting to shrink.

... the RSS Feeds

(246 Alternate Title: Thing #8 Bloglines)
Well I just spent a lot of clicks subscribing to everyone's blogs in my Bloglines account.

Now, like Supervisor S, I can sneakily check up on what everyone is up to and know when they have made new posts - like Groovy Spirits making another post and teasing us like a LibraryLand conference with promises of cocktails that never seem to appear.

On the home front the floating floorboards were collected yesterday and hefted upstairs with Handy Dad and may have contributed to a horrible mother's day back-related headache. Mostly recovered now but still feeling a little feeble.

... the Second Goal!

My second goal eventuated in tonights game because the defenders expected me to pass to another player and let me set up the shot and get the placement I wanted. So I now have scored two goals and have an average. I can expect a Goal every two months - the pressure on me is immense!

In other news, today was the start of Offline time in the LMS upgrade and also the day the Brighton router decided to die. There's nothing like a crisis that pushes your late lunch back even later.

... the Disappearing Week (and a half)

Well things have been so busy at work with the LMS upgrade - not long left to wait for 8 - and at home with renovations and packing that I haven't had a chance to even glance in the direction of the blog.

The painting in the new place is almost done, thanks to Handy Dad sneaking in and doing a lot of work during the week. We spent a few hours this afternoon wandering in a daze through Bunnings,
ordering thousands of dollars worth of floorboards and marveling at the low level of service (and, sadly, noticing what types of slip printers they had).

Last week was also the last week of work for The Polster from the council IT helpdesk and Adversary from Sandringham - making Friday fall below the average for work accomplished.

Now, in the interests of actually making these into cautionary tales I will add a caution about the movie Aeon Flux. I watched it after collapsing on the couch last Saturday night and it was a struggle even in that state. It's not bad-bad as such but there are much better films in its sub-genre. I never really got into the animation it's based on so maybe the film is a good adaption of the source material?

In other news Svetlana has got herself a job and will most likely be extending her stay in the homeland. Poo! Well at least I won't have to paint any of the rooms pink.