... the IT man in LibraryLand
This weekend just past was the twentieth anniversary of the blokey camping night at Mt Disappointment.
My blokeyness got off to a slow start after an early morning phone call from Svetlana delayed my arrival but we got there in the end.
We being the core group of: yours truly, Legion2, BestFriendSincePrep, StumpyRudolph and MrRogers (Gavman pulled out sick with a bad case of being weak and girly).
We indulged in many of the usual activities: bush golf, drinking, firewood harvesting, drinking, exploding things on the fire, drinking, jaffle making, drinking and eating lots of chips and chocolates. We also squeezed some drinking in. I survived to make it home and only twinged my knee three times so I think I got off lightly.
In order to unwind and dissipate some of the blokeyness I had Sunday night dinner with Alecto and Rugrat Twin while we watched the latest Dr Who Christmas Special before making Rugrat Twin redress her error of never having seen the classic metaphysical comedy that is Groundhog Day.
... The Long, Dark, Nightime of the Install
I have been a tad incommunicative lately as my focus has been elsewhere - namely on completing a computer rollout before the end of the week.
As a part of that process I had a Glorious Master Plan to book out the Brighton public PCs from 6pm and install until closing time or shortly thereafter.
It was not to be however.
The first setback of the day was the delay in getting to Hampton for the mornings install of it's measly three PCs. I had to forsake them in order to fix a slip printer at Sandringham that the library IT Support Coordinator and incorrectly installed the day before.
Eventually Hampton was finished and I could traipse back to Brighton to commence operation image in the training room. I had barely begun ordering my work experience lackey to unpack the PC boxes before he was cruelly taken from me - by his mum coming to take him home. This near disaster caused me to have to pick up the slack and do the rest of the work myself!
Several network access issues later I made my way out into the public domain to inform the desk staff that they could let the public use my bookings as long as there was warning that they could be kicked off for the upgrade at any moment, only to find that Miss Amanda and Seditious Sam had taken it upon themselves to already do that - without awaiting my orders!
Anyway as the set-backs gathered I formed a clearer picture of my actual finishing time and informed the two recalcitrants of the situation only to have Miss Amanda bring down a huge curse upon my evening with the fatal words - "double that time, you always have to double IT estimates".
Having already doubled my estimate I was horrified to realise that she had now doomed me to a quadrupling of install time!
One long night in a darkened Brighton library, replete with wind-rattling doors and haunted air conditioning pipes, uninstalling and reinstalling of printers later and the new PCs were ready to go.
I zoomed home in record time to collapse into bed and make the most of my handful of hours before returning to the library for the next days early morning Strategy team and free morning tea.
As a part of that process I had a Glorious Master Plan to book out the Brighton public PCs from 6pm and install until closing time or shortly thereafter.
It was not to be however.
The first setback of the day was the delay in getting to Hampton for the mornings install of it's measly three PCs. I had to forsake them in order to fix a slip printer at Sandringham that the library IT Support Coordinator and incorrectly installed the day before.
Eventually Hampton was finished and I could traipse back to Brighton to commence operation image in the training room. I had barely begun ordering my work experience lackey to unpack the PC boxes before he was cruelly taken from me - by his mum coming to take him home. This near disaster caused me to have to pick up the slack and do the rest of the work myself!
Several network access issues later I made my way out into the public domain to inform the desk staff that they could let the public use my bookings as long as there was warning that they could be kicked off for the upgrade at any moment, only to find that Miss Amanda and Seditious Sam had taken it upon themselves to already do that - without awaiting my orders!
Anyway as the set-backs gathered I formed a clearer picture of my actual finishing time and informed the two recalcitrants of the situation only to have Miss Amanda bring down a huge curse upon my evening with the fatal words - "double that time, you always have to double IT estimates".
Having already doubled my estimate I was horrified to realise that she had now doomed me to a quadrupling of install time!
One long night in a darkened Brighton library, replete with wind-rattling doors and haunted air conditioning pipes, uninstalling and reinstalling of printers later and the new PCs were ready to go.
I zoomed home in record time to collapse into bed and make the most of my handful of hours before returning to the library for the next days early morning Strategy team and free morning tea.
... RFID Tour Day
Yesterday was a day of visiting several westerly libraries to check out their RFID setup and workflows.
The first stop on the tour was a Sydenham library - a return for me after last years visit.
Wisely deciding to avoid Supervisor Grand Chief K's suspect driving I took the train to meet the group at Sydenham. It was quite a site seeing Mr Prada, Big J, Sonja Roster Queen, Groovy Spirits, Torchwood, Ms Magpie, and Devil's Advocate disembark from the bus and swarm into the library like a school of bibliographic piranhas.
After much investigation - and no morning tea - we took our lives into our own hands and boarded the bus to head on towards our next stop - Caroline Springs (or, in Torchwood parlance, Alice Springs. tsk tsk tsk oh the Welsh.)
Once there we once again swarmed through the library devouring their RFID and other IT set-ups and no morning tea - in a moment of desperation I had to buy myself a mocha at the library cafe.
It wasn't long before we were once again on the bus of death and heading for Sunshine library.
Along the way we made a short stop at this little local attraction.
Sunshine was more of the same but also included a rather unsettling moment of thinking the same thing as Torchwood when the locals replied that they hadn't done any yet to T's question about communicating with the borrowers about their new system which went live last week.
Anyway, after my eyebrows eventually came down again, Supervisor Grand Chief K announced that we were finally going for lunch. Oh, but what a cruel announcement that was. Picking a delightful little wine bar we discovered that lunch would be out of our own pocket!!
After lunch I made up a plausible reason to catch the train rather than spend any more time under the vehicle directing "skills" of SGCK.
I made my way straight home, pausing in the city only long enough for some gaming-related shopping - having the latest edition of Traveller being a requirement to put me back ahead of The Viking Hat GM in the collection stakes.
After some well-earned rest I headed out for the semi-annual soccer night out consisting of some lovely dinner and conversation at a pub along with free drinks from the match payment kitty.
The first stop on the tour was a Sydenham library - a return for me after last years visit.
Wisely deciding to avoid Supervisor Grand Chief K's suspect driving I took the train to meet the group at Sydenham. It was quite a site seeing Mr Prada, Big J, Sonja Roster Queen, Groovy Spirits, Torchwood, Ms Magpie, and Devil's Advocate disembark from the bus and swarm into the library like a school of bibliographic piranhas.
After much investigation - and no morning tea - we took our lives into our own hands and boarded the bus to head on towards our next stop - Caroline Springs (or, in Torchwood parlance, Alice Springs. tsk tsk tsk oh the Welsh.)
Once there we once again swarmed through the library devouring their RFID and other IT set-ups and no morning tea - in a moment of desperation I had to buy myself a mocha at the library cafe.
It wasn't long before we were once again on the bus of death and heading for Sunshine library.
Along the way we made a short stop at this little local attraction.
Sunshine was more of the same but also included a rather unsettling moment of thinking the same thing as Torchwood when the locals replied that they hadn't done any yet to T's question about communicating with the borrowers about their new system which went live last week.
Anyway, after my eyebrows eventually came down again, Supervisor Grand Chief K announced that we were finally going for lunch. Oh, but what a cruel announcement that was. Picking a delightful little wine bar we discovered that lunch would be out of our own pocket!!
After lunch I made up a plausible reason to catch the train rather than spend any more time under the vehicle directing "skills" of SGCK.
I made my way straight home, pausing in the city only long enough for some gaming-related shopping - having the latest edition of Traveller being a requirement to put me back ahead of The Viking Hat GM in the collection stakes.
After some well-earned rest I headed out for the semi-annual soccer night out consisting of some lovely dinner and conversation at a pub along with free drinks from the match payment kitty.
... Catching Up With Harry
Potter that is.
Last night I went over to Rugrat Twin's for some soup and the watching of heretofore un-Phill-seen Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It was ok, if a little long, and the bit where the monster was suddenly blinded didn't make a lot of sense until Rugrat Twin accused me of falling asleep.
Previously in the week I had been inundated with IT projects as RFID kicked off and ordering of new wireless hotspots and delivery of new computers have all conspired to occur at the same time. On top of all that I was given the "clean up your room" treatment by Supervisor Grand Chief K about some printer documentation - in front of the RFID IT guys. I think she does it on purpose just to embarrass me.
I received an upset phone call from Svetlana late in the week as she'd just discovered that some nefarious types had used her credit card in NSW to purchase their daily grocery needs of $3000. A few calls to the card providers sorted things out - although I am still puzzled that she was told "it looked unusual so we tried to call you but then you made a payment so we thought it was okay".
Today I took my jumper on another outing to the footy with Legion2 and The Great Sandro. We watched the umpires make a game spoiling four goal contribution to a game that would probably have been a close Carlton win anyway.
A proper phone talk with Svetlana finished my day and washed away my footy pain preparing me for the horrors of first desk shift tomorrow.
Last night I went over to Rugrat Twin's for some soup and the watching of heretofore un-Phill-seen Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It was ok, if a little long, and the bit where the monster was suddenly blinded didn't make a lot of sense until Rugrat Twin accused me of falling asleep.
Previously in the week I had been inundated with IT projects as RFID kicked off and ordering of new wireless hotspots and delivery of new computers have all conspired to occur at the same time. On top of all that I was given the "clean up your room" treatment by Supervisor Grand Chief K about some printer documentation - in front of the RFID IT guys. I think she does it on purpose just to embarrass me.
I received an upset phone call from Svetlana late in the week as she'd just discovered that some nefarious types had used her credit card in NSW to purchase their daily grocery needs of $3000. A few calls to the card providers sorted things out - although I am still puzzled that she was told "it looked unusual so we tried to call you but then you made a payment so we thought it was okay".
Today I took my jumper on another outing to the footy with Legion2 and The Great Sandro. We watched the umpires make a game spoiling four goal contribution to a game that would probably have been a close Carlton win anyway.
A proper phone talk with Svetlana finished my day and washed away my footy pain preparing me for the horrors of first desk shift tomorrow.
... The Fabulous Free 50th Feast
This Thursday past was Sandringham Library's 50th birthday and it had it's birthday party in the evening.
At first I thought there may have been some sort of conspiracy to keep me away from the food as I was in meetings at Brighton all morning and then there was a mix-up that had me hanging around waiting to make Beeby into "my young apprentice" - in the work sense since he's already well down the freeloading road all on his own.
Eventually I made it to Sandy but all the anxiety about missing out on the free feed led me to almost overdo the pre-feast eating - the nibbling and scrounging from the preparation table covered with the magnificent cake-work of Days of our Libraries and Country Girl, not to mention the many horses doovers and the dippyness of Mr Prada.
So heres another caution: pace yourself on a feast day as there's nothing worse than a wasted free dinner.
Luckily my years of training and robust constitution led to a quick recovery from that horrific "I ate too quickly and there's still so much more to eat" feeling and I was able to consume with the best of them by the time the main event rolled around - it will take the knuckle bruising from repeated "you can't eat that yet" rapping a bit longer to heal though.
The opening speech was given by Supervisor Grand Chief K with no sign of Torchwood. I can only hope that this means that SGCK has had the Torchwood problem taken care of permanently.
Other highlights include:
My suspicion about a food deprivation conspirary deepened at the end of the night when the leftovers were quickly hustled out the door to go to the other branches rather than stay at the one I'd be at the next day.
At first I thought there may have been some sort of conspiracy to keep me away from the food as I was in meetings at Brighton all morning and then there was a mix-up that had me hanging around waiting to make Beeby into "my young apprentice" - in the work sense since he's already well down the freeloading road all on his own.
Eventually I made it to Sandy but all the anxiety about missing out on the free feed led me to almost overdo the pre-feast eating - the nibbling and scrounging from the preparation table covered with the magnificent cake-work of Days of our Libraries and Country Girl, not to mention the many horses doovers and the dippyness of Mr Prada.
So heres another caution: pace yourself on a feast day as there's nothing worse than a wasted free dinner.
Luckily my years of training and robust constitution led to a quick recovery from that horrific "I ate too quickly and there's still so much more to eat" feeling and I was able to consume with the best of them by the time the main event rolled around - it will take the knuckle bruising from repeated "you can't eat that yet" rapping a bit longer to heal though.
The opening speech was given by Supervisor Grand Chief K with no sign of Torchwood. I can only hope that this means that SGCK has had the Torchwood problem taken care of permanently.
Other highlights include:
- a lot of mingling with the ghosts of Sandringham librarianship past
- Kiwichick, Days and The Pragmatist sporting wonderful 50's fashion
- the return of Chanlib and Vikki;
- a dozen library staff behind the desk when borrowers came up to be served;
My suspicion about a food deprivation conspirary deepened at the end of the night when the leftovers were quickly hustled out the door to go to the other branches rather than stay at the one I'd be at the next day.
... Bag of Bones by Stephen King
I knocked off the last couple of hundred pages of this after finally getting back on the train to work for a couple of days this week.
I've been taking a bit of a break from Mr King's oeuvre but decided to read this in preparation for tackling the Svetlana-ese version that I received as a gift from the gorgeous lady herself just prior to my trip this last December.
It was mostly a by-the-numbers work showcasing his frequent tropes of: smalltown Maine life, the writing process, the nastiness in people and supernatural revenge. I rate it a three out of five mostly because it did have me reading late into the night to find out what was going on at the end.
Given that most of the first half of the book dealt with writer's block and a child custody case before the supernatural came to the fore, I feel that I've gotten full story value out of my "in genre" read when a "proper" book about "real" or realistic people and events would have been only half a good story - and who'd only want to read half a good story?
I've been taking a bit of a break from Mr King's oeuvre but decided to read this in preparation for tackling the Svetlana-ese version that I received as a gift from the gorgeous lady herself just prior to my trip this last December.
It was mostly a by-the-numbers work showcasing his frequent tropes of: smalltown Maine life, the writing process, the nastiness in people and supernatural revenge. I rate it a three out of five mostly because it did have me reading late into the night to find out what was going on at the end.
Given that most of the first half of the book dealt with writer's block and a child custody case before the supernatural came to the fore, I feel that I've gotten full story value out of my "in genre" read when a "proper" book about "real" or realistic people and events would have been only half a good story - and who'd only want to read half a good story?
... Bowling with the Bayside Babes
note: this posting is sarcasm and nastiness reduced, as some people think that I never say anything nice.
This Friday last Mr Prada and I had the extreme luck to be out in in public ten-pin bowling with a bevy of the best Bayside has to offer. We were the envy of all around for the company we had while we lobbed spheres down the lanes.
It was all thanks to Torchwood's brilliant idea and excellent planning skills, and as a thank you for everyones work at the Literary festival. Of course, as I spent most of the festival at the corporate centre, I was just freeloading along for the night as was Sister Serials showing up only for the free drink.
There was much fun had by all with Big J's sparkling laughter a frequent backdrop, most participants striking at least once - which is important as Innocent Em said to me - "Scoring is what it's all about Phill!", Groovy Spirits, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, The Administrator, and Lord of the Small Fries all plugging away diligently on the aisles.
Of course I blitzed the field in the first game, despite re-injuring the knee last Thursday at soccer. My sense of honour prevailed in the second game and I stepped aside to allow others to claim the glory (there's a chance it may have been several drinks that prevailed actually now that I think about it).
We all played with a spirit of cooperation, encouragement and fair play. With the experts - Sonja Roster Queen, Days of Our Libraries and yours truly - imparting our bountiful bowling wisdom to all who asked and ensuring a much improved second game from both Big J and Kiwichick.
The food was good and Kiwichick came up with the fantastic idea of improving access to the sour cream for the wedges by smearing it all over the table.
All in all it was a grand night out and hopefully there will be many more occasions of it's ilk where I can spend an entire evening in the treasured company of those I work with.
This Friday last Mr Prada and I had the extreme luck to be out in in public ten-pin bowling with a bevy of the best Bayside has to offer. We were the envy of all around for the company we had while we lobbed spheres down the lanes.
It was all thanks to Torchwood's brilliant idea and excellent planning skills, and as a thank you for everyones work at the Literary festival. Of course, as I spent most of the festival at the corporate centre, I was just freeloading along for the night as was Sister Serials showing up only for the free drink.
There was much fun had by all with Big J's sparkling laughter a frequent backdrop, most participants striking at least once - which is important as Innocent Em said to me - "Scoring is what it's all about Phill!", Groovy Spirits, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, The Administrator, and Lord of the Small Fries all plugging away diligently on the aisles.
Of course I blitzed the field in the first game, despite re-injuring the knee last Thursday at soccer. My sense of honour prevailed in the second game and I stepped aside to allow others to claim the glory (there's a chance it may have been several drinks that prevailed actually now that I think about it).
We all played with a spirit of cooperation, encouragement and fair play. With the experts - Sonja Roster Queen, Days of Our Libraries and yours truly - imparting our bountiful bowling wisdom to all who asked and ensuring a much improved second game from both Big J and Kiwichick.
The food was good and Kiwichick came up with the fantastic idea of improving access to the sour cream for the wedges by smearing it all over the table.
All in all it was a grand night out and hopefully there will be many more occasions of it's ilk where I can spend an entire evening in the treasured company of those I work with.
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