October 31, 2013

When I got to work I finished up the paper die I was working on yesterday and started on a new project, cutting out a bunch of game pieces for a fluency Checkers game. Then I put velcro on the back of each piece and on the squares on the boards. After that I started working on typing up a bunch of fluency sentence fragments that will be put on labels and then stuck to note cards. There are supposed to be three sets of a hundred fragments but the first two have both fallen short of a hundred. It's a little weird. The hardest part of this project was getting the label template. There were several in Word but the first few I tried had strange formatting and it was frustrating me. I briefly looked online but the Avery website wanted me to register to download their template so I went back to Word and figured that out. As long as we have labels and note cards I should be able to finish everything up tomorrow. I also scanned several pictures for one of the kindergarten teachers.

October has been anti-bullying month at school and today was dress up like a superhero day to fight bullying. It was also a clever ploy (intentional or unintentional) to get around students not being able to wear costumes to school for Halloween. I did not participate, not because I am pro-bullying, but because I have a very limited wardrobe and I'm not really into dressing up in general. The SPED teachers (who are in charge of the paras) made all the paras little capes to wear, and many of the other staff and teachers dressed up, too. It was pretty cool. After school I had most of them meet in the library so I could take their picture. One of the third grade teachers thought it would be good for the beginning of the year slideshow during the district-wide meeting. I also think it would be good for the yearbook.

We had a physics assembly today put on by several college students. They were all in Halloween costumes and they made their presentation Halloween-themed. It was actually a pretty cool assembly and all the kids really liked it. My favorite parts were the methane bubbles because they floated up to the ceiling of the gym and were incredibly flammable, and the hydrogen-filled balloons that had different types of metal dust in them so when they were touched with a match they exploded with a big bang and different colored flames.

On my way home I stopped at Target because I needed bread. I also bought raspberries because I have never actually had them on their own. Turns out they're not really my thing. The outside is kind of hairy and feels really strange in your mouth before you bite into it. The flavor after biting into it was alright but I don't know if I can get past the weird texture.

Tonight I didn't have a visit with the new volunteer kid. Not because he had Halloween plans but because he had a football game. I asked him how the possible hernia turned out but he said he never got to go to the doctors appointment because his foster dad had a heart attack. That was a surprising revelation. I asked him how his foster dad was doing and the kid said he got back home yesterday and that he was doing alright. That was good to hear.

Tonight I watched SNL, several Goosebumps episodes, and I messed around in Minecraft. With a brief bit of Terraria to see if I could get any Halloween drops. And I couldn't. In Minecraft I decorated my house a little bit for Halloween and then loaded in the shaders mod and took some screenshots. I also messed around with game capture software and my video editing software. I think I discovered a way to get my graphics card involved in the rendering process to speed things up. The first time I rendered the video it took fourteen minutes. The second time, with the graphics card being utilized, it took five. I don't know if it was faster the second time because the project had already been rendered and maybe the computer saved some information (although I wasn't rendering the already rendered video). But if it was just the addition of the graphics card that is pretty impressive.

October 30, 2013

My timing going to work today wasn't the best. It was barely sprinkling when I went out to my car but started pouring about halfway to work. Thankfully I managed to avoid all puddles on the walk to the building so my socks remained dry.

I only had a few classes in the lab today and a lot of time on my hands so I went back up to the resource teacher to get more stuff to cut. I laminated a few things, and cut out a bunch of letter die (dice). I worked on this on and off throughout the day and managed to cut out and assemble all but six of the die. To assemble them I first glued it together and then taped it. Just to be safe.

I also scanned a bunch of art for this year's card art. Every year parents can let their kids turn in a piece of art they have done, which we then turn into cards and sell them to raise money. Last year the art teacher scanned them and I used Publisher to turn them into cards. This year the new sixth grade teacher is going to use Photoshop or something to turn them into cards. I think. I don't know. The librarian asked me if I could scan them. So I did, and edited the colors a bit in Gimp so they looked more like the original because everything seems to lose color when it is scanned. At least with the scanners I have used.

On Wednesdays I normally go to Chipotle and Jimmy John's on the way home but today it was pouring rain after work and I didn't want to deal with that so I went home and waited for it to pass over. Which is did pretty quickly. My burrito was pretty good tonight. By the way.

Tonight I played a bit of Terraria before getting annoyed once again by a lack of Halloween drops. I then jumped into Minecraft and harvested all my trees and stuff in my garden. The animals in my pens are still disappearing so that is a bummer. I think I have decided to just cheat in an animal spawner for each animal that I want. I still want to make my aquarium (which will be pointless in a way with the animals disappearing), possibly make a barn surrounding my animal pens, and make an orchard.

My RAM arrived yesterday so my computer went from 4GB to 12GB. I haven't really done much to test it out but I can now maintain a really high FPS with a Far render distance in Minecraft, with many web browser tabs open. So there's that. I am happy with the purchase.

Tomorrow is Halloween. I have no plans. My only goal is to find stuff to do at work. Last year I think I played a bit of Left 4 Dead 2 to celebrate the day. I'm not sure what I will do this year. Maybe watch a movie. Or not. I'll find out tomorrow.

October 29, 2013

This morning I learned that Honey Bunches Of Oats is a bit like Grape Nuts. In that if you pour a whole bowl, you'll be tired of it by the time you're halfway done. It started out as breakfast and ended up being a chore. In the future I will know not to be so eager. Although tomorrow if I have enough time I will probably go with Corn Flakes.

I didn't have a lot going on at work today. I need to send out another email. I printed off some labels for the receptionist, fixed a laptop that had the screen flipped upside down, and then more of the same old thing. Overall it was a pretty boring day. And I would write about it but I got less than six hours of sleep last night and my brain really isn't working at the moment.

After work I went to Hobby Lobby to get yarn because my sister told me her significant other lost the hat I made him several years ago and she wondered if I could make him another one for Christmas. It has probably been at least five years, probably more, since I've crocheted a hat. At some point I'll need to look up a pattern.

Tonight I have been watching a bit of YouTube and taking another peak at Terraria, looking for Halloween drops. There was the random pumpkin here and there around my various worlds but I wasn't getting anything from the mobs. And if anything there seemed to be less mobs. It is kind of annoying.

My goal was to go to bed by ten o'clock but at this point I'll be lucky if I make it to 9:30PM. I'm just so tired.

October 28, 2013

I exercised this morning. No one is shocked more than me.

When I got to work I hit the ground running by fixing the library printer (with a whole bunch of luck) and I also got the library scanner working. When I made it to the lab and logged into my computer I discovered it had once again been reset. Ridiculous. I'm beginning to wonder if I just need to start expecting my computer to get wiped every weekend. I lost the spreadsheet I made for one of the fourth grade teachers for her survey and she had more data for me to add, but luckily I was able to download the copy I had sent her last week.

I helped out with kindergarten reading centers this morning for the first time this year. It's like riding a bike. I had the listening center where the kids listened to a story and then drew pictures of their favorite foods. Luckily my group was pretty good and they all stayed on task. For the most part.

I had downtime and nothing to do after that so I copied and cut stuff for one resource teacher and cut out more game stuff for another resource teacher. I remembered to bring my scissors today which saved my thumb quite a bit of pain.

Second grade reading groups went relatively well. My first group was the more advanced group so they read the story individually and then worked on the plot worksheet. I helped them out on that a little bit. My second group was one of the lower groups so I read the story to them and had them follow along with their finger in their own books. Some of them had a harder time staying on task but it didn't go too bad when we got to the worksheet.

This afternoon we had our character assembly for the month, which involved the staff flash mob. I did not participate in the dancing but I did record it on my phone. Most of it anyway. My phone shut off twice during the middle of it so I missed out on the part where some of the teachers came down the middle aisle holding signs, but I got the beginning and end. Better than nothing.

After the assembly I helped decorate one of the second grade doors. I guess there is a door decorating contest coming up and the teacher needed help. And I had nothing to do. So I cut out a bunch of letters with the stamp press thing, taped a giant sheet of purple paper to the door, and then taped up the letters I had cut out, in the form of words. It was a good way to make more of my afternoon go by.

On my way home from work I stopped at the bank to deposit a check and then I went to Target. I had an urge for cereal and a determination to actually finish a carton of almond milk. I came close with the last one but didn't quite make it. My plan this time is to change up the cereal. I still have Golden Grahams from last time and today I bought Honey Bunches Of Oats and Corn Flakes. So hopefully I won't lose interest before I empty the carton. I also got trail mix, frozen vegetarian dinners (including one with pasta, broccoli, and asparagus that I had over the weekend and was really good), and some fruit.

I spent pretty much my whole night editing the video of the flash mob. It would have been so much easier if my phone hadn't cut out on me but I had to work with what I had. I ended up cutting out the two little chunks in the middle and sticking with the beginning and end sections. The final product doesn't really look that impressive but there was a lot of work going on behind the scenes. First I had to sync the video and audio because it was slightly off for some reason. And I had to do that on both sections. Then I couldn't really hear the song (Just The Way You Are by Bruno Mars) so I imported the song as an audio track. And then had to sync that up for both sections, which was really tricky because I could barely hear the song in the video. But I think I got pretty close. Next I joined the two clips with fade-ins and fade-outs so it wasn't too jarring. And lastly I added a fade-in to the beginning and fade-outs for the different tracks at the end.

After rendering it I realized I forgot to turn down the original video sound and all the background noise (a gym full of kids) really distracted from the song. And at the end I cut the song off in the middle of a word, which sounded weird. So I went back and lowered the video volume and ran into a wall when trying to fix the music. I tried to add on a bit to the trimmed end, and I could join them together without it being obvious, but I couldn't figure out how to make the sound fade evenly across both joined sections. I am sure there is a really easy way to accomplish this but I have very little editing experience, considering video editing is just another one of my ephemeral hobbies. So I ended up importing the song as a new track, trimming it down to where I wanted, zooming in really close so I could line it up with the track I had already synced using the little spikes in the song, deleting the original song section, and then moving the new one into place. And then re-rendering it. But that render came out weird so I had to render it again. I had a few renders freeze and the program froze a couple times, and I probably rendered a full version at least four or five times. So it probably shouldn't have taken all night but it did. I'm just glad the video wasn't any longer. I do wish my phone hadn't crapped out twice in the middle of the video but the final product isn't too bad.

And now it is way too late for me to still be up. Six o'clock will be coming up before I know it.

October 27, 2013

I was pretty much just as lazy today as I was the rest of the weekend but I did get some things done. All before nine o'clock because I woke up at eight o'clock for no reason. I finally got around to buying new pants and shoes for work. I don't really know if either will fit but I did go with my current sizes so fingers crossed. I also paid my gas card bill and activated my new credit card. I was getting worried my card wasn't going to show up because my current one expires at the end of the month and we are getting pretty close to the end of the month. With my debit card I think it usually shows up by the beginning of the month, most often before. I guess things work differently with different cards.

I fully exercised for the second day in a row. My stomach still hurts from yesterday. I would like to hope I would be up for three days in a row but I have been notoriously bad so far this year when it comes to listening to my alarm and actually getting out of bed at six o'clock to exercise.

In Minecraft today I expanded my farm and now have eight squares for all of the different fruits, vegetables, and herbs that I have. At least I think so. It wasn't organized very well in the chests. And I think I have all the plants that grow in the ground. I know I'm still missing a few of the trees but I'll worry about that when I get around to setting up an orchard. After the garden I built a path over to the area for my animals and built six pens. I filled the first two with cows and sheep. But then they disappeared. Which was a bummer because I had to entice them to get in their pens and all of that works was for naught. And I had a white sheep and a sheep dyed green with cactus dye, and they made a lime green baby. I decided not to waste my time with other animals until I figure out why the cows and sheep disappeared. I might cheat in some spawn eggs and experiment with those before I go to the effort of getting animals to follow me into the pens legitimately.

Tonight I did laundry and made a bunch of tortilla chips. Wheat, regular, and jalapeno cheddar. Yum.

And that was my lazy Sunday. Now it is almost ten o'clock and I am going to go to bed because I didn't get enough sleep last night and my eyes are drooping. And I'd like to actually exercise in the morning.

October 26, 2013

If it were even possible I think I managed to do less today than I did yesterday. I am way too lazy. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and messed around with Minecraft. I finally figured out how to get the shaders mod to work and it does make the game look incredibly cool. By the time I got it working I wasn't really in the mood to play around with it anymore but I was glad I got it working. I need to go around and take some screenshots next time. In terms of world progress, I still need to expand my farm and build animal pens so I can start breeding animals. I think I have finally decided how I want to do both of those things. On my journey for cacti yesterday I came across a round, crater-like, water cove on the far edge of my island and I think it would be cool to wall it off or fence it off from the ocean and turn it into a big aquarium. That would require me to figure out fish bowls and fish nets a little better because they don't seem to reliably work for me.

Tonight at work I played a game on my phone and read two Goosebumps books. The Scarecrow Walks At Midnight and How I Learned To Fly. It has potentially been almost two decades since I would have read them but I don't think I read either of those. At least I didn't have the faintest recollection of having read them. But I liked them both. And I like that I can read them fast. I get a good story and don't have to commit days or weeks or months to finishing it. It also didn't hurt that I wasn't sent home early so I had even more time to play my phone game and read. I probably could have read a third book but I needed a break.

October 25, 2013

I played a little bit of Terraria today because they released their Halloween update. Last year or the year before they had a Christmas event where there were Christmas-themed drops from enemies. The Halloween event is similar with Halloween drops. According to Reddit the drops seem to be plentiful but I wasn't really getting much. It was cool seeing the different mobs dressed up in costumes though.

I also played a little Minecraft but I mainly messed around with trying to record my gameplay. I tried several different settings and eventually got it figured out. At least I think. The raw video played in VLC wasn't always great but when I would preview it in my editing program it would run through smoothly. I'll need to mess around with that more tomorrow.

I started watching old episodes of Goosebumps and it is making me very nostalgic for the books and my childhood. I think I might dig out my books and read one or two. The television series is a great exhibit of Canadian child actors. And bad voice recording apparently because there are a lot of re-dubbed voices. The episodes are so cheesy but I can't stop watching.

Tonight at work I read a bunch. With a break to go down and help clean theaters because we were incredibly short staffed. They are still cutting hours but it kind of bit them a little bit tonight. They sent a bunch of people home but then other people either got sick or had car trouble or whatever else so we ended up with two door people and two people in concession. On a Friday night. So everyone was a bit overwhelmed. They really need to figure out the whole payroll thing. We also got our new polo shirts and they are pretty awful. We finally lost the advertisement on the back (we were still wearing shirts with Lone Ranger on them) but that is the only improvement. The new ones are 100% polyester, snag on everything, thin to the point of being see-through, and overall just very cheap feeling. I'm not a fan.

October 24, 2013

Today I did nothing and really have nothing to worry about. Due to teacher conferences I didn't have work and I did nothing productive with my time. I caught up on YouTube videos and DVRed stuff while playing Minecraft and looking things up on the internet. I'm thinking about upgrading parts of my computer and I'm seeing if I can get any advice on forums. One thing I learned is that my motherboard can handle up to 16GB of RAM. It even explicitly says this in the manual and on the website but for some reason I have always thought it could only handle 4GB, which is why I only have 4GB. So that might be my first upgrade.

In Minecraft I filled out my expanded farm and will need to add onto it in the future. My goal is to have eight squares for everything I am able to plant, which is a lot of different stuff. I also decorated my house a little bit, which lead to a really long search for cactus. I set off in one direction and kind of took an unintentional circuitous path and didn't find any cacti until I had almost made it back to my house. So I definitely set off in the wrong direction. But I ended up finding four or five new fruit-bearing trees and a few queen bees. I know there is a mod that involves a lot of bee stuff but I'm not sure how deep the mods I have go into it. I'll have to do some reading. And going back to RAM for a second. I allocated more RAM to Minecraft and it runs a lot better now. I was inspired to look into this when I finished expanding my garden and putting a whole bunch of torches up, which practically made everything grind to a halt. I am assuming there was just too much going on in one place. Or it might be completely unrelated. But now everything runs pretty much great.

I didn't have a visit with the new volunteer kid but we did text back and forth a bit. He apparently had a doctors appointment to see if he has a hernia. Ouch. Never had one and don't want one. I have enough on my plate with all the kidney stones. My friend had one on is stomach once and was able to push it back in. It was gross.

And again it is way too late to be up. I'm never going to get back to a regular sleep schedule.

October 23, 2013

I knew I didn't have anything to do today so I sent out an email when I got to work asking if anyone had odds jobs or needed help with something. And that made the day go by incredibly fast.

I started up in the SPED room installing an old program onto one of their laptops. That was a little bit of a puzzle. At first it was coming up with a bunch of errors, which I clicked ignore on and shouldn't have because it made things that much more complicated. Because it hadn't really installed it wasn't showing up anywhere on the computer but it installed just enough that I couldn't get the install option to pop up again. I dug around in the folders on the CD and eventually found a setup program that I was able to right-click on and run as an administrator, which got around all the errors. The only thing I couldn't figure out was the program would open up in the lowest resolution possible, thanks to its age, and I couldn't get around it. I eventually had to leave instructions for the teacher on how to auto-hide the taskbar when she used the program because if you don't then it cuts off all the command buttons in the program.

My next project was copying more games for the second grade teacher. That didn't take too awfully long, which was good because I finished just in time for reading centers. It was basically a catch-up day so they were all working on past centers that they hadn't finished. And most of them caught up.

I still had some time before lunch after centers so I went back to the workroom and restocked and organized all of the construction paper for one of the receptionists. I tried to organize it by color so it would be easier to find. I think it turned out relatively well, even though it will probably be messed up soon. I also finally had to replace the magenta toner in the color printer in the lab because one of the preschool paras was trying to print and kept getting a functional error on the printer and it kept printing the same couple of pictures over and over. Thankfully replacing the toner seemed to do the trick.

Lunch was a nice little break and the first time I had been back in the lab in a few hours. Immediately after lunch I organized some of the data from a survey for one of the fourth grade teachers. It wasn't technically work related because it is for her Master's degree, but I'll say it was close enough.

Then there was a first grade class in the lab, another little break, before going back across the hall to cut out a bunch of squares from construction paper for one of the sixth grade teachers. Followed by taping up first grade artwork in the hallway and looking at one of the first grade teacher's laptops. And I ended my day by cutting out games for one of the resource teacher. The same type of games I had copied earlier in the day, because the resource teacher had given her workbook to the second grade teacher. All the cutting was a pain in the butt, mostly because the scissors sucked. They were sticking and required a lot of force from my thumb to open back up after a cut, which my thumb did not appreciate. But I made it through. If I'm feeling up to it, and I remember, I may take my own scissors to work on Monday because she still has more stuff to cut.

I sent out emails looking for work last year and they would work for a day or two before people seemed to forget and I went back to trying to find stuff to do. I fear the same thing will happen this year but maybe people will remember and will keep me busy.

Tonight was Chipotle night and my burrito was alright. Nothing special. My sister made me biscuits and I ended up having one before dinner and one after. She makes really good biscuits. I then spent the rest of my night watching YouTube videos and playing Minecraft. I took a break from the Nether and portal room stuff and worked on stuff topside. I thought about starting breeding animals but I couldn't decide on how I wanted to lay things out so I ended up going on an adventure to a nearby island to get some colorful trees. And then I got started on more than doubling the size of my garden. I want to eventually have a much bigger farm but, like the animals, I couldn't decide where I wanted to build so I ended up just extending the garden next to my house. I laid out the fence, put in the water and walkways, and hoed the ground. Next I will need to start planting seeds. With the extra room I want to start planting stuff in groups, rather than having everything spread out. Like all the asparagus together and all the pineapples together and so on and so forth. That way I will have a better idea what stuff is and will get better at knowing when it is time to pick it. I would also like to put up signs but I haven't decided how to go about that yet.

And now it is way too late so I am going to go to bed.

October 22, 2013

Last night right before going to bed my friend called and we ended up talking for about an hour. A good talk about everything and anything. But it did keep me up way past my bedtime. And ended up sleeping in until almost seven o'clock again. Tomorrow I want to actually wake up when my alarm goes off.

I ran out of things to do today at work. No more projects or things to clean. I ended up reading a Junie B. Jones book because it was left in the lab and they seem to be popular with third graders. It was actually pretty good. They are written in her voice, and at least in the book I read, she is a kindergartener. It doesn't really promote proper grammar, or real words, but it is pretty funny. I might need to look into more of those books.

After school I went to a jewelry store to get a new battery put in my pocket watch. I noticed it losing time and then it eventually stopped completely. When I walked in the one girl asked the lady if she just needed to pop the back off. And the lady wasn't sure and said the jeweler knew what he was doing but he had left because his grandchild was sick but he might be back later. She said she would feel better if he did it and I said after hearing the two of them talk I too felt better about him doing it. So I left it and they said they'd call me. Not more than five minutes after being home they called. Apparently the jeweler had gotten back almost exactly when I was leaving. Great timing on my part. But now my watch works again.

Tonight I finished the first season of Once Upon A Time and watched the first episode of the second. Then I switched over to YouTube videos and played some Minecraft. I mined a bunch of stuff out of the Nether and then started increasing the size of my basement because I ran out of wall space for chests and my backpacks were filling up.

My other friend called tonight and we also had a long conversation about everything and anything. It had been a bit since I had heard from either of them so it was good to hear that things were still going well. And luckily the friend that called tonight is in the same state. One potential problem with my other friend living on the West Coast now is the time difference. Like calling really late at night, at least on my end.

But now I'm going to go to bed because I need to get back on a better sleep schedule. Even though that probably won't happen until next week when we finally get back to a full work week.

October 21, 2013

I did stuff today. And I didn't play any Minecraft.

I ended up sleeping in until seven o'clock but I still managed to get to work a little after eight o'clock. When I got to work and logged into my computer I discovered that it had been reset back to how it was when school first started. The programs I have downloaded and the things in my Recycle Bin were still there but everything on my desktop was gone. Including a folder where I had been putting the stuff I had been working on this year. Poof. Luckily all the important stuff was saved on one of the shared drives but I still lost stuff. And that is annoying. I emailed the Librarian to see who I should talk to about it and she had me email one of the tech guys. Later in the day I got an email from the principal who forwarded me an email from one of the tech guys saying they had tried to make student logins faster and they ended up wiping everything accidentally. None of the lab computers seemed to be affected, other than student logins actually being slower. And then my computer was wiped. And not remotely because when I opened up Excel today it showed that the last thing opened was a list of Office registration codes from a flash drive. So I'm kind of annoyed.

Despite that, I finished the spreadsheet the principal wanted me to make comparing the most recent MAP scores with the scores from last Spring. That was all a bit tedious and staring at all those numbers, while listening to classical music on NPR, was lulling me to sleep. But I finished it.

I fixed a laptop today by taking out the hard drive and then putting it back in. Seeing as how I'm not supposed to even open the computer towers, I'm probably not supposed to take the hard drive out of a laptop, but I only had to take out two screws and slide it out. It was easier than my netbook which kept the hard drive and RAM under the keyboard. Anyway, the computer wasn't getting to the Windows screen and it was saying something about a hard drive not being present. So I decided to take it out and put it back in to see if the computer would recognize it again. And it did. I'm not sure if it was just a fluke thing or an actual problem, so my fix might not last very long, but it worked for today.

The second grade teacher who I help out with reading centers made me a tiny loaf of chocolate chip pumpkin bread. I'm not sure if she has several tiny bread pans or if it is one big pan with individual tiny loaf spots in it. That is a mystery, one which I could solve with a question, and I might do that, but for now the mystery lives. Regardless of that, the bread was good. I had some after dinner and despite pumpkin being in the title, I liked it.

Speaking of food, after school I stopped by Target to get stuff. I got peanut butter, tortillas (jalapeno cheddar and thin corn), broccoli, pineapple, and a pomegranate because I have always wanted to try a pomegranate. Before dinner I tried it. It was kind of fun cutting it in half and then beating the seeds out of it over a bowl. I never noticed it in the pictures or videos but the seeds look just like corn kernels. Especially Indian corn because it has more of that color. It seems like there has to be some connection there. Maybe not. As for the seeds, I liked the first half of them but wasn't really a fan of the crunchy inside. It's like it is something that should be bit into and chewed a couple times before spitting it out. It's like a reverse sunflower seed.

For dinner I made steamed rice with broccoli and a little teriyaki sauce, a fake hamburger, and pineapple. With the chocolate chip pumpkin bread for dessert. And later in the night I had half of a caramel apple with peanuts. It was a really sour apple but it worked well with the caramel and peanuts. Also, I can't remember the last time I had three different fruits in one day. Probably the last time my sister made fruit pizza, and that has been awhile now.

After dinner I made tortilla chips. I made wheat ones just in case because I know I like them. Then I made some jalapeno cheddar ones. I tried one or two and they were actually pretty good. Then I made the thin corn ones. I tried one of the thin corn tortillas before I backed it and I am surprised that is not up there with the saltine challenge (trying to eat ten in a minute). One bite and my mouth instantly went dry. Once baked they were quite a bit better. I think I could have left them in a little longer but they seem edible. I did end up cooking each type individually because they had different consistencies and even though it was more time consuming I think it was the right choice.

Tonight I continued watching Once Upon A Time and that was about it. Nothing productive anyway. I am still enjoying the show. Still hating the mayor. She truly is crazy because her hatred for Snow White is way too intense. The phrase 'an eye for an eye' has obviously never come on her radar. Her vengeance is more of a nuclear winter in response to being accidentally bumped into. It's all a bit absurd to be honest. I can understand be mad and going after Snow White, even though that is a stretch. It was all the mother. But it just seems to keep snowballing. I have no idea what is to come but I don't see there being any redemption for the mayor. She's too far gone. But I'm going to keep watching to see what happens. I've got one episode left in the first season and then I can start on the second.

October 20, 2013

And another lazy Sunday. I played Minecraft and started an unplanned marathon of Once Upon A Time. I planned on just watching an episode or two. The first episode didn't really grab me but now I find myself almost done with the first season. It is a very intriguing show. I like the twists they've made to make fairy tale characters exist in the modern world. The casting is also pretty good. They mayor knocks it out of the park at being evil because I completely despise her. And Ruby is really hot, but more so when she is Little Red Riding Hood. I also like that Jiminy Cricket becomes Dr. Hopper. I find that funny.

In Minecraft I made progress. I went and got obsidian and dug out a lower basement for a portal to the Nether. Originally I was going to put the portal somewhere away from my house but then I picked convenience. My goal for the Nether was glowstone, which I got a ton of, but I also ended up digging out a bunch of soul sand because it looks really cool with the texture pack I'm using. I decided to line my portal room with it. Minus the path to the portal because it has a slowing effect that is pretty annoying. I also found a fortress in the Nether and I am thinking of going back to get more of the bricks and stairs. I might switch out the stairs and cobblestone I put up around my portal with the nether bricks. I also added onto my dock, sheared a few sheep lots of times to get wool, and harvested a bunch of fruits and vegetables from my garden. Mainly vegetables. I need more fruit.

Tonight I made egg sandwiches for dinner because I had eggs and I wasn't sure how much longer they would last. I tested them in water and they weren't floating yet so I decided they were safe. The sandwiches were nothing special but it was a change from the norm and I liked them.

When I was doing laundry I forgot about the three cough drops in my hoodie pocket. I was reminded when I opened the dryer and found two, semi-melted cough drops by the door. I also found one empty wrapper, because I started with three in my pocket, but there was no trace of the third, other than the wrapper. My hope is that the third one dissolved in the washer and that I won't stumble across the remnants of it in my clothing in the coming week.

October 19, 2013

There isn't much to say about today because it was basically a carbon copy of yesterday. For quite awhile, probably up until I went to work, it really felt like Sunday. Thanks to not working at the school on Friday. So tomorrow will be like a free day.

In Minecraft I went adventuring in the caves for cobwebs to get string and I dug out a basement under my house. I also downloaded a backpack mod because I got tired of getting way down deep in the caves and then running out of room in my inventory. The backpack takes up one spot in my inventory and contains the same amount of spots as a small or large chest, depending on the backpack you make. It required a bunch of string and leather but it is supper convenient. I can keep a workbench and furnace and extra tools in my backpack, keeping my inventory clear, and then I can move stuff into it as I go along. No longer will I have to choose between what I keep and what I have to leave behind. I like it. Tomorrow I want to harvest everything I have planted and plant the next round.

Tonight at work I didn't watch anything but I did switch off between the three books I am currently reading. I need to read more often. Book-wise. I have fallen off quite a bit and I don't like that. There are too many books out there that I will never get to read, especially when I'm not reading as often as I could.

October 18, 2013

We had the first snow of the season today. It was the giant clumps of snow flakes that look really cool. It wasn't nearly cold enough for anything to stick, thankfully, but it looked cool coming down.

I'm not exactly sure why we didn't have school today. I think maybe it is a prep day for the teachers to get ready for conferences, which are next Thursday and Friday. Regardless, I got to sleep in and it was pretty nice. This paycheck is going to suck if both of these three-day weeks are on it but I do enjoy sleeping in.

I spent my day playing Minecraft, watching YouTube videos, and catching up on my DVR. So a productive day in respect to those particular things, but in the grand scheme of things, not very productive. I need to work on that. I made progress in Minecraft, adding a decent garden to the side of my house. It is a good start. The hard part is knowing when everything is fully grown. There are the obvious ones like wheat, carrots, pumpkins, and watermelons, but I am not familiar with most of the stuff so I am probably going to have to start guessing. But the garden looks good. At some point I would like to expand to have individual gardens for each fruit and vegetable but I'm not anywhere close to that. Another end goal is to make one of every type of food in the harvest mod. That will take quite awhile. I also need to go to the Nether to get glowstone because I want to make lamps and ceiling lights, both of which require obsidian and glowstone. And then there are all the animals. I unintentionally made a goat my pet today but he eventually wandered off and was probably killed by a mob. I want to have an area for animals and try breeding, and maybe having one of everything as a pet. And figure out how to make nets and fishbowls so I can have pet fish in my house. Which is still pretty barren on the inside. I still need to decorate it. And dig out a basement so I have a place for a bunch of chests. I currently have three in the main room and they are far from organized. I need a better system.

I turned on mobs again for a little while but then got overwhelmed by them. And my bed wasn't working so I kept respawning thousands of blocks away from my house. I wanted to turn off the mo creatures mobs and leave on the regular Minecraft mobs but it wasn't working. I kept getting all of them and they kept ganging up on me. To be fair I only had a sword but even if I was fully armored I don't think I could take on five different things at once, each coming from a different direction. And apparently my house isn't lit well enough because every time I tried to take refuge there I was relentlessly attacked. By the end of it I think I finally got the mo creatures mobs turned off. At some point I would like to have them back, with their spawn frequency turned down maybe, because at the current level my house is surrounded by a literal mob of mobs every night.

Tonight at work I switched off reading a couple books and I watched Escape Plan, the new movie with Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It is not nearly as cheesy as the Expendables movies but it does borrow a lot from the sensibility of 90s action movies. I enjoy the bad jokes. I was going to play some games on my tablet but every one I wanted to try required an internet connection. I'm assuming only because they are free-to-play and the want me to be able to make micro-transactions. Which I will never do so offline should be an option. It would be nice if the theater jumped on the bandwagon and set up public wifi but they are much too cheap for that. And way behind the curve. If they do get it, it would be right before wifi becomes obsolete.

When I got home from work my package was on the porch. That package contained a keyboard wrist rest and my new mouse. I can't really pass judgment on either yet but I think I like them. I have want a wrist rest for awhile, currently I use a little box of pins and a small bowl. Not the best. And so far with the new mouse I haven't had any accidental double-clicks. But I haven't really clicked that much so time will tell. The new mouse is slightly bigger than my old one, making it more of a palm grip mouse, rather than a claw grip mouse. I tend to have more of a claw grip but the palm grip seems to be more relaxed. Maybe I will change my ways.

October 17, 2013

Today happened but it wasn't too exciting. I messed around with my student directory a little bit and made it so all you see is the form, all by itself when you open the database. I think it looks pretty good. And that was pretty much my day. Everything else was the same old thing. Toward the end of the day I started working on a new spreadsheet for the principal. She wants one that compares MAP scores for this Fall and last Spring. Exciting stuff. But it gives me something to do.

I played the mandolin a little bit today. My fingers are getting stronger. And I still only know one song.

My visit with the new volunteer kid tonight was just over forty-five minutes long. Not bad. We talked about all the random things. Football, video games, woodworking, college, Cheetos, and other things. It was a pretty good visit.

When I got home I watched YouTube videos and played Minecraft. I made significant progress on my house. I would say it mostly done on the outside. Next I need to populate it with furniture. I ended up not making an attic but I put in a door in my tower that leads to the roof in case I want to add one in the future. I also want to add a basement at some point.

At one point I ran out of stone, so I went spelunking. The cave system under my island is pretty great. At least in terms of adventuring and getting lost. It consists of at least two converging chasms and a big mine. I killed two birds with one stone by not only collecting stone and ores, but also harvesting wood and fence posts from the mine. Saves me from cutting down a bunch of trees. Soon enough I will be able to start making my farm.

October 16, 2013

Today I wasn't nearly as active at work but I managed to be pretty productive. One of the receptionists got me more canned air so I cleaned all the keyboards. After being told I wasn't supposed to be opening the computer towers I decided not to finish those. But maybe later if it starts to annoy me. I also wiped everything off with Clorox wipes. Gross.

Against my better judgment I decided to work on my student directory and it turned out to be a wise choice because I ended up getting it to work. I changed a few things and out of nowhere it started working again. There aren't duplicate records, the guardian information shows up, and the report for the call list shows the filter I have applied on the form. I also found a way to put a counter on a page break for the report so for certain classes I can state how many records show per page so I don't end up with a kid's name at the bottom of one page and their guardians on the next. And just in case it randomly stops working tomorrow, I made PDFs for each class call list. I did open and close it multiple times and it continued working so hopefully it is fixed for good this time.

The rest of my day was pretty much a normal day at work. I took a break and ordered a new mouse because I'm getting tired of the random double-clicking of my current mouse. With my recent return to Minecraft it became quickly evident that my mouse not only double-clicks on the left click but also on the right. And I'd have to say it occurs more frequently on the right. But that could just be my imagination. It is probably an equal amount. I'm just tired of trying to place blocks and putting down two instead of one. Especially when it comes to glass because then I'm just wasting glass.

After work I went and picked up dinner and eventually engaged in Chipotle night. It was a good burrito, nothing exciting. After I showed my mom and sister the videos I had this week my sister showed the Dollar Shave Club commercial, which is still probably the best commercial ever made. And then she showed the latest commercial, which I didn't know existed, but it does, and it was also incredibly funny. Genius.

I spent my night playing Minecraft and watching YouTube videos. I made significant progress on my house, nearly finishing the second floor. I've got to finish one wall, the roof, and the tower thing I decided to add. I'm not exactly sure what to do with that so my fingers are crossed that it'll come to me. I have a vague idea of having a door in it that will lead to a secret attic and then have a lookout or lighthouse type thing at the top. I don't know yet. But it is all looking decent. I added a furniture mod so I can add in furniture when I'm done. And eventually get around to the harvest mod and start farming.

October 15, 2013

Today at work I did a decent job of earning my keep. When I got there a teacher had left a note on the lab door asking me to come up to his room when I had the chance. I put my stuff down and headed up there to learn that his computer was continuously restarting but never actually getting to the Windows screen. His network drives also weren't showing up on his laptop. I told him that the network drives thing was normal and that they only seem to randomly appear. Not very helpful but it is better than nothing. And I wasn't sure about his desktop but I told him I'd go do some reading and get back to him.

Back in the lab I learned that a computer continuously rebooting could be caused by any number of things. Great. I picked a few options and went back up to see if anything would work. While I was running a scan I went across the hall because one of the resource teachers had emailed me saying she needed help. Her computer had been updated or something over the weekend and she could get to her email. I pinned Outlook to her taskbar and I pointed out that she wasn't able to get to her email in her web browser because she had been typing the URL into the search box instead of the URL box. Then it was back across the hall. The scan revealed nothing but when I was looking around in the BIOS there was an error log that was saying something about a keyboard error. So I took a chance and turned off the computer, unplugged the keyboard, and turned the computer back on, and it worked. The computer made it to the log in screen and I was able to plug the keyboard back in and get to the desktop without a problem.

In second grade reading centers I read with one group before going to help the first graders log into the computers in the lab. And while I was there I helped a couple sixth graders print their stories before heading back to reading centers. I helped kids with their workbooks and then installed a printer on one of the sixth grade laptops because a couple sixth graders brought it in so they could print their story.

And this afternoon I helped one of the SPED teachers get the wifi working on one of their laptops. I pushed the wifi button. She said it was alright if I thought she was an idiot but I told her not to worry because that turned out to be the issue the majority of the time. Which I don't mind because it is actually something I can fix.

In between all of that I listened to This American Life and renamed school pictures. When we get the pictures from the photo place all the kids are labeled with their student number instead of their name. So I started going through and renaming them and sorting them into class folders. This is a bit of a process because I don't know the full name of every kid in the school. I know a lot of them but even for the ones I know I double-checked just to make sure I got the spelling right. I sped up the process by using a list I had already made in Excel and sorting it by student number because that is how the pictures were in the folder. That went a lot faster than looking at the picture and then flipping through my rosters to get to the right class. I nearly finished. I was told to do this last year to help out the people making the yearbook. Which ended up being me and another parent. So this year I figured I would get a jump on it because there is a chance I will be helping with the yearbook again this year. The parent I worked with last year wants to do it collaboratively through a website so more people can work on it but it will cost more money. One of the receptionists, also the adversary of this parent, hasn't liked the idea of that since the parent brought it up a year or two ago and wants to keep the cost down by designing it at the school and having it printed locally. I have no idea what's going to happen but I'm game for whatever.

Tonight I played Minecraft and watched DVRed stuff. I almost didn't play Minecraft because I tried a couple different methods to install the single player command mod and the last method ended up breaking the game. Thankfully I was able to reload one of the mods and it reset everything back to where it should be. And in that whole process I felt like an idiot because I remembered that I could get access to the commands by enabling cheats when I created a new world. I had forgotten that commands were a built-in thing now, and that you had to enable cheats before a world was created for them to work. So I made a new world and all was fine.

Originally I started on Easy but with the mo creatures mod, and nighttime, I couldn't get very far away from my spawn without dying. I ended up switching to Creative so I could fly around and look for a spot for my house and the beginning of my farm. That took awhile because I was surrounded by snow and jungle biomes. But I eventually found a relatively flat island with a village. I'd prefer there not to be a village but I think it will work out nicely. I want to be legit with all the building but I am going to leave it on Peaceful during the initial building phase so I can build in peace and not be constantly killed. Once I found my spot I got a start on my house but probably spent most of my time cutting down and planting trees to get wood for my house. I have made a decent start but it started getting late, IRL, so I had to call it good for the night. There is always another day.

October 14, 2013

Not having to work today turned it into a pretty lazy day. Kind of like a Sunday. By mid-afternoon the plumbers had fixed plumbing so I was able to use my own shower again, which was pretty nice. They filled in the giant hole in the backyard but there is still a big mound of dirt where the hole used to be because the dirt isn't packed down. We were told to shove a hose into it and let the water fun full blast for six to eight hours a day. In theory that will get the dirt to all settle down. Sounds more like an incredible waste of water and a really high water bill. And have you ever tried to shove a floppy hose into a pile of hard dirt? There are also two big pipes sticking out of the pile of dirt. My guess is they are for easy access if future problems occur. At the moment they are both sticking several feet out of the ground but the plumbers said they would come back and cut them off when the dirt had settled.

My main accomplishments for the day involved Minecraft. I made a good amount of progress on my TARDIS swimming pool. I instantly regretted deciding to use hundreds of torches to represent stars but I have fully committed at this point so the project continues. And then tonight I went download crazy. Every so often I'll download a bunch of mods and play them for a little bit and then forget about Minecraft for awhile. And inevitably when I come back several updates have occurred and all my mods are out of date. Tonight I downloaded the new launcher for the latest version of Minecraft and downloaded a texture pack that makes the game look like a child-friendly RPG, if that makes any sense whatsoever. I like it. I also downloaded a harvest mod so I can grow a whole bunch of different food things and the mo creatures mod so there are all sorts of new animals that I can eventually tame. To help with installing everything, and sometimes it was required, I downloaded an installer that makes everything really easy. For the most part I just need to drag the downloaded mod zip folder into the mods folder in my Minecraft folder. It took me awhile to get some things to work but I almost got their eventually. The harvest mod, craft guide mod, mod installer, and texture pack were fairly straight forward. The mo creatures and mini-map mod took awhile longer to work out. For mo creatures, one of the files downloaded as a zip when it was really a jar, so I had to fix that. And for the mini-map mod I had to get the latest updated one off of the Japanese forum because it hadn't been added to the English forum yet. I was unable to figure out the shaders mod, timber mod, or single player command mod but I might continue looking at that tomorrow.

Now I am listening to Seether and writing this. I heard a Seether song on the radio the other day and it made feel really nostalgic for high school. I listened to their CDs on repeat for so long. And it is currently way past my bedtime and I actually have to go to work tomorrow so I am going to end this here.

October 13, 2013

Today was a Sunday. A fairly typical one. I spent my day watching stuff and playing stuff. I watched a bunch of YouTube videos, including the start of a playthrough of Beyond: Two Souls, which is the game with Ellen Page as the main character. The graphics are really good and I am liking the story so far and if the guy was done playing the game I probably would have watched the whole thing today. While I watched that I played a bit of Terraria.

Tonight I watched more YouTube videos before switching over to Netflix. And I was in the mood to build in Minecraft so I jumped back into the TARDIS I started so long ago. I lost a little progress when I forgot to save before reformatting my computer, but I didn't let that annoy me too much. I continued work on the swimming pool. I added more of the black wool to simulate night, designed and made the back wall, and started on the side walls. I avoided the tedious work of putting up torches for the stars but that will have to be tackled at some point. And then I'll need to pick the next room I'm going to make.

I played more mandolin today, working on my calluses and pinky strength. Progress was made but I still need to come up with a new song to learn. Not that I don't enjoy the one song and messing around with chords, but a one-song catalog is a bit weak.

October 12, 2013

I didn't really do a thing today. I kind of feel trapped by being unable to use my bathroom. Technically I can but I don't feel like messing with the giant hole in the backyard. I even went over to my sister's to take a shower because I didn't want to turn the hole into a mud pit. It is a deep hole and the backyard doesn't get that much sun. Although there are rumors of rain on Monday when they are supposed to come back and hopefully fix everything, so all of my courtesy may be pointless. But it's the thought that counts.

Before work I tuned my mandolin because it was slightly off and when I got to work I immediately dropped it far enough to knock the E-strings out of tune. Thankfully the other strings seemed to be fine so I was able to tune the E-strings without too much trouble. I played off and on and got better at the one song I know. At some point I need to learn something else. At the moment my left hand fingertips are bright red and my wrist and forearm are a little uncomfortable. I need to build my strength and calluses back up. Especially the strength in my pinky because it is shamefully weak.

On my way home I stopped and bought more Gatorade because my kidneys have not appreciated my reduced liquid intake in the past few days. Then I stopped by my sister's to use the restroom before going home. Tomorrow I would like to get up and around and go to the store. Mainly for bread and trail mix but there are probably other things. I'll probably end up putting it off until Monday but it would be nice to do something tomorrow.

October 11, 2013

This morning I drove over to my sister's house around seven o'clock to take a shower. Tis the season for the mornings to get darker and in this dim light I drove by several kids walking to bus stops. I do not miss those days. It sucked being up that early anyway but then having to go wait for a bus. And it only gets worse during the winter when it is really dark and really cold.

As for the shower, I forgot my shampoo so I spent the first part of my day faintly catching the scent of Herbal Essence following me around.

I only had two classes in the lab today so things were pretty laid back, but I did manage to be fairly productive. One of the second grade teachers had me tape up her class project about the life cycle of the caterpillar in the hallway. I didn't reinvent the wheel or anything but it didn't look too bad. Shortly after that I helped with reading groups. One of the paras was gone so it was just me, a parent, and the teacher. Thankfully my group just had to cut words out and glue them into columns. And then I dodged the annoying group because the teacher decided not to rotate groups.

In the afternoon I finished gluing the cards for the second grade teacher. I'm not sure how long they will last but I did my best. She might end up having to make a new set sooner than she would like. I also made progress on the SMART board in the SPED room. I found out which piece of software I needed to download and it is apparently the full version, not just a 30-day trial. We'll see in thirty days. I also figured out how to get around the error I was getting on the laptop yesterday that was preventing me from installing the software, about the H: drive being invalid. There was a line to type into the command prompt that would map the drive to the C: drive or something, long enough for the download to go through. I found it on a forum that was talking about getting the error when trying to update software but I tried it out and it worked. Success. Now both SPED teachers have the software on their laptops and it appears to work.

I spent the rest of my afternoon continuing to clean the computer in the lap. I made it through eighteen before running out of canned air. I was knee-deep in the tower of number seventeen when one of the tech guys walked in, thankfully the one I graduated with. I had submitted a couple trouble tickets on behalf of other people but he just looked at my name rather than the location on the ticket so he thought it was lab stuff. When he walked in he informed me that I wasn't ever supposed to open the towers and I was lucky that it wasn't one of the other tech guys. Whoops. But they're dirty as hell and I'm almost done so if I can get more canned air I'm going to finish. I didn't tell him that though. I also explained the tickets and he told me that technically he could cancel both tickets because the people they were for hadn't filled them out. I think that is kind of bullshit considering I marked that one was in the library and the other was in a specific classroom, but whatever. In the future I can just have people log into the trouble ticket site and I can fill it out under their name. When I ran out of canned air and couldn't continue cleaning out the towers, I switched to dusting off the outside of everything and cleaning the monitors. At least on the outside everything looks a little better.

When I got home I passed two phone company vans, there was a truck with an empty trailer on the street, and there were two plumber vans in the driveway. So they obviously didn't get finished while I was at work. It turns out that the phone company guys were leaving out house because the backhoe hit a phone line and they had to wait three hours for the phone company to show up, only to find out the lines were dead old lines. And not surprisingly the project ended up being a little less than straight forward. Everyone thought the pipe was in the big side of the back yard but it ended up being on the small side, which meant they had to take apart two fences to get the backhoe where they needed it, instead of just the one. And then they dug a twelve foot hole without finding the problem. At some point the backhoe reached its limit and they had to switch to digging the hole by hand. By the time they called it quits for the day they were fairly confident the problem was occurring right at the connection between our pipe and the city pipe, and it was completely blocked off. Sweet. This means that we are technically still without water but not really. One of the guys said we could still take showers because the water would just go into the hole and the dirt would soak it up. He also said we could use the toilets, and the same thing would happen, and he said not to worry because they had seen everything, but that still sounds pretty gross to me. And kind of disrespectful because they are still going to be down in that hole working. So in my opinion the toilets are still off limits.

I brought my mandolin to work and it turns out it is just like riding a bike. Eventually. It took me a bit to remember the only song I ever knew, but with a lot of trial and error I got it figured out. I just can't remember the name of it. Something about a washer woman, maybe? Irish Washer Woman sounds like a thing. I don't know. I do know that my fingers are way out of shape. Especially my pinky. Not to mention the lack of calluses on my fingers. It has been at least a couple years since I've played the mandolin, maybe even three or four, and it has been almost as long since I've played guitar or bass. So my fingers kind of suck at the moment. I should work on that.

I got off early because they were cutting hours again. Not a problem with me because I kind of feel like crap. Or at least on the verge of feeling like crap. There is a slight bit of light-headedness, my stomach still hates food, and I ache a little. I just want to go to bed and wake up feeling better.

October 10, 2013

A good chunk of my morning was spent bailing out water from the basement. It tends to flood a bit about every six months and we didn't catch it in time (ie – before it flooded) so the plumber had to be called this morning. He was supposed to be there at nine but it was closer to ten o'clock. My sister showed up a little before nine o'clock but I stayed to continue the vacuuming and bailing process so she wasn't having to lug buckets of water out of the basement. And my main goal was to get to work in time for second grade reading groups, which I did.

And then I ended up not helping with groups but cutting out laminated cards for the teacher. That turned into a bit of a thing because two pieces of paper were glued together and then laminated. But during the laminating process or just poor gluing to begin with, made it so the two pieces of paper were not really stuck together anymore. Originally I wanted to use rubber cement, and we had giant tins of the stuff in the workroom, but there weren't any brushes. So I went around looking for brushes and couldn't find any so I ended up using a tiny brush from an extra water color paint set. That only lasted for one card though because the rubber cement ended up bleeding through so you could see the orange bottom paper through the white top paper. This lead me to a glue stick. By the end of the day I had made it through two thirds of the stack maybe. It's a bit tedious. In the future I think it would be better to glue the two pieces of paper together and then cut out the cards before laminating them. That way you could cut out the cards with a little laminate border so you wouldn't have to worry about the glue. Just my thought.

The rest of the day kind of flew by. Helped by the fact that I got there a couple hours late. At the end of the day I went up to the SPED room to look at their “new” SMART board that the librarian gave them because she has a whole new setup in the library. I tried downloading the driver from the website and it wouldn't work but then when I plugged the SMART board into the laptop it automatically downloaded just fine. Technology. The software CD was lacking and the librarian emailed someone about that so we'll see. For the time being they can kind of use the board but the software would provide an actual workspace for them to use, not just using the pen to draw in Paint.

On my way home I stopped and picked up my sister's cross stitch from the framer and it looks really good. The purple mat works perfectly with the purple string I used and the frame looks really good. I am entirely happy with it. After dinner I took it over to my sister's house and she really liked it so I'd say it was worth it. My favorite thing might be the non-glare conservation glass I got because when I took a picture of it with the flash on the picture came out looking really good because the flash wasn't reflected in the glass.

I also used the bathroom when I was over there because the use of water at my house is currently a no-go. The plumbers are coming back tomorrow to tear up the backyard and hopefully fix the flooding problem so it doesn't keep happening every six months. My mom is kind of annoyed by this because she just got grass to grow in the backyard and they are going to have to take down some of the fence to get the backhoe into the backyard. The good news is that they are fairly certain they can get the plumbing fixed tomorrow, so the water can be used again. That would be super convenient. I am just hoping the problem is as straight forward and easy to fix as they are assuming.

I had a visit with the new volunteer kid tonight. A solid thirty minute visit. We went to the gas station again and then sat in the park across the street talking. One of his foster brothers works at the gas station and they were talking about how two of their other foster brothers had skipped school today and their case workers had been looking for them. Kids. I asked the kid about computer camp and he said it was pretty boring because they were basically just showing them how to use Office programs all day. But he got a free laptop out of it so I would say it was worth it.

I've been back into bluegrass the past few days so I stopped by my sister's house on my way home to pick up my mandolin, which I haven't played in forever. And I used the bathroom. We talked for awhile about a bunch of random stuff before I headed home to write this.

Now I will be going to bed because I am exhausted. I think part of it is all the trips I made this morning with buckets of water but I also kind of feel a cold coming on. Other than the exhaustion I kind of feel a bit of the chills and my stomach has been acting up. Hopefully I'll feel better in the morning.

October 9, 2013

Today was an early release day, which I found out about last week probably but completely forgot about today until almost lunch. So that was nice. I might have made a little forward progress on my student directory but I'm still behind where I was the other day. I feel like it is just messing with me. I took a break and looked up potential math websites for one of the second graders who has Down Syndrome. We're going to try out a lower grade level on Odyssey but if that doesn't work maybe one of the websites I found will have something that will keep her entertained. As for second grade, reading centers actually went pretty well. I spent the last bit of my day cleaning out the inside and outside of the computer towers and monitors in the lab. I made it through the first row. Halfway anyway because I still need to clean the keyboards and the front of the monitors. I can continue that work tomorrow. Until I run out of canned air.

When I got home I tried Battlefield 4 again and it ran beautifully. Or pretty close to it, even with all the video settings put on Ultimate. So it definitely wasn't a hardware limitation. My computer restarted in the middle of the night to install updates so maybe that updated the graphics card driver I downloaded yesterday. I don't know. But it was actually fun to play when there wasn't a terrible amount of lag and I wasn't constantly dropping frames. And then I got too cocky I guess because when I tried to play again after dinner it was back to being crap. I was so close to being on board with the PC version but not anymore. I'm taking that tiny step back to sit on the fence. Leaning slightly to console again because even with the game running well I was still crap at it. I do much better on console. Well, marginally better.

Chipotle tonight was nothing to write home about. I feel like maybe I'm kind of over it. Eating it once a week for years can apparently get old after awhile. At least when meat is not an option. Meat makes everything better. I should take the opportunity to cook different things rather than just buying a burrito.

Tonight after becoming frustrated with Battlefield 4, I played some Terraria. I had to log into my old world with my old character to get wood and an axe because mine was still missing in my new world with my new character. Then I created a new large world to run around in. I ran from one end to the other, looting the chests in both oceans. And that kept me up past my bedtime. I have really been neglecting my bedtime this week. I need to get back on that horse. As well as the exercise horse.

October 8, 2013

Well, the popcorn lasted all of one day before disappearing and that annoyed a lot of teachers. It usually lasts a week before getting thrown out. Last year it might end up in someone's room for a little bit but it would always come back to the lounge. I think it was either thrown away by one of the new custodians or someone took it home with them. It is a little annoying though because it kind of defeats the purpose of going through the effort to get the giant bag of popcorn if it disappears when it is still pretty much full. I'll have to put a note on it next time. Explain the obvious to people.

I was pretty happy when I left my student directory yesterday and when I opened it today it was completely broken. I don't know what happened. Now on my form I get an individual record for each guardian a kid has, instead of one record that lists all the guardians. My filter still works to just show individual classes, and initially the report still showed that, but out of the blue the report stopped representing the filter. I know the issue is related to messing with the control sources yesterday but the thought of going back and trying to fix it all, getting back to my original filter issue, isn't very appealing. I need a break from it.

I didn't have a lot going on today. I kind of figured out how to add printers in XP using an IP address but it is much easier in Windows 7. I had a few classes in the lab, I talked to several teachers about their frustration with the disappearing popcorn, got a few compliments on my flower, and tried not to fall asleep. Hopefully tomorrow will be more exciting.

After school I tried a bit more of the Battlefield 4 beta on PC. Domination worked fairly well, a little better when I turned everything to Low, which wasn't a big deal because the graphics don't really matter in fast-paced Domination. I played a little Conquest but I got tired of the loading screens and low FPS so I called it good. And moved onto a bit of Terraria. I got bored on my tiny world and cheated a bit to get to two of the three floating islands. I might create a bigger world so I have more to explore because I'm not really into the boss battle stuff. I like exploring. I quit playing after my axe and all my wood disappeared and I couldn't make any more torches. I'll have to load into my other world sometime and get some wood.

October 7, 2013

I brought the giant bag of popcorn to work in the morning. Never does the short walk from my car to the school seem so long as when I’m carrying a giant bag of popcorn. But I made it without having to stop, even if my right arm did feel a little useless afterward.

One of the funniest mistakes happened during second grade reading groups. Second graders aren’t the best spellers and some have trouble when it comes to ‘b’ and ‘d’. This lead to grandpa’s old old bike becoming grandpa’s old old dick. I was almost tempted to correct it but it was too funny. I texted my friend about it later and he came back with maybe someone should have a talk with the grandpa.

I made a big leap forward in my student directory, finally getting my report to reflect the filter I was applying to my form. So now when I select an individual teacher, I can click the report button, and the report will only show the students for that teacher. This is a very simple thing, even though it took me forever to figure out last year. And almost as long this year. The problem ended up being that the form and the report had different control sources. So I added more fields to one control source, to cover those in the other control source, and switched the form and the report to that control source. Voila. Now I can move onto adding another filter and working out the format of my report. Every now and then I’ll end up with a kid’s name at the bottom of one page and the guardians at the top of the other. I’ll figure it out. Or just adjust the report format for each class.

On the way home from work I stopped at Target to buy things. I wanted to try fried rice again so I bought more fake chicken and broccoli. I also bought teriyaki sauce because I wanted to switch that with the soy sauce. I like teriyaki sauce better.

As for the fried rice, it went much better than my first attempt. The only real problem with my first attempt was trying to cook the egg in the same pan as the rice and vegetables. And my timing was a little off so dinner ended up being much later than I planned. But this time around I had the timing figured out and I made the eggs in a separate pan and then added them into the fried rice. I was much happier with it this time around.

The rest of my night was spent working on the flower I needed to design for work. I started my designing and making the cross stitch for one of the petals. I went with a loose interpretation of David Tennant as the Doctor. There is a site online that makes a lot of pop culture cross stitch figures that are really simple looking. So I used that design but made it a little shorter and less awkward so it would fit on the petal. Originally I was going to use rubber cement to glue down the cross stitch along with the crocheted thing, the knitted thing, and the other stuff. But the cross stitch cloth just sucked up the glue. It also absorbed crazy glue. So I ended up going with mod podge and that worked out really well. After gluing down the crafted things I glued down the pictures of a music note, books, and an NES controller on the other petals. On the leaves I wrote in Morse Code “Once upon a time there were words written in Morse Code and these are those words.” Then I put my initials in Braille below that and colored the leaves and stem green. It all turned out pretty well and kept me up past my bedtime but it was worth it.

I downloaded a beta driver for my graphics card that is supposed to make Battlefield 4 run better but my work on the flower didn't allow me to try it out. So maybe tomorrow. I’ve got my fingers crossed. Even if I am leaning more toward buying it on a console.

October 6, 2013

I played more Terraria and I had a little more success with Battlefield 4 on the PC today. I turned down the graphics and that seemed to help a little bit but there was still lag and drops in the FPS. I've read where people with incredible setups are experiencing the same type of issues so I know it's not all my computer. Which can run pretty much everything else on top settings. So I don't know that it would be worth it to look into upgrading parts of my computer. I am casually considering a next gen console now. Leaning more toward the PS4 because it is a hundred dollars cheaper and will allow game capture through HDMI, unlike the PS3. I'm not entirely convinced on the purchase yet because gaming on the PC is so much cheaper. Paying sixty bucks for a game on console is ridiculous when you can wait awhile and get it on PC for ten bucks. Or less. But I can see getting a console, maybe splurging a couple times a year on a full-price game, and using the console to watch Blu-Rays or something. I don't know.

I caught up on my DVR today and I started re-watching the beginning of the Yogscast's Minecraft experience. Those videos were one of the major deciding factors in me getting Minecraft. I liked it before they got into the whole Shadow of Israphel thing. It was innovative at the time because they were the first people I was aware of that turned Minecraft into an adventure, but it eventually got pretty convoluted and there were too many breaks in the series so I lost track of what was going on.

After dinner I made enough tortilla chips for the whole week. I was baking enough for three days and then making another batch on Wednesday but it became hard to find the motivation on Wednesday night to make them. Because I'm lazy. I was doing it in smaller batches because I wasn't sure how long they would keep so this will be a little experiment to see if they are still good by Friday. Fingers crossed.

Tonight I wrote my monthly report for my volunteer thing, figured out how I want to design my flower for school, and I went and got popcorn from the theater. I was waiting until after MAP testing to bring it in and several people at school have mentioned it, so I figured tomorrow was as good a time as any. Even if going to retrieve it has kept me up past my bedtime. I did take a late nap this afternoon so that already kind of screwed up my bedtime.

October 5, 2013

“Tell me where the girl is, and I'll go find her.”

“I don't know where she is.”

“I'm going to have to ask you to be more specific.”

(The Shadow Of The Wind, p.454)

I played a little bit of the PC beta for Battlefield 4 today and it was kind of a fail. I experienced the same problems I have playing Battlefield 3 on PC. But with worse lag. I've heard the lag thing is a pretty widespread issue with the PC beta so I won't judge it too harshly for that. So then my main problem was just getting into a game. I only found two or three servers that actually had people in them and then had to wait at least ten minutes, usually closer to twenty or more minutes, to actually get into the game. And the same thing happens when I want to play Battlefield 3, even when I pick Quick Match, so that's not a beta thing and would probably be the same with the actual game. When I decide to play a game, I want to play the game. I don't want to spend more time trying to get into a game than I do actually playing it. And in this case all the waiting was pretty much for nothing because the lag was so bad in the game that I couldn't kill anyone. So even though I like that on PC there is more going on in the maps (more people and vehicles and capture points), I probably won't be buying the PC version of Battlefield 4. I'm going to try again tomorrow to see if anything changes but it's not looking good.

I played more Terraria and did a lot of spelunking. I experienced my second Blood Moon since the update which makes me think the frequency of those have increased because in all the hours I played before the update I only experienced a few Blood Moons. I now have claw boots and gloves which allow me to jump up walls, slide down them, and stick in one spot on the wall. That has been pretty convenient. I also spent enough time in the jungle biome today to get the material for an ivy whip which is like a grappling hook but it has three hooks. This is helpful when trying to get out of holes or get up to hard to reach ores. It has also saved my life many times when I was falling because I could grab a wall or something before hitting the ground.

Tonight at work I spent a little time finishing The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. It was a good book but I'm sick of actual or potential incest. And it was a confusing book to have week-long breaks between reading sessions because the two main characters live very similar lives and I was having trouble remembering what happened to which person. The flow of the book was also interesting, being broken up between the present and the past, with a different narrator at times. I liked it, though. For the most part. My favorite character by far was Fermin, mostly for his comedic relief.

I also spent some time tonight crocheting with the tiny crochet hook I have and knitting with toothpicks, using the same string I use to cross stitch. I am thinking of putting a little crocheted square and a knitted square on the flower I have to decorate for work, and they need to be pretty small. So I went really small. Knitting with toothpicks is pretty tricky. My main issue was the length of the toothpick, which made them hard to hang onto. I was also using cheap toothpicks so I would get the occasional splinter of wood coming off. The hardest part though was the first row and then getting the string off the toothpick to finish the work. Finishing was a bitch really. But I managed to make a tiny square with a basket weave pattern and it looks pretty cool.

We had a midnight show of Gravity tonight but that was pretty much wishful thinking because it really hasn't been that popular this weekend. Probably nowhere close to selling half the theater for any given show and usually well under twenty people for the last set. We don't really need two prints of it. Or to have a midnight for it. And thankfully the patrons agreed and no one came to it. I probably would have been sent home anyway but it was still nice.