February 4, 2015

 It is nearly midnight so hopefully I can make this a short entry.

This morning I was helping a second grader with a Reading Counts test because he isn't the best reader and was having trouble just reading the questions and answers. I was helping him sound things out and at one point he misread something. I can't remember if he confused whatever it was with trains or coal but seemingly out of nowhere he told me you have to stay away from trains because when you run out of coal you get punched in the face. I had no response, mainly because I was trying incredibly hard not to fall on the floor in a fit of laughter. He was completely serious about what he was saying and I want nothing more than to follow his train of thought back to the station and figure out what he was talking about.

I spent most of my day working on the desktop shortcut situation. Successfully, I might add. I made a batch file that would open up a program, making one for each of the Office programs I wanted shortcuts for. I still couldn't get it to work in Chrome or Firefox because whenever I clicked on the link it would just open a page showing the code of the batch file. Then I stumbled across some random forum, and a random comment on that forum, and learned that Internet Explorer could run batch files. I'm not a fan of IE but it got the job done so I was happy. I tested it out on the back row of computers in the lab and everything worked great.

Over lunch I decided to make the Office page look a little better, which was a good idea, but it ended up setting me back because it took me forever to switch it out on the computers I had already installed it on. But I eventually got there. Once I had my system of installing it down, I was able to update a computer in about five minutes, which is a little over two hours, but actually much more than that if you count how long it took me to figure everything out.

Here is the process I have to go through for each computer. I navigate to the Control Panel and make hidden folders visible. I delete the old Shortcuts link and associated folders off the desktop. I navigate to my new Shortcuts file and Office file on my drive and drag them to the desktop. Then I copy the font I used for the Office page, navigate to the Fonts folder, and paste the font in. Next, I go to the Public Desktop folder and drag over all of my files from the desktop. I then make a copy of IE and move it to the Public Desktop folder. I change the icon for IE to an Office one so it looks like an Office thing, not just an internet shortcut. Then I go into the Start Menu and the Accessories folder to find Run so I can open up the gpedit.msc and navigate through several folders to get to the Group Policy for changing the IE homepage to the link of my Office shortcut on the Public Desktop. I have to do it this way, instead of doing it from inside IE, because it needs to be for all users on the computer, not just me. Then I make a shortcut of my Shortcuts file (because you can't change the icon of a website you make in Word but you can change the icon of a shortcut) and change the icon to the star that I used for my old Shortcuts file. I select all the folders and files on the desktop that I put on the desktop that I don't want seen (because the Shortcuts file and the Office file each come with a folder attached containing pictures and other stuff) and I make them hidden. Finally, I hide hidden objects once again so all that stuff disappears, and then I close out of all the folders I have open. It is an incredibly tedious process. Thankfully I only have twelve computers left.

After work I went to Chipotle. While I was there, I got a text from my mom asking if I had left work already. When I got back in my car I said “Yes” and a short time later she asked if I could grab my sister's bowl out of one of the teacher's rooms. My theory was that she asked one question but was thinking she asked another, so she wasn't really ignoring my response. She later confirmed that she was thinking she had asked if I was still at work, which would have made her subsequent request more reasonable. Either way, I was still relatively close so I went back and got the bowl. Then I went and mailed a bill and bought a Powerball ticket before heading home.

My burrito was pretty good tonight despite the lady being really bad at judging how much stuff to put on the burrito. She started by giving me half a spoonful of rice even though the thing was overflowing with rice, so I had to ask for more. She was also stingy with the beans and sofritas but I didn't want to continue asking her to do a better job at her job.

I showed several videos after dinner, and not just because I was avoiding writing my discussion post for this week. But I was definitely doing that. Even after I came down to my room. I never turned on my TV but I did get sidetracked several times on the internet while trying to think very hard about what to write about. I want to say it was worth all the “wasted” time because I ended up coming up with ideas that hadn't occurred to me before but were way better than my initial ideas. I kept with dishes and utensils for “library-like” organization and came up with my old shelf of memories (random items with memories attached) and my picture folders on my computer (compared to my music folders). I'm pretty happy with it. Tomorrow I'll start reading other people's posts and write some responses.

But now I'm going to bed. Once again I wanted a short entry and did the opposite. It is now half past midnight and I can definitely feel it. Luckily we don't have school on Friday so I won't feel bad about taking a nap after school tomorrow and messing up my sleep schedule.