May 30, 2015

 Today has been a long day. I went to bed around one o'clock last night, didn't sleep well, and ended up getting up at 6:30AM. I finished reading one of my textbooks on website usability and I played Minecraft for a little bit. I dug a tunnel through the mountain by my Nether portal and I continued working on my place in the Nether. I was going about it all above board but then I kept getting harassed by blaze's and skeletons, and the occasional ghast. So I said screw it and switched to creative. It is kind of annoying because I have all the supplies but it is taking me too long to get the walls and ceilings up to protect myself. I just had the thought that I could switch it to peaceful and use my own supplies. I might do that next time, although flying is nice.

After running on the elliptical and eating lunch I started putting the clear coat on my tables. At least I think it was after lunch. Either way, the process has begun. I managed to get three coats on the underside of the two tabletops, on one side of all the side pieces, and on one side of the legs. I thought about hanging the legs so I could do all sides at once but I ended up not going that route. Tomorrow I'll probably end up painting the remaining three sides of the legs, maybe elevate them a little bit so they don't get stuck on the surface they're laying on. So tomorrow all the clear coating should be done and on Monday I can assemble both tables and get everything set up with my computer and monitors. Or maybe on Tuesday because I have stuff due on Monday and I haven't done it yet.

I was going to work on my homework today but that obviously didn't happen. Tomorrow will be the day for that. For real. It really isn't hard stuff, I have to review a website's usability and accessibility, and write a discussion post about the web standards. Really not difficult stuff but once again I am procrastinating. Shocker.

I had planned on working on that stuff tonight but I ended up getting completely derailed by trying to fix a screen tearing issue on my second monitor, which is actually a TV. I read so many different forums and tried so many different things, and nothing worked. If anything, it got worse during the process a few times. The last I checked it looked better but now that is all I'm focused on. I'll worry about it again later. Probably when I need to finish something for school.

May 29, 2015

 I ended up staying up until almost one o'clock last night. I was about to go to bed and then I started watching a D&D stream and they were wrapping up their adventure and I got sucked in. D&D is one of those things that I have always been interested in. Maybe not participating but definitely watching, or listening to in the case of the podcast Sark was on for awhile when he was the dungeon master. I'm into all of these geeky and nerdy things but I don't have any friends that are really geeky or nerdy. Someday I'll work on that.

This morning I woke and and decided to finally fix the crack in my tabletop. I moved my car out of the garage and dug out my sawhorses and stuff I would need. The crack in the table was smaller than I remembered. It did go all the way across the table top along the grain but it didn't open as wide as I would have liked. I put a couple small pieces of wood under it to help hold it open and I applied pressure on one side while I put glue on it to open it up even more. I think I got enough glue in the actual crack, not just on the outside, so hopefully it will hold. After the gluing I used my box clamp to hold two pieces of wood on either side of the table to protect the table from the bar clamps, which I then clamped on to really hold everything together. I also put a few pieces of wood on top of the table for the bar clamps to rest one, also to help protect the table. It only needed to be clamped for half an hour (with no stress for twenty-four hours) but I decided to leave it clamped because I figured it wouldn't hurt. Tomorrow, maybe, I'll get the other tabletop and the legs and stuff for both, and start with the clear coating. I kind of feel like I didn't get enough clear coat but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.

I came back in from gluing and read another textbook chapter before running on the elliptical and then eating lunch. This afternoon I finished two chapters in the online textbook for my web design class. Still not a fan of reading it online but free is nice. Tomorrow I need to write my discussion post for that class. It isn't due until Monday but I'd like to get it done with because I've been putting it off. I also need to respond to a couple of my classmates' posts I believe.

Tonight my sister came over for dinner. My mom and sister went and got Sonic and they forgot my sister's hamburger. My mom tried giving my sister her burger and said she would eat something else but my sister refused. She finally agreed to splitting the burger. On the plus side, my order was all there.

After dinner I wanted to play Minecraft and it crashed again, just like it did the other day. It was working fine and then poof. I loaded back in and went about my business and everything was good and then it wasn't and it crashed again. I tried getting rid of several mods but that didn't help and at that point it would load my map for maybe a second before crashing. It wouldn't even let me in. After looking around the internet I finally found a solution, and it made sense. One of the mods I have is Not Enough Items and it requires another mod to work. There was a problem with the other mod when it came to the name of redstone or the particles that redstone emits or something. Some sort of conflict occurs whenever a player is looking at redstone and it does the little glowy particle thing. And I remembered that the first time the game crashed the other night it was shortly after I uncovered redstone. And tonight I was back down in the same spot with the redstone. And I later found out that when my game was crashing almost instantly it was because I was standing directly in front of redstone. This was a known issue and the mod had been updated to fix it. So I downloaded the update and it didn't help. Then I downloaded the updated version of Not Enough Items and the combination of the two updated mods seemed to do the trick. I was able to be in the presence of redstone without catastrophe striking.

Once safely back in, I continued mining and managed to find some diamond. After a bit of searching I also found some lava and was able to turn it into obsidian and get what I needed for a Nether portal. In the Nether I spawned right next to a fortress, which is pretty convenient, other than being repeatedly set of fire by a blaze while trying to collect glowstone. After getting the glowstone I went back and collected a bunch of stone to start building a house around my portal in the Nether so I could go in and not be immediately attacked. I only had enough stone to get a start on the floor but I think it will look pretty cool once I get it finished. It is going to take a lot more stone though, which means a lot of mining. Or a little cheating. We'll see how I'm feeling the next time I play.

And now it is 12:30AM. I set my alarm clock this morning to wake up at a decent time but I ignored it. I'm going to try the same thing tomorrow morning. I'll probably ignore it again.

May 28, 2015

 This morning I woke up and read a textbook. Then I ran on the elliptical, ate lunch, and read some more. This afternoon my sister stopped by to mix food for the bird feeders so I took a break and talked to her for awhile before going back to reading.

Other than reading, I messed around on the internet and watched YouTube videos. Tonight was the Neebs livestream and they were playing Minecraft so I jumped into the server for a little bit until the lag ruined it. I would randomly get teleported to where I had been a minute or two before and the final straw was getting stuck in a lag loop so I couldn't take more than a step before going right back to where I had spawned. So I gave up and just watched the stream instead.

While I did that, I edited a video from my GTA5 stream last night. Back in BF3 I made a montage video of every death I had in a match and I thought it would be fun to do the same with some of the flight school missions I did last night. Tonight I compiled all the deaths in the last mission, Follow the Leader. I lost track of time while playing it but it ended up taking me thirty minutes to beat the mission. And while editing the video I learned that it took me seventeen attempts. That is a little ridiculous but I thought it would have been a lot higher, so there's that. Tomorrow or sometime I want to make a video for the mission where I had to fly under all the little bridges. That one had to have taken way more than seventeen tries. I crashed so many times.

Tonight I will be going to bed much earlier than I did last night, and for that I am grateful. I would like to get back to a slightly better schedule. Like in bed around midnight and up around seven or eight o'clock in the morning. I would feel much better about that. Tomorrow I would like to glue my table top together so I can eventually get both tables clear coated and finally get my computer setup the way I want. Soon.

May 27, 2015

 There isn't too much to write about today, and not just because it is after 1:30AM and I should have gone to bed a long time ago.

My morning and afternoon were pretty much the same old thing at this point. I woke up, read some textbooks, and then ran on the elliptical. I made it thirteen minutes today. At this point my main motivation for being able to run for a longer period of time is so I can listen to more music. It kind of sucks when I have to stop. Every day I have increased my time but I don't think that is really sustainable. At some point I will have to plateau, for at least awhile, before slowly progressing to longer times. Although the chances are very good that I will lose interest before that time comes.

After lunch I did things. A lot of time was spent reading a couple textbook chapters. There is a lot of reading so far this semester. I'm glad it is during the summer and not during the school year when I'm working full time.

Before going to Chipotle I wanted to stop and get a PowerBall ticket. That took way longer than it should have. They have installed traffic lights near the gas station and they haven't quite got them figured out yet. And by that I mean they are completely worthless at the moment. I couldn't turn left at the light so I went right, going way out of my way. But it was better than the people trying to go through the light on the street I turned onto. The way I went had cars backed up past the next light, which was at least a quarter mile away probably. When I was coming out of the gas station I again had to go right because going left was headed toward the broken lights and there was a line of traffic on this side of the lights that was getting close to a quarter mile long. Ridiculous.

After dinner and videos I came downstairs and read an article for class. Then I played video games. There was an update for BF4 and it included the Gun Master game mode where you have to get a couple kills with a weapon before advancing to the next one, eventually getting to a knife. I suck at it but I really liked playing it in BF3 so I wanted to try it in BF4. I also wanted to record it in the off chance I won a game. I won once in BF3 but wasn't recording it so who's to really say it happened. I figured the easiest way to record would be using OBS and just streaming on Twitch because that would record it on their end and I wouldn't have to worry about taking up hard drive space. And if I won I could just get the clip off of Twitch. But I couldn't get the game to show up in OBS. The sound was there but I couldn't get a picture. I tried several different things but nothing worked. So I said screw it and played without recording. I still suck but I had a couple decent streaks. None good enough to record though, so I didn't miss anything.

Next up I wanted to try streaming GTA5. I had the same problem I had with BF4 but after some searching I saw a suggestion of trying to do a window capture instead of a game capture. And that ended up working. So at some point I'll need to try it with BF4. Or maybe not because it did make the game super laggy. Or maybe it was all the activity that was going on in the server I got into. There was a tank battle with helicopters and jets. It was insane. I drove down to one of my garages and parked so I could go into my menus and see if there were any settings that might help with the lag. That is when a jet strafed the street I was on. Thankfully I was in passive mode because I would have been blown up.

A van nearby blew up and after a minute or two a firetruck showed up to put the fire out. I couldn't resist the temptation so after the fire was out I stole the firetruck and took it for a ride around the map, initially followed by the jet, still trying to blow me up. I crashed the firetruck, after almost making it around the entire map, and eventually ended up at the airport. While there I stole a helicopter and a giant titan plane flew me, on purpose, so I was again glad to be in passive mode.

I saw an icon for flight school on the map and that is what I ended up doing for the rest of the night. And I should have stopped a lot earlier than I did but I got sucked in. Flying is really tricky in GTA5 and there were a couple missions that I lost track of how many times I tried them. I managed to make it through all of them but not without getting really pissed off on several occasions. In the end I made over $100,000, so that was nice. I'll have to go back in and try to get better medals on most of the missions so I can get more money. Or get really pissed off and break my controller. Whichever comes first.

May 26, 2015

 Today was exciting. Or it wasn't in the least. The second statement is more accurate. After waking up I read a couple textbook chapters and then I ran on the elliptical before lunch. A good chunk of my afternoon was spent finding and downloading all of the articles I will need to read for one of my classes this semester. Twenty-four in total. It takes quite awhile to use the university library website to find the journal, then the right year and volume, and then the article in the journal. But I eventually managed to find all of them and I not only downloaded them but I also added them all to Zotero just in case I have to cite them at some point in the semester.

Tonight we had our first online meeting for my web design class. It was basically just an introduction to the class but I learned that when the professor was having her graduation party last weekend (she just got her PhD) everyone had to hide in her basement because of tornado, which ripped the roof off of her garage and threw it into the field behind her house, along with a wheelbarrow from the garage. Scary stuff. There were only four or five of us in the meeting but each one will be recorded and I believe there is going to be a meeting every Tuesday night. They will probably become more important as the semester goes along once we get into coding and working on websites.

Throughout the day I watched movies. I watched Doom and the last two Matrix movies. I vaguely remembered Doom but I had forgotten that Dwayne Johnson turned into a crazy bad guy, even before he turned into a mutant. The second and third Matrix movies weren't as bad as I remembered. Part of it was probably due to me not paying close attention to the storyline. I think I paid too much attention to the plot when I first saw them all those years ago. It quickly becomes very convoluted. Not unlike a lot of trilogies these days that should have stopped after the first one. The prime example being The Hunger Games trilogy.

While I was finishing the last Matrix movie I played a little Minecraft. I finished the path from my barn out to where I plan to build the Nether portal, as well as the bridge and steps leading up to the future Nether portal. Now I just need to find diamonds so I can mine obsidian. After the Nether portal, I need to go in and collect a bunch of glowstone so I can make better lighting for my house. I also need to light up the interior of my farm. I have torches on the outer fence but not a lot is going on inside. I have some ideas but haven't gotten around to it yet.

May 25, 2015

 I slept in a little bit this morning and then read textbooks. Reading about being a manager in a library setting kind of makes me want to be a manager in a library setting. Which goes against my feelings about be a manager. This is going to be an interesting semester.

When I was done reading I ran on the elliptical for ten minutes. Considering my current lack of exercise, that length of time surprised me. Not only for my lungs but also my legs, which generally suck. I wasn't going full-out, running as fast as possible but it was a decent clip. I'll probably be unable to walk tomorrow but I'd say it was a solid start. I created a spreadsheet (because I like spreadsheets) to keep track of my elliptical usage. I thought that maybe having something to fill out would keep me accountable and make me stick with it. So far I am keeping track of: the number of the exercise (today was one), the date, the time I started, the length of time I ran, the music I listened to (today was Skrillex), and the reason for stopping (today was because I hit ten minutes and my legs were tired). I may add some things in later but for now it seems like those categories can give me some interesting data.

This afternoon I went over to my dad's to hang out with my grandma for a little while. We all sat around and talked for a few hours and then I went down and played video games with my brother. We played the latest CoD: Advanced Warfare. Awhile ago we played a horde-type mode with waves of enemies but this time we just did team deathmatch. It started with just me against him because he forgot to add bots in and I obliterated him. To be fair, he was trying out the new pistol and I was using fully automatic weapons, so I had a major advantage. When we did switch bots on we were on the same team and he consistently got more kills than me. It was kind of fun to play a CoD game again. I think the last one I bought was CoD: Black Ops 2, which I liked but my wrists can't take much of the frantic FPS games with a controller anymore. They also seem to be getting a lot faster and adding in more verticality, and my aim is bad enough when I'm trying to track a player moving on the ground.

CoD games also take forever to drop in price and only rarely go on sale on PC, and even then it is down to like $40 instead of $60. The vast majority of the PC games I buy are after they have dropped down to the single digits. It is rare that I pay full price for a game and CoD games are no longer the type of game I would spend $60 on. As an example of the price, the original CoD came out in 2003 and is still $20 on Steam. For a game that old, it should be $2.50, maybe $5 on a good day. The first Black Ops, which came out in 2010, is still $40 and the DLCs are $15 a piece. That is encroaching on absurd. Black Ops 2 came out three years ago and is still priced at $60. It's like that franchise didn't get the memo of how video game prices work on PC. But it is still a ridiculously popular franchise, so they don't really have any incentive to lower their prices.

Tonight we had a family dinner. My sister's husband smoked a brisket, which I did not eat but it smelled good. I had a breakfast veggie burger instead. My mom made pasta salad and deviled eggs, and my sister made her ridiculously good coleslaw and a apple pie / apple crisp pizza thing. It was also pretty good. I'm still decent at making spaghetti, and a peanut butter sandwich.

I ate way too much for dinner and then spent the rest of my night watching YouTube videos and playing Minecraft. I added some new paths, collected animals for my barn, and laid out the basic idea for the location of my Nether portal and the path leading to it. I still need to find diamond so I can make a diamond pickaxe and mine obsidian to make a portal. I foresee that being the biggest hurdle at the moment. The next time I play I should probably focus on that endeavor and get it taken care of before going back to building.

It is now almost midnight and my eyes are feeling heavy so I am going to go to bed. I borrowed some bar clamps from my dad so I can finally glue my table together. Then I can put a clear coat on both tables, assemble them, and eventually get my computer area set up the way I want it to bed. It looks so good in my head, or a least very functional, so I would like to have it realized. When I finally have both tables I can have my scanner set up so I can get back to scanning my grandma's old photographs. I mention all this because the gluing of the tabletop is something that may happen tomorrow. We'll see how the weather is.

May 24, 2015

 Today, things happened. I read a lot for school, a few chapters in one book, the introduction of a second book, and a chapter in a book online. We had the option to buy the second book but it is also available online for free, so I went with the free version. I'm currently caught up but we'll see what gets assigned for the coming week. I think sometime soon we'll be making our first webpage in the web design class. I'm looking forward to that because it has been awhile since I've played with HTML and I've never messed around with CSS but it seems pretty cool.

I cleaned up my computer room today and it looks a lot better. There is still a lot to do but for now there is a lot more room and that was the goal. I wanted the extra space to move the elliptical downstairs, which I did and that was exercise enough for me today. It was a bit of a fight but I managed to get it down here without running into the walls so I'd say that was a victory. Hopefully tomorrow I will start using the elliptical. I need to start exercising again, especially now that I'm out of work for the summer and won't be moving around as much. Not that I was moving around a lot at work but it was a lot more than just going up and down the stairs at home a few times a day.

When I was cleaning I was listening to Skrillex. When I was done cleaning I switched over to a live Nickel Creek concert. On a daily basis I am glad that I am able to enjoy such a wide range of music. There are people who get stuck in a single genre and that seems like such a waste of the ability to hear. And also really boring, no offense to whatever that single genre may be. And thanks to that Nickel Creek I have a new favorite song of the moment, which is “Hayloft”. It is a lot more upbeat and there is more going on than a typical Nickel Creek song but I really like it. And I've just learned that it is a cover of a song by the band Mother Mother, who I don't think I've ever heard of before but the Nickel Creek version is less frenetic but still a faithful cover.

After dinner I played a little BF4, for the first time in months. I'm still as awful as ever, possibly worse, but it was fun for a couple matches. And with my new graphics card the game runs on Ultra and looks really good.

After those matches I switched over to GTA5. I did a couple jobs but most of my time online was spent randomly driving around and finding new cars. I have seen several videos of a gamemode where two players on bicycles are chased by two players in semi trucks and couldn't find it in the jobs list but then an invitation popped up and I was able to get into a game. We played twice and I was awful in both roles. Being in the semi was more fun because when I was on the bike I was almost always immediately run over. Except one moment of glory when I was on a bike and made it to the finish line.

I was also a nice online person later in the night when someone was asking in chat for an impromptu race so they could finish a challenge. I said I was game and we met up and raced. I figured it would go to the regular job screen and I would be able to switch my vehicle but it really was impromptu so after I agreed to it the race started. And I was in a giant flatbed truck I had just stolen. Probably would have been faster to jump out and steal another car but I went with the truck and didn't even get close to the finish line. But the other person finished their challenge so it's all good.

In order to do the race I had to come out of passive mode and I didn't put it back on. This screwed me over some time later because I had just picked up a new motorcycle and was trying to take it to the mod shop to customize it. There was a dude parked in from of the garage and when I tried to pull around him and into the garage he turned around and killed me. He apologized and said it was an accident. Then on my way back to get my motorcycle it was blown up. Based on the chat it looked like it was the same dude but maybe it was a nice gesture because someone was trying to steal my motorcycle and I think the original killer took them out. Unfortunately my motorcycle was a casualty as well. But I didn't have to pay for the insurance and was eventually able to pick it up and get it customized.

Now I'm going to bed. Tomorrow the plan is to go over to my dad's in the afternoon to see my grandma. Then dinner is going to be with my mom, sister, and her husband. Other than that, I will probably read some more textbook stuff and maybe play some Minecraft.

May 23, 2015

 This morning I dug up Ping Pong. I buried her a lot deeper than I remembered. We also loaded up all of the round paving stones that my mom wants to do something with at the new house. In the process we came across several humongous earthworms. Easily the biggest I've ever seen. There was also a really skinny worm, so skinny that at first I thought it was just a thin piece of wire, and then it started moving. It was weird. We ended up moving them off to the side and I put some dirt over them so they could go back to doing whatever earthworms do. After digging a hole, loading heavy stones, and then unloading heavy stones, I'm fairly confident in my belief that my body will be slightly uncomfortable in the morning. Not really looking forward to that.

Most of the rest of my day was spent watching things and playing Minecraft. I did read a textbook chapter but it was short and didn't take too long. I'll need to read more tomorrow. As for the watching of things, I watched Taken, which is still a good movie. I need to watch the second and third one. I saw a lot of the second one and found it somewhat bad, but maybe it is better when seen from the beginning. I don't think I saw more than a few minutes of the third one but I heard it was better than the second one. I also watched several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. That is the Star Trek I grew up with and it holds up. I'm still a fan. I would like to continue watching it but we'll see how long I remember that. And have time.

In Minecraft I finally finished my garden. My very large garden. It would be a lot cooler if I could have Pam's HarvestCraft mod installed but she's still waiting to get more money before she releases the update for the version of Minecraft I am running. So right now I just have an abundance of carrots, potatoes, and wheat, with some melons, pumpkins, and sugarcane thrown in. I also build a barn and pens for animals. I still need to add a few things, mainly all the animals, but I am happy with how the barn and pens turned out. I just kind of made it up as I went and was happily surprised by the outcome.

Midnight has now come and gone so I'm going to go to bed.

May 22, 2015

 This morning and into the afternoon I did school stuff. I read two textbook chapters and an introduction. I also watched several videos (school related) and made sure I could log into the virtual desktop. One of the videos was a librarian talking about the future of libraries and he started with some interesting facts that I can only vaguely remember so they may be slightly off. He said that the greatest predictor of success later in life are fourth grade reading scores. The greatest predictor of fourth grade reading scores is reading level at the age of five. And kids who grew up with at least 500 books in their home had a much higher reading level by the age of five. So the takeaway here is have several well-stocked bookshelves.

Later in the afternoon I played Minecraft. I laid out the fence to outline the area that will be my field for potatoes, carrots, wheat, pumpkins, sugar cane, and watermelon. I also dug all the holes for water, so now I just need to plant everything. It will take me awhile to fill all the space but I think it will look pretty cool when I'm done. I had to go adventuring for the sugar cane and while on my journey I think I picked out the spot for my Nether portal. A nice stone hill with a flat top on the other side of the field across the river from my house. And speaking of that field, my next big project is clearing out all of the trees and making pens for animals. The field used to be pretty barren but I started planting oak trees there so they would be closer to me, considering my house is on the edge of a spruce biome. And now the field is packed with oak trees. Once I figure out how I want to set up the pens I can start planting trees again. Originally I was envisioning an fairly open design with a path in between all the enclosures but I just had an idea for a barn like building that all four animal pens were connected to so animals would have the option to be inside or outside. That idea might have some potential. I'll have to take a look at things the next time I play. I'll have a better idea of what I'm working with once I get all the trees cleared out.

Tonight I played GTA5, mostly online, but didn't really accomplish anything. I bought another garage, because I came across another vehicle I wanted and my other two garages were full. I believe I added that first vehicle along with a motorcycle. I spent most of my time just driving around, kind of looking for particular vehicles but mostly just enjoying the scenery. At what became the end of my online play I went to join a job and the host left as I was transitioning from my current spot into the job lobby, which caused me to go into some weird limbo. I was stuck on that above the map screen for a minute or two and then the game couldn't connect to the online session so it kicked me back to the singleplayer. I still wanted to play so I did a couple Trevor missions and customized a really cool motorcycle. I also bought a garage to store it in but I'm not quite sure how that works in singleplayer. It doesn't have the tracking and insurance options like it does online so I'm kind of worried I just spent a bunch of money upgrading my motorcycle and then it is going to disappear when I leave it somewhere or will be irreversibly destroyed at some point. I need to experiment with that at some point.

It's now after one o'clock in the morning so I'm going to go to bed. If it doesn't rain overnight I want to go over and dig up Ping Pong in the morning and find a place to rebury her at the new house. That is my main goal for tomorrow.

May 21, 2015

 I ended up not getting out of bed any earlier than usual this morning but I did gain some time because I forgot I didn't have to make a lunch. So it all worked out.

Today was very reminiscent of past last days of school. When I got to work I worked on cleaning up my desk for awhile and then I went down to find the librarian. I copied the slideshow file to her laptop and then we went to the gym to help set up the projector with the music teacher. It took a little while to get everything positioned just right but we got there.

When it was time for the assembly I sat up front with the librarian, just in front of one of the kindergarten classes. I ended up have kindergarteners randomly sitting on my feet or messing with my watch chain. Kindergarteners have a short attention span. This was my first time sitting up front since probably the last day assembly last year. It is an interesting change from standing in the back.

When it came time for the slideshow the principal had some nice things to say about me but I didn't hear most of it because I was in the presenting zone where I kind of shut down to the outside world. Presentation-wise, the slideshow went really well. I saw the slightest of a stutter on one slide that was probably imperceptible to everyone else, but everything else looked and sounded great. And everyone seemed to like it, so that was cool. I'm glad I decided to go with just the video file and not the DVD.

After the assembly I went and shredded a bunch of papers, once again jamming the shredder in the process. This time I think it was more related to there being too much shredded paper in the bag and that blocking the paper being shredded, so it backed up and got stuck. I spent a long time trying to get all the paper unjammed and I wasn't entirely successful. I managed to get enough free that the shredder was useable but there was still a blockage on the left side that I couldn't do anything about. So I called it good.

From there I went out to the playground to watch the sixth graders play kickball against the adults. I stood and talked with one of the substitutes for awhile and then sat down at one of the tables and talked with my mom and one of the kindergarten teachers, and the substitute again when she joined us later. I'm not sure how long I was out there but it was definitely the most sun I have gotten in awhile.

When the game was over I went back in and printed out MAP reports for the math enrichment teacher because she needed them for Boys & Girls Club. I had completely forgotten about that. I remembered when I first started downloading reports but then in the process of waiting for tests to be deleted and reports to be updated, along with all the other end of the year stuff, getting the reports for the teacher completely slipped my mind. But she has them now.

I also made a certificate for one of the sixth graders. When I was sitting outside I overheard him talking with one of his classmates and he was bummed because he apparently never got a character award this year. It's kind of rigged so every kid gets one, but somehow he didn't. So I made a Certificate of Achievement that was “In recognition of only spilling your juice box on a keyboard once this entire year.” He was the kid a few weeks ago who had a juice box explode on one of the keyboards and I had to pop a lot of the keys off to clean all the juice off. I finished it with a few minutes before the final bell so I went up to the sixth grade classroom and gave it to him. He immediately lit up and started showing it to the other kids, so that was really cool.

After school a lot of the teachers and staff went to lunch at a Mongolian barbecue place. I think the last time I ate at one of those was on my roadtrip to Washington DC. At these places you grab a bowl, put noodles, meat and/or vegetables, and sauce and then give it to the cooks who make it on a big flat grill or whatever it's called. At this one it is a big doughnut shape and the cooks slowly walk around in a circle, each taking turns with their spatulas on each bowl of food around the circle, beating the crap out of their spatulas in the process. I was worried about the vegetarian thing but one of the para told me to tell them it was vegetarian and when I did they put spatulas on either side of my food and used different spatulas that weren't used for all the other food that had meat. And they clean the cooking surface after each bowl so I didn't have to worry about that. That was pretty cool. I kind of messed up on my initial food selection though because I just went with noodles, red potato slices, those tiny corn things, and Teriyaki sauce. I started with too many noodles, which didn't leave much room for anything else, and I completely missed the broccoli and green beans.

When I got back to the tables where we were all sitting my seat had been taken so I leaned over and grabbed my keys, which I had left to save my spot, and sat down at the next set of tables over, which had also been saved. My mom had left her purse on one of the chairs and I can't remember who it was but they took her seat and just handed my mom her purse. So that was nice. But it ended up working out because we had good conversations with the people at our table.

After lunch I came home and didn't really do much. I was going to start reading textbooks because I have all of them now, the last one arriving today, but I decided to take the day off. I can read textbooks tomorrow. Instead I watched YouTube videos.

During dinner I watched a couple Laurel & Hardy silent shorts that my sister told me about the other day so I was able to record them. I hadn't seen any of them before, which I found really surprising. And they were good. It is crazy how well they transferred their comedy from the silent era into the sound era. Their talking definitely adds to their shorts and movies but they could carry a silent short without a problem. One of them also had really good music. The short involved selling Christmas trees door-to-door and the music incorporated a lot of variations on Christmas songs, a couple bars here and there, along with some other noticeable songs. They were subtly incorporated into the regular music and I liked it.

After dinner I watched the Neebs livestream and played Minecraft. I added side walkway off my bridge leading down to where I started building my garden. I've got a lot of potatoes and carrots now. I will probably need to make some changes to the garden, mainly in the water situation, but I got a decent start on it and I am liking how it looks.

Tonight a Painted Bunting made an appearance at the bird feeders in the backyard. If you have never seen one, they are so brightly colored that they look fake. If you gave a kindergartener and handful of crayons and told them to color in a picture of a bird, it would look like a male Painted Bunting. They have a red or orange body, bright blue head, a yellow or green patch on their backs, and darker green wings. I've never seen such a brightly colored bird in person before. It honestly looked fake. According to maps we should be just out of the summer breeding zone, which might explain why I've never seen one before. Their normal residence is in Southern Mexico and Central America, which makes sense because the coloring seems to fit that area better than the Midwest. Hopefully it will come back so I can get some pictures of it.

Now, it is bedtime. As it usually is when I finish writing. Or even past bedtime as it is in this case. I've been up far too long today. But I get to sleep in, so I'm going to go get a start on that.

May 20, 2015

I wanted to go to bed about two hours ago but I got caught up in making my two introductory posts for my summer classes and now it is midnight.  I can feel it in my eyes.  And my headache.

A lot of today was again spent with the slideshow.  I lost track of how many times I rendered the video because I kept getting random flickering or black screens or other things.  It seemed like the program was only good for one rendering and then I had to shut it down and restart it to try again.  I also ended up burning four DVDs, the first three didn't work out and the fourth one has a little audio glitch at the very end in the credits that is annoying.  Despite all my work making the DVD menus, I have decided to just show the video of the slideshow, rather than playing the DVD.  I was able to render a video in 1080p and it looks like the slideshow is supposed to look, not the crappy standard version that had to be rendered for it to go into a DVD.  And if anyone wants a copy, I'll just burn the video onto a DVD and throw in all the individual slides, rather than the lower quality DVD version with all the cool menus.

I had a few classes in the lab today, second grade this morning, sixth grade this afternoon so they could take a survey, and one of the third grade classes several times throughout the day because they were getting in the last Reading Counts tests of the year.

The yearbooks were given out today and a lot of people liked the edited portrait I put in of the custodian.  I included his normal one but I also included the one I made earlier in the year that makes him look like Evel Knievel.  I had completely forgotten it was in there until people started mentioning it to me.

This afternoon we had the yearly physics assembly, where an older professor and two younger but still older assistants come and demonstrate cool physics things.  This includes several things that go boom, like a balloon, a fire cracker, and a liquid nitrogen bomb in a barrel of water.  There are some pretty interesting demonstrations and the old professor is really excited about all of it, but he also talks a lot and gets sidetracked.  And I've seen it all three times now, so that doesn't help.  But I still enjoyed it.  Minus the firecracker maybe, which made me jump.

Near the end of the day I went to find the librarian and couldn't find her, but I talked to the library clerk instead.  She said I was the best thing to ever happen to the school.  That is more than a bit of an exaggeration but I'll take it.  I should put her on my resume as a reference.

After school I picked up Chipotle and headed home.  Sometime before dinner my mom found my cutout in the walk-in pantry.  She was not amused.  Now I have it downstairs and it will probably scare the crap out of me the next time I come across it because there is always that split second when you complete forget it is there and assume it is a real person standing there.

My burrito was good but small, so only eating half of it wasn't all that filling.  After dinner I showed a few YouTube videos along with the slideshow.  Both my mom and sister liked it.  They probably felt obligated to like it but I am choosing to believe them.

I read a little bit more in my management textbook tonight but it was making me fall asleep so I switched over to writing my introductory posts for my summer classes.  That ended up taking a lot longer than I thought it would.  Which is why it is so late and why every blink right now is becoming a fight between gravity and my eye lids.  So I'm going to go to bed.  I want to wake up a little earlier than normal so I can get to work a little earlier than normal so I can make sure everything is working for the slideshow.

May 19, 2015

 I knew I was forgetting something yesterday and I remembered almost immediately after I finished writing yesterday's entry. And wanted to go to bed so I didn't add it in. That forgotten thing was that I finally got a grade for my research paper. I got 24.5 our of 25. I got 0.25 off for not having a clear enough thesis statement, or stating it soon enough in my paper. I also got 0.25 off for not including citations in a few places where I possibly could have. A couple of those places probably could have used a citation just to back up my point. And a couple of those places were completely based on my own opinion so finding a citation would have been a little difficult. So, along with the extra credit I got for doing the last discussion post, I ended up with a 101.6% in the class. Along with the 100% I got in my other class, I would say it was a fairly successful semester. It would be nice if transcripts showed when an 'A' was actually an 'A+'.

Today was finally field day. It had been canceled two or three times because it was either raining or there was standing water from all the rain. The original plan was to have field day at school but after the rain caused a lake that seems to be a permanent edition to the playground, field day was moved to the park. It sounded enjoyable but I did not go.

My morning classes had field day in the morning and my afternoon classes either had field day in the afternoon or were watching a movie. This meant I had a lot of time on my hands. To start my day I helped one of the resource teachers with her iPad. Thankfully that went smoothly because I was kind of making it up as I went.

This afternoon I spent over an hour scanning a couple workbooks for one of the second grade teachers. During the year I recreated a couple worksheets for her and every time I mentioned that she should have digital versions of her worksheets so she could print them off whenever she needed and wouldn't have to worry about them getting messed up or making progressively worse copies on the copy machine. Well, she finally took me up on that. Thankfully I learned a few months ago that I could use the copy machine to scan and email documents. Using the flatbed scanner in the lab to scan all the pages I did today would have taken weeks. It took a little longer than it should on the copier because it took me awhile to figure everything out. My main discovery was picking the size and orientation of the thing being copied. I have always had trouble knowing which way I needed to orient a page in the copier and I managed to get it wrong almost every time. Well, no longer because I figured it out. After all the technical things were learned it was just a matter of standing at the copier for an extended period of time and scanning and emailing pages. I'm glad that isn't my full-time job.

The vast majority of my day was spent working on the slideshow. Like several hours. And I would say it was worth it because I made a whole bunch of progress on the menu. I ended up being able to add in extra menu pages and included thumbnails that would open up the individual slides. I couldn't figure out a way to add a control button on the individual slides so they just open up for five seconds and then it goes back to the thumbnail page. Oh well. I also added in a page that lists the songs and clicking on those will play the song. Those just go to a black screen, again with no control buttons, but it will go back to the song page after the song, or if you hit the menu button on a remote. And I made a title slide for the slide show, which threw off all of the song timings so I had to redo that. But the title slide is pretty good and I got the songs figured out again.

I took my cutout home today. I haven't looked ahead at the forecast but I didn't want to risk waiting until the last day and having to get it to my car in the rain. And my timing couldn't have been more perfect today because droplets started to fall as I was lowering my backseats to get the cutout in my trunk. For once I was glad I parked under a tree because it blocked the light sprinkling long enough for me to get the cutout in my car without it getting wet.

Tonight my third textbook arrived, the first for my management class. I started reading it but ended up spending most of my night working on the slideshow. Nothing is immediately pressing in my classes at the moment and the slideshow needs to be done by Thursday, so that takes precedence at the moment. I made final layout changes to the main menu and rendered a copy of the slideshow to insert into the DVD menu software.

My first attempt to burn the DVD stalled out. The time remaining kept climbing and the progress remained at zero percent. The second time it worked a lot better, which is to say, it worked. The downside is that the quality really went down compared to the original video I rendered and it pretty stuttery when the camera is panning across the slides. So I'm going to keep messing with it because I am assuming it is something in my settings. I've got a lot of spare blank DVDs so I can afford to try a few different things. And, if all else fails, I can just play the rendered video of the slideshow. The DVD and cool menus are far from necessary so I can cut to the chase and just show the video if it comes to that.

I'm going to stop worrying about it for now though because the night has flown by and I need to get to bed. I've been looking forward to that all day.

May 18, 2015

 At one o'clock in the morning I was rudely torn from my slumber by the sound of a fire alarm. And not just the fire alarm in my room but all of the fire alarms in the house because they're all wired together. So that makes eight I think. It only lasted a few seconds but it was enough to get the blood pumping. Kind of a like stopping a dog fight. It appears to be a false positive (if that is the correct terminology). A little before four o'clock in the morning one of the ones upstairs went off for a few seconds. Thankfully I slept through that one. Although it did take me quite awhile to settle down and fall back to sleep, it was good to discover that if the fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night, it will wake me up. As long as it is one of the ones downstairs.

Most of my day today was spent working on the sixth grade slideshow. I made a whole bunch of progress. I finished adding in all the pans and zooms for each slide and I added in the music. I also created the credits slides, one for the kids' names and another for the music I used. And the bulk of my time was probably spent messing with the menu software and re-learning how to do all that. I think I've pretty much got it figured out. If I had to burn a copy of the DVD right now it would probably be just fine. But I've got until Thursday so I'm going to keep messing with things to see how much I can do. Last year I put a hidden button on the menu that lead to a page where you could click on the songs I had used and you could listen to song. It was cool, if only for myself because I was the only one who knew about it and only the principal had a copy of the DVD, but there was also no way to go back to the song page after the song. So if I could figure that out I would be happy. I also want to make sure I render the slideshow correctly so it is the highest quality and isn't all stuttery and fuzzy. I will work on that tomorrow.

There were classes in the lab this morning but this afternoon the lab was monopolized my the ACT Aspire test. I think five kids took it. The one's who are not loved by their parents because their kids just sat through the state assessments and MAP (and a middle school test for the sixth graders) and then the parents decided they should take another test. It was kind of annoying that two classes were bumped from their normal lab time because a small number of kids were taking a voluntary test. I feel the same way when I have to cancel lab times when the really slow test takers blow through their scheduled testing time and keep going.

I had to order one of my textbooks through the university bookstore because it was sold out on Amazon and they couldn't tell me when it would be back in stock. The bookstore emailed me today and said they were out of stock and if I still wanted it they would need to order it. It was a very informal email, so I'm assuming written by a freshman, maybe sophomore. I responded that I still needed the book for class and that it was sold out everywhere so I would appreciate it if they could order it for me. So maybe I'll get it next week. Fingers crossed because I'll already be behind on the reading. The shipping would probably be faster with Amazon but because they didn't know when it would be back in stock I didn't want to risk it.

One thought on the smoke detectors was that they may be dusty. Tonight I went around with a hair dryer (because it was the only source of blowing air) and blew air over all of them. Not sure it was the smartest to be blowing hot air into something that is designed to detect and alert sleeping humans to the presence of hot things, but I did it anyway. Hopefully nothing goes off in the middle of the night.

I took a personality test for one of my classes tonight. It was the same type of test as the one I took last semester, at least in terms of the desired outcome, but it was a different version. All based on the Jung Typology Test or the Myers-Briggs test. Last semester I was an ISTJ and this semester I am an INTJ. But the only thing I'm strong in is the 'I' for Introvert, so the other ones could really go either way. That is kind of a problem when reading the results because it turns it into a bit of a horoscope. Some of the stuff seems spot-on but other stuff only seems applicable sometimes or is off completely. Oh well.

I couldn't really bring myself to do other school things, like read a textbook, even though I am interested in getting into the web design ones, so instead I watched YouTube videos and played a bit of Minecraft. A great way to start a new semester. In Minecraft I didn't really accomplish a whole lot because I went off in search of a village so I could find carrots. I fully intended to go about my search in a legit way. It wasn't a great start when I didn't even make it from my river to the ocean without crashing and breaking my boat. A while later I lost my second boat and spawned in another one, which I lost after going quite a ways and then lagging back to when I first got in it. My computer can handle setting my render distance to the max setting but then chunks don't always fully load and every now and then I get those lag issues where I get into a loop that takes several seconds to start over. I need to find the sweet spot.

In my last attempt at a boat I came across an underwater temple. I vaguely remember seeing something about them on Reddit, I think someone was draining the water away from one of them. I cautiously approached and saw what, from a distance, reminded me of the flying tentacle robots from The Matrix, swimming around and shooting lasers at peaceful octopuses. I went into Creative mode to get a closer look and ended up getting lost inside for quite awhile. I was just about to dig my way out when I found the entrance. Or exit. I'm not sure what the point of the whole place is. There were the scary little creatures and in some of the rooms there were big scary fish things. I thought there would be chests but I guess if you kill the creatures they drop something worthwhile. There were underwater lamps that looked cool but I didn't take any. Sometime I might go back and fight for them, if I can figure out how to breathe underwater. Or I'll just cheat them in. Or stick with my original glowstone idea. Either way, I need to look up the temples and see what the point of them is.

From the temple I left it in creative mode and flew around in search of a village. I eventually found one, quite a distance from my house. And unlike the first village I found on this map, this one had carrots. It also had potatoes, which I had completely forgotten about. So I stocked up on those and wheat, replanting what I picked, just in case I need to go back for some reason. And so I don't feel like a dick stealing all food.

Now it is bedtime. Past bedtime actually. Tomorrow I'm going to continue working on the slideshow. That is my main goal. Other things will probably also happen.

May 17, 2015

 This morning, before lunch, I finished all the work on the slides for the slideshow, which included getting them added and adding transitions and the pans and zooms. I also threw in the music. All of that work was kind of pointless when I rediscovered how I did things last year. I wanted to adjust how long each slide lasted without having to manually adjust each one and stumbled across a video I watched last year. So I deleted everything I spent hours working on and started over. It would have been nice to do that at the beginning, and save myself all of that time, but oh well. Now I need to go back through and add in all the pans and zooms. With the adjusted slide length I needed to add another song and I went with The Nights by Avicii because that is one I came across in the beginning of my song search and thought it would make a good graduation song. Probably better for high school or college but I work at an elementary school and am making a slideshow for sixth graders, so it's going to have to work.

After a lot of work on the slideshow, I took a break before dinner and played some GTA5 singleplayer. I mainly did Trevor missions and have made it to the second heist. There was a weird lag thing going on when I was driving so I didn't play for too long because it was stressing my eyes out.

I called and renewed my Sirius XM radio. It is annoying having to jump through the hoops every five months, calling to cancel in order to get the price dropped to a more reasonable rate. It's got to be really annoying for the customer service people because they have to do all the acting on their end and I have to do the acting on my end. If we could just cut to the chase and acknowledge that it's all a big show, that would be nice. At some point I need to just cancel it for real so I can be done with it.

Tonight I figured out the slideshow stuff and worked on that for a bit before calling it a day and playing Minecraft while watching the Doraleous stream with his friend Matt. They make a good pair and this stream was by far the best. At one point they prank called Neebs, which went horribly but I haven't laughed so hard in awhile.

In Minecraft I was in the mood to be productive in my building so I went into creative mode to finish up the outside of my house. I added railing to first and second floor wrap-around porches, finished the bridge across the river, made various stairs outside, made the outside of the mine look like more than just a hole in the ground, and added stone under the lower porch so it looked like my house wasn't just precariously built on the top of a hill. I really like how everything looks.

Next I want to make a better farm, which will center on the big tree I made. In all of my wanderings I only came across one village and they didn't have carrots. So I need to go out again so I can eventually get some pigs. I also need to make my basements look better. There is a good chance I'll do that in creative as well. Especially with summer school starting tomorrow. When I get carrots I'll probably set up the animal pens and start breeding so I can get off my bread and apple diet. And I need a Nether portal so I can get glowstone for my house, because I think that will look better than all the torches everywhere.

Now I'm going to go to bed. Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to finish up the slideshow. I also need to look at class stuff and see what I need to be doing this week. I'm not looking forward to that. I still think a week break between semesters is ridiculous.

May 16, 2015

 This morning I woke up earlier than I would have liked. But rather than going back to bed, I got up and made a few slides for the sixth grade slideshow. I also finally put a roof on my house in Minecraft. I'm a big fan of the roof. The house has a bit of an odd shape and the second floor is slightly raised in the back so that made for a unique challenge but I think I did a pretty good job.

After lunch I did something, probably, and then I took a nap. That lasted about three hours. And it was great. When I woke up I took a shower and got ready for the end of the year staff party. Around the time we would have left it was really raining and the thunder was incredibly loud, which was freaking the dogs out. Tanner was trying to get downstairs but I compromised and opened up the bathroom upstairs and he immediately climbed in the tub. I also threw in one of the dog blankets in there just in case he wanted something soft. With the current storm, and the radar showing another round coming in, we decided not to go to the party. I was perfectly fine with that because I am not a fan of parties or social gatherings in general.

With my newly free night, I worked on the slideshow and managed to finish all of the individual slides. Tomorrow I would like to finish all of the group slides and start assembling everything. The more I can get done tomorrow the better because this coming week is going to be busy.

When I finished the slides I played some GTA5 while doing my laundry. I started out playing online and immediately had a bounty placed on me, which meant everyone on the server was going to try and kill me. I could have hung out in my garage for 48 minutes but that is dumb and the game was ridiculously laggy so I couldn't have made it back to my house even if I wanted to. After being killed by a player that was lagging all over my screen and invisible most of the time, I tried switching servers. It didn't help the lag. Then I tried playing singleplayer and it was also laggy, so I assumed it had something to do with my computer. I restarted it and that seemed to fix things because I was able to play online after that. I completely one mission to steal a car and I updated my haircut and clothes. Then I switched over to singleplayer because that is more fun than playing online. I can actually accomplish things, as opposed to racing and stealing cars. I interested in the story, also, so that is reason enough to play the singleplayer.

To finally confirm my suspicions, and disbelief, I checked online tonight to see when summer classes start. One of my professors mentioned Monday and it turns out classes do in fact start on Monday. That is ridiculous. There is a single week between the end of the Spring semester and the start of the Summer semester. What the hell is up with that. I still don't have a final grade in one of my classes from last semester. Two weeks would have been acceptable, three weeks would have been preferable. One week is just dumb. The textbooks for one of my classes arrived today and tonight I ordered the books for my other class. One of them will be here Tuesday but Amazon didn't have the second one so I had to get it through the bookstore. Hopefully standard shipping doesn't take too long because we're supposed to read the first chapter in each book this week.

Looking at the calendar that I found on the school's website, it looks like there is also a single week break between the Summer semester and the Fall semester. Something to look forward to. The only real break is between Fall and Spring when we get six and a half weeks off. Doing the math, we should have four weeks for winter break and take those extra weeks to allow a two week break after the Spring semester and after the Summer semester. Oh well.

Now it is late, and I'm finally tired, so I'm going to go to bed. Tomorrow will hopefully be a productive day.

May 15, 2015

 The official MAP reports still weren't updated today for three of the classes that needed tests deleted. Kind of annoying. I ended up printing out my spreadsheets for the classes that are up to date, to add to my pie charts and the official reports, and I gave those to the teachers.

I also printed out a bunch of labels for folders. It required exporting a report from the online student directory and importing that into Word so the fields in that report would fill in the designated fields in the label template. I'm glad it didn't take me forever to remember how to do it.

I got the last baby pictures today, so now I have at least one for every sixth grader. And the majority of my day, when there weren't classes in the lab, was spent working on the slideshow. I scanned and edited the new pictures, edited some other pictures, and started making the individual slides. Tomorrow I want to finish making those individual slides so I can drop them into my video program and get an idea for how long the actual slideshow will be. I still need a third song. At least I think I'll need a third song. I'll find out when I figure out the slideshow running time.

This afternoon the fifth and sixth grade band and orchestra kids had a concert. I remember the concerts being so much more impressive when I was in fifth and sixth grade. I'm assuming now that my memory is misleading. The difference between the grade school band and the middle school band is shocking. The middle school band is really good. And again, I remember it being really good when I was in middle school, so I guess in this case my memory is accurate. That makes me even. But back to the point. The amount of progress these kids make in just a couple of years is incredible.

On my way home after work I stopped by the bank to deposit a check. It has been quite awhile since I have gone to that bank, possibly a year or more. There is a new teller, or maybe an old teller because, again, it's been forever. Either way, she seemed genuinely friendly. Not like that fake kind of friendly that tellers and other people in customer service have to develop. It was the kind of friendly that is contagious and just kind of makes you happy. I need to remember this on the dark days near the end of a semester so I can make up an excuse to go to the bank and hope that teller is working so I can get a pick-me-up.

Tonight it was more of the same, Minecraft and GTA5. In Minecraft I did some things and in GTA5 I participated in a bunch of races and customized some of my cars.

Now it is after midnight and I'm freaking tired. That means it is past my bedtime and I've got some sleep to catch up on. I'm going to go work on that.

May 14, 2015

 I made a lot of progress with MAP stuff today. I downloaded all of the reports for the classes that are fully updated (still waiting on a few classes to have tests deleted). I also made all the pie charts to show the breakdown of scores this time around and added those to the ones for the Winter and Fall. I made them for individual teachers and I made a collection that shows entire grades and the entire school for the principal. Being able to type all of that into a single paragraph makes it sound quite a bit less involved than it was. It took so much work.

When I have finished all the MAP stuff I had time to edit a few pictures for the slideshow. I might have a few more pictures to go but tomorrow I'd like to start making the individual slides. And then figure out how to actually make a slideshow again. I'm hoping I vaguely remember enough that it will go smoothly.

This afternoon the sixth graders performed the play that they wrote this year. Last year's sixth graders did the same thing and it turned out really well. This one also turned out well. This year's play was about a group of kids that were making a float for Mardi Gras and the older kids in the group weren't nice to the younger kids, until they learn to respect each other in the end. Some of the kids were a little too good at being mean and a lot of the kids in the audience were a little too amused by the mean kids in the play. But it was good. I was surprised last year and was again surprised this year, pleasantly so on both occasions.

I ended up not having to work the Book Fair after school. The librarian's son's baseball game was canceled so she didn't have to leave. I went down anyway near the end of the day to take a break from the computer and talked to the librarian for awhile until a lot of parents and kids started coming in to buy books.

When I got home I played Minecraft and made a lot of progress in my second basement. I still need to figure out how I want to do the roof on the second floor because my house is still lacking a roof. I have some ideas but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

There was a break in playing when I had to run upstairs and break up a dog fight. There was a very fine balance during feeding time at the old house and it is even more precarious at the new house. We already have to feed Tanner separate from Beau and Alfie but they nip at each other as they pass because we have to let Tanner inside and the other two out. I'm not sure how it started today, other than passing each other during the switch, but when I got up there Alfie had Tanner pinned on his back. Tanner is always the asshole starting shit. Awhile ago Alfie finally gave it back and ever since then she occasionally nips at him. Today she totally dominated him. He was never the toughest, just always ready to start a fight, and now he seems to be getting more frail, but he's still an asshole that starts fights. And Alfie isn't having it.

Awhile ago, after unintentionally sticking my hand in a mouth when trying to separate Tanner and Beau, I started to go lion tamer style and would use a chair to to separate them. We have a baby gate covering the stairs so the dogs can't go down, and as I came up I just held onto the gate and went right for the dogs, shoving it in between them until I could get them separated, and then used it to coral Tanner away from the door so Alfie could be pushed outside. Nothing like a dog fight to get the adrenaline going. I will never get why people get into dog fighting, on several levels.

Tonight I played some GTA5 while watching the Neebs livestream. When I first spawned in I got in my minivan to go see Lester so he could explain the heists. All the way across town there was another player in a helicopter trying to blow me up. He was a horrible shot because he never hit me. He finally blew up my van while it was parked outside Lester's house and I was inside watching the cutscene. Nice guy. I spent most of my night playing solo races, getting money and leveling up and maybe getting slightly better at driving a motorcycle.

The stream is still going but it is eleven o'clock and I'm freaking tired. I've been up way too late recently and waking up way too early. This weekend I'll be sleeping in but we're not there yet. So I'm going to sleep.

May 13, 2015

The morning started off with a performance by the middle school band. It is still the same band teacher that I had in middle school. The same band teacher who I saw when I was in grade school and it made me want to join the band. He's still got it. He's incredibly animated and jokes around and just makes the whole thing fun. You can tell the kids in the band really like it and the grade school kids love it. They are going to be hard pressed to find someone even half as good as him when he retires.

After the assembly one of the fifth grade classes came to the lab. I talked to the teacher about a worst-case-scenario wisdom teeth video she had to watch, her getting accepted into a leadership thing that the district started that will help her earn her master's degree (which she will start next Fall), her being up late helping her boyfriend finish his paper for school, and probably some other things.

Both second grade classes came in after that to round out the morning. Maybe one of the third grade classes, too. I can't remember. A lot of my day was focused on updating my MAP spreadsheets. It took me until the end of the day, a little after, to get everything updated but I managed it. The only things left are the scores that haven't been updated yet because tests still need to be deleted. If that could happen by the end of the week so I could print off reports, that would be great.

Near the end of the day I went down to one of the third grade rooms because the gifted kids were giving presentations and the gifted teacher wanted me there to help out with technology stuff. It was good that I was there when switching from a laptop to an iPad but other than that it really wasn't necessary for me to be there. But I had been staring at spreadsheets all day and it was nice to get out of the lab. The presentations were pretty interesting, as well. At one point I accidentally bumped a stack of drawings that then slowly slid down to the floor, in a less than quiet fashion. That was embarrasing. Also slightly embarrassing was not being able to get the sound to work for the iPad, through the projector. I didn't realize the iPad presentations would have sound but they did. Had I known, I probably would have messed with it beforehand to make sure it would work. Oh well.

After school I went and got Chipotle and then headed home. My burrito tonight was pretty good, probably because I took last week off for my birthday. After dinner I was able to show a bunch of videos that I haven't been able to show the past few weeks because I was too focused on schoolwork. That was nice. Also, my sister gave me the birthday present she got me that ended up getting stuck in New York for several days. It's an Elephant Wallet, not made from real elephants, and it looks pretty cool. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Tonight I eventually played a little bit of GTA5. I downloaded several custom races so most of my time was spent trying those out. The all only required one player to start, which meant I could try them out by myself, without the stress of other racers. Or having to wait for other racers to join, which can take forever.

Now I'm going to bed because it is late. Tomorrow I'll probably try and get some work done on the slideshow. I'd like to get as much as possible done this week so I don't have to spend too much time on it this weekend. I will also be staying a half an hour late after school to help the library clerk cover the Book Fair because the librarian has something going on. I've managed to not buy any books this time around and hopefully I can keep that up. I still need to write out my budget for this summer but I'm probably going to be cutting it pretty close if I don't come up with a summer job.

May 12, 2015

I forgot that when I was playing GTA5 last night that I spent a decent amount of time following an NPC car. I wanted to steal it and add it to my garage but I decided to follow it and see if it would ever park, that way I wouldn’t have to pull the person out of the car. The driver never parked but they did drive all over the place. I figured eventually it would just turn into a loop, like a pre-programmed path, but it never did. It may at some point but I followed it for quite awhile and it never made it back to where I originally started following it. But, I discovered that following a random car is a really good way to see parts of the map I have either never seen before or always flew by driving really fast. Going at a nice, leisurely pace allowed me the chance to take in the scenery and see things for the first time. Like a suburb that kind of reminded me of the 1960s for some reason. And, with the game on High and Very High settings, everything looks so freaking good. Following a random car might have to become a thing.

Also, I never ended up adding that car to my garage. I did eventually steal it but then right outside my garage I came across a VW van, or whatever it is called in the game, and I have been looking for one of those for awhile, so I ditched the car and grabbed that. And then I almost immediately found another van. Now I have two because one has a rack with surfboard on the roof and the other one doesn’t, and I haven’t decided which one I want yet.  I’m not sure that the rack would be an add-on option that I could unlock later, and if I could, it would probably cost a lot. So I’m waiting until I run out of room in my second garage and need to get rid of one of the vans.

This morning Beau was taken to the vet because he had a bad tooth and it caused his face to swell up. Tanner always barks hysterically when someone leaves the house, as if they will never come back, even if they're just going into the garage or standing outside. I had forgotten all about Beau going to the vet but I also knew something was different because Tanner's bark was completely different this morning. It was weird. He must have had a rough day because when I got home this afternoon the gate blocking off downstairs was knocked over and in my bathroom, the bathmat was scrunched up in a ball and it was obvious that Tanner had spent at least a little while laying in my tub. He got in the habit of doing that at the old house whenever there was a storm. He'd even spend the night in there. I guess tubs have just become his safe space when life gets too stressful.

Today at work I had classes in the lab but I spent most of my day working on my MAP spreadsheets. I made it to the very last page, the second page for sixth grade. I'll still need to go back and add in the scores that will change after tests have been deleted, and go in and figure out how much each score and percentile has changed since the Winter test. I might be able to finish that tomorrow. I'm also hoping the tests will be updated by tomorrow so I can start printing off reports.

After work I stopped and paid a bill and bought a PowerBall ticket before heading home. And then I played a little Minecraft before dinner. I finished digging out the second basement and filling in the path with water that flows through it. Progress.

After dinner I played a little more Minecraft and then jumped into the singleplayer campaign for GTAV and played through a few of Trevor's missions. Then I went online for a little while. I got in on a motorcycle stunt race and ended up playing that several times because it was a lot of fun. Then I went and customized my new favorite car, a Vapid Peyote with a hardtop. I made it a wine red color with green rims and lime green neon lights. It definitely won't win any races but it is fun to drive around in.

Now I'm going to go to bed. My sleep schedule has sucked recently. Too many video games. It's almost summer though, so I'll survive. And then summer school will start. Not really looking forward to that. I'm still burnt out on school. My friend finished up her last class today and I'm a little envious. I can't wait to be done with school. I really like learning but I also like being able to do other things than read textbooks and make presentations and write papers. I'll get there soon enough.

May 11, 2015

Today was a wonderful, test-free day. It was kind of weird. This morning I glued the pictures I put together of some of the sixth graders who have been going to our school since kindergarten. I scanned their kindergarten pictures from the yearbook and put them next to their portrait from this year. Then I cut them out and glued them on colored construction paper. I think they turned out pretty well.

This afternoon I finished editing the appreciation card for one of the fifth grade teachers and got those printed out. That also turned out pretty well. She thanked me for fixing all of her coloring mistakes. I learned that the process for the card involves her having the kids draw a random thing that is in the shape of whatever letter they are assigned. She then makes a photocopy of the drawings and resizes them before finally coloring them. And then I scan that, fix the coloring and do whatever else needs fixing and print them on cardstock.

This morning both second grade classes came to the lab which was weird because it was normal. It was nice getting to talk to those teachers again, more than just in passing in the hallway or when they have a question.

This afternoon, after finishing the appreciation card, I worked on inputting MAP scores to my spreadsheet. I got all of that finished and now I am putting in all of the percentiles from the official reports. After that I'll update the second page for each class in the spreadsheet that, among other things, show the change in scores and percentiles from the last test. I should be able to finish that tomorrow, maybe. And if all of the tests I requested to be deleted are deleted by tomorrow, I can start printing off reports for the teachers.

I also need to work on the slideshow. I think that might become a weekend project. We're coming down to the wire again. I'm pretty sure I still need at least one more song but I won't really know for sure until I get all of the slides assembled and figure out the timing. It would be nice if I hadn't lost the slideshow file from last year when my hard drive crapped out so I could go back and look at it to remember how I did everything. I'll be working from a poor memory and will probably just make it up as I go and hope for the best. A wonderful plan.

After school I went and got my haircut and then came home. All day I was looking forward to leftover barbecue pineapple pizza and it did not disappoint. My sister also brought over the pitas she made so I had some of those with the black bean hummus and the cucumber hummus. I'm still enjoying both of those. I don't know what it is about my sister's pitas and hummus but I could probably eat all of both, in one sitting, making myself sick in the process, and enjoying every bite. I'm addicted.

Tonight I played a little Minecraft. I explored for awhile and worked on my house. I had an idea for making a tunnel under my house (which is on a hill) for the stream to cut through (which goes around the hill my house is on). The only problem is that my basements get in the way. I'm going to have to rethink the design. And just now I thought of one. I kind of want to jump back in and rough out the idea but it's already late and that would probably be a mistake. But I might anyway.

I also played a little GTA5 tonight. I bought a new ten-car garage and quickly filled it up with stolen cars. In my other garage I immediately took my cars to the chop shop and got insurance and change the paint. With my new garage, most of the cars were all impulse steals, so I didn't commit to putting money into them just yet. At some point I'm going to need to get more choosy. Going along with that, I did purchase my first vehicle tonight. It is a motorcycle that I stole one of the first times I played the game and instantly loved but you aren't able to steal and keep it so I finally broke down and bought it. Thankfully, I think it is is the cheapest motorcycle in the game, so that was nice.

I got an email for one of my summer classes tonight. The professor introduced herself and told us which books we would need to buy. Literally the day after I finish the Spring semester and I'm already having to think about the Summer semester. Still isn't as bad as one of the other classes who's professor has been emailing the students for at least the last several weeks. I think that would have been too much for me to take.

So yeah, I'm going to finish this and then jump back into Minecraft real quick and see if the idea I just had will actually work. And then I'm going to go to bed. I'm a big fan of sleep. I need to get more of it.

May 10, 2015

I read through my paper a few more times today and made a few small changes. I also had my mom and sister read it. They both agreed that it was a decent paper and sounded analytical, which is a positive because that is what I was going for. I finally submitted it around nine o'clock tonight after reading it through one last time and reading through the instructions and the rubric a couple times. I think I have all my bases covered but part of me is still worried that I completely missed the point of the assignment somehow.

I was finally able to install my new fans and graphics card today. The two small fans were replacements for the fans I had on my liquid cooler. One of them stopped working awhile ago but I never got around to replacing it. The power cords on the fans ended up being super short and I had to unplug one of the fans on the top of my case in order to plug in one of the new ones. Sometime I will need to get a cord that will convert a normal fan plug into a bigger one that I can plug in to one of my open plugs. That probably makes no sense but I don't really know what all the cords are called. Installing the big fan on the side door panel was a bit of a pain but it ended up working out.

I was worried about the size of my new graphics card because it is so much bigger than my old one. Thanks to the power cables plugging into the side of the card, though, I had plenty of room to spare. The main problem was after getting everything plugged in inside the case, and everything plugged back in outside the case, my computer would shut down after only being on a few minutes. I thought maybe it had something to do with the power cables so I tried different configurations and nothing worked. I looked through a lot of different forums and couldn't find anything that matched my situation but in one of them someone mentioned an crash report being listed in the bios. The next time I started my computer I went into the bios and couldn't find any reference to a crash report but right before my computer shut down again I just saw the CPU temperature as it went from 125 degrees Celsius to 127 degrees Celsius. I'm not to familiar with Celsius but that seemed incredibly hot, and according to Google it is. That is 260.6 degrees Fahrenheit. I believe the normal running temperature of a CPU is around 40 or 50 degrees Celsius, so my new theory was that my CPU was overheating and shutting the computer down.

I got back into my case and started checking on things related to the liquid cooler on the CPU and noticed the power cable. I had unplugged it when trying to figure out the power situation for my new fans. I remembered to plug it back in but it has three female (I guess) openings on the plug and four pins on the motherboard. I always get confused by this and apparently this time was no different because I plugged the plug into the first three pins instead of the last three pins, which meant the liquid cooler wasn't working. As soon as I fixed that and turned my computer back on I heard the liquid start to flow and everything was good with the world. Haven't had another problem since.

When I finally got everything set up I loaded up GTA5. I can't remember what my settings were with my old graphics card but I know they weren't great. I even had to play the game in 720p because it couldn't handle 1080p. Now, everything is either on High or Very High. And when I'm in the game, it looks freaking fantastic. So much better than it did before. I celebrating by driving around enjoying the scenery and adding four new cars to my collection, via a five-finger discount. I got a wood-paneled station wagon which I painted yellow with lime green rims, a big beat up pickup truck that I painted bright red, a muscle car that I left the original shiny black, and a lifted beetle that I painted light blue with light red wheel covers, or whatever those things are called that are currently eluding me. These new editions brought me up to the ten car limit of my garage. I looked and I think I may end up buying another ten-car garage. Originally I was going to buy the cheapest house that came with a ten-car garage but I discovered there are standalone garages that will fit ten cars, not just six like I originally thought. The standalone garage is also about $100,000 cheaper than the lowest price house with a ten-car garage. So whenever I get in the mood to add more cars to my collection I'll probably get that garage.

Tonight my sister and her husband came over for a Mother's Day dinner. My mom and I got pizza ourselves and my sister brought over a chili sandwich thing, which she made for her husband and herself. It looked good but my pineapple pizza with barbecue sauce was delicious. I used to get that a lot many years ago when I first became a vegetarian but I haven't gotten it in years. I need to get back on that wagon. My sister also brought over two new types of hummus for me to try, speaking of vegetarian things. One was black bean hummus and the other was cucumber hummus. I liked the black bean one because it still had the flavor of hummus but also tasted like an interesting Mexican bean dip. The cucumber hummus was different. It definitely tasted like cucumbers, with a hint of dill. It made for a very fresh taste that I imagine would be good with vegetables. My sister made pitas but she forgot them so I used one of the rolls that she made for the chili sandwiches. It was a really good roll.

After dinner we sat around and talked, my sister read my paper, and then I retired to read my paper again and finally submit it. I also started some laundry before getting back into GTA5. I mainly did a bunch of races and got my ass handed to me every single time. I was always in the bottom third or fourth. In my defense, the lobby was filled with people way out of my league, including one guy would was over level 100 and a guy over level 200. I just hit level six after one of the races. My goal at this point is just double digits. I might switch back to the singleplayer campaign next time I play because I was enjoying that but kind of lost track of it after going online for the first time.

It is now almost midnight and I'm working on about five hours of sleep, which means I have been tired since I woke up this morning, so I'm going to go to bed. There is no testing tomorrow so I can focus on normal classes in the lab and working on the various projects I am currently in the middle of. Thank goodness testing is over.