February 3, 2015

 I completely ran out of things to do today at work.

This morning I went down and helped out with literacy centers in kindergarten. I usually do the listening group but we were a person short today so I got that group started and then went over to whatever center the parent usually helps at. I think it might be word work but I could be completely wrong. Anyway, there was a basket of plastic hearts (because it's February) and inside the hearts were letter magnets that spelled out words. The kids took turns picking a heart and then trying to unscramble the words. One of the words was “this” and it turns out, those are also the letters that spell “shit”. The latter was the first word the girl spelled and she looked at me with a very mischievous gleam in her eyes and I shook my head so she started rearranging them. Luckily none of the other kids saw, especially the kid next to her because he kept saying all the words the other kids got out loud and in a fairly loud voice. I wouldn't want to be the adult responsible for the group where the kid shouted “Shit!” for the whole classroom to hear.

After that class I went across the hall to see if they would need me over there. There was the student intern along with a para and a parent so it didn't seem like they needed me but I wanted to make sure. The para was pushing the tables apart and he looked up and whispered “We don't need you, or want you... I'm sorry, that's something I want to say to my father.” It was hilarious.

Another funny thing was said while the sixth graders were in the lab this morning. I was standing in the back with the teacher and he asked me if I could tell who's birthday it was based on the clue that in their family you were allowed to wear leather, or faux leather, on your birthday. And then we both looked at the girl wearing the leather pants. I had noticed it earlier because leather pants seem a little ridiculous, even for sixth graders who are just starting to try and figure out their style. The birthday thing was an interesting explanation. I can see maybe being allowed to wear makeup on your birthday but leather clothing, of all things.

Throughout the rest of the day I had classes in the lab but when there weren't classes I was at a bit of a loss because MAP is done and I hadn't asked around for any busy work. Eventually I decided to update the Shortcuts website I made. I wanted to add in links for Khan Academy and Free Rice, which I did, even though it was kind of a pain and I ended up having to remake the entire website. I'm doing it in Word, which should be easier than writing out all the HTML, but I kind of don't think it is, and HTML would be more fun. And time consuming, which is good when you're trying to consume time. It was a bit of a bitch trying to get everything centered and spaced correctly on the page. It looked fine in the Word document but then it would be all over the place on the webpage. I ended up having to go back and forth, making incremental changes in the document and checking the webpage to see where things were at. They now look super wonky in the document but just fine on the webpage. I don't get it but it works.

When I finished that up I had the idea to make a webpage, like the Shortcuts page, with just Microsoft Office programs on it, so the kids could open that up from the desktop and then pick the program they wanted instead of going through the Start Menu. I also thought that would be simpler than cluttering up the desktop with shortcuts for each program. It appears to be a bit of an issue, however, trying to get a webpage to open a program, because in web browsers, executables are generally seen as a bad thing. I tried using a hyperlink with the address for the program and that didn't work. Now I'm thinking about making a batch file that will open the program and linking to the batch file in the webpage. I'm going to look more into that tomorrow. Really, I would like to just pin the programs to the taskbar, but I couldn't figure out a way to do that for all users on a computer. If all else fails I'll just put the individual shortcuts on the desktop, but I'm not ready to admit defeat yet.

After work I tried out the Battlefield: Hardline beta. I downloaded it on my laptop and I don't know if it was my computer or the beta but it was pretty laggy. Maybe I need to update a driver or something. I feel like I also had lag issues with the BF4 beta but I could be misremembering that. Either way, I ran around, and drove around for one match, and got a few kill assists but never managed to get a kill. There were several instances where I should have gotten a kill but the lag ended up getting me killed. If I really wanted to see if it was computer related I could set up my desktop and try it on there but that seems like a lot of effort for a game I'm not that interested in. It's basically a slightly sped up version of BF4, and BF4 is still a good game. Even if I haven't played it in forever because I've been distracted by other things. Either way, I don't foresee myself buying the game.

I was going to write my discussion post tonight but I kind of feel a bit out of it, my head has been feeling on the verge of dizzy all day, and the topic for this week is still a bit murky. I have to write about things in my personal organizing that are library-like and things that are museum-like. I can't quite wrap my head around that yet. And based on the few posts that have been made so far, I'm not alone, because they also seemed to be grasping at straws a little bit. At the moment I have that feeling like I have accidentally walked into the wrong class and I don't want to admit my mistake so I sit there acting like I know what's going on but really it is all flying over my head. It just feels like we have been dropped into the deep end without much of an introduction. I mostly blame that on the textbook because it really seems like its main purpose is to show how educated and smart the author is rather than actually trying to teach the reader new things. It kind of reminds me of the comment one of my professors made last semester about how often times people working on their PhD find it hard dumbing down what they're saying to the general public. They are so engrossed in their little specialty that they forget that everyone else isn't completely versed in that specialty. It really doesn't matter how smart you are if you can't convey that knowledge to others.