November 6, 2013

Today was a productive day. Before lunch I was able to finish all of the card art. At one point I forgot to switch the font on the vertically ones but I got that fixed and so far I haven't heard of any typos but I'm sure there are at least a few. On all the horizontal ones the information on the back of the card was typed upside down so that it will be right-side up when the card is folded. It would have been better for proofreading to flip all the pictures upside down instead but that would have taken a lot more time and I just continued the theme started by the sixth grade teacher, even if the only thing remaining from her input is the font. Hopefully she doesn't actually notice that though. I kind of feel bad because she did put at least a handful of hours into putting cards together in Publisher and I changed all of it. But I did a better job. I'm just a little more particular and I have more time on my hands.

I also managed to finish cutting all the stuff I laminated the other day for one of the resource teachers. That was a whole bunch of cutting. I lost count of the number of pages. But it is finished and it actually wasn't too bad. It was kind of nice to just sit on the floor, listening to This American Life, in my own little world, and cutting stuff.

I took a short break from the cutting to design something for one of the other resource teachers. She isn't at the school in the afternoon so I left my rough draft on her desk. I can't remember what they are called but they are still starburst things with double letters in the middle and two words that show an example of the sound they make. Not sure if that makes sense but she wants to put them on the wall next to the the posters she has that demonstrate the sounds the vowels make. So maybe they are letters that make vowel sounds? I don't know. Anyway, I think I may need to make them bigger but I'll find out about that tomorrow.

At the end of the day I got a brief start on digitizing the sixth grade storybooks. Very brief because I only scanned one cover and got about a fourth of it edited in Gimp. It's a start though. I did confirm that the scanner is only big enough for normal paper, not legal paper, which means I will need to scan each page twice and then stick them back together in Gimp. That will more than double the length of the project, depending on how lucky I am with scanning. Hooray. But I'm done with card art so I welcome the challenge. Although I might need to check back on that sentiment when I'm knee deep in frustration.

We had an assembly today and it was really good. It was Richie Castro as the History Hunter, accompanied by a very enthusiastic girl playing Scout. He goes into a giant history book, finds a dreamcatcher thing (that he called something else), puts it into his magical guitar, and it is turned into a song that he and Scout sing. It sounds pretty ridiculous, and it was, but it was also a lot of fun to watch and the kids loved it.

At Chipotle the girl thought she knew my order and I jumped the gun so I ended up with corn salsa instead of cheese. To be fair to her that used to be my order. She was moving down the line and said “just corn” but I assumed she was going to say “just cheese” so I said “yes” right after “just” and she piled a bunch of corn on. I could have corrected the mistake but I don't like confrontation (note the card art situation with the sixth grade teacher mentioned earlier) and I would have kind of felt like a dick because I did say yes. And it ended up not being a bad thing because it has been awhile since I've gotten corn.

My new headphones arrived today. I like them but wearing them is going to take a bit of getting used to because they don't have an actual size adjustment. They have a little wing on each side that touch your head, instead of the top connecting pieces, and they automatically adjust to your head. I'm not sure about it yet. It is weird not feeling them on the top of my head but I keep expecting them to slide down my head. And they do a little bit but I think most of it is just in my head. We'll see how it goes. Other than that, they are an open air design, which means the ear pieces only have a mesh covering over them. This allows you to hear the environment around you, and lets everyone around you hear what you're listening to, but it apparently leads to a better sound. They do sounds pretty good so there must be something to it. The first thing I listened to with them was the 3D barbershop. Freaky. I had my eyes closed and I kept having to fight the urge to turn my head and look for the dude. Being able to hear the sounds going on in the world around me really added to the realism of the barbershop clip. It is cool enough with regular headphones, and even earbuds, but it was on a whole different level with my new headphones. Next I want to try them out with an FPS like Battlefield 3 because they are supposed to be really good with directional cues, allowing you to not only easily hear enemies but know where they are coming from. It'll be fun to try out.

Tonight I watched YouTube videos (until I remembered the CMAs were on) and farmed a bit more in Terraria. I got several goodie bags but didn't get anything new out of them. I think the only thing left that I want is the Ninja Turtle costume but I keep getting rotten eggs and cat ears. I have no need for such things.