August 18, 2015

I woke up and ran on the elliptical this morning. Sometimes I surprise myself. Now I just need to keep it up.

Today was the first day of school. At the morning assembly all the adults had to go up front and introduce ourselves and the added twist this year was to also say how many first days of school we had experienced in our lives. I think this was my twenty-second. The highest numbers were in the fifties, which is very impressive. The only male para had the best introduction. His are usually pretty good but he stepped it up a notch this year. It was like he was channeling Straight Outta Compton. He started by clearing his throat, aggressively saying it wasn't any of the kids' business how many first days he had, and then loudly saying he was a professional (with a pause) and then saying “a paraprofessional”. It was pretty good.

My first discovery when I got to work that in an attempt to save money, all of the thermostats are set to 76 degrees during the warmer months and 68 degrees during winter. It will apparently save one teacher's salary and it all looks good on paper but 76 degrees in a stagnant room is really hot. Throw in almost thirty computers and over twenty kids in a stagnant room and things are going to be great. Especially when those kids are coming from PE or recess, because kids stink. Today, without the computers on and no kids in the lab I ended up having to prop open the doors with reams of paper. I need to look into actual doorstops.

I spent some time today with the librarian setting up the guest access to the wireless network. It took several tries to get right but we managed it faster than we did last year (although we haven't tested to make sure it actually works). The main reason for setting it up was that one of the kindergarteners has special needs and has a person in the room with her that apparently needs internet access. The guest access is usually set up for the college interns in the building but we remembered after getting everything set up that we won't be having any interns this year, I think because of budget cuts. I don't think it is throughout the district and I don't know how many schools are actually affected but I think it is kind of ridiculous. Especially after the district meeting where one of the speakers went out of their way to mention the good relationship our school district has with the university.

The rest of my day was spent in the resource room setting up a projector. It is new and has interactive capabilities so we downloaded the software and got it all set up. For awhile there was a calibration issue, even though I calibrated it manually and with the auto settings several times. After a lot of thought I eventually came up with the idea that it might be a resolution issue. I know that when projectors are usually plugged in it automatically lowers the resolution on the computer screen to match the projector. In this case I plugged it in with an HDMI cable but I think the projected image lowered its resolution but the laptop resolution stayed the same. So, I changed the resolution on the laptop all the way to the highest setting which switched it on the projector as well, and after that all was good. The pen lined up with the cursor.

It was only a half day today so when I got home I ate lunch and then did nothing. I was tired and couldn't bring myself to do anything productive. Shortly before dinner I also moved over to my comfy green chair and may have nodded off a little.

After dinner I read two articles for one of my classes and read part of a chapter. After that I started watching a livestream because it was Sark and he rarely streams. While doing that I started working on a website for one of my other classes. The professor suggested using a template site like Weebly but I figured since I took a web design class this summer I should maybe try to use those skills. I might change my mind later in the semester went things get busier but for now it seems like a good idea. I also plan on mostly cutting and pasting different parts from the two websites I made over the summer to make the whole process a little easier. The beginning of it all went pretty well but I couldn't get the mobile menu icon to pop up when I made the window smaller so I called it a night. I'll figure it out later.

It is just after 10:30PM and I plan on going to bed by eleven o'clock. I'm tired now but Sark is still streaming so I'm going to watch that a little longer. And then I'm going to get a decent night of sleep (fingers crossed) and then wake up and run on the elliptical again. Hopefully the motivation stays with me.