Got my blue card back (O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!) and have been working like a bastard. It is good to be back at the zoo.

One of the aides accidentally did an open ended batch process without previewing it. 11000 (Eleven Bloody Thousand) entries had their call number and location changed. Last backup was a week ago. It has been decided to change them as they are borrowed and returned (its not like we aren't busy just checking things in and stuff this time of year [11000!! That's about six or seven years worth of entries {fortunately it is quicker and easier to edit an entry than to make one from scratch}]).

Also the database we use was updated to a new version at the start of the year. The company providing it was immediately bought by another which decided to scrap that database, harvest it for features and fuse it with a new dbase they planned to make. This means we have had to put up with a buggy alpha version of some discontinued software while waiting for the new product (the dodgy batch processing features included). One of the main problems is a memory leak which slowly ties up all of the available ram (when the computer starts to bog down you can call up the running processes and watch as the available ram dwindles to nothing and the computer locks up). So it goes.

Despite this it's all good.