February 24, 2015

Hopefully I can make this short because I want to go to bed.

This morning I had one of the fifth grade classes in the lab and I got the teacher playing on FreeRice. She wanted to do math but after the first math question it switched to English vocabulary. We spent the rest of the time her class was in the lab making it up to level 41 out of 60. Not bad.

After that I had both second grade classes but they came in reverse order because the teacher who usually comes first had to take her daughter to a doctor's appointment. They got a hamster from an acquaintance and last night there was an incident. They had just about got the hamster back in the cage after letting it walk around in its ball, when the doorbell rang and the teacher went to go answer it. When she came back she saw drops of blood leading to the bathroom, and in the bathroom there was a whole bunch of blood on the white shower curtain. The hamster had either bitten or clawed the daughter. Its name is Fluffy, and they were going to change it to McFluffington or something, but now the daughter is referring to it as Killer. Initially she wanted to get rid of the hamster but now she thinks is was just an accident. The doctor appointment was just to make sure the daughter didn't need an antibiotic. Which she doesn't because it wasn't a wild animal, just a pet hamster.

So the other second grade came first and the first second grade came second and stayed a little while longer, until lunch recess (which they have before lunch), at which time I walked them back to their room and they got their stuff to go outside.

Throughout the morning, when I had time, and this afternoon because I didn't have any classes in the lab, I worked on the yearbook. I reorganized the portraits, got all the teacher portraits on the individual class pages, picked out a font for their names and typed those (which I might change later), and went through and made sure everyone's name was spelled right. I ended up going through and renaming a handful of kids and adults who generally go by a different name.

It was an early release day but I had a testing plan meeting after school. It was the principal, the SPED teachers, the Title teachers, and myself. I didn't really contribute too much but I will be deciphering the schedule notes and typing up final schedules so it was good that I was there. It was also a pretty entertaining meeting, so that was enjoyable.

It was only 3:30PM when I got out of the meeting, which I thought was a bit early to go to Chipotle, and I had to pee, so I decided to stop by the old house. That didn't work out because the plumbers were still there so I ended up just coming home for an hour.

Based solely on the two girls that now work the line on Wednesday I am considering moving Chipotle night to Thursday. There is no urgency or real purpose to their movements and it is like watching the hour hand on a clock when they are assembling a burrito or tacos. They also aren't that great with portions, erring on the side of not nearly enough considering the price of the food. And they get distracted by the new jackass working in the kitchen who talks loud and never shuts up. It is evident that the boss, or anyone with authority, is working when I go in on Wednesday and it is getting kind of old. There is a learning curve to any job, and I probably couldn't jump in the line and do any better than these two girls, but they have been working there for a little while now and they should have developed more speed and skill at their vocation.

Tonight I read one of the PDFs for one of my classes. I ended up switching out the 24” monitor I had in my bedroom with the one I had hooked up to my desktop in the other room, mostly because I wanted to do that anyway after messing with the streaming stuff the other day. But also because I wanted to try propping the monitor up on its side so I could read the PDF in Portrait mode. I figured as long as I was moving the monitor in my room I might as well switch it out. And I was trying to delay reading more of the PDF about metadata. It's an interesting topic but it's still metadata, which doesn't make for a very thrilling read. The sideways monitor ended up working out pretty well because I was able to see an entire page of the PDF at once. That makes it a lot easier and more natural to read compared to reading one column on a page and scrolling back up to read the second and then the third. I was also able to easily look back at stuff without having to scroll around. I need to get a stand so I can mount my monitor in Portrait mode. Maybe for my birthday in a few months.

I wanted to write my first discussion post for the week after finishing the PDF but I was kind of wiped out. I think a lot of it had to do with staring at a monitor and reading for so long. I'm not a fan of reading long things from a computer screen. Physical paper will always be better. Or maybe an E-Ink device, like a Kindle, but big enough to show a whole page of a PDF at a time.

Tomorrow I'll have to write my discussion post and probably respond to one or two. I also need to start thinking about my contribution for this week to my group project. None of my fellow group members have posted anything yet either so at least I'm not the only one.