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.