Bit of This and a Bit of That

Issue 2 of this round of The Commissioner gets sorted today. Zookoda the thing to it's incredibly small mailing list (Katherine and myself so far) and Katherine will zap it onwards. The Zookoda e-mail version is a response to our commissioners who don't fancy having to open attachments, they like to go straight to the links..... They asked, I supplied, Katherine's distribution list gets both it and the attachment because there may be library folk who print the thing. Actually been a good bit of CAS that's gone down well outside the North West (Can't believe it all began here!)

PCT Librarian's meeting at St Helens, costing and pricing the key topic, went OK. Very C&M though. Snow hasn't been bad, led to the odd apology but most folk made it OK. Positive vibes to Beryl.

Back and I solve the Nigel Crisp conundrum, that old implement called the phone and a call to Monitor leads me back to the DH where I am quizzed as to whether I've looked on their site before being put through to their folk who deal with Foundation Trusts. They let me know that no letter exists, what I am after is section 15 of the Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Act 2003. Problem solved! Pauline catches up with me job partially done. Just need to locate the Green Book now.

Home and time to sort the kitchen. Must resist the temptation to do the news..... We're letting Helen loose on it tomorrow!

The Dentists - Kebab House Crawl

The sights and sounds that entertained a much younger me - the person I still am in my head!

With Fish in Our Beards

Mornings recording of records is paused due to lack of battery power. Go see Eddie the buildings manageer and let him know about the leak and the rodents! Come out for the recharge period. Start of the day and I was convinced I'm not gonna finish today, a wall of boxes in front of the racking that will complete the job, an avalanche of boxes where one had collapsed from the wall I'd been building too. Repair that situation. Then move onto the new stuff. Shift around 50 boxes and build a new wall. Usual situation, dusty, shite conditions but I quite enjoy the physical nature of it, makes a change from sitting on my arse all day.

Music today is all garage/psych influenced stuff, The A-Lines, The 5 6 7 8's, Thee Milkshakes, and The Prisoners keep me hard at it. The Dentists planned for the afternoon.

Try contacting Tracy via Meebo but Easy don't seem to like it and a direct contact through IM suggests we're offline anyway!

Djamolidine

Latest e-mail marketing metrics. Some interesting phenomena beginning to emerge, there is a good forwarding rate where we have established a personal relationship and it seems to be the forwarded mails that are opened most. Conforms to viral marketing patterns then. Key thing seems to be the value placed on the sender not the content.

I concede defeat in trying to map a blog template to the design in Helen's head. Nearest compromise I can come up with is promoting the archives in the sidebar and renaming them 'Articles' which is probably a bit more user friendly. Might need to tart up the header but it's getting there. Leave fuller instructions for Helen on Zookoda. Of course I continue to rave about it as a tool. Let Alison from the LDB know about it today (Tracy I've left some marketing books for Alison - not as yet issued - she's dropping the laptop and projector back some time tomorrow and I've asked her to check the data cable is with the projector).

Discuss the printable CEO with Tracy, as ever I'm only a tool away from solving my problems (I know though that I am the basic problem!) Point her at the Rough Underbelly Task Manager. Fetch the train ticket for tomorrow's Land of Manc gig and pass Hammy House which is really being knocked about by the developers. I'd have been easier to knock the bugger down.

Of a less work related nature I listen to 'Heads and How to Read Them' (thanks to whoever left it on my desk for me) and instantly I get transported back in time to my year in the Smoke at Library School at UCL, to a time in Oxford which Bob's excellent Gigography (at the Dentist's homepage) tells me was the 17th October 1991 when I lost myself in the music while moving at around 1000 mph away from the place I wanted to be while standing about 8ft away from it at the Jericho (don't worry if that don't make sense to you it does to me!) I also get transported to moving in to Nursing Home South at Napsbury, only to find the next day I had to move to a gaff above the laundry because I wasn't a nursing student! Strange how music is a trip in itself. Other listens for the day include the very excellent Nikki Sudden and Abdoujaparov (who prompt me to pic up the phone to call Christina - she was in the car when I first listened to 'Air, Odeon, Disco, Pub', oddly enough easy enough to date that if I ask Tracy because it was the day of her wedding!).

Mic rings with good news on a job, I send the reference today so it should be sorted for him. So the sidies are off to live in Chesterfield, hope they don't cause the twisted spire to straighten up. Made up for him, sounds like a good job.

Home, cook, hoover, play with blogs. Off to the Land of Manc again tomorrow.

Old Father Time

On Thursday our new member of staff Leanne kicks in, and she seems according to her application form to originate from Rainham, so me being a big Dentists fan and knowing that Mark Matthews is from Rainham thought that I'd ask if she knew the man that beat up a Burns bass and latterely a Rickenbacker (clearly a man with an eye for a cool bass, I have an affection for the Burns logo that lingers as a result). Then I looked at her date of birth and calculated that when I was stood in the cellar at the Clarendon in Hammersmith grooving down to the fab 'Kebab House Crawl' and the sounds that made 'Some People Are On the Pitch They Think It's All Over It Is Now', 'You and Your Bloody Oranges' and 'Down and Out in Paris and Chatham', Leanne was all of 6 or 7. Might ask her just to see though!