February 20, 2015

Today was another day. I didn't have my regular morning classes in the lab because the tech guys were updating computers. They were in the library most of the day but one of them, the guy I graduated high school with, came down to the lab in the morning to update the handful that still needed it.

I came very close to getting in trouble because of my colorful desktop background images. The tech guy commented on them and I showed him a picture of what it looked like with the lights off and all the computers logged in so he could see the whole rainbow. He thought it was pretty cool and asked how I did it. I told him I had to use a group policy and he asked how I got one of the head tech guys to let me do that. And I said I didn't. I don't know that it ever really crossed my mind to ask for permission because I was only changing the desktop background. The tech guy said he knew I wouldn't do anything malicious but the head tech guys don't really like people messing around with the computers. Whoops. I didn't think he would rat me out because we know each other and he also gave me the heads up that I wasn't supposed to be opening the towers and cleaning them (which I still think is a tad ridiculous. Despite that, I did have a bit of a fear the rest of the day that the head tech guy would come in and chew me out. But he didn't.

A little later on the tech guy said I should change the 'Log Off' button to 'Restart', which I can do next week. I didn't tell him that doing so will require me to go back into the group policy options because that's how I had to do it when I was switching the 'Shut Down' button to 'Log Off' so it would show up for all the users on each computer.

I also didn't mention that I had to change a group policy to set the homepage for Internet Explorer to the Microsoft Office page I made. Apparently I am walking a very fine line and the odds are good at some point before I quit I will get chewed out by someone in the tech department.

I spent a lot of my day working on slideshow stuff for the end of the year slideshow for the sixth graders. I went through all of their school portraits and added the white border and drop shadow to them. I also played around with the idea of adding a teddy bear to the background of the slides. That might be a thing that happens because it looks kind of neat but it also might be distracting. I'm missing one picture of the newest sixth grader but I did a rough layout for each slide that will just have the portraits on them. If I remember right from the one I made last year, each kid had a slide with their baby pictures on them (along with the school portrait just in case they weren't immediately recognizable), then I had random pictures I found on the faculty drive of them in younger grades, and I ended with slides that just had their portraits. I'll have to see if I still have the file from last year on my computer. I am hoping it isn't on the hard drive that won't show up.

I started going through the old pictures on the faculty drive and picking ones that had the current sixth graders in them. I'll have to continue that next week and start editing them. I also need to start thinking about songs for the slideshow. Last year the sixth grade teacher suggested a couple and I added one, along with a clip for the main menu. I might take an informal poll of the sixth graders and see what their favorite songs have been this year.

Going back to this morning for a second, the sixth graders came down to the lab first thing to enroll in classes for next year. Or at least request their preferences for electives. Things have changed a lot from when I was in middle school. They can even check all their grades online. They will have one or two visits to the middle school during the school year, I think, and then over the summer they'll go for a day. I vaguely remember getting my schedule in the mail and some time before the beginning of the year there was a night where we could go and walk our schedule. Maybe there was an orientation or something but I don't remember one. That was long before I started keeping a daily journal so I can't go back and check.

Tonight my mom and I went over to the old house to check on the work that has been going on the past few days. The back sliding door has been fixed so it actually slides, one of the walls in the laundry room has been fixed and new flooring was put in, a shelf was fixed, and new caulking was put around the tub in my old bathroom. Progress.

On the way home we stopped at Dairy Queen and I got a frozen hot chocolate. So good. I could probably have one of those every day and never get tired of it.

Tonight I did a whole lot of nothing. I posted a PDF of a report to the discussion post to help some people out if they hadn't read it already, but I didn't actually respond to anything else. I had planned on it but I didn't. I'll do that tomorrow. Instead, I watched a couple sad, short documentaries on YouTube and cried and got all stuffed up because they were sad. Sometimes I wish I wasn't so empathetic. I would like to be more stoic when it comes to sad things.

Lastly, I think I experience motivational anhedonia, which as far as I understand, is basically a lack of motivation. Pretty much the story of my life.