January 30, 2015

I think I'm getting a sore throat. It is in its infancy right now but I feel something. Not surprising considering my mom has been sick for a week and now has bronchitis, and I'm constantly coming in contact with sick kids at work. It was inevitable.

Today was the last day of MAP testing. Winter MAP testing, at least. This morning I went and got the one first grader who still needed to finish her reading test (not counting the two absent kids). While she worked on her test I wrote random things with my left hand. I also helped her out a few times when she had a question. Not giving her answers but slowing her down and having her sound things out and read out loud when she got longer passages. When she finished I walked her back to her room just in case her class wasn't there. She told me before we left the lab that she knew her class was in the room, and she was completely positive, but then she spent the whole walk back telling me about one time when her class wasn't in the room. She went up to the SPED room and the teacher wasn't there so she went back to her classroom but the class wasn't there anymore so she went to the office and they called for the SPED teacher but they couldn't find her. It sounded like quite the ordeal. We managed to avoid all of that this time because her class was in the room.

After I walked her back to her room I went down to the second grade room to see if she needed any help because I usually go down there on Friday for reading groups. I was just in time to go get iPads. They are in the music room now and the music teacher wasn't there so I had to go borrow a key from the office, let myself in and get iPads, take the key back to the office, and then go back to the second grade room. Where I had to authenticate all of the iPads and then bring up the website the kids were going to. There were extra iPads and they were all lost in their own worlds so I sat down on the carpet with them and played some random, connect-the-dots game for a little bit. When they were done I went back to the office to get the key, put the iPads back, dropped the key back off, and then went to the lab for the other second grade class.

This afternoon I retested two first graders from the other class. They were the two who went too fast when they first took it and didn't get scores so they had to take it again. And then the first nonexistent score for one of the kids showed up in his overall score and the second score for the other kid disappeared. So just to be safe we retested both of them. One did slightly worse on one section and slightly better on the other. I was sitting right by him and tried to get him to slow down several times but even when he appeared to be completely focused his actions proved that false. The other kid, however, really took his time and did way better. I was glad to see that. I think part of his thing is the kid he sits next to, who has been annoying since last year. I'm going to try separating them for the next test so they don't feel the need to race each other.

When I wasn't testing or working with classes in the lab, I finalized my MAP spreadsheets, minus first grade and one of the fifth grade classes because I'm waiting for final scores. Then I printed off reports for the teachers, along with the two spreadsheets I made and the pie charts. When all the final scores are in I'll be able to make pie charts showing the change from Fall to Winter for the school as a whole. I'm interested to see that one.

After work I remember to go to Target. There was a group of high school kids behaving like high school kids, and I managed to be in their presence multiple times. The whole time they were listening to music, being played out loud from one of their phones. They were talking loud, not only to be heard over their music, but also because the things high school kids talk about in Target is very important and needs to be heard. And at one point one of the girls was standing in their cart to read bottles of pop. I think I like elementary school kids better. Anyway, along with other things, I also bought a broom and dustpan for my bathroom. I'm kind of excited about that. Which makes me kind of sad. That is way too adult.

I don't work at the theater this weekend but I did get my paycheck today. I don't know if $0.49 is a record for the company but I'm pretty sure it is the smallest check I have ever seen. I actually earned $0.62 but taxes. And $0.08 when into my 401k, so I'm probably set for retirement now.

My sister dropped off cookies tonight. They were the leftover cookies, that wouldn't fit in the container, from the ones she made my brother for his birthday. She had her dogs with her so instead of coming inside she just left them on the little table thing outside the front door and texted me. And after I grabbed them I confirmed the drop. I told her that it was exactly the same way my drug dealer does it. The cookies are really good. I don't know exactly what kind they are but based on taste an appearance they are chocolate chip with sprinkles baked into them. They are also nice and chewy, not hard, and my sister said that was probably due to her using brown sugar instead of regular sugar. I'm all for that.

I spent my night watching some YouTube videos and then a lot of DVRed stuff. I'm all caught up with Sirens and The Twilight Zone. It looks like the first season of Sirens is on Netflix so I'm going to need to check that out. It is one of the shows that looked really good, and I may have seen part of an episode at some point, but I have been kind of out of TV for awhile, only recently getting back into it with the lack of internet and YouTube. So far it has lived up to my expectations. It is very funny. It kind of makes me want to be a paramedic but I've heard too many horror stories from my dad.

Now it is late so I'm going to go to bed, with my fingers crossed that I don't wake up with a serious sore throat.

January 29, 2015

I am hoping this entry will be short because I have a headache and I'm tired and I am looking forward to sleep.

This morning I retested a fifth grader (who ended up going up 23 points so that was good) and nearly finished testing the first graders. That was the class that didn't have their first scheduled test because the internet was sucking. And I can't remember but I think one of their other testing times was a bit truncated. This morning we were able to finish their Math test, minus the two kids who were gone, and this afternoon one girl came back and finished part one of her Reading test. Hopefully she's not sick tomorrow so we can get that finished.

Speaking of first graders, this afternoon the first graders had a performance in the gym with the theme of Clifford the Big Red Dog. This morning when they came to the lab they were all wearing red, a fact that I didn't pick up on until they were lined up to leave, and one of the kids mentioned it. It was a pretty cute performance, with some choreography, and I could almost understand most of what they were singing.

I accidentally discovered that I didn't have to make all the pie charts I made for the last MAP test, for this MAP test because I saved that file 'As' and when I put in the numbers for this round of testing the pie charts automatically updated. That was a nice surprise. Then I figured out a way to put the charts in Publisher and I'm working on a new way of arranging them. To get them into Publisher I had to copy the chart in Excel, paste it in Excel as a picture, cut it out of Excel, and then paste it in Publisher. Probably more convoluted than it needs to be but it works.

I remembered that I was going to go to Target after school after I got home for dinner and picked up a Target bag filled with stuff I brought from the old house. We'll see if I remember tomorrow.

I went to the old house after work to read a textbook and that was successful. I managed to start/finish a chapter and that only leaves one more for the week. I still need to post at least one reply on the discussion thread for this week but my brain isn't in the mood to come up with coherent thoughts right now. At least ones I will be graded on.

Now I'm watching the Neebs livestream, for the first time in the new house. It is really nice not having to drive across town to watch it. And with the way I'm feeling tonight I probably wouldn't have gone, which would have been a shame because it is a good stream tonight.

It was my brother's birthday today and I sent him a text because that's what people do now. He apparently has bronchitis so at some point in the future when he is feeling better we'll get together and I can give him the books I got him and send him the Neebs birthday song. I could have sent that to him today because I kind of want to see his reaction.

January 28, 2015

Today there wasn't a single MAP test. It was nice. At least I don't think there was a MAP test. None are coming to mind.

This morning I started working on my spreadsheets but was asked to come look at a projector in one of the third grade rooms because it wasn't working. The bulb wouldn't come on and after the power light flashed green for awhile it would switch to flashing red and there was a red light next to the bulb symbol. I looked up the meaning for the lights online and found out it was either an overheating bulb or a burnt out bulb. The first option was to clean out the filter, which I did because it was filthy. After a thorough scrubbing, and some blowing, I put the filter back in place and got the same response from the projector. That lead to the bulb. The teacher got up on a desk and borrowed my little multi-tool to get the bulb out and I went down to the library to see if the librarian had an extra bulb. Thankfully she did. I knew bulbs are expensive so as a last effort I tried thoroughly cleaning all the dust and stuff off the old bulb and putting it back in but it didn't work. The new bulb did work, however, which seems to be a good indication that it was a bulb issue. We didn't get if figured out in time for the Math Enrichment teacher to use the projector, which is why I was called down in the first place, but it should be ready for her next time.

I caught up on my spreadsheets and downloaded all of the reports that were ready but haven't printed anything out yet. This turned out to be smart because I found out after school that one of the fifth grade teachers is going to have one of her kids retest tomorrow.

Throughout the day I worked on creating a calendar for the former resource lady who is now a Boys & Girls Club lady. She gave me the real general description that she wanted a calendar to give to parents for one of the reading programs. I honestly had no idea what she was talking about but I said I'd come up with something and we could go from there. I opened up Publisher and none of the calendar templates did anything for me so I designed the thing from scratch. I put four small calendars on the right side (for the remaining months of school because I figured those were the relevant ones) and on the left side left a space on the top for a title, in the middle for a list of important dates, and the bottom for a legend for the eventual shaded calendar days.

I managed to hit the nail on the head because she really liked what I came up with. She got back to me later with a list of important dates and all the dates that needed to be shaded in on the calendar. Figuring out the shading I wanted to use and finalizing the format ended up taking more time than I expected it would but I was pretty happy with how it all came out. And she liked it.

This afternoon I stepped out of the lab for a minute to use the bathroom and when I returned a small group of second grade kids were in the lab to use Khan Academy. And they were freaking out because for some unknown reason the Math Enrichment teacher thought it wise to tell them there would soon be a fire drill. Some of them were squatting together on the ground with their hands over their ears, talking loudly and acting like the world was going to end. The rest were standing but also had their ears covered and none of them were actually working on getting logged onto their computers. Trying to get that done was like herding cats. I could get one focused on logging in but the others would start going nuts. And when I left one kid to help another, the first would join the crazed ones. It was ridiculous. The fire alarm is ridiculously loud and obnoxious but these kids had no reason to be acting like that. They were caught up in a land of pretend and make-believe and it got old real quick. One of the kids in the group has been freaked out about loud noises since kindergarten and he was actually the only one completely fine with the situation because he apparently recently got over his fear. At least when it comes to fire alarms.

The fire drill was a bit delayed but thankfully it finally came and the kids could get it out of their system. It was a really nice day out and by the time we got back inside the second graders were a lot more calm. It would be nice if they could be like that all the time. I try to remind them that coming to the lab is a privilege and if they can't stay on task or follow directions then they can stay in the room and work on the same stuff all the other kids are doing. That threat usually lasts about thirty seconds.

After work I got Chipotle and then headed to the old house. Reading about Organizational Design still makes me really sleepy. Somehow I managed to finish the reading and it was none too soon because shortly after a dog started barking outside. I go over to the old house because I like the silence. Dog barking is one of my biggest pet peeves. Even when they are my pets.

After dinner tonight I was able to show YouTube videos for the first time in a long time. There was been an update to Chromecast since last I used it and it was a pain in the butt. It looks like you can now create a list especially for the Chromecast but it seemed a bit buggy. It kept playing videos I didn't want to play and the general list of videos kept automatically scrolling up and down so I couldn't click anything. Also, you have to click a few different times to get out of the list view and go to the video page so you can fast forward, skip around videos, or adjust the volume. But sometimes that doesn't work so you have no way of controlling the video. I eventually found it easier to open each video in individual tabs and then stop streaming after one video and begin streaming again with the next video. It was a pain. Next week I'll try making an actual list for the Chromecast and we'll see how that works out. It certainly can't go any worse.

When we were done with dinner I looked at the dishwasher because it had a weird thing on the display that wasn't listed in the book. I looked it up online and apparently “iCO” (where the 'i' is missing the little dot) stands for communication error, which can stand for a number of things. The easiest solution was to turn the breaker off for ten minutes or so to reset everything. And thankfully that seemed to work. It had mixed results online and some said it only helped for a couple days but it would be nice if it was just a random glitch and all was well now.

Tonight I didn't accomplish much. I responded to one of my classmate's posts on this week's discussion but still need to comment on at least one more. I plan on just scrolling through and responding to any question that jumps out at me, the more the merrier. I like the addition of requiring questions in each post because it makes it easier to come up with responses.

And now I'm going to go to bed because it is currently a struggle keeping my eyes open.

January 27, 2015

Last night was one of the best nights of sleep I have had in a really long time. It wasn't one of those where I completely pass out and it seems like I don't move an inch until I wake up in the morning feeling completely rested. Those are great nights. Last night I woke up at least a few times to go to the bathroom because that's what being hydrated gets you, but the time seemed to drag on forever, which sucks most of the time but at night it is the best.

This morning one of the first grade classes was going to take their Math MAP test. They should have taken it last week but their first test was canceled when the internet was cutting in and out. After logging into all the computers I was just finishing logging into the test on the first row of computers when the power blinked off. Just long enough to ruin all of my work. Although I'm better off than the sixth grader who was just about to save his story. Hopefully he didn't lose too much.

After turning all the computers back on, except the front row, I headed down to help out with literacy centers in kindergarten, stopping off in the office on the way to have the custodian flip the breaker that popped with the power blink so I could turn on the front row of computers when I got back. That was a really long sentence. Fifty-seven words. Moving on.

Six of the kindergarteners were out sick today. With that news I wanted to turn around and leave immediately, but I didn't. My group was listening to Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100^th Day of Kindergarten because tomorrow is the 100^th day of school. After the story they had to say what they would bring to celebrate and then draw one hundred of them. At one point I pointed at one of the kids' paper and his wet pencil touched me. He spent the whole time coughing and sneezing and wiping his nose with his hands. I had to send him to go wash his hands after he wiped his nose along his arm and it left a snail trail. The kid next to me was also coughing the whole time and he told me that he was the only member of his family that hadn't been sick yet. So it will be a miracle if I'm not sick tomorrow.

Despite my inevitable illness at the hands of these kindergarteners, it was worth it because one of them asked me if turtles lived with the dinosaurs (because he picked dinosaurs to draw but quickly discovered it was much easier to draw turtles). Before I could respond one of the other boys, the one with the snail trail, said “No, turtles live in sewers.” The third boy just shook his head and said “Not the Ninja Turtles.”

When I got back to the lab I logged into all the computer for the second time and then all of the tests. Then I set them all up, just in time for the first graders. A whole bunch of them didn't make it through the test and on top of that, three or four of them were sick. It'll be interesting to see if we can get them all tested by the end of the week.

When I was setting that test up a lady stopped by the lab to schedule a time for the ACT Aspire test, or something like that. There was one last semester and parents have to decide if they want their kids to take it. Last time there were five or six kids maybe. All of the times either conflicted with the State Assessment window of the next MAP window so I tried to pick a time in between. I spoke with the principal about it later and she said she would see if there was a way out of it because she agreed it was just way too much testing. At the very least I suggested she urge parents not to sign their kids up because the kids should be focusing on the State Assessment and the MAP test because those actually count for something.

This afternoon I had both kindergarten classes and one of the third grade classes in the lab. Nothing too exciting.

With all my free time throughout the day I nearly finished updating my spreadsheets. I only have sixth grade left, not counting all the kids who I don't have final scores yet for. Hopefully soon I'll be able to print off the final reports but I don't think there is a single class yet who has everyone completely done with no tests to be deleted.

After work I got my car washed and bought a Powerball ticket. For weeks now the only clean part on my car was a small area underneath my door where my jeans hit when I get in and out. The other day it sprinkled just enough to make my car look even worse and I couldn't take it anymore. I still need to clean the inside of the windows but it looks so much better.

I stopped by the old house not only to look for my TV stand screws, but also because I wanted to read a textbook without any distractions. I looked almost everywhere for the screws but couldn't find them. I even looked through the stuff I put in the hall closet that I had completely forgotten about. I left the closet propped open so I don't forget that stuff again. While taking a small breather from reading the textbook my mind wandered back to the screws. I thought maybe they ended up with my tools and I made a mental note to check in the garage when I got home and look through my tool bag and router table. But then I pictured my tools being downstairs at the old house and how I had put a bunch of random crap in a box that was out in the living room. I had overlooked it before because on top there was a box of dust masks and a pair of noise-canceling headphones. Well, I went out there, dug through the box, and found a bag of random screws that looked like the ones that came with my wall mount. There were also four black screws (all the rest were silver) that looked promising. And they looked that way for a reason because they ended up being the correct screws.

I finished a chapter in my textbook before heading back to the new house for dinner. After dinner I watched TV and wrote my discussion post for the week. It was set up like it was at the beginning of last semester where you can't see anyone else's post until you submit one. It would be nice if that would change because it is easier to write when you have an idea of what other people are saying. I also felt like my post sucked after glancing at some of the other posts. In the topic, which was about our music collections, the professor asked us to cite examples when talking about different collections being organized the same way. I talked about examples but other people quoted the textbook. I kind of feel like I should quote the textbook now. Maybe in my responses to other people. I need to post two responses but I didn't want to read through all the posts tonight so I'll do that tomorrow.

January 26, 2015

Last night was another involving a lot less sleep than I would have liked. Tonight will be better.

This morning I got to help out with second grade reading groups for the first time in awhile. I wasn't really needed though because I ended up just sitting there and talking to the kids as they cut out words and glued them down. And in the second group I stood there as the only two kids in the group cracked each other up for fifteen minutes. At one point one of them said to the other “You're killin' me Smalls.” Not the right context from the movie but it still made sense and it was really funny.

I left there early so I could start a MAP test for a fifth grader. Following that, both second grade classes came to the lab while I a group of first graders in the back row making up MAP tests.

This afternoon, I had one kid take a MAP test, a group of sixth graders, a group of second graders, and a first grade class. That was all fairly uneventful.

Throughout the day I sent off emails to have MAP tests deleted and updated my spreadsheets. I got caught up with all the scores I have so far and have started calculating the change in scores from the last test. When I eventually get that done I want to make the pie charts I made last time.

After work I went to the old house and loaded up my desktop. So many freaking cords and cables. Getting my TV off the wall mount was way easier than it was putting it on the wall mount. I was hoping that the screws I used for the wall mount were the same ones for the TV stand but they aren't. I can vaguely remember where I put the screws in my desk but that was before I packed everything up. Now I have no idea where they are. I need to get that sorted out because I can't just lean the TV against the wall. I looked in the boxes I have at the new house but didn't have any luck. I'll need to dig through the stuff I still have over at the old house. And cross my fingers.

Tonight I ate way too much for dinner again but I managed to finish all the leftovers. Tomorrow I will eat a more reasonable dinner. I'm not a fan of feeling stuffed. After dinner I read textbooks. The organizing one is still really dense and boring but the reference one is pretty interesting so far. I've got a lot of reading left to do this week.

January 25, 2015

Last night I didn't actually get to bed until around two o'clock, which means I only got about five hours of sleep last night. That is not enough.

I got up at seven o'clock so I could take a shower and be ready when the cable guy came to hook up the internet. The window was eight o'clock to ten o'clock. He didn't make it here until sometime after nine o'clock. I would have liked that extra hour of sleep.

But the dude showed up. At first there was some worry that he wouldn't be able to hook up the cable in the box downstairs because there was only one line coming into the house and that was being used by the satellite. The original plan was to run a line into the room on the other side of the stairs. But that room doesn't have any outlets so he was going to have to bring it in that room and then put an outlet in the room on the other side of the wall and put the modem behind the couch. After we talked through it for a minute he decided he would try to patch into one of the cables going into one of the unused rooms upstairs because that was already headed into the room with the cable box. Thankfully, that ended up working out.

When it came to hooking up the modem, we brought over the one from the old house but he couldn't activate it because the serial number was obscured. I told him we got it from the cable company but it wasn't showing up. I told him that we were actually still customers and when he looked up the old address he was able to find it. In order to activate it we had to transfer the internet over here, meaning we lost it at the old house. There was a moment of hesitation because if something didn't work here it would probably be a pain in the butt trying to get the internet back at the old house. But we pulled the trigger and it ended up working out.

The only downside was that he didn't think the pre-wired ethernet would work. And when I tried it, it didn't. That wasn't much of a problem because I was able to hook up the wireless router and the whole house now has internet. I'm not giving up on the pre-wired ethernet though. It doesn't make any sense that it won't work and I want to figure it out. Much like figuring out why my 3TB hard drive won't work with my new motherboard.

But we have internet now. It took just shy of five months but we finally got it. That will make this semester of school so much less stressful. It will be nice not having to go over to the old house every night. I'm thinking tomorrow I will bring my desktop over. Still not sure where I'm going to put it because I need to clear coat the one desk that isn't broken (and send the split one back). I'm also hoping I remember where I put the screws for my TV so I can put the stand back on. It would be nice to mount it on the wall again but I don't want to be drilling into the new walls.

After lunch I eventually got around to taking a nap. It was so nice. Then I played some Fantasy Life and watched TV. Not a very productive use of my time. Productivity starts tomorrow. Textbooks here I come.

My sister came over tonight and made dinner. She made chicken burrito things for her and my mom and she made me fake chicken fajitas. She also made the rice that she makes that is really good. I ate way too much. And then she made these cinnamon ball things for dessert. So much regret after that meal but it was delicious.

The rest of my night was spent watching Modern Family and Sirens, which is a good show but I only saw a couple episodes before I stopped watching TV. I also clicked around the internet and ended up playing some emulated SNES games. It is amazing how bad the graphics are. The SNES used to look so good. And then the N64 came out and blew my mind. And again with the original XBOX. And the XBOX 360. And the PC. If I ever travel into the future I'm definitely going to check out the graphics on video games. Although at that point people will probably have to jack their body into something and the graphics will be as real as real life. Technology.

Now I'm going to go to bed. Or maybe when the current episode of Sirens is over. Tomorrow is going to be rough. I really need to get up and exercise.

January 24, 2015

Today will certainly be a short entry because I did very little.

I woke up kind of early and then was amazed every time I looked at the clock and it was still so far away from lunch. I watched some DVRed stuff and Die Hard. It has been awhile since I've seen that movie and it is still good. It's interesting to see the humble beginnings of that franchise. Sometime I need to marathon them. I also played a little Fantasy Life for the first time in a little bit. I'm now an Alchemist and at the moment I'm journeying around the world trying to find ingredients for recipes.

Along with that stuff, I took a couple long naps. There were things I could have been doing but I just needed a lazy, curl up in bed kind of day. Soon enough I'll need to devote that time to reading textbooks and working on projects. Can't wait.

Tonight I went to a play that my friend invited me to. It was about three people (four with the teacher) taking an acting class. I enjoyed it. It has been awhile since I've been to such a small production and there was definitely some awkward tension in some of the long transitions where the audience was just sitting there alone in silence. With those silences, my only suggestion would be the addition of music. It was still good, though. I need to go to more stuff like that. Or just more things in general. Get out of the house a little.

After the play I came over to the old house to do internet things. I was going to pay my tuition but I just now remembered that fact as I typed it, so maybe that will happen when I finish this. I edited the introduction page for one of my classes and added my information. I included the book cross stitch I did over the summer for the school librarian (which I still need to get framed) and a Laurel & Hardy video. I also emailed my professor the results of the personality test that she wanted us to take (even though I feel like it is kind of like a horoscope). And I picked a topic for the first assignment. We had to pick a metadata schema to analyze, which sounds really intimidating, even more so after reading through the long list of options we were given. I ended up going with the Public Broadcasting Core (PBCore). I'm just glad I happened to look in the Discussion section and saw the post because only thirteen people had posted before me and PBCore was really the only thing in the list that jumped out at me.

We should be getting the internet tomorrow morning, which I need to be awake for, and it is one o'clock in the morning right now. I'm going to need another nap tomorrow.

January 23, 2015

Today is one of those days where I wish I would have started writing this earlier because I'm definitely going to skip over some stuff just so I can be done with it and go to bed. It's almost midnight and I'm tired.

This morning I watched a few random kids take MAP tests and I had both second grade classes in the lab. Right before lunch I went to return a laptop to one of the fourth grade rooms because a kid brought it down but by the time he made it to me the laptop had died. When I got it back up to the room I plugged it in and when I started it up it said there wasn't a battery. There was a battery, though, and when I took it out and then put it back in, it was finally acknowledged. As for the original problem, it wasn't happening when I was there so the teacher is going to have me come up when it happens again.

On my way back down to the lab I ran into the librarian, who was looking for me, so we walked back to the library to look at a couple laptops she was having issues with. One of them belonged to the gifted teacher, who's laptop had a virus. It had been taken, fixed, and returned, but it came back with a trust relationship problem so we couldn't actually use it. The other laptop only had the option to log on as “Student”. There was no way to switch to a different user and no one knew what the password was. So we put in two trouble tickets.

After lunch the gifted teacher's laptop had been fixed, again, and I was tasked with getting it ready for her. I started by putting a link on her desktop for a site she uses for IEPs. The default shortcut icon was tiny and awful, and would have potentially been erased soon, even though it was on the Public Desktop. I learned the hard way that internet shortcuts don't last long on school computer desktops. My workaround for this is a redirect code written in a text file, saved as an HTML file, and making a shortcut of that file so I can change the icon. I then made the icon by pulling an image from the website and editing it in Gimp. I then pull all of that stuff on the Public Desktop and made everything but the final shortcut with the new icon image, hidden. All a bit of a process but the end result works and that is what I was going for.

Next I added a bunch of printers. The computer lab printers were easy but I ran into a bit of a problem with the printer in the gifted room and the one across the hall in one of the fifth grade rooms. I eventually figured out the one in the gifted room by downloading a driver, then a second driver because the first one wasn't right and I red through the configuration page more closely. Then I told the computer I had the disk and navigated to where I extracted the driver. After all of that, it turns out the printer driver was in the list where you pick the brand and then the model. The tricky part was that even though it was a Ricoh printer, it was actually a Lanier printer. Confusing. And it would have been nice to know much earlier in the process. I ran into the same issue with the fifth grade printer and I went out on a ledge and picked another Lanier driver, despite it being a Ricoh printer. It was also not the exact driver but it worked.

When I delivered the laptop to the gifted teacher I had her log in and then set up her email for her. Then I tweaked the resolution and graphics option to make things bigger for her. I figured out how to make part of her email bigger but not the actual message in Outlook without double-clicking on it and then clicking on 'Zoom'. I was stumped. At the end of the day I was finally realized there was a little zoom slider in the lower right corner, like there is on all Office programs, and when you move the slider it changes the message size. So I went up and showed her and all was good. Until she has more questions.

The last class in the lab today was third grade. There were either working on their poems or doing Type To Learn. At one point I ended up getting really distracted and was playing catch with one of the kids. We were throwing cotton balls at each other. It started with one because he was throwing it at people and then saying “Think fast.” Then we started playing catch. Then a second cotton ball was added into the mix. Then more. Then the teacher politely asked him if there was something he should be doing. Somehow we both go very wrapped up in the cotton ball game. I blame it on being a really long week, even if it was only four days long. I also ended up playing Rock, Paper, Scissors with the same kid. I can't even remember why that started but he was really good. I beat him in the first game but he got me the second time. And it wasn't blind luck on his part. He was using actual strategies based on what I was throwing. So instead of going with the thing that would beat what I just threw, he went with the thing that would beat that. If he went Rock the first time, he would go Scissors next, assuming I would go Paper. This meant I had to go a couple moves in advance to beat him. The second time we played I wasn't really paying attention (not to give excuses) but I'm pretty sure he had figured out I was going one step beyond him so he went one step further. I don't know if any of that makes sense because it's 12:30AM and I'm tired, but it was really impressive. Most kids, and most adults probably, play randomly, but this third grade kid actually knew what he was doing.

Tanner started digging under the fence to get at the tiny neighbor dogs who don't realize he would tear them apart. They have a Napoleon complex and think they're big scary dogs. It was real dumb for the neighbors to put up their fence so it was practically touching ours. It is also annoying that they rarely come out to get their dogs when they all start trying to eat each other through the fence. Two tiny dogs are much easier to handle than Tanner, who turns into the Hulk or Mr. Hyde when he's in attack mode and will go after anything that moves. Because of the digging, my mom had me bring over some of the big rocks we had at the old house to put against the fence. Hopefully that will prevent future digging.

I didn't work at the theater tonight so I came over to the old house to watch YouTube videos and mess with my desktop. It still won't recognize my 3TB hard drive. I feel like I had that problem when I originally got it but I can't remember. I need to look back through old journal entries and see if I can find anything written about it. So far, nothing that I have found online has helped. It doesn't show up in the Disk Management thing or in the Bios. The motherboard came with a program to “unlock” 3TB hard drives but the drive doesn't show up in there either. I tried plugging it into the external dock I have but that didn't work either. I haven't tried using the dock with my laptop though, so I might try that tomorrow. On a slightly more positive note, the desktop has gotten a little faster starting up. When I turned it on for the first time today it was on the initial screen for thirty seconds and then on the “Starting Windows” screen for three minutes before going to the login screen. Thirty seconds for the whole process used to be considered slow before my old motherboard crapped out. I moved the C: Drive SATA cable to the correct port on my motherboard, which did nothing, and I updated a bunch of things. Despite all of that not seeming to have an effect, it randomly started starting faster. Not like it used to be but definitely faster than it was. I have no clue why but I hope it keeps getting faster.

Now I'm going to stop typing because once again I have typed way too much and I want to go to bed so I can get up at a decent time tomorrow. I still need to do the introductory stuff for my classes, which I would like to do tomorrow, and tomorrow night I am going to a play with my friend. It would be nice to not sleep until noon.

January 22, 2015

This morning I decided to stay in bed instead of exercise. I allow myself to do that once a week and it is my favorite day of the week.

We had a character assembly first thing this morning. I believe this month was Trustworthiness. The kids know all about each character trait but quite a few quickly forget.

Immediately following the assembly, second graders came to the lab for MAP testing. They only had thirty minutes because the assembly took up their first thirty minutes and most of the kids weren't able to finish. Lucky for them, the teacher scheduled them to come back after lunch.

When the second graders left, first graders took their place. One of the kids wasn't in the system so she couldn't take the test. I sent off an email to get her added but that didn't end up happening until sometime after lunch, so she got to draw instead of take the test. Unfortunately, she is the one kid who hates drawing and loves taking tests. And she voiced that opinion loudly. She is just like a kid in second grade. They look similar, she has a similar name (but a female version), and they act the same. Randomly throughout the test she would just start talking loudly, like she doesn't have a volume switch, and she apparently does the same thing throughout class. Initially when she was told to draw, right after saying she wanted to take the test, she proclaimed that she didn't want to draw an arctic fox, even though no one said she had to. But then she did. When she was finished I talked her into writing about the arctic fox. At one point I asked her to whisper and she looked at me like she had never heard of whispering before. She eventually started kind of whispering though so that was nice.

With second grade coming back at 12:30PM, I got them set up before eating a quick lunch. I look forward to the day, maybe tomorrow, where I don't feel rushed through my lunch. When the second graders returned, they had a substitute because their teacher was in a meeting. There substitute was a really really old guy. He's probably someone's great grandpa. When he's the sub and the class isn't testing he just drops them off at the lab and then shows back up when their time is up, but he doesn't come into the lab, he just waits out in the hall. I didn't realize this until recently when a para informed me. Anyway, the kids quickly became talkative as they finished their tests and I was constantly moving around the lab trying to get kids to stop talking. And the old guy did nothing. It was a little frustrating.

The rest of my afternoon was filled with two kindergarten classes and a third grade class. The third grade class continued to work on their acrostic poems based on their names. One of the kids lost his save file and had to start over. This is the conversation we had during that process:

Him – I can't remember what I put for 'F'.

Me – ...Frickin' Awesome?

Him – ...Is that appropriate?

Me – ...Probably not.

I thought it was pretty funny and the para sitting by him started cracking up.

Throughout the day when I had a bit of free time and wasn't testing or updating my spreadsheets, I took a personality test for one of my classes this semester. I kind of feel like it wasn't much better than a horoscope. There was enough in there to keep me interested and feel like I was really relating to it but there was a whole bunch of stuff that definitely had nothing to do with me. Thanks a lot internet personality test.

After dinner I went down to my room, emptied my pockets, took off my shoes, turned on an episode of The Twilight Zone, and had just gotten comfortable on my bed when my sister texted me that they were playing GTA5 on the Neebs livestream. I had completely forgotten about the livestream. Good grief. I pulled on my old skate shoes, and headed over to the old house.

I wanted my time to be productive while I watched the livestream, but instead of doing school stuff, I started messing with my desktop. I noticed that it was starting really slow after I switched out motherboards. I tried installing the new drivers but that didn't seem to help much. I ran a Windows Experience thing and it showed the disk transfer speed or whatever it was called dropped two points. I don't know what those points mean but going from a 7-point-something to a 5-point-something seemed significant. I tried some other things but to no avail so I decided to just reinstall windows. Get a good, clean start to my new motherboard.

I finished that a little bit ago and now I'm trying to get all the drivers updated again. It doesn't seem to have fixed the slow start up but I'll save that judgment for after I get everything set up again. I also still need to figure out my missing hard drive. I can't even remember what was on it but I think one of my Windows backups was on it, which is kind of funny. Also, even though I'm connected to a monitor using a DVI cable, the computer is only seeing it as a VGA cable and giving me crappy resolution options. More things to worry about when I have more time. It's already eleven o'clock and I should be in bed, not messing around with this. I should have picked tomorrow as my skip exercise day

January 21, 2015

This morning things happened but it once again feels like it took place years ago. I had one MAP test and at the very end, when there were only two kids left in the lab, the internet crapped out. It had apparently been going on and off all morning around the building but thankfully it didn't hit the lab until then. It crashed the test for both kids but it saves after every question so they didn't actually lose anything.

A first grade class was supposed to come in and test after that first test but I ended up canceling it because I didn't trust the internet. I waited awhile and it started working again but then halfway through setting the test up it went down again and the tests crashed. I didn't want to risk that happening during the middle of the test so we decided to cancel testing for the rest of the morning. I spent my time updating my MAP spreadsheets.

I had a class in the lab until noon and then I had to go around and set up the computers for kindergarten because one of the teachers wanted to come in at 12:30PM because there was a test during his lab time yesterday. That time looked good on paper but it was almost ten after when I finally clocked out for lunch and then had to rush through that a bit so I was done by the time kindergarten showed up. I'm thinking 12:45PM should be the official afternoon opening time so I have a little wiggle room.

Right after kindergarten left, third grade came in to work on their acrostic poems. They started working on them yesterday but did it on the testing server which doesn't have access to any of the network drives, including the Student drive, so the kids couldn't actually save their work where the teacher could access it. So the teacher called it practice and today when they came in they logged into the computers as themselves so they could save their work.

I logged into the computer and then the test so many times today. I did it first thing in the morning and then before lunch because the class right before lunch had logged out of all the computers they used, even when I asked them not to, and the computers they weren't using were used by the sixth graders who had to log in as themselves to save their papers. And then I had to log in again after the third graders left this afternoon. It's kind of a pain in the butt logging into twenty-six computers and then twenty-six tests once a day, let alone numerous times.

After the third graders left I set the MAP test up for fifth grade. Thankfully it was an uneventful test because the internet decided to cooperate. And all but two kids finished. They are definitely thorough test takers.

At the end of the day I went out to the trailer to give the preschool teacher her laptop back. I still wasn't able to recreate her slow computer or email attachment problem when I was logged in as myself. Everything worked fine. I had her log in and show me what was happening. It seemed relatively slow but not excessively slow. She was able to show me that she couldn't open email attachments so that is something I can look into.

When I left work I went and got my oil changed. The kid who did it looked just like a young Watsky. It was pretty strange actually. From there I went to Chipotle and then got a Powerball ticket before stopping by the old house to check internet things. Word on the street is that we should have the internet this weekend. They are supposed to come by Sunday morning, which sucks because I won't get to sleep in but we're finally getting the internet so I'll wake up early. It'll be really nice being able to do my homework at home this semester. It will also be a big distraction, so I'll need to be careful of that.

Chipotle was good, not spectacular, but it is hard to reach that level when steak isn't involved. Yet another downside of not eating meat. After dinner I showed my mom and sister some highlights from Space Warriors, one of the most ridiculous movies ever. I also played my sister the birthday song I had made for my brother by the Doraleous & Associates and Neebs Gaming guys. I got it yesterday and have listened to it several times since then. It is only thirty-one seconds long but it is great. My brother is going to love it.

After dinner I was going to read one of my textbooks. I made it through the Forward and Preface before giving up and taking a nap. That is going to negatively affect my ability to go to bed to tonight. I might try reading a little more. It certainly worked the first time in bringing on a drowsy state.

January 20, 2015

This morning already seems so long ago.

I finished up the testing plans for state assessments and watched one kid take a test while helping some of the sixth graders work on papers. I continued updating my MAP spreadsheets. I didn't get much time to do that last week with wall-to-wall testing so I am pretty behind. I'm getting there though.

I fixed two laptops this morning for one of the first grade teachers by turning the wi-fi on. I like those fixes. I kind of feel bad for the people with the laptop because they feel bad that the solution was so simple, but in the end everything works so that is what matters.

I ended my morning with a small MAP test consisting of the fifth grade class who had six kids absent last week. Three of them were gone today but luckily all but one of the original six were back. And all but two of the kids finished.

This afternoon I had a MAP test after lunch that was boring, like MAP tests tend to be. It was the fourth grade class with the kid I had in a reading group a couple of years ago. For the reading test he kept asking me questions and tried talking with me throughout the whole test, when he wasn't frequently going to the bathroom or getting a drink. I talked to his teacher about that and she talked to him and said he would only get one bathroom break this time and he wasn't supposed to start conversations with me. He did have a few moments of talking but he did a lot better than last time and way better than last year when I had to send him to the principal's office during state assessments. He even managed to finish the test in one sitting, which may be a first.

I ended the day with a kindergarten class and then a third grade class. And then more data entry on my MAP spreadsheets.

I stopped by the old house for a little bit after work and then came home to eat dinner before book club. There was a really good turn out this time around, eight volunteers, one intern, and two supervisors. Easily the most people we've ever had. There was also some pretty good discussions. And I learned that I would never want to be a teacher on a military base. One of the volunteers is a first year third grade teacher and it sounds exhausting, emotionally and physically.

When I got home I watched Space Warriors, which turned out to be one of the most ridiculous movies I have ever watched. It was so bad and parts of it had me actually laughing at how absurd it was. The basic plot involves a kid lying to his parents and sneaking away to space camp, where he is part of a team of fifteen-year-olds competing against other kids, and the winning team gets to go to the International Space Center. That sounds crazy enough. And then disaster strikes on the ISS and it has to be evacuated but only three of the astronauts can escape, leaving three others stranded. A rescue mission is put together but help won't arrive in time. But wait, the leading kid comes up with a plan and his team, along with the main rival team in the movie, come together and save the day. They use remotely controlled space suits, which they control using motion capture that involves spandex outfits with ping pong balls attached to them. Incredible. The lives of three astronauts are put in the hands of a group of kids who have had five days of space camp training. Also, there was a sup-plot running through the movie of the leading kid and a girl on his team liking each other. Other than being really awkward because they were kids trying to act, it seemed fairly obvious that the leading kid was gay. Not something I have a problem with but maybe they could have been a little more progressive and the other party involved could have also been a guy. I doubt the acting would have been any better but it would have a least been more believable.

January 19, 2015

 Today was a productive day, even if I did sleep in. I finally took down my Christmas tree. Much like the larger one from upstairs, it did not fit nicely back in the box. I decided to tie the box closed with some yarn but it is much too thin on its own so I made a crochet chain out of it which worked out pretty well.

I also cleaned my room to get ready for the new semester, which starts this week. I packed up all the trash that had accumulated, not only in my trash can, but all the random papers and things that ended up in stacks around my room. I reorganized my small bookshelf and plan on keeping it that way. We'll see how long that lasts. I also moved out the green chair and replaced it with the writing desk I got from my grandma's house. I thought that would be a more practical choice and hopefully I will get in the habit of using it. To make a little more room for the desk I moved my bed over about four or five inches, which is a fairly small move, but it made my room feel a lot bigger. Soon enough it'll become normal and I won't notice it anymore but at the moment I really like it.

I did laundry today and that involved messing with the washer for awhile. Every now and then it leaks, possibly only when the water level is set to maximum, but I don't know. Regardless, after my first load I noticed some water so I pulled the washer away from the wall so I could get it all cleaned up. I also had the thought that maybe the leak was due to the washer not being level, like being tilted slightly forward or back. I got out my level and it was tilted forward a bit so I tried to remedy that for quite some time but I don't think I really got anywhere. I was never quite sure which way to spin the feet to get them to go up or down and it didn't seem to matter with one of the front feet because I don't think it moved at all. I eventually got tired of being bent over and lifting a heavy washer with one hand while spinning one of the tiny washer feet with the other, so I got it back to being level so it wouldn't rock back and forth, and called it good, pushing it back into position.

Tonight I finished reading the book club book, One For The Murphy's by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. I enjoyed the book, probably more than any of the other books we have read for book club, but I can only vaguely remember those, so I don't know how reliable that judgment is. I do know that the books tend to be a bit or a lot on the depressing side, and this one was a little better in that department. It didn't have the ending I wanted but it was a realistic ending, at least based on my brief volunteer experience. I also liked that it had a bunch of short chapters. That makes larger books feel much more manageable. I would definitely recommend it. And now I'm back to reading textbooks almost exclusively. How exciting.

Earlier in the day I watched Blended, which turned out to be a pretty good movie with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. It was very much an Adam Sandler movie but I liked it. I also watched the two episode season finale of The Librarians. I really like that show and I am hoping it comes back for another season. They ended it in such a way that the season can stand on its own if it doesn't come back but I am hoping it does. Tonight I watched Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. Also enjoyable. I haven't watched a movie like that in awhile and I liked it. It was a bit strange hearing Kiera Knightley with an American accent though.

Tomorrow MAP testing resumes. Can't wait. There aren't as many tests this week but still more than I would like. One is more than I would like if we're being honest. I'm going to go to bed, not so the morning will get here sooner, that is just a sad consequence of sleep, but because I'm kind of tired.

January 18, 2015

Today was pretty boring. But not in a bad way. Just a very relaxed way. I woke up not long after eight o'clock and instead of just rolling over and going back to bed, I stayed in bed and watched TV, played Fantasy Life, and eventually read my book. I watched Cocktails, a Tom Cruise movie I hadn't seen before. It was real convenient when he went down to Jamaica from New York and fell in love with a white girl from New York while working at a bar on the beach. And it got real dark near the end. But I liked the movie. Not something I'll watch again any time soon but I liked it. I also watched Silverado. I caught the last half of it last weekend so I found another showing of it this weekend and recorded it so I could see the whole thing. I'm fairly certain I had heard of the movie before, maybe even seen bits and pieces, but I'm not sure why it took me so long to see the whole thing. It was really good and Kevin Costner was squirrelly as hell. My favorite part of the movie is when Kevin Costner is leading his horse while reading a book and his nephew tries to jump off the porch and onto the horse. I don't really care about that but the best part is that Kevin Costner's horse is wearing his hat.

Before dinner we took down the Christmas tree. It didn't come anywhere close to going back into the box. I think maybe one of the big pieces and the little top piece could probably be squeezed in there but the second big piece definitely won't. I think the plan is to just put a sheet over the box.

After dinner I went and god blizzards at Dairy Queen. I can't remember the last time I had a blizzard but I'm fairly certain it has been several years. I kept it simple and went with an Oreo blizzard because that is what I had been craving. The blizzard of the month was an Oreo cake blizzard that included rainbow sprinkle frosting. That sounded interesting but I didn't want to risk it being super sugary and weird because me getting a blizzard is obviously a rare occurrence.

When I was finished with my dessert I headed over to my dad's house to look into a issue they were having with one of their laptops and their wireless printer. With their other computers when they print, the printer will automatically wake up and print. The laptop just shows the printer as offline. I messed around with stuff but the only solution I found was to make sure the printer wasn't asleep before printing. Although, it will probably be like things at school that start working when I'm around and will probably stop as soon as I leave.

I came over to the old house when I was done at my dad's so I could check internet things and watch last nights episode of SNL. I keep meaning to record it but also keep forgetting. I'm a fan of Kevin Hart and it has been a pretty good episode so far. It's almost over, which is good because I'm tired and want to go home so I can go to bed.

January 17, 2015

 I forgot to mention the funniest thing from testing yesterday. At one point one of the third graders got a question about angle and he asked me what an “abuse angle” was. So close. Almost as funny as when a kid can't pronounce 'synonym' and asks me what a “cinnamon” is.

I had a slow start to my day but I eventually got around to doing stuff. The weather was nice so I wanted to open the garage door and start putting a clear coat on my future computer desks. I dug out my saw horses and got everything set up and then noticed that the one table top that I just unpacked today was split all the way down the middle. Good grief. I opened one back in October when I got them and made the assumption that the other one was fine. My mistake. In the emails from Ikea it said to call within 48 hours of delivery if something is wrong. Missed that mark by well over 1500 hours. However, the return policy is 90 days so I'm hoping I can take advantage of that. Rather than messing with clear coating the other table I grabbed my laptop and headed over to the old house to I could bring up my order information and call Ikea. That was a giant waste of time. After listening to their crappy muzak for over twenty minutes I said screw it. I'll try again tomorrow. Or sometime soon.

After giving up on that, I turned my attention to my new motherboard, which was sitting on the front porch when I arrived. I was expecting that it would be a bit of a process to swap out my old one and it was. The only tricky part in taking the old motherboard out was getting the water cooler off my CPU. There was a weird bracket thing that I had to loosen the screws on and then lift it up while twisting the water cooler. Putting the new motherboard in and getting everything plugged back in took a little longer. I should have paid a little more attention while I was unplugging everything. The little cables for the front panel lights and buttons were particularly a pain in the butt because the were each one or two pins big, which means they were tiny and awkward.

I eventually got it all put back together and I'd say it looked better than it did with the old motherboard. I was working on it on my desk so I moved it back down to the ground and plugged in the power cord and a monitor and turned it on. All the lights came on and the fans started swirling, which was a good sign because it meant I plugged everything in correctly, but didn't really confirm anything because they were still doing that when I turned the computer on with the old motherboard. The real test was the monitor, and it remained completely blank, other than saying no input was found. Not good. I got out the little post board checker thing I got to test my old motherboard and plugged it in. I think the code was 02 but that didn't mean anything to me. I tried switching out different cables for the monitor but that didn't work either, so I just sat there and stared at things for awhile.

It took me a little longer than I'd like to admit but I finally realized I forgot to plug in the power cables for my graphics card, which my monitor was plugged into, which would explain why it wasn't getting a signal. I plugged in the graphics card and voila, Windows appeared on my monitor. It unfortunately started in Safe Mode because I also forgot to plug in a keyboard.

A short time later, I was on my desktop's desktop and it was good to be back. I meant to download new drivers but got sidetracked when two of my hard drives weren't showing up. There was a lot more staring and again I realized I forgot to plug something in. That something being the power for those two hard drives. After plugging them in I got one of the drives to show up but not the other. I'm thinking it may be a driver issue. It is a 3TB hard drive and I'm pretty sure my motherboard can handle up to a 4TB, but maybe I need to update the drivers for that to be a thing. I'm crossing my fingers anyway. I tried moving around SATA cables, and that didn't seem to have any effect, but I didn't try all the combinations, so that is still a possibility if the driver thing doesn't work out.

Around seven o'clock I finally called it a night and headed home. I was happy with the progress I had made, even if my lower back is killing me after bending over my computer for so long. When I got home I made dinner. The tater tots ended up being dessert because I couldn't be bothered to wait for the oven to heat up.

I spent the rest of the night watching TV, reading a book, and playing Fantasy Life. I watched Byzantium, which is an interesting take on vampire movies. I also watched Slackers, which I haven't seen in years. I forgot how good it was. Jason Schwartzman is hilarious and Jaime King is really cute. I had a crush on her when I was younger and much like the movie, had completely forgotten about her existence.

Now I'm going to go to bed.

January 16, 2015

It's late so I'm going to try and make this short. That shouldn't be hard considering my day was once again filled with four MAP tests. One week down and one to go, minus whatever stragglers have to finish up in the third week. And then a slight reprieve until March when state assessments start. And then April when MAP comes around again.

In the little bit of downtime I had at the very beginning of the day and at the end of the day I continued working on testing plans for state assessments, turning them into an easy to use spreadsheet schedule thing so people aren't haven't to sort through a stack of papers.

The last MAP test of the day was one of the fifth grade classes. There are only sixteen kids to begin with, six of them were out sick today and two were testing out of the lab, so it was a pretty relaxed test. As for all the sickness, I feel like whatever horrible things are going on in their classroom are the beginnings of scary story. And I kind of want to write it. My guess was that someone was sick and came back too early and the teacher said that was her guess to because there was a sick kid who's mother insisted on sending her back as soon as the twenty-four hour period was up. And the day after she came back six kids were out sick. One hell of a coincidence.

There is also the possibility that there is some sort of super strain virus in the room, bred from too much anti-bacterial cleaners that just helped it build a tolerance. At one point the teacher needed to borrow a pencil to write on the lab schedule for next week. I offered her mine but then had to write down a test score so she said she'd just borrow one from the cup I have at the front of the lab. My immediate response was “Thanks, just go ahead and poison the well.” An obvious reference to the mysterious illness falling on her class and the possibility that she is a carrier. I'm not one to toot my own horn but I was completely surprised by not one the speed of my response but also at how clever it was. I have never even used that expression before. Maybe it doesn't even mean what I think it means. It was just an autonomic-level response that I'm really proud of.

Near the end of the day I went to return a laptop to one of the preschool teachers, which involved me having to walk across the playground to get to the preschool trailer. On my way back to the building I took a break and sat with my mom at a picnic table and talked for awhile. It was sunny and in the 60s and more than half the school was probably outside, including the gym and music classes. My eyes never adjusted to the sun but it was really nice to get out of the lab.

One of the sixth graders this morning started calling me Mr. Rich Beard after screwing up my name and getting distracted in the middle of trying to talk. The next time I create a video game character with a beard he is definitely going to be called Rich Beard.

Tonight I worked for all of five minutes at the theater. That was super annoying. I ate dinner, got dressed, went to the theater, clocked in, went upstairs, and saw on the schedule that I wasn't scheduled this weekend. I had a real urge to check the schedule today at school but it was fleeting and I kept forgetting. I also kind of felt like I checked it earlier in the week. Apparently I had not. So I clocked out and came over to the old house to play Fantasy Life and watch YouTube videos. I still have over 2,000 videos in my Watch Later list, which I'm fairly certain is never going to happen. I have fallen behind and I'm going to have to start skipping a whole bunch of videos. The video I'm on at the moment came out on October 15, 2014. I'm three months behind and it feels like it. Oh well.

It is supposed to be nice all weekend so I would like to wake up at a decent time tomorrow and start putting a clear coat on my desks so those will be ready when we finally get the internet (soon, hopefully) and I move my desktop over to the new house. The desktop which should hopefully be fixed tomorrow when my new motherboard shows up. If it is in fact the motherboard causing the issues. I also need to dig up Ping Pong and rebury her at the new house. I've been meaning to do that but it has been so cold that the ground would have been impossible to dig into. Hopefully a couple days in the 60s will be enough to thaw it out a bit.

And now it is after midnight and I need to wrap things up so I can actually get up at a decent time. I need to stop trying to go all Babe Ruth with my entries and call short ones at the beginning because they almost always turn out long when I do that. I'm going to stop typing now.

January 15, 2015

 Today was another day filled with four MAP tests. This week has gone by super fast thanks to testing all day long, every day. I'm kind of done with that. Today after one of the sixth graders finished and I was writing down her score she said she was bored. I told her if she thought taking the test was boring she should try watching someone take a test. I daydream about taking the test. And I hate taking tests.

This morning I had second grade and sixth grade, and this afternoon there was third grade and fifth grade. Nothing eventful happened. I wrote a bunch of scores and nearly fell asleep on several occasions. During the sixth grade test, the new girl rushed through her test once again. Yesterday she answered the forty-three questions on the Reading test in thirteen minutes. Today she answered fifty-three Math questions in eight minutes and forty-four seconds. That is less than ten seconds per questions. When the teacher saw that she was done and how fast it had taken her, he turned around and walked away with his head down and hand over his face. I've seen little kids rush through tests and not gets scores because it was too fast but I've never seen anything quite like this. I don't know what the time cut off is for not getting a score but she had to have been incredibly close. And they obviously need to tweak that time because spending ten seconds per question is obviously way too fast.

I was talking about this with the fifth grade teacher during her test and then I pointed out that the new girl looks almost exactly like a boy the other fifth grade teacher had in her class last year. Like, exactly like him. On a couple occasions I have caught sight of her out of the corner of my eye and I thought it was him, even though he isn't at our school this year. The teacher had only seen the girl a couple times but she instantly recognized how accurate my observation was. I feel like there is a strong chance they two are actually twins separated at birth.

After school I ran into both of the fifth grade teachers in the office just as the one I was talking to earlier was about to tell the other one about what we had been talking about in the lab. So she asked the other teacher who the new girl looked like and I gave her a second to think before saying it and she immediately started laughing. The similarities are verging on freaky. I think one of the student interns this semester looks like Anna Camp from Pitch Perfect but the new girl definitely looks almost exactly like the boy from last year. And I keep repeating that so I'm going to stop now. We all get the point.

Anyway, the other teacher then told us a story about the time last year when the boy was supposed to go to the office but refused so one of the office ladies (who can barely walk) came up to get him and he was dodging around desks and running away from her. And he was a bigger kid so that was probably the fastest he's ever moved.

And that just reminded me that I saw an old guy in the building today who was the closest I've ever seen in person to someone being as wide as the are tall. He was pretty short, so that helped with the illusion, but that didn't take away from how wide he was. It was incredible.

Right as I was about to close Outlook and clock out for the day an alert popped up in Outlook reminding me of the test coordinator meeting scheduled for after school. I had completely forgotten about it. That was the first time I had ever set something in my Outlook calendar and I'm glad I did. I would have eventually seen the alert when I checked my phone before leaving but I saved myself a few minutes.

When got to the school where the meeting was I parked on the side near the library because that is where the meeting was taking place. The door on that side of the building was locked. Obviously. So I walked around to the back of the building and was let in by a custodian who was holding the door open for a woman who was also going to the meeting.

Despite being reminded belatedly and having to find a way into the building, I made it to the library on time. Which cannot be said for the majority of the people attending the meeting. I guess most of them were principals and they were having a meeting at my school, something I had also forgotten. When it was mentioned by one of them that they had just come from the meeting and that the meeting had just ended, I remembered seeing people in the conference room before I ran into the fifth grade teachers. So there really wasn't any need to rush. We ended up not getting started until almost 4:30PM, about fifteen minutes late. The meeting was interesting but a lot of it was of little actual interest to me. I'm also more focused on MAP at the moment.

It was almost 5:30PM after the meeting so I just headed home instead of going to the old house. The cable technician stopped by the house last night and tonight my mom called the cable company to see about getting the internet. The person she talked to was very confused. Along with her supervisor and her supervisor's supervisor. They had the notes and the phone number for the technician but whatever they were trying to do wasn't working. After about a half an hour tey said they would have to call my mom back. Maybe tomorrow because they certainly didn't tonight. The newest neighbors got this ball rolling but it seems to be a bit premature. They got someone somewhere to promise something and that apparently skipped a lot of vital steps in the process. Despite all of that, hopefully we'll have the internet soon.

I spent my night at the old house watching the Neebs livestream. Really it was just listening to the livestream while doing other things but I did watch some of it. They finally got partnered on Twitch which hopefully means the streams will be recorded now. That will be nice.

All night I had my phone sitting on my 3DS so I wouldn't forget my 3DS, which I brought with me but never played. When I was packing up to go I moved my phone so I could put my 3DS in my laptop bag. And then I ended up walking out without my phone. What the crap. It's got a giant yellow case on it. I need to get better about leaving it face down so I can see the case. This is the second time I've forgotten my phone at the old house. Thankfully this time I won't be getting ready for work early so I can go get my phone, only to find out I don't need to go to work. We'll see how things are going in the morning. I might just stop by after work to get my phone because I don't really have any need for it while I'm at work. Either way, I'm going to bed now.

January 14, 2015

Today was a short day due to early release but it was busy. And it started with tragedy. I was up in the resource room getting some busy work from one of the resource teachers and learned that the financial secretary's husband had a heart attack and died last night. I don't know the full story but I heard that the secretary woke up to him having the heart attack and then gave him CPR until the paramedics arrived. There are four kids, the sixth grader and second grader go to our school, but I think they slept through it. It is an often used phrase but I can't even begin to imagine what that family is going through. All day it has been on my mind and I keep trying to put myself in their place, both the secretary trying to save her husband and the kids waking up or being woken up and told their dad has died. And I can't do it. I just can't imagine it.

From what I've heard they weren't that financially well off to begin with and on top of the emotional toll, this will also take a major financial toll. I play PowerBall because I want a vice and I don't have even the slightest delusion that I could actually win. Despite that, one of the main reasons I think it would be cool to win is so I could be a philanthropist. I like giving money to things. I currently work two jobs that don't pay very well, so I can't give a lot of money, but it makes me feel like I'm at least helping in a small way when I am able to donate. This is one of those instances where I really wish I had won the lottery so I could be of more help financially.

Before school actually started I worked on the thing for the resource teacher and worked on the gifted teacher's tablet. She woke up to it plugged in, feeling super hot, and it wouldn't turn on. I'm assuming it just needed to cool down or something because all I had to do was press the power button and volume up button for a second or two and it came right on as if nothing had happened. I like easy fixes like that.

The rest of my morning was spent testing. One of the kindergarten teachers brought me a purple stool that I can sit on in the back of the lab so I don't need to stand up the whole time. I only sat down on it a little bit today but tomorrow I've got four tests so I will probably using it more, especially by the end of the day.

Over lunch I worked on figuring out how to add an email address to the school group so the office lady could include that email address in her school-wide emails. I messed around and eventually figured out how to do it but didn't have sufficient privileges to actually make the changes. I found a workaround and set that up for the office lady but it wouldn't work for other people who wanted to use the school group. So the office lady called one of the tech guys and he was able to fix it.

Because of early release there weren't any tests this afternoon but I was kept busy. I started making the spreadsheets for the state assessment testing plans. That was interrupted by going up to the third floor to figure out the printer in one of the fourth grade rooms. It was only randomly printing. I think the problem was caused by the ethernet cable coming from the wall not being plugged into the right spot on the hub. When I put it where I thought it should go, the printer started printing stuff. So it appears to have worked. I'll have to check back later to see if it has continued to work. The teacher said one of the SPED teachers had been testing in the room and thought maybe the cables got mixed around when she was hardwiring laptops.

I also tracked down one of the second grade teachers, who ended up being in the teacher's lounge, not her room, because she wanted Reading Counts on her laptop. In the search for her I ran into one of the new paras who was trying to connect to the wireless on her phone and I got that sorted out. The para ended up down in the lounge when I was working on the second grade teacher's laptop and I helped her again but showing her how to authenticate because she wasn't able to use her Facebook app. Then I made a few slight edits and printed off a recipe that the cook had sent me and took that down to her office. On my way back down the hall one of the kindergarten teacher's asked me if I could walk one of the kindergarteners back to the gym because she was staying for Boys & Girls Club. She is the really small kindergartener so I held her hand and tried very hard to walk slow enough for her.

And at the very end of the day I went back up to the third floor to help one of the student interns get her laptop connected to the wireless. The librarian had tried several things earlier in the day but it wasn't working. I lucked out because when I went up all I had to do was open up Chrome and the log in screen popped up. I like simple fixes. On a side note, the student intern looks a lot like Anna Camp from Pitch Perfect, except with light brown hair instead of blonde hair. She could easily be a younger sister.

After work I talked to the librarian for awhile and then headed over to the old house. I went through all my clothes that had been piled up on a chair in the laundry room. There were a lot of shirts that I had completely forgotten about. My favorite was one with a pictures of William Shakespeare that said “I Love My Willy”. I want to say I got it in Europe but I don't remember buying any shirts in Europe. So who knows.

I then watched a live stream of Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson finishing their free climb of El Capitan's Dawn Wall in Yosemite National Park. The internet is amazing. It was really cool to watch but it was also slow going so I also ended up watching Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno. I'm a fan of the anime and manga but had no idea there there live action movies. I need to look up the first one. The lead guy did a really good job I thought. They included a bit of quirkiness every now and then which I liked.

With the mountain climbing and movie watching I was slightly late going down to get Chipotle. Not as late as I would have been if we were eating at the regular time but my mom pushed it back a half hour because she went to the school book club. But then she ended up not eating dinner so we really didn't need to push back dinner. But it was good because I got to finish what I was watching. But but but.

My burrito was good and my sister brought over more of the cinnamon knots she made. She had the regular ones and a twisted version. I liked the regular ones better because they weren't as dense. She agreed.

After dinner I read my book for an hour or so. I think the book club for my volunteer thing is next week so I need to send an email I plan on attending. I think it was the last book club where I read the book and then we ended up not meeting. So hopefully that doesn't happen again. It's a good book though so I wouldn't be too disappointed.

When I was done reading I played Fantasy Life for a little while. I'm now a Master Miner. I'm going to attempt Hero Miner so I can get some cool gear from the king and then switch to my next Life. I'm back to vacillating on that one. I wanted to do Alchemy so I could make health potions but now one of the characters in my party had a healing ability so I'm not really using that many potions anymore. Which has me leaning back toward being a Carpenter or Blacksmith. We'll see.