End of the year 2025
I write this as a massive thunderstorm slowly approaches - the weather this summer has been very strange. It has been colder than previous summers but just recently it has gone extremely hot only to have massive thunderstorms. Enough about the weather though, the past few months has been busy!
On the home front:
- Playing Hockey on Friday nights has been good fun. I find that I am usually pretty tired after a full work week and I have a niggling calf/achilles injury that doesn't seem to be healing (playing on it every week isn't helping I'm sure!) but we have a great team of guys that love playing so its been really good fun.
- School functions have definitely ramped up - concerts, meetings, awards, uniform for our middle child heading into high school next year, birthday parties, all seem to get busier towards the end of the year.
- Our annual trip to Sydney for allergy testing occured, they were pretty quick this year so there and back in a day was good - that being said I think my son was on his iPad for nearly the whole trip so at least he was entertained! My car doesn't seem to want to play music from my phone anymore either, nor audiobooks. I think it may have been a recent OS upgrade to my phone so I only have the radio or my 20yr old iPod to listen to in the car. I need to find a solution!
- Christmas is fast approaching. My wife has been super organised and has arranged for nearly all the presents to be bought/delivered and wrapped. I am so appreciative for all the work she puts in to get everything ready. While I put the Christmas tree up and all the other decorations, I fear my efforts are minimal in comparison!
- I have been slowly building up my motocamping equipment - I think I am at a point where I could test my setup. I was thinking of heading for a short trip or I might just setup in the back yard. Looking forward to seeing how it goes!
Work wise:
- Work has been busy with end of year renewals - all the subscriptions have been reviewed, we already cancelled a number of subscriptions this year but the university announced that we must find $35M in savings by end of next year so renewals have been under a lot of scruitiny so a lot of information and analysis (and negotiation) has been happening
- With the $35M deficit announced and other areas of the University already undergoing staffing changes and operational efficiency projects, everyone is a bit on edge with the uncertainty about their ongoing employment. While we have been assured that nothing will happen until next year and only after consultation, morale is taking a hit!
- One of the largest publisher deals that we subscribe to was effectively put on hold 'until a later date'. We effectively have a few weeks to determine how many reading list items are affected, communicate the change to 'read' and to 'publish' access (Not to mention impacts on Mendeley) to all staff and respond to questions/feedback from impacted staff. This has been a massive piece of work and we are still weathering the storm.
- We are also upgrading all the Selfchecks and returns units to Windows11 - previous projects to do this (Win7 to 10) have resulted in a lot of issues but so far we are 4 campuses down, and it all seems to be going very smoothly. A couple of tweaks required to some of the units but I have been pleasently surprised on how well it has been going.
I am very much looking forward to some time off over Christmas!