Scenes from a Conference Month

So time has passed, as it always does, and one had a busy month of October - the International month of user conferences.

Having somewhat recovered from the inevitable accumulation of work not done due to being away at said conferences one is now in a position to recount the hazy remembrances that remain.

• Organising, organising, organising
• MCing two days of conference
• Being caught once more in the late night bear trap with a Kiwi
• The standard motivational back prodding via pen from Sis
• Voluntarily stepping down as President making it the year for the ending of great presidencies
• Taking the First Lady, Salsa Girl, to a much deserved dinner
• Escorting the First Lady, Salsa Girl, to her train and thereby
• An Early morning jogging session to earn free upgrades for life
• Presenters and time wrangling for all that going long, short, and missing that occurs with public speaking
• Being compared to Mr Prada in the fashion stakes
• A short break before a second conference
• A long awaited catch up with Alecto after nigh on a year of missing each other at various Library events
• Late night mild food poisoning that has no connection to mixed drinks, it was the chicken I tell you!!
• The joy of just sitting back in a conference one isn't organising
• The stress of trying to keep new project ideas from entering Supervisor Grand Chief K's sphere of attention
• And, as an afterthought, the wonderful networking opportunities which may have involved equally wonderful food and drink but one is not one to notice that sort of thing

.

... The Girl's Night In

This Friday past I was over at Rugrat Twin's with Alecto, Emma, Kate and Jane.
Alecto and I watched the romantic drama as Rugrat Twin worked on her dressmaking.
I was lured into this fest of girlyness with the cunningly thought out trap of free beer and home made pizza.

Unfortunately it was quite enjoyable - maybe because of the beer - although the drama itself did become a bit "What the?" towards the end when I'm sure (though it may have been the beer again) I heard the handsome hero proclaim that he had loved Emma since he held her as three week old baby, and also other aristocrats proclaiming "don't they make a wonderful couple, just like a brother and sister". I guess it must have been a realistic portrayal of the British aristocracy...

Suffice to say that in the end I went home confused and with a full stomach.


In order to reset my testosterone balance I went to ArchEnemy's on Saturday to watch footy with him and ElfBoy. There was beer there to but no freaky revelations so I felt that my extreme masculinity had been restored to it's usual high level.
.

... The Manga Marathon

This Easter has seen another of Alecto's traditional anime watching festivals. This years took place over 11 hours of Good Friday with Swing, Hemy and another also in attendance.

This time we were watching Azumanga Daioh a cute one about the lives of a group of girls during their three years as high-school classmates. Alecto had a bountiful table of nibbles on hand so the only disappointment was the lack of giant fighting robots in the anime itself.


Sticking to the comics theme yesterday I attended a comics discussion get together organised by The Real Greg Dean and attended by myself and Zombie Monkey. We had a good chat and some great food and booze from the venue. We wrapped up just after Doom showed up claiming it was his local cafe. Personally I am concerned that there is some sort of blog appearance stalking going on.


The final piece in the comics puzzle is my finishing reading the novelisation of the computer game of Dredd vs Death of Judge Dredd of the 2000AD comic. I quite enjoyed it as the writing was easy to read and it captured the feel of the comic.
Reading this book did give me the dilemma earlier in the week of deciding which was the geekier reading material for the work lunch room - a comics novelisation or a RPG supplement? I went with the RPG supplement figuring it would look more like a non-fiction text book and protect me from awkward questions.
.

... Movies, Footy and Music

Good things have continued to happen as, not long after making my last post, Mr Prada finally released his vice-like grip from Doctor Who series two and allowed my reservation to allocate. I recommenced catching up with the good doctor that very evening.

Friday night's good thing was a movie outing with Rugrat Twin and Alecto in celebration of the Rugrat Twin's birthday. The Twin chose a double of both X-Files movies at the Astor (pronounces Ass-toor by the staff, I mean staaaff). It had been a very long time since I'd graced the venue with my presence and I was pleased to see that she hadn't changed a bit. My bum was a bit displeased that they hadn't changed the seats one bit though.
Rewatching the first movie - now 10 years old - gave me a weird sense of deja vu as things happened that I vaguely recalled. Obviously it was an unforgettable experience the first time I saw it.
The new movie vindicated my expert search skills when Skully, conducting doctory research into stem cell treatments, used Google - and only Google - and found exactly what she was looking for. I believe that since I do not go beyond the big G, that makes me eminently qualified to be a reference librarian.

Saturday's good thing was, of course, the Grand Final BBQ.
This year it was organised to be at StumpyRudolph's chalet in the hills - the scene of my rather unfortunate run in with BestFriendSincePrep's idea of a good nights drinking. Everything was much more sedate this time however I did have some nam-like flashbacks on visiting the rest-room I had spent so much time in.
The game itself went well and for once Legion2 and I were supporting different teams so we had a legitimate reason to abuse each other. My team won of course.

Leaving the BBQ early - i.e. the same time as everyone else - I rushed back to civilisation to join the festivities at Rugrat Twin's birthday slash flat-warming party. This kept me up until pumpkin time listening to the verbal acrobatics of Evil Twin.

Sunday was a prearranged get together with Tuck to go through our musical memorabilia from the band we were in together, oh, FOURTEEN YEARS AGO! The pictures were the most interestingly scary. Unfortunately my scanner was misbehaving and, not having anyone IT savvy enough around to fix it, I won't be able to show you any of them for a few weeks so forget I even mentioned them. In any case we unboxed many fascinating relics from those Malaclypse III times and whiled away the afternoon in reminiscent conversation.


The most recent good thing to happen was everyone believing me that I was working from home today. A few strategic emails and phone calls and the rest of day was mine.

My luck may have turned though. I unthinkingly used my bountiful non-work time to have my flowing locks trimmed so I could look all spiffy and suchlike for this weeks conference - ignoring that Svetlana has decreed that my locks must stay at least a certain length (I think so that they are easily used to guide me towards her side of any discussion we may have).
I may be forced to have hair extensions installed in order to escape her wrath when she lands in, oh, 15 more sleeps!!
.

... 20 Years of Disappointment

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.

... People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Rugrat Twin lent me Alecto's copy of this one to me to read and since it had 37 reserves on it I decided not to read the library copy.
I've been chipping away at it in between printer rollout disasters and finally knocked of the last chunk on Sunday morning.

I really enjoyed the opening half (all set in SvetlanaLand's region) but the second half began to lose me as it became more and more a thin veneer of history covering a gooshy melodramatic story. Plus all the stuff about printer failure was pretty jarring - although maybe I'm conflating my reading and my real life...

Still it had many interesting bits and her writing's not hard to read so it gets a three star rating from me.

---

In other news I battled through an hour long help desk call on Freeloading Mum's behalf - missing out on a lot of the lunch that I'd had to pay for! After jumping through lot's of inane plugging and unplugging tests to prove the problem wasn't at our end I finally got them make some changes at their ADSL Exchange and tada! Freeloading Mum has working ADSL again. Bloody IT people.

... A Year of The Tales

My how the time flies. Today marks the one year anniversary of the humble start of The Tales. Perhaps fittingly I have been far too busy to post this last week. In fact the idea of closing The Tales on the anniversary had crossed my mind - going out on a high and all that.
However I think I'm going to carry on and grind The Tales into the ground, shedding readers until I am once again typing only to myself - after all I can't let 113 posts go to waste.

So, on with the show...


Mad March
My recent hecticity has been the beginning of what I am referring to as Mad March. Many projects are being embarked plus the social calendar has been busy and shonky electrics at two of the libraries have conspired to rob me of any chance of spare time blessing me with its presence.


The Prelude
The evening before the beginning of Mad March was a drinks and dinner evening for the staff of Sandringham and Hampton branches organised by Mr Prada.
Arriving late - I had to sample the free consumables being provided at the council social club happy hour - I discovered that apparently Supervisor Grand Chief K was now based at our branch. Even her renowned enabling skills couldn't get any more than a handful of staff to stay for the dinner segment of the evening - herself included.
The evening went pretty much as expected given that Sandringham has now now taken the title of smuttiest branch from Beaumaris thanks to the hard work of Mr Prada and Days of our Libraries. The ordering of the spatchcock by Kiwichick was greeted by the expected gales of laughter and Innocent Em's requests for a lift home from yours truly at the end of the evening lead to all sorts of wonderful innuendo based comedy. All in all not a bad evening as far as such self-funded events go.


A Little Geekery
My Saturday disappeared in quite quickly after I spontaneously decided to buy myself a cheap document scanner. It turns out that a combo scanner, printer, copier fit perfectly into my tight budget so I was busy unpacking and installing for most of the afternoon.
In the afternoon I tootled off to Alecto's for dinner with her and Rugrat Twin. After dinner we had Rugrat Twin and my first viewing of Shaun of the Dead. It was a good humorous addition to the Zombie genre - although if it were a book I think it would have a genre sticker a little like this:

A Bit More Geekery
Sunday began with the resumption of my watching of my Farscape season one DVDs which I have managed to guilt back out of Scully's hands since my return from Svetlanaland.
The afternoon and evening was the return of the monthly-esque Sunday afternoon gaming. There was a bumper turnout this time with Badger, Amoeba and Mechwarrior Wayne all putting in their first appearances ever.

... 2.0 Remedial Class

Having made no progress in 2.0 for a very long time I was sent along to a day of 2.0 seminars at the state library today. It was interesting and did open my eyes to a few more ways to incorporate 2.0 into what we do at the library. I do still remain a little skeptical about 2.0 being the way all things in the library will go in the future which is the impression that a lot of the Library 2.0 talk gives me.
In an anti-eponymous move I went to lunch with Alecto who works in the state library instead of staying for the free lunch. Word is it was very good so I'll be having a sleepless night of regret tonight.