Freedom Days

 One is pleasantly surprised to see so many celebrations of freedom these past weeks.

It is quite humbling to see what seems like the whole world turning out to celebrate one's two year anniversary of being freed from the dictatorial control of Supervisor Grand Chief K.

Yes, it's hard to describe the sense of relief one can feel when such a yoke is removed and one has to no longer kowtow to the completely unreasonable demands that actual work be done and projects be completed.

It is sad to no longer be "working" with the likes of Sister Serials, Psycho Chicken, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, The Maple Maverick, Lord of the Small Fries, Longstride L, Bomber Babe, LibraryBFF, Sidekick, Days of our Libraries, The Administrator, Roysgirl, Sonja Roster Queen, and Mr Prada - but they too had their incomprehensible demands that things be fixed, technology be made to work, procedures written up, and could one please stop eating all the cake in the staff kitchen.

So, here's to one's freedom, may it be everlasting!

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A Conference Carol

What a month it has been. Filled with the lead up to One's annual conference and then the event itself.

Now that one has some distance between oneself and the happenings of conference it will be safe to report Objectively on the many happenings of the event.

--

Our hero's journey began on a sunny... rainy... sunny... windy Melbourne day as he boarded the train that was taking him to the exotic, far off, destination of Jolimont.

It seemed like mere minutes passed and suddenly he found himself checking in to the most haunted of venues, replete with the moaning of the unsettled dead whistling down the corridors (or if Old Mate and Dual Wielder are to be believed it's just the air conditioning).

Expect the twins to cycle round the corner any moment...

Our hero bravely pushed left his safe and secure room to attend the early arrivals get together. This year, as well as the usual early arriving attendees, there was an organised flash mob of the ghosts of past conferences. Among them Vivacious Em, Skeptic L, Comrade Treasurer, and Dubrovnik Hater; all doing their darnedest to resurface events of past conferences that still haunt our hero to this day.

--

Day the second began with the proper conference events and that familiar haunting feeling that every conference organiser has that something had been forgotten.
In any case all was well, except for the haunted projector flickering in and out during the first two hours of presentations.

The large morning events led into the smaller afternoon events and soon enough we were gathering for the evening Galah dinner wherein one found oneself at a table with Supervisor Grand Chief K. The horror continued when she left early and the now spare dessert was sent back to the kitchen as "not needed"... NOT NEEDED!!! Despite that horrifically traumatising event the fun level did seem to pick up as the night went on and there was even some dancing amid the conversation. However a chill did descend upon our hero towards the end of the evening as the ghosts of the present conference obviously took possession of both Sis and Old Mate.

The moment the spirits took control...

--

The third day began with Sister Serials and LibraryBFF joining Sidekick and our hero for the day.
After a few morning presentations the fun stuff of the AGM began wherein one's back-room dealings once again failed to return our hero to the presidential standing so richly deserved and he had to continue on as Secretary.
To make matters worse there were then afternoon training sessions in which post-lunch learning was expected!
Luckily it was over in the long-blink of an eye and we were all soon traipsing our way to the evening networking event Sis had booked in the back of a wardrobe, down some stairs, in a basement.
I begrudgingly presented the official crown of presidency to Sis only to have it refused and then stolen away by Jeza who seemingly had it glued to his head for the the next several hours.
Conversation and company was good and our hero was surprised to discovered that several of the other IT employed attendees were huge nerds/geeks about various things.
There was also the ghostly glimmer of potential future conference organising volunteers to warm ones spirit as the witching hour approached.
The return trip of the evening was rather less traipsy and more in the realm of stumbly. But it did involve a visit by Dual Wielder, guided accurately by our hero, to the model Fairy Village (also known correctly as the Model Tudor village) and the Fairy Tree before evening retirement was had at a sensible single digit hour.

--

Day four began.
Day four provided many more networking opportunities which, luckily for our hero, Sidekick was able to shoulder the load of.
And before you know it the great adventure was over.
Well, except for the part where our hero had to face one last trial: The Trial of the Unwinding Executive.
Once more spirits were summoned and traipsing the breadth (but not the length) of the city was undertook. Creamy fluffy cocktail temptation was faced and defeated by our hero - time and time again. And finally all were safely back to their haunted hotel rooms to head towards a well-earned sleep in before heading homeward in the morning.

The ghosts and spirits of conference where to linger with our hero and his faithful companions for days, nay the week, to come - for such a manifestation is not so easy to shake without a second weekend of sleep-ins...
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The Lazy Weekend

One has just completed a most auspiciously lazy weekend. Thanks mostly to Salsa Girl having to work for one and a half days of it.

Apparently when one does not set an alarm one has a tendency to sleep until almost noon (nigh moon?) - especially when it's one of those rare weekends when Sister Serials makes no crisis calls from the library.

Of course such an alarm would have been set had there been an event on, such as the gaming extravaganza at The Bastard's which was booked in for my completely free and open Saturday for nigh on a month before a last minute change to the booked for Salsa time Sunday afternoon because of some inexplicable preference for Dragonmim and Pirate Dave being at the table instead of oneself. All explained with the flimsy excuse of "more people are available then" or some such.

Sigh.

In any case I made the most of my nothing time over both days, achieving huge amounts of rest and nothing. I believe I shall enter the working week fully refreshed and ready to go, go, go.

I'll just check this one more web site then get to bed...

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The First Days of Phorty

Last weekend was the grand occasion of my becoming a forty year old (in body, mind is a little harder to judge).

On the Saturday night - the actual anniversary of my birth as luck would have it - I held a magnificent soiree to which I invited friends, family, fun people, and librarians. So many were in attendance that were I to list them all the tagging system for the blog would collapse under the weight of numbers.
Instead I shall just say that it was a magnificent night thoroughly enjoyed by yours truly and, if I'm any judge, by all in attendance.

Highlights include: Freeloading Mum mistaking Spare Legion for myself "oh good Phillip I've found you"; The Great Sandro getting along famously with many; BestFriendSincePrep's whinging about missing the first round of cake resulting in him in his being presented with no less than five pieces from the second round; and Mr Prada almost succeeding in abandoning Supervisor Grand Chief K when heading home.

The end of the evening saw a small group of us walk back to my flat causing every venue we attempted to enter on the journey merely by staggering in the front door "Sorry guys we're just closing for the night" was the refrain.

Successfully making it back we proceeded to embark on a port and Pez fuelled rampage (Pez courtesy of Sister Serials wonderful present) all to the strains of Conan the Barbarian thoughtfully playing in the background thanks to BestFriendSincePrep.


I awakened the next morning with the only flat-company being BestFriendSincePrep in the spare room - well, and The Tiger busily trying to usurp his position on the spare bed.
We had a wonderful cafe breakfast and then I was on my own to use my new found oldness to justify napping my way through the afternoon.


I took the chance that evening to finally go and see Avatar lest it leave the cinemas unseen by oneself, a situation that would put a severe dent in one's geek cred.
I found it good that the story was easily digested which made it easy to concentrate on taking in the wow factor of the special effects and new 3D process. As a wearer of eyeglasses I am quite impressed with how well the physicality of the glasses works.

More of my impressions of Phortiness to come...
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The Return to Normalcy

So Wednesday was the scheduled day for my triumphant return to LibraryLand and the usual hum-drum of the day to day workday. True to my amazing recuperative powers I was all ready to keep my scheduled return date and was even looking forward to having some human company as The Tiger seemed completely oblivious to my need for careful nursing over the previous week.

So Tuesday night was when a major server decided to "fall over", as we say in the high jargon IT world, just so that many things would have trouble first thing in the morning. Did I mention my plan to take it easy on my first day by arriving around eleven?

So anyway, there I was, up early to do my knee-ish physio exercises - least The Viking Hat GM come around and knee-cap me for being one of those people that don't do the recovery exercises and then whine that the operation didn't fix anything - and lo and behold the phone begins to ring.

So of course it was Sister Serials with some query, only she would be callous enough to value her record as my chief tormentor over my health and call so early on my day of return.
Alas she was not the only call that morning. They followed in quick succession and before long I was busily trying to fix things remotely from home.

So eventually I was able to make it in at about 1pm - just in time for my lunch break.

So that evening there was normalcy at the regular game hosted by The Viking Hat GM as he once again made us face a deadly enemy - luckily we were too good for his shenanigans.


So Thursday there was even more normalcy as I had to struggle through roadworks and Punt Rd traffic to get to a regular morning meeting.
Refreshingly I was subject of some very abnormal behaviour as a chorus of workmates greeted me joyfully as I walked late into the meeting. We even had a post meeting lunch in honour of The Administrator having a birthday that day. Honestly, what some people will do to steal my limelight!

So while we're on the subject of limelight stealing let's not forget the dinner I attended that night in honour of Comrade Treasurer's change of job. You can guess which recently operated upon IT man was not the centre of attention there as well.


So, sigh, only a week after being operated upon and the universe had already run out of sympathy for me.

So such is the normalcy under which I live my life.

(So I've found out with this post that you can start any paragraph with so. Amazing isn't it?)
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... The Small Victories

This week so far has been one of small victories.

It began when I finally wrestled correct function out of our receipt slip printers as they'd been limping along with minor annoyances since our recent upgrade.
In the process I have become a master of xmlst programming - or more correctly a master of "I'll just change this and see what happens... woohoo nothing broke let's try another one... two hours later we have success". Still as long as my staff don't see the toil they'll continue to think of me as an IT Wizard extraordinaire.

My next small victory was in getting our training room DVD player to work through the overhead projector before Sister Serials eviscerated me for not having it working in time for her special book club meeting where they watch a movie... yeah I don't get it either.
In any case the problem seems to be that some hyper-efficient IT Man in LibraryLand had plugged one to many cables back in to the projector after changing the globe earlier in the year and one was blocking the DVD signal. Some quick unplug this, unplug that and viola it's all working again.


Another small victory was being able to leave work early, well, on time - which is early for the last few months.


And the most recent small victory was getting gmail chat to work despite lashings of sarcasm hurled in my direction by both Svetlana and The Viking Hat GM as I struggled to undo my all-to-good hiding of the chat functionality.

Anyway I must be off to accumulate further small victories.
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... The Maverik's Mad Mixer

After a long and tiring week catching up on all the work I so gleefully avoided whilst at my training last week I found myself finally able to relax at the farewell do for The Maple Maverick as he is about to forsake Libraryland for Mapleland.


I was a little late to the party and not for my usual fashionable grand entrance reasons. This time it was due to Sister Serials, ever a thorn in my side, discovering a slight flaw in my latest brilliant system tweak which made it impossible for her to complete her usual workflow. I fail to understand the issue as not having to do your job sounds like every workers dream to me. Nevertheless I soldiered on badgering away at the problem until eventually, with the call of the pub ringing in my ears I managed to decide to use the old IT standby "maybe it'll fix itself over the weekend".


Upon arrival at the venue I found out it was also yet another farewell for Adversary, who just won't stay away for good.
Anyway, The Maverick had gathered quite a mix of staff from across the branches and many tall tales and tall drinks were had before I tore myself away in order to rush home to catch the remains of the footy on tv - which, given how easily we dealt with Beeby's boys was quite the relaxing end to the week that I had been after all along.
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... The Free Food Frenzy

So I spent most of the last week in training sessions in the heart of our beloved city.

Many and varied was my company including: Devil's Advocate, Sister Serials, Sonja Roster Queen and Miss Amanda for the majority of the time and special guest appearances by Mr Prada, Days of our Libraries, Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, and The Pragmatist.

All of these exciting training companions were overshadowed by the fact that this particular round of training was accompanied by an incredible four days of free lunches!!!

I don't believe I have ever had it so good. I didn't even mind heading out for a girly shopping expedition on behalf of Svetlana.

On top of this bounty of brunches came the Friday farewell party for a libraryland associate of years past - complete with free drinks and circulating snacks!


However, as with all good things, the universe had to right the cosmic karma imbalance and, during my Saturday attendance at the footy with Legion2 and The Great Sandro, my hunger got the better of me forcing the purchase of sustenance in the form of one $20 pie.


Things did swing slightly back in the other direction today when I was able to take advantage of a free trip to NSW care of BestFriendSincePrep.
I was recruited for my excellent company on the long drive and possibly to put my strength into lifting the package we had headed North to collect. Many hours of great conversation and camaraderie was had before we returned to his abode and he 'remembered' an IT issue he had that required urgent proffessional attending to.
Sigh.
It seems I can never escape IT on my weekends.
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... The So-called Weekend of Rest

Friday night was another branch drinks evening with Kiwichick up to her usual social coordinator antics and hustling a bunch of us including Fifi, Mrs Football and Easy-Going Em off for a post drinks dinner. Once ensconced at our table we discussed such enlightening topics as Mrs Football's best way to start a bender being with two bottles of wine and before you knew it the evening was over and we all trundled off home to sleep the sleep of the righteous - or is that inebriated, I always get those two mixed up.


Now one would think such a fun and frivolous evening would be the perfect way to start a weekend of rest, however one did not think to account for Sister Serials penchant for early morning "fix the computers please" telephone conversations. She was followed in quick succession by Kiwichick and others demanding that I make things work merely because it was my job and I was paid to do it - Supervisor Grand Chief K would be proud of her staff.
Suffice to say that most of a perfectly good Saturday was wasted trouble-shooting and then they were at it again today on the Sunday!

I tell you it's no wonder I'm so stressed and on edge all the time!
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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:

• 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 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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... The Last Day

So it's the last day of the year and instead of being quiet I am being besieged with a billion little tasks and jobs to be finished before the year is out.

To be fair most of them are jobs I should have finished months ago but I won't let that stand in the way of my outrage!

In particular Sister Serials has been hounding me with questions about new books and the RFID process. Also, puzzleingly, AntagonisticAl has also been throwing tasks at me in some sort of attempt to undo all the good work she'd done to earn my favour.

And now I am sitting here as all the staff leave and I have to wait for another one of those drawn out processes runs until it finishes. Ooh it just finished, I better get to it so I can make my evening rendezvous.
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... A Lazy Weekend

I've been enjoying my first lazy weekend for ages after surving the tail-end of my anniversary week.

I do think that I have to point out that box cake might come from a box but it is still stirred (by hand I might add) and bunged into my oven. I want to squash those rumours of my bringing cake straight from the shop, as we all know that shop-cake means reputation death in the library staff room.

Anyway, thanks to random computer and borrower failure, I was only able to have one piece of the cake as it was naught but crumbs by the time I got back to it at the end of the day. Oh well, I can just say that it's a part of my renewed fitness program.

Friday started off well with an invigorating pre-work walk/jog. Things soon took a turn for the worse when I arrived at Brighton to find that Sister Serials and I had "worn the same dress to the ball". It turns out that when Svetlana gives you a green polka-dot shirt it's part of some cosmic joke and SS will be there in her red twin of your shirt the moment you enter the building and you'll have to put up with Xmas themed humour at your expense all day.

In any case I soldiered on and, with the help the disturbingly Miami Vice like collarless Mr Prada, proceeded to run yet another 2.0 remedial class. Sonja Roster Queen, Sister Serials, Nurse Janet, Devil's Advocate and a new casual were the victims of the day. From some points of view it was successful as yet more staff finished their 23 things before there IT Man.

Friday was finished off with a surprisingly dinner-free Sandringham Xmas dinner. Still it was good to be home again although it does sound like I'll have to give them an anniversary cake of their own. Hmm, I wonder if etiquette allows me to buy this one?

I was going to make a one sentence post saying that a lazy weekend leaves me with little to write home about but I seem to have blathered on and filled my quota.
And blather is what it is compared to some of the heartfelt blogging I've read recently from the likes of LittleBigGirl re her and BigBen's horrible health issues; and Tooticky's farewell to a monster I knew in passing; not to mention The Viking Hat GM's world/people saving efforts. Still, I am famous, judging by LittleBigGirl's blog, so I must be doing something right... right?

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... Mr Sniffles

I've been laid low with a most vicious strain of man-cold for most of this week, however I dragged myself out of my deathbed yesterday in order to fulfill my duties as Mr Secretary and host the local chapter of SPUN, the LMS group, at Brighton library.

I arrived early in the morning to find a Sister Serials Sniffles Survival Pack of tissues and canned soup awaiting me on my desk. I knew I was still sick when I caught myself thinking about how nice that was and how it would all be very handy during my recuperation.

After a quick and easy room set-up (with loads of help from The Administrator) the meeting went well and the morning tea was fantastic - a selection of cakes and biscuits from a local bakery. Dubrovnik Hater was in attendance in her new guise as "one of them" as were many of the other usual attendees.
Most stayed around afterwards to watch my demonstration of the all-consuming RFID system including real live borrowers and minor bugs.

After the main meeting there was an executive meeting with Madame President and our late arriving new, us yet un-blog-named treasurer. In the pub. Hefty decisions were made and after those drinks were sorted out we moved on to official business.

On returning to the library for a good half-afternoon's work (halfternoon?) I was greeted by Lord of the Small Fries who was giddy with glee over my new workroom moniker of Mr Sniffles. I'm sure this was the cause of my making a mess of some updates to the RFID kiosks and having to stay until closing time to straighten it all out.

Returning home I had some lovely soup for dinner and then promptly went to bed, and sleep, at the early hour of 11pm for the beginning of what turned out to be 9 hours of sleep.

Such rest invigorated me with enough strength to face work for a second day in a row and I pottered through the day today before coming home for an end of the week quiet night at home tonight.

... Scheduling Svetlana's Sojourn

The only important thing that happened recently was the confirmed booking of Svetlana's visit to these fair shores.

It is now booked in and paid for (on my credit card, see how generous I am, and I expect nothing in return) and I have only about 40 sleeps to go until I collect her from the airport.

Of course that's not nearly enough time for me to clean up the apartment - some things are still boxed up from the move a year ago!
I figure I can get away with it if I say "it was cleaned yesterday but The Tiger went crazy and messed it all up". If that doesn't work, well, she needs something to do while I'm at work...

Now, more importantly, I have to work out how to make her stay permanent.
Naturally my first thoughts turned to some sort of basement internment. However the closest thing to a basement my block of flats has is the communal laundry, and there may be awkward questions about the woman chained up in the corner - not to mention the reams of paperwork involved in getting Body Corporate permission to install said chains.
Plan 'B' is the trickier "knock her up ploy" which I suspect may fail due to her being several months back in Svetlanaland before realising her knockedupedness and therefore likely to nest where she is.
Plan 'C' is currently percolating half-formed in the back of my mind but I know it involves flying monkeys in some way.



Oh and there was a total system crash this weekend as well

I suspect it was orchestrated by Sister Serials as she was the first to interrupt my weekend.

... The Well Deserved Day Off

I don't want to be a martyr but boy have I suffered lately for this RFID project.
So to make use of some of the hundreds of extra hours I've worked over the past months I decided to take a single day off.
The first complication was cancelling my IT Team meeting - which wasn't in my calendar(not my fault, honest) - so that they wouldn't scheme against me without me there.

The next wonderful thing that happened was The Tiger deciding to wake me early because she felt the need for company while she ate the bountiful food I'd left out for her the night before. I tell you I'm looking forward to Svetlana's coming visit so I'll be able to kick her out of bed with orders to look after the little one.

This wakeup was followed by a call from Torchwood's temporary successor continuing the harassment that I'm sure Torchwood herself included in the position handover instructions.

Once my day proper had begun it was quickly spoiled by The Beaumaris Ballerina, who decided to make a Sister Serials-esque support call about - you guessed it - an RFID problem.

One of the benefits of being home was being able to fianlly have a phone conversation with Svetlana herself after a few weeks of mixed up weekend schedules.

... The Lunchless Launch

Now that a few days have passed I have had time to recover from the severe lack of lunch at Monday's RFID launch.

The day started badly with Sister Serials having snuck in over the weekend and processed a huge mound of new magazines which yours truly had to load onto the tagging machine so they could be put away before the launch event happened.

The launch itself went without a hitch which is surprising given technologies usual reluctance to work properly under pressure. I was surprised to learn from the assistant to the minister's copy boy (or something like that, the minister couldn't make it) that up until RFID we'd been tagging books with up to seven tags! But then I'm not a librarian so what would know.

Now to be fair to Supervisor Grand Chief K there were some nibbles and bubbles supplied but there also appeared to be some sort of conspiracy to keep me busy and away from the table as guest after guest was trotted out with questions for me to answer. In the end I did manage to wash down a few crumbs of cheese with the dregs of the last bottle of bubbles - all under the pressure of Devil's Advocate hovering around to reclaim my glass like I was some sort of thief. Suffice to say I wasn't able to complete my set of champagne flutes.


Also this week:
Monday night I once more foolishly subjected myself to The Viking Hat GM's torture disguised as game. Perhaps it the abundance of snacks that keeps me doing it?

Tuesday night I had eight blokes pretending to be cowboys as our latest game - a supernatural western - began with some crazy hijinks on a train.

Wednesday Sonja Roster Queen and I began blasting (or zapping if you're SGCK) the Brighton collection to activate the RFID tags. I don't think I will every tire of the "blasted books" joke.
As it turns out blasting is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. The process involes waving an antenna wand over the books until they are all done - it actually feels more like you're caressing their auras than blasting them.

On Thursday The Administrator and I tag-teamed to train the public for a day consuming couple of classes due to trainer illness.

My week ended on a high indulging in a small after-work tipple with Groovy Spirits, Shirl, and Nurse Janet after the days duties were done.
Once Home I watched the footy until I was joined by Pirate Dave dropping off some cards for the next tournament. We tried to puzzle out his new World of Warcraft boardgame until late in the evening. Eventually he left when he guessed I was tired from my subtle move of passing out from exhaustion.

... 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.

... 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.

... Pimping my Hotspot

I spent a reasonable chunk of time Friday morning limping around on my bad knee showing off the wonders of my wireless internet hotspot at Brighton to a gaggle of Stonningtonites.

They seemed suitably impressed with it - particularly with the other-people-set-it-up-rather-than-the-library-IT-person part.

Of course my stunning presentation was cut short by repeated "hey Phill!" problems cropping up and staff vigorously hunting me down to solve them. I didn't even get the chance to try for a thank you lunch from my enrapt audience. Instead I had to hobble down the street for my sustenance.



The Knee Report: Days 2 and 3
Yesterday was a day of hobbling and war story telling. The general feeling was one of tenderness. I received suitable sympathy from Sister Serials, but most others gave me a Supervisor S style of "I warned you about MAMILS" attitude.

Today the knee has been stiffer but also feeling much more like it will heal up quite soon - I would be listed on the footy injury list as TEST (although I'll probably have to skip next weeks soccer).

I'm also currently considering purchasing a cane for myself so I can wave it angrily at the young whippersnappers while muttering things about lack of respect.