September 30, 2015

 I'm tired.

At work today I caught up on my spreadsheets, mainly getting all the formulas in order so the numbers at the bottom show up correctly. The tests that need to be deleted will hopefully happen soon so I can print off all the reports. Except for the two kids that still need to finish. The teacher, who is not only new this year but this is also her first year teaching, emailed me at the end of the day and said that things got hectic today which is why she didn't send them down. She suggested tomorrow afternoon when kindergarten will be in the lab and then a couple times on Friday. I replied that she should send them whenever she can and that the test is kind of a priority when it is this close to the end of the window because if they don't finish it Compass Learning won't be updated until the new year and their parents won't get an updated report at conferences. She seems a little too laid back about the whole thing. Or maybe I'm just uptight about it.

When I didn't have classes in the lab I worked on things for teachers. I made a change to a booklet I made for the resource teacher last year because she needed it tweaked a little bit. I remembered that I took pictures of the kids in one of the kindergarten class yesterday so I could make small pictures for the teacher to use for various things. So I edited those and made her a page with all the pictures.

My favorite project of the day was making a sign for the librarian. She is setting up a display or something for graphic novels and asked if I could make her a sign that said “graphic novels” on it. I already had a couple fonts from when I made my superhero metadata presentation last year so I was good to go. I did check online and downloaded a few more font options but I ended up going with the same one I used for my presentation. To give myself a little more room to work with I used the Legal size paper instead of the regular 8.5x11, which I think was a good choice. Then I typed up “GRAPHIC NOVELS”, which was probably the easiest part. The hard part was making it look interesting.

Originally I was thinking about a crazy spiked outline like they use for sound effects words. I tried all sorts of different combos but they all kind of sucked. Then I got back into the frame of mind my superhero presentation and decided I wanted to make the sign look like a single panel on a page. For the background I looked up graphic novels for children and arranged their covers all over the page. Leaving them like that would have been too distracting so I made a box, filled it with white, and set the transparency pretty low, so you could still see what was going on but the colors were fairly muted. I wanted a clean white border around the outside so I created a box in Publisher the size of my page and gave it a really thick white border, which covered up all of the book covers around the edge of the page. Then I added a slightly smaller box with a thick black border to give it the panel look. I finished by bringing back the text, which I made three copies of to make a top blue layer, a middle green layer, and a bottom black layer. I was pretty happy with it. When I went across the hall I could find any white paper so I went with tan, which may have actually worked out better. When I gave it to the librarian she really liked it, so mission accomplished.

There was a magic show assembly this afternoon but I forgot all about it. Turns out that was the reason the first grade class never showed up to the lab. I ended up spending that time working on the kindergarten pictures and listening to a Harry Potter audiobook, so at least I was productive.

After school I got Chipotle and my Powerball ticket. My burrito was decent but nothing amazing. I showed some good videos after dinner, at least in my opinion, and then I spent a good chunk of the rest of the night reading an article. Or rather a textbook chapter in the form of a PDF. I'm not a fan of reading long documents on the computer. I don't even like reading short documents on the computer. And this week all the metadata reading is electronic. I'm not a fan. And I still have one more article to read, which is thirty-two pages long. Good grief. I tried to start it tonight but my eyes weren't having it.

Tomorrow morning I want to maybe leave the house a little early so I can go down the the Treasurer's office and pick up my vehicle registration. I paid it online, and switched my address, but apparently switching your address online doesn't actually work. This meant the post office tried to deliver it to my old address and it bounced back. There was a message today from a lady explaining the whole situation, and saying that she had changed my address for me, but that I needed to come pick up my registration. And this was the last day of the month. So it would be nice if I could pick it up before work, not only to avoid a crowd, but also avoid getting in trouble for having an out of date registration, even though I paid on time. It probably won't make that much of a difference if I got after work but it would be nice to get it over with.

September 29, 2015

 In exciting news, I have a new health insurance card. This was the first year I could sign up for health insurance at work, which saves me a lot of money each month. The only problem was after I signed up for it I didn't hear anything about it. I knew coverage started on the first of October but that was about it. I stopped paying my current insurance so it would cover me through September (assuming you pay a month in advance) but not making the next payment meant my coverage would be canceled. I could have paid, just to be safe, but I decided to trust in the school district and it turns out that was a wise choice. The cards showed up yesterday. Better almost late than never.

Today was fairly boring. I had classes in the lab and had the occasional kids finishing up tests. When I wasn't engaged in those activities I worked on my spreadsheets, I sent off a list of kids who needed tests deleted, and I downloaded reports for classes who were completely done with testing. I also helped the ELL lady with some laptop and printer things. There is a small room in the back of the computer lab that for the past three years was used by math enrichment / Boys and Girls Club. This year it started out being used by Boys and Girls Club and the reading lady but yesterday they were moved up to the third floor and the ELL lady was moved in. This year we have eighteen kids in need of her assistance (last year we had five) and they have been working in the hallway at a small table since the beginning of school. Now they have a proper little space.

There are probably other things I could write about, like talking to the superintendent when he stopped by the lab, or the job of kindergarteners being back in the lab because testing is over, but I'm tired, so lets move on.

Tonight I read stuff for class. Three articles to be more precise. And I've got two more to read so I can make my discussion post for this week. I also have reading for my collection development class but I don't have a discussion post for that class so I decided to prioritize. I would like to finish the two metadata articles tomorrow but I think they're both long so we'll see. Maybe I can get some reading done at work. Today it seemed like whenever I had any free time a small group of kids would come in to use the computers. I remember to agreeing to some of that but I don't actually remember the schedule for it and the kids don't either because they never know when they're supposed to leave. I should get that figured out.

So yeah, tomorrow. More work on spreadsheets, maybe get the last two kids to finish their tests, maybe some reading. Then Chipotle night and more reading. Sounds like a fun day.

September 28, 2015

 I went to bed late and then this morning I woke up around 5:40AM. I had to go to the bathroom and I was worried if I tried to go back to bed for fifteen minutes I'd wake up super drowsy. I was already kind of awake so I said screw it and decided to get up. I paid for that by yawning the rest of the day. It was kind of annoying.

Even with all the yawning the day seemed to go by pretty fast. I helped out with literacy centers in kindergarten this morning. I was actually supposed to team up with whatever group had this one obnoxious kid but a parent didn't show up so I had a group of my own. It actually went pretty well because everyone stayed on task and took my suggestions for what to add to their drawings long enough to fill the whole thirty minutes. Always a plus.

I planned on doing some hole-punching after that but right after I got everything set up in the workroom across the hall from the computer lab a group of kids showed up to take MAP tests. Thank you teachers for giving me a heads-up. They had to leave at 11:30AM which gave me enough time to do the hole-punching before lunch.

This afternoon I had classes in the lab mixed in with kids finishing their tests. That was pretty much the entire afternoon so it went by pretty fast. In my brief bits of free time I updated my spreadsheets and started adding in stuff from the official reports. There are still enough kids that need to finish and tests that need to be deleted that I haven't gone through the effort of printing off any reports yet. That should happen sometime this week though.

When I got home from work I wrapped my sister's birthday presents. Eventually we went out for dinner at a Mexican restaurant and I ate too much. It was good though. Just to add insult to injury we had cake and ice cream when we got home before opening presents. It was good cake and ice cream, though. One of the presents I got my sister was a birthday song from the Neebs gaming guys. Now I have one, she has one, and my brother has one. I think I might get one for my mom for her birthday, even though she isn't really into the whole thing.

Over the weekend I started watching the first Minecraft videos I ever watched on YouTube. I started with the very first series I found that piqued my interest in the game. I came really close to buying it while watching that series but didn't actually commit to it until I started watching the Yogscast videos. I think I ended up getting it shortly before it went out of Alpha because I think the price was going to go up. Anyway, I have really wanted to play recently but I have so much work to do, so I have resorted to taking a nostalgic trip down memory lane. I watched a few more videos tonight but now I'm going to go to bed because I'm freaking tired and I have been since I woke up this morning.

Tomorrow will involve work and then when I get home, a lot of reading. Hopefully. I didn't get any done over the weekend because of class and assignments, so I need to play catch up again. Hooray.

September 27, 2015

 Around 1:30AM one of the smoke alarms apparently started chirping. My mom took the battery out of it but I think that is just a backup in case of a power outage because all the alarms are wired into the house. So I had to get up on a chair and unplug it. These alarms are definitely setting up a boy who cried wolf scenario because so far they have been more grief than helpful

I could have gotten up early but I ended up staying in bed until nine o'clock, which was pretty nice. Then I kind of worked on my metadata assignment. The bulk of the work happened after lunch, when I finished up my reflection and the lengthy reference section. At first I just had the things I referenced in my reflection but then I decided to include the digital resources I used and the resources I used to find all the metadata information. I posted just the reflection to the discussion thread and then after dinner, when I read through the whole thing again and made a couple edits, I submitted the assignment.

Also after dinner I came up with my research proposal for my academic libraries class. At first I wanted to look at how usage has changed in the digital age in terms of circulation of physical materials. Then I looked at the instructions which said we could pick anything we wanted except for stuff about materials and collections, two boxes which my original idea kind of ticked. So I switched it to how academic libraries are being used now that a lot of students get the information they need online, either from places like Google or through the digital resources of the library, like online databases. How do librarians keep the building itself relevant if the physical resources are no longer a draw. I think it is an interesting idea and hopefully I was able to word it well enough that the professor also thinks it is a decent idea. It would also be nice if I could find a plethora of information on the topic. I would prefer to have too many sources to pick from than not enough.

Tonight there was a supermoon lunar eclipse. It was better than the lunar eclipse for several reasons. To start, it wasn't in the middle of the night, it started not too long after eight o'clock. Second, it was in our backyard, not in the front of the house, so I didn't have to worry about the neighbor calling the cops on me for sitting in my own driveway. The sprinklers didn't come on and soak me. And the weather wasn't nice. I remember last year being cold because I was wearing a hoodie and a stocking cap, and because I was wet from the sprinklers. So it was a much better time.

Now I'm probably going to go to bed. We're done with full-class testing but there are still a few stragglers that need to finish up this week. Hopefully most of them will do it during their normal lab time so I don't have to spend my free time watching kids test.

September 26, 2015

 Class went well today. The day started with a video conference with my academic libraries professor, who's library we are designing a collection development policy for. Last night we signed up for groups and today he explained the target audience for each group and gave us more details about the library and the community.

Next we did a small group activity about ethics that led to good discussion not only in our group but also as a whole class when we came back together, much like last night. Two of the women in my group were teachers and we finished a little early so we were talking about our current jobs and then goals or the future. Both of them had been teaching for over twenty years and both were basically looking for a behind-the-scenes kind of job after they retire from teaching where they don't have to care about people anymore. Which is hilarious but also true. I've only worked at the elementary school for four years but it can be pretty emotionally draining seeing all these kids with bad home lives and the kids who need more help than they're getting or the kids who just can't get something and never will because they keep getting passed on to the next grade. I can't even imagine having over twenty years worth of stories like that.

After lunch we had guest speakers, the local high school librarian, the dean of the university library, and one of the library school's faculty members acting as a public librarian (because she used to be a public librarian). All of them talked about collection development, obviously, because that's what the class is about. It was really interesting.

The last bit of class was taken up with breaking into our big groups for the collection development project for the college. My group seemed to be on the ball so I am cautiously optimistic. We picked an overall team leader and then, because there are three main tasks to accomplish, we divided our main group into three smaller groups and picked leaders for each of those. The smaller groups are for writing the collection development policy, making a selection list of books to buy, and creating lib-guides. I let everyone else say what they wanted to do because I didn't really have a preference, and I ended up in the selection group. For that group we are supposed to cover five subject areas (Writing, History, Sociology, Chemistry, and Biology) so we broke our group up based on that. I'm covering Sociology (because I took a Sociology class once), a History major is covering History, a girl who likes writing is covering Writing, and a guy with a background in hard sciences is covering Chemistry and Biology. We each have $2600 ($5200 for the science guy) and that is apparently a lot of money. The one girl with selection experience said she just spent $1000 for her library and got 130 books. Granted those were fiction books, $2600 could still potentially lead to a pretty long list. It'll be interesting to start looking at. It's a little nerve-racking knowing that this is for a real library and that if we do it right, there is a very real chance that our selection choices will actually be used to fill up the library collection. No pressure.

After class my policy analysis partner and I went down to the computer lab in the basement so we could record our presentation. It ended up being three and a half minutes long, which is short and makes me a little worried, but it took us an hour and a half to finish it. We had to make some changes as we went with the script and I needed to edit some slides, so that took a good chunk of time. I also screwed up several times while trying to record the presentation. It was rough. I had kind of put the original script together based on all the information my partner sent me, but then we ended up cutting most of that out and rearranging things. And I never really paid that much attention to the script because I didn't think I was going to be a part of reading it. But we managed it. Along with submitting the video of the presentation, we also submitted a link to the original, much more in-depth presentation, and a link to the video that plays the song that the sheet music is for. So hopefully if we get any points off for our presentation being so short, we can make up a little bit for it by showing that we did actually have a much more detailed presentation that was just too big. Proof that more than three and a half minutes of content was created. We'll see how it goes.

Due to the delay, the first half of my journey home, once I got back on the highway headed west, was spent facing the sun. It was just to the left of the road and not too far above the horizon. The perfect spot below my visor and impossible not to look at. For quite a while it felt like I was racing it to the horizon. It finally dropped below the horizon and the sunset was pretty cool, so it wasn't all bad. It was also interesting when the sun was more than halfway below the horizon because it kind of looked like a pyramid. The best part of the drive home was not getting trapped behind any slow cars. I came close to catching up to one going into the small town about halfway home but we parted ways and the last half of the journey was completely devoid of cars in front of me. I made it back in record time.

I was going to try and write my reflection tonight for my metadata assignment but after the hour and a half delay and the drive, I was beat. I decided to take the rest of the night off. I'll finish the assignment tomorrow. And come up with my research proposal for my academic libraries class. I can totally do that.

September 25, 2015

 I finished some of the reading I wanted to today. Only two chapters but it was better than nothing. Time really flies when you're a slow reader. I also reviewed other things for class so I wouldn't be completely caught off guard by assignments and stuff.

While I ate lunch I watched a Yogscast video featuring Simon's return. Over the past week or two I've been watching old Yogscast videos because I had been missing Simon's personality for the last however many months he's been gone. And now he's back. My optimistic view was him coming back for the holiday livestreams, but he beat that by a couple months. I'm okay with that.

My drive down to class was interesting. It was mildly frustrating because the first half was mostly spent going well below the speed limit because other drivers suck. While slowly going along I dreamt of smart cars. Like a car that could match the cruise control or speed of the car in front of you and keep you at a predetermined distance. The only thing worse than getting stuck behind a slow car is not being able to use cruise control because their speed keeps fluctuating. It would also be nice to have a bird's-eye view so you could see when it was safe to pass. The drive down is winding and there are so many times when I could have passed people, but there is no way of actually knowing that because you can't see what's around the bend. Another smart car idea would be if you end up with a line of cars behind you because you're going to slow, your car will automatically pull over so the line can go by. People don't have the courtesy to do that on their own so maybe their car should be programmed to do it for them.

Also on the first part of the drive I witnessed to interesting things. One much more so than the other. The first, a bunch of old cars. I'm assuming there was some sort of gathering somewhere. I know very little about cars but I know what looks cool and there were definitely some cool looking ones. The second thing, which almost made me pull over just to watch, was a small airplane. At first I thought it was just a big model plane because the way it was flying didn't seem possible for an actual plane. I still kind of feel like I was imagining it. I've never seen a Cessna in person but I imagine the plane I saw was about that size. It may have actually been one. I don't think the wings were on top of the plane but after looking online I saw pictures where the wings aren't always on the top, so maybe it was a Cessna. What I do know what that it was repeatedly flying really really close to the ground. Like constantly dropping below the tree line before climbing, turning, and dropping back down. I've never seen anything like it.

Class was good tonight. Earlier in the week we had to submit a random fact about ourselves and we started tonight by going around with a sheet of those facts and trying to match them up with our classmates. I think I've done that once before, and I can't remember when, but I do remember disliking it. Tonight I started with that same feeling but it actually turned out alright. I met some people I haven't had classes with before and I learned some interesting things about all of them. Two of the facts on the list involved the radio, one was a DJ and the other was voice talent, and a lot of people chose one of those for their first guess about me. Curious. I guess if the librarian thing doesn't work out I can go into radio. Back in college I applied at the student station, not because I wanted to be on air, but because I wanted to play the music. Sadly I never heard back. Maybe if I had I would be working at a radio station now. Like NPR. Probably not though because when I talk too much I give my voice gives me a headache. It really vibrates in my head.

We worked on a small group project about budgeting which was interesting. We didn't really get that far with it but we had some good discussion. And the class discussion afterward was also really good. Quite a bit of time was spent talking about microfilm because that is apparently still a thing, especially with local newspapers. I never would have guessed.

Near the end of class we went over the main group project, creating a collection development policy for the community college library that one of my professors (who I had this summer and I have again this semester for my academic libraries class) is the director of. We have to create the policy, create a selection list, and create lib-guides. There are three target audiences so at the end of class the professor passed around a sign-up sheet so we could sign up for the group we wanted. She saw one as being more like an academic library scenario, one like a public library, and one like a school library, based on the patron needs. Thankfully she started the sign-up sheet in the back of the room because I was closer to the back than the front, and I was able to sign up for the online students, which was the more academic library example. Because this is for a real library, and the professor will be giving all of us credit for it, we will be able to put it on our resume, so that is pretty cool. Also, my group ended up with the other three guys in the class, so one of the girls in the group referred to the group as the dude group, which was kind of funny.

My partner for the policy analysis presentation talked to the professor tonight and found out we both have to talk in the presentation, which kind of throws a wrench in our plan because we had planned on him doing the recording. So we need to figure that out now. I spent time tonight when I got to the hotel figuring out OBS on my laptop, because I kept getting a black screen when I tried recording. But I got it working. One thought I had was both recording our own parts and then my partner could send me his and I would join them together. I think we might end up just trying to find a quite place tomorrow and knocking it out before we leave. I had the thought that I should bring my microphone with me and now I wish I had, because laptop microphones suck. Along with that concern, the other big one is I had not planned on talking, so I have no idea what I'm supposed to say. Hopefully my partner has some sort of script.

And now it is almost eleven-thirty and I need to go to bed. I'm freaking tired and I've got a headache. A great combo. Hopefully I will wake up tomorrow morning with both of those problems solved. Fingers crossed.

September 24, 2015

 My work day was primarily filled with work stuff. There were only two full tests scheduled along with a make-up time for one of the sixth grade classes. Not too long after testing was over in the morning one of the third grade classes came in. That was a bit of a circus. One of them needed to take a test so I had him in the back. The others were either supposed to be working on typing an assignment or doing Compass Learning. The ones typing needed to log off of the testing server and log in as them so they could save to the student drive. Trying to explain that concept was difficult. And trying to get them to only log off of the computer they needed and not all of them, creating more work for me later, was even more difficult. On top of that, the typing was group work so it was chaotic. And there was a substitute. He was actually the husband of the teacher. Later he came back and complimented me on how well I handled the kids and managed to stay calm. So that was kind of cool.

This afternoon I had kids come in to finish tests and that butted right up to the next class testing. For my schedule looking so open on paper it feels like I spent the majority of my day standing in the back of the lab waiting for kids to finish tests.

In my free time I updated my spreadsheet with all the scores I had written down. Next week I'll start going through the official scores to add in percentiles and start printing reports for the classes who have completely finished.

I also had a little time to design a button for my sister. I haven't made buttons in years but I got the idea a month or two ago when my sister sent me a picture of one with a funny saying on it. At first I made my own version in the form of a desktop wallpaper but today I turned that into a tiny button. I haven't actually checked to make sure my measurements were right but we'll find out when I make it sometime in the near future. Fingers crossed.

Tonight I finished creating the records for my metadata assignment. This was aided greatly by the Library of Congress website, which was back online after yesterday's outage. Now I just need to write up a reflection and I'll be done. I'm kind of thinking that won't happen until Sunday but we'll see how much time I have tomorrow. We don't have work but I imagine most of my day until I have to leave town will be spent reading all the stuff I didn't have a chance to read this week. At least the stuff for the class that is meeting this week. But I also want to sleep in a little. Hopefully not too much, though.

September 23, 2015

 There was more testing today, no surprise there. There were three scheduled tests, two in the morning and one in the afternoon, along with a few stragglers here and there. Nothing worth mentioning happened.

When there wasn't testing I worked a little bit on my metadata assignment. I didn't have a lot of time but I made a little progress. Which I had to redo when I got home because it wouldn't upload on Dropbox.

Near the end of the day the second grade classes were together watching a movie but they could only get sound out of the small projector speaker, which was too quite. I was in the lab with a kid testing and a few other kids working on an assignment so I had to have one of the second grade teachers come watch the kids in the lab so I could go look at the sound issue. They were watching a VHS but the teacher only had computer speakers that couldn't plug into the DVD/VCR. I had the thought of plugging the computer speakers into the projector, so I got up on a stool and tried it but it didn't work. I was pretty sure it should work but I was surrounded by second graders who were all talking to each other about not being able to hear the movie. And they couldn't hear the movie because they were all talking to each other.

I eventually went back to the lab and told the teacher I had failed but said I would go back after school and look at it. And when I went back, I tried the exact same thing, and it worked. No idea why it didn't work when I needed it to. After a little testing it turns out the sound for the computer also goes through the speakers when they're plugged in up there (at least I'm pretty sure), so I wrapped the cords around the speakers and left them on top of the projector. It's a real MacGyvered setup at the moment, especially with the extension cord strung along the ceiling that is held in place with paperclips. That was the hopefully temporary solution of the guys who installed the projector on the ceiling. As long as it works, I guess.

After work I got Chipotle and a Powerball ticket before heading home. My journey went a lot smoother than last week. No roadblocks this time around.

My burrito was wrapped terribly and it didn't taste as good as last week but we can't win 'em all. It just make the good ones that much better. I showed a lot of videos after dinner before departing to work on schoolwork.

I was making good progress on my metadata assignment but then the Library of Congress website for subject headings and authority names stopped working. A major chunk of the assignment relies on finding the official subject headings and names for people. So I was kind of boned. I kept working on the other fields and checking back on the Library of Congress site but it never came back online. It was pretty frustrating. I ended up filling in all of the fields I could for all five of my resources, and I put in possible entries for things I will need to verify with the LOC site at some point. If the site starts working again I should be able to finish all the records tomorrow. Then I need to do some other stuff, like summarize stuff, maybe, I don't know. But I'm nearly done with it. Which is good.

I got an email from my group partner tonight with his suggested edits to the presentation. He was also concerned about time and it looks like his suggestions cut out a majority of the presentation. The cue sheet I sent him was five and a half pages and the one he sent me was just over a page. So I'll need to wrap my mind around that and see if I can get it sorted out. Now it seems way too short but he's a talker so we'll see. It would be nice if I could finish that in my free time at work tomorrow, but I again can't remember how many test there are. Maybe three. Hopefully I'll have some free time.

Now I'm going to watch a YouTube video and then go to bed. Hooray for sleep.

September 22, 2015

 Future me really appreciates past me when he unties my shoes before taking them off. Present me prefers to just pulling my shoes off but it is nice when I have to put them on again and don't have to untie them first. I'm trying to make it a habit.

Today was another day of testing. I only made one kid cry, so that's pretty successful. That total should have been zero, because she got upset after I told her she scored better on her retake (after she sped through it the first time). I think she misunderstood me.

When I wasn't testing I updated my spreadsheets and worked a little bit on my group presentation. Three tests were scheduled today but one was canceled because of an assembly. Can't complain about that. Other than the fact that the test was just postponed so I'm still going to have to deal with.

Before dinner I managed to finish the group presentation. After dinner I went through and created a cue sheet for all the slides that included all of the information for the slides as well as when to move forward. Hopefully he likes it and can get through it within the time limit so I don't have to tweak it anymore.

When I finished with that I worked on my metadata assignment and nearly finished my second record. Slowly but surely. I'm on pace to get it finished in time. Hopefully. It would be nice if we didn't have class this weekend so I had more time to work on it. One plus is that we don't have school on Friday so I can wake up early and have a good chunk of the day to work on it. Or do the reading for this week because I haven't had time to do that yet.

Right now it is coming up on eleven o'clock and I'm going to go to bed. This is one of those work-filled tired weeks. I'm not a fan.

September 21, 2015

 Today wasn't too bad despite my lack of sleep. I even managed to get out of bet when my alarm went off. Tomorrow morning I might try running on the elliptical again because my knee hasn't locked up in a couple days. We'll see.

Last night the school librarian texted me to see if I could edit some pictures for her, so that is what I did when I got to work this morning. They were pictures of her son's football team that she wants to do something with, so I cropped them and made them look better. I finished just as the first class came into the lab.

It was supposed to be a regular class but three of the kids needed to take a test so it turned into testing, which bumped right up against the first scheduled test of the day. That finished up before lunch and I was able to complete a spreadsheet for one of the resource teachers, and I fixed something on the gifted teacher's tablet, before eating lunch.

When I was almost done with lunch one of the sixth grade teachers came down and had a graph question in Excel. I knew there was a way to do what he wanted but had to play with it for a bit to remember so he left the laptop with me. Less than two minutes later I figured it out and on my way to clock back in after lunch I dropped the laptop off and explained how I did it.

Sometime later the Math Enrichment substitute in the sixth grade teacher's room had a question about connecting a laptop to the projector. That always seems to be finicky, and after messing with it for a couple minutes with no results, I took the alternate route of laying the iPad under the Elmo, as if it were a piece of paper, and projecting that. It worked. I also answered another Excel graph question before I left.

Before the next test I nearly finished the worksheets I was making for the resource teacher. I made r-controlled word worksheets for her a week or so ago and she wanted more words so I came up with some more. My favorite was “perspire”, which I doubt any of the kids will know but it will give them a chance to learn it.

The next test was second grade and they had some speed demons so several of them will be coming back tomorrow to retake one or both parts of their test. Hooray. When they were almost done a sixth grader came down to work on her test. She's the one who seems determined to set a new record for how long it takes to finish. She's probably got around two hours invested in the math test and she's on question 10. She'll need to kick it in gear because the testing window closes at the end of next week and the test has fifty-three questions.

Tonight I started working on my metadata assignment and I made pretty decent progress. I finally decided on the five resources and started the actual document, putting in each of the resources and citing them using APA style, hopefully correctly. Then I began creating the table for the metadata record for the first resource, a journal article. I'm pretty close to being done with it but it's slow going. I would be completely lost without the example the professor gave us. I'm constantly having to switch between several different browser tabs, looking up terms and vocabularies and syntax and name authorities and the list goes on. It would have been nice if I started working on this earlier. It's due on Sunday and I imagine that will be here before I know it. Especially with all the other work I need to finish. I'm still somewhat confident that I can get everything done, so I'm not too stressed out. Just mildly. A mild but constantly nagging level of stress. It passes the time.

Now I'm going to go to bed so I can wake up and see how much I can get done tomorrow. I heard back from my partner with more stuff to add to the presentation so that will be on the agenda for tomorrow along with more metadata. It would be nice if I could do the presentation stuff at work but I can't remember how many tests I have tomorrow. I'll hope for the best.

September 20, 2015

 It is after midnight on a school night and I am tired, so I'm going to make this quick.

The vast majority of my day was spent working on my group presentation. So much time. I just finished up a first draft of it and sent it off to my partner. I know there are things that I need to tweak regarding the design of it but I'll worry about that after we get the important stuff worked out. Like the timing and the content. I'm worried that it will run long because six minutes is supposed to be the max. Currently I think there is way more than six minutes of content. And that isn't counting the fact that my partner has a leisurely way of talking. This is the same professor that I made a presentation for instead of writing a paper last Spring and I went for ten minutes instead of six. I got 0.3 points off, I think, but to hit six minutes I would have had to leave out information and I think that would have cost me more points. The same situation may hold true for the current presentation, even after we trim it down. I don't know.

I sent the presentation to my partner so he can run through it and let me know what he thinks. Now that the bulk of the work is done I need to shift my focus to my metadata assignment. I was hoping to at least have a little time to work on that today but I didn't. Reading through the discussion thread and seeing some of the issues my classmates have had so far makes me worry it is a lot more involved than I initially thought. Hopefully it clicks pretty quickly for me because time is running out.

I also need to pick a topic for a research paper in my academic libraries class. I think that is due Sunday as well. I haven't even looked at that assignment yet. I also need to do all of the reading for the upcoming week because I didn't get to that this weekend, either. It's going to be a long week. I think my metadata class only goes for another two weeks so maybe after that I'll get a little breather.

September 19, 2015

 I forgot to talk about throwing ice at a rabbit yesterday. When I got home I checked the backyard before letting the dogs out to make sure all the squirrels were gone, and apparently bunnies. I saw the rabbit sitting near the fence and I decided to try the technique I had been suggesting to my mom. So I went back in, grabbed some ice, and headed back outside. I've never thrown ice cubes before, other than maybe tossing them into a trashcan, and I've got to say, I've got a real knack for it. Even though the rabbit was pretty far away, I consistently hit within a foot or three of it. But the rabbit didn't seem to give a shit. Even when I was within a foot in the grass or when I banged them off the fence. The rabbit twitched its ears a little but that was it. Death wish bunny. I finally gave up and took two steps down the stairs and it ran under the fence. So much time wasted. At least I proved my technique for scaring away bunnies is a complete failure.

Today was not a great day for productivity. I got up really early, which should have been a good sign, but a few hours later I took a nap under my desk. I woke up with a headache and it went away a couple hours later, but when it came back I gave up, took some Ibuprofen, and crawled under my desk. My headache eventually went away but I never really recovered any motivation.

I worked on my group presentation, making a few notes and setting up the layout for the presentation. I tried coming up with actual content but it never came. It was partially (very minimally) due to not knowing what my partner was covering and not wanting to spend a lot of time on one thing only to find out that is what my partner had been spending time on. Really that's just an excuse though. I just couldn't get it going. I spent a lot of time thinking about it but it never clicked into gear. Tonight my partner actually sent me a file with all the stuff he has come up with so far so I am going to work with that tomorrow and actually start adding stuff to the presentation and figuring out slides, and fill in anything he either didn't cover or things I had thought of. I have done a lot of work on the presentation side for this project but my partner has definitely done the majority of the research side. I feel bad being the deadweight so far.

I responded to a discussion post and then started working on my metadata assignment. We have to pick five digital resources, each from a different category, and then create metadata records for them using Dublin Core. I was in the middle of picking out those resources when I decided to check the discussion thread we're supposed to be posting to throughout the process. I haven't posted yet because I hadn't actually looked at the assignment before last night, but I saw a question that I thought I could respond to so I did. It ended up requiring a bit of research so I got lost in Dublin Core stuff for awhile. I think I came up with a decent answer and I got a glimpse of how much work this assignment is going to require. It's going to be a fun week.

I also went through and bookmarked the textbook chapters I need to read and the organized all the articles I need to read but didn't get around to reading any of it. I wanted my focus to be on the group project because that directly impacts someone else so it takes precedence, but for all I accomplished on that I might as well have been reading.

Tomorrow I need to make decent progress on the group presentation. Ideally I would get in the zone, stop over thinking, and knock the whole thing out. Unrealistically but ideally. I also need to finish picking out my metadata resources and hopefully start a document and get a template going for each one so I can just drop in the information once I have it. I would also like to get some reading done. All of it would be nice but there is a lot of it and with the group project and the metadata assignment being due next weekend, that stuff needs to come first. I can skim the reading if I need to for a discussion post this week. I don't want it to turn into an excuse to not work on my projects.

September 18, 2015

 This morning I woke up a couple minutes before my alarm was set to go off and that is a good thing. A couple minutes later I heard my alarm click on but the radio didn't actually play. There was just silence. So that could have been bad. My backup alarm clock is the dogs being let out upstairs because there is a mad stampede and loads of barking as they run to go outside. And that didn't happen this morning until seven o'clock because my mom overslept. I'm just saying it is a good thing I was already awake.

Today there were two scheduled tests with a couple small groups coming in to finish tests. Usually the full testing days go by the fastest but today seemed to fly by. When I wasn't testing I did things. I made a list of all the students in the school for one of the lunch ladies, which wasn't too bad because most of it was cutting and pasting the names and numbers I had already typed up for my testing spreadsheets. Those lists had spaces in between the names and I learned that there is a way in Excel to select all of the blank rows and delete them. That saved me so much time. There is also a way to select every other row and change the background color, all with a simple formula. That is obviously a lot faster than having to click every other row in a list of over 200 kids. Possibly well over 200 kids, I wasn't actually keeping track.

There wasn't too much downtime in my day because when there wasn't a test I had normal classes in the lab. So maybe that is why the day went so fast. The last class of the day was fifth grade and while talking to the teacher I ended up genuinely laughing, like couldn't help myself. It started with the koala wedding, which I'll talk about, but it really got me when she was telling me about pencils with names. She was talking to the fifth grade teacher from last year who got married over the summer and had to move away. She got a new fifth grade teaching job and she said that her class had decided to name all their pencils. She sent a picture and the teacher I was talking to said she could see epic names, like Super Pencil, but then the old teacher asked if she could see the pencil in the background. This pencil was broken and splintered and just beat up. And its name was Judy. It's just so ridiculous. All these epic pencils and then there's poor Judy.

Now, the fifth grade class in the lab hadn't named their pencils but they did have a full-blown toy koala wedding at recess. An incredibly detailed and well planned out wedding. Several of the girls in the class actually wore dresses. The whole thing started with three small toy koalas, not much bigger than a golf ball. An informal system was developed where the koalas would go home with a different kid every day, kind of like when baby chicks are hatched and kids take them home for a night. Well, one of the kids has a dog and the dog completely destroyed one of the koalas. Tore it apart. This was the grandpa koala and the kids ended up making a coffin for it and put in all the little bits and pieces. And in case you were wondering, grandpa was able to attend the wedding. In his coffin.

The wedding took place at recess. There was a pillow for the ring to sit on and one of the girls brought a tiny basket of tiny fake flower petals. The teacher didn't want her to actually drop them because it was a windy day and they would have been irretrievable. I don't know what was used for a ring but it was big enough to be a collar, but not big enough to go over the koala's head, so they had to pop the head off to put the ring on. Oh, and they gave the male koala a bath in the sink before the wedding but his colors ran or something and he went from being gray to black. I don't know if that was the cause of it but shortly after the wedding, like almost immediately, the koalas got divorced. In the chaos of the wedding going to crap, I think the girl koala ran away and everyone chased ran after it, at which point the tiny fake flower petals exploded into the air. And at one point one of the kids started crying because someone else told him he was the reason the wedding was ruined.

So freaking elaborate. When the kids were lining up to leave the lab the teacher had the girl who kind of started the whole thing show me the girl koala and I made some comment about it being newly single and the girl said that the boy koala had apologized (for whatever he had done) and that they might be getting back together. It is like a soap opera. I'm stuck watching kids test all day and there is a real life toy koala soap opera going on only a couple floors above me.

At the end of the day I fixed a laptop for one of the third grade teachers, by changing the display from portrait view back to landscape. That happens a handful of times each year and I have never figured out how. Kids don't have access to the screen resolution options so they shouldn't be able to do that. My only guess is that it happens when a teacher has logged into a laptop for a student, but I don't know. It's strange. Anyway, when I got down to the third grade room the teacher told me about another laptop that wouldn't turn on. Initially I thought it might be a power issue, like it wasn't getting charged properly, but all the cords were plugged in. I plugged it into the charger for another laptop, just in case, and that didn't seem to have any effect but I also thought it might be a hard drive issue because there is a laptop in fourth grade that needs to have its hard drive pulled out every now and then to “fix” it. So I opened up this laptop to have a look. While doing that I had another thought so I swapped out the the battery with another laptop and it powered right on. And the other laptop did not. So now I think it is purely a battery issue, not a hard drive issue or a power cord issue. Just in case I plugged it in to another power cord and we'll see on Monday if it works.

After that I went across the hall to one of the second grade rooms to give the teacher a little grief about a table she is trying to get rid of. And I ended up staying to help out with her projector again. She said the blue projected image was big but when she tried to show her computer screen it was smaller. My theory was that it was a resolution issue, which is what it turned out to be. It seems that normally when you plug a computer into a projector, the computer adopts the resolution of the projector, but that wasn't happening in this case. Instead, the projector was projecting the widescreen resolution of the computer. So it was as wide as it could be but much shorter and everything looked much smaller because of the higher resolution. Lowering the resolution to a square format made a dramatic difference, and I showed the teacher how to do this so she can easily switch back and forth.

When I got home I finished writing up my interview and was able to submit it before dinner. Dinner ended up being a fairly impromptu family pizza night. The pizza was good as was the conversation. I ended up talking too much because by the end of it my voice had given me a headache. That is one frustrating thing about my low voice. It vibrates in my head just enough that if I talk too much I get a headache.

After dinner I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and I wrote a long response to one of my classmates on the discussion post for this week. I was envisioning a future with virtual reality and 3D-modeled digital collections. I think it will happen.

Tomorrow, I need to focus on my group project. And take a look at my other upcoming assignments to make sure I don't get surprised. I know there is another one for my metadata class that I should already be working on so I need to look into that. It is due next Sunday, the same day that my group project is due, and I've got class next weekend so I won't have much time to work on it that weekend. I have to create complete metadata records using Dublin Core for five digital resources, and a brief glance at the instructions makes it look a bit intense. So maybe tomorrow is all about my group project (and reading for next week) and Sunday is all about this metadata assignment. Sounds like a decent plan.

September 17, 2015

 Not nearly as much happened today worth writing about so this will be short. Short-er at least.

I had tests all day today so that was nice. Only one more week. Until January. And April. When I wasn't testing I entered scores and started messing around with an idea for improving the Lexile color chart I made for the librarian last year, which was an improvement over the one she had previously sent out. I have a couple ideas but its a matter of having the time between tests to get them out and see what they actually look like.

Outside of the lab I helped one of the kindergarten teachers with the firewall, one of the second grade teachers with her newly ceiling-mounted projector, the music sub with the projector, and possibly the sixth grade teacher with her daughter's emails being blocked. That last one has been an ongoing issue and if my latest solution doesn't work than who knows. As for the music sub, one of the sixth graders came and got me because they couldn't get the video to work on the projector, only the audio. My first clue that nothing was wrong should have been the DVD player splash screen displayed by the projector as the sound played. But I just noted that as weird before spending several minutes digging through a rats nest of cables trying to figure things out. Eventually I realized that the DVD the kids wanted video for was really just a data DVD, filled with a bunch of songs, so there wasn't actually a video, just music. Minutes wasted but at least it was figured out in the end.

After work I watched a couple YouTube videos and read half an article before dinner. My Chipotle burrito this week was easily the best one I have had in a long time. After dinner I finished reading the article, read a second article, and then wrote my discussion post for this week. I'm pretty happy with it. I spent so much time on it, however, that I didn't make it to finishing writing up my interview. If it were due tonight I would have finished it but it isn't due until tomorrow so I can finish it after work. And then spend a lot of time on my group project because I haven't really done any work toward the content of that project all week. I need to step it up.

September 16, 2015

 This has the potential to be lengthy but it is after 10:30PM, I have been ready for bed since 8:30PM, and I have a headache. So we'll see what happens.

More testing today. Four scheduled tests with a small group of first graders coming in at the end of the day to finish up. From about 12:45PM until 3:45PM I was on my feet, watching kids take tests. It was pretty great.

The first graders tested this morning and it was the class with the Chinese girl. She had to take the test because why not. Who doesn't love a pointless test? When she was done I pointed at her scratch paper, which she had not used because why would she, and said she could draw. She sat there for several minutes not really doing anything so I opened up Google translator and typed in that she was done with the test and that she could draw (or something to that effect). I pointed at the translation, and then played it so she could hear it, before I erased it and went to write down a few test scores for kids who had finished. When I came back later she wasn't drawing but I did see she had something on her paper. In very careful handwriting she had written down “Enter text” and “Translation”, just as they appeared on Google translator. I couldn't help but smile. It was great. I shook my head to myself and then typed in that she should draw a dog or a house or a tree or a girl. A little while later I came by again and she had drawn a little dog under “Enter text” and a little girl and a sun under “Translation”. I tried my best. Maybe she just not that into drawing. Or maybe she was still confused from having just answered seventy math questions which were frequently English-heavy.

When the small group of first graders who hadn't finished this morning came back this afternoon, the Spanish speaking first grader was with them because she had been absent this morning. She managed the test pretty well, not score-wise obviously, but she got the idea of how to work the test pretty quickly. At one point she tried to get help from the boy next to her, who I think might speak at least a little Spanish, but I kind of stepped in and showed her how to answer the question (not give her the answer but showed her the controls). With my brief understanding of Spanish, she wasn't confused about how to answer the question but the question itself, but the boy next to her looked confused (maybe he isn't that good at Spanish) and for some reason we don't have a translator sitting with these kids, so I just wanted to move the process along.

Other than testing, there wasn't much. I entered test scores at the end of the day and this morning I scanned a drawing that one of the kindergarteners had drawn. This is the girl who needs to be in SPED so she can have a full-time para but her parents don't want that label so instead have hired observers to be in the room all day. Observers who aren't allowed to interact with anyone, including the girl, and serve no purpose other than making the teacher uneasy. Anyway, every day at the beginning of the year there is a student of the day in kindergarten and each day the kids draw a picture of that student. The little girl has never really drawn the student of the day and really likes mermaids so she tends to draw them all with a big fin, if she even gets that far. But today she actually drew a person, with two arms and legs. The teacher wanted me to scan it because the original will go into a book but she wanted a copy so she can show it to the girl the next time she is trying to draw a mermaid and show her what a good job she had done before. My mom came down with the drawing and I did a quick scan and edit because she was in a hurry but in my break between the morning and afternoon tests I made it look better and sent the teacher a digital copy.

My journey home after work was a tragedy of errors. It never quite achieved comedy. At the light near the school I go straight to go to Chipotle. The car in front of me turned left and as I went to go straight the car across from me turned left, so right in front of me so I had to apply my brakes. This is actually a somewhat common occurrence because the two roads don't line up well and people coming from the other way often aren't the brightest it seems. When I did make it across the street, I only made it a short way before having to turn left because the road was closed. The whole road had been closed yesterday and I don't know why I didn't think to look farther down before I decided to take that road today but I didn't, so I was left with a roadblock. I knew I needed to take the second right to go as far as I wanted but the two cars in front of me took the first right and I jumped on the bandwagon. This put me on a road that didn't go as far as I wanted so I had to turn left again, then right to get back on the forward track.

When I got to the intersection I wanted I looked right but the road was still blocked off so I had to continue forward. There were two cars in front of me at the intersection to a larger street and the one in front wanted to turn left. And they weren't accepting anything less than a thirty-second break in traffic to turn onto the street. It was ridiculous. But they eventually turned and I eventually made it to Chipotle.

There was a guy who has worked there a long time at the front of the line so he had things moving along and I got a well made burrito. Unfortunately, the slow girl was at the register. And for quite awhile she was having a discussion with an equally slow group of people at the register who I think had called in their order. The line of tacos and burritos kept growing as the fast dude tore through them and this girl wouldn't end the conversation and start ringing other people up. She is not suited for work that requires speed or even the slightest sense of urgency.

When I left Chipotle I was an idiot and thought maybe only one lane of the road was closed. That road being the one from earlier. With all the roadblocks. Well, turns out the whole thing was closed, which I learned after turning onto a side street heading toward it, so I had to turn around and go back. Then I was a polite idiot and waited for a dude on a bmx bike riding in the street to go by. Well, that dude turned out to be an asshole. I get the impression he was only riding the bike because he lost his license due to alcohol and/or drugs. Rather than riding off to the side of the street and was slowly swerving back and forth across the entire lane. Then he took a right, which is what I needed to do, and did his little swerving ride for the next two blocks. If I didn't care about dents in my car, I would have seen how high far I could knock him down the street in front of me.

At the next stoplight there was a big truck in front of me and there was a girl in a big pickup to my left on a side street wanting to turn on. I thought she was turning right so I pulled up behind the big truck but a short while later I learned she was turning left and wanted to be in the lane to my right. There really wasn't enough room for that to happen and I ended up having to suck right up behind the big truck so I didn't lose a taillight to the pickup truck.

This new route put me one street past the one I needed to be on to mail a bill so when I got across town I again had to go out of my way to get back on track. Then I headed over to buy my Powerball ticket. They've installed new stoplights by the gas station over there and they make getting out of the gas station kind of a pain. I needed to turn left and there were several big pickups at the stoplight to the right so I couldn't really see into the far lanes and it was hard to tell if traffic was coming. Eventually the stoplight traffic down the street to the left caught up and when the big SUV in the right lane couldn't go forward anymore without blocking me in due to the traffic at the light, they waved me forward. I slowly started creeping out, trying to tell if there was any traffic coming from the right. When I looked back left, there was a big SUV coming in a little fast in the far lane. I hit my brakes, they hit their brakes, we waved apologies, and I pulled out the rest of the way and headed on my way. Thankfully the rest of the drive home was uneventful.

Dinner was good because I actually had a full-sized burrito, and I think the videos went over pretty well. After dinner I did a little school work. I realized that there were a few things I needed to read for the discussion post this week, that I hadn't read because they were in the optional readings, so I didn't write my discussion post tonight, which I kind of wanted to do. Instead, I wrote most of my interview paper for my academic library class. Something I should have done a long time ago because I did the interview back in August.

Tomorrow I need to read the articles so I can reference them in my discussion post. I also need to finish my interview paper. And maybe do some work on my group presentation. I have completely ignored that this week. I need to get back into that mode I was in at the end of the summer semester when I was way ahead on everything. I actually felt good about myself. Getting behind makes me feel like crap and makes it that much harder to keep up with things. I finally got on top of the reading, doing it the weekend before the coming week. Now I need to step it up with the assignments.

September 15, 2015

More testing today. Two tests in the morning and one in the afternoon. It was as boring as it always is. My favorite substitute was working today but I only got to see her briefly this morning, so that was kind of disappointing.

Other than testing, I kind of helped the new sixth grade teacher with her email. I also kind of helped someone connect their phone to the wireless but not really because the guest wireless is trickier than the regular wireless. This afternoon I translated one of the first grade teacher's newsletter into Spanish and Chinese again. Which would be impressive if I wasn't using the internet to do all of the heavy lifting. I just mess with the formatting after the fact to make it look better. Who knows if it's actually a good translation.

And speaking of translations. And testing. One of the fifth graders, who only speaks Spanish, had to take the reading MAP test today. In case you were wondering, not only does he not speak English, he also doesn't read it. Him taking a reading MAP test was completely pointless. Unless you're testing something other than reading, like how well random guessing works on the test. Dumb.

Back to things I did today other than watching kids test. I filled out cards for both second grade classes, one third grade class, and one fourth grade class, with login information for Reading Counts. And I input a bunch of test scores into my spreadsheets. While listening to Harry Potter.

After work, I did nothing. I'm in a bit of a school slump and it can't last any longer. I've got a discussion post to write for this week. And my interview is due this week. And I've got to start looking into a research paper that I'm assuming is due fairly soon and I haven't a clue what it is about. And I've got a metadata assignment due in a couple weeks I think that involves the creation of metadata records. And I've got my group project to work on. I think the overwhelming number of things has paralyzed me. I need to start chiseling away, taking baby steps. It's too early in the semester to be so overwhelmed.

Tomorrow. More testing. Then Chipotle and videos. And then serious schoolwork action.

September 14, 2015

MAP testing started today. Just when I had almost forgotten how much fun it is to watch kids take a test. That would have been a horrible thing to forget. I don't really feel anything right now but I imagine my back will be sore in the morning from all the bending down to see computer screens so I could write down scores. And my legs will probably hurt from all the standing. I have taken the past however many days off from running on the elliptical because of chunks floating around in my right knee, threatening to lock it up. I wanted to get started again this week, even though the little chunks are still making their presence vaguely known, but we'll have to see how all the extra standing during testing goes. My desire to exercise would be so much easier to sate if my knees weren't crap and I didn't live in constant fear of knocking another kidney stone loose. I'm a ticking time bomb of pain.

We had three tests today, two in the morning and one in the afternoon. Technically there were four tests, though, because the first class came back after the second class in order to finish. So I tested from 8:45AM until noon, then ate lunch and tested for another hour. I love it.

When testing was over I made bookmarks for the librarian. She was given a sheet of bookmarks that she needs to hand out next week and she asked if I could scan them (to get a color copy) and then print off a bunch. I thought I could do better so I scanned the page, saved the image on it, and then used Google to find a digital version of that image. Then I put that into Publisher and typed up the original words on the bookmark but used a better font and got eight on a page instead of six. It looked way better than the original. I also discovered that the picture used for the bookmark, which was a boy covered in an American flag outfit, originally included a little girl in an American flag outfit. I printed out all of the original bookmarks that the librarian wanted but I also made a page with the girl in case the librarian wants to print some of those off as well.

After work I came home, watched YouTube videos, ate dinner, talked to my friend on the phone, and that was about it. I had a headache when I left work and I was tired. I didn't sleep very well last night and I'm going to go to bed after I finish writing this. Well before ten o'clock it looks like. My friend and I talked for quite awhile, starting with him splitting his thumb open with a hammer today and having to get four stitches. He almost passed out a couple time from the loss of blood but he said it was better than when he cut his head open. Then we talked about a mobile app idea he has and ended with talking about music on a YouTube show he likes but they never credit. I was able to find one of the songs but the other remain a bit of a mystery. I sent him a couple links with music that I think has a similar kind of sound. Not a perfect solution but it works.

Now I'm going to stop writing, finish the video I'm watching, and go to bed. And hopefully fall immediately to sleep.

September 13, 2015

Today I read. I read a whole bunch. Thankfully none of it was as boring as the budget stuff I read about yesterday. And I would write about some of the stuff I read but at this point I have kind of forgotten most of it. If I looked at the titles of the article I could tell you but that requires effort and I can't be bothered. This is going to be a short entry.

I took a nap this afternoon under my desk. I was tired from all the reading and I couldn't resist. It kind of screws me over now that it is late and I should go to bed but I'm not tired. Well, I'm yawning but I know if I go to bed I'll just lay there forever.

Tonight I was going to write out my librarian interview but instead I responded to my group partner, updating him on my progress. I have the presentation ideas locked down so this week I will focus on the content. I'm really interested to see how the presentation turns out because it looks cool in my head.

Now I'm going to try and entertain myself for awhile until I feel sufficiently tired to attempt sleep.

September 12, 2015

Today was pretty boring. I woke up pretty early, sometime before eight o'clock, and throughout the day managed to read three or four articles and a bit of a textbook. I also watched a video about the collection development policy analysis assignment and I think I pretty much finish making the musical score for that assignment. At least the music part of it. I will still need to turn it into a presentation once we have all the information we need to add. I haven't decided yet if I am going to add the text onto the PDF in the music program and then make the slides around that, or add the text in Prezi. I'll have to mess around with it and see what works best.

When I wasn't reading stuff I watched YouTube videos and read random things online. I recently started watching an old Yogscast series from last year that I started but then didn't finish because I got distracted by school. The main reason I started watching it again is because it includes Simon, who has been absent for several months now. I subscribed to the Yogscast years ago because I liked the interaction between Simon and Lewis and it really isn't the same without him. He's apparently had some medical issues but hopefully he will come back soon. I'm thinking coming back for the holiday livestreams would make for a triumphant return. If not, there are always a whole bunch of old videos.

I also took a brief nap today under my desk. I miss those naps.

Tomorrow I am going to read more articles. I also want to write the report based on the interview I had with an academic librarian for my academic library class. We haven't really had much going on with that class so even though I conducted my interview really early, I haven't put much thought into the rest of the class. At some point soon we have a research paper to write, and possibly other stuff, so I need to look into that. I also need to continue working on the website for that class, that I briefly started and then got sidetracked. I may end up using a website building website like the professor suggested just so I don't have to worry about making a website from scratch on top of everything else. We'll see.

September 11, 2015

Today was busy. There was a storm last night and the power went out at school. Normally that pops a breaker in the computer lab and a row of computers won't turn on. That didn't happen this time but two of the printers in the building stopped working. And they were the exact same type of printer, too. It may have had nothing to do with the storm but it is a pretty odd coincidence.

I looked into the printer thing before school started and then I worked on finishing the worksheet I started for one of the second grade teachers yesterday. In the middle of that one of the resource teachers came to me with two ideas she had for worksheets, so I added those to my list.

After a couple classes in the lab I finished the second grade teacher's worksheet and went down to give her a copy. I came in right as they were starting to try and get on the laptops in their room. That always seems to be an chore. For every grade level actually, not just second grade. So I stuck around and helped all of the kids get on.

When I got back to the lab I had an email from one of the office ladies and when I went to talk to her I found out she wanted to copy some clip art from a few PDFs but couldn't figure it out. I said I would mess with it so I went back to the lab and messed around until I figured it out. Or maybe I just remembered how to do it because it kind of felt familiar. Either way, I copied all the clip art she wanted and sent them to her in a Publisher document and all told her how she could do it in the future.

I worked on that while I ate lunch and then I started on the worksheets for the resource teacher. I think they both turned out pretty well and I managed to finish them before my two afternoon classes came in. One of those classes was fifth grade and in the middle of their time a bunch of third graders showed up. I vaguely remember talking to their teacher about kids coming down at some point but I can't remember why they were coming down, or how many there would be, or if we ever agreed on a time. Regardless, it definitely added a hectic feel to the environment of the lab.

With the small amount of time I had left at the end of the day I printed out my score sheets for MAP because that starts next week. I wasn't able to print out all of the seating charts but I can do that before school on Monday. I also need to cut scratch paper before Tuesday because that is when the first Math test is happening. I don't think I'm going to make it through the school year with the paper I have left for scratch paper. The classes are going to have to start providing their own.

When I got home I didn't do anything but after dinner I watched some DVRed stuff and started working on a new piece of sheet music for my group presentation. The one I started yesterday was mainly just to mess around and I had a different idea in my head today so I started a new one. I heard back from my partner and he was on board with the new music library I found so that is going to be the one we do our presentation over. Which is good because I want to see how the sheet music presentation comes together.

Now I'm going to go to bed so I can wake up and read textbooks and articles. I probably won't do that all day tomorrow but it would be nice to get it done so I didn't have to worry about it on Sunday.

September 10, 2015

I went to be shortly after nine o'clock last night. I woke up a few different times throughout the night and it felt great every single time rolling over and going back to sleep.

Today at work I did things. Most of which were work related. Most of which aren't worth writing about. This afternoon I went down and helped one of the kindergarten teachers set up his computer so he could demonstrate to his class how to get started in Compass Learning. That seems to be a good technique, rather than trying to go through it in the lab. There were plenty of difficulties when the class came to the lab but I think it would have been worse.

I got an email from my partner in my collection development class where we have to analyze a the collection development policy for a library. Initially he suggested we do a cartoon library but we didn't think their policy was big enough, and we couldn't find the policy for the larger university library. Today he threw out the idea of doing the music library where he interviewed one of the librarians for one of our other classes. He also mentioned that we could do the research together, I could make the presentation, and he would record it. He suggested I make the presentation because he liked the comic book one I did last Spring.

Making that reference, and suggesting a music library, brought on a moment of inspiration. I thought it would be cool to have a piece of sheet music in Prezi, kind of like the comic book page I made. The title would be the name of the library, the subtitle the name of the assignment, we would be the composers, and the content of the presentation would be the notations or lyrics on the page. It all kind of came to me in a flash and it looked pretty cool in my head so I started looking up sheet music. I could find any with open usage rights that looked right and I didn't want to use any copyrighted stuff because I prefer to avoid copyrighted stuff for class projects. I also started thinking it would kind of be a bit of a pain to edit an existing piece of music so then I had the thought of making my own.

I looked around the internet and found a free program where you can create your own sheet music. You create the music by picking the type of note you want and hitting the corresponding key on the keyboard for the note you want. It is pretty intuitive but also kind of hard to wrap your mind around typing out music. The coolest part is probably the ability to play back what you have created. I started making random stuff that I thought would sound cool and then I got the main song from Willy Wonka stuck in my head and ended up putting that in. It doesn't really what the music sounds like, though, because no one will ever actually hear it, I just want it to look real (and cool). If it actually sounds interesting though, that would be a bonus.

A little later I heard from my partner again and he learned that the music library didn't actually have their own policy, they just used the larger library's policy. That was disappointing but I really like my presentation idea so I looked around and found what seems to be a decent policy for another music library and sent it his way so we'll see what he thinks.

At the end of the work day I started working on recreating a worksheet for a teacher so I've got finishing that on my plate tomorrow. I am also hoping the last teacher will sign up for MAP testing so I can finalize my testing schedule and get that posted. I also need the last one or two seating charts. I think it is actually just one, from that same teacher. I sent out a blanket email to all the teachers today but if she hasn't signed up tomorrow I'll have to email her directly. We'll see. I will also probably continue to work on my sheet music in my free time. I'm going to end up spending way too much time on this presentation.

September 9, 2015

I didn't run on the elliptical this morning because my right knee is bothering me but I still got up at six o'clock, despite not getting to bed until close to two o'clock this morning. It's been a long day.

Instead of running I read over my metadata assignment again. I read over it again when I got to work, made a few minor changes and then submitted it. Later in the day I got an email from my professor and she said she understood that sometimes life gets away from us and she knew that I was a good student. I will lose at least four and a half points for the assignment being late, along with whatever I get off when it is graded, but there is still a chance I can get an 'A' in the class. I'm thinking at most it will be an 'A-' but at this point that would be a win.

I had classes in the lab today but my main accomplishment was probably created a couple worksheets and a reward ticket for one of the resource teachers. I also finished listening to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and got into the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Work is definitely the best time to listen to audiobooks. At least audiobooks for books I have already read so I don't miss too much when I'm only half paying attention.

It was an early-release day so I clocked out at 1:40PM and headed home, stopping to get a Powerball ticket along the way. I was really tempted to take a nap when I got home but I didn't want to ruin my chance of sleep tonight so I powered through. A few hours later I went down to pick up Chipotle. The girl who isn't great with portions was working. Asking for extra rice and beans maybe gets you the regular amount if you're lucky. She is cute but also pale and possibly anemic and she gives out the small portions that I imagine an anemic person would give. Or maybe her previous job was at a Taco Bell or one of those people who give out food samples in the supermarket.

After dinner I showed videos, a bird website I reviewed for my metadata assignment, had a piece of the ice cream cake my sister made, and then came downstairs. I was too tired to do anything other than watch YouTube videos. It's not quite nine o'clock but I will be going to bed soon. I need sleep. Hopefully a sleep that will feel like hour and hours, not one of those blink and you're awake kind of sleeps.

Earlier today I was watching a video about British hip-hop artists and they mentioned a rapper that goes by Plan B. I typed it into Spotify and clicked on the first thing that popped up, which ended up being a Spanish hip-hop group. And I'm totally cool with it. I'm listening to them right now. I like listening to music in foreign languages because I can't get distracted by randomly catching parts of the lyrics. I did eventually watch music videos on YouTube for the British rapper and I like his stuff as well. Not a bad day for music.

Tomorrow morning I will again be taking a break from running because my right knee still feels like it is on the verge of locking up and I keep pinching one of the chunks that floats around in there. It needs to chill out, but until that happens I will be chilling out. I still plan on getting up at six o'clock though, so I don't get out of my routine of waking up early. If I do then I'll never get back to exercising.

September 8, 2015

It is now after one o'clock in the morning on a school night so hopefully I can make this quick. Thankfully tomorrow is early-release so there is the opportunity to come home and take a nap.

I think picture day went well. My dress shirt and tie went over well and even though my smile immediately felt fake when I got in front of the camera, my fingers are crossed that I don't look too ridiculous. After the picture I immediately went and changed into one of my usual shirts. The dress shirt and tie were way too hot.

Today I had several classes in the lab (both second grade, both kindergarten, one fifth grade, and one sixth grade). I also worked with my a second grade reading group. I learned that one of them not only doesn't know how to spell, he also knows what weed is. The game was to draw a three-letter card and put an 'e' behind it to see if it made a real word or a nonsense word. He pulled 'wid' and immediately started to tell the other two kids that it spelled 'weed', not the yard kind but the smoke kind. I told him that it did not spell 'weed', it spelled 'wide', and that we didn't need to talk about any of the various types of weed, even if they were all actually spelled the same. Second graders should not know what weed is.

At the very end of the workday I checked my email and saw that grades had been given for the first assignment in my metadata class. And my heart sunk. I had no idea what that was referring to. I didn't have any recollection of the first assignment, let alone it being turned in (on August 30^th). I quickly opened up the assignment instructions, verifying that I had never seen them before, and started to freak out a little bit. It is worth 25% of our final grade. I emailed the professor to apologize for basically being an idiot and ask if there was any chance of me still doing well in the class. I haven't heard back.

This turn of events has been mildly devastating. I have forgotten about things before but this is like blackout drunk forgetting. I somehow completely missed an assignment. There wasn't even an inkling that something was wrong. I don't get it. My only thought is that I'm not used to juggling three separate classes in grad. school. I've been so focused on all the reading and discussion posts that I developed tunnel vision. It's unacceptable and I feel terrible. I was kind of hoping that I'd make it through the program with straight A's but now I'm going to be completely boned by a one-credit hour class. And a momentary but dazzling display of stupidity on my part.

When I got home I started angrily (at myself) working on the assignment, which involved analyzing three digital libraries. I took a break for dinner and then spent the rest of the night, until one o'clock in the morning, finishing the assignment. It's obviously not my best work but it's not bad considering I just learned about it today. Or maybe it's terrible, I don't know. It's late. I was going to submit it because it was after midnight it would have counted as being submitted tomorrow anyway, so I'm going to hold onto it and read over it again tomorrow when I've had a little bit of sleep. And maybe I will have heard back from my professor by then. At this point it is probably pointless to turn it in because I can't really salvage my grade, but I want the professor to see that I'm not a slacker. She should have proof enough of that with my discussion posts in both her classes so far this semester (and doing an entire group presentation by myself in her class last Spring) but I did just completely blow off an assignment without any acknowledgment for over a week. So who knows what she thinks.

I'm going to bed. Maybe tomorrow with be better.