... the IT man in LibraryLand
Sunday last I was in attendance at the rip-roaring affair that was Handy Dad's 70th birthday party.
Kicking off at midday this raging event included a delicious lunch. Unfortunately I only partook lightly of the lunch as I Freeloading Mum had asked me to make a speech and I was suffering through a mild case of the inevitable 'speech tummy'. I suspect keeping me from eating all the food may have been the primary motivation despite my legendary speechmaking skills.
The party finally wound up late in the early afternoon and we were all surprisingly on our own by 4.30.
With Handy Dad on good behaviour and Legion4 not making it due to a odontalgia disaster I'm afraid I have no tales to tell of the day.
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... The Opening Night
Last night saw the opening of the second annual Bayside Literary Festival.
Unlike last years Festival this one was disappointingly Supervisor Grand Chief K injury free.
AntagonisticAl did a marvellous job of organisation with everything going off like clockwork - I particularly enjoyed the Mayor's surrealistic performance art piece made to look like a Basil Fawlty-esque bumbling mess, bravo!
One must wonder, however, if snacks and drinks do have to stop during the presentations - surely they could be circulated amongst the crowd to save valuable IT staff from wasting away?
Luckily there was ample cheese and decorative fruit at the staff after-party once the formalities were completed and disaster was averted.
Other highlights of the enchanting evening include:
On my way home I popped in for a quick wine-bar drink with Dubrovnik Hater - now with slightly less minions. Our waiter was amusingly snooty towards us until a rather inebriated fellow tried to enter the establishment and was turned away as he would disturb "these valued customers".
I was home at a reasonably late hour which enabled Sister Serials to give me a late morning wake up call this morning for some frivolous IT support matter.
Sigh! Life is so hard sometimes.
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Unlike last years Festival this one was disappointingly Supervisor Grand Chief K injury free.
AntagonisticAl did a marvellous job of organisation with everything going off like clockwork - I particularly enjoyed the Mayor's surrealistic performance art piece made to look like a Basil Fawlty-esque bumbling mess, bravo!
One must wonder, however, if snacks and drinks do have to stop during the presentations - surely they could be circulated amongst the crowd to save valuable IT staff from wasting away?
Luckily there was ample cheese and decorative fruit at the staff after-party once the formalities were completed and disaster was averted.
Other highlights of the enchanting evening include:
- Kiwichick and Days of our Libraries with coordinated hair styles
- Dubrovnik Hater attending with a flock of minions
- Beeby suffering from a lack of party-pie style foods
- staff all frocked up to the nines (except yours truly who decided to go with a laid-back "came straight from work" style in a masterstroke of fashion trend-setting)
- a complete lack of any IT support requirement in my attendance
On my way home I popped in for a quick wine-bar drink with Dubrovnik Hater - now with slightly less minions. Our waiter was amusingly snooty towards us until a rather inebriated fellow tried to enter the establishment and was turned away as he would disturb "these valued customers".
I was home at a reasonably late hour which enabled Sister Serials to give me a late morning wake up call this morning for some frivolous IT support matter.
Sigh! Life is so hard sometimes.
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... The Star Trek Review
So, along with Fantomas and Pirate Dave from my regular Thursday night gaming group, I decided to forsake the game tonight for the only thing geekier - the new Star Trek movie.
It was pretty good using many of the common tropes of the franchise to explain the reboot of the continuity and pave the way for not having to slavishly follow the previous series and films.
Highly recommended.
The geekiness of Star Trek has even managed to eclipse my other big geek event of the week - another Geektogether. The Viking Hat GM organised the first of these in almost a year to try and kick-start his flailing gaming career after the The Blithe Bogan abruptly put an end to its latest burst of activity a few weeks ago.
And in a contrasting non-geeky event I, along with Legions 2-3, BrotherStealer, and MadMog, attended the housewarming for Spare Legion this Saturday past. With Badger and Hector the Nazi also in attendence much drinking and fun and frivolity was had by all.
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It was pretty good using many of the common tropes of the franchise to explain the reboot of the continuity and pave the way for not having to slavishly follow the previous series and films.
Highly recommended.
The geekiness of Star Trek has even managed to eclipse my other big geek event of the week - another Geektogether. The Viking Hat GM organised the first of these in almost a year to try and kick-start his flailing gaming career after the The Blithe Bogan abruptly put an end to its latest burst of activity a few weeks ago.
And in a contrasting non-geeky event I, along with Legions 2-3, BrotherStealer, and MadMog, attended the housewarming for Spare Legion this Saturday past. With Badger and Hector the Nazi also in attendence much drinking and fun and frivolity was had by all.
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... The Life Brightonian
Contrary to all my planning I ended up spending most of last week anchored to Brighton branch.
This lead to my partaking in all facets of the Brighton lifestyle: the lunches, the perpetual snacks on the kitchen table, the crazy computer users, the nigh-constant hubbub of noise from the workroom, the late working nights trying to catch up on all the work that was missed due to unavoidable participation in said hubbub and snack ingesting.
Being so long at the one location gave me opportunity to scientifically test my hypothesis that my presence has a detrimental effect on individuals problem solving skills.
I was able to first hand see the problems I was asked to solve devolve from the beginning of the weeks fairly reasonable "Phill! my computer just exploded", through to the late week puzzlers along the lines of "Phill! How do I click my mouse again?"
Luckily I was able to make good my escape and spend my Friday luxuriating in the autonomous environment that is Sandy.
The only hardship being having to put up with Days of our Libraries claiming my latest knee injury was merely my latest attempt to get out of going down on bended knee before Svetlana no matter how much I assured her that, when I come to engage in such an endeavour, I shall do it in a thoroughly modern manner and send Svets an email.
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This lead to my partaking in all facets of the Brighton lifestyle: the lunches, the perpetual snacks on the kitchen table, the crazy computer users, the nigh-constant hubbub of noise from the workroom, the late working nights trying to catch up on all the work that was missed due to unavoidable participation in said hubbub and snack ingesting.
Being so long at the one location gave me opportunity to scientifically test my hypothesis that my presence has a detrimental effect on individuals problem solving skills.
I was able to first hand see the problems I was asked to solve devolve from the beginning of the weeks fairly reasonable "Phill! my computer just exploded", through to the late week puzzlers along the lines of "Phill! How do I click my mouse again?"
Luckily I was able to make good my escape and spend my Friday luxuriating in the autonomous environment that is Sandy.
The only hardship being having to put up with Days of our Libraries claiming my latest knee injury was merely my latest attempt to get out of going down on bended knee before Svetlana no matter how much I assured her that, when I come to engage in such an endeavour, I shall do it in a thoroughly modern manner and send Svets an email.
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... The Career-Ending Injury
No I'm not talking about some heinous injury to the two fingers I use for typing things into these infernal computing devices. Rther something more unfortunate has arisen.
In the dying minutes of last Thursday's soccer game my knee decided to half-pop for no reason other than my running full-tilt to beat another player to the ball.
It was a bit of a night for carnage as SoccerBuddy aggravated his hamstring and another player left early with an injured calf.
My knee gave only momentary pain and I was walking fine by the time I returned to my car with just a bit of a "twinged" feeling about the joint.
Alas my physio, however, had other ideas.
After some examination he pronounced it to be a most rugged and manly sporting injury - ruptured anterior cruciate.
Finally I am alongside the top athletes of our day.
Unfortunately I don't have the resources or time to devote my days to rapid recovery so I shall have to make do with almost no impact on day to day life and, should I return to soccer, being relegated to only goal keeping.
There will be an assessment in six weeks and we will see if any surgery will be necessary for general usage but the good doctor seemed quite the optimistic fellow.
As staying in goal lacks a lot of the running to position and playing the passing game that I enjoy this most likely means that I shall have more free time in the future.
This free time may well be time to write and I do have an idea for a fascinating first novel - completely made up of course.
This is the opening line. What do you think?
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In the dying minutes of last Thursday's soccer game my knee decided to half-pop for no reason other than my running full-tilt to beat another player to the ball.
It was a bit of a night for carnage as SoccerBuddy aggravated his hamstring and another player left early with an injured calf.
My knee gave only momentary pain and I was walking fine by the time I returned to my car with just a bit of a "twinged" feeling about the joint.
Alas my physio, however, had other ideas.
After some examination he pronounced it to be a most rugged and manly sporting injury - ruptured anterior cruciate.
Finally I am alongside the top athletes of our day.
Unfortunately I don't have the resources or time to devote my days to rapid recovery so I shall have to make do with almost no impact on day to day life and, should I return to soccer, being relegated to only goal keeping.
There will be an assessment in six weeks and we will see if any surgery will be necessary for general usage but the good doctor seemed quite the optimistic fellow.
As staying in goal lacks a lot of the running to position and playing the passing game that I enjoy this most likely means that I shall have more free time in the future.
This free time may well be time to write and I do have an idea for a fascinating first novel - completely made up of course.
This is the opening line. What do you think?
Bill, having suffered a terrible elbow injury playing badminton, decided to become a famous writer of novels.
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... The Skyping of Svetlana
So last Friday I bit the technological bullet and installed this thing called Skype onto my PC at Svetlana's insistence.
However lo and behold but when I cut short the soccer night out drinking to rush home and try giving the good lady a stupendous Skyping I get nothing. Ignored. Completely.
When I had finally gotten over my huff and contacted her tonight she came out with some sort of guff about May 1st being a holiday in Svetlanaland - May Day or some such - a likely story.
Anyway we made the connection and talked away for a quite a while. I never really knew about Skype but find it nigh mind-boggling that computer to computer calls are free. I guess they hope you'll get used to it and then start a paid account so you can call real phones from your computer.
The quality of our conversation was good (I mean sound quality the other sort was... well, you had to be there to appreciate it). There was no sense of lag at all and the only thing that stopped us going all night was my need for food after getting home late from trying to fix a Brand New Problem™ that Days of our Libraries and Kiwichick managed to unearth in their late shift. Those two need to be separated, especially now that Mr Prada is off in Mapleland and the whole place is falling apart.
Ahem. I seem to have wandered somewhat from my initial point. Suffice to say it works, I think I deserve some sort of IT hero award for getting it going, and I believe that there shall be much more conversation with Svetlana in the future - as long as my internet account can handle it anyway.
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However lo and behold but when I cut short the soccer night out drinking to rush home and try giving the good lady a stupendous Skyping I get nothing. Ignored. Completely.
When I had finally gotten over my huff and contacted her tonight she came out with some sort of guff about May 1st being a holiday in Svetlanaland - May Day or some such - a likely story.
Anyway we made the connection and talked away for a quite a while. I never really knew about Skype but find it nigh mind-boggling that computer to computer calls are free. I guess they hope you'll get used to it and then start a paid account so you can call real phones from your computer.
The quality of our conversation was good (I mean sound quality the other sort was... well, you had to be there to appreciate it). There was no sense of lag at all and the only thing that stopped us going all night was my need for food after getting home late from trying to fix a Brand New Problem™ that Days of our Libraries and Kiwichick managed to unearth in their late shift. Those two need to be separated, especially now that Mr Prada is off in Mapleland and the whole place is falling apart.
Ahem. I seem to have wandered somewhat from my initial point. Suffice to say it works, I think I deserve some sort of IT hero award for getting it going, and I believe that there shall be much more conversation with Svetlana in the future - as long as my internet account can handle it anyway.
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