August 12, 2014

I must admit that I am unsurprised at how poorly my attempt at sleep went last night. I got in bed at eleven o'clock, laid there until midnight, read from a couple different books until 1:30AM, and finally fell asleep sometime after two o'clock. This morning I woke up at 5:40AM, decided I was just going to lay there for a little bit so I turned my alarm off, and then ended up sleeping until 7:01AM. That was unintentional but I still had plenty of time to get ready. I remembered several hours later that I had forgotten to eat or drink anything before going to work. Whoops.

The first day back at school went relatively well. All of the computers in the lab worked, except for mine. I guess all the computers were moved to shampoo the carpet and in all of that my computer was forgotten when the techs came around to re-image all of the computers. This turned into a failed trust relationship. I sent in a trouble ticket and not too long later one of the techs came to fix it. It was the gruff, old one who doesn't have the best communication skills and for a long time wasn't allowed out of the office because too many people complained. He was a bit rude with me when he came in because he had tried to call the lab but I think it was during the assembly. He was annoyed about that and that I didn't mention in my trouble ticket that it was a teacher computer. He said if I had given him the name of the computer he could have fixed the problem remotely. I told him I had no idea what the name of the computer was and he lightened up the slightest bit and the showed me how to see what the name was. Then he told me that he would go back to his office and give me a call when everything had been reset. Quite a bit of time went by without me hearing from him and then he walked back in the lab. Apparently the remote method didn't work because my computer hadn't been re-imaged, so he had to come back and “do it the old fashioned way.” I don't know what all that entailed but it worked and I was able to log into my computer.

We had an assembly this morning and I forgot all about the part where all the staff has to go up to the front of the gym and introduce themselves. It's really not that nerve-racking being up in front of all those kids. You'd think it would be, maybe, or maybe you wouldn't, but I thought it would be and it's not that bad. I ended up saying basically the same thing I did last year but I don't think it was as funny. Oh well.

I helped the librarian fix a printer (by unplugging it from the network and then plugging it back in) and I helped one of the Resource teachers download and open an Excel file. In the lab I went around and changed the 'Shut Down' button in the Start Menu to a 'Log Off' button, I adjusted the time for the monitors to turn off so it wasn't happening so frequently, and I installed Reading Counts. I still need to go back around and put my Shortcut link to frequently used sites on all the computer but I still need to make that. I sent out an email asking the teachers if there were any sites they wanted added to the page before I make it so I don't waste my time adding something that'll never get used, or not adding something that a teacher ends up using all the time. That might not happen until next week.

When I was finally able to get back on my computer I printed out and hung up a sign-up sheet for the computer lab and started working on a project for one of the Resource teachers. She wanted me to edit a couple pages so that they referred to reading stuff, not spelling stuff. She liked the image on the page and wanted to still use that but I wasn't able to find it online. I managed to find a digital copy of the page, cut the image out, and dropped it into Google to see if there was a higher quality image but there wasn't. So I decided to just edit the digital copy. I went through Word fonts until I found the font that had been used, opened the PDF in Gimp, and then erased words and added words in. It looked pretty good on the screen but when I printed it out the words I added were noticeably less blurry than the original words, which made it look weird. So now I'm just going to replace all the words. At this point it would have just been easier to recreate the entire thing from scratch but whatever. I think the outcome will be decent. I should be able to finish that tomorrow but we'll see. At the moment I have six other things on my To-Do list, and I don't think this project is a great priority for the Resource teacher.

It was only a half day and I ended up leaving around 12:30PM. I was talking to the Kindergarten teachers on my way out and my computer issue came up. The one teacher who my mom works with said she doesn't like calling for help because they always treat her like an idiot and get mad when she can't do something. She told us she is coming closer and closer to telling them that she doesn't expect them to come and teach kids how to read so they shouldn't expect her to know everything about computers. I really hope she says that someday.

When I got home I ate lunch and drank a bunch a lot of Gatorade and water. Awhile later I went to meet my sister and my dad over at my grandma's. My brother showed up an hour or two later. We talked about a whole bunch of random stuff but we also occasionally talked about the latest happenings with my grandma. I can't remember if I wrote about it but I recently learned my grandma's side of the cat story from my sister. It is a little different from my aunt's.

According to my grandma, who I trust because she is the one who was actually there, when she went to answer the door, it ended up being a guy who was roofing a neighbor's house and wanted to know if she wanted a free estimate. They were talking through the storm door because my grandma didn't really want to trust a stranger and while they were talking the cat came up and started scratching/attacking my grandma's leg. When she waved her hand down to shoo him away he continued attacking her leg but also started going after her arm. The roofer asked if she wanted help and she said no but after the arm attack started and she started bleeding a lot the guy opened the door and helped her out. Thank goodness the door was unlocked. My aunt said the cat was trying to escape and my grandma was trying to stop him. My grandma said it was an unprovoked attack and he couldn't have been trying to escape because the storm door was still closed. I believe my grandma. Due to her having to go to the ER the cops and animal control are no investigating the incident and the cat has been quarantined for several days. My grandma had to take several things because of the cat bites and that has screwed up all the other medications she is on. In her words, it has been a major setback.

Even with two different stories out there, my uncle knew nothing of the incident. He called my grandma about bringing her computer down and a bigger TV that he has and isn't using and she said she would have to talk to my aunt to see if that was alright. That pissed off my uncle because my aunt has kind of taken over my grandma's life and all decisions have to go through her. Even though my grandma is an adult. Adult enough to be the mother of my aunt. Crazy. Anyway, in that conversation my grandma brought up the cat incident and my uncle mentioned that was the first he had heard about it and my grandma broke down and told him the whole story, crying in the process. My uncle later got on the phone with my aunt to talk about things, wanting to see if she would tell him about the cat. He gave her plenty of opportunities but it never came up. She didn't know that he knew and she made no effort to tell him. So that pissed him off even more. My grandma wants my dad or uncle to do something about the whole thing but they have both said that is up to my aunt. It's her cat and her house and they don't have a say. My aunt's response to the whole thing has been to change her Facebook profile picture to a picture of the cat. Wow. Hey look, it's the horrible cat that just attacked my mother. I don't get the thought process there.

At the end of our time hanging out at the house today my dad mentioned the things my grandma had said we could take the last time she and my aunt were up here. It was mainly the books and stuff that were on the kitchen table because that was where they were sitting while they talked. It also included the train set that I used to play with when I was a kid with my grandpa. My dad said we should take it before anyone changed their minds (mainly my aunt). So I brought home the train and several more books. At some point I need to get the train track, which is attached to a board. My sister also took most, if not all, of the photo albums. My dad had mentioned the book I turned into a PDF and brought up the idea of having me scan all the old family pictures. At that my aunt said that she had been thinking about taking them and eventually, some time in the future maybe, getting around to scanning them. When my dad told that to my step-mom she said “fuck no” because her sister had done the same thing with their family pictures and they haven't been seen in almost thirty years. When my dad mentioned it to my uncle he said “hell no”. He liked what I had done with the book and thought it was a better idea to have me do it. So my dad told us to take the pictures today because he didn't know when my aunt and grandma were coming back up and he didn't want the pictures to disappear.

I ate dinner when I got home and then watched a few YouTube videos before putting in What Dreams May Come. Robin Williams has a lot of funny movies but I'm not ready for that yet. I needed to feel the sadness of this movie and have the uplifting outcome. The movie is all the more sad now that he is gone but it is nice to think that he can now be in a better place, like in the movie. Using the movies logic he is in his own personal Hell but I would like to think those that have gone before are there to get him out safely. I'm not religious and I don't truly believe in the existence of Heaven or Hell or an afterlife, but I really like the idea of it. I can see why it caught on and why so many people believe. It is a great thought and I like thinking that people are in a better place once they leave the suffering that is their life on this planet.