April 29, 2014

Somehow I forgot that when I got home yesterday I watched The Fantastic Four. The one from the 90s. And holy cow was it from the 90s. And had I not known that I would have said 80s. It was somewhere well below great. But I still kind of liked how cheesy it was. I'm not surprised that comic book movies didn't really take off until recently because the special effects are key. And they were still apparently awful back in the 90s. I am often amazed at how good something can look in the present, and even in your memory of the past, but going back and actually looking at years later completely ruins it. I often site N64 games, which I distinctly remember looking incredible. And now they look horrible. So maybe in the 90s the special effects in The Fantastic Four looked pretty good. Hard to believe. I'm interested to see what 2014 movies look like in the future. At the moment some of the CGI looks incredibly real, but will it in the future? I think a big problem comes from higher definition TVs, and those are still getting higher and higher in definition so it will be interesting.

Anyway, today. Testing. Both known and unknown. My morning consisted of two tests that I was fully aware of because I had put them on the schedule. One MAP test and one State Assessment. Both were uneventful.

This afternoon there was only supposed to be one test, at two o'clock, but around one o'clock one of the sixth grade classes showed up to take a test. Last week the teacher had communicated with me about adding another testing session this week, on Thursday, as a make-up time because only a few of his kids finished the first test. I added that to the schedule and didn't think anything else of it. At some point later he signed up on the MAP sign-up sheet (which is irrelevant at this point and I should probably take down) to come in at one o'clock today. Well, third grade was still in the lab because it was their usual time to be there and it was a tad awkward because it was a complete surprise to me and the third grade teacher that the sixth graders were coming.

After sorting all of that out, the sixth graders stood out in the hall while I went around and got all their tests set up. Depending on the state of the computers before I start, that can take five or ten minutes, and it was the latter in this case. After going through all that I found out they only had thirty minutes to test because they had PE at 1:45PM. One person did finish but thirty minutes is now long enough to take a sixth grade reading test. So now they have started both tests but only a few have actually finished a test. I'm a little annoyed by this mainly for scheduling reasons. I had everything worked out and now I'm having to randomly throw in new times, messing with other regular lab times. They will be back tomorrow, for a scheduled test, and the goal is for the kids to at least finish one of their tests. Some of them won't and will have to return at least a couple more times, but hopefully during another class' test so I won't have to inconvenience anyone. I just want testing to be over with.

The third grade test went well. The teacher was a bit strict in the beginning because they came in and they were all talking. She reminded them that they were there to take a test and that talking got them kicked out of the lab yesterday. That shut them up pretty quick. When most of the kids had finished it started to get a little loud so she took them back to the room, again making them shut up with her words. I want that kind of power. All but one kid finished. It was the same kid who I sent to the office during State Assessments when he started acting up. Today he said his head hurt and it appeared to be the truth because he kind of looked like crap. I kept him going until he made it halfway through before stopping his test. That way he'll be on the downward slope when he comes back to finish it.

When the last kid had finished testing, I went up to the SPED room because one of the teachers couldn't print from her computer again. This time the IP address of the printer didn't change but it looked like it did change in the printer properties on her computer. I still don't know how to change the port for an installed printer so I just deleted it and reinstalled it. And thankfully it worked.

While I was in doing that, the teacher got a call from one of the paras in the sixth grade room right next door because she was having trouble with one of the kids. Generally not a good sign when a para has to literally call for backup when she is twenty feet away. The SPED teacher went over there and a few minutes later walked by the door with the kid. A short time later I was finished so I walked out and headed the other way. About the time I hit the stairs the SPED teacher came jogging in from the exit door at the end of the hall, which was in the opposite direction I had just seen her walking. As she got closer she said she needed the principal to call her and then she ran out the door toward the playground.

Right before I left the SPED room the principal had come in looking for the SPED teacher because she heard something was up and I had pointed her in the direction I had originally seen them go. So now I headed that way, stopping by the office where they told me she had just put her jacket on and went out the front door looking for the kid. By the time I stepped out she was already at the corner and headed along the side of the building, way out of range for me to get her attention, so I went back inside and down the hall to see if I could head her off. Which I couldn't. When I got to the door the original para was standing there and she said the principal had gone by, headed toward the back of the building. I stepped out that door just in time to see the principal start to jog toward the playground. I informed the para of this and she headed that way but through the building because it was faster. At that point I considered my job done because the principal was obviously aware of the situation and I had nothing to contribute to the situation. I don't know how it all resolved but the kid was leaving the principal's office when I was clocking out for the day.

When I got home I knitted, maybe added a couple inches to the purple scarf. It is looking longer but nowhere close to scarf length. I need to kick it into high gear but my wrists and forearms are feeling it. I would be happy with a couple inches a day and a foot on the weekends. I'm running out of time.

Tonight I watched Hellphone, a French movie I saw years ago and have wanted to see again. Once a year or two I look it up and it is always an overpriced DVD, but tonight I found it on YouTube. I remembered it being an entertaining movie and it has held up. I also think it would be a pretty funny movie but it is in French so I have no idea what they're saying. This version had subtitles but they were in another foreign language I don't speak so they were no help. I found various versions of an English subtitle track, and I didn't look into it too much, but I imagine you have to have the movie and then copy it and add the file in. Or maybe I'm over-thinking it. Either way, I don't actually have the movie, and if I downloaded it from YouTube, it would still have the foreign subtitles on it, which would just interfere with the English ones. For now, I will just have to live with the French version, and trying to imagine all the funny things they are saying.

While I watched that, and then YouTube videos, I finished up working on the card the fifth grade teacher wanted me to turn into card art. In my downtime today I was able to pretty much finish all the editing, but I wanted to look at it on my monitors at home because they are bigger and clearer than the monitor I work on at school. This came in handy and I was able to see a lot of random artifacts that I hadn't been able to see at school, and I could erase them. Tomorrow I should be able to get it into Publisher, come up with something to put on the back, and print off a test one to see how it looks in the real world. Hopefully not too bad.