Wednesday, January 8, 2014

January 8, 2014

I am tired. Tired enough that I took a very brief nap tonight while sitting in my chair at the computer. And now I am going to write this so I can read a bit and then go to bed.

Today was a day. Very insightful. At work I made a little progress on storybooks but nothing to write home about. I added teachers to Type To Learn and then added in all their kids. I know at least one teacher started messing with it so there is that. Teachers have the ability to customize assignments for their whole class or individual kids but I don't know how useful that will be. When you first start you take a practice test that determines where you should start and what you need to work on. That seems pretty helpful.

I gave my second grade spelling test this morning, which I completely forgot about, but it went fairly well. I only had to threaten them once to be quiet. Second grade reading groups went well also. The teacher switched things up a bit this semester, not drastically or anything, but it seems to be working. Or maybe the kids just haven't fully wound themselves up after winter break. Regardless, I hope it lasts.

After reading groups I went back to the lab for a bit and worked on storybooks before going back to the second grade room to supervise indoor lunch recess. I'm not entirely sure that I am necessary because there is already a para in there, and they were covered in all the other rooms as well. But I still put off my lunch so I can wander around the room and talk with the kids. A couple kids chose to spend their time reading books. There is hope.

I eventually got to eat lunch around one o'clock which was earlier than I thought. I also wasn't starving. Last semester I would eat two granola bars for breakfast. I don't think they really did anything for me but it felt like I was doing something. And I was starving if I didn't get to eat lunch by eleven o'clock, noon at the latest. This semester I have started eating a cup of the cashew/almond/cranberry trail mix for breakfast and it appears to have a bit more substance than the granola bars. Although the past couple of days could be a fluke and tomorrow I could be starving by ten o'clock.

I got an extra thirty minutes on the clock this afternoon because I attempted to help the librarian upload student pictures to her library thing. The first problem was that she could only upload one picture at a time. The only way to do more than one was to make a ZIP folder. She didn't have a program on her computer to do that so I downloaded 7ZIP and made a couple ZIP folders. But these also failed because it was missing an index file. None of the pictures are labeled with the kid's names, just random numbers and it uses an index file to match the number with a name. This is the same thing I used awhile ago to rename all the pictures with names rather than numbers, where I used Excel and then created a small program thing that would automatically rename everything. Anyway, the index file that already existed wasn't called the right thing for the library program and just to check, when I renamed it to the “missing” file, it said it was the wrong format. The librarian didn't have any of this trouble last year but she also didn't have the files from last year so I couldn't check what format it needed to be in. So she is going to check with some of the other librarians in the district and see if they know what is up.

After work I went and picked up Chipotle and it was eventually dinner. I had a lot of YouTube videos stored up because we haven't had a proper Chipotle night in weeks so throughout dinner I showed them on the TV via the Chromecast. Possibly next week we are going to watch the Big Fat Quiz for this year. That will be entertaining. I enjoyed this years because it was recent enough that I actually remembered a lot of the stuff they were talking about.

Tonight I kind of wanted to play Battlefield 4 but not enough to actually play it. I was too tired. Instead I watched YouTube videos and hung up some Christmas lights in my room. I thought they would provide some chill lighting for when I just want to lay back and relax. At the moment I like them but we'll see if that opinion changes. The annoying thing at the moment is that they have eight different modes and just solid-on, which one would think is the normal mode, is the last on the list. So every time I plug them in I have to hit the button a whole bunch of times to get to just normal lights. The plug is also really loose when plugged in so if you breathe in the wrong direction it will fall out. Minor gripes for really cheap lights.


And now I am going to read a chapter or two in my book and go to bed. Glorious sleep awaits me.

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