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Weekend? What weekend?
Oct. 5th, 2009 08:45 amIt was one of those weekends where you feel you need a weekend to recover from the weekend...
Friday was spent with various chores, including fitting some (rather plain) yellow canvas covers on the little spinny things that stick out of our roof. (Note to self: Embroider new covers for next winter). There were lots of other small things around the house, plus a run to the supermarket for the weekly grocery shop, and a visit to my masseur (this last being very overdue). Then I spent time wrestling with some code for the IAGSDC website (Site 1: Danny 0) but I am planning a rematch.
On Friday I went to the crisis line training day. I'm one of the role-play trainers. This is always my favorite day in their training, because the students have just covered suicide. Taking the calls during roll-play, they all immediately assume a suicide, when often none exists. We throw a curve-ball at them, where a call starts off apparently as a simple support call, but rapidly deteriorates into an emergent suicide; and at this point as the 'caller' I frequently end up 'dying'. This time they saved me.
Roll-play work is hard for the students and the trainers. Often there are tears and very high levels of anxiety. Although we're all sitting in a training situation, it can be very intense. The intent is to give the students a sense of the worst-possible scenario they might face on the phones, and help them understand the support network THEY have so that they don't get crushed by the experience.
By the time I got home I was in no mood to take on the coding problems again, so I noodled instead with photo scans of old family photos and other non-challenging tasks, along with some TV.
Sunday, I was due at work at 8am for a web server and systems upgrade. I was putting a new set of authentication code and web pages in place; every person at the University is impacted if this system doesn't work. No pressure. Working with the systems team, the rollout went (mostly) as planned. A slight hiccup on the systems side was resolved within an hour, and we were done by 11am.
Then I went off for my Box Office training. The LGBT film festival, an annual event, is coming up. I'd volunteered to do a couple hours of support work for them next weekend; but because they were short of volunteers, I ended up with one shift in the box office and one as an usher; plus an 11am to 7pm shift next Sunday as the Theatre Manager! I have no clue what that entails yet, but I'll (hopefully) figure that out by Sunday. I do know I have to deal with the setup, volunteer supervision, announcements prior to the film starting, and the money...I'm sure there's more that I don't know about yet.
I'm now at work waiting for the phone to start ringing. After any major upgrade, there will be people who until now have ignored all our messages about what they have to adjust, fix, or re-write; so they'll come in this morning and find one of their systems is no longer authenticating correctly. For the moment, I'm enjoying a brief moment of peace!
Now, when do I get a real weekend off?
Friday was spent with various chores, including fitting some (rather plain) yellow canvas covers on the little spinny things that stick out of our roof. (Note to self: Embroider new covers for next winter). There were lots of other small things around the house, plus a run to the supermarket for the weekly grocery shop, and a visit to my masseur (this last being very overdue). Then I spent time wrestling with some code for the IAGSDC website (Site 1: Danny 0) but I am planning a rematch.
On Friday I went to the crisis line training day. I'm one of the role-play trainers. This is always my favorite day in their training, because the students have just covered suicide. Taking the calls during roll-play, they all immediately assume a suicide, when often none exists. We throw a curve-ball at them, where a call starts off apparently as a simple support call, but rapidly deteriorates into an emergent suicide; and at this point as the 'caller' I frequently end up 'dying'. This time they saved me.
Roll-play work is hard for the students and the trainers. Often there are tears and very high levels of anxiety. Although we're all sitting in a training situation, it can be very intense. The intent is to give the students a sense of the worst-possible scenario they might face on the phones, and help them understand the support network THEY have so that they don't get crushed by the experience.
By the time I got home I was in no mood to take on the coding problems again, so I noodled instead with photo scans of old family photos and other non-challenging tasks, along with some TV.
Sunday, I was due at work at 8am for a web server and systems upgrade. I was putting a new set of authentication code and web pages in place; every person at the University is impacted if this system doesn't work. No pressure. Working with the systems team, the rollout went (mostly) as planned. A slight hiccup on the systems side was resolved within an hour, and we were done by 11am.
Then I went off for my Box Office training. The LGBT film festival, an annual event, is coming up. I'd volunteered to do a couple hours of support work for them next weekend; but because they were short of volunteers, I ended up with one shift in the box office and one as an usher; plus an 11am to 7pm shift next Sunday as the Theatre Manager! I have no clue what that entails yet, but I'll (hopefully) figure that out by Sunday. I do know I have to deal with the setup, volunteer supervision, announcements prior to the film starting, and the money...I'm sure there's more that I don't know about yet.
I'm now at work waiting for the phone to start ringing. After any major upgrade, there will be people who until now have ignored all our messages about what they have to adjust, fix, or re-write; so they'll come in this morning and find one of their systems is no longer authenticating correctly. For the moment, I'm enjoying a brief moment of peace!
Now, when do I get a real weekend off?
