Sat down at my laptop about 7:45 AM. It was month end, so I had administrative tasks to tackle.
My day went something like this:
- Checked email for anything that needed immediate action.
- Reviewed my upcoming day and the rest of the week.
- Reviewed AIIP-L posts.
- Walked office assistant for about 40 minutes – it was cooler this morning, so the walk was a lot more pleasant and we did a bit of training while we were out.
- Back to email and FaceBook after the walk.
- Phoned AMA about registering for the International Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication – the registration page appears to be a non-secure page and the person I talked to wasn’t sure about the workings of the process, so I faxed in my registration.
- Did some reading arising from email and Twitter off and on during the day. Some samples:
- 10 Myths About Canadian Health Care, Busted
- Why we learn more from our successes than our failures: MIT study sheds light on the brain’s ability to change in response to learning
- TweetDeck and Hootsuite – Better Together (From April – and it appears some of the features on the blogger’s wishlist have been instituted in the new version of HootSuite.)
- A silly pat on the head helps seniors remember daily med, study suggests (My mom, at 90, forgets to take her medications sometimes, despite having a bubble pack from the pharmacy – I wonder if this could work for her?)
- Farewell to e-mail: E-mail’s shortcomings are hard to ignore as new collaboration tools take off (I’ve used Google Docs on occasion, but some folks I’m working with still cling to emailing back and forth)
- Building a Collaborative Environment on the Medical Education Blog
- Lunch break about 1:15-1:45. Left-over pasta salad and veggies. Switched from morning coffee to afternoon tea.
- Did research on ways to extend range of our wireless router (Signal is stable in the living room, but less so in the back of the condo. Some days I get dropped from the network 5-6 times in the back. Due to cable connection, need to keep router where it is, so a bridge might be just the ticket.)
- Did invoicing for projects that wrapped up in July and emailed them to clients.
Discovered voice command to search computer for files using Dragon Naturally Speaking! (No more scrolling through to open a file. There’s so much more to learn about this hand-saving software.) - Calculated GST (federal Goods and Services Tax) for second quarter remittance due today.
- Twitter: off and on during the day, Tweeted, retweeted, replied.
- Corresponded with a client to firm up an initial project meeting in early September (One member of the research team is away for the summer).
- Went to bank to pay GST (Normally, I do my banking on dog walks – office assistant’s day is made if she gets to say hi to lots of people – but today it was too hot to walk her that far.)
- Went to buy a bridge for the router, then got conflicting opinions, so came back to the office with a new router instead. (I’ll see how it goes – Staples has a great return policy if the problem continues with the new router.)
- Discovered that the audio on my headset isn’t working with the USB connection. Tried all USB ports on the laptop with same result. Audo works through analog connection, but USB is better for voice recognition funtion. Went to London Drugs to exchange them for another pair (since I’d had them only 2 weeks. LD also has a good returns policy.)
That’s it – 5 days in the work life of a librarian working outside the traditional world of a library with walls. There are a few things left undone, which will get done on the weekend – but since they aren’t of an urgent nature, they’ll get done when they get done.
I’m off to enjoy the BC Day long weekend. A few of the Vancouver events going on over the weekend, in roughly chronological order:
- World Police and Fire Games: Started Friday night with the Opening Ceremonies and a parade. 10,000 participants from around the world. Events taking place throughout the Lower Mainland and up the coast. (I’m taking a vacation day on Thursday to attend the Police Service Dog events open to the public: Agility, Obedience, Protection and Search. Events on Friday are closed to the public: Explosives Detection and Narcotics Detection.)
- Critical Mass: Cyclists take over the streets in protest. Took place Friday evening, with lots of negative press beforehand; about 3,000 cyclists attended. Photos available at the Vancouver Sun gallery.
- BC Cultural Crawl: Month-long celebration of the Arts in BC starts on Saturday, with several Vancouver galleries/museums participating.
- Dyke March: Took place Saturday at noon on Vancouver’s Eastside.
Celebration of Light: Fireworks competition. Finale takes place Saturday evening in English Bay. Videos of the previous 3 nights this year – the entire almost half hour each – can be found at Global TV’s website.- Pride Parade: Takes place Sunday in the West End during the Pride Festival this weekend.
- Powell Street Festival: Takes place Saturday and Sunday, celebrating Japanese Canadian arts, culture and heritage.
I hope to spend some time over the weekend reading some of the other Library Day in the Life posts.
