Well, once again it's been a long time since I've posted. Day to day life is pretty boring when you're working...not much to write about when all you do is work, eat, sleep, do chores, and then start all over again.
One of the nice things about my job is that working on the department website and library OPAC is allowing me to expand my web site authoring and graphics skills. I have been a steep CSS learning curve lately, and thanks to a new coworker who has a background in graphic design I finally have enough of an idea of how Photoshop works that I can open it and understand enough about the layout to start learning by trial and error. Besides the web presence revamps at work, which should be online soon, I've used a couple of little side projects as platforms for experimentation. I helped a friend redesign her website for her freelance editing business, and this weekend, I have been working on developing an HCT Library Catalogue Google Gadget:
It probably isn't as good as I think it is, but I am inordinately proud of it all the same :) It can be added to iGoogle pages and embedded in outside web pages, too. Haven't really had a chance to test it in Explorer (I use Firefox at home), so if something looks seriously out of whack to you let me know so I can fix it!
The big news here this week was, of course, the accidentally-severed undersea cable that knocked out Internet access for much of the Middle East. We were not affected; our connection did seem slow that night but thanks to our ISP slow connections are not unusual for us even on good days. The fact that this story is such big news, though, is a testament to how much we now rely on the Internet for work and for recreation. Though some might find it hard to believe, I can live without being logged on in my spare time; all of my work is dependent on online/networked tools, though, and I'd be hard-pressed to find anything to do in the case of a network outage! I suppose I could write out catalogue records for inputting later, but that's about it.
Edmonton has been struggling under extremely low temperatures this week. We have nothing that dramatic here, but we are in the middle of a pretty impressive sandstorm. The howling wind woke both of us up quite early this morning, and visibility is very low. The intire sky is a dull beige-grey...it's like fog, but created by sand instead of moisture! Even the Corniche waters are being whipped up into little baby whitecaps, which is VERY unusual.
Out on the highways, driving in sandstorms is much like driving in a snowstorm: sands blow across the roads and you can get whiteout conditions very easily. So I'm glad we don't have to go anywhere and can stay in today. I am going to attempt a roast beef for dinner (believe it or not I've never actually cooked this myself before) and we have apple cider supplies left over from Christmas. This is the closest we're going to get to a "winter day" in Abu Dhabi so I feel like we should make the most of it!
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