The Draw of Victory

This evening last one was lucky enough to attend the local World Game event in the company of Gavman, ArchEnemy, and sundry others - about 18 in all. The match in question was between The Melbourne Victory and The Adelaide United.

Due to Gavman's renowned network of connections he had been able to wrangle us seats in a suite at AAMI stadium and we made the most of the accommodations. There was a main room with seating enough for the full compliment of attendees and a fenced off balcony section with all our seating in a quite acceptable proximity to the play.

The excitement was palpable in the air before the match even began as the first round of free drinks and nibbles began to circulate.

Enthusiasm grew throughout the match as Victory scored a goal and the calamari and chips arrived.

Half time was quite the occasion as several plates of pies and sausage rolls appeared before us.

The second half grew to a crescendo as Adelaide scored an equaliser - and accompanying flare in the crowd - and hope began to fade in the hearts of those, such as ArchEnemy, with a true passion for the Melbourne Victory team.

The peak of the match was reached with barely a quarter hour remaining as warm scones with cream and jam made their most timely appearance.

One thinks this soccer watching lark is something one could become quite used to.

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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?

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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... The Near-perfect Return

Last night I was back in action on the soccer field.

After a short warm-up I was into action in my Svetlanaland national jumper.
The knee was a bit tender and I had to nurse it along, but for the last third of the match it had really warmed up and was working quite well - I even had a shot on goal thanks to a great pass by SoccerBuddy but, no thanks to the goalie, there was a deflection and then it bounced off the post. Sigh, I suppose you can't have everything.

Afterwards the real action began in the clubhouse with beer and snacks. My knee survived that with flying colours too.
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... The End of the Busy Days?

I think that was just my biggest non-Svetlanaland break. As the title may give away I have had very little "free" time to blog and also because of the massive tome that Badger has had me reading since January first I have had no easy "just finished a book" posts to make.

That doesn't mean, however, that nothing has been happening - as this sample should prove irrefutably:

• a team lunch at The Yacht Club followed by gaming at my abode in the evening
• the physio's all clear for knee go-live day at soccer
• multiplying my RFID tagging output by ten at Hampton and reaching the allusive 100 items! (only 5467 steps that day however)
• another regular card tournament at my place with most of the regulars in attendance
• the soccer groups annual family BBQ
• spruiking the RFID at Brighton to not one but two visiting contingents of interested libraryland visitors, then rushing to Hampton to lose a battle with a virus infested staff computer, and consequently arriving late to night one of my second great experiment of gaming with The Viking Hat GM, and Exploding Ninja Pony - this time under the auspices of a new GM (blogname pending - edit: The Blithe Bogan)
• network outages ending, virus removal complete, and regular gaming all evening
• early morning wake up calls from The Tiger, who now needs me to stand by the bowl in order to eat - who says cats aren't neurotic!
• working on the desk with Sister Serials while the Sandy Squad talk about me in their staff meeting and, more distressingly, have cake and biscuits in said meeting without me.
• session two of gaming with a baby in the room. I must say it does inspire having the players encounter a screaming monster
• attending a morning tea and lunch - flanked by some talk about wireless hotspots - out in the far reaches of libraryland. The event itself being marred somewhat by the onset of yet another Man-Cold
• spending my training day preparation time suffering from the aforementioned YAMC. Being fuzzy headed and sneezy and sniffly is not conducive to scribing precise answers to IT questions. I did while away some time watching The King of Kong - force-lent to me by Sister Serials. It was lots of fun and I think I may have found my new hairstyle in the bad guys mullet. Mr Prada did ask the pertinent question though - "is it Svetlana approved?"
• a tortuously early start to training day under orders from Devil's Advocate to collect IT gear from the corporate castle, leaving me too exhausted to properly demolish the morning tea, lunch and post-event drinks

So there you have it. Up to date and ready to return to our regularly scheduled blogging.
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... 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.

... A Trio of Triumphant Returns

The Man in the Corporate Castle
The first triumphant return was my week at the corporate centre in the IT department hanging out with SoccerBuddy - my first time there for a very long time.
I was preparing new PCs for various library branches and making sure that the abundance of morning teas about the centre did not go to waste.


Facing the Field Again
The second triumphant return was my once again taking to the soccer field. It wasn't quite as triumphant as it could have been if I'd scored a goal but the field was crowded requiring little running and the knee held up well - on the night at least, it's been a little stiff since then but as the footy parlance goes "he pulled up sore after the game but will be playing next week".



The Jumper Redeemeth Itself
A last minute phone call from The Great Sandro had me dashing home last night and rushing off to the footy to see Collingwood and Geelong clash. As I expected to be beaten I wore my Collingwood jumper as I figured it couldn't do any harm.
Well...
what ensued was an amazing performance of pressure from the pies, that led to a thrashing of the cats - and more importantly the curse on my jumper has been lifted so I can freely wear it everywhere now (I can't wait to attend my next wedding).

... Pop Goes the Knee

Tonights soccer game gave me the delightful opportunity to hear something in my knee go POP-pop.

I may have been trying to get a little too fancy in my attempts to stop another player and was left hopping around in a bit of pain. Luckily SoccerBuddy gave me a shoulder to replace my injured leg and, despite a shoulders inappropriateness as a leg, I made it to the sideline for some quiet time with a bag of ice.

What I think happened is that the joint popped out and then back in - over-stretching the surrounding muscles in the process. The current pain is one of tenderness and overstretched muscles but I shall see how it is in the morning to check for swellings or "bad" pain.

I think I'm lucky and will just have to spend a few weeks off from soccer to let the muscles recover - which is going to play havoc with my goal scoring average.

... A Whole Lot of Waffle

Contrary to what the title might suggest there is no tasty light batter cake content to this post.
It is merely a convenience for Supervisor Grand Chief K so that she knows that there is no need for her to bother reading my musings as they will, like she commented on my last post, just glaze her eyes like a freshly cooked waffle.



No sooner had I whinged last post about not having anything to blog about than it all starts to happen.

Thursday Morning I finished reading Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge. It's actually two books - The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime - that explore an imaginary stasis technology and it's ramifications. I really quite enjoyed them both - so much that I bought the company, that is I'm basing my short Thursday night roleplaying game on it while I fill in as gamesmaster for The Bastard who's out with a back injury and having as much trouble standing up straight as a syrup soaked waffle.

That night I continued on my pathway towards eclipsing Ronaldo as I blitzed my way to another two goals at soccer (12 goals in 17 months). The extreme heat kept the numbers low so we joined with the other field of regulars for an us versus them game. I was obviously one of the stars of our team in my Svetlanaland national team jumper as they were shouting at each other to "guard Svetlanaland" when we went into attack. Unfortunately we seemed to be the much better team with a 13-2 scoreline, crushing them like a waffle in a waffle iron.
Technically they actually won due to the "last goal wins" rule in effect when the nasty hockey players kick us off the field.


Friday was an extended session of setting up new public PCs at Beaumaris branch and simultaneously trying to solve one of those wonderful intermittent printing problems that said new PCs were having. I think I've worked out the cause but with SoccerBuddy away at training there was nothing I could do until Monday.


Today I took a walk over to Rugrat Twin's to help get her mobile broadband working only to discover that Evil Twin had already got it working. I was a bit miffed that a mere Doctor had done my job and felt like going out and operating on people to show him what it feels like when someone else does your job.
Anyway Rugrat Twin and I decided to walk into the city and do some shopping. Whilst there we ran into Doom who is living the gamergeek dream and working in the city game store.
Walking home was a little harsh in the afternoon sun and I was feeling a little like an overcooked waffle, but eventually we were home and it was time to take a quiet Saturday night and relax around the house.

... The Rest of the Week

Having run out of tagging space on my last post I've been forced to continue in a second post.
Interestingly there is now a much more helpful error message than previously.

ERROR

The combined length of all the labels must be at most 200 characters.

Training Day and much more Geekery
Monday was our March all staff training day.
The morning was one long session on cultural diversity training. The highlight of this was the discovery that it may be possible to have Torchwood deported back to Leekland.

Lunch was a good pub meal which, for unknown reasons, Supervisor Grand Chief K had decided should be held in the sauna-themed room of the venue.

I stumbled through my own session of tips and tricks thanks to the power of delegation with Miss Amanda and Mr Prada shouldering most of the load. Although I did manage to make a room full of librarians gasp in excitement with my tips about manipulating reservation dates.

My fourth attendance at a Geektogether was delayed a little by the appearance of drinks after the staff training day but I got there in the end. Pirate Dave and Fantomas were my bring alongs this time, proving to the other Geeks that I had gaming Geek friends of my own - ooh the subculture status I achieved!
A reasonable nights drinking and gaming talk was had but we were all a little more reserved than the last occasion.


Terrible Tuesday (and Wednesday)
Power safety switch errors and dying video cards in crucial PCs ate most of these two days. Gaming on Tuesday night and debut of the new Public PC image at Beaumaris were marks in the plus column.


Soccer Superstar
At the end of a long day of meetings and "Hey Phill!" problems at Brighton I threw my goal scoring average into disarray by scoring twice on Thursday night. At 10 goals in 17 months my average is really starting to look good.


Executive Decisions
And finally, today was an all SPUN day with the regular garden-variety Victorian meeting hosted by Dubrovnik Hater without enough chocolate biscuits.

After the meeting our host then showed Madame President, The Professor, myself, and one other a delightful cafe in the area to have lunch at.

Following lunch there was some messing about in banks before we three of the executive entered a lock-in meeting to decide the details of the annual conference.

... The Making of a Speech

I meant to post an entry yesterday but all my spare computer time has been filled with the hand-carving of my best-man speech for Legion2's wedding reception on Saturday night.
It's coming along swimmingly and, in fact, the big danger may be running over my 7-8 minute limit by 10 minutes or so.

Said hand-carving has been taking place in Google Docs which means I can say:
(246 Alternate Title: Thing #18 Web-based Apps)
and knock off another one of the 23 things (which I need to do now that 2.1 is here and there are another 23 things).
Google Docs works quite well for traveling from place to place without the need for saving files to disk or M$ Office. It's "lack" of advanced formating tools actually makes it much more productive and the absence of Petey Paperclip is it's apotheosis.


Other things keeping me busy have included such great fun as:

• spending many days setting up new PCs at Beaumaris branch with no help from Imposter Phil or Polish Chris at council IT since they are snowed under after CC's recent departure - apparently with all the knowledge of how IT things work
• making the mistake of visiting Brighton branch and walking away seven new jobs for the worse
• adding more Ding to our circulation PCs. A little investigation uncovered the sound file used for nigh-inaudible alerts by our LMS and it's swift change will now go on to annoy staff no end whilst ensuring they no longer miss alerts
  
• having to listen to unprovoked insults from the new children's librarian - "this food is for the Summer Reading Club party this afternoon and you are not to eat it Phill" and Days of our Libraries - "please tick which meal options you want on training day - and you can't tick all of them Phill". One suspects Torchwood's hand is behind it all.
  

Prior to coming home tonight Legions2-4 and I collected our penguin costumes for Saturday night in a scheduling move maliciously designed to deny me my soccer game. Of course finding out that Legion3 was in the end able to make the 4.30 time which would have allowed me to go on to kick the round ball did wonders for my extreme sense of lose.

... The Gaming Buck's Night of Legion2

Before I get into the main event I have to mention that I scored another goal at soccer on Thursday night. Well, my team mate basically bounced his pass off me into the goal but I'm claiming it since I ran to be in good position. I'm now at 8 goals in 16 months so expect the next goal report on April 10th.


The Main Event

This Saturday we had the second Buck's Night event to celebrate Legion2's upcoming nuptials.

In the grand tradition of the Buck's Nights of Gavman, ArchEnemy, and ElfBoy it was an afternoon and evening of gaming.

The afternoon was a fast-play version of one of our card tournaments with Legion2, Mr Magpie (no relation), Gavman, MatrixMan, Elfboy, and myself taking part.
Mr Magpie (no relation) romped in unbeaten. The fast-play kind-of worked except for the highlight grudge-game between Legion2 and yours truly which went for an hour and a half in a huge stalemate and - in younger brother tantrum style - included Legion2 having a fit of table punching over an insignificant mistake when the game was fairly obviously going to be won by him in the next few minutes anyway.

With the addition of ArchEnemy, BestFriendSincePrep and Badger we switched to a movie trivia game whilst the footy was on tv in the background. Surprisingly few of the answers were Red Dawn.
Ooh I just though of a Caution (about time I had another one): Alcohol does not a quick trivia game make. Even if you do play in teams.
When asked something along the lines of "Who starred in the 1994 film xxx?" a slightly affected BestFriendSincePrep responded with "Is this a true or false question?"

Disgusted with the pies display of football Mr Magpie (no relation) left shortly after the end of trivia and ArchEnemy joined him.

We remaining seven began our final game of the evening - a seven knight game of Shadows Over Camelot. By a quirk of fate Legion2 was the secret traitor, although MatrixMan's beginner status and inebriation made his clumsy play seem quite suspicious. At the end of that game most of the evenings attendees departed.

Since it was still early - and to stay in the bucksish spirit - Legion2, Badger and I stayed up until 3am having philosophical discussion about the quality of recent content various visual entertainment delivery systems had displayed.


The Day After

After a much needed recovery rest - and a treasure hunt around my flat for beer bottles from the previous nights festivities - I attended a wedding rehearsal. It was mostly just an excuse to have some nibbles and bubbles in the park but I think a few important ceremonial things were sorted out while I was busy making sure the free dip didn't go to waste.

... The Unstoppable Goal Machine

Last nights soccer saw me once again score the final goal of the evening - and the year!
That's two weeks in a row now and I'm considering becoming a full time forward.
My tally is 7 goals in 15 months.

I was late to last nights final gaming session before my big trip to Svetlanaland. Mostly because soccer is like a relationship - when you score you have to hang around and talk afterwards.

I also had a phone call from Svetlana herself which may have contributed to my lateness. When her money ran out I attempted to call her back with my calling card but the line quality was atrocious. Coincidentally I had just that day received a letter from Telstra that was pimping their new international rates as "better than calling cards" and having "Telstra's superior line quality". I was instantly reminded of my ADSL experience.

The gaming, once I did arrive, did bog down in a big fight scene until we worked out how to streamline the process (it involved not interrupting each other and only having a small amount of time to think about what your character will do). Of course by the time we were streamlining we were all also starting to fade out from exhaustion. Hopefully the rest of the group will have it perfected by the time I return from Svetlanaland.

... The Week that Was Suddenly Over

Monday - The Apprentice
My first day of being saddled with a work experience student who inexplicably was interested in Library IT. I took to heart the task of cautioning him about the detrimental effect if being immersed in LibraryLand. He was also initiated into the wonders of "Hey Phill!" problem solving for most of the day.

Tuesday - Corporate Drive By
The Apprentice started the day by asking me if I was going to start working soon, so I decided to punish him by taking him into the Council Corporate Centre IT department.
It didn't phase him.
So I took him to several of our branches in an attempt to overwhelm him with librarians and locations. He was made of sterner stuff than that and shrugged most of it off with a hmmph. So far he looked like prime IT material.

Wednesday - Road Trips, Meetings and Paperwork
The Apprentice and I traveled up and down the Seaside Road today to fix problems that were already fixed by the time we arrived at the branch. So far he was getting an excellent introduction to the life of an IT Man in LibraryLand. The next test was the IT Team meeting. The afternoon's meeting was attended by all team members and The Apprentice fitted (fat?) right in by nodding off in tandem with The Pragmatist.
After The Apprentice had gone home I stayed back at work diligently catching up on the paperwork that I was just not cruel enough to force an innocent minion to complete.
Whilst I was catching up on said paperwork, The Flibberty Gibbet, enabled by Supervisor Grand Chief K of course, made another stalking phone call. This time I was able to legitimately say I was working on RFID - it was a strange feeling, kind of itchy.

Thursday - Chocolates, Soccer and Snoozes
I was able to offload The Apprentice onto Sister Serials as a box unpacker while I attended the Service Coordinators meeting. We then spent the afternoon working out how to embiggen the print size of our slip printers and installing it on Bomber Babe's PC as a test.
The surprise of the afternoon was the box of chocolates The Apprentice gave me as a thank you for dragging him all over my little corner of LibraryLand. I shared them of course - it would have looked greedy if I'd eaten more than 80% of the box.
I rushed off to soccer delighted at being able to play in 32 degree heat for the second week running. The upside was that I scored the "last goal wins" goal by dribbling a kick over the line while we all watched on exhausted. The goal arrived right on target keeping me at a my goal every three months average. The post game recovery took a full hour but finally I was able to drag myself off home and then to ArchEnemy's for falling asleep on the couch during gaming.

Friday - SPUN and Branch Drinks
The morning was our free xmas lunch at Civica HQ preceded by the quarterly SPUN Meeting. I brought Mr Prada along as a minion to show my new stature as Mr Secretary but completely forgot to have him Fight Flibberty's minion in the pit, oh well there's always next time. I had a quick catch up over a glass of free wine with Madame President to cover where the exec was at and then headed out into the city.
After a quick drop by visit to Rugrat Twin's retail workplace I trained my way back to Sandringham.
After booting up my laptop I shut it down and we all headed off to the branch xmas drinks and dinner. It was a good evening with a cameo by Chanlib, and the evening seen out in increasingly slurred conversation with Mr Prada and Scully.

Saturday - A BBQ and Librarians Running Amok
A last minute BBQ with Fridgepower, Judgemingus, their spawn and several others left me rushing a little to make it to Miss Amanda's delightful residence for the Library Xmas Party soirée.
It was a very well attended event, with magnificent food and much joviality. I was able to meet the infamous infamous Mr Amanda, and noted the family resemblance when Little Miss Amanda called me the best customer for food trays.
The evening took a turn for the surreal later on when the Sing Star computer game was fired up. I tell you nothing compares to a 15 librarian chorus of Unchained melody - it almost killed Torchwood with hysterics (watching said fit may have been the best ten minutes of the evening).

Sunday - Legion Gathers
And finally I get to today. The clan was having a get together to celebrate several birthdays and my impending departure for Svetlanaland. No wait they weren't celebrating my leaving they were saying farewell. Handy Dad, Freeloading Mum, Legion2-4 and various partners were all there and we had a nice lunch before heading home for some much needed rest.


Hey I just found out that you can only have 200 characters of Labels on a blog post. Though the error message is confusing as it just says that you have more than 200 characters but not that it's only the labels that it cares about. I was thinking that I needed an Everything label for this post and now I had to trim out some of the less important tags.

... The Long, Long Day of Decision

AKA the Election that stole Soccer
Yesterday I worked as a polling official on the federal election. I'd signed up to it on the belief that the corporate games soccer would only be on this Sunday but alas they had double the entries and then scheduled all our pool games for Saturday - bastards.
Ahem, anyway I had to miss out on the games to work on the election.

And what a long day it turned out to be.
I've been doing this at elections for nearly 20 years and it was definitely the worst run booth I've worked on - not terrible but a smidgen below acceptable.
Not only did our working day go from 7.30 until 10.15 instead of the usual 9 - 9.30 finish but in all that time I was only given two breaks from the hot classroom we were working in. Granted it was a new team in charge who maybe needed to learn the ropes but how hard is it to keep rotating the staff around?
While I was getting the absent voting area sorted out the rest of the group were taking what seemed like an inordinate amount of time to sort and count the house of reps papers. In the end the Officer in Charge finally decided to let most of the staff go instead of continuing to make us watch as she tried once again to balance her figures. I have to admit that there was a little bit of schadenfreude (or zluradost) at seeing the formerly chirpy and bubbly OIC being brought almost to tears by not adding up properly but in the end I just wanted it over and done with and to get home.

Oh and SoccerBuddy and the others failed to qualify for todays finals.

... The Haircut Theory of Scoring

And I mean goal scoring. After getting a great shortening of the freeloading locks on Tuesday, I was able to front up to Thursday nights soccer and score within the opening ten minutes. The total is up to four now - two scored in the week of a haircut. I am considering having my sideburns trimmed every week now and I guess I have further insight into sporting superstitions.

The goal was even more amazing for my ability to score it after being stuffed full of food from the sad farewell to Simmone who is leaving to spawn a future tormentor of IT staff.

... a Year of Soccer

It was exactly a year ago today that I started playing casual Soccer once a week. In honour of the anniversary my MAMILS reappeared two thirds of the way into tonights game but it has settled down again now. I ran around an awful lot tonight and the game wouldn't end as the "last goal wins" part of the evening went on for almost twenty minutes until finally the ball was kicked over the fence.

... The Completion of the Hat-trick!

My third goal finally arrived at last nights soccer, so the average is now one goal every two and a half months.

I also finished zooming through the second part of The Green Mile.

Most of the last couple of days have been taken up with the wireless internet install - or rather the organising of replacement and missing parts to be sent across. It is still many days, maybe even weeks from debuting for the public as there are a few security and networking issues to e sorted out.
In the middle of all that it was announced that The Marketing Marvel was resigning due to the day not having 30 hours in it and not being able to fit everything in. She will be sadly missed.

.. Classes and headaches and 'puters, oh my!

Since the weekend I've been busily doing the usual with just a touch of sadly hunched over in the cold for two hours at the footy induced back muscle tightness which has given me those wonderful referred head/neck aches.

The Class was another Your Library at home class co-presented with Mr Prada. (Co-presented means I do half the talking and he does all the preparation and set-up - it's good to be the king). It went well this time and is unsurprisingly much easier to do when you haven't had oodles of training day drinks the night before.

The aforementioned headaches gave me the excuse for a late arrival on Wednesday, but Days of our Libraries had been hunting me around all the branches so I couldn't pull the old "I was at another branch" swifty and instead had to use up some of the extra-time I'd built up.

I finally faced my fear of calling a service centre today and spoke to the Dell tech to get our faulty monitors replaced. He had one of those beautiful fake call centre accents that couldn't quite cover his sub-continentness and the delightful name of Luther Alexander - very close to the wonderful Luther Arkwright.
Soccer tonight was a great workout even though we white shirts took a ten nil thrashing. (it should have been 9-0 but I'm not going to head a ball that could mush my glasses... again)(well actually it should have been 9-1 but I can't kick straight)

I skipped gaming tonight and was able to intercept Svetlana's attempt to just leave a message and forced her to talk to me live.

Finally I received an email tonight from LittleBigGirl who is turning her occasional update emails into a blog so now my RSS feeds will keep tabs of her too, mwha ha ha.

... The Big Move

The big news is that I am moved in to the new flat and surrounded by piles of stuff until I can sort it and put it all away (and I'm not going to sort by Dewey!). I had a Tiger under the bed for the first few days but now I have an exploring Tiger.

Making it all harder is a bad cold that I probably picked up last Thursday playing soccer in 6 degree temperatures and may have made worse by attending the soccer groups beer tasting night at a couple of Richmond venues.

In amongst that I finished reading the Abaddon Books sampler. Abaddon are a new company creating action based, teen focused stories with a big dash of gore thrown in. The sampler had a chapter from each of their first four books with most of it beinf fairly run of the mill zombie/post holocaust/fantasy style stories with tough loner protagonists.