... Too Many Ten-Hour Days

This week has been a hectic mess.

After a relatively relaxing May the 4th Be With You gaming day on Sunday (in which Badger won every one of the Star Wars focused games) I dived head first into early starts and late finishes as the printer rollout went live. Well at first it went half-live and then it went live-with-problems and finally it went live-with-only-minor-glitches.

On Monday I went from branch to branch and back again setting everything up and eventually left to arrive a couple of hours late for my new game at The Viking Hat GM's where I was able to unwind for a few hours playing an upper-class twit.

Tuesday, aka Go-Live Day #1, was going smoothly until our new printing system people hit me with this doozy - "only 10,000 of your 48,000 printing accounts were brought across".
For reasons unfathomable they didn't consider it was necessary to inform me of this interesting fact until I inquired of them as to why only a fifth of our borrowers where able to access the new printing system that they'd said was ready to go live.
Suffice to say by Wednesday afternoon the missing records had been moved across to the new printing system. The extra records won't work with the new computer bookings system coming along in a few weeks - the reason they didn't import them - but I'll cross that bridge when we come to it, or maybe I'll take some annual leave.
Late Wednesday night I finished up some signage for the coin-machines and printers and toodled home to collapse.

Back bright and early Thursday I created the final signage - well final until Torchwood casts her evil marketing eye over it - and deployed across all the branches in a series of flying visits.
A most magnificent side-effect of visiting all branches was that I was able to participate in the biggest morning tea at three of them - indulging to my stomachs content in some of the best brownies, sc-own-es, cakes and slices that librarians can produce.

Sadly leaving the Beaumaris cakes behind I had to make a lightning raid on The Professor's lab, a way down South, to collect some Top Secret Stuff.

Hurtling back North I hoped to be home in time to catch a train so that I could attend a girlie film preview gifted to me by Sister Serials. Alas I was able to see the train on the crossing as I approached my domicile. This lead to me rushing to catch a connecting train to minimise my lateness. Interestingly I found that I can now jog with my injured knee.
After all of that franticness I arrived mere minutes before Rugrat Twin, also running late, only to discover that we were attending the worst organised film preview ever.

It turns out that when the exclusive preview flyer says:

To attend the screening in your capital city, RSVP is essential. Simply email your name ... and your name will be added to the guest list ... note only successful RSVPs will be notified until capacity is reached.

And your reply email says:

Thank you for your email. Two free seats will be reserved under your name...

The event can still be drastically overbooked?!? Thank you Hopscotch films.

Oh well. In the end we took up the venues generous offer to see another movie for free and I was spared from girlie romance. The replacement we chose was Moliere. It was an enjoyable film and a worthy replacement - although it did still have a touch of the girlie about it.

Friday morning was a relaxed morning which became a little more frantic until I managed to use the new printing system's admin program to correct a charging error - despite the system suppliers claiming it was a problem with the printers themselves. The rest of the day was a series of glitch fixing jobs before I could finally head home and relax at the end of a very long week.

Today I have: slept in, finally read some more of my latest book, taken my knee for a long walk and switched on the home computer again, to see what I missed while I was off in printer land.
Tonight I shall spend relaxing as I will be heading off to tackle Freeloading Mum's ADSL problem in the morning.

... 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.

... Flibberty's Farewell

After a leisurely afternoon meeting with The Professor and Madame President to discuss SPUN Executive things I toodled off to The Flibberty Gibbet's farewell drinks as she is leaving the LMS supplier for more academic pastures.

The chosen venue was The Mint. It was a great night for some outdoor drinks and the beergarden BBQ proved just what I needed to lay the foundations for what was to come.

Several large beers later I'd had some good conversations with some of the girls who deal with my pleas for help when the system breaks.
I was also been able to dig for dirt on Mr Prada from The Puppies who knows him quite well so I should be able to maintain my command of him for quite some time now.

Somehow TFG, a generous barrister, a help desker and I walked into a bar... no wait that's not right, we staggered our way to a new venue which turned out to be the Carriage place, from the staff Christmas party, in which it appears I am fated to spend all my late drunken evenings.

I had to leave once the progressive 80's rock instrumental band started as it was just all too much to bear.


Hell Island by Matthew Reilly
There really is nothing like a little train time to help you knock off a few quick books. This is the first Reilly book (action movie script) I've read for a while and the break as done wonders for my appreciation of his writing style. I quite enjoyed the setting and the story. It's shortness made it a great two-day read. If you like his stuff then this is one of the better Scarecrow stories.

... The Three Days of the Conference

Day One
My conference experience began with catching the plane to Canberra at a sensible time of the morning. This time there is no drama getting to the airport - unlike my Libraries online flat tire incident.

The flight up is quite pleasant, although we are on a Dash 8, which causes Supervisor Grand Chief K to go into paroxysms of anxiety as it is propeller driven.
Upon arrival we check in and then wait 30 minutes to have our quiet drink on the patio delivered.

The rest of my afternoon was taken up with with a visit to the Australian War Memorial. It was a great refresher of my memories from the visit with the cubs when I was ten - although the groups of school kids were getting on my nerves by the end of it. The dioramas were still as impressive as I remembered them.

When the memorial closed I walked back to the hotel through the fly-infested centre of Canberra and freshened up in preparation for the evenings festivities.

Suitably refreshed I made my way downstairs for the evenings "cocktail" reception. (Being wise to my complaints about libraryland cocktails they had declared the evening to be merely a Welcome Reception.)
After a few drinks, as many free nibbles as one could gather when the trays circulated past, and several hours of conversation, we all adjourned to the hotel bar to watch the debut episode of the new ABC series the librarians. Due to a fluke of the sound system the best place to be was on the patio looking in at the screen on the far wall. The show was well received although we missed many of the subtle spoken jokes and the subtitles were unreadable at the distance.
When the show finished we all went to bed so that we would be suitably refreshed for the serious conferencing in the morning. ;)

Or not. That last sentence was simply for the "what happens on the conference stays on the conference" agreements. In reality a reasonable sized group stayed on in the bar until it closed. After that unfortunate occurrence a smaller group returned to The Flibberty Gibbet's room to drink the mini-bar dry. Our gentlemanly manners had us leave at 2am when TFG passed out/fell asleep.


Day Two
Day two began with a restrained use of the breakfast smorgasboard followed by conference registration. After that we were into the sessions.

The LMS supplier gave their usual state of the nation session, interrupted by a morning tea of some lovely little pastries, followed by their what's new and upcoming session.
This took us to the lunch which was of the cold meats and salad style with plenty of variety.
The afternoon sessions encompassed RFID and web 2.0 - all things I knew quite a lot about but it was all still very interesting. Supervisor Grand Chief K did attempt to ridicule me during her Library 2.0 spiel but I think the audience could see through her shallow attempt to besmirch my name.

After the sessions I went for walk along Lake Burley Griffen but the masses of flies soon forced me to turn back. After a short stop at the hotel bar to socialise with SGCK and friends I returned to my room to relax and prepare for the conference dinner.
Waking from a strange dream I realised that I must have fallen asleep and was now late for dinner. Not to worry though as my timing was immaculate - I arrived just before entree - and was probably considered to be fashionably late.
The dinner was quite good, and we were 15 stories up, but I think Mr Prada is correct and it lacked that extra something that revolving adds to a meal. There was much talk and socialising for the duration of the dinner which was all quite good even though I was beginning to get an idea of the plans being hatched for the morrow.
Not long after dessert we all headed off to our rooms to rest up for the final day of the conference. ;)

The true story is that most of the attendees stayed on in the restaurant until the free wine bottles were emptied and then headed down to the hotel bar were we once again stayed on until it closed.
A slightly differently composed smaller group then retired to a room to drink the mini-bar, and several others, dry. I forced myself to leave at 2.30am when my eyelids were beginning to fail.

Day Three
The third day began innocently enough with a late trip to the breakfast table.

The morning session was the AGM for SPUN, the organisation we were members of. It was during this meeting that the insidious plans of the night before were hatched. The result being that I found myself elected as the organisations Secretary for the next term of office. My fellow electees - Madame President and The Professor(treasurer) - took it so well that I had no choice but to play along. I do think that I will have to insist on being addressed as Mr Secretary from now on.

Still stunned at my election I nearly missed out on scones with cream and jam at morning tea but my instincts prevailed before tragedy struck.

The next few sessions gave the group the chance to put the hard word on the LMS suppliers and go a little more in-depth into the reporting capabilities of the LMS.

After a nice Asian lunch we had sessions on RFID, Wireless, and the many programlets that The Professor uses in his IT duties. All were things I knew about so I may have had some difficulty focusing.

The conference closed and a group of us had a few drinks on the rear veranda baking under the hot Canberra sun. We then moved to the bar to await our taxis.
A short, but highly cliched, taxi trip to the airport later we crammed into the exclusive lounge area to freeload while we waited for our continually delayed flight home.
Eventually we were allowed to board. This time Supervisor Grand Chief K hadn't booked us seats together and I didn't have to put up with the high-pitched noise... of the engines. Which was good as the strain of the past few days of concentration on the sessions had led to some slight cranial tightness.
We were delayed coming into Tullamarine and then again on the ground when they couldn't find anyone to attach the departure bridge. Once that was sorted out we had to wait again as there was nobody to unload our luggage. (I suspect that they had been reassigned to bridge-moving).
Luck turned after then though as I walked straight out of the terminal and into the long term car park bus.

In no time at all I was on my way home to feed The Tiger and provide her with some much missed human companionship.

Fingers crossed that Supervisor Grand Chief K will accept this as my conference report - her and her damnable bureaucracy!

... The Great Frankston Road Trip

Today Sister Serials and I ventured down the highway to avail ourselves of the Frankston library Service knowledge of the more confusing parts of Spydus Serials.

Along the way I subjected the good Sister to the torture of my 70's era teach yourself Svetlana-ese tapes, and followed it up with a good dose of Radio-Phill from the iPod. She seems to have survived intact though so I'll have to increase the dosage next time.

Once there, some light was shed on the areas of Serials that may be causing our repeated problems with 'those darn magazines' as I like to refer to them.

We also had a demo of several of the IT support programlets that Frankston's IT nice-guy, The Professor, uses to automate several of the day to day tasks that we IT people have to slog our way through oh so frequently. The public PC booking software was particularly impressive and I may recommend that we see if it's possible to institute it at our branches - even though it would mean yet another project upon my overburdened shoulders, sigh.

Oh and the lunch wasn't free but it was in enormous proportions!