Today was a pretty laid back day. I spent the first couple of hours
figuring out how to rename hundreds of pictures automatically. We
got higher quality student and staff pictures for the yearbook and
they all had weird ID names instead of the name of the person or a
student ID. It also came with a text file containing a master list
(including the weird ID name, the person's name, teacher, grade, and
other things). I was able to import that list into Excel and I had
the bright idea that I could somehow use that spreadsheet to rename
all the pictures without having to click on every single picture and
rename them.
It took a lot of Googling and in the end I didn't find exactly what I
wanted and had to cobble together several different things. First, I
divided each class and then staff into separate spreadsheets so I
could easily rename one group at a time and put them into folders. I
was a little surprised by my forethought because it would have been a
pain going back through and dropping pictures into class folders.
Second, everyone's name was split into two cells so I needed to join
those together into one cell, and then add '.jpg' to the end so it
could be used for the new image name. And then in another cell I had
to write the formula that would rename the picture from the name in
the first cell to the name in the second cell (the one that I had
created). Next, I copied those cells with the renaming formula into
a text file and saved it as a batch file, one class at a time. After
each class I would save the batch file and then click on it, and it
would rename all the pictures in the folder for the most recent class
I had added. Then I was able to highlight and drag those into the
appropriate class folder. It was actually pretty simple after all
the initial formulas and stuff were figured out. And I was pretty
excited that it worked. That initial part did take awhile but it
would have taken several hours more (and a lot of pain in my fingers
and wrists) if I had to go through each image and type in the name.
Even with all the Excel stuff I had time to work on the storybooks.
I didn't finish the one I was working on but I did finish the page I
have been working on. That damn checkered pattern. I also got the
next two pages scanned so on Monday I will be able to stitch them
together, resize it, fix the colors, and work on yet another
checkered pattern. Hooray.
Second grade reading centers went alright. My first group was
somewhat annoying because we started at the listening center. They
were supposed to read along with the CD which is a nearly impossible
task. The lady reading the story reads way too slow and the kids
could never quite figure out the tempo. But I couldn't trust them to
read together without the CD either so there was really no winning.
Just surviving. When the story was over they got to do silent
reading which went a lot better. I ended up sitting with one kid who
just kept pulling books out of his desk like it was a clown car. We
started by looking through a Scooby-Doo book and then I had him read
my Even Monsters Need Haircuts,
which had a pretty good ending. We got halfway through the next book
when it was time to switch groups. I ended up with the really
annoying group but only one of them was screwing around today.
And some random bits. The
kindergarten teacher my mom works with won Teacher Of The Month from
one of the radio stations so their class had a pizza and ice cream
party this afternoon. I stopped by for a little bit but didn't
partake in the food. It smelled pretty good though. This morning I
“fixed” one of the laptops for the library sub so she could get
on the internet. I fixed it by logging off and back on. Technology
is a mystery. At the end of the day I wrote a very wordy letter of
congratulations for one of the receptionists. I think the
librarian's husband finally agreed to come in and fix the big black
cord that is hanging from the ceiling in the office. They did
something this summer and rather than run the cord through the wall
they just dropped it down from the ceiling. The librarian's husband
is a contractor or something so he agreed to come fix it and the
receptionist wanted to write him a funny letter saying he had won the
bid, and she asked for my help. So I wrote something ridiculous that
doesn't make much sense but it was kind of entertaining.
It had started to ice up a bit
during the day and after school I had to scrape my windshield. It
wasn't too bad though because I was under a tree. I also scraped my
mom's windshield because she was parked in front of me, not under a
tree. I nearly scraped the librarian's windshield because she was
across the street, but I didn't, and I kind of feel bad about that.
Next time.
Tonight I did not go visit the new
volunteer kid because of the weather and he would have canceled
anyway because he has a research paper due tomorrow and he hadn't
finished it yet. Instead of the visit, I spent my night watching
YouTube videos and playing Minecraft.
I cheated in all the seeds for my garden and replanted it. All the
stuff that had been their previous had turned to asparagus, which is
very odd. I also ended up with four extra types of seeds that I had
apparently not come across before, so I expanded my garden. This
expansion left room for a little patio so I added that in and I'm
pretty happy with the look.
At the end of the night I signed up
for Duolingo, a website for learning languages. Recently I have
wanted to relearn some of the little bit of Spanish I picked up in
school. And then tonight I heard about this website so I decided to
check it out. I went through the first basic set of lessons and I am
liking it so far. It is all vaguely familiar which makes it easier
so we'll see how I feel about things when I get further along and out
of my familiar zone. We'll also see if I keep up with it longer than
tonight. I hope so.
And now it is way too late for me to
still be up. But I get to sleep in tomorrow thanks to a professional
development day. I am thankful for that.
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