hot day at home

It's muggy and hazy today. Working from home with the still air and the dozing pets makes me feel sleepy. I worry about the bushfires in the Blue Mountains nearby and the damage they are causing to wildlife habitats. I'm also concerned about my sister and her family. She recently moved up to the mountains. I know she is not in an area that is currently in danger but the idea of her up there does make me feel anxious. It is becoming more and more commonplace to expect that each summer there will be severe bushfires in the Blue Mountains where in the past, these were much less frequent. Is it to do with global warming or more development on the urban fringe? A complex interaction of these and other factors to be sure. Each year, there is a sense of looming danger as the hot days of December approach. I spoke to my sister the other day and she has tried to empty all her gutters of leaves. Some areas she couldn't reach because her roof is too high and she would have had to climb up onto the roof. I wonder how it is expected that elderly people do this sort of fire preparation.

I haven't heard back after my recent batch of letters and am taking it easy on the querulent front. I had a meeting with my supervisor late last week, and I showed her the method I'm using for filtering and extracting themes and examples from each interview. This mainly involves notetaking and grouping insights and quotes as I go. The meeting was helpful and I feel kind of reassured but still haven't resolved whether to use a qualitative research program or not. At this stage though I've decided to continue with the method I'm using since I have to listen to each interview anyway to fill in words that were missed by the transcriber. I think I might consider using NVIVO after I've completed this step, even though this means getting hold of a PC somehow.

Today, I entered the remaining observation notes from the Telco staff in Melbourne and the one session I did with a staff member at the Holiday Inn at Darling Harbour while she was working "on the road". I still have a few more observation notes to record. I've been entering the notes into the comments fields of iPhoto next to the photos I took during the observation sessions. This has the effect of creating a very film like, story-book feel to my observations. It takes ages to enter all the comments because I also recorded the sessions on a digital voice recorder so I cross reference my hand written notes with the recording while I enter the comments next to relevant stills. I still reckon my "thesis" would have made a great documentary. It might sound boring recording and photographing office workers in their daily interactions with information and communication technology but visually it is suprisingly rich and evocative.