May 22, 2013

I got mobbed by kindergarteners yesterday. When they were about to leave the lab the teacher told them that it would be their last time in the lab this year so they should thank me and give me a hug. They all shouted 'thank you' at once and as a team, came at me for a giant hug. I imagine that is what celebrities would feel like if they were swarmed by a very short fan-base.

When I walked into work today, with a giant bag of popcorn, I just managed to clock in before having my picture taken with Flat Stanley and then was given a last minute project by the receptionist. The project was to make the labels for the CUM folders for each kid. And that 'U' make a 'u' sound, like 'cumulative'. The receptionist was having difficulties and thankfully I had just learned all about mail merges in Word while working on my note card label project. So I knocked that out and had the labels printed in maybe fifteen minutes.

On my way to the computer lab I dropped off the giant bag of popcorn in the teacher's lounge and then sent out an email to let everyone know about the popcorn. The subject line was “Cookies and Baked Goods...” and then the first line of the email was “are delicious, but I don't know how to bake.” And it continued “Not something I am proud of but I feel I can be candid in this public forum. To compensate for my inability in one food arena, I have overcompensated in another. That arena being popcorn. There is a bag in the lounge. And it is way better for you than cookies. As long as you can get past all the stuff that makes it taste good. Tell you what, just think of it as an exercise-motivator. You're welcome.” My last good email of the year.

I spent the rest of my morning finishing up my MAP spreadsheets, listening to podcasts, archiving emails, and shredding all the sensitive documents I have accumulated throughout the year. I ended up with so many sheets of paper that had student numbers or test scores or home addresses and phone numbers. It is really fun to shred paper though.

I didn't have any classes this morning and I couldn't get ahold of the first grade teachers to ask if they were going to come this afternoon because they had gone on a field trip. So I went on a brief field trip with one of the kindergarten classes and their fourth grade book buddies, to the park, which is about a block away from the school, not counting the block or two we had to walk to get to the playground in the park. On the walk over we ran into the male para that works with the preschool kids and he was carrying two styrofoam food containers. One the the kindergarten boys in front of me turned to the guy and asked him if he just had lunch with his love bud. Instant classic.

We stayed at the park for an hour or so and when I got back I found out that the first grade classes had planned on coming to the lab. I missed the first class but I came back in the middle of the second one so I stood around and talked with the teacher and my para friend. The kids were getting to play on CoolMath so my para friend was playing a coffee shop game and, after answering some emails, the teacher started playing Snail Bob 2, which is her favorite game. She wants to be able to play it on her iPad so I sent her a link to a browser that supports Flash so hopefully that will work for her.

I didn't really have anything to do after that so I just messed around on my computer. In my email archiving I discovered a link the librarian had sent out awhile ago that I had saved but not really looked at. It turns out, Popular Science teamed up with Google and now every single issue of that magazine is now available for free on their website. I think it was something over 1,800 issues since their first issue in 1872. I read some of the stuff in that issue and then started reading the issue from my birth year and month. I learned that HP had a touchscreen computer way back then. Fun fact.

Near the end of school the gifted teacher stopped me in the hall and said she was having a problem showing a video with a projector. It would play just fine on her laptop but when she plugged it into the projector, the projected image would just show a black box where the video should be. It sounded like maybe it was similar to the issue I was having when I was trying to screencap pictures from Windows Media Player so I looked up how I fixed that just in case it was the same thing. She had time to work on it after school so I met her upstairs at four o'clock.

When I got up there I briefly had to wait for her to save what she was working on and then open her email to get to the video which was attached in an email. She mentioned that her desktop shortcut to her email had stopped working and I asked if it still worked from the Start Menu, which it did, so she won't have to use an internet browser to check her email. Then I showed her how to drag the video from the attachment place in the email, onto her desktop, so she could just click on it there when she needed it instead of having to open up the email. When we plugged the laptop into the projector it idd exactly what she was describing. I tried making the projector the primary display but that didn't work. Then the video ended up being an MP4 I think, and could only play in Quicktime, which threw me for a bit of a loop since I was thinking about Windows Media Player. But thankfully I was able to look around in the menus and find something that referenced video acceleration, which is what needs to be turned off in WMP to screencap. And after turning that off in Quicktime, the video showed up on the projected screen just fine. A lot of my job is just clicking around and hoping stuff works. And thankfully in this case it all worked out.

After school I got Chipotle and Jimmy John's and mailed my Old Navy exchange at the UPS store. The new hoodie shipped today so that should be here sometime. I hope it fits. Eventually it was time for dinner and my burrito was alright but not great. I didn't do a very good job of cutting it in half and it was already really big to begin with so I ended up not eating all of the half I cut. I think I might need to get white rice next week. It isn't as healthy as brown but it sure tastes a lot better. And maybe try a different salsa. Maybe.

I didn't do too much with the rest of my night, other than editing a picture for my mom and doing a load of laundry. I'm really tired now but I kind of don't want to go to bed because I don't want tomorrow to come. Kind of the opposite of Christmas. I like working at the school and having interactions with people and feeling productive at least every now and then. It is going to be a long boring summer without that. I am looking forward to seeing the yearbook, though, and I am really hoping I didn't forget someone or call them by the wrong name. But I should probably go to bed and let the inevitable happen. It should be a fun half-day.