Well, that's it for the summer. New students next week, rest of 'em the week after. What's not done now probably isn't going to get done.

Good meeting today planning a report I've been tasked to write on the blog we started a year ago. Still going strong now. 236 posts, 13,242 views and 203 Facebook fans in its incarnation over there. Bother... that probably means I won't be allowed to give it up. :-)

I'd forgotten that today sees one of the most fun events of the year.

The International Fair where our students from foreign countries get a special welcome, briefings and, in breaks, an opportunity to visit various stalls such as banks touting for account custom, the Student Union, and of course the Library.

We go and give out leaflets and floor plans and show them the web site and generally enthuse about the Library. I probably wrote about this last year, but best bit for me is finally having a use for all those odd words and phrases I know from around the world (plus memories of visiting some 40 odd countries). Great fun trotting out 'Good day' in Bulgarian, my name in Chinese characters, "My German is clumsy, clumsy and clumsy" (but with three 'clumsy' words) in German and the Nigerian national anthem with a guy who was game enough to join in but somewhat bemused in retrospect.

Of course, I was really holding out for a Czech as I've newly acquired an impossible tongue twister (and a few other words and phrases in the language). And just after lunch a Czech computing student came past, then a little later a Czech engineering student. The latter tried to convince me that the 'impossible' letter of their alphabet was easy. But both were impressed with the tongue twister - or perhaps just thought it lunacy that that's what anyone would choose to learn.

Our 'roving' briefing today. From next week we'll be taking hour slots to 'rove' around selected parts of the Library (e.g. the atrium) to welcome/direct/help new students (and old ones who are clueless).

This year instead of shared t-shirts we've all been given our natty polo shirt. Well, as natty as such things are. I had to fight over an XL with a diminutive colleague who wanted it...

An internal conference today for the heads of departments and course leaders (plus others). (I'm most certainly an 'other').

Usual curious mix of things. One excellent presentation from someone with college and school experience explaining why students are so ill equipped for university. (Which then had a curious echo from someone presenting on very similar lines in the afternoon - but much more tediously. Which was a shame given she represented the government deparment involved!)

Highlight of the day though was sitting next to an academic who was taking notes in a notebook which appeared to have a big 'clip' at the top. Turns out he's using a special pen that interfaces with the 'clip' (ultrasound he said) and the two in tandem record all his writing and sketches or whatever. The clip then plugs into the USB port of a laptop (in his case the very natty and tiny Asus) and uploads his notes for storage or converting via OCR.

I had a go at the latter thinking - particularly with my handwriting - it would be poor. In fact it wasn't - and I wasn't even making an effort to write neatly and hadn't trained the system.

I was most impressed. A Zpen from DaneTech if you want one. Amazon had a pretty good price of just $120 which is ..... ALMOST ... tempting. If only I could convince myself it wasn't a toy!

Awake far too early this morning thinking about things I've not got done this week (this blog being one of them). I must take some things home to do over the weekend. I'm not used to doing that more than very very irregularly, but I'm beginning to think I may have to start.

Finally dared to look at the draft version of my boss's write up of last Friday's appraisal. It was a fair summary and perhaps not as bad in print after the event as the hours themselves.

The comment on Friday's post ("Sounds like it was a badly conducted appraisal if it made you feel de-motivated." in case you missed it), is fair.

But there is a bit of me that wonders.

IF we imagine for a moment that I'm doing a really terrible job, or I'm not up to scratch, then surely the appraisal process isn't supposed to mollycoddle me but get me to pull my socks up. Perhaps the disjuncture was because I wasn't expecting that and was shocked to see myself through my bosses eyes for a moment and felt I'd let her down.

The lull before storm.
I sat at our new "electronic help desk" phone enquiry service for an hour today. We anticipate in the coming weeks lots of problems with and enquiries about the changes in logins to dozens and dozens of databases that has been forced upon us. I'm sure we won't be the only university struggling with this but I have a feeling our own IT guys have not made the situation easier.

But today - still a couple of weeks before the students return en masse, I escaped without a single call.

Gave me a chance to read a journal article about a plagiarism study which had surveyed students on the issue. Apparently one of them had copied the free text responses of a friend...

Off today as well - and slept till lunchtime!

But a good moment to say many thanks to R who organized yesterday's trip. It's been a year of planning and organization and excitement and much of its success was not so much down to 'luck' as to R creating her own fortune as it were. Well done and thank you.

No (work-related) post today due to a theater trip to see a couple of stars in Hamlet. Quite brilliant. Despite the 300 mile round trip I did half the driving for.

Even collected a very special autograph - the last he did of only a dozen or so at most. Amongst so many disappointed (and rabid) fans it seemed a bit churlish to bemoan not seeing the other star and the one I really wanted to sign my program!

Late now. Will sleep tomorrow.

Well, perhaps yesterday presaged what was coming.

I've never come out of an appraisal feeling I wanted to cry.

It was so disheartening and discouraging...

Apparently I should be planning more, leading more, organizing more. My document was 'thin' (though better by the end of the 2 and half hours) and I have a ton of things I now need to do - but no more time to do them. Aaaaargh!

There have been two appointments in my diary for today for some time now.
A Word 2007 training course for a couple of hours in the morning starting at 10am.
My appraisal at 2pm with at least two hours set aside for it.

Very disheartening to get to the end of the former to find my boss has been looking for me wondering why I wasn't at my appraisal at 10. I don't know. How can I get that so wrong... (I'm not even sure that I did get it wrong but can't find any evidence to show that I was told it was at 2. ). Not a good start.

Interesting day today putting together the document I supply to my boss prior to appraisal.

I started finding it quite hard to think of much under the heading 'achievements' in the past year but I was quite pleased by the end of a trawl through my diary and through my CPD folder at how much I had actually done.

I don't find all this 'reflection' and review very easy. But presumably as a 'leader' or nascent 'manager' (I feel like neither), I can't avoid it.

Day off on Friday (to church sit bizarrely enough, it's a long story) didn't help any of the work that's piled up over the vacation go away.

Worse yet it rained very heavily all day (and the next - but I won't go into that it was too horrible).

What regular readers may recall is that the non-new extension part of our library leaks like a sieve. You can often see orange buckets strategically located around various damp bits of carpet. I can't recall if I've mentioned that once after particularly heavy rain, one of the leaks manifested in my office.

I arrived at work this morning very fortunate to find that the flood across my desk had only made some 'reading' very soggy and nothing precious got damaged. Some irreplaceable stuff (including a pile of personal books I'd gathered out of the exhibition I believe I've gone about which were just waiting for a dry evening to carry home) was less than a foot away from me being very very upset this morning.

As it is I'm just wringing out the stuff I do want to read, mopping up the continuing drips onto the desk, and realizing that my goldfish bowl is perhaps a more literal description of the office than even I'd bargained on.

I *suppose* I could learn the lesson and somehow keep my desk absolutely clear like a certain senior colleague. But I doubt it.

Phone call today from a company that's fast becoming my unfavorite of the month.

Initially a rep was coming to sell us something and was a bit too brash over his demands for coffee and a parking space for my liking. But not to worry.

Now I don't often arrange reps like this and have in the past assumed that only I and closely related colleagues would be interested. And completely failed to invite academics or marginally related library colleagues and such.

This time I pulled my finger out and invited the Technology Faculty, the Science Faculty, people from acquisitions, other library staff and so on to the meeting. Well, it's a lot of money and a product that would be widely useful.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was today to hear that they've had to postpone the meeting. Not only that but could *I* call back in the afternoon to rearrange a new time? (You'd have thought they'd be keen to call me). And not only that but when I did call back was brushed off when the rep was interrupted by something and could I give him half an hour?

Well frankly no. I won't be calling back. Life's too short. I'm not even sure I'll reschedule the meeting if they bother to call. I have way too many things on my desk at the moment and this isn't top of my priorities.

And remind me next time to go back to the easy option of not bothering to invite anyone else to the meeting.

One of the things I most enjoyed on vacation was a bit of smithying.
I visited a recreation of a medieval village (and yes there was jousting sort of[1]). But there was also a smith at his forge and for a modest sum I could choose to make a hook or a bottle opener (presumably for all those medieval bottles of beer...).

I had a go at the bottle opener and although I was under strict guidance, naturally, I was surprised at the hands off nature of smith letting me get on with it. It was no surprise that it was hard work - keeping the forge hot with the hand pumped bellows, hefting the chunky hammers, trying to get the metal in the shape you wanted (to look good and be functional at opening a bottle), trying to remember what was hot and not to be touched...

But the satisfaction of actually making something. And making something that looks remarkably good for absolutely no practice or previous experience whatsoever, was quite something.

Presumably that's why I enjoy putting together 'finished' things like library tours and hate the endless email/paperwork/reading that never seems to achieve anything.

[1] I say sort of because I've seen it before where two riders would really go at each other. Here they took in turns to tilt at wood or pick up rings or whathaveyou - which was still impressive and took a lot of skill.

It doesn't seem as if I've missed a lot while I've been away.

Same old hassles and it's easy to step back into the same rut as ever.
And while a lunch date that I'd looked forward to got cancelled, I *think* the proof-reading I've been trying to help with has finally stopped bouncing back which is a relief as today was their deadline for me to be done.

I'm back. Trust you haven't missed me.
Over 2000 miles later it's kind of nice to be back in my seat not moving - but the vacation's been generally good - the weather could have been a bit kinder. But we managed to swim every day just about. Sometimes under leaden skies in a rather too much wind.

Now I'm just swimming against the tide of work that's piled up whilst I've been away. That's not gone anywhere. Although looking on the bright side I was able to connect my laptop wirelessly four or five times - twice through the auspices of a tiny but connected public library, the other occasions via a friend's server as we visited. On the downside my laptop battery seems to have given up the ghost and until I persuade a colleague who doesn't use theirs to swap, or my boss to buy a new one, I'm power supply dependent.