April 30, 2015

 Currently my brain is fried and isn't quite working right. I'm keep trying to think of things and there's just a lot of nothing. Kind of frustrating.

There was more testing today. I think two this morning and one this afternoon. They're all blending together if we're being honest. One more week.

I got a hen and chick plant from one of the third grade classes today, along with a few handwritten notes from a few of the kids. I think it is related to para appreciation week, because my mom also got one. I'm not a para but it's a cool looking plant. I later asked the teacher two questions. What the plant was called, and how do I not kill it. Apparently they are fairly easy to care for so lets home my thumb is green enough. I had a bonsai tree years ago that slowly died, and I also had the beginnings of an avocado tree, grown from a seed, that quickly died. The hen and chick plant seems kind of like a gimme, so fingers crossed.

We had a fire drill this afternoon. It was postponed slightly because it was going to happen in the middle of a test, but the delay allowed all but one student to finish, who was able to come back after the drill and finish. It was really bright outside, by the way. We were only out for a few minutes but it felt like I was already getting a tan. I should probably go outside more.

Later in the afternoon there was a POPS choir performance. I've gotta say, I've seen a lot better. It looked like they had been doing the performance all day long at different schools and they just couldn't quite muster the steam any longer. On top of that, their teacher sat on the stage behind them the whole time and couldn't have looked less enthused. Also, when the kids sang, there was a very noticeable over enunciation of words ending in 'T'. It was strange but maybe that is a thing in singing. And there was a girl that didn't have a male partner, and most of the songs involved dancing with a partner, so she spent most of the songs dancing by herself off to the side. It was kind of sad. I thought they would have rotated girls but they didn't.

Before the performance the music teacher, who introduced the choir, took the opportunity to steal the lime light a little bit and have the whole school, and the POPS choir kids, sing her daughter happy birthday, who turned six today. I'm on the fence about that. That is a cool gesture but it's not really the time or place to do that, especially with the choir kids already on a tight schedule. But whatever.

After school one of the fifth grade teachers stopped by the lab to show me a wrapper she had found on the floor. The other day we were talking about how she thought her wisdom teeth were coming in because her teeth were hurting and I said that she was basically experiencing adult teething. The wrapper she found on the floor was called Teether or Teethers or something like that, and it appeared to be for adult teething. Very strange coincidence. Kind of like last night when I wasn't even looking for it but found an article on the latest theory for why some people have room for their wisdom teeth and other people don't. Childhood diet, by the way, not evolution.

My graphics card and fans arrived today. I opened the big box to get the packing slip out, which wasn't there, and then looked at my graphics card box for awhile. I also took the large fan I got and held it up to my case to make sure it would fit. I'm pretty sure it will. I ordered one with a blue LED but got a black one without an LED. That's kind of annoying. I guess we could say the joke is on them, however, because the black fan costs about a dollar more than the blue LED fan. I didn't double-check but the two small fans I got should have blue LEDs so there's that. They will be replacing the two green LED fans I currently have set up in a push-pull fashion on the liquid cooler I have for my CPU. I'm replacing them because one of those fans died. I would like to have all green lights in my case but now I'll just have blue, instead of blue and green. Maybe with my next case I can go all green. Anyway, after looking at the graphics card box, and really wanting to open it, I gave it to my mom so she can wrap it up and give it to me for my birthday next week. The goal is still to be done with all my schoolwork by then but that is obviously not going to happen.

Speaking of which, tonight was severely unproductive. I managed to make a discussion post, which took way too much effort. I also organized all of my group posts into one document, which will make up the appendix for my summary journal I need to write. It's eleven o'clock now but I'm going to try and stay up late enough to at least get something down for that journal. I've just had complete writer's block all night. But screw it. If I can at least get a little something down, maybe it will open the floodgates. I'm going to work on that as soon as I finish this, with the goal of at least giving the briefest of insights into why I picked the resources I did. Then I can go back tomorrow and throw in some fact-based reasoning from things we have learned this semester. That will give me all day Saturday and Sunday to find more sources for, and then write, my research paper. Haha. Yeah. I just need to pretend it is due this Sunday instead of the Sunday after.

April 29, 2015

 Guess what today was? Another day. Yep. Filled with testing and other random things. I look forward to the near future when my days won't be filled with testing. It is on the horizon.

As far as I can remember, the testing was uneventful. You think that would be a reliable indication that testing was in fact uneventful but my memory has failed me before. Oh well.

When I wasn't testing I did other work-related things as well as school-related things. Yesterday I made a fake university letterhead for my group project and today I came up with a coat of arms or seal or whatever you call it, for the fake university. It's got a quill, a scroll, an ebook, and a regular book. I think it looks pretty decent. I got the okay from at least a few of my group members so tonight I went ahead and added the letterhead with the seal to the top of all the pages and I made a smaller version of the seal for the bottom of each page. I like it. I mainly did all that as a distraction from finishing the work on my own page. So I have once again put off summarizing bibliographic sources and formatting my page until tomorrow. It's gotta happen for real tomorrow though because I still have to write a freaking research paper. In a perfect world, I'll be able to finish that this weekend, at the very latest by next Tuesday, so I can enjoy my birthday and maybe even install my new fans and graphics card. Odds are good I won't finish it until the due date the Sunday after next, however.

I got the skilled people at Chipotle today. When I asked for extra rice and beans, I got a lot of freaking rice and beans. And I asked for a little cheese to hold it all together and ended up getting a lot of cheese, but not to the level of too much. The last girl also knew how to efficiently add guacamole to tacos, using a knife to get it off the spoon rather than trying to shake it off the spoon in even amounts, which rarely works well and takes a lot longer than just grabbing a knife.

Tonight I made the aforementioned changes to the group pages. During that process I made the images look better. I made them in Publisher and I originally tried saving the letterhead as a PNG but the quality sucked so I switched to saving it as a PDF, which looked a lot better, but the quality went down a bit after uploading it to Imgur, which converted it to a PNG. Well, tonight I had a thought and noticed that when I went to save as a PNG the default quality was low. When I bumped it up to high, not surprisingly, the final image looked a lot better. It also didn't lose much when I uploaded it to Imgur and added it to the pages. It looks so much better now than it did before. It is really noticeable in the smaller font on the letterhead and the small seal at the bottom. I'm glad I made that discovery.

I also finished reading the textbook chapter for this week and made my discussion post for my other class. It would be nice to not have one this week, or next week (although we may not next week), so we can focus on our research papers. But who am I. I do really like what I was able to come up with for my post, though. It'll be a good one to go out on if it is in fact the last one. Tomorrow and at least one or two more days I'll need to respond to a couple questions show I can get the full points for this week. I want to get all the points I can which will give me the most room for error on my research paper. I hope I'm able to pull it off without a problem but just in case I want some wiggle room.

Lastly, it was my friend's birthday today. Thirty is an easy birthday to find ecards for. So I sent him a bunch. Most of them were about being really old. But one called him a princess. And I included some of the Ryan Gosling 'Hey Girl' meme. The opportunity presented itself and I went for it. He called me a douchebag and said I had a week, so the clock is ticking. Still worth it.

April 28, 2015

 More testing today. Fourth grade state assessments in the morning. Fifth grade state assessments and second grade MAP testing in the afternoon. One more week. In theory. During the fifth grade test I had interesting conversations with the teacher. We covered a lot of random stuff. Wisdom teeth, laundry, needles (fainting because of them), teeth brushing, and at least a few other things that are slipping my mind at the moment.

When I wasn't testing, I updating my MAP spreadsheet. I also worked on a thing for class. In my last group project we are created a resource guide for our target demographic and it is made up of several pages, each covering a different information resource. I thought it might look good to pretend we were making this for an actual university so I designed a letterhead to put at the top of every page. I still need to tweak it a bit but I think it looks decent. I put it on the page I'm in charge of and I'm waiting on feedback from the rest of the group to see if they think it is a good idea.

Tonight I accomplished things but I could have been a lot more productive. I emailed the head of HR from the university library that I want to eventually do a practicum at. We spoke over the weekend while I was down for class and she mentioned the possibility of setting up some job shadowing opportunities to help me figure out what area I'm more interested in. I am looking forward to that because I am pretty sure I want to work in an academic library but I have no academic library experience outside of being a patron so I need to get it figured out.

I also emailed an assistant professor at the university I am attended about possibly using my caution signs from the information literacy assignment, on the university's library website. Our professor said he might be interested in using some of our projects and that we should email him if we wanted our projects to be considered. So I did. I don't know if my signs would be of any use on the website but I still like them so I figured it couldn't hurt to send them his way. If he does use them, I'll be able to put that on my curriculum vitae, and even if he doesn't use them, that's still one more person that will hopefully get a laugh or two out of my signs.

I read half of a textbook chapter. It kept making me nod off so I will finish the second half tomorrow night and then make my discussion post. I could make my discussion post without finishing the chapter but maybe there is something super interesting at the end of the chapter that I could reference. So I'll wait. I also need to finish up my page for the group project tomorrow. Summarizing bibliographic resources and at least starting format the page. Not everyone has posted yet so I obviously can't format everything, but I can start.

I donated to the Red Cross tonight to support the relief effort for Nepal after the devastating earthquake. Donating money seems like a fairly insignificant act, especially considering the magnitude of the disaster, but at the moment that is what I am able to contribute. Donating money is my go-to when natural disasters strike. Maybe sometime in the future I will be able to contribute more than just money. For now it will have to do.

Tomorrow there will be more testing and hopefully wildly productive academic achievements in terms of my class work. Fingers crossed.

April 27, 2015

 Today was uneventful and my brain has kind of shut down. There was more testing. The first two tests doubled up so instead of having a second test this morning we got it over with all at once. I didn't mind.

This afternoon there were two tests, one state assessment and one MAP test. During the MAP test, which was for second grade, one of the girls in the front row fell off her stool. The girl next to her immediately asked if she was alright. When the girl on the ground responded that she was, the girl next to her then asked if the girl on the ground could hand her the icepack that the falling girl had knocked to the ground as she fell. She obliged, handing it up to her before slowly getting up off the ground. It isn't nearly as funny in text but it was amusing how quickly she asked for the icepack back after finding out the girl was alright.

When I wasn't testing, I did other things, like filling in my MAP spreadsheet. I realized that I accidentally tested one of the third graders twice in Reading, rather than once for Reading and once for Math. On the plus side, his score went up five points the second time he took the test. On the down side, he still needs to take the Math test.

The principal will be gone the rest of the week I think, so myself and a couple other people learned how to reactivate tickets today in case we need to do that. And it will probably be a thing. It would have made things easier had I been able to do this earlier but it also meant less work for me, so I can't really complain.

Tonight I eventually managed to decide on my last resource for my group project. I went with the ERIC database. It needed to be an index or abstract resource, and I wanted to do something interesting, but I settled for a plain old database because I wanted to stop thinking about it. And all of my thinking hadn't gotten me anywhere. I should have also been able to summarize bibliographic resources but I didn't. Tomorrow. I also want to come up with a theme or design for all of our pages but we'll see if I get around to that. It will probably happen if I am still avoiding my research paper. But I did find a couple sources tonight for my paper while trying to decide on a database, so I have been productive.

Now I think I'm going to pull the trigger on a graphics card and some new fans for my case. I have been leaning toward the Sapphire Vapor-X 290 because it got the best reviews over all of the reviews I looked at and I found the price to be acceptable. Then I came across the Sapphire Tri-X 290x on Newegg and it was cheaper than the Vapor-X, even though the 290x is a beefier card than the 290. But with Newegg the only return option was to get a replacement. I didn't feel comfortable with that because if I ended up not liking it I wanted to option to send it back and get the Vapor-X. So I found the card on Amazon, and it was more expensive, but I added it to my Wish List just so I wouldn't forget about it. I think that was yesterday and it has since dropped $25. Bringing it to just $20 more than the Vapor-X 290. On top of all that, I got my two Amazon gift cards in the mail today that I got with my hotel rewards points. It's like all the stars have aligned and it was meant to be. So I'm going to buy the card, and the fans, and then give them to my mom so she can wrap them for my birthday, which is next week. My group project is due on Sunday, my research paper the Sunday after that, and there will be at least a few other things mixed in there, so I don't need the distraction of fiddling with the insides of my computer. And even though I plan on unwrapping them on my birthday, rather than when they arrive in the mail, I won't actually mess with anything until classes are over. Because I'm a responsible adult.

April 26, 2015

 Not a lot to write about today. I slept until 11:30AM. It was amazing. I spent my afternoon trying to come up with a bibliographic source for my group project. I think because I could really use a vacation, I ended up going with a bibliography of Machu Picchu resources and recommended that our undergraduate interested in going to graduate school should take a vacation. Coming up with an index or abstract resource is going to be more tricky. I wanted to get that done today but I'll figure it out tomorrow. Along with writing my summary for bibliographic resources, because that is the page I'm in charge of. I also need to write the journal I was supposed to be keeping to go along with this assignment. But that will be easy enough. We're just supposed to explain our reasoning and search process for each of the resources we picked out. I think I can still remember all of that. If not, it'll come to me.

The professor said she wasn't going to have our presentations graded until next weekend but I got my grade today. I got 26.7 out of 27. I'll take it. That leaves me with a 99.1% in the class, so unless I completely bomb the research paper (which is possible), I should get an 'A' in the class. I'm curious to know what my partner got for the presentation. I can only hope it was less than me but for all I know the professor put out the grades without looking at the group pages or the group evaluations we wrote. And I can't really ask my partner what she got. It would be real awkward if her grade reflected her lack of participation in the project. It would also completely suck if she got the same grade as me.

Tonight I went and had dinner at my dad's house. I had fake hot dogs, salad, a baked potato with salsa on it (which is always good), a couple tiny cinnamon rolls in the shape of tiny cupcakes, and a lot of garlic bread. It was really good garlic bread. I wanted to eat the whole loaf.

After dinner I went down and played a little GTA5 with my brother. I got to shoot the tank and drive the monster truck. Good times.

I didn't end up leaving there until almost 9:30PM, so that kind of blew my plans to get any work done tonight. I skimmed through the textbook chapter about indexes and abstracts but I need to give that some thought and try to figure out how I can find something for our target demographic. I'll probably end up having to just pick one of the examples from the book.

My brother and I watched a tiny bit of the Neebs stream before switching to GTA5 and Doraleous and his friend from last week were staying true to their word and playing Oregon Trail. When I got home and turned it on, Simon had joined them and I just caught the tail end of them playing movie-themed Hangman using Microsoft Paint. At some point I need to subscribe to the channel so I can watch the past broadcasts that I miss.

I have now been up for twelve hours and I am ready for bed. This week at school will involve more testing. A lot more testing. My goal outside of work is to finish up the group project and collect all the sources I will need for my paper. I want to be able to write my paper next weekend. Knock the whole thing out so I will have a week to go back over it and make any changes that I need to before turning it in two weeks from now. Sounds like a decent plan. Here's to not putting off my paper until two weeks from now.

April 25, 2015

 Last night there were two downpours in the middle of the night. They both woke me up but I only got up to look out the window during the first one. Just to see what was up, making sure it wasn't a tornado or something. The great thing about the rain was that it completely cleaned all the bird crap off of my car. That made me happy.

Today was mostly presentations. Lots of presentations. Some better than others. The most awkward was one about obituaries. And it wasn't due to the subject matter. One of the girls in that partnership is just off somehow and I haven't figured it out. She either has some form of tourettes or she dabbles in drugs. Or maybe a combination of both. Either way, she kind of went off on a tangent on the history of obituaries, wasting most of their presentation time on it, and then her partner had to kind of rush through the actual point of the presentation, which was their metadata schema. It was interesting to watch from a psychological perspective.

This weekend lunch was provided for us. Sandwiches, veggie trays, chips, and things like that. I ended with a Kraft singles cheese slice on some bread with lettuce and mustard. It was a pretty sad sandwich. But the real point of the lunch was the visiting university librarians who were recruiting for several positions they had open. That part didn't really pertain to me because I'm not graduating until next summer, but they were from the university I am interested in doing a practicum in and maybe potentially working there, so networking. After they made their announcements and told about the positions, and I had finished eating, I ended up talking for quite awhile with one of the librarians and the HR lady that came with the two librarians. I learned some things, which was good, and the HR lady said she might be able to set up some job shadowing opportunities with some of the various departments in the library. This way I wouldn't have to commit to a practicum when I'm not entirely sure what area within the academic library that I would want to work in. So that is really cool. I'm going to email her about it on Monday.

In the afternoon we eventually made it to my presentation, second from the last. I think it went pretty well. I forgot at least a couple things I wanted to say but we still came out to around ten minutes. Closer to fifteen would have been better but hopefully we don't get counted off two much for that. My partner brought comic books and action figures and modified the script I wrote for her slides somewhat, but it was still weird to hear what I wrote interspersed in there. At the end, during the question portion, we had one question about why I hadn't included Eric Bana in the Hulk example, but all the other questions or comments were about the design of my presentation, wanting to know how I did the different aspects of it. So that was pretty cool. The professor said she should have the grades posted by next weekend. Fingers crossed.

The group after us, the last presentation of the weekend, was easily the best. They did a play on the OnStar vehicle service, calling theirs OffStar, which could keep track of the vehicles belonging to to superheros and villains. So my presentation was kind of the perfect segue for them. For their presentation they acted like they were OffStar agents, selling us on the services they provided, like locating invisible vehicles. And they went through their very extensive schema, which was riddles with humorous things, which a completely deadpan delivery. It was really good. If anyone gets a perfect score it needs to be those two.

We wrapped up at 4:30PM and the last thing we needed to do was write a group evaluation. I was brutally honest about my experience with the project. Or more with my partner. I'm not really upset about it anymore, mostly because that frustration was exhausting and I'm not good at holding onto grudges. And because we're done with the whole thing. But I just couldn't let it go. Our presentation definitely could have been a better presentation if my partner had provided more input and all the information wasn't just a solo effort on my part. So I briefly wrote what things were like from my perspective and then spent even more time writing what I liked about the assignment itself. Which was a lot because I liked the practical aspect of it and it was fun coming up with the name for our schema and the layout of the presentation. I would be interested to know if my partner was completely honest in her evaluation. She was typing for awhile so she at least said something.

On my way out of town I stopped by Spangles, as I do, and because it was five o'clock and I didn't have much of a lunch, I also got a grilled cheese sandwich along with my fries and orange juice slush. After getting my order I jumped back on the interstate for a couple minutes and then got back on the road that would take me out of town. A few minutes later I noticed that I only had fries in my bag, no sandwich. If I had been farther away or not as hungry, I probably would have said screw it and kept driving. But I wasn't too far away, I was hungry, and that was an expensive sandwich, so I turned around.

I probably should have gone back through the drive-thru but I wanted to go in just in case I needed to explain things, and because I didn't have my receipt. There was no one in the drive-thru but I didn't have to wait for a long line of people to place their orders before it was my turn at the register. Again, probably could have just gone up to the counter and mentioned it but I waited my turn. I ended up getting the same girl that helped me at the drive-thru so she remembered and they knew the grilled cheese had been forgotten so they made me a new one, gave me a card for a free ice cream cone, and apologized several times. It did slow me down by about fifteen or twenty minutes, but no harm no foul.

I made it back without incident, talked to my mom for awhile because we haven't really talked since Wednesday probably, and then took the night off from school work. I decided I had earned a break. I watched some YouTube videos and played GTA5. My goal was to steal vehicles for my collection. I managed to find a minivan, a jeep, a moped, and a bicycle. I also got a couple motorcycles but neither are the one I want so I'm going to keep looking.

Now I'm going to bed because it is really late and I want nothing more than to sleep. Tomorrow I need to work on my other group project and hopefully get everything done for this past week. That is the goal anyway.

April 24, 2015

 I am so exhausted right now. I think part of it is dehydration but most of it is just life. I don't like it.

Today was much better than yesterday. There was testing but it was the same classes as yesterday for the state assessments, and most of them had finished both parts yesterday, which left just a handful of kids in each class. Those kids managed to take almost their entire testing session, but there was still more downtime than yesterday. The day ended with a MAP test, and I was going to leave early and leave a para with the last two kids but they both managed to finish by the time I finished shutting everything down. So it worked out.

My favorite substitute was around today and she stopped by to talk in between tests. I showed her my presentation and she really liked it, which is good to hear. I'm still really happy with it, despite the fact that it was supposed to be a group project.

My drive down was uneventful, and for the first or second time ever I didn't get screwed on the last stretch of highway coming into town. I thought about maybe stopping to use the restroom but when I saw there weren't any trucks in front of me and I just kept going. It was amazing being able to drive the speed limit.

There are two classes meeting this weekend and I ended up running into one of the ladies I work with who is a year ahead of me in the program. Small world. We are meeting in a new building and the classroom is small, hot, and not really built for presentations because half of the desks and chairs are facing the wrong way. Mine was one of those so for the presentation portion I ended up moving a chair off to the side of the room so I didn't completely throw my neck and back out of whack by twisting my body and craning my head to see.

The presentations tonight were pretty interesting, covering everything from movie posters to picture books for older readers to ghost hunters to church choir sheet music. Some of them had a lot of information which made me feel a little inferior but we'll cross our fingers. It was interesting to see the ordering of most of the presentations somewhat followed my ordering. Probably because I kind of just went down the list of objectives, but there was no real set order so it is interesting that there is the same kind of flow.

I had a conversation with my partner after glass, and that sucked because I do really like her as a person. The groups were made based on personality scores and we are both very similar. I'm also not good at holding grudges. They are a waste of time and effort. But she still majorly dropped the ball and I think there is some sort of group evaluation at the end of tomorrow. I probably won't totally throw her under the bus but at the same time I'll be honest, at least from my perspective of events.

There is supposed to be a lot of severe weather here but it either hasn't hit yet or it went by us. With the classroom being so hot it felt amazing at 66 degrees outside after class. I drove to the hotel with the windows down listening to Incubus and if I wasn't so exhausted I would probably still be out there driving around.

But it is now late. And by late I mean not even 10:30PM. Which is ridiculous. My eyes feel like it is four o'clock in the morning. I need to run through the presentation real quick before bed, though. Maybe make some additions and finalize some things. I printed out my script but odds are good I'll probably just hold it and not look at it. And if I do look at it, it will just be for pretend because I'll be in the presentation zone where I lose all track of time and location and just kind of fall into the abyss. Anyway, I'm going to do that and then go to bed. Hopefully before eleven o'clock.

April 23, 2015

 Today really sucked. I would describe it more eloquently but that pretty much sums it up and I am tired.

My day started with a test, which lead right into another test. Then I had yearbook club, followed by a seven-minute lunch break because yearbook club cuts into my lunch at the beginning and the kindergarten class comes in before my lunch would normally end. So I had a nice seven-minute break after a non-stop morning. Right on the heels of the kindergarten class there was another test, followed by another test which went right up until the bell rang. So a seven-minute lunch break and few quick runs to the bathroom, and the rest of my day was spent on my feet in the back of the lab watching kids test. Not fun.

I was finally able to sit down and edit the last few yearbook portraits and get those in after school and discovered that all of the margins on the class page had been shifted slightly. This threw off the alignment of the class portraits on the page as well as the picture of the teacher I put on each page. I was able to fix the issue by redo doing the layout but this also got rid of the teacher's picture and name. So I had to go back through and fix the layout, add in the teacher's picture and painstakingly adjust the size based on the size of the other pictures on the page, realign the teacher's picture, add the name back in, and finally align in. This would have been a tedious but manageable process if the website we use wasn't incredibly slow and cumbersome. It takes forever to do the simplest things. I think I fixed eleven pages, and it took three to four minutes just to switch between pages, along with several minutes on each page fixing things. This on top of already staying late to finish the portraits. I ended up clocking out a little before six o'clock.

Then I went out to my car and discovered it was covered in bird shit. Fan-fucking-tastic. These goddamn birds. All they do all day is eat black thing or yellow things and crap all over my car. I'm sick of it. I'm going to start parking several blocks away if that's how far it is to a spot that isn't covered in trees. I was starving and had to go to the bathroom so I didn't have time for the carwash but I did stop and get gas and while I was there I at least cleaned off my windshield, mostly, so I don't have to stare at that on the long drive to class tomorrow night.

When I got home I ate dinner and then spent my night finishing a textbook chapter on boring stuff and looking over my presentation. I want a good grade but at this point I'm just so burnt out, on school and work and life and everything. I just want to curl up in bed and lay there for awhile. I need to hit the pause button and take some time to catch my breath. Summer and a brief reprieve from school and work cannot come soon enough.

April 22, 2015

 I'm tired. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, and in all the other ways I can't think of. All the stress from my failed group project keeps hitting me in waves. Currently the wave is pinning me to the ocean floor. I just want to make it through this weekend and then hopefully I won't have to see my partner for a really long time.

After this weekend I'll also be able to devote more of my attention to my research paper. I've collected some sources for the paper, so I'm feeling good about that. I haven't actually read through them but I have them, and that's how it starts. The professor got back to me today and suggested rather than writing about the use of linked data in libraries, or even a specific type of library, I should look at the pros and cons of its use in libraries in general. That sounds a lot more interesting. I'm still not looking forward to actually reading all the articles and writing the paper, but at least it should be interesting. Hopefully.

Today there was more testing. More uneventful testing. Two tests this morning and one this afternoon. There were two tests scheduled for this afternoon but we moved the second one because the teacher wasn't going to be there and she didn't want to leave the substitute with that responsibility. Because the time was already blocked off the class did come to the lab a little later on but they just played on the computers instead of taking a test.

In between tests I took pictures of three more kids for the yearbook and I think I've got all of them now. At least all the ones that I could think of or that the teachers mentioned. Which is good because we have to be done by Friday. By the end of the day I was able to get the first three kids I took pictures of added to the yearbook and tomorrow my goal is to get the other three added.

After school I went to Chipotle and then came home. My burrito was alright. I just got rice, beans, and corn salsa, no cheese or sour cream. That made it less interesting on my palate but it was better than last week when there was so much cheese that at points that's all I was eating. I kind of think a little bit of cheese or sour cream may be necessary just to hold everything together though. Or it could have just been a somewhat failed attempt at wrapping my burrito. The kid struggled and didn't really succeed.

Tonight I read most of a chapter on resource descriptions. Never has a more thrilling topic been written on the pages of a textbook. I started by reading it in my head but I kept nodding off so I switched to reading it out loud. And now my throat is kind of sore. The chapter seemed like it was all kind of a build up to talking about XML and similar kinds of methods for structuring resource descriptions. I should probably try and finish the chapter tonight because I also need to read a couple PDFs before the weekend but I'm going to push that burden off until tomorrow.

My partner got back to me on the tweaks she had in mind for my presentation and she pretty much back pedaled out of all of them. The only one she mentioned was that the font I used was all-caps and she didn't know if the professor would appreciate that for the formatting of the references. Thanks for the insight partner. I had a similar thought when I was putting it together but only one of the references has any real need for formatting, and that was an italicized title, which I was able to do. I would hope that I wouldn't get docked points for my font choice, when it is kind of necessary for the comic book theme. My partner also signed us up for a time and it looks like we will be presenting last on Saturday, unless there is a group that hasn't signed up yet. Best for last, maybe? Probably not, but probably the best solo effort. My hope is that the bar will be set so high by the other groups that we can just walk under it safely and not worry about hitting our heads. We will probably be running long and everyone will want to leave so I doubt they'll be paying much attention at that point. As long as someone acknowledges how cool my presentation looks, I'll be happy.

April 21, 2015

 It's late and when I try to think my mind draws a blank. There was more testing today, as per usual. Two tests this morning and two this afternoon. The two this afternoon were actually done by the same class. They came in after lunch to take their Math state assessments, went out to recess, and came back to take their Reading MAP test. This is the kind of crap that happens when state assessments and MAP are so heavily overlapped, and crammed into the end of the year. There is so much other crap going on that scheduling becomes a nightmare. It's like a jigsaw puzzle that you have to figure out with your feet while blindfolded. It's a bit absurd.

When I wasn't testing, which was not often, I worked on editing one of the pictures I took yesterday of one of the missing kids for the yearbook. It seemed a little white in comparison to one of the official portraits, which seemed warmer somehow. After a cursory glance through the Gimp options I couldn't find anything that looked like it could help me with this but I ended up coming up with a solution. I put a layer on top of the picture and colored it a medium shade of brown. Then I lowered the opacity to around 7% and it gave just enough tint to make the picture look a little more like the official portrait, at least with regard to the lighting.

One of the kindergarten classes was supposed to come in after lunch, and I got them all set up and started my lunch a little early so I'd be done by the time they got there, but they never showed up. The teacher apologized after school and I gave him crap about it, but it's all good. It was annoying at the time but it gave me time to edit the yearbook picture.

And keeping with the out of order thing, I was talking with one of the paras this morning, the one who wearing a different, often crazy, headband every day. Today it was a purple, flowery, fluffy, looking one and she said she could figure out if she was a peacock or a lilac bush. As we were talking one of the fifth grade teachers walked by and briefly joined the conversation and then started complimenting the para as she was walking away. Her final compliment was that the para looked breathtaking, and then she started to act like she was having trouble breathing. I thought it was pretty funny.

Tonight I started reading a textbook chapter on bibliographical sources. It is the chapter I chose to be in charge of for the group project. That means that along with picking a source, I am in charge of summarizing what bibliographical sources are, and formatting the page that everyone else will submit their bibliographic source examples to. I kind of wish I had chimed in earlier in the selection process. Not only because I would already be done with it but because bibliographic sources seems a little hard to summarize. And to pick an example that would be of use to a student interested in going to graduate school. In my reading tonight I learned that there are subject bibliographies, which obviously cover specific subjects, so I might look and see if there is one specifically for liberal arts.

I also think I settled on a research paper topic, which is linked data and its use by libraries. I emailed the professor to see if that was narrow enough or if I need to focus on a specific type of library. We'll see what she thinks. I did a very brief search and found some interesting information so hopefully this topic will work out. I haven't actually started collecting sources or writing but the whole thing seems a little less daunting now that I have a topic. I'll probably think otherwise once I actually start writing the paper, but for now I'm going to embrace the feeling.

We got our grades back in my other class from the information literacy standards assignment, and I got twenty-five out of twenty-five. So she liked my caution signs. I am glad because I really liked what I was able to come up with and I think the final product turned out well. The professor also said that another professor might be interested in using some of our projects on the campus library's website, which would be cool, not only for being picked, but also because it could be added to our resumes. I can't exactly see my caution signs fitting into a library webpage but we'll see what happens.

I got another message or two from my partner. Nothing productive though. In the last one she rhetorically asked how many times she needed to apologize. And that she is seriously thinking about whether she should continue with the program. That all seems a bit melodramatic. I told her I didn't want or need her apologies. All of that is in the past and apologies can't fix it so we need to focus on the very near future, which is the presentation this weekend. We still need to figure out how we're going to divide that up and I'm seeing if she has any input. I'm so close to being done with the whole thing, then I can devote my attention to my research paper and wrapping up my other group project.

I played a tiny bit of GTA 5 tonight because I just felt like driving around for a little while. I didn't partake in any missions or races or anything, I just drove around. I kind of wanted to get a hearse, which is apparently one of the rarest spawns in the game. It spawns at the cemetery but very infrequently. I ended up driving back and forth and all over getting new cars to spawn there but the hearse never showed up. I did manage to steal two other cars and added them to my garage so I can sell them later. I thought you could steal any cars except the super expensive ones and store them in your garage to sell but even on some of the regular cars it won't let you store them because it says they already have a tracker on them. That is kind of annoying to find out after driving it all the way back to my garage.

I spent a lot of time driving around on a motorcycle and it made me realize I need to buy a motorcycle, or find one that will let me store it in my garage, because the one I found tonight had a tracker. It is so much easier weaving through traffic on a motorcycle. I also discovered that it kind of sucks stealing cars and storing them in my garage because when I come back out on foot, there are no vehicles parked on the street anywhere near my apartment building. And I don't want to go through the hassle of stopping a car in the street. I also couldn't get my melee attacks to work, which was a sad realization when I was getting attacked by a random NPC. I think maybe it was because I was in passive mode.

Anyway, it's midnight now and that is going to make tomorrow morning suck. So I'm going to bed.

April 20, 2015

 I'm so tired right now and my monitors seem super bright. Part of me kind of feels like I'm getting sick. It's probably stress related. I'm a bit late but I think I need to go into hibernation. Just for a month or three. Recharge the batteries a little.

There was more testing today. As there was last week. And as there will be next week. Fourth graders tested first today and as their teacher walked into the lab she said, in a sing-songy voice, “We're ba-ack.” She was then followed into the lab by one of her students, who in a perfection impression of that sing-songy voice, said “And we're awe-some.” It was pretty funny.

And speaking of funny, after the two morning tests, one of the third grade classes came into the lab and I overhead this humorous exchange between the classes intern and one of the students:

Intern – Did you do anything exciting over the weekend?

Student – Yes.

Intern – What'd you do?

Student – Went to GameStop.

Intern – Cool, what'd you get?

Student – A game.

Intern – Duh, which one?

Student – Super Smash Bros.

Intern – Ugh, that's the best.

This afternoon there were another two tests, one being a MAP test. I can tell my back is not up to the bending down and recording of the scores yet because tonight I bent over and reached to put my place mat back under the napkin holder after dinner and I thought my back was going to give out. Hopefully it gets back in shape before MAP testing really takes off.

I had a little bit of time after class so I went and took pictures of three of the third grade students who weren't here for the first picture day. It hit me last night that the yearbook is due on Friday and I hadn't taken pictures of any of the missing kids yet. I know I've got at least one kindergartener and one fifth grader to get but there may be more. I sent out preview pages to the teachers today so they could double check spelling and let me know who was missing.

I had a few exchanges with my MIA partner tonight. At one point she kind of tried to allude to me being at fault for not giving her feedback on the feedback she gave me. I asked her not to do that and said my lack of response didn't prevent her from posting her own thoughts over the past six weeks. I'm just so over it and I want to get past this weekend. I don't want it to come because I am afraid of the train wreck but it also can't come fast enough. I need to write a goddamn research paper and I can't focus on that with all this lack of group shit floating around my head.

Despite those exchanges, I had a kind of productive night, reading most of a chapter on geographical resources and making my post about a geographical resource for my other group project. We still have to read two other chapters and make two other posts for this week. Along with reading a chapter and a couple PDFs for my other class in preparation for the face-to-face meeting this weekend. This week is going to suck. Especially if I continue to feel like crap.

And now I'm going to go to bed because I feel like crap. And it's almost eleven o'clock.

April 19, 2015

 Today I accomplished nothing. Not a single thing. I somehow managed to make it through the single day without doing anything. I looked at the instruction sheet for the research paper and the topic list but still have no idea what I want to write about. I also looked at the example papers which just makes the whole thing look more daunting. I hate research papers. I like creative writing, not stuffy academic writing.

And I take back the lack of doing anything thing because I just remembered that I did read the two PDFs for this week's reading in one of my classes. One was a paper about coming up with an organizing schema for pictures, and the other was a paper about how to improve the online library catalog. So there. Productivity.

I finished watching Doraleous & Associates. I'm pretty sure I could watch all 49 episodes on repeat and never get tired of them. I also watched a few more episodes of Salad Fingers and it got exceedingly more strange with each episode. I thing there are only ten so I'll finish it eventually.

Tonight I watched the Neebs livestream. The whole crew does the Thursday stream and now they have started doing individual streams. Simon streams on Mondays and tonight, Sundays, is Doraleous. The opening of the stream was pretty epic. The stream was meant to have a love advice theme so there were lit candles, Doraleous was dressed up in fancy clothes, and his guest (who was just wearing a regular t-shirt) had a tie and tiny hat. And the stream started by having a third person push Doraleous on his office chair into the camera frame and then walked over and pulled the other guy into frame. Very amusing. Overall the stream was really good. I'd watch again.

I also played a little GTA5 Online. I participated in several races to get myself up to level five and then bought an apartment. There are a few house options, which apparently have the same interior as lower level apartments, and I kind of wanted to get one of those but when I was watching videos the inside of them were a bit messy, which would have constantly bothered me. I ended up going with one of the cheapest apartments that come with a ten-car garage because the price was decent, it was somewhat near shops, and I liked the view. I had it narrowed down to three options but one of them was the most expensive apartment in the game and I didn't think the view was as good as the one I chose, and the other one, which was maybe slightly more expensive, had a better view but it was also farther away from shops. I'm happy with my choice.

It's nearly eleven o'clock now but I slept in this morning so I'm not really tired enough to go to bed yet. So I'll probably continue watching YouTube videos and clicking around the internet for awhile. I should probably just read one of the many books I want to read but I won't. Unless I end up not being able to sleep later.

April 18, 2015

 This morning I slept in again, which was great, and then I read an article about Abraham Lincoln in National Geographic. Not a bad way to start a Saturday.

When I did finally get up and around, I worked on my presentation. I made some changes to the References slide, and a couple other small things. I also wrote a script for the presentation. On the first read through it came out to around ten minutes. The directions say it should be around fifteen minutes but I learned during the last round of presentations in my other class that there will be people who go way over that limit. It will hopefully be appreciated that I did go that extra five minutes. Also, for my recorded presentation in this class I got 0.6 points off for going about five minutes long. Hopefully, at most, I will only be penalized that much for being five minutes under.

I sent the presentation to my partner last night and I sent her the script today but still have yet to hear from her. Part of me hopes something is wrong, not because I want bad things to happen to other people, but because at least it would be a valid excuse for why she hasn't done anything for this project.

Other than doing laundry, that was about it for my productivity today. Not bad I would say. Could have been worse. Tomorrow I'll try and nail down a research paper topic. I think that will give me three weeks to research it and write the paper. Probably should have started it earlier, to be fair, but hopefully three weeks will be more than enough time.

Tonight I decided to jump into GTA5 Online. I spent so much time designing my character trying to get it to look like me. Overall the head is too small and they didn't have the write hair and beard options, but from the right angle when I'm in my car, it kind of looks like me. I also started off trying to go for a Laurel and Hardy look with a black suit and bowler hat. It wasn't really working and it didn't help that the hat was way too big for my tiny head, so it was kind of like when Stan accidentally puts on Ollie's hat. I'm now rocking out with a bright blue suit jacket, black pants, and green Chucks. Pretty snazzy.

Online starts with a race against other people who have just started playing Online. I had no idea which car to pick so I went with one at random and thankfully it was actually decent. I was near the back of the pack for the first half of the race. When I managed to get up to the front, I gave the person plenty of room when I went to pass him but he apparently wasn't having it so he came across and rammed me, totally spinning me out and dropping me back to last place. Great sportsmanship. Rubbing is racing as they say but deliberate ramming is unnecessary. Despite that, I managed to come back and win the race, so screw you to that guy. Later on I also managed to win my first street race mission, helped by the fact that all but one guy dropped out so it was just me and him and he wasn't that good.

After coming out of the second mission I was immediately shot and killed by another player. I read that there are people who will camp out in the starting areas and kill new people. Apparently that is true. After your first death you are able to turn on passive mode, which I immediately did so I could go through all the beginning stuff without worrying about getting killed again.

I learned that you get a free car at the beginning of the game, after you steal it and take it to the mechanic. The super fancy, high-end cars and military vehicles are restricted but I think everything else is fair game. Right after getting this call there was a pretty cool looking car across the street from me so I grabbed that and then headed over to the beach because in Story mode there were some nice cars in the parking lot by the pier.

I parked there and got online to read about the car I had and it seemed to be a pretty decent car. I was a fan of the look but as I was driving it around the parking lot I saw another car, a two-door coupe, that also looked pretty cool. I had planned on driving it around the parking lot a bit to see how it handled but as soon as I turned away from my first car and then looked back, my first car had disappeared. I then had to decide whether I wanted to stick with this second car (which also seemed to be pretty good according to people on the internet) or drive around and try to find a new one. I decided to stick with the second one because according to several people it has a fairly rare spawn rate so I figured I'd be less likely to run into someone with the same car as me. I ended up painting it bright blue with yellow rims and lime green neon lights. It's pretty badass.

It is now creeping up on three o'clock in the morning and I need to go to bed. My sleep schedule is going to be so screwed up this week. And then next weekend I'll be stressing out about my presentation. But this will be my last trip down for school for awhile, which is nice, and the semester is almost over, which is also nice.

April 17, 2015

 I slept in this morning, which was awesome, and then I laid there awhile longer coming up with a plan of attack for my presentation. And then I spent pretty much the entire day working on it. I had to almost fully redesign the layout of my PDF, several times, as I came up with what each slide was going to be. I started by trying to make an outline with a brief script for each slide but I gave that up pretty quick because I still hadn't figured out what the actual order of the slides was going to be. So I switched over to Publisher and decided on my slide order as I went, rearranging things as I needed.

I made my final edit for the day sometime after nine o'clock, after so many hours of work today. Ridiculous. But I pretty much finished it, one day ahead of schedule. Tomorrow I want to add some more comic book covers for the background and go through and come up with a basic script. I might also make some changes to the PDF but hopefully not because it is kind of a pain to get everything situated in Prezi. But I've got a week to get it all sorted out. I was happy enough with the final product today that I sent it to a couple people. I also sent it to my partner, mentioning that I hadn't heard from her so I made the presentation. Mildly passive aggressive.

I am slightly interested to see how everything turns out because other than coming up with the initial idea for the topic of our presentation on the weekend it was assigned, she hasn't contributed a single thing. Other than an apology a week or two after missing our first deadline for posting some ideas. I'm probably going to send her the script I come up with, too, just so we're on the same page for the presentation. If I don't get an 'A' on this project, I'll probably throw her under the bus. And if there is a partner evaluation I don't think I'm going to white-wash the situation. I thought my partner last semester was bad when I made the entire newspaper and heavily edited the two poorly written, tiny articles I had her write, and then edited and doubled the length of our presentation. But at least she wrote those two articles and kind of made a presentation. This time around is kind of unbelievable actually. Most of the time the slackers at least fake like they're doing stuff or come up with a bunch of excuses. My partner has been completely MIA. I don't get it.

After calling it a day on the project, I played some GTA5. I completed the first story mode heist, robbing a jewelery store, and I met the third main character, Trevor, the crazy guy. So it was a productive day in terms of schoolwork and video games. I also started watching Doraleous & Associates again. I don't know how it came up but one of the fifth grade teachers mentioned this cartoon the other day that she saw on YouTube years ago called Salad Fingers. I watched the first episode and it is probably the weirdest thing I have ever seen on YouTube, which is saying something. I need to watch some more of it though just to see how much weirder it gets. In return, I sent her a link to the first Doraleous & Associates, because it is a great cartoon. That got me started on watching it again. I wouldn't be surprised if I made it through all the episodes this weekend.

But not tonight, because it is two o'clock in the morning and I am freaking tired.

April 16, 2015

 April is half gone already. Time really does seem to move faster the old you get. Or the more busy you are. I'm participating in both activities at the moment.

We had our first MAP test today and I was quickly reminded how much more I like it compared to the state assessment. The set up sucks, having to log all the kids in, but I don't have to mess with tickets, and I feel like I serve more of a point by writing down scores at the end. The scores are also nice because teachers can get immediate feedback on how the kids did. There are a lot of kids on the state assessment who fly through it or take hours and there is no way to tell how they did until scores come back, months from now. It's nice knowing for a fact that they bombed it and having them retake it.

After the MAP test we had a state assessment. Then I had a short lunch because one of the kindergarten classes wanted to come in at 12:25PM. I was working on MAP stuff when the teacher came in and asked so I stopped that and got all the computers set up and then clocked out around 12:10PM. So I nice fifteen minute lunch instead of a half an hour.

This afternoon there was another state assessment and then the fourth grade performance. They sang a whole bunch of old Rock 'n Roll songs. One kid dressed up like Elvis, another did a high-pitched “Wooo” for Litter Richard, and they all danced. It was pretty good.

I didn't really have much downtime today but when I did I was either entering MAP scores or getting my score sheets ready for the coming MAP tests. I decided to add in the main score from last time so teachers can see how the new score compares without having to go look it up.

Tonight I didn't really accomplish much academically. I have a DVD that has all of the X-Men comics on it from 1963 to August 2005, which is apparently over 485 issues. They are all PDFs and I went through and randomly picked several of them, screencapped the cover, turned it into a JPG, inserted it into my Prezi, and arranged them for a background. I figured it would be easier to cite the source of those pictures because they're all coming from the same place, as opposed to all over the internet. Still need to figure out the information for the slides. And I'm hoping that it will all fit on the page I already made because I like it and it would be nice if I didn't have to remake it.

Tomorrow I will be focusing on the information. My goal is to have the presentation pretty much, if not completely, done by Saturday. Then I can spend all of Sunday coming up with a topic for my research paper and gathering sources. It all sounds kind of easy and straight forward when I write it out but I know it's going to be a struggle every step of the way. I'm having to create all of this stuff, not just copy stuff out of a book or memorize facts. At this point I kind of miss memorizing stuff for tests.

When I finished the comic book cover thing, and finally admitted to myself that I wasn't going to get any more work done, I played a little guitar, while watching the Neebs livestream, and then played some GTA5. I did a few main missions and a few side missions but probably spent more time driving around the map. It is such a huge map. I managed to make it over to the other side but there are still a lot of areas I need to explore in order to see them on the map. Originally the map is covered up but as you go to different places, the map is revealed. At some point I'd like to reveal the whole thing. Which I imagine might happen just by playing through the story.

It's two o'clock now so I'm going to go to bed. We don't have work tomorrow, which is why I'm up so late, but I need to sleep so I can wake up and work on my presentation. A fun-filled day.

April 15, 2015

Testing. There were two tests this morning and one this afternoon. Then we had an assembly. The day went by really fast.

When we weren't testing I worked on an idea I had for my “group” presentation. We are creating a metadata schema for Marvel superheros so I thought it would be cool to move around a comic book page in Prezi, rather than just a plain old PowerPoint slideshow. I haven't ever used Prezi before so I set up an account and started playing around. I couldn't get the layout I wanted, the one I saw in my head, so I ended up making a PDF page in Publisher that looked like a comic book page. I might end up having to make a new one when I figure out how many slides we are going to have but for now I put ten panels on the page. I thought it would be cool if they were real panels and the speech bubbles contained our information but I also thought it would take forever to find individual panels that had big enough bubbles. Instead, I just went with pictures of popular superheros from the Marvel website. I then added a white layer on top of them and adjusted the transparency so the pictures are still visible but hopefully the words on top of them will be legible. I'm obviously biased but I think it looks really cool. Way better than I thought it would.

As for the presentation, in my head I envision it starting with a pulled-out view, showing the comic page I made with a background of a bunch of different comic book covers. Then it will zoom in to the first panel, which is the title slide, and then progress from panel to panel, which will be filled with a whole bunch of interesting information. The last panel is a picture of Daredevil holding his hand up to his ear, listening. It didn't occur to me when I chose that picture but after putting it in the last slide (because it was the last picture I had), I thought it made a pretty good Questions slide.

Of course, all of this is still in my head. A cart before the horse situation. I still need all the information to put into the presentation. I secretly hope my partner has amassed all of that and is going to surprise me soon. Realistically, that isn't going to happen. The only real input she has had, since we first talked about it during our initial meeting, was to apologize for not contributing anything by the date we agreed on. And now we're back to radio silence. So who knows. At least the presentation will look cool, even if the content sucks.

Tonight was Chipotle night but my sister is still out of town so it was just my mom and myself, and she wasn't eating Chipotle. Oh well, the burrito was decent. Not award winning. Or really that great. But it was decent.

After dinner I thought a lot about school stuff but didn't actually do anything tangible. I spent a lot of my day at work, when I wasn't testing, working on school stuff. I was burnt out. But the thinking was good. A lot of graduate school so far, at least when it comes to my process, involves getting lost in my head. There's a whole bunch of thinking and then bursts out output. Like my caution signs over the weekend. Or coming up with the comic book presentation idea. And tonight I was back to the thinking phase.

Around nine o'clock I gave up on the thinking stuff and played some GTA5. I knew it would be a distraction. I think I'm maintaining my self control, though. Only an hour or two a night, after I have made progress with other things. Tonight I did a couple main missions and side missions. The exploding phone thing was a bit of a shock. One of those unexpected, holy shit moments. I did all my driving with the mouse and keyboard tonight and I did alright. Even participated in a race. I still wish the camera would lock onto the behind-the-car view quicker. When you turn corners it sometimes takes forever to lock on so you'll be staring off in the direction you used to be going while your car runs into something. There might be a way to lock it but I haven't figured it out yet. It's still too tricky for me to use my mouse to move the camera. The sensitivity is too high. Although there is a probably a way to fix that.

Now I'm going to bed, because that's what I do at the end of the day. I'm looking forward to sleep. Tomorrow is the last day of the work week for me, which I am looking forward to. But my weekend will be packed with school stuff. I need to make a lot of headway in the next few days. I believe in myself. Because I can't believe in my partner.

April 14, 2015

More testing. And there will be more tomorrow. And for the next however many weeks. Can't wait.

There were two tests this morning and then that was it for the lab today. There were three classes on the schedule this afternoon but two were on a field trip and the third was a no-show. So I spent most of my day editing pictures. I think I'm nearly done, minus some that I could probably do from this year.

I took breaks here and there from editing and looked at stuff on graphics cards. That has really caught my interest recently. During the tests I was making mental notes of the stuff I want to replace on my computer. It's not a big list but it does add up. I need at least a few new fans, the graphics card, and a new hard drive or two. My big hard drive died (or just can't be recognized anymore) and my other two, slightly less big ones are almost full. And the SSD that I have Windows installed on is small and always coming close to running out of room. So ideally I'd like to get a bigger SSD and another big regular hard drive. And I'll eventually need to replace my CPU I would imagine. I need to take up a second job. Technically a third job but I haven't worked at the movie theater in quite awhile. It would be nice if I could get just one grown-up job. Soon.

After work I paid a bill, got my car washed, and bought a Powerball ticket. I've heard it is supposed to rain sometime this week but I couldn't take the bird poop anymore. I can't help but park under trees at work and the birds take advantage of the easy target. Goddamn birds.

When I got home, I read a textbook chapter on encyclopedias and made my group post. I really didn't want to think about it too hard so I jumped on it early, creating the group page (because it hadn't been created yet) and picking Wikipedia as my suggestion for our target demographic. I called myself out for making the easy choice but the early bird gets the worm as they say.

After dinner I worked for a couple hours on my other group project, which I should refer to as a solo project at this point, and looked over the stuff for my research paper. I really need to pick a topic for that. If I wait until after I've gotten the group presentation out of the way I'm not going to have much time at all so I'd like to nail down a topic and at least have a couple sources by the end of the week. Along with having the presentation done. Lofty goals. I feel like this coming weekend is going to be really busy.

I was satisfied enough with my progress for the day so I ended the night with some GTA5, no real surprise there. I ended up playing a while longer than I planned because when I went to my house to save the game and end things, two characters walked out of my house and it started another mission. And I went with it. I am experimenting with using the mouse and keyboard while on foot and using my Xbox controller while in vehicles. I like mouse and keyboard driving in Saint Row but it just doesn't feel quite right in GTA5. It is much better with a controller.

Now it is eleven o'clock and I'm going to call it a night. Can't wait for another day of testing.

April 13, 2015

More testing today. No surprise there. There was only one issue where the test didn't have any graphics, which included the checkboxes and checks and any real indication that an answer had been selected other than the question numbers going across the top of the screen getting slightly smaller when an answer was picked. I think it was a browser issue, rather than a test issue. Still, I had the ticket reactivated so we can go back in and make sure the answers actually went through, and that everything got answered.

When I wasn't testing and classes weren't in the lab, I edited baby pictures. And I think that was my day. It was really pretty uneventful. At least that's all I can remember anyway.

After work I came home and read a textbook chapter. After dinner I posted an entry for my group project based on that chapter. I need to make one more group post this week, on encyclopedias. There should also be a discussion post for my other class but that hasn't gone up yet. Maybe we'll get a week off so we can focus on our group presentations. That would be nice. Especially for my partner who hasn't contributed anything yet. I need to start working on that tomorrow. During our first face-to-face weekend she showed us examples but I haven't been able to find them posted anywhere. It would be nice to have those as a basic outline for the presentation. Never mind, I just found the examples. So yeah, I'll look those over tomorrow and see what I can make of them. I'll be working under the assumption that my partner will be absent for the whole thing, that way I'll be pleasantly surprised if she steps up to the plate and no surprised if she doesn't. A win-win.

I also need to take a look at the research paper for that class because that is due on the last day of class, just under a month away, and I haven't even looked at the assignment yet. I feel like it is going to be a pain in the butt, though. Just a thought.

After I posted my group entry tonight I learned that even though GTA5 doesn't technically come out until tomorrow, it was playable today. So I loaded it up, waited for an update, and jumped into the game. It apparently has some crazy standards so I have to play it on 720p instead of 1080p. Kind of annoying because it relies solely on my graphics card memory when I have plenty of regular RAM to spare. There's probably a reason for that but oh well. I'm still looking into a new graphics card because the fan on mine is going out. But I also don't want to spend that kind of money at the moment so I'm going to live with my current graphics card and hope the fan doesn't go out.

As for the game. It's fun. I can easily see myself getting lost in the game. Both literally, because the map is freaking huge, but also in terms of real world time, just zoning out. I went through the opening and then ran through a few missions with Franklin. I wanted to keep going but it is now creeping up on midnight and I've got work in the morning. And then schoolwork when I get home. Schoolwork doesn't go so well when I get home from work and I'm tired as hell from a lack of sleep. So I'm going to go to bed now, rather than staying up all night and playing a video game I have been waiting to play for over a year. That is very adult of me and I don't like it.

April 12, 2015

It took me the entire morning and some of the afternoon to figure out my clever closing line for my Archie Bunker prejudiced caution sign. But I got there and I am happy with the final product. Something I can be proud of and will hopefully earn me an 'A'. That will also be dependent on my one-page summary, which I finished up before dinner. The hardest part was doing the reference page. I always feel like I'm just making that stuff up. Fingers crossed I was close enough not to be noticed.

I took a break from my work to go feed my sister's fish. I then stopped by the old house because my mom was over there and I helped her with some stuff. Then we loaded up her car with a bunch of stuff, and my car with a few things, and called it good.

I also posted twice to this week's discussion post. So I had a fairly productive day. When I finished everything I took the rest of the night off. It was only a couple hours but it was nice to kind of turn my mind off and zone out with some Minecraft. While watching the Yogscast play Minecraft. I added quite a bit more to my house, including the first floor porch, the second floor porch, and most of the second floor walls. I then set off on a brief adventure to end the night, just to see a bit more of my world.

The coming week will involve more testing and more schoolwork. I think the next face-to-face is the weekend after next, which is when my partner and I will give our presentation. The one my partner has contributed nothing to so far. So that should be interesting. I don't know what her goal is but mine is to have everything done this week so I'll have a week to practice and sort everything out. Hopefully she will be able to contribute something.

April 12, 2015

This morning I got to sleep in a little bit which was nice. Then I got up and ready so I could move bicycles. My mom and I went over to the old house and loaded up all our old bicycles and took them down to Goodwill. Kind of made me want a bike but I know I'd never ride it.

My sister is out of town and asked me to feed her fish over the weekend but didn't tell me what time or how much to feed them. I texted her this morning to find out but she didn't get back to me while my mom and I were there dropping off the truck so we headed home. I also texted my brother because he has fed them before and he texted me back right after we got home and said he fed them in the morning. I was just about to make lunch but decided I should probably head back over because it was almost noon. I hadn't gotten more than a mile away from my house when my sister texted and said to feed the fish any time after noon because that was when the light would come on. So I took the scenic route and got to her house a few minutes after noon.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my project. Although it probably didn't look like it most of the time. Most of it was done in my head because I was trying to think of a good picture for my prejudice caution sign. I'll tell you, it is really hard to search “prejudice” on Google and not get 99.9% of the results related to Pride and Prejudice. I ended up going with a picture of segregated water fountains labeled 'white' and 'black'. I still want to do something different though. I ended the other two signs with a clever line but it is hard to be clever when it comes to racial segregation. I would like to use a famous prejudiced character from movies or TV but the only character I could think of was the mom from Arrested Development. The assignment is supposed to be geared toward undergraduate students, and I would hope they would get that reference, but I also didn't think she was a good enough example of prejudice. So I went with the water fountains and came up with two different ending lines, which I'm still debating. Even with all that struggle, I managed to finish the other two signs, for manipulation and deception, and I'm pretty happy with them.

As I was writing about that just now, Archie Bunker came to mind. I'm liking that example. I don't really think it fits in with the undergraduate audience but it does seem like a pretty solid example. I'll have to think about it more tomorrow.

Also, I will need to write my one page summary of information literacy and whatever else is required. I should be able to knock that out pretty quick so hopefully I don't let it drag on all day. I would like inspiration to strike quickly.

I finished working on my signs after dinner and spent the rest of my night doing laundry and playing Minecraft. The last couple of weeks I got in the habit of doing laundry Monday night but I think it works out better doing it on Saturday night. So that's what I did. As for Minecraft, I continued building my latest house. I added walls and a ceiling to my first floor, the floor to the second floor, and started digging out a second basement, below the first basement, because why not. I also discovered that there was a conflict between two of my mods, my mini map and damage indicators. Ever since I added in all the mods, whenever I would look at a bad mob, like a skeleton or zombie, my screen would go completely black and I would get my ass handed to me. Turns out it is something messed up in the latest version of the damage indicators mod. I like that mod but the mini map is way more useful so I got rid of damage indicators and I can finally defend myself against mobs again.

And now it is time for bed. It's after 1:30AM and I need to wake up early enough so I have plenty of time to finish up my assignment. Can't wait. Less than a month left in the semester and then I can finally relax. At least a little bit.

April 10, 2015

Today one of the paras stopped me in the hall and looked slightly concerned/confused when she asked if I was coming back next year. I told her that I was because I still have a year of school left. She seemed a bit relieved and said that she had heard a couple people talking about how they were going to miss me when I was gone. At first that sounded nice but then my next thought was that was a little premature and perhaps they had nefarious things in mind. So I asked the para if they had plans to kill me and if the para had just spoiled it for me. She told me to pretend I hadn't heard anything.

There was more testing today. No surprise there. They were also boring, as they have been this year. Which I guess is a nice change after all the crap that happened last year.

Near the very end of the last test this afternoon, while waiting on three slower test takers to finish, I had a breakthrough idea for my project that is due on Sunday. I think last night I decided on the standard, performance indicator, and outcome I wanted to focus on. That outcome says that the information literate student recognizes prejudice, deception, or manipulation. My idea this afternoon was to make three signs, similar to “Beware of” / “Found” / “Missing” / “Wanted” posters, one for prejudice, one for deception, and one for manipulation, and include famous examples on them. I originally thought about tracking down a famous example from scholarly publications where a researcher had exhibited one of those traits. And I probably could have done that if I had more time but I don't feel like I do.

Today most of the teachers and staff wore shirts what were meant to show our support for all the kids taking tests. After school the principal had us all meet out in front of the school so we could take a picture. I imagine it looked a bit strange, all these adults wearing the same shirt, blocking the front door of the school.

Tonight, while looking for ideas for a layout based on my original idea I had the thought of a warning label. I searched a few different things and came across a Caution sign, which narrowed down my focus. I created Caution signs in Publisher that say “Manipulative Content”, “Prejudiced Content”, and “Deceptive Content”. I then spent most of my night trying to come up with an example image to put on each sign. I started with an image of Pinocchio for the Deceptive sign. Later I decided that really wasn't the best example and had another brilliant flash of genius and switched it to a picture of the Trojan Horse, one of the greatest deceits in history. For the Manipulative sign, I used a picture of Hannibal Lecter. I'm still trying to come up with something for the Prejudice sign. It still remains illusive but I think I'm getting closer. Hopefully something will come to me tomorrow. I also need to come up with what I want to write on each sign. I haven't decided if it will just be a description of each or quotes or examples or what. Then I need to write the one page paper about information literacy. Plenty of time.

Now I'm going to go to bed. It's one o'clock and my mom wants to move more stuff out of the old house in the morning. There is apparently still stuff in the shed. Can't wait for that. And then I'll get to go back to working on my project. I'm feeling a lot better about it now that I have a solid idea. And as soon as I finish it I need to go back to my group project, which my partner is still absent from. And I need to look into the research paper, which I haven't given a single thought.

April 9, 2015

I actually slept decently last night. It felt strange. It is nearly eleven o'clock now so hopefully tonight goes as well. This weekend I need to work on my project that is due on Sunday night so I probably won't get the chance to sleep in. Unless I knock most of it out Saturday and feel safe enough sleeping in Sunday. I don't see that happening though.

Today there was more testing. Three, wonderfully boring tests. I could write about them but I want to sleep so let's just say they were just like all the other tests with slight variations. When I wasn't watching tests I edited a couple baby pictures and spent a lot of time trying to figure out the library clerk's printer. Her computer was horribly slow, to the point of being unusable, and they finally replaced it but she couldn't get her printer working. I did a whole bunch of things before lunch, and cutting into my lunch, but had to leave because I had just enough time to eat before the next test.

The timing this afternoon worked out really well, though. I started my lunch at 12:35PM and one of the kindergarten classes was supposed to come in at 12:25PM, which I totally forgot about because I was caught up with the printer. Thankfully, the teacher also forgot because I hadn't set anything up, and I didn't actually remember until about 12:45PM. The test at one o'clock didn't actually get started until about ten after and there were a couple kids that were taking a little longer than everyone else. I got them started on their second test but was going to have to stop them when the second kindergarten class showed up. But, that kindergarten class wasn't having a very good day and they were about ten minutes late, which allowed just enough time for both kids to finish. Everything worked out.

At the very end of the day I went back to the library to check on the printer situation and it was working. So we're going to say I did something worthwhile in all of the tinkering I did earlier in the day.

Tonight I watched the Neebs livestream and read over the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, which is what my project is over. I have to pick a standard and design a promotional piece geared toward undergraduate students. I've got a couple ideas so I'll be thinking real hard about those tomorrow during testing, hopefully having some brilliant insights and writing down ideas.