August 30, 2013

No exercising was had this morning. I probably fell asleep before 10:30PM last night and I woke up at 5:55AM when my alarm went off, wide awake and ready for the day, but I just couldn't convince myself to sit up. So I went back to sleep until 7:00AM. I suck.

At school today I added a printer onto one of the resource teacher's laptop because for some reason she doesn't have the sufficient permissions to add a printer. It seems like somehow she got lumped in with the students because she doesn't even have the control panel. When I logged in to add the printer I messed around with the group policy and tried to give her access to the control panel and the ability to add a printer but it didn't work so I think it is something that will have to be changed further up the chain.

The librarian and I discovered that at least one of the students doesn't seem to exist. She hasn't been able to log into the computers in the lab and when we checked today we couldn't find her in the system. But she is in Infinite Campus because she is on the roster I have, with her student number, and that was printed from Infinite Campus. She has a brother but I can't remember if he has logged in or not so I should probably check on that to see if maybe they both weren't entered. On Monday I also need to see if she is able to take the MAP tests, which she should because those rosters are downloaded from Infinite Campus, but it won't hurt to check.

Because we were messing around with that I was a little bit late getting into the lunchroom and ended up serving cheese and salsa instead of wiping tables and opening milk cartons. The cheese sauce was only for the burritos but the salsa was for both the burritos and the tacos. I was unaware of the cheese restriction at first so one kid got away with it in his tacos but everyone else was denied. Which kind of sucked because there was plenty of cheese and only a handful of kids wanted it in their tacos. Whatever. Thanks to serving, I got out of the lunchroom by 12:20PM instead of sometime after 12:30PM, and I didn't have a class in the lab so I was able to eat my lunch pretty early compared to the last few days. That was nice.

I helped out with second grade reading groups today. There were parent volunteers so I just tagged on with one of them which ended up working out pretty well. It is easier dealing with two or three kids at a time than it is trying to wrangle five. I was sitting next to one kid who kept coming up with excuses why he didn't want to write, the main one being the other kids making noises, which he interpreted as them making fun of him. I think the real reason for not wanting to write is that he is awful at it. I can say from experience that his writing skills are about on par with those of a kindergartner at the beginning of the year. He had a backward 's', even short words weren't spelled correctly (ice cream became 'is krem'), and complete sentences weren't even close to being an option. And I don't know if you can really determine anything from a kid's artistic ability but his was also on a kindergarten level. It was a kind of torture trying to get him to write a draw. For both of us. We ended on a good note though, because in between groups we talked about the LEGO Star Wars book he had and he was showing me his favorite characters.

In the lab today I came up with a new option for the commonly used shortcuts. At the moment I have them in a folder on the desktop because regular internet links seem to get deleted. At least the ones I put on. But, my typing practice link hasn't been deleted and I made that as a webpage in Word last year. So I'm thinking that maybe documents don't get deleted. So today I went to all the websites and got the main title graphic, put it in a webpage Word document, and turned them into hyperlinks. Then I went around a put that on all the computer desktops. The main goal behind this is to make it easier for the younger kids who struggle with double-clicking, especially when they are trying to pick something out of a list. With the new shortcuts page I made they will still need to double-click to get it open but then they just have to single-click on the picture of the website they want. If it doesn't get deleted over the weekend.

After work I decided to take a nap, which was a really good decision until I had to wake up to get ready for work. I do think it helped though because I am not incredibly tired at the moment. I'm still occasionally yawning and do feel tired but I don't feel like I'm about to pass out like I normally do on Friday night's at the theater.

I spent my night at the theater making decent progress on my cross stitch and reading more of Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of Nimh. I also looked into connecting an external source like a blu-ray player or computer to one of the projectors. At some point in the near future we are supposed to play some movie or short-film and the director or someone stopped by tonight to see what his options were in terms of playing the movie. I guess it will technically be the world premiere before it goes off to festivals but I obviously no nothing about the whole thing so I'm not really that excited. Anyway, it seems like the best bet will be a blu-ray player but he'll need to bring it in beforehand to make sure it will actually work. We have all the inputs for pretty much anything on one of the projectors but we have never tried using them before. Another projector has a DVD player attached to it with component cables but I was reading that newer blu-ray players don't allow HD content over component cables anymore. So hopefully he has an old blu-ray player or one with an HDMI output so we can hook it up to the other projector.

And I was completely wrong about that nap earlier. About thirty minutes after I wrote that, my day hit me like a ton of bricks and I was almost immediately, entirely exhausted. Friday is definitely my least favorite day of the week. Waking up super early, working eight hours at the school, taking a very short break, and then working seven or more hours at the theater is rough. I'm too old for that crap.

Despite that exhaustion I was feeling more awake when I left, which tends to be the case, and I ended up driving around town for about twenty minutes, taking the very scenic route home. The main reason for this is they were playing live sets on one of the EDM stations I listen to on XM and I was enjoying the set by Kill The Noise. But now I am going to go to bed because I have written enough and it is late and I am tired.

August 29, 2013

Today I took my old keyboard to work and it definitely makes typing a lot nicer. Mechanical keyboards for the win.

It didn't really feel like I accomplished much today. The day just kind of happened. I made a sign-up sheet for MAP testing and put blank seating charts in the teachers' mailboxes for them to fill out. Testing starts the week after next and that just feels like it is way too soon. I think it is a week earlier than last year but I also think we started a week or so earlier this year so that explains that difference. To my surprise I had a few teachers sign up for times and a few turn in their seating charts. As long as I get it sometime before a class is scheduled to test it will give me time to log in all the kids but the earlier the better so I don't have to worry about it. I still don't have a permanent lab schedule up but I have been avoiding typing one up because the teachers are still trying to figure out their own schedules. I think after MAP testing I'll put up the permanent lab schedule. Which will be good for what feels like a week before the next round of testing starts.

I continued to work on inputting guardian information into my student directory. I'm using the sheets that parents/guardians filled out during enrollment instead of Infinite Campus which kind of sucks. I'm not only having to decipher sloppy handwriting but the information is also incomplete and I don't know what the relationship is to the student. But whatever.

There was an assembly today but I opted out. It had felt like I was going non-stop all day, bouncing from one thing to the next (classes in the lab, an hour in the lunchroom which felt like at least four, more classes in the lab) and I had just gotten the chance to sit down and eat lunch. I needed a break. And the assembly was Agent G, teaching kids about bullying through displays of karate, like jumping over people and breaking boards. All that makes kids want to do is jump around and punch things. And then claim everything is bullying, like a kid cutting in line or not sharing a crayon. I'm not a big fan and most of the teachers aren't either. And the dude putting on the assembly (who is a textbook case for a Napoleon-complex) pretty much bullies teachers into volunteering by getting all the kids to yell and pressure them into doing it. One older para apparently ended up with a giant bruise on her elbow from several attempts to break a board and I was talking to the second grade teacher afterward and she said it hurt enough that she probably would have cried if she wasn't up in front of the whole school. It's a great message for the kids.

After school I texted the new volunteer kid to see if we were hanging out but he had a football scrimmage so that was a no. I asked if there was a better day of the week for visits but I guess the football schedule is still kind of up in the air so who knows. Fingers crossed for a visit next week because we're going on two weeks without one. Not that it really matters because there really isn't a case anymore so his need for an advocate in the courtroom really isn't there anymore. And I do hope that the need does not arise again and that the kid can age out of the system without incident.

I got the other pictures I ordered in the mail today. And I managed to find a frame online for the one I want to give my dad. It is four inches bigger on all sides, meaning a two inch mat instead of the one inch that I wanted, but it was way cheaper than having a frame custom made. At least based on online custom frame prices. I got the frame on Amazon but it wasn't eligible for Prime 2-day shipping so it won't make it here by my dad's birthday on Sunday, but it isn't out of the norm for him to take months to get presents or birthday cards to me on my birthday so I don't feel too bad. I'll just get him a birthday card for the day of, if I'm actually going to see him. I have no idea what his plans are.

Tonight I played more Saints Row 4 and watched YouTube videos. Real productive stuff. My goal is to get to bed as close to ten o'clock as possible so maybe I will be more willing to wake up and exercise in the morning. I full exercise, not just the half-assed stuff I have been doing. I know that if I can't get in the habit now when my room isn't freezing in the morning, I'm going to be a lost cause when winter comes. Although that doesn't see like it will be any time soon considering it was humid and over one hundred degrees today and it is supposed to be worse tomorrow. Anyway, I'm going to bed.

August 28, 2013

My days are kind of running together. This morning I had a few classes in the lab (and helped some kids with formatting) and I had my second grade reading groups. That went better than the first time I think. My first group worked on a worksheet and then played a memory game. And then my second just did silent reading. Which was good until one particular kid came back from whatever he was doing outside the classroom. He's a bit of a handful. He immediately tried to kick another kid out of his desk but I told him that kid was their first (even if it was his desk) and he needed to bring a chair over from another desk. He got a chair about halfway back to the group when one of the other kids got up to get another book. So the Handful dropped the chair and sat down in the recently vacated one. And I told him to get up and go get the chair he had started bringing over. And he didn't move. Until another kid got up to get a book and then the Handful moved to that open chair. Again, I told him to get up and he eventually did, bringing the original chair all the way over. But he brought it right up to his desk, and slowly moved closer until he was right up against the kid, annoying the kid until he moved backward away from the desk. The Handful happily pulled up to the desk, for a second or two, before telling the kid that was at his desk that they needed to switch chairs because he wanted his back. And after all of that it took him another five minutes or so to settle on a book that he was actually going to read.

Before I left one of the paras came up and asked me how I did and what I would rate him out of a four point scale. I would expect at least a five-point scale but maybe they didn't want to end up with middle of the road scores. Anyway, I was generous and gave him a two. Now that I am working in the lunchroom the teacher asked me to keep an eye on him during lunch and give him a score. Fun times.

And speaking of lunch, I was in the lunchroom again. I started my time by wrapping forks in napkins because kids apparently have a habit of grabbing one but not the other. Then I walked around with a rag to wipe down tables and helped the little kids open things when they needed it. I also learned that the first graders' favorite game is to ask you to open a milk carton that is already open. Even when I am the one who originally opened the milk carton. There is also a first grader who keeps asking me if I'm a hobo. I in no way resemble a hobo, other than the fact that I'm a human being and hobos are human beings. Most of the time.

This afternoon I had some more classes in the lab, worked on my student directory, and tried to help the librarian figure out the trouble ticket thing, unsuccessfully. Well, I successfully tried but we couldn't figure out what was going on. I'm just glad my ticket about the student drive went through yesterday because it was fixed today.

After work I went and picked up Chipotle and Jimmy John's on the way home so I wouldn't have to come back across town. Once again I went with a Jimmy John's sandwich for tonight and I'm saving the burrito for tomorrow and Friday.

My new keyboard arrived today and it is pretty cool looking. It looks just like my old one but it has green backlighting (around the keys and the letters and number on the keys. I also think it might be slightly quieter than my old one but that might be in my head or maybe the old one got louder the more I used it. I don't know. But I am liking it so far and it looks super sweet in the dark. And now I can take my old one to work which will make all the typing I do much easier.

Tonight I played a little more Saints Row 4, watched some YouTube videos, and I also watched a few episodes of Duck Dynasty. And now I am going to go to bed.

August 27, 2013

Today was a fairly uneventful day. I made more progress on my student directory. It is going a lot easier than last year thanks to the template but I'm still having to figure certain things out and re-learn other things. It's a good time waster.

I worked in the lunchroom again but there were a couple parent volunteers so instead of serving food I carried a rag around to wash tables off and help kids open food and milk. It is surprising how many little kids are sent to school with a bunch of things they have no ability to open. As for the cleaning off of the tables, it wasn't too bad but it still kind of grossed me out. But it is still nice getting out of the lab every now and then.

On the network there is a student drive where teachers have folders and students can access those folders from any computer. This is used most often by the older grades when they come to the lab and write papers. They can all save into their teacher's folder and then their teacher can access all of their papers from their computer back in their room. It's handy. But at the moment students can't save to the student drive. They can open stuff off of the drive but can't save to it. And that pretty much defeats the purpose of the drive. Who didn't think or forgot to give students the necessary permission to save to the student drive, dropped the ball.

After school I took a nap. It was a glorious nap. I may have screwed myself over in terms of going to bed tonight but I do still kind of feel tired and I'm yawning so I've got high hopes that I'll be able to fall asleep.

Tonight I played more Saints Row 4 and watched YouTube videos. In Saints Row 4 I customized a few cars, completed a bunch of side missions, and made a little progress in the main storyline. I also have a new second favorite gun. The dubstep gun is still, and will always be, my favorite gun, but my second favorite gun is the bounce rifle. After it is fully upgraded. I dismissed it when I first got it but now that I have it fully upgraded it is pretty useful.

Now I am going to give sleep a shot.

August 26, 2013

Today at work flew by. Minus an hour or two in the afternoon. As I walked into the school this morning the principal was there and she asked if I could help serve food at lunch. The lab schedule isn't really set yet but I was fairly certain I had the time to do that so I agreed. Then a little while later one of the second grade teachers asked me if I could help out with reading centers like I did last year. That was supposed to end right before lunch so I agreed to that as well. And the music teacher wanted me to look at her projector so I started my day with that.

The projector is mounted on the ceiling and there is a pull-down screen a few feet from the whiteboard. But she doesn't want to use the screen, she wants to just project onto the whiteboard. The projector was set up to project onto the screen though, so it is way too big on whiteboard, even after turning the knob to make the screen smaller. My kinda-fix was to go into the settings and make a custom size where I shrunk the screen even more and then adjusted the vertical position to move it onto the whiteboard. It would fit perfectly on the whiteboard but there is a paper boarder around it. I was pretty happy it worked out though.

The reading groups in second grade this year are different. At least for now. The groups are in the room and then rotate every fifteen minutes or so. It is the beginning of the year so they are all pretty much like first graders, and I had one group that was ridiculous and annoying, but the other group was pretty good. In that second group was a girl with Downs Syndrome and I made her laugh so that pretty much made my day. She was eating the eraser off the end of her pencil and I told her to stop but she kept trying to sneak it back up to her mouth. And every time she did I would push the pencil away. And then I was doing it just because until she finally said “I'm not eating it” and started laughing.

Reading groups ran a little long so I missed the first group at lunch but I was there for the rest of it. I served peaches to a bunch of kids and steamed vegetables to far less. Not surprising there. The best moment was a fifth grader talking to one of her classmates. She put her tray down as they were waiting to put in their lunch numbers and said “Are they trying to feed us? Because it doesn't look like it.” It was pretty funny.

After lunch I had two classes back to back in the lab so I didn't actually get to eat lunch until after 1:30PM, which is about two hours later than I usually eat lunch. But I survived. And the rest of the afternoon was sloooow. For the last hour I put more work into my student directory. After hitting a wall in my attempt to make a printer the default printer for all users on a computer. I came across a couple different options, one of which didn't work because I didn't have administrator access, and the other one involved writing a script and I doubt I had the access to enable that either. So I'm putting that mission on the back burner for the time being. It really isn't that hard to pick a printer when you need to print and it's generally only fourth grade and up that ever print.

In terms of successes, after the projector in the morning, I fixed a printing issue for one of the SPED teachers. Every time she tried to print a PDF it would ask her to save and it wouldn't print. And if she went to wherever the PDF supposedly saved, it wouldn't be there. I had a complete bit of luck and decided to click on the advanced printer options and one of the options in there was to print to file, so I unchecked that and it started to work. I'm a genius. I also added a printer to one of the fourth grade teacher's computer. It somehow never got added to the list of printers (like the SPED printer I added onto the SPED teacher's computers). So it has really come in handy that I spent all those hours figuring out how to add printers using Print Management and IP addresses.

After work I used my stepper for awhile, did not a lot, ate some dinner, and then played Saints Row 4. Such a fun game. I several cool vehicles to my garage that don't appear in normal traffic. I've only seen them show up at flashpoints. One of them is the 4-wheeler which I spent some time looking for but the area where it was parked in the last game is destroyed in this game. I'm going to check out my new cars tomorrow and hope that I can customize them.

I hope that tomorrow is a little less hectic than this morning was. Even though it made the day go by faster. I just want to settle into a normal routine so I know that I have stuff to do all day and don't get stuck with hours of downtime. I'll get there eventually.

August 25, 2013

This morning I played a little Black Ops 2 because it was a double XP weekend, which meant 24/7 Nuketown 2025. So I played a lot of that and was annoyed almost the entire time. The lag was ridiculous. I think I had maybe one game where it wasn't just completely ridiculous. There was one game where I stood right next to a dude, shot him three times with my shotgun, and then he turned and shot me in the face. And most of my killcams didn't show my first couple of shots on guys before they killed me. It was all pretty frustrating. But I kept playing because my goal was to get gold camo on whatever shotgun I was using. I needed two Bloodthirsty medals (five kills without dying) but only managed to get one of them. I got three and four kills a bunch of times but couldn't manage five more than once. Oh well.

This afternoon and in the evening I played more Saints Row 4. I spent a lot of time buying different clothes because I only had a couple items in my wardrobe and wanted to change things up. I also went around a did a bunch of side missions to work on my 100% completion goal. I still have a long way to go but I did manage to finish hacking all thirty-four stores.

Tonight we had a family dinner and my sister and I went to pick up Sonic. I ate way too much food. I need to get better at not eating way too much food. It took me forever but I finally got there with Chipotle, only eating half of the burrito at a time. I need to get there with everywhere else I eat. Not only for my health, because the food is already bad for me in normal portions, but also because I don't like feeling like crap after dinner.

Last night I slept really well. And in the morning when I woke up after only seven hours of sleep, I went back to sleep for another two hours because I didn't have any plans today and I wanted to sleep. Hopefully I will get a decent seven hours tonight and find the motivation to get out of bed and exercise in the morning. My hand and back are feeling better so I might be able to start pushups and situps again. That would be nice.

August 24, 2013

Today was fairly uneventful. I was awakened earlier than I would have liked by dogs barking. But that has become fairly typical. At least a few hours of my day were spent playing Saints Row 4. It is still fun as hell. At the moment my goal is to get 100% completion. I got close with the first game but ended up starting another character instead so I could see what happened in the story when two choices were presented. Several of the main missions had you choosing between two different things, like saving one person or many people, or blowing up a building or not blowing up the building. Bunt then I got distracted by something else before I got very far into my second character. This game doesn't appear to have the same sort of choices (although it starts with you have to choose whether you want to cure cancer or end hunger, and the game pokes fun at so many different movies and video games, that might just be them poking fun at the last game). So there is less incentive to play through again, at least in terms of the main story, so I'm not going to kid myself into thinking I will start another character. But 100% completion is a thing that could happen.

I went to Hobby Lobby today to check out frames and found that finding a frame for my 6"x24" panorama is going to be an issue. If I want to get it at Hobby Lobby that is. I still need to look online and I've got my fingers crossed for that. If I can't find anything I'll have to have a custom frame made. It would be cool if that was a thing I didn't have to do. Although I might as well get used to it because my sister's cross stitch is more than likely going to need a custom frame.

On the way to Hobby Lobby I drove through campus because that is generally my preferred method of going across town. It is easier during the summer because during the school year my timing tends to suck and I get stuck at a crosswalk as an entire class is letting out. I got kind of lucky today because it turned out to be move-in day for the dorms but I managed to only catch the tail-end of it.

Tonight at work I wasn't in the mood to work on my cross stitch or watch Generation Kill. Instead I finished reading American Sniper by Chris Kyle. It was an interesting book and I liked that it was obviously written by him. It was also depressing to read, especially when he was talking about his kids or his future after the NAVY, running his business and helping war veterans. It is still hard to believe that he survived four tours, getting shot twice, and then was killed by sick soldier who he was trying to help. Sometimes life just doesn't make any sense.

I also started reading Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of Nimh by Robert C. O'Brien. At the beginning of the year there was a bunch of random stuff in the workroom at school that teachers were getting rid of. Amongst all that stuff were several copies of Mrs. Frisby so I grabbed a paperback and a hardcover. I only vaguely remember parts of it but it was one of my favorite books as a kid. I have no idea where it ended up (somewhere in my dad's house probably) but I can remember the cover and that I got it at a small bookstore in Clay Center. I think at the same time I got Tomorrow And Tomorrow by Charles Sheffield, another one of my favorite books from childhood. As I get into the book, more and more of it is coming back to me and I am enjoying it. And not just because of the nostalgia.

August 23, 2013

I woke up even earlier this morning, still after my alarm but I'm getting better. And I used my stepper a little bit longer. I am still at the point where my legs get tired before my lungs. But my legs are getting stronger and hopefully soon I will be able to put more work into my lungs.

Today my favorite substitute was once again working. And once again, I parked right behind her. She hadn't spilled her coffee on herself today but she did have way too many bags and needed help carrying them. We were parked on the corner of the block next to the school and she had carried several things across the street to the corner of the school but had left them there and gone back to her car after a parent said they didn't have time to help her carry them the rest of the way in. Nice. I helped her with her remaining bags and when we made it to her first load there was a helpful parent that helped us the rest of the way to the school.

I helped one of the third grade classes hopefully set up their laptops so they will only have to log into them, not log into them and then log onto the internet. The internet thing should happen automatically now. This will also come in handy if those laptops are used for MAP testing because there were instances last year where the login pop-up would repeatedly pop-up while kids were taking the test. I could have solved that problem but I didn't hear about it until after the fact.

I had a major brain fart today when it came to first graders logging into computers. I forgot that their usernames are just their lunch number so when I had them all trying to type in their names like the older grades, I shouldn't have been surprised that no one could log in. It didn't help that they had a grandma-aged substitute and a para who had never been in the lab before. I eventually got everyone logged in, going around and typing it all in myself because it would be faster than trying to explain they needed to type in their lunch numbers, after I had confused the hell out of them by telling them to type in their names. Most of them don't even know their lunch numbers.

One of the sixth grade classes came in to type papers and I learned how to make a heading show up on the first page only. I am fairly certain I never knew how to do that. I always just worked around it. And it isn't very intuitive. I'll probably forget about it before I have to do it again. Another student ran into a problem where her keyboard started showing different letters from what she was inputting. It was like she had inadvertently switched the layout of her keyboard, even though students don't have the right privileges to do that. It was strange. I ended up getting around it by saving her paper to a shared drive and logging her in as me because the keyboard was working just fine when I logged in. When I checked back later to save her paper on her own drive, the keyboard was working fine. So I have no idea.

My afternoon was boring as hell. I nearly fell asleep. Off and on I worked on my student directory, finally finished inputting phone numbers and addresses, and made some design changes to the layout of the main form. I'm waiting to see if I am going to get my own login for Infinite Campus so I can get guardian contact information for the phone list or if I need to borrow the login information of the secretary like I did last year.

After work I really wanted to play more of Saints Row 4 but by the time I got home and settled in I didn't really have the time. So instead I watched some YouTube videos and then ate some dinner and got ready for work at the theater. At work I made a little progress on my cross stitch and nearly finished Chris Kyle's book. I also watched The World's End and it was pretty great. Lots of talking and big jokes and subtle jokes and some badass fights. I would watch it again. Maybe not tomorrow because I want to work on my cross stitch but I will probably be renting it.

August 22, 2013

I exercised a bit this morning. A very tiny bit, only about six or seven minutes on my stepper thing, but that is way better than nothing.

When I pulled up to park at work I was right behind my favorite substitute teacher. She was messing around with stuff in her backseat and when I got out I got her attention and she turned to show me that she had just spilled her coffee all over the front of her white shirt. She was trying to juggle two drinks and a big box of donuts. I took the drinks off her hands and we walked to the building, catching up as we went. After clocking in I cleaned her drinks off and then followed her down to the lounge to drop off the donuts. I traded her the drinks for a glazed donut and it was pretty great. I have been craving a glazed donut for months, no joke, and that craving was entirely sated with that donut. Food can be so much better when it becomes a novelty.

During work I found a student directory template for Access so I am going to adapt that to my needs. That will save me a lot of grieve trying to figure things out in Access 2010, after spending so much time last year figuring out Access 97. I already got pictures working, so they show each student as I switch to their information. That took me so long last year, and it involved a lot of coding. But I will still be putting a lot of work into this new directory, even with the template, and it is all kind of pointless. I think I was the only person who used my directory last year. And the only real benefit for other people was the phone directory I made using a report from the database. That will probably be the only benefit once again. But it is kind of fun messing around with it and it gives me something to do with all my free time.

The drumming has started in the music room, which is next to the computer lab. So my usual BBC news was enhanced with a constant drumbeat. An incessant drumbeat. Last year it seemed to go on for weeks and I am hoping that won't be the case this year. At least it isn't during testing.

By far the worst class in the lab in terms of logging in for the first time was the second grade class today. They were all shouting and poking at me and pulling at me. I felt very popular but that is not the kind of popularity anyone desires. It was a madhouse. Many of them didn't know how to spell their last names and a lot more of them didn't know their lunch numbers. With the help of the sub and the para, everyone eventually got logged in, even if it did take them twenty minutes. I think the main problem was trying to help kids individually. I gave the instructions to the whole group but that didn't go over well. In the future I think it would be better to go one tiny step at a time and not move on until everyone had gotten that far. I would like to do it over again and I will probably get the chance next Tuesday when they come back to the lab.

On my way home I stopped and got gas in anticipation of my trip to see the new volunteer kid. After dinner I found out that wasn't happening because the kid was at football practice. So that's a thing now. After tonight the practices should be shorter so our visits can probably stay on Thursday nights but time will tell.

My panorama that I had printed arrived today and it came out looking pretty good. It is 6”x24” and it is hard to believe it was taken with my phone. On Saturday I think I'll stop by Hobby Lobby and see if I can find a frame for it. I would prefer not to have one made but I don't know how common that size is. I was thinking of getting a mat for it so maybe that will help. Or hurt. I don't know.

I also activated my XM radio when I got home. It makes sense that the radio has to be on when the activation signal is sent but I didn't think about that until this afternoon, after getting in my car this morning and the radio not working even though I thought I activated it last night. So I sat in my car, turned it on, used my phone to send the activation signal again, and waited. Then I programmed in a bunch of stations. At work I printed out a station list and marked the ones that sounded interesting. I ended up picking more than the eighteen slots available on my stereo but some of them were close together so I can just scroll to those.

With all of my free time tonight I played more Saints Row 4. I figured out what my deal was last night and was able to continue playing. I made a lot of progress too. Not only did I progress the storyline, I finished the side quest for the dubstep gun (which is easily my new favorite weapon in the game), and I collected a whole bunch of the shimmering blue things needed to upgrade my superpowers. Progress.

I also ordered a new keyboard today. I have wanted the new Razer Blackwidow for awhile now because this year's model has backlit green keys. I also do a lot of typing at work and my current mechanical keyboard is a lot easier to type on than the regular cheap keyboard I use at work. So I am using that as an excuse to take my old keyboard to work and replace it with the new green light one. If only I could get the school district to pay for it. Payment enough will be the relief my wrists and fingers and forearms get from not having to push so hard on the keyboard. It will be really nice when MAP testing starts and I'm having to type in hundreds of scores. Which will be thousands and thousands of numbers before it's all over with.

And now I am going to go to bed. It is almost eleven o'clock and I am going to try and get another decent night of rest. Even if it isn't eight hours. And maybe I'll be awake enough to exercise a bit more. Still no pushups or situps with my hurt back and hand, but I'd be satisfied with my stepper.

August 21, 2013

Today at work I did stuff but not a lot of stuff. Most of my time on my computer was spent messing with Access. The goal being to completely redesign my student directory from last year, mainly because last year I had Access 97 and this year I have Access 2010, which is way better but also way more confusing. I'll get it figured out by the end of the year. Or I'll give up and move onto other things. But I'd like to figure it out. My next step is figuring out how to edit code in 2010. It was way more straight forward in 97 but I'm sure it is just as easy in 2010.

I also spent some time finding giant pictures of keyboard keys that I could print out. I wanted to put up the simple way of logging of a computer because some kids have poor mouse control. So I found a Windows key, a Right Arrow Key (That I put my own arrow on because the provided arrow looked weird), and an Enter key. Then I printed them out, cut them so they were the same height, and taped them to the wall. It kind of looks like crap, and most of the kids probably won't ever use that technique, but I had a lot of free time and I was tired of looking at Access forms.

Tonight was Chipotle night but I changed things up. I did go to Chipotle because my sister wanted tacos, and I got a burrito because I was there and the rice looked really good, but I got the burrito for tomorrow. For dinner I got a sandwich at Jimmy John's along with the sandwich I got my mom. The burrito won't be as good tomorrow, but it keeps and reheats better than a Jimmy John's sandwich with a bunch of lettuce and avocado. At least I am pretty sure that is the case. I could be thinking of a Chipotle burrito with lettuce, which does not work out the next day. Either way, I could have just gotten one tonight and picked up the other one tomorrow, but I decided to do it this way and I am going to live with that decision. All that being said, the sandwich was good. It has been awhile since I've had one. I didn't feel all weighed down after it like I do after half a Chipotle burrito.

Tonight I played Saints Row 4 for awhile. And had a lot of fun for the most part. I am getting better at running and jumping in a superhero kind of way and I am slowly progressing through the story. But I spend a lot of time just getting distracted by all the little objectives throughout the world. The things that I did not enjoy tonight were the two times the game kind of half froze, where I could move the mouse around (and in one instance rotated the car I was customizing) but couldn't click on any of the buttons to get out of the screen. And what ended my gameplay for the night was either a glitch or some gameplay mechanic that I am completely missing. I am on the ship and trying to start the mission where I get the dubstep gun but when I try to go back to the simulation the city map comes up and I can move around it with the mouse and hover over stuff, but I can't go back into the simulation. If I click on the back button I go back to the ship. And if I click on 'return to the game', I go back to the ship. I have run all over the ship but the checkpoint markers is right in front of the simulation thing and I'm almost certain the mission takes place back in the city. At that point I had gotten tired of alt-tabbing out of the game to close it and restart it so I just called it a night and quit. Hopefully when it reloads next time everything will be fine and dandy.

My other accomplishment for the night was starting my XM radio back up. When I bought my car I had a three-month trial and I listened to it almost exclusively in that time, getting my free fill. I didn't renew it because I was kind of tired of it after that three-month period, and I wasn't going to pay $15 a month for it when I don't really spend all that much time in my car. Since the trial ran out I have been getting offers in the mail to get me to come back. And after my trip to Colorado where we listened to a lot of XM, I decided to take them up on the latest offer of six months for only $25. And I put a reminder on my phone to cancel it before it automatically renews.

Now it is only a little bit after ten o'clock and I am going to attempt to go to bed. I have not been getting enough sleep lately and it is incredibly hard getting out of bed in the morning. Fingers crossed tomorrow morning will be different. And that maybe I will exercise when I wake up. Even just a little bit. I would be happy with anything. My hand and back still hurt from yesterday so I would probably just use my stepper thing. But I'm totally cool with that. Anything thing is better than nothing.

August 20, 2013

Today there was a distinct lack of printers in my life. I was okay with it. I didn't have a lot going on today so I started to remake the student directory I made last year. I don't think anyone actually looked at it last year after I made it. And I only used it to create the reports that made the student directory. So I don't really see the point of the whole thing other than giving me something to do. It was more than a bitch last year putting it all together and having to relearn a bit of Visual Basic in order to do it. I was also using Access 97 so hopefully things will be easier with Access 2010. Although I will probably spend half my time looking for stuff that I knew about in 97 but can't find in 2010.

I also did some googling to figure out how to change the 'Shut Down' button in the Start Menu to 'Log Off', for all users on a computer. This was inspired after almost all of the the third graders shut down their computers instead of logging off of their computers. Like everything else I have done to the computers, it took at least 500 steps to switch the button for every user on the computer. When all it takes is one right-click and a drop-down menu to switch it for individual users. But I got it done. I think. Hopefully it takes.

While working on that I discovered that all of my desktop shortcuts had disappeared from all but one of the computers. What the crap? One possible explanation is that the computers thought they were broken links and deleted them. And one possible solution to this is to put the links in a folder on the desktop. So as I went around switching the 'Shut Down' button, I added a folder to each desktop with all my shortcuts. Fingers crossed they stick this time.

Near the end of the day we had an assembly and I got screwed after it. Last year I helped put the chairs away after assemblies with my para friend, and by the end of the year, a lot of helpful kids. This year, my para friend is one of the new fifth grade teachers, so she has that to do. After the assembly, everyone left and the custodians never showed up, even though it is the custodians job to put out and pick up the chairs. The principal asked me last year to help, and I did, but the custodians slowly stopped showing up in time to pick chairs up. And today there was no sign of them. So I picked up all the chairs, while the gym teacher and a PTO parent stood around talking to the guy who put on the assembly. It pretty much sucked, and it hurt my wrists and forearms after all the typing I have done recently. We'll see how it goes with the next assembly or two but if I continue to be left to do it myself I will probably just walk out with everyone else.

On my way home I stopped at Target to get bread and peanut butter. Then I came home and played Saints Row 4. Prior to the release of the game they released a character creator so in theory, you could spend a bunch of time creating your character and then upload it to the game when it was released. That way you could just right into playing because the character creation process usually takes awhile. And I spent a lot of time making my character but when it came time to load it into the game today, there was nothing. So I had to remake my character, and it looks somewhat similar to my original one but I spent a lot less time on it because I wanted to get into the game.

Despite all that, the game is a lot of fun. It is basically the same game with a new story and superpowers. And it's cool. In order to upgrade the superpowers you need to go around and collect these shimmering blue things that are all over the city. I like collecting things so I have already collected over 350 of them. I haven't gone too far in the story yet so I only have two superpowers unlocked and an over abundance of those shimmering blue things that I can't spend yet. But I'll be ready. With the superpowers I have started using the cars less and less, but every time I see a cool car I stop and get it. In this one in order to save a car all you have to do is get in it and hit 'N', then it becomes available whenever you want it. That is really convenient, and I imagine they did that because most people probably aren't going to put too much effort into the vehicles in the game. But I can see myself losing myself in customizing all my vehicles when I have more money.

And now it is late again because for the life of me I can't get back on a decent sleep schedule. Tomorrow is going to come too soon.

August 19, 2013

Today's theme was printers. I was the printer whisperer. I got an email this morning from one of the SPED teachers asking me about a USB cable for their printer because they were having to share the cord they had whenever they needed to print. I talked to the librarian and got a cable but when I went up to the SPED room I saw that they were actually sharing one printer. In my mind they had two printers and only one USB cable, not two computer and only one printer. So the cable I got was useless. I tried setting up the wireless but that always seems way too complicated. The printer would connect to the guest wireless network but the computers were connected to the main network and that seemed to be a problem. At this point I had to go back to the lab for my first class but I was determined to figure out the SPED printer.

One of the sixth grade classes came down because they are currently having laptop issues and the teacher wanted them to using SpellingCity. Earlier in the morning I went around and tried various student logins on all the computers just to make sure they were actually work, since they weren't last week. Thankfully they were. The teacher wanted her kids to print their test after they finished and this brought to light two more printer problems.

The first was with the position of one of the printers in the lab. Over the summer it had been moved over to make room for a new iPad cart. This move put the printer right in the path of one of the air conditioning vents. The paper comes out of the printer, back-to-front, so as it comes out the paper was getting blown back by the vent, and several times out of ten the paper would get blown out of the printer and it would fall down between the wall and the thing the printer is on. And more often than not, the paper would fall into a little slot thing on the back of the thing that the printer is on. I'm not painting the best picture here but whatever. The sixth grade teacher lost a few spelling tests back there and to get them out of the slot she had to get a yardstick and I put some tape on the end. After her class left I switched position of the printer thing and the iPad cart, problem solved.

The other problem was that one of the computers in the lab didn't have the lab printers on it. And that turned out to be a pain in the butt. I tried adding the printer when the kid was logged in but the permission level was sufficient, so I logged in as myself and added the printers, and then had the kid log back in. But he still couldn't print because the printers weren't there. I am learning a lot about multi-user computers this year. A good chunk of my day was spent figuring out how to install printers for all the users on a computer. Most of the solutions I found involved writing scripts and stuff on a higher level than I have access to. What eventually worked was getting the IP address for the printers and adding them through Printer Management. And that sounds really simple but Print Management is buried and getting the IP addresses for the printers was a pain. But I figured it all out and now that computer can print.

And going back to the SPED printer, I fixed that by plugging it into the network, typing the printer IP address into the SPED teacher's laptops as a local printer, and now they are able to print just by being connected to the network, no USB cables.

I think that was everything involving printers today.

The other major thing was kids having to log into the computer for the first time. That was interesting. The sixth graders got in pretty easily. The fourth grade teacher had her kids log in and out three times which I think was a pretty good strategy. Most of the third graders took awhile. And the first graders took forever. Capital letters are tricky, having kids hold down the Shift key and hit the letter they need at the same time takes a bit. And the first hurdle, before the username or password, is having to hit 'ctrl' 'alt' 'del' to get to the login screen. At the end of the day I was able to find a simple picture of a keyboard online and used Gimp to add red circles over the 'ctrl', 'alt', and 'del' keys. I wanted it to be big so I could put it on the wall but the biggest piece of paper we had was 10x18 construction paper. Which worked out I guess because the keyboard picture was just over seventeen inches long. So I cut the construction paper so it would fit in a printer, and then took forever to figure out how to get the printer to recognize an 8.5x18 piece of paper. I added it in somewhere but it still wasn't showing up as an option so I ended up opening up a Word document, making the page size 8.5x18 in the page layout, inserting the keyboard picture, and then making a custom page size when I printed (which was an option in Word but not in the printer dialog box itself so I couldn't do it through Gimp). So I guess that was another printer thing.

After work I was tired as hell because I stayed up until about 12:30AM last night watching a Saints Row 4 livestream with Sark and APL, and waiting for my laundry to dry. If it hadn't been jeans in the dryer I would have just let it go and set overnight but leaving jeans in the dryer overnight usually just leaves a wrinkled mess. I really wanted to take a nap but also wanted to be able to fall asleep tonight, so I didn't take one. But then I did around 7:00PM or so, which is worse than taking one at 4:30PM, I think. But I'm tired now so I guess it worked out. Unless I go to lay down in bed and can't fall asleep. I can see that happening. Anyway.

I spent my night watching a few episodes of Duck Dynasty and more of the Saints Row 4 livestream. I am looking forward to playing that game tomorrow. It really does look exactly like the last game but there are enough changes to make it look fun.

And now I am going to try and go to bed. And maybe wake up at 6:00AM instead of 7:00AM so I can exercise. I want to exercise. Not quite as much as I want sleep but I'm working on it.

August 18, 2013

I didn't have a lot going on today. It was a typical Sunday. I thought about hanging my Red Rocks poster but didn't go any further than that. I played some video games, starting with Burnout: Paradise. I was a big fan of the original Burnout games back in the day because it was incredibly satisfying to ram into cars and make them crash or get points for having near misses or try to cause the most damage in a massive wreck. Burnout: Paradise is a different game. They made it an open world game so you drive around the city and each intersection is a potential event, like a race or whatever, and you spin your wheels at the intersection if you want to partake. It's not as fun as the old games, I have to say, but I can see it maybe growing on me. I'll need to get over the horrible camera and mini-map first, though. The camera is sluggish, messes up when you get in wrecks or go in reverse, and there are only two positions. The mini-map shows a small section of the city at a time and the player is represented by a triangle. But the map doesn't orient to the player, so when you are driving south, the triangle is pointed down, and if you see something to the right of you on the map you have to turn left. I guess it is probably a good exercise for spatial awareness but it is still awful.

I jumped into a few rounds of Black Ops 2 for the first time in months. I still kind of have it. And by have it I mean I can almost go even with my K/D. My sensitivity felt way too high from what I remember and my aim was awful, but for the most part I held my own, and I got to play on Nuketown a couple times.

I also played a little bit of Cube World. Just enough to level up once and see that the game is as I remember it. It is a good waste of time, just running around and looking at the randomly generated landscape. Now they just need to put out some major updates to make the game interesting again.

Tonight I played Trials: Evolution and beat the final Extreme track. I beat it a long time ago on the Xbox but the Extreme tracks, and some of the Hard ones, are pretty much all luck when I'm playing. I think I was somewhere over 300 faults and over 20 minutes by the time I beat the Extreme track tonight. And if I had tried again immediately after, I probably would have been close to the same, if I was even able to make it past all the obstacles. But I like the game.

On Tuesday Saints Row 4 comes out and I am pretty excited about that. I played the hell out of the last game and this one looks pretty much the same, just a little more over the top, and I am cool with that. And hopefully my opinion remains the same when I actually play the game. My main concern at the moment involves the vehicles. In the last game one of my favorite things was going around and collecting practically every vehicle in the game and customizing it. In the new game the main character has super powers so you can run really fast and kind of fly. The few early reviews I have seen on YouTube mention how they rarely use the vehicles because it is just easier to run around and climb buildings and fly. So I am hoping that there are still a lot of different vehicles in the game and that the customization options are still there. And that I will still be interested in doing all that even with the super powers.

I edited one of my panoramas from Colorado, adjusting the colors a bit and resizing it so the ppi was print quality high and the size was six inches high. I wanted that height because I found a website that does panoramic prints and their smallest option was six inches high. That height gave me a pretty high ppi and kept the picture width at two feet. That seems like a pretty manageable size. If the print comes out well I think I am going to have it framed and give it to my dad for his birthday. And maybe order another print for myself.

Tonight we had a family dinner. My sister and I went down to the barbecue place and then Freddy's for my veggie burgers, and brought it all home. I think the guy at Freddy's dropped the 's' so he could rhyme when he said “Welcome to Freddy, order when you're ready.” I could have also misheard him but I don't think I did. As for the food, they didn't put cheese on my burgers which was great because they usually ignore my request for no cheese. And I ended up eating way too much food, like I always do. I am just glad I exercised today so I don't feel quite as guilty. And the extra food will be motivation enough for me to actually exercise tomorrow morning. Doubtful, considering I am up relatively late for a school night, but there is always a chance.

The school starts the year with color themes each day and everyone is supposed to wear those colors. It is a kindergarten thing, maybe to help them learn those colors, but the whole school participates. Tomorrow is blue and I can nail that one with everything blue except for my under shirt and socks, if I decide to wear my blue shoes, but I think Tuesday or Wednesday is orange. That one isn't going to happen.

August 17, 2013

I had a proper workout today and it kicked my butt. And it felt great. I am hoping that it will be a start of daily exercise. I feel better when I can exercise on a consistent basis but I have trouble keeping it up over time. Here's to another beginning. Until Monday probably when I won't want to get out of bed in time to exercise before work.

I also want to start switching out my chip consumption with vegetables. At the moment I'm thinking carrot sticks and celery, possibly with hummus when I can get my sister to make it.

I went to Staples today to check out what they have in terms of folder organization. Last year I ended up with a stack of folders and papers and every time I needed something it seemed to be in the middle of that stack. I am hoping this year to get that organized a little better. They had a few different options but I want to consider my choices a little more before making a decision. I did get a couple more small notebooks to carry in my pocket for random notes.

From there I went next door to Hobby Lobby to see about a frame for the Red Rocks poster I bought. It is 12"x36" and I assumed that would be a standard frame size considering they made a poster that size, but I wasn't sure. And I guess it isn't because they didn't have a frame that size but they had several that were close at 11.75"x36". I figured that was close enough and as luck would have it, wall frames were 50% off. So I got a nice looking one, especially by Hobby Lobby standards, for under twenty bucks. When I got home I saw that there really was no wiggle room with that quarter of an inch so I had to cut it off the bottom of my poster. But it looks good in the frame so it was worth it. Now I just need to hang it. The best place would be over where I hung my TV but I need to figure out the stud situation because the frame is pretty heavy.

Tonight at work I read my book, worked on my cross stitch, and started watching Generation Kill again. I can't remember if I read the book or watched the series first but I like both. I think the series does a good job of not glorifying war and showing what it was really like for Marines invading Iraq. Of course, I have no basis for this assumption, but it seems at least fairly realistic.

August 16, 2013

Today at work, with the help of Google, I figured out how to put shortcut icons on the desktop so they can be seen by all the users on a computer. Yesterday I went from computer to computer, logging in, and putting the icons that I wanted on the desktop. And then I realized that I was just putting them on my desktop, since I was the one that logged into the computers. Last night I was looking into it and didn't get very far but I lucked out this morning and came across a forum post that solved the mystery.

The Public Desktop folder still exists in Windows 7 but it is hidden. All I had to do was unhide it, put in all the shortcuts I wanted to show up for all users, change the folder option to read-only so hopefully no one will be able to delete the icons from the desktop, and hide the folder again. Doing this on over twenty computers took quite awhile but I got it done. Now I just wish I could arrange them how I want them.

I took a couple breaks from that task to do some random work for one of the second grade teachers. I made some copies for her and then cut out a bunch of squares out of construction paper. They weren't perfect squares, which annoyed me, but whatever. Initially I was stuck with a pretty poor selection of colors because I am an idiot. The workroom is set up so there is a counter and cabinets along three walls. On the left side underneath the counter there are a bunch of slots with construction paper but there were about four colors to choose from because they needed to be light enough to see markers. I looked all over and couldn't find another stash of construction paper so I worked with what I had. And after cutting all the squares I needed I turned around to go and happened to glance to the opposite side of the room as the construction paper I had been using. In exactly the same, easily visible slots, was a bunch of construction paper, in all the colors of the rainbow. I had been using bigger pieces and directly across from that was the normal size paper. How in the hell did I miss something so blatantly obvious? To avoid looking like an idiot for only using three or four bland colors I grabbed several different colors from the newly discovered paper and added those to my stack of squares.

Awhile after that I took another break from the desktop icons work and went and taped nametags on the desks for the same second grade teacher. It was a little awkward because she was still teaching and I was walking around with loud as hell packing tape, taping down the nametags and trying not to distract the kids too much as I went along. I was mostly successful. Not so much with the tape, however, because I did a pretty awful job at that. It'll get the job done but it is far from pretty.

When I had finished the desktop icons and the side projects for the second grade teacher, I decided to get my MAP testing spreadsheets ready for whenever that starts again. I am using the same format as last year but I had to get rid of one teacher and add in the three new ones. Then I typed in all the names and lunch numbers for the kids in each class. I also created my cheat sheet the kindergarten names and numbers for when they come to the lab. It was a whole lot of typing, and there will probably be minor tweaks to the rosters before testing starts, but at least I got the bulk of it out of the way so I don't have to worry about it later. Student logins still weren't working today but they should be good to go by Monday, hopefully. I don't know if the format is going to change or not but I am thinking of typing out all the usernames and passwords for at least the younger grades so they can visualize it when they are typing it out.

After work I took a short nap before eating dinner and getting ready for the theater. I haven't been there in a couple weeks and I didn't miss it even a little. It sucks the life out of me and I don't like it. I need to just quit already. But I've said that for many years now. Longer than most people will ever work there. And it is hard to give up the free money when I usually end up doing the same things I do at home, but get paid for it. Tonight I spent my time reading and working on my cross stitch. I need to put more hours into my cross stitch away from the theater, now that I'm back to only working two days a week at the theater. But I'm on the last letter and there is a better than decent chance that I will be able to finish it by my sister's birthday.

When I got home I walked in right at the onset of one of Tanner's seizures. Alfie was acting like an ass and barking because I was coming in the door but then Tanner walked up all stiff, trying to head toward the stairs to the basement because the bottom of the stairs is on of his go-to spots during a seizure. Considering how stiff he was he definitely wouldn't have made it down without falling most of the way so I directed him away with one hand while dropping my bag and taking my backpack off with the other so I could settle down with him on the floor. At first it seemed like it was going to be pretty mild but it turned out just to be a slow burn and it picked up quite a bit. But he pulled through like a champ.

August 15, 2013

I need to get back into my morning exercise routine. But sleeping until 6:45AM is way better than getting up at 6:00AM. Maybe next week.

Today was the first full day of school and it was a pretty productive day for me. I added in the new teachers to Odyssey and then moved all the kids into the right classes and put in transfer requests for the new kids or created profiles for the ones coming from out of the district. That took awhile. Especially for the two Kindergarten classes because I had to type in all the information for each kid. And waiting for the transfers to go through was annoying. But I got it all done. Not that it really matters because the student logins are messed up at the moment and probably won't be fixed until this weekend. And the kids can't get on the computer anymore without logging in. I get it but that is still frustrating. Especially because I'm going to have to log in the kindergarteners before I log them into Odyssey, when they advance to using Odyssey. I know that teachers and staff can log into six different computer or devices and if kids get the same number I might just memorize a few kindergarten numbers and use them over and over.

Interspersed throughout the day I helped the librarian with random things like getting the student interns connected to the internet using guest accounts. I also took a couple pictures of kids with food allergies because the nurse wanted them. I don't know if they are for her records or if she wants to give them to the lunch lady so she knows who shouldn't be eating what. But that was pretty much my day.

I had the realization today that even though I went around and put desktop shortcuts on all the computers in the lab, that they might not show up on the desktop when kids log in as different users. Which kind of sucks. So tomorrow I am going to mess around with that and see what I can come up with. There is apparently a way put the icons on every desktop in XP using a public desktop folder but I guess that doesn't exist in Win7 Pro, so I don't know. It might come down to putting a folder on the shared drive with all the icons and either having the kids move it to their desktop the first time they log in, or go through and log in as each kid and arrange the icons myself. Hopefully it doesn't come to that.

Tonight I had the second half of my Chipotle burrito and it was pretty good but I am still thinking about switching to Jimmy John's for awhile. Just to bring the novelty back to Chipotle. After dinner I went and visited the new volunteer kid for about forty-five minutes. He was a little distracted because he was annoyed with his foster dad. His bedtime was ten o'clock and he went to bed but he got up at 10:30PM to get something to drink and that was when his foster dad came home, who saw the kid up and thought he hadn't gone to bed. So now his bedtime is 9:30PM. I would gladly accept a 9:30PM bedtime, but I'm not a teenager. A lot of teenagers don't know how to pick their battles. A bedtime is not a battle to get involved with. In fact most things aren't worth getting in a battle over. Enjoy being a teenager, suck up all the annoying things about your parents for a few years, and then go off and be an adult and do your own thing. Anyway, we went to Sonic as usual and they weren't serving food, only drinks and ice cream, because they had a grease fire right before we got there and it messed up the grill. We usually only get drinks so that wasn't a big deal. He got a raspberry cherry slush and I got an orange watermelon limeade. Both were awful. With his the slushy was mostly melted and there was way too much syrup, so it was basically just like drinking cold syrup. And mine was just gross. Orange is usually not a good flavor outside of juice, soda, certain candies, and the fruit itself. So I guess it is mainly just not a good flavor when it comes to Sonic drinks and Dairy Queen slushies. And watermelon usually isn't a great Sonic flavor either. And for some reason I decided to put both of them into the same drink. It was way too sweet and just not that palatable. The kid didn't drink much of his slush and I didn't make it anywhere close to halfway on my drink. Lesson learned.

When I got home I watched some YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, listened to some music, and wrote this. Not very productive. During my lunch break today I looked into the Library Science program at the University of Denver. I want to apply there. I was thinking about doing online graduate school because I could still work at the school, like several of the teachers who are getting graduate degrees, but if I could live in Colorado, I want to live in Colorado. And when you actually go to a university there is the chance of being a TA and getting tuition covered or better internship opportunities. Or if I joined the NAVY and went to whatever college that is they not only pay for it but pay you a monthly allowance basically, and you're guaranteed a job for at least the first four years after you graduate. I just need to take the leap and pull the trigger and all those other metaphors.

August 14, 2013

I keep forgetting to write about the time my friend met Jerry Rice, so here it is. My friend was in charge of throwing his brother's bachelor party and they ended up at a club getting bottle service, which had them in a roped off area, with a waitress refusing to let them refill their own glasses, and a personal bouncer. And then in the distance, across the club, my friend spotted Jerry Rice. So he started climbing over furniture and eventually made his way over to Jerry Rice, putting his hand on his shoulder, shaking his hand, and talking to him like they were old friends. He told Jerry about his brother's bachelor party and asked if he could come over and say hello. Jerry was up for it so they went back to the roped off area and when they got to the bouncer my friend told him “It's okay, you can let Jerry Rice in.” Hilarious. At this point in the night my friend's brother was pretty well wasted and couldn't really believe that Jerry Rice was standing in front of him but Jerry said “I came all the way over here, you better shake my hand” and he did. My friend said Jerry Rice had the most beautiful hands he has ever seen.

Now onto the first day of school. I was worried it would feel like I had never worked there because last year kind of seems like it never happened. It just went by really fast looking back on it. But as soon as I clocked in and started turning on the computers in the lab it felt like I had never left.

My main goal for the day was to get all the shortcut icons from last year back on the computer desktops. We don't have a generic lab log-in this year so I was having to use mine over and over again which is good I guess because I have the privileges required to add and delete things from the computers. As I logged onto each computer I changed the screen resolution so everything wasn't so big, deleted all the shortcut icons that will never be used, downloaded Chrome, pinned all three web browsers to the taskbar along with Word, added the shortcuts that were popular with teachers last year, downloaded Reading Counts, and arranged all the icons on the desktop so every computer looks the same, at least for now. The only thing missing from last year is Type To Learn, which I can't find anywhere. Last year I had to use the generic lab log-in to even get the program to work because student log-ins generally made the program freeze, which makes me wonder if it would even work this year given that we only have student log-ins now. But I'm going to keep looking into it and email the computer aide who helped me get started last year and see if she knows anything about it.

We had an assembly today and all the teachers and staff had to go up to the front and stand in a line and we passed a microphone along to introduce ourselves. I missed that last year because I started a few days after school started. I introduced myself as Mr. with my first name or Mr. with my last name because I get both, and said I work in the computer lab, and in every other room when something goes wrong. That got some chuckles but the best introduction by far was the para who we found out last year is the cousin of one of my old coworkers (the one I ran into at the bars a week ago). As soon as he got the microphone he took a step forward like he was going to launch into a big speech, and said “I've been waiting for this moment all summer and have been working on what I was going to say... My name is Mr. Greg.” And then he passed the microphone on to the next person. There was a split second where everyone was caught off guard because we were all expecting a big speech, and then everyone broke out laughing. It was pretty good.

From the assembly I went upstairs with one of the fourth grade teachers to look at her desktop computer. I have to say getting to the third floor was a piece of cake after all the stairs at Red Rocks. Her computer was replaced recently and it worked for a little bit but then nothing would come up on the monitor. Initially she thought it was a loose cable and when she tightened them it seemed to work. But today the light was on but nothing was coming up. I checked the cables and those appeared to be fine and the monitor was working because I could pull up the menu and it was displaying messages, but there wasn't any computer stuff showing. I thought maybe the computer had gone to sleep or something because it was awfully quiet but hitting the keyboard and mouse didn't do anything so I hit the power button on the tower and it shut off. I hit it again and stuff started spinning up and lights were flashing but it quickly settled down to the quiet hum of a fan or power supply, with no hard drive activity showing (the little light that flickers when the hard drive is being accessed) or the sound of a hard drive working. And when I hit the power button again the computer immediately shut off. So I am assuming it is a hard drive issue. I could be wrong but I told the teacher that was my best guess.

A resource teacher also had her computer tower replaced recently and now it freezes every couple of minutes. I haven't looked at that one yet but something seems to be up with these replacement towers. It took forever for them to come around and fix the computers that crapped out in the lab last year (and there are currently two out of order now) but that was when they weren't trying to upgrade every computer in the district, so who knows how long it will take them to get around to the two faulty towers of these teachers.

I worked with the librarian a little to help her figure out a couple of things she will be responsible for as Lead Tech this year but we didn't get very far because she still hasn't been given the rights of Lead Tech so she can't log into what she needs to log into. Kind of annoying considering the tech guy marked her down on his sheet as the new Lead Tech last week. I think it will be a rough first few weeks but I am kind of looking forward to what kind of twists and turns come my way. And I hope that I am able to fill out my daily schedule fairly quickly.

It was only a half day and I made it home around 12:45PM and had some lunch. Around 2:00PM my dad wanted me to meet him at my grandma's to talk about a possible project that would involve the use of my router. But the project ended up not being a thing. The housing board or whatever they are called was having an issue that the block of wood with my grandma's address on it, is posted on the side of her garage, not on the brick wall to the right or left of the garage like every other house in the neighborhood. Upon measuring that brick wall it was discovered that it was around three inches shorter than the wood block, which explains why whoever installed it in the first place put it around the corner on the side of the garage. It would look dumb on the brick wall as it is and if you used a smaller block we would need to use smaller numbers, which would really look out of place. And to be completely honest, in however many years my grandma has lived there, I had never noticed that her address block was in a different place than everyone else's. It makes sense where it is because that side of the garage faces the street so the address is easily visible where it is. The only people that would really notice it are the people on the housing board. My grandma's mailbox, along with her neighbor's, are also apparently not regulation, they are too big. Whoever lived there before them changed the mailboxes without permission, I guess. But again, I never noticed this. They are white like all the other mailboxes and they aren't gigantic, maybe an inch here and there. And the only people who did notice are the ones who make it their mission to nitpick about all the little things that no one really cares about.

Anyway, with the router project a non-starter, my dad took me out to the lake to show me my brother's Eagle project. It looked completely different from the last time I was out there. All the underbrush was gone, the trails were laid out and had mulch on them, and my brother helped the other kid working on a project build a log archway thing for the head of the trail. It all looked very Boy Scout. And I was impressed. I look forward to seeing the before and after pictures.

Before parting ways I showed my dad the pictures from my Colorado trip and told him some stories. Then I came home for a bit before going down to pick up Chipotle. It was alright but my taste buds experienced so many new and interesting things in the past few days that Chipotle wasn't too impressive. Granted the burrito I get isn't that impressive to begin with. The steak burrito with sour cream and cheese is way more interesting in your mouth. I was reading about a new vegan burrito with tofu that Chipotle has started trying out and I hope it makes it to Kansas because I would be interested in trying it. Right now I am kind of thinking about just getting Jimmy John's next week. It has been awhile and it has to be quite a bit healthier for me than a Chipotle burrito, even with the brown rice.

After dinner I showed my mom and sister the Colorado pictures and then a few YouTube videos. And the rest of my night was spent watching YouTube videos and looking at Patagonia clothing. I like their bright colored jackets. And I am in the market for some new shirts. We'll see if anything comes out of that. They currently have a sale going on which makes everything that much more attractive.

And now it is way past my bedtime and 6:00AM is going to come way too soon, so I am going to go to bed and hope I wake up feeling refreshed and not groggy as hell.

August 13, 2013

Last night I was tired as hell but didn't get a lot of sleep. We made it about an hour into True Grit and I was really liking it so I need to rent it, but I wanted sleep. And then I didn't really sleep. I was on a cot and it was pretty comfortable but I didn't have a pillow and it was completely silent. I have trouble sleeping when it is quiet. For a pillow I used my hoodie and eventually made that more bearable by adding a sleeping bag into the mix. I didn't have a clock by me but I don't think I got more than a few hours of sleep before my friend's alarm went off.

We were all moving a bit slow and probably left the house ten or fifteen minutes later than we planned and there was no time for food. When we got to the airport my friend dropped us off and we said our goodbyes. I don't know when he'll be back in town so it will probably be awhile before I see him again. And his sister is going to Northern Ireland and Hungary for nine months so it will be a long time before they get to see each other as well. But I think my friend is going to go visit her in Northern Ireland, so I'm even more jealous of him now than I was when I learned in a day or two he was going to the Grand Canyon. If I didn't have the job at the school, or if school started next week instead of tomorrow, I totally could have checked the Grand Canyon off my list.

After getting our boarding passes we were a little lost so we asked a guy and he pointed us to the giant security line. I didn't time it but that took a really long time, winding our way up to the xray machines and the full-body scanner. If I flew more often I would definitely invest in footwear that I didn't have to tie because that is always a nuisance. And I didn't even bother putting my belt back on (until we got to Kansas City). Our flight was at 10:20AM and we made it to the train to take us to our gate at maybe 10:10AM. Thankfully our gate was the third one from the escalator and we made it right at 10:20AM. And then they were waiting for a flight attendant and the flight was delayed for about thirty minutes. I'm just glad we didn't run to get to our gate.

I had completely forgotten about checking in for the flight and my friend's sister remembered on the way up to our hike so we checked in about three hours after the window opened which had us boarding more than halfway through the boarding process. This meant we didn't have seats together but it was only about a two and a half hour flight and I got a seat between two seemingly nice people and I got some reading done.

When the plane landed my friend's sister waited for her checked bag and I went to the bathroom, where I put my belt back on because I needed to put my belt back on. After she got her bag our timing was perfect because right as we stepped outside the bus was pulling up to take us out to the parking lot. Instead of renting a car, my friend's parents drove up and dropped off my friend's sister's car for us and they somehow managed to park right next to one of the bus stops in the parking lot. And then we headed home, very quickly. My friend's sister is a bit of a speeder, we were going about 90MPH all the way home, and she has a K-Tag so we didn't have to stop at the toll booths. It was pretty nice just being along for the ride.

The first thing I did when I got home was eat a big bowl of Golden Grahams because it was after 3:30PM and I hadn't eaten anything all day. And the cereal was amazing. And then a couple hours later I had a couple veggie hot dogs for dinner and they were also amazing. The rest of my night was spent doing a bit of laundry, catching up on YouTube videos, and looking at the pictures I took in Colorado. A lot of them came out pretty good if I do say so myself.

Now it is coming up on 9:30PM and I am thinking about going to bed. I need sleep so bad and my sleep schedule has been screwed up for a couple weeks now. And school starts tomorrow so I will be up at 6:00AM. In theory. I can see myself putting that off until the very last minute. Although I don't really want to show up late on the first day. Life.

August 12, 2013

This morning I got up around 9:00AM or so, wrote my entry for yesterday because I was too tired last night to write anything more than a brief synopsis, and eventually took a shower. My friend's cousin left for work shortly after I woke up but his girlfriend was working from home so we were able to get directions from her before we left.

Our first stop was lunch at Fire On The Mountain, a restaurant specializing in chicken wings. I got lucky and they actually had meatless wings in the form of seitan, which I have always wanted to try. So I got six meatless wings with a cilantro lime barbecue sauce. I also got a salad just in case the seitan was not to my liking, and fried pickles because I have always wanted to try those, too. My friend wanted to try two different sauces but you had to order more than six wings to get different sauces, so he ended up getting five with one sauce and five with another. We both ended up getting way too much food. Each boneless chicken wing was about three-quarter the size of a chicken patty and the sauce ended up being really spicy, so my friend wasn't able to finish his order. I think he got through less than half. As for me, when I pictured fried pickles I figured I'd get a pickles-worth of sliced pickles. I think it ended up being three or four pickles cut in quarters. They were delicious because they were fried and fried things are generally good regardless of what has been fried, but I couldn't eat more than a couple. The seitan was also good. It reminded me of those thick beef jerky sticks. Pretty much the same texture and flavor. But again, there was just too much there. I think I finished maybe three. So it was a good lunch but I could have done with less.

From lunch we went back to Red Rocks so we could get souvenirs. I had looked in the gift shop by the museum when we were there for the concert but it kind of sucked. Luckily the trading post had a lot more stuff.

From Red Rocks we went to Mount Falcon for a little hike, with a brief stop at a gas station to stock up on water and throw out our lunch leftovers because they were making the car smell like a cat. I wasn't really dressed for a hike, mainly wearing Chucks for footwear, but I made do and I am glad I did. The scenery was beautiful and the weather was nearly perfect. It was hot at times but there was enough of a breeze to make it quite nice. I took a bunch of pictures which look pretty good on my phone so I hope they look as good on my computer monitor. I am really looking forward to seeing the panoramas. I don't think we ever decided if the hike was two miles or three but with the altitude and my lack of physical activity it was quite the workout. And I enjoyed it.

After the hike we took a scenic route back into town and ended up seeing an area with several amazing houses with perfect green yards and a stream running by them. I lack the ability to fully describe how awesome these houses looked but each one instantly became my new dream home. At the last one we ended up stopping to get pictures and I think it will become my new desktop background.

When we got back into town we stopped at Patagonia because my friend's sister wanted to look at coats. No final decisions were made but several possibilities were discovered. I might have to look into Patagonia coats because they had some nice ones.

Then we drove up to meet my friend's other cousin. The first cousin was a younger, laid back dude. The second cousin was older and more into hunting and things like that. A real nice guy. We ended up going to dinner at a Mexican place and I think it was next to a Ruby Tuesdays that I ate at the last time my dad, brother, and I came to Colorado. At the Mexican restaurant we again ran into portion size problems. I got a veggie burrito that was really good but it was also about two and a half inches wide and close to a foot long. I was really hungry but I barely made a dent in that burrito. My friend got a big bowl of soup that was really spicy and way too big, even though it was only a half bowl. And it was spicy enough that my friend was sweating quite a bit as he ate. And that is always entertaining. Also, the restaurant has appeared on the show Man Vs. Food because they have a seven pound breakfast burrito. Their portions are just way too.

After dinner we came back to my friend's cousin's house and sat around and talked for awhile before his cousin needed to go to bed. My friend and I are sleeping in the basement because it is cooler and his cousin needs to wake up at four in the morning to go to work which is way too early for us. Right now we are watching True Grit but I don't know if I'm going to make it to the end. The hike wore me out and I've been tired since seven o'clock. We'll see.