July 30, 2015

I woke up way earlier than I would have liked today and somehow managed to avoid taking a nap. I spent my early morning babysitting dogs and watching Arrow. I continued watching Arrow throughout the rest of the stay. In fact I'm still watching it now. Apparently the first season was incredibly long. I'm on episode sixteen and there are twenty-three episodes in the season. Maybe I'm just used to British shows but twenty-three seems like a long season. Maybe it does that thing where they do the first part of the season, take a big break, and then do the second half. Who Knows. I don't care More episodes for me.

I wrote responses to the two people who posted critiques to my group website. And not too long after a third person posted. There were only supposed to be two but it looks like there was a breakdown in communication in one of the groups and two people posted for them. The third post was also very extensive. Hooray. Now I've got to come up with another response and makes some changes to the website. Possibly. Haven't decided yet.

I worked on my budget for awhile. Based on my initial estimates, I only have $47,250 to get rid of. Tomorrow I'm going to spend more time with the non-key staff and see how many of them I can switch to part-time. For each one that goes to part-time I'll save half their salary along with $7,500 on benefits. I've decided for this project to take on the role of a transitional director, the one they bring in to make a bunch of cuts and be the bad guy before bringing in a new director. I'm not there to be loved, just to cut $300,000 and set the library on a path of change and innovation. I think I can do it.

On top of all the other things I kind of did today, I also did laundry. So not a bad day. Tomorrow I'm going to do website stuff and budget stuff. I'm also going to pot my avocado seed. I can't remember when I started it but it has been sitting in a bag by a window, wrapped in a wet paper towel for awhile now. The stalk is around six inches tall now and little tiny leaves are starting to come out of the top. Seems like a good time to move it to a pot. Previously I have made it to the point of having several full-size leaves but I was afraid to trim them and the tree eventually died. My goal is to make it a little bit farther this time.

July 29, 2015

Once again I forgot to mention something. My dreams of maybe buying a new pair of shoes kind of went out the window yesterday when I spent nearly $400 on textbooks for the Fall semester. The only thing worse than spending that much money on textbooks is the fact that over the next several months I will be reading five textbooks from front to back.

Today was a day off. I spent a lot of time thinking about my budget assignment, which is good because it requires a lot of thinking, but I didn't actually put down any additions to it. I figured taking a step back was a good thing. I'll hit it hard tomorrow and see how far I can get. I've got over a week to finish it but I wouldn't mind getting it over with sooner. This weekend is a little too ambitious but we'll see what happens.

I didn't really do much with my day other than watching videos and reading things. I'm okay that. Tonight was Chipotle night. There was pretty much only one person working the line because the second guy was moving in slow motion. The girl with him was probably doing 80% of the work, and she handled it pretty well.

After dinner I showed videos and my sister also showed a couple with the lead singer and one of the other members of Shinedown. They apparently put out a couple CDs of covers and I am now intrigued. Shinedown was one of my favorite bands and the songs my sister played reminded me why. After the videos, I moved a dresser into the basement for my mom. It went a lot better than I thought it would. Not that I thought it would go badly, but I was expecting more of a struggle.

Tonight I watched things. I started with The Cobbler. It starred Adam Sandler and had Dustin Hoffman and Steve Buscemi. It came out last year and I had never heard of it. I guess only Sandler's comedies get a marketing budget. In the movie Sandler plays a cobbler who discovers a magic sole stitcher passed down through his family and when it is used on a shoe, there wearing takes on the appearance of the shoe's owner. It was an interesting movie.

Following that I watched The Expendables 3 because I have wanted to see that since it came out but never got around to it. It was pretty freaking great. Just what you want from a 90s action movie and what you expect from a movie in this franchise. I can appreciate the addition of the young blood but I couldn't have cared less about them. None of them really had the charisma to make you care. The best character by far was played by Antonio Banderas. He nailed it.

I ended he night with the first episode of Arrow. I have only ever heard good things about it but never got around to it. I get the hype now. At least based on the first episode, it is good. They did a good job with the action and the story has me intrigued. I'll have to keep watching it and see if it manages to hold my attention.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it is late and I have to get up early because the plumber is coming to fix the mistake that was made during the building of the house that has lead to the washer sucking water out of my toilet and replacing it with bubbles. I will be babysitting dogs. And maybe working on my budget assignment. Or responding to the critiques of the group website.

July 28, 2015

 Today I watched things online while working on my final budget assignment. It really is a thinker. And it doesn't help that I don't really know anything about library budgets or even the different roles of library staff. More experience would be nice. But I'm working through it. Today I focused on going through the key staff members, at least one of which has to be fired. Along with a little insight from my mom, right now I am thinking of firing five people, replacing a couple with part-time staff, and promoting one of them. After some rough estimates for some of the numbers, all of that will save me $185,000. I still need to go through the non-key staff and maybe move some of them to part-time, and then go through the rest of the budget. Only $115,000 to go. In real life I probably wouldn't fire so many people, I would go after other budget stuff first, but in this hypothetical situation where I don't personally know or have to face any of the individuals involved, I'm bringing the ax.

I watched Big Hero 6 today and I liked it, minus the death because I don't like death. I'm a fan of comas that characters wake up from by the end of the movie. Death is unnecessary, especially in cartoons. But other than that, I liked the movie. The best part was when Baymax's battery was running low and he started acting drunk, something that the kids wouldn't pick up on (hopefully) but it was pretty funny. I also liked when he had to let out air out of himself. And when he was patching holes in himself with tape. That part was in the trailers but it was still funny in the movie.

I also started watching the show The Whispers. It looked good when I saw a commercial for it and I decided to give it a shot. I'm now seven episodes in. The idea of the show is interesting but I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. Part of it is due to not liking the two main actresses, there is just something about their faces that annoy me. I'm also not a big fan of the main little girl. I don't know if she is supposed to be acting in such a way that she is unlikable, but that's the vibe I'm getting. I don't know that I'll keep up with the show once I catch up with the episodes that have already aired.

We got our first site evaluation so I looked through that. I ended up adjusting the size of one of the images on the homepage so it matched the other one. They are stacked on top of each other and switch when you move the mouse over it. It is kind of pointless but it uses Javascript and we needed an example of that. And the different sizes of pictures kind of annoyed me so I didn't mind the excuse to fix it. The other issues that were pointed out weren't necessarily things I feel need to be changed but I'll consider them. One cool thing was that the classmate who evaluated the page thought the main area was meant to look like a clipboard, which goes along with the basketball theme. That wasn't my intention but I'm cool with the interpretation. I also liked that overall, my classmate liked the site I made.

Tomorrow, more budget analysis. I can't wait.

July 27, 2015

 Today was really productive but I don't have much to write about because it was also really boring. Before lunch I read through my reflective journal, made a few minor changes, and then submitted it. After lunch I read through my grant proposal, made a few minor changes, and then submitted it. Both assignments weren't actually due until next Sunday but I submitted them today, almost a week early. That is very much unlike me. Maybe I'm coming down with something.

Late tonight the other groups in my web design class submitted their website links, including the two groups that my group has to evaluate. So I went ahead and evaluated them. I didn't have anything better to do so I figured I might as well get it over with, even though that isn't due until Thursday. My group started a Google Doc so we could all add in our own evaluation of the site and then one member will combine everything and submit it to the discussion thread. The only thing I should have left for that class is to make any changes the other groups suggest for our site, if they make sense and are easy enough to fix, and I might play a part in the final report, but we'll see.

In my management class, the only thing I have left is the budget assignment, which is worth twenty points, so it is a major player in my overall grade. I finally took a look at it today and it is a little more substantial than the professor was making it out to be. He described it as a short three-page paper. It does include a short three-page paper, but it also involves answering a few questions that will require substantial thought. He are the director of a library and we have to fire at least one person, possibly more, possibly rearrange the organizational structure, and cut 10% of the budget, which equates to $300,000. That is a big chunk of change. I read through all the material today and I'm pretty sure I know who I'm going to fire and who I will promote to fill the position, but that only saves around $50,000. I also think I'm going to make one of the full-time employees a part-time employee, but that still doesn't get me in the ballpark of $300,000. It would be easier if I was more familiar with the actual functioning of a public library's organizational structure. Then I would have a better idea of what positions could but messed with without making the whole thing crumble. I'm going to need to make more people part-time to save on benefits. And I'll probably need to reduce the book budget, which is sad. In the end, it doesn't really matter how I get rid of the $300,000 as long as I have a valid argument and can justify my decisions. I need to do some research and put a lot more thought into it.

One of my classmates mentioned the movie Sky High during her presentation this weekend and that made me really want to watch that movie again. So that's what I did today and it is still good. It definitely holds up. I feel like I heard at one point it was supposed to have a sequel but it didn't do well enough. I could be making that up but it would have been cool if there was a sequel.

I watched another movie after Sky High but for the life of me I cannot remember what it was right now. I feel like I'm really close to remembering it but I've got nothing right now. It's really weird. Or maybe I planned on watching something else but then didn't. But I'm pretty sure I did watch something. Oh well.

Tonight I watched my Mumford & Sons concert DVD when they played at Red Rocks. I need to go to more concerts there. I've only been to one, when I went to Sublime, but that was the coolest concert I've ever been to. My friend's cousin and his girlfriend volunteer and pick up trash there in exchange for free tickets. I would be down for that.

I finished reading the first volume of Suicide Squad tonight and now I want to get the other volumes. I think there are five all together but I need to wait until I start getting a paycheck again before I start buying a bunch of books. I also want to buy new shoes. I've been looking at a lot of new shoes recently. But I don't really need new shoes right now. Or new books. Soon enough I'll be making more adult money and I'll have a little extra spending money. That will be nice.

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. That is the other movie I watched. I had seen bits and pieces of it in the theater but never actually saw the whole thing. I read at least a few of the books, maybe more, but I couldn't make it through the series because it began to feel like I was just reading the same book over and over again. The movie was good though. Jim Carrey did a really good job. I could have done with more of him and less of the kids, no offense to them.

I've been bored most of the night and I'm not tired enough to go to bed so I'm going to go back to being bored for awhile. Nothing sounds worth doing. I'll figure something out.

July 26, 2015

 I accomplished nothing this morning because I slept through most of it. I did look through some stuff and thought about things for my reflective journal entries but I didn't actually type anything. The fun kicked in after lunch when I started typing. And re-reading parts of chapters and articles to remind myself what my short notes were for on each entry. I had some distractions but I would say I put in a decent amount of effort. Maybe even more than decent because I managed to finish the last entry shortly after 11:30PM. It would have been nice if it was earlier in the night but I was kind of expecting it to be at least two in the morning, so I beat my expectations. Tomorrow I'll re-read everything and make any edits I need to and maybe even turn it.

After dinner we had a group meeting. Originally I thought it was at five o'clock but then one of my group members sent out a message asking to push it back a half hour to 7:30PM, so apparently the original time was seven o'clock. Good to know. When I joined it was me and the other guy in the group and we ended up talking about Minecraft and video games in general because he saw the Creeper face my sister made me that is sitting on my pile of books. His kids play Minecraft and I learned his oldest kid is nine years old. It was surprising enough to learn he has kids because he looks really young but it was even more surprising to learn his oldest is nine, again because of how young he looks.

Eventually we were joined by another group member. The fourth wasn't able to join because she was out of town and didn't get to her hotel in time. We organized the plan for submitting our group update, how we were going to handle commenting on the other group websites, and getting our final report set up. I didn't think we would really have much to go over but we got a lot accomplished. Go us.

After the meeting I went back to working on my reflective journal entries until I got them finished. And since then I've been watching videos. Thanks to sleeping in I'm not really tired but I'll get there. Hopefully soon.

Tomorrow, along with proofreading my reflective journal entries, I also want to proofread my grant proposal. One of my classmates mentioned that school librarians usually don't get paid during the summer because I didn't have that figured into my budget. I said that my program would be during summer school so the librarian would already be in the library and that she would be volunteering her services. Thinking on my feet. But now I am thinking that I should probably add in a salary and categorize it as in-kind, which I think covers volunteering or donated stuff, like if someone donates their time or a bunch of t-shirts, you figure out how much that stuff would actually cost and include it as an in-kind donation in the budget. I figured out the salary just in case but I'll have a better idea as to whether I should add it in tomorrow when I look through things again. And speaking of budgets, it would be really nice if I could look over the budget assignment tomorrow, just to get the thought process started on that. The professor said it was only a short, three-page paper that had a lot of right answers, but most of our time would probably be spent thinking. So I need to get the think-train started. That's totally a thing.

July 25, 2015

 I forgot to mention that I forgot something in my packing. My pillow. It's been awhile since I've forgotten something. Thankfully the hotel pillows are good so I managed just fine.

Right now I am tired, and it isn't even midnight yet, but I have stayed up far later than I should. I got up this morning around sometime. I think my alarm went off 6:30AM. Instead of getting up immediately I went over my presentation a couple times out loud as I laid there with my eyes closed. Then I got up and got ready.

It was really strange brushing my teeth at a sink that wasn't in a bathroom.

Today was filled with presentations, a few lectures, and a little adventure. I would say all of the presentations were interesting. A couple of them were for actual grant projects that my classmates did for work so it was cool to hear real life examples. As far as the posters went, there were a couple really cool ones that looked like a lot of effort was put into them. The majority looked like an afterthought. I imagine they will all get full credit but at least I have the satisfaction of making a superior product, which will look better as an example for my capstone next summer.

After lunch I drove around town long enough for me to go over my presentation a couple times. Practice makes better. During our last break of the day we decided to go up and look at the new cardboard furniture on the fourth floor. Our adviser and professor both said they thought it was a joke when they heard about it but it definitely wasn't. It exists and it looked incredibly uncomfortable/impractical, and it was apparently expensive. We all kind of made fun of it for awhile and then we decided to go see the new furniture down on the main floor of the library.

We headed off in a different direction than we came to go down to the second floor but when we got to the bottom of the stairwell we learned that the door was locked. So we went back up to the fourth floor and when we got about halfway through the stacks we decided to take the stairs down that are in the stacks. I'm pretty sure there are two levels of stacks for each floor so there were a lot of stairs. And then we went down one set too far and had to go back up. It was like the blind leading the blind and it was pretty great. The whole time the professor kept commenting on how bad the condition of the stacks were. He was pretty sure they were never really taken care of and that weeding was not a thing that ever happened. I was just enjoying being surrounded by all those books. I love the smell of old books. It smelled way better than the cardboard furniture, which managed to make the gigantic room that it was in smell like cardboard.

We did eventually make it to the second floor and checked out the new furniture down there. It was in an area that used to be filled with books but I guess they're going to turn it into a tutoring and studying area. The office chairs were comfortable.

While we were down there, and then when we were headed back up to the room, I ended up talking to the girl that I went all through school with, kindergarten through high school. But I don't think we ever talked because we were always just in different circles. We started talking about working in an elementary school because I do that now and she wants to eventually be a school librarian. Then we segued into talking about people from high school and the reunion, however long ago that was, and Facebook. It was kind of a cool. It's still pretty crazy that we took entirely different paths after high school but both managed to end up in the exact same grad program, starting at the exact same time.

Eventually it was time for the last presentation of the day. Me. I'll be honest, I think it went really well, at least from my point of view. All of the practice really paid off. I wasn't too nervous and for the first time every, probably, I didn't blackout at the beginning and come back at the end. I was completely aware of not only what I was saying but also what I was doing with my body. I was able not be too awkward with my hands and I looked around the room and actually saw people while I was talking, I wasn't just staring without focus. And I said all of the things I wanted to say, including my small joke, and it got a laugh, which is always my goal in any presentation. So I'm happy with it. And with my poster. Even if there was a small error with “hardware” missing.

On my way out of town I made the obligatory stop at Spangles and then headed home. It was a really fast trip because most of the time I was able to drive at the speed I wanted to drive at. On two occasions cars pulled onto the highway in front of me and they were apparently unaware of how highways work because there was obviously not enough time for them to get up to speed before I caught up to them. And then when they did get up to speed, it wasn't actually fast enough. They should have waited. Thankfully I was able to get around them fairly quickly so it didn't slow me down too much. I kept track of my mileage on the way down and on my way home, going a different way (but the same way I always go home) it was six miles shorter than my trip down. That could account for part of the reason why the return trip feels faster.

For dinner I had Little Caesar's and it was delicious. I've been in the mood for Little Caesar's for awhile now and it did not disappoint. I spent the rest of the night watching TV, YouTube videos, and playing a bit of Zuma's Revenge and Bejeweled 3. I was in the mood to play a game while watching videos and I didn't want to think too much. Those games fit the bill.

I'm sitting here in silence, writing this entry, and some animal just start frantically squealing really loudly outside my window in the backyard. I turned the light off in the room and tried to look outside but it was too dark so I have no idea what the hell was going on. I could have gone out and checked but no freaking way. I'm cool with not having the crap scared out of me. I am hoping that maybe it was a opossum that accidentally stepped on its own tail and scared itself. That is the happiest thing I can think of. We're going with it.

And now that it is an hour after I started typing, and creeping up on one o'clock, I'm going to call this good and go to bed. Tomorrow, I really want to knock out my reflective journal entries. And preferably not push off that goal until the middle of the night. If I could get it done early enough I could also go back and proofread by grant proposal. There are a couple things I want to double-check on that so I probably won't submit it tomorrow but it would be nice to have it done. That way my main focus this week can be on the budget assignment. And maybe critiquing a website for my web design class. I think we have a group meeting tomorrow, although I'm not entirely sure why because we haven't done anything this week, but we'll see.  

July 24, 2015

 I kind of work up with my alarm clock but I stayed in bed and I know I dozed off at least a couple times. But when I wasn't dozing, I was being productive by running through my presentation in my head. I remember that the first presentation I gave in graduate school was pretty nerve-racking because I hadn't presented since college and I didn't practice it nearly enough as I should have. I've gotten better about it since then and remembered the importance of practicing. Not only figuring out what I want to say but timing it and going through it several times. I already kind of go into auto-pilot when I present and don't really feel like I have much control or awareness of what I'm saying, so it is good to have the practice so I can trust that I'm at least saying stuff that is in the ballpark of being correct. That's the goal anyway.

Before and after lunch I didn't really accomplish much. I burned a couple CDs for my mom and that was about it. Soon enough it was time to take a shower and pack up so I could leave town. The drive down was pretty good. For the last ten to fifteen minutes of the first half of the trip I got stuck behind a car, and eventually a school bus, that weren't going as fast as I would have liked but it wasn't too slow. On the last stretch of highway where I usually get screwed over by large trucks, I got hung up by a car that either didn't have or didn't believe in cruise control. I would catch up to it so I would kick off my cruise control and then they would speed up. The first few times I tried matching their speed with my cruise control but it was fluctuating too much for that to be an effective strategy. They also seemed to speed up every time there was an opening to pass them, which was annoying. But I made good time and actually got into town a little earlier than I was expecting.

Class was interesting, just like last time. I still enjoy the professor and I think I'm in another one of his classes in the Fall. We had a brief visit from the dean of the library school and then we ended the night talking about disaster preparedness. And in the middle of that discussion the fire alarm went off. It was unintentional but perfectly timed. Thankfully it happened after the sun went down so the temperature was in the mid-90s. The temperature today according to my car was 102 degrees and I think I heard the heat index was around 114 degrees, which I totally believe. I only briefly experienced it but that was more than enough. I also think my brief time outside affected my allergies because my nose is clogged and my eyes are feeling a bit itchy. Hooray.

Keeping with the trend at the hotel, I am staying in a completely different room. I'm fairly certain I've stayed in a different room every single time. And there is no confusing it this time because I'm in a completely different building, across from the one I normally stay in. The layout over here is different, too, with the sink and mirror outside the bathroom, which has blue tiles instead of beige and a small frosted window. I could do without the window.

When I got into my room it was hot, even though the air conditioner was on. Thankfully, I always bring my fan with me. The general idea for the fan is that it is the same one I turn on at home for the noise when I fall asleep. I figured having the same noise would help me fall asleep in a hotel. And it does. This time there is just the added bonus of it all keeping me cool.

After watching a couple YouTube videos while I ate the rest of my dinner and drank a bunch of water, I practiced my presentation. Three or four times just to be safe. I'm feeling pretty good about it but there are a couple parts that still trip me up a little bit. Hopefully not tomorrow.

Now I've got a bit of a headache and I think I'm tired. I'm not entirely sure because it could just be my allergy eyes. I shouldn't be tired because I didn't get up super early but I also drove down for class which can be tiring. I don't know, but I'm going to stay up for a little bit and read some of the first volume of Suicide Squad, which I bought along with my poster the other day. I've heard good things and the movie looks cool so I figured I would give it a shot.

I forgot to sign up for a presentation so I go last tomorrow. I don't really have a problem with that unless I find out my idea for the presentation is completely different than the collective rest of the class. I'm also slightly worried that people will go way long which will put more pressure on me to go quickly because we're running late and everyone wants to leave. So two small worries, but I'll also have more practice time, in my head, which is nice. Always a positive.

July 23, 2015

 I did things today. Hooray for me. I can't really remember my morning but I know I slept in until sometime and then did something until lunch. After lunch I eventually left the house and went to Target to get construction paper. There smallest option was 200 sheets of paper. I needed fourteen pieces. So now I have more construction paper than I will ever need for the rest of my life.

When I got home, I started work on cutting the paper. I trimmed down most of the sheets I printed out last night and then cut the construction paper so it would make a quarter of an inch border around the information sheets. I thought only using one color would look boring and be kind of confusing so I used four. One for the title sheets, one for the demographic stuff, one for the main information about the project, and one for the examples of the worksheets the kids will work on.

There was a lot of cutting so I didn't finish it until after dinner. And then the gluing started. Another thing that took quite awhile. Much later in the even I was finally able to lay everything out on my poster and start to tape it down. That also took awhile, not just because of all the tape but also just trying to get everything aligned so it didn't look like it had been put together by a child. I think it turned out pretty well. As long as you don't stare too closely at some of the construction paper borders because some of them are awful, but I'm trying not to think about it. I also noticed an error on my budget table, where it is supposed to say “Computers & Hardware” it just says “Computer &”. Who the hell knows where the hardware went. I guess that's what happens when you make something well into the middle of the night. Again, I'm trying not to think about it.

I took a little break after I got everything taped down and then I practiced my presentation. It's a work in progress. I feel like I'm talking super fast but the overall time has been between eight and ten minutes, which is good because the time frame is five to fifteen minutes. I'll need to practice again tomorrow. And tomorrow night. And Saturday morning. I forgot all about signing up, as did several other people so I'm not alone, but I got put in the last slot. Which means I'll be presenting right before we leave. Which also means if I go long, I am preventing everyone from leaving. No pressure. My main worry is actually seeing everyone's posters. I'm still not entirely convinced that I did mine right and it would suck if everyone else has something completely different. It would be super awkward to get up there after everyone else who seemed to get the assignment and then me who obviously didn't. But that is a worst-case scenario. An over-thinking scenario. I should be good. At least my poster has some colorful borders.

It is currently after two o'clock so I'm going to go to bed so I can wake up in the morning. I would like to wake up at a decent time just so tomorrow night I will actually be tired at a decent time, which will make it easier for me to get up early on Saturday for class. I'm trying to plan ahead for my future self.

July 22, 2015

 I woke up with my alarm today and managed to read two textbook chapters and two articles before lunch. I wildly successful start to my day. And then I did nothing the rest of the afternoon. School-related anyway. I ran on the elliptical and did my laundry, so that's something.

Before Chipotle I paid a bill and bought about Powerball ticket (which was another loser). On the way to Chipotle I ran into construction and had to go out of my way. Then I ran into more construction and again had to go out of my way. I love summer because all of the college kids leave town but I also hate summer because that is when all the road construction happens. And I think some of the college kids are starting to trickle back into town. Yay.

I went to Jimmy John's first because my mom wanted a sandwich. I then went around the block and was on the street right beside Chipotle. As I pulled up to the stop sign before turning onto the road in front of Chipotle, I apparently went into the crosswalk a little bit. I discovered this when I looked to the left and saw one of the Chipotle employees walk out of the the blind spot created by the door frame of my car. She had to walk a little bit around my car and stared at me. Not in a nasty way, more of a “Really?” kind of way. I've got to say the one thing I don't like about my car is the door frame blind spot because it is surprisingly large and it does often come into play when I'm turning onto streets.

The Chipotle employee was walking to work and by the time I got up to place my order she was in the food line. When I got to her I made sure to say I was sorry about getting so close to her with my car and she seemed good with that. I'm down there every week and she's frequently there and hopefully things won't be awkward. At least awkward beyond the normal levels of me interacting with strangers.

After dinner I showed some videos, which I think went over fairly well. I also had a piece of bread before leaving. My sister made bread and brought it over. She said after all the ingredients go together it has to sit for eighteen hours. Good grief. But it was really good. Like restaurant good. But the majority of the stuff she makes is restaurant good so I shouldn't have been surprised.

I meant to start working on my poster after dinner but that didn't really happen. I ended up looking at stuff on the internet and got distracted. I halfheartedly had my grant stuff open and was kind of working on it but not really. It wasn't until sometime after ten o'clock, maybe eleven o'clock, that I buckled down and got to work. And sometime between two o'clock in the morning a half-past, I was done. It was annoying trying to print because my desktop wouldn't show my printer and the driver wouldn't download. I ended up having to save my file as a PDF, because I made it in Publisher '13 and I don't have that on my laptop. My laptop does have my printer installed so I opened the PDF out of my Dropbox folder and was able to print. Everything except the picture of the school because my printer is out of color ink. Or it is dried up. Either way, black is my only option at the moment so I got rid of the picture. When I laid everything out the poster was looking a little sparse so I went back through some of the worksheets I downloaded yesterday and printed out three examples to show the type of stuff the kids would be working on. And I think it all looks decent. I'll probably change my mind this weekend when I see every else's but for now I'm going with the idea that I did something right.

Tomorrow I am going to go buy some construction paper and a glue stick. The idea is to glue my printed stuff onto the construction paper, giving everything a thin border of color. I did that for my log-in instructions in the computer lab and the border made everything look a million times better than a plain piece of paper. And it is definitely needed for the poster because it is also white. I would like to get that done before lunch, the shopping that is, but it is three o'clock in the morning right now and I already feel like I'll be ignoring my alarm clock, so we'll see how motivated I am in the morning.

July 21, 2015

 I ignored my alarm again but I managed to read two and a half textbook chapters before lunch. Not bad. The school librarian also called me and we talked for about forty-five minutes about my grant project. She has apparently used Charlie and the Chocolate Factory several times over the years with fifth graders so she had a lot of ideas which was incredibly helpful. She gave me her log in and the fifth grade teacher's log in information for a couple different teacher websites and I was able to find a lot of useful worksheets related to the book. I don't actually need those things but I needed that to help me get my head around the program I was proposing for the grant. It helped being able to actually visualize what I would be having the kids do. And it kind of makes me want to print a lot of that stuff out when I read the book and work through the activities.

This masters program would be a lot harder if I didn't have the connections I have at the elementary school. And there is a good chance I wouldn't even be in the program if I wasn't working at the school. I was thinking about it but the school librarian convinced me (and mildly pestered me) into applying. And she and the principal wrote my recommendations. I don't who I would have gotten to write my recommendations if I didn't know them because all of my connections at the theater had quit long ago. And now that I am in the program, I have better experiences to reference in various assignment, along with skills I have acquired working on different projects at work. And being able to get advice, not only from the school librarian, but also from other teachers. I wish I had gone back to school a lot earlier but I don't know if I would have been as successful. Taking so long was frustrating but maybe it was necessary.

This afternoon and into the night I worked on my grant proposal. And thanks to the help from the school librarian, I was able to finish. And I think I'm going to call it good but I'm still not quite sure about a couple of the sections because they are worded really strange. One is called Measurable Results and the other is Assessment Methods. The short explanations are vague and it seems like there is some overlap. It's confusing. I might ask the professor about it this weekend if I get the chance.

Tomorrow I need to figure out the poster presentation. The goal is to actually come up with all the content I want to put on the poster and print it out. Or at least attempt to print it out and see if my printer has enough ink. And if I could figure this out before I go pick up Chipotle, I could leave a little early and swing by the store while I'm out. I doubt I actually get that far though because I still have no idea what should go on the poster. It feels like a lot of space to fill. We'll see. The slightly more realistic goal is to finish the content before I go to bed tomorrow, and maybe try to print it. I'd be really impressed with myself if I made it that far.

During one of my breaks from the grant proposal tonight I made a small edit to my group website, adding a copyright logo, the client name, and the year to the bottom of all the pages. One of my group members was looking through the requirements for the site and messaged me about it tonight to see if I had everything on the site because he wasn't sure about some of the stuff. I went back through and the previous two assignments because we had to include all the required elements from those assignments as well as the required elements for this assignment. The only thing that had been missing from this assignment was the Google Analytics stuff, which I added yesterday. And the only thing I was missing from the first assignment was the copyright stuff. So we're good now. Until we get feedback from other groups. And until I finally get around to looking at the SEO article we were given and see if there is more stuff I need to add. Hopefully not.

And certainly not tonight because it is almost half past three in the morning and I should get to bed. I'm feeling like I'm going to go lay down and not fall asleep for another hour but there's only one way to find that out.

July 20, 2015

 Holy balls, it is late and I have a headache and I want to go to bed.

The vast majority of my day was pointless. Again. I just could not bring myself to do much of anything school-related. I thought about my projects a lot, so that was kind of productive but not visibly. I just watched videos online, read articles (unrelated to school), and ran on the elliptical. So I was healthy at least. Oh, and I changed the light bulb in the oven, which involved turning a breaker off, so yeah, work happened.

After dinner, I went back to not doing a lot but I slowly started working on things. I commented on a discussion post where someone form another group was asking for suggestions on how to do a slideshow on their website. I haven't attempted that but I came across some things in my research so I posted a few links, a couple with a CSS solution and another with the easier route of embedding a Flickr slideshow.

That got me thinking about my group's website and I think we need to have a video or music embedded on the site, which I didn't put in because it didn't really make sense. But I was still avoiding my grant proposal so I checked on YouTube, finding nothing, and then went through the client's Twitter feed and found a short promotional clip for their summer camp, so I got the embed code for that and put it on the summer camp page of the website. It took me a bit to figure out because I wanted it to be centered on the page, and I ended up having to put it inside a <div> to get that to happen. But I got it. I did all that with the code saved on my computer so I had to copy it, log into the school server, and paste it into the files saved there because those are responsible for what the internet sees.

I eventually got past all the distractions, or at least most of them, and got to work on my grant proposal. And the document actually looks kind of impressive. Very official looking, mostly thanks to the formatting. I emailed the professor today because in one of his announcements there was a reference to a sample grant proposal but I couldn't find it anywhere so I asked if he could send it to me again. I was either not alone or it never got sent out because he ended up sending it to everyone. I loosely based my layout on the sample but mine looks cleaner. It was really helpful seeing examples for the various sections because the short directions for each one wasn't always entirely clear. I still need to come up with the Program Objectives, Program Design, Measurable Results, Assessment Results, and finalize a title for the project. That sounds like a lot, because it is, but I finished a lot of other stuff so I don't feel completely overwhelmed by it. I goal (or maybe I should say 'hope') is to finish it tomorrow. Then I can focus on the content for the poster presentation on Wednesday, which will give me time to figure out if I need to go buy more printer ink or other supplies. I bought a poster on Amazon today, which should be here on Wednesday. I don't think I'll actually start putting it together until Thursday but you never know. I'm still not entirely sure what all I need to put on it but I'll figure it out.

Tomorrow I also need to start reading the required reading for this week. And last week. Just in case it is referenced this weekend. And because I will eventually need to write the second half of my reflective journal for the semester. I know that I will have no motivation to work after coming back from class but it would be really nice if I could write my reflective journal this weekend, maybe on Sunday. That way I can focus on the final budget assignment for my management class. I watched the video instructions today and it definitely sounds more than a bit involved. And I'll only have a week to work on it.

But now it is after three o'clock in the morning so I am going to go to bed. I need to get stuff done during the day tomorrow and not save it all for the middle of the night.

July 19, 2015

 I somehow forgot that I also watched Dark Knight Rises yesterday. I also forgot about the twist in the movie. I don't know if I ever watched the movie straight through from the beginning to the end when it was in theaters but I do know I saw the whole thing. But it has been three years so maybe I can be forgiven for forgetting the twist.

Today I lost half the day by staying in bed until lunch. This was partially due to the fact that it took me over an hour to fall asleep last night. And it was partially a subliminal thing because I knew I had plans to do schoolwork and I kind of didn't want to do that. Self-sabotage.

I didn't finish the grant proposal like I had wanted to but I did a significant amount of work. I wrote the executive summary and filled in the basics for a lot of the other fields based on further research that I did today. That research included emailing the public library to see if they could find a better statistic for the literacy rate of the community, which was one of the questions on the grant proposal. I found a kind of answer but it was from 2003. Turns out that was the same statistic that the library found, which makes me feel good about my own fact-finding abilities.

I also emailed my old friend who is involved in the theater (she is the one who was in the quick change video from the Tony Awards). I needed to come up with a budget for the grant and I needed to know how much I should put in for costumes and props for the play I want the kids to do. I barely buy clothes for myself, let alone costumes for a play, so I didn't even have a clue where to start. Thankfully, she knows her stuff and she was able to give me an estimate around $600. I found a site for buying books in bulk and I can get twenty-five books for around $120 before taxes and with free shipping. I think that is going to be my budget. I've had some other ideas, like maybe doing a pizza lunch at the end or other little things, but for right now I'm going with that.

I need to come up with specific activities for the kids to engage in beyond reading the book because the idea is that the program will increase their literacy skills. I had the idea for the play, and watching the movie and then pointing out the differences, but I need more, like worksheets or something. So I emailed the school library and the fifth grade teacher to see if they had any suggestions for what they do for activities when kids are reading a novel. I also texted the librarian because I didn't know if she checked her school mail during the summer and she said she would take a look when she got back into town tomorrow.

When I figure out those activities I need to state how those will help with literacy skills and also come up with a way of quantitatively measuring the benefits of the program. Not quite sure how to do that yet. I don't know that a before and after test would really work. I need to keep thinking. Something will come to me. Or I'll ask someone for ideas.

Tonight I talked with my friend out in California for a couple hours on his four hour drive home from San Diego. I held the phone to my ear for so long that my elbow hurt when I tried to straighten my arm out. But we had a really good conversation. He's nearing the end of his commitment to the NAVY and he has to decide whether he wants to commit to another five years to get a nice monetary bonus, stay in but not commit to five years and miss out on the bonus, or get out all together. He is interested in going to law school so that is a compelling reason to get out. Through our talk tonight we realized how similar we are, not only in our current place in life but also in our way of thinking about life. We both live incredibly different lives at the moment but there are a lot of similar themes in both of them. It was really interesting to hear someone else voice the exact same thoughts that I have going through my head all the time. It is nice to know I'm not alone but it is also kind of depressing because they aren't always great thoughts and I'd prefer if my friends didn't have to deal with them, too.

It's two o'clock in the morning now and I'm going to try and go to bed. Hopefully I'm genuinely tired so I won't just lay there and not fall asleep. Tomorrow I need to make progress on my grant project, possibly figuring out what needs to go on my poster so I can focus on getting that done. We also have a budget assignment that is also worth 20 points and I haven't even looked at it yet. I downloaded all the files today but I should probably take a look at that tomorrow, even though I feel it will be a little overwhelming on top of everything else.

July 18, 2015

 Today was another pointless one. I can't say I'm all that surprised, but this will probably be a short entry because I don't feel so great about it. And I didn't really do anything. I woke up “early” for my group meeting. That only lasted about thirty minutes. They all liked the website I made, so that's nice. The due date for submitting it for a critique by the other groups is the 27^th but we decided to submit it now because I don't have plans to make any major changes to it in the coming week and we figured the two groups assigned to review our site might appreciate the extra time.

After the meeting I had lunch and after lunch I took a nap. I was only kind of tired but I kind of had the feeling I was done for the day. So I took a nap. And then just kind of waited around until dinner. Which was delicious. Fake hot dogs. I like fake hot dogs. As long as they're from Morning Star. They make a good fake hot dog. For dessert I had a very tiny container of ice cream, which was really freaking good. I forgot to check what size it was but I've never seen such a small container, which was great because you don't really feel guilty about eating such a small amount. And any more would have just felt like too much.

Today I watched movies and TV shows. The Librarian (parts of all three movies), Rush Hour 3, the Super Girl pilot, Dark Matter, and maybe other things I have forgotten. Dark Matter is really good, along the lines of Firefly and, more recently, Kill Joys. I like Kill Joys but if I had to choose, I would say Dark Matter is better. Possibly a lot better, partially due to the larger cast. And there is a lot more intrigue because the show is based on the idea that all of these people wake up on a ship and have no memory of who they are or why they're on the ship. Keeps things interesting.

July 17, 2015

 I found out today that one of my uncles has a brain tumor. I guess he has been experiencing some memory issues over the past six months, including one time when he got lost driving around town, and when he went in for a scan they saw a tumor. My aunt said the doctors weren't very optimistic. Thanks a lot doctors. My uncle was a lawyer and when he retired it gave him time to go to more movies, which he has always enjoyed, and he got really into gardening, even taking classes and becoming a master gardener. He survived a pretty bad experience in Vietnam only to get a brain tumor. The only acceptable way to die is of old age, in your sleep, after having a party to celebrate your life. Plenty of doctors have been wrong before so lets hope my uncle's doctors are just a tad pessimistic and they are way off base.

Today wasn't nearly as productive as I had hoped. I got a brief start on my grant proposal. Very brief. I did some searching and I think the book I'm going to focus on is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I was looking through the instructions and I need to describe various aspects of the project in detail and figured it would be easier with an actual book. I also spent a bunch of time looking up demographic information. So much demographic information. I still need to figure out the literacy rate and I'm not entirely sure of where to find that.

In other school news, I watched a couple lecture videos for my web design class and a TED Talk for my management class. That led to a bunch of other TED Talks, which is what always happens. For web design, it looks like I might need to go in and add more stuff for search engine optimization. I put in META tags but the professor sent us a link to a big PDF so I need to look through that. Hopefully it won't be too much work. Or maybe just enough work for one of my group members to volunteer for it. That would be nice.

For dinner I had the second half of my Chipotle burrito and it was better than the first half. After dinner I worked on my grant proposal, taking a brief break to go pick up a couple books that I lent my friend awhile ago. She is moving to a different state in the morning and I figured I should probably get them back so she didn't have to pay the postage to mail them to me. When I got over there they were still working on loading up the moving truck. It had cooled off when the sun went down to the low 90s but it was over 100 degrees most of the day. I'm glad I wasn't the one moving.

Tomorrow morning I think I have another group meeting. I haven't heard from anyone since our last meeting, not even a response when I sent them the website. But I'm pretty sure we agreed on another meeting tomorrow. I'll be up in time and have my email open so I can see if I get an invitation to the web conference.

July 16, 2015

 I ignored my alarm clock but I still convinced myself to get out of bed before noon. So successful. Before lunch I managed to finish the last page of the website. That brought the page count up to twelve. I wasn't really keeping track as I went along, which is probably a good thing because twelve is a little intimidating. But I can say it certainly felt like I was making that many pages. I spent so many freaking hours over the past week. But I'm done. Pretty much anyway.

After lunch I tweaked a few things and then uploaded it to the school server so I could see it online, which would also allow me to validate the code and run accessibility tests. Those checks lead to a few more tweaks, including getting rid of the email button on the form I made because I couldn't get the PHP to work. Every time I clicked on the button it would just show the PHP code instead of running it. I might try to figure it out later but PHP is beyond the scope of this class and I've got other things to worry about. The only error I got in my HTML was the blank link that is used on each page for the mobile menu icon. I'm not entirely sure how it works but it is needed for the mobile menu to work, so I left it in. There were also a bunch of warnings because my alternative text on images is often the same as the title text. Oh well. Like the PHP thing, I might worry about it later but not right now.

I sent the link off to my group so hopefully tomorrow I'll hear back from them. And hopefully they like it because I spent a whole bunch of time on it with no real input from them. We'll see.

Tonight was Chipotle night, a day late, but it still tasted good. Afterward I showed my website, on the computer and on a phone, and several YouTube videos. My mom also got in on the act and showed a couple videos she had.

After dinner I could have maybe started on my grant project or written in my reflective journal or worked on other school things but I didn't. I took the night off. I needed a break. One where I didn't feel so guilty that I couldn't relax a little. I waste so much time not working and feeling so guilty about it that I don't get anything else done either. Tonight I embraced the break. I didn't really do anything fun but the breather was nice.

Tomorrow I'm working on my grant proposal. I believe I have to present that next weekend. It isn't actually due until the end of the semester, which I believe is the 8^th or 9^th of August, but we have to have a poster presentation ready for our next face-to-face meeting. The goal is to have it done this weekend which will give me the week to get everything together for my poster. Like buy a poster and make sure there is enough ink in my printer to print off whatever I need to print. This sounds like a pretty good plan right now. We'll see how I'm feeling about it on Sunday. I'm just hoping I don't have to pick out a specific book for the program I want a grant for. It would be nice (and I think easier) to keep it general.

July 15, 2015

 My getting up early streak went down in flames today. I didn't get out of bed until noon. To be fair, I did get up for a bit around six o'clock in the morning but then went back to sleep. And it's a little nuts because I was in bed before one o'clock, at least I think I was, so there was no real reason for me to sleep for eleven hours. I don't get it.

I was up at six o'clock because there was a strange storm outside. Instead of the lightning coming in big flashes of light, it was more of a strobe light, like staccato notes in visual form. I can't remember ever seeing that before. And to make it even stranger, the thunder wasn't the low thunder like thunder is supposed to be. It was at a distinctly higher pitch, like it had been sped up. I would say it was a dream, and it did feel a bit like one by noon, but I actually got up and pulled my current aside so I could watch out my window for awhile. Very strange.

Despite missing so much of my day, I was productive. I read two textbook chapters this afternoon and another one after dinner. I also worked on the website. I added another page (possibly the last but I might add another) and I made a bunch of tweaks. I went back and messed around with my mobile menu and finally got it working the way I wanted it to. Not the prettiest thing ever but pretty damn good considering it's my first attempt. I also added a file that will hopefully make the form on one of the pages work. If it doesn't I'll just take off the 'send' button and call it good. Tomorrow I want to upload it to the school server so I can actually take a look at the site online and on a real phone so see if it looks how it is supposed to. That will also let me run validation and accessibility tests so I can fix the inevitable issues. There is so much more code than on my personal site and I know it isn't the most efficient. I have used so many divs and classes to tweak things. My fingers are crossed there isn't anything completely broken.

I ended p working on the site for a much longer time than I anticipated tonight. I was going to stop after the one page but then I got into messing with the little things and it turned into “just one more thing” and before I knew it, three o'clock in the morning. Ridiculous.

Tomorrow I would like to get up at a reasonable time, well before lunch. I have to much stuff to work on to be sleeping until lunch. I also moved Chipotle night to tomorrow because my mom wasn't feeling well so that will cut into things as well. I know that if I don't get anything done in the morning I probably won't have much motivation to do it after lunch and before I have to go to Chipotle. I need to get the ball rolling before noon. That is the goal.

July 14, 2015

 I woke up early again, sort of by choice. I did want to wake up early and I had the incentive of an electrician coming over to look at things. I thought I might have to be involved in some way but I ended up just watching the dogs. The electrician checked on the smoke detectors (one had gone bad), the light in my mom's bathroom (turns out both of the bulbs I tried were just duds), and told us how to change the light on the mailbox, which went out awhile ago but I couldn't figure out how to change it. Later on in the day I babysat the dogs again when the plumbers came to figure out why my toilet sometimes loses all of the water or overflows with bubbles when the washer is going. I looked only and it seemed like the most likely possibility was a blocked vent. It appears that is the case, and the blockage is due to a poor design. They're coming back sometime in the future to hopefully fix it.

While I was babysitting dogs, and while I wasn't, I was working on the “group” website. I made a lot of progress today. I came up with a footer I like, some small design elements to give the pages a bit of color, made a couple more pages, and made various other big and small tweaks. A very productive day. At least on that one aspect of school. I still need to work on stuff for my management class, which I will hopefully do tomorrow. I've already gone above and beyond on the website, and it isn't due for a bit, so I need to shift my efforts to more pressing matters.

I looked through my stacks and stacks of books today, trying to find To Kill A Mockingbird, because my mom just got Harper Lee's new book and wanted to re-read To Kill A Mockingbird first. I told her it might be better to read the new one first because even though it is billed as a sequel it is actually an early draft of what would become To Kill A Mockingbird. And even though it is set after that book, it seems to be a bit of a downer for anyone who loved Atticus, so it might be better to read the new one first and then go back to To Kill A Mockingbird as a palate cleanser. Anyway, I couldn't find it in my stacks of books. And I can't even remember if I own it. I was almost entirely certain that I did own it because it is one of my favorite books, but after my search today I am less certain. Maybe I just borrowed it. I need to get a copy though. Either to replace the one I have lost or to replace the one I never owned.

July 13, 2015

 I think reading before bed may have helped a little bit. Maybe. I don't know. Either way, I woke up this morning at eight o'clock and I actually got out of bed, instead of just laying there until I fell back to sleep.

I spent the vast majority of my day working on the “group” website. The quotation marks are obviously there because I am designing and coding the entire website by myself, so it isn't really a group website. I made significant progress on seven of the pages. The only real thing left on those pages is the footer. In the process today I learned how to float items to create columns and I also created a form. I don't know that I will make the form functional because that requires some stuff outside of HTML and CSS but maybe I'll have time later on. I ended tonight by adding two more navigation buttons at the top of the page for the summer camp page and a page for an upcoming tournament. I need to work on those pages along with a few others tomorrow. Or sometime soon.

And that is pretty much all I've got. I spent so many hours coding today. While doing that I watched the occasional YouTube video, listened to a bunch of music, and watched a few episodes of Helix. I also took the time to eat a couple meals, the last being dinner which consisted of leftover homemade pizza. Still delicious.

It is now drawing closer to one o'clock in the morning and I am going to go to bed because I am tired. I've been up for so many hours today. And I would like to try the same thing tomorrow. I like being productive. It would be nice if that feeling wasn't so rare.

July 12, 2015

 It took me awhile to fall asleep again. I woke up at six o'clock with a headache so I took some Ibuprofen and went back to sleep. I woke up several more times but didn't actually get out of bed until almost one o'clock in the afternoon. My wonderful sleep schedule.

I tried exercising this afternoon but I only made it seven minutes before my headache, which had never really gone away, became too much and I had to stop. I used to get headaches a lot as a kid. I got them almost daily after I got a new prescription for my glasses, which took months to stop. I'm always a little wary when I get a headache, afraid that they will become a thing again.

Before dinner I read an article and a textbook chapter. My sister came over and made pizza for dinner. Her homemade pizza is really good. I went with my usual: garlic sauce, fake hamburger, artichoke hearts, tater tots, and a little bit of cheese. Delicious.

After dinner I read another textbook chapter and another article. So my day, although slightly truncated, was at least mildly productive. I will need to do better tomorrow.

Right now I'm watching an episode of Helix. When it is over I'm going to go to bed. I'm going to try and read for a little bit before I try falling asleep to see if that will help me actually fall asleep when I lay down. Fingers crossed.

July 11, 2015

 It took me way too long to fall asleep last night. That made getting up five hours later that much harder. Especially because I apparently need nine hours of sleep a night now. But I got up and got ready for the group meeting. Which was productive. We decided to change things up and organize ourselves more like a web development team because that is how one of the group thought we were supposed to be doing this whole thing. So now one person is the group leader and will be in charge of keeping on top of due dates and making sure everyone is on top of things. Two people will be in charge of reports and things. And that leaves me in charge of the entire website. I already laid out all of the basic HTML and originally the plan was to have everyone do two pages. They would just need to copy and paste the stuff from the original website and do the basic HTML formatting like paragraphs and headers and images. And I would cover my two pages along with all the CSS to make everything look nice. And then today things were talked about and now I get everything. It is good in the sense that I won't have to worry about tweaking their code with classes and things to make it work with my CSS, but it is also a lot more work for me. Even if it won't necessarily be hard, it will take a lot more time than I was originally planning. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it yet but we'll see once I get into it.

After the meeting I had lunch and then I crawled under my desk and took a nap. When I woke up I didn't really do anything. Nothing that really comes to mind anyway. Eventually I ate dinner and then went back to doing nothing. The idea of the group project kind of put me in a pondering state of mind and that was not productive today. I'll have to make up for it tomorrow.

Tonight I watched a couple movies. I started with What If because I have wanted to see that movie since I first learned about it. And it lived up to my expectations. I really liked it and wouldn't mind owning it someday. Or at least watching it several more times. Based on the female lead in that movie, I watched Ruby Sparks next because she plays the leading lady in that movie as well. I had also wanted to watch it since I first heard about it. I also enjoyed it, not as much as What If but it was still good. The only thing I didn't like, and the thing that altered my overall feelings about the movie, was when it got super dark near the end. Like really dark. It's like it went from a happy, Weird Science feel, to a creepy serial killer movie. And then we were supposed to feel something for the lead character other than complete repulsion. I did like the ending but the dark stuff kind of ruined it a bit.

Now I think I may go to bed. Or at least try to go to bed. I need to do things tomorrow. I'm definitely falling behind with school stuff. It doesn't really feel like it yet but I know I am and I would like to catch up before it becomes too overwhelming.

July 10, 2015

 Today was kind of productive. Not as good as yesterday but I did things. Those things all related to the group website. I figured out how to turn the individual buttons in my horizontal navigation menu into a bar across the top of the screen. Took me a lot longer than it should have. I also came up with fonts for the page and a font design for the main title of the company on the home page. I even got the main title to properly resize when I resize the browser window. While I was messing around I discovered that using the 'Inspect Element' feature with Chrome, I could go into the developer options and test out what the website looks like on different devices. That would have been nice to know when I was working on my personal website.

The vast majority of my day was spent fiddling with the code for the website. The last thing I worked on was trying to put the company logo in the menu bar. That was easy enough to do but that aligned the menu buttons with the top of the logo, rather than being centered in the bar, so it looked weird. Ideally, I would like the logo to be off by itself on the left side of the screen and the menu buttons to stay where they're at in the center of the bar. I can get them to be horizontally centered but they aren't centered vertically. I can manually adjust them to be centered vertically but then when I resize the screen and the buttons get shifted down to the next row they go outside of the menu bar. I might keep messing with it because I know there's probably a simple solution. Or I might say forget it and just put the logo down in the body of the page. We'll see.

Tomorrow morning we have another group meeting and after that I might take the rest of the day off from the website. I need to put some serious time into my management class. I still have pretty much all of the grant proposal project and that deadline is quickly approaching. What I really need to do is write down all of my upcoming due dates, on a physical piece of paper, so I can have those handy. Everything is kind of coming to a head and I know I will quickly become overwhelmed if I don't get at least a little organized.

Tonight I hung out with my friend for a few hours. She came over and got to see the new house for the first time. Most of the time we sat at my computer and watched random YouTube videos while talking about all sorts of random things. I'm a fan of random conversations. At one point I left her alone for awhile so she could record herself answering whatever questions she wanted to from a long list I found online. I want to start recording the voices of my friends and family and I figured I would start with her because she is moving soon. Eventually I would like to have a fixed set of questions that I have people answer. And maybe get a different microphone so I can do it more interview or podcast style and actually ask them the questions. For now, I just pulled up the questions I found, set up the microphone, and left her alone so she could do her thing. I figured it might be a little weird with me just sitting there silently. I know that I feel weird enough talking into a microphone when I'm by myself and I would probably feeling even weirder if someone was watching me. So I left her alone. And looking at all the little sound spikes in the file, I'm assuming she talked about things. In the future maybe I might go through and actually listen to the recordings I make, but for now they're just for sometime in the future.

Now I need to go to bed so I can wake up for my class meeting. This past week I have been sleeping past the point that the meeting is scheduled for, and I would like to not do that tomorrow. It would also be nice to be able to take a shower beforehand. I'm still a little anxious about the whole video conferencing thing but it was fine last time and will probably be fine again tomorrow.

July 9, 2015

 I failed to wake up early. Or at least to stay up after my alarm went off. Despite that, I actually had a productive day, and I don't feel half bad about myself. Being unproductive makes me feel kind of worthless, which in turn saps the little motivation I may have, and the lack of that motivation makes me unproductive, starting the cycle all over again. Thankfully today there was a little ray of sunlight shining through the dark clouds.

I designed a flowchart for my group website, which I kind of think is pointless. It is a site map using visual vocabulary, which is a fancy phrase for flowchart, and it is a representation of how the pages of a website are laid out. I think it is much easier to read a site map in the form of a bulleted list, especially when it is a site as small as the one we're working on, but whatever. The professor took the time to make a video lecture about it so I made one. I also included the bulleted list in our proposal because I think it is more clear. I also wrote up the design summary for our proposal, which means I'm done on that front.

Tonight I worked on the website itself and kind of got the mobile menu icon working. The idea is that the navigation buttons along the top of the page will eventually collapse into a menu icon, so on smaller screens like cellphones the majority of the screen for each page isn't taken up my the navigation buttons, there will just be one small button that can be pressed to open up the menu list. I got everything to collapse into the menu icon, and the menu list pops up when I hover over the button with the mouse cursor, but it is on the other side of the screen and it disappears before I can click on anything. Also, clicking on the button doesn't do anything and the menu list actually pops up whenever I have the mouse at the top of the window, not just where the menu icon is. I messed around with it a lot and made a tiny bit of progress but ended up calling it a night before I got it figured out. I'll try again tomorrow and try and get a fresh perspective on it.

Working on that stuff was pretty much my day. And it felt good. And I know being productive feels good but I just can't make myself do it on a consistent basis. It is incredibly frustrating, as I have stated on multiple occasions over the years, but I can't fix it. This is apparently my life, I would say for better or worse but life can always be worse, so I can't really complain that much. But I will continue to grumble.

July 8, 2015

 Today I accomplished nothing. I woke up and then stayed in bed for another two hours because I didn't feel like getting up. Then I spent the rest of my day doing nothing online. Could not have been more pointless. It is frustrating because I know it is happening but it's like I don't have any control over it. I'm just along for the ride. I don't like it and I'm tired of it. That won't change anything but it's nice to say every now and then.

Tonight was Chipotle night. My burrito was good. I went with the green salsa again and it was again delicious. After dinner I unwrapped a couple Christmas presents from my aunt and uncle. Slightly belated. My sister got them back around Christmas and was waiting until there was a time we could all get together. And then time passed and the presents got buried behind stuff and she forgot about them until today. So Christmas in July. I got a LEGO mug (mug on the inside, LEGO on the outside) and some LEGOs to put on it. I also got a big paper monster book, which is kind of like a paper doll book, but you fold paper monsters. Pretty cool.

When we were done watching videos, I went back to doing nothing. I emailed a picture of the website background I made yesterday to my group to get their opinion on it and they seemed to like it. Maybe tomorrow I can make more progress on that. More progress on anything at this point would be good.

I watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (the latest one) and I didn't think it was that bad. It got a lot of grief when it came out but it is a movie about giant talking turtles who have an affinity for martial arts. It's obviously not going to be a masterpiece. I'm a big fan of the old movies, especially because of the practical effects, like the real turtle costumes. This movie obviously relied more heavily on CGI, so it is a whole different beast. And it was entertaining, so I've got nothing against it. Nothing big anyway. It was just a fun popcorn movie.

Tomorrow, maybe I can wake up “early” and do things. Not get distracted by random, pointless things on the internet. It is hard to avoid those things when I need to be online for my classes. And when my willpower is hovering around zero.

July 7, 2015

 Today I did things. I finished the textbook chapter I have been working on and I read two others. Significant progress. I didn't look at the reading I have for this week. I wanted to remain in good spirits today. I'll check that stuff tomorrow.

Tonight I worked on the group website. Nothing content related because we haven't decided on who is working on which page. I stuck with the CSS, trying to come up with a design for the site. I spent a lot of time trying to find a basketball court picture that was free to use as a background image but that failed. I ended up going with a light wood background that kind of sort of maybe looks like a basketball court. I also found a picture of a basketball, cropped it, put it in the lower right corner of the page, and figured out how to put the wood background behind it. That took a little doing but I got it working. I also messed around with the menu a little bit. Eventually I would like to get it so it will collapse down to a menu icon on mobile devices or when a browser window is too small. Right now each item in the menu collapses down nicely but there are nine items at the moment and it doesn't look that great on a small screen, having to scroll past those to get to the main content. I think I've found the code to make the mobile menu happen I just need to adapt it to the code I already have. That can wait for another day.

I caught up on Stitchers today, minus the episode that aired tonight. I think it is safe to say I'm a fan of the show. It isn't great but it is good, and hopefully it will stick around for at least a few seasons. I also started watching The Last Ship. A NAVY ship is up in the Arctic for several months and when it is time for them to return home they learn that a worldwide epidemic has broken out and they don't really have a safe home to return to. Their new mission is to try and discover a vaccine for the virus. It's an interesting show. Again, not great, but they're doing something right and I'll stick with it. Until I lose interest.

Tonight we didn't have a class meeting. Instead I partook in the previously mentioned activities of watching The Last Ship and working on the website. It made the night go by pretty quick. I imagine my day tomorrow will involve more reading. And possibly more website stuff. I also need to at least take a look at upcoming due dates and start figuring things out. I believe there around a month of class left, and there is still a lot of work to do. The majority of our points in both classes are still outstanding, so I need to keep on top of things.

And now the internet is out. That is kind of annoying. So instead of doing internet things I'm going to watch tonight's episode of Stitchers and then go to bed.

July 6, 2015

 I forgot to mention the final game of the 2015 Women's World Cup was last night, the United States v. Japan. I only got to see the last twenty minutes after dinner, so I missed all the action, but the United States beat the pants off of Japan, five points to two points, and from my understanding one of those two points was counted as an own goal, so they really only scored one point. The United States scored four points in the first sixteen minutes and three of those were scored by the same player. The last one was scored from a foot or two beyond the midfield line. Embarrassing. Would have been a good game to watch. I was very much into the Women's World Cup back in 1999 when they won. I had a bunch of newspaper clippings pinned on my wall, up until we moved last summer actually. This time around I only managed to catch the last twenty minutes of the game last night. We'll pretend my not watching was the reason they did so well.

I also watched a mini-series, documentary of sorts last night. I was watching bits of the AP Music Awards and at one point they gave an award to Joan Jett, and it was presented by Laura Jane Grace. She is the lead singer of Against Me, and the last time I heard of that band the lead singer Tom Gabel came out as transgender. Turns out that was awhile ago and Tom has since become Laura. The documentary is a 10-part series online produced by AOL, hosted by Laura, that not only talks about her life but also the experiences of other trans people. It was really interesting and informative.

Much like gay people, I can only assume that trans people have always been around, but it hasn't been until fairly recently that they have become more noticeable in society. I would like to say more accepted as well, but we aren't quite there yet. Surely more accepted then last year or five years ago, or ten, so we're getting there. As gay people have become more accepted they have been able to educate the general public, which in turn helps with acceptance by decreasing ignorance. The same is now happening for the trans community. Slowly but surely. And I find it fascinating because I am one of the ignorant masses who doesn't know a lot, but I'm curious and working on educating myself.

Our whole lives we have been taught that there are boys and girls, and for the longest time, boys liked girls and girls like boys. Then we learn that sometimes boys like boys and girls like girls, which makes sense if only because that seems to happen all the time in other species, so why not humans. And now we're learning that sometimes even though someone has the body of one gender, they may not feel they are that gender. As a straight male who feels male (as much as I can assume the male gender is supposed to feel like), it is kind of hard to wrap my head around. Not the concept but the feeling. I am empathetic but it is hard to imagine feeling like another gender. I don't really have any context for it. But who does really? People feel the way they feel and then that is associated with a gender. And they have always felt that way so all of our assumptions about our feelings are really based on something that is apparently very subjective. So really we're all having to figure this out together. It's like science, where we make our best guess based on the evidence we're presented with, and then we change that guess as new evidence is presented. Just because there have always been boys and girls with matching internal gender identities, doesn't mean we have to stick with that viewpoint, especially after copious amounts of evidence has been presented to the contrary. I imagine at some point we'll get to the point of accepting that gender identity and sexuality exist on a spectrum, not specific categories. I don't see a true conversion to that way of thinking any time in the near future because beliefs are incredibly resilient to change, but hopefully it won't take too long for a general acceptance of the idea to be adopted.

Moving onto my day.

I woke up when my alarm clock went off but I had a headache so I took some Ibuprofen and went back to bed. Eventually I woke up again, took a shower, ate lunch, and went and got my haircut. I actually remembered my haircut. Thanks to three calendar reminders, a text last night from the lady who cuts my hair, and one or two mentions from my mom. I don't think I needed all of those reminders but I can't say they hurt.

When I got home I wrote my discussion post for my web design class. And as I wrote that last sentence I remembered that I was supposed to respond to two of my classmates' posts. Usually we have a due date for our posts on Monday and the responses are due my Wednesday. Apparently not so this week, unless it was a misprint, because there was only a single due date. So I stopped writing this and went to write those responses. It is after one o'clock in the morning, so technically past the due date, but fingers cross that isn't counted too harshly against me. I also made three responses instead of two, maybe to help my case a little.

I also read part of a textbook chapter. I need to get better at that because I am falling behind. It is taking me forever to get through the chapter I'm on. I only have a couple more pages left. And then a whole bunch more in all the other chapters I need to read. As mentioned before, my motivation has tanked recently. Below the usual levels. And it is kind of encompassing all things at the moment. It's not very conducive to productivity.

Tonight I watched Kill Me Three Times, a dark comedy about a bunch of bad people who eventually get what's coming to them. I enjoyed it. Then I watched the first episode of Stitchers, where a secret government agency goes into the memories of recently deceased individuals to solve mysteries. It kind of reminds me of the old TV show Seven Days. It's pretty interesting and the lead character kind of reminds me of a female version of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory.

And now it is two o'clock so I'm going to go to bed. My eyes hurt. Tomorrow I want to read textbooks. Well, I don't really want to read them but I need to read them. So that's on my agenda.

July 5, 2015

 I slept through the morning again. That is kind of annoying but it feels so good to just lay in bed. Nine hours might be a bit excessive, though.

This afternoon I didn't accomplish much. My motivation levels have definitely tanked again. I want to be doing everything and nothing at the same time. It's not a very productive state of mind. I did eventually run on the elliptical so that's at least a thing.

Tonight we had a family dinner, kind of a belated Independence Day dinner. My sister made a fruit salad, coleslaw, and rolls (which were delicious). My mom made deviled eggs, hamburgers (for the meat eaters), and a smores brownie thing. I had some of the smores last night and they were just as good tonight. I ended up eating way too much food because that's what I do during holiday dinners.

After dinner I did a little bit of research and then wrote my update for the grant writing project. I think going through the process of writing the update helped me focus my idea for the project, which is helpful. I've still got a lot of stuff to figure out but I'm getting there. I also read an article for my web design class so tomorrow I can write my discussion post.

Tomorrow, other than that discussion post, my only real goal is to remember my haircut. I obviously need to do school things but setting goals for that often feel a bit pointless.

July 4, 2015

 This morning I somehow managed to wake up early enough to run on the elliptical and take a shower before my group meeting. I had to take a nap after the meeting but I woke up early, so there.

The meeting went well. It was kind of weird at the beginning just because I've never done anything like it. I've spectated webinars and web conferences before but I've never actually participated, not in chat or with a webcam. But it wasn't that bad. And it was a lot better than trying to communicate with people through emails. We talked about things and got things rolling and we plan on meeting again next weekend. By then we should have the website divided up so sometime this week I can maybe make a decent start on whatever pages I end up with. The real work will be in coming up with the design in CSS.

The meeting ended suddenly because there is a 45-minute limit on free web meetings. And by suddenly, I mean someone was in the middle of talking. Awkward. Immediately after that there were a few emails sent to get everyone different Google Docs so we were all on the same page. I participated in that by figuring out how we could could edit our HTML pages online. I originally sent everyone the pages through a Dropbox link but that isn't really an online option because they would have to download everything to their computer, make their changes, and re-upload them. And it turns out you can't edit HTML documents directly in Google Docs. You have to use a third-party app. I re-uploaded the pages to my Google Drive, figured out how to do all the HTML editing stuff, shared the files with my group, and explained how they could actually edit them. It took me awhile to get it all sorted but I did and I'm kind of surprised that it didn't take me longer. In the end, though, I will probably do most of my editing with the Brackets editor that I currently use and then copy and paste that code into the Google Docs files, rather than using the online editor. It is cool but I like Brackets better.

In other school news, this afternoon I read a couple articles. But that's about it. I've still got a lot of reading to do this week. Which means I have a lot of reading to do tomorrow. Along with submitting my grant proposal update. And maybe writing my reflective journal entries from the past two weeks (but probably not). And also the discussion post that is due by Monday. My time management still has some kinks.

Tonight I went out on the back deck with my mom again to watch fireworks. Who needs to spend lots of money on fireworks when your neighbors do that for you. I took a few pictures but then I had to put my phone away and go to constantly moving my hands around because they were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes while I tried to hold my phone still. I ended up getting bitten five or six times on my hands and two or three times on my head and face. Lots of fun. But the fireworks were cool.

I watched two movies today. I started with If I Stay because I want to read the book and I wanted to see the movie. I haven't read the book yet but I watched the movie anyway. It was good but very sad, which is what I expected. Not really a fan that it kind of ended abruptly but I know there is a second book, so they probably are setting it up for another movie.

I also watched The Spectacular Now. Another good but sad movie with a somewhat unresolved ending. Not sure how I managed two of those in a row. I liked the humor of the movie, all due thanks to the lead actor, Miles Teller, who is really funny. His quick delivery reminds me a lot of Vince Vaughn. At some point I also want to read the book that the movie is based on. There were a couple things that I felt were kind of dealt with quickly that I am hoping are more developed in the book. I probably won't get around to it for another year, when I am finally done with school, but it's on my list.