I am sorry that I have been so lax this week with blogging. I know that I promised to be much mroe regular about my personal blog entries, but I have been having a great, but busy week. I have actually been falling asleep each night while watching TV. Thankfully, Jolie has been coming along to wake me up so I would get to go to bed to sleep between midnight and 1:00 am.

The good news is that I am pooped at night because things have been going so well at work. It is all very exciting. The staff has been so welcoming and supportive. One of them even mentioned that it is great that today was the last day of a whole week that I have been there and that it went by so quickly and well.

I have been starting to get my fingers wet in all sorts of projects. I spent some time in two of the departments (reference and circulation) so I am prepped for when I have to help cover the desks since I am the coverage of last resort in all of the departments. I also have been working on a new monthly, electronic newsletter that will highlight some phone apps and websites that will tie in with some themes. For example, I am did some things dealing with exploring the area for leaf-peeping and kids going back to school.

Besides being the assistant director, I am also the technology coordinator, which means I am in charge of all the computers in the building. I have already had to deal with a few hiccups, which has gone pretty well. I am also working on building the library's first social media/networking policy to define the appropriate use of tools like Twitter and Facebook for the library. I also have to start installing and setting up some new equipment on Monday.

The last two days have had me dealing with the approaching Hurricane Irene. I have had to prepare the staff working on Saturday so they can shut off all the computers and tech equipment and either unplug the devices or turn of the surge protectors they are connected to. It is going to mean a mad rush to get everything turned back on Monday morning before we open, but it should protect everything. I also got to write my first staff memo to deal with it.


Speaking of Hurricane Irene, things seem to be looking a bit up for us in RI. While we are still going to be confronted with a part of her, it sounds like she will be more of a tropical storm than a hurricane for us. They are predicting winds of about 40-70 mph, with some stronger gusts from time to time. Water seems like a biggest concern. They are expecting us to get about 5-10 inches of rain between tomorrow afternoon and Monday morning, and the storm surge could shoot up Narragansett Bay which splits a good portion of our state with 4-8 foot swells. None of this is great news, but it is better than they were initially predicting. Hopefully, this will prove the case or predictions could result in even less serious results. I would be happy with that.

Besides waiting out a hurricane, I also have to work a bit on my two fall courses. I finished up the syllabi last weekend, which was a big goal, but I didn't have enough time to get those syllabi loaded into the related online course shells. That would have meant that the classes would be already to go for their start on September 7 and 10. The good news is they. technically. didn't need to be done last week so all is good, but I like to have things done a bit ahead of time so students can explore before class starts. Of course, I already emailed the syllabi to the registered students, but I like to give them everything they might want to ease the process. Hopefully, I can get this done tomorrow because it is possible that we could lose power on Sunday.