#blogjune Post 23 - Step by Step

I'm having difficulties getting my Garmin to connect to my PC via USB this morning and I'm wondering if this is an indication of how my day is going to be.

I started the day off tired and knew that the 12km hilly run was going to be a struggle.  I even changed the route around a bit to shock the legs a bit as they are getting used to our usual 12km hilly run.  Then my running buddy and I spent a fair bit of brain power working out our new turn around.  I suppose it distracted us a bit.  We were both tired so the run started bad and I can't say it got better.  Struggle street all the way but we got it done!

I'm beginning to question my 20km run planned around the Park2Park course (as we are doing a fleeting visit to Ipswich this weekend).  If the hills killed me today - they will most likely not be pretty on Saturday!

Garmin has finally connected - the day is good once more!

One of my friends from my time in Emerald has tagged me on Facebook to post my favourite songs from the 90's over the next 7 days.  I was then debating if it should be the songs I liked then or the 90's songs I like now.  I've decided to mix it up a bit.

Today's song is: Step by Step by New Kids on the Block.  They were my favourite group for most of the 90's.

However, looking back now there are a lot of songs from the 90's I didn't like but like now.  They might just show up in my Facebook posts.

Happy Thursday everyone!

Blog December Post 12 - It's one of those days

I must admit, I'm a bit stumped about what to write today.

I could ask those that read this blog - what would you like to see me write about?

Anyway, instead I will bore you with how frustrating my day was yesterday.  You may remember that I predicted that this week would be stressful.  It makes me wonder why I take leave, as when I return there is so much work to do.  And I had only 3 days off this time!!

So yesterday was frustrating for a number of reasons but I suppose I really can't go into them because some are political, and some regard the lack of space on the shelves for books which is causing me no end of frustration as I have weeded and weeded and weeded - so I may just have to purchase new shelves which is not an easy task at this time of year.

I also ended the day with another one of our public computers going stupid.  And due to our limited IT staff, I know we will most likely have to wait a while before it is fixed - with school holidays coming up it will cause extra stress filling bookings - can't wait to get a computer booking system.

Then I got home and found that we have only received one calendar that my daughter had made at school (the students draw a picture and then they put it on a calendar) when I had ordered 3.  So today I have to chase up the school about it.

They had the school presentation "night" on yesterday "afternoon" at 5.30pm.  My bug bear about that is what about parents that work - I don't get home till around 6pm so never get to go to school functions.  Yes I could have tried to leave early but as mentioned above, yesterday was one of those days where that wasn't going to happen - unfortunately, most days are like that.

Then my last bug bear of the day was when I ordered some books from a particular online ebook shop and they are in ePub format.  However, they won't load onto Bluefire Reader on my tablet.  All other ePub books from other online shops do but not from this shop - the files come across as ACSM (I think that is the file format).  I am stumped and I can add that to another ebook frustration of mine!

So let's all toast our coffees, teas or milos to a better day today!!

Blog June Post 16 - Not Every Day is a Bright One

The IT saga continued yesterday with staff computer (and our back up) number 2 going down at Urunga branch.  I feel pretty stupid about this one because I was trying to open a docx document and we only have word 2003 on our computers - sad I know but we don't have the funding to purchase a license to upgrade the library computers.  So I thought I'd download open office - as I have done this before and it will then allow me to open the document.  I can almost hear some of you sighing about doing this - because I'm sure there are other ways of opening docx documents but anyway this is the way I know.  Please share if you know another way.

So I started downloading open office - and I noted the download was different to normal so I stopped it.  Apparently a bit too late because this stupid free games program had loaded and it decided that it would stuff the computer up by not allowing any programs to launch.

Phone call to our wonderful IT officer and he talked me through starting in safe mode and then trying to do system restore - hmmm system restore not working.  Hmmm big problem.  So he has given me some instructions that I will follow, along with the help of my IT savvy husband who has more than once saved a computer from a nasty virus/trojan, over the weekend - when we get time to go down to the library - to see if we can salvage this computer.

Unfortunately, it means my staff member who is working there today until lunch will have to manually note all loans and will have no system to search or reserve.  Not to worry, we have all been in tha predicament before but it reminds us how much we rely on technology and how we have really made it hard for when our system isn't working for us to do our job.

A positive out of the day is that we decided to splurge and go out for dinner to the newly refurbished Club Urunga (Bowls Club).  What a shock to be asked for a licenses when we walked in the door - or some other form of ID.  Thank goodness we are local as they let my husband slip in without ID as he wasn't driving or paying so he didn't have his wallet on him.  He did have to get signed in by a member though!!

It was also lucky I had run into a lady that works there during the day and mentioned we were coming in that night.  She asked if I had booked - to which I replied - no do we have to?  She said yes as Friday nights are pretty busy.  She then reassured me she was heading over there now so would put our names down.  I'm double shocked now as this is Urunga with a population under 2000.

Anyway, we were seated by the lady I know and there was another lady who was taking bookings and payments that I also knew and then a few people that sat on adjoining tables that I also knew.  And then hubby saw some people he knew and so on.  It's nice to eat out and feel part of the community.  Of course, my head starts going on tagents of possibly ideas to partner with the libraries.  But more on that later when I've mushed them around a bit.

The meal was lovely - very filling.  My daughter was desperate to check out the kids playground - you can see it from the road and she has been hounding us since the club opened.  So in the freezing night we went outside and she got to play around for a while.  There was a big tunnel slide but she wouldn't go on it because it was pitch dark inside!!

Once my husband is working again - he took his first steps toward this by getting his OHS White Card - we hope to do the out for dinner in town thing a bit more often.  We thought he had a job lined up after that but he's been told he will need his Blue Card (stop/go batten) first.  So because all these tickets/cards cost money we have to do it bit by bit when we can afford it.  But we are working towards it and that is a good thing.

On a side note, I waited on the phone for over half hour to talk to family assistance about child care benefit as we want to put our daughter in vacation care this holidays.  The main reason is that the vacation care is on it's final chance to prove that we need the service in Urunga.  So they have to get at least 15 kids booked in this holidays or else they will not offer it again.  You see once my hubby starts work we will be needing this service so while we don't need it now I am going to book her in for some days just to show support - and I think she will really enjoy it as they have some great activities planned.

So after half hour waiting on the phone - I can't believe this is accepted as customer service - I finally found out some good news about our entitlements.  Basically we won't be paying a lot for vacation care.

Back to vacation care - I had a few emails back and forth with the organiser and suggested that if it is to keep going - which of course it will - we should look at where we can use the library in the program.  So I'm putting it out there to my fellow professionals - have you worked with a vacation care provider to offer some library based activities and if so, what were they?

Blog June Post 15 - It's days like this....

You need patience and more technical skills then you have.

Yesterday afternoon tested me in a lot of ways.  Yesterday morning was peaceful and there was not much traffic in the Urunga branch library - mainly due to the rareness of a sunny day.

So when I went to open a link from an email sent via one of my professional email lists to see what seniors were doing with iPads - I was surprised when the screen screamed (silently) at me that there was a virus and what did I want to do with it - so I put it in the "vault."  Then the computer went stupid - pages after pages opened and wouldn't stop - EEEEKKKK!!!

So I did the sensible thing - I clicked on the scan and repair button.  So it scanned and then found some serious hard drive errors - EEEEEKKKK!!!  So I hit repair to which it asked for an activiation code - WHAT ACTIVATION CODE??!!  At this point I phoned our ever trusty IT officer.  BTW - we don't have an activiation code for that software.

Considering my trusty IT officer had had a challenging day he thought it would be good to escape to the seaside so quickly suggested he'd come and take a look.

So the bad news is yes there is a hard drive issue and it has wiped all the programs off the computer.  Good news is that it may still be salvagable and we have another staff computer for circ.  Bad news is that I then had to set up email on the other computer as well as try to get it to act like the main print server. FAIL!!  I tried various things.  I managed to get the slip printer to work - YAY!  I managed to get the drivers in for the printer/copier machine - YAY!  But could I get the public machines to talk to the printer/copier?? FAIL!!!

So this morning I will walk into the branch feeling a little bit defeated and I will start the day in a frustrating position of trying to get something to work.  Hey, I managed to work it out in Dorrigo but do you think I can remember what I did??  NO!!  You know when you just fiddle around until you get something to work but then you can't remember what you did?  Well that's what I did in Dorrigo!!

On a side note, I have asked our IT officer that perhaps it would be a good idea to use the rest of my equipment budget to purchase some spare hard drives as I think a trend is happening.  All of the computers were purchased at the same time and they are coming up to 4 years old.  Two hard drives have already decided they have worked too hard - it is only a question of WHEN not IF that more hard drives on our library computers will fail!!

A bit off topic but I'm about to venture into a task that I have never done before.  I have the appropriate training and qualifications to do it but I have never acted on it.  So I'm feeling a lot of self doubt but I'm going to have a go.  You may hear more about it in coming posts - depending when it all begins to happen.  But the important message here (and probably relates to what I have written about above) is that you should always HAVE A GO!!   And perhaps a couple pack of minties wouldn't go astray to stop you screaming and scaring the customers!!

Library Day in the Life - final post

Well it has come to an end of the week for Library Day in the Life - I look forward to my next blog challenge.

Again the day started with the local steiner school students inundating the library - they only stayed for 2 hours today.

I had one of my favourite library volunteers work with me today. She has almost completed her Cert IV in LIS and is a great help. It is a shame I don't have any open vacancies in my libraries for her to apply for as yet but she still enjoys giving us a hand.

I had a meeting with the Council finance manager but this proved to be false and as a means to get me to attend a morning tea to celebrate my birthday (which was on Monday) and another staff members departure - very tricky but a lovely surprise. I apologised for not staying longer but with the steiner students in the library and only my volunteer there to assist them, I had to rescue her!!

Once the steiner students left the library was very quiet. Although every computer was occupied there was few borrowing books. That was thankful as the boxes arrived and my volunteer and I concentrated on getting the books returned, reservations allocated and shelving done.

Lunch time - off to the pool to do laps and guess where the steiner students were!! There were a few "hello library lady" shouted at me while I was doing my laps. Only hit 44 instead of 50 due to lack of time but it was refreshing.

Back to work and a line up at the door - most wanting computers. Another quiet moment and I caught up with some emails, twitter posts and posted some items to our library facebook page.

The afternoon then flowed on without drama - a nice way to end the week.