October 30, 2015

 At work today I watched a lot of Bob Ross. Last week I think they released the first season of his show on YouTube. Today on Twitch they started a nine day marathon. A good portion of my day at work was spent watching the marathon. I had it up on my second monitor while I worked on various things.

The workday went by pretty fast. We had a tornado drill this morning and I had a couple classes in the lab. This afternoon I think there was another class but I can't remember. Most of the classes were having Halloween parties today so One or two didn't come to the lab.

Near the end of the day I went upstairs to help the gifted teacher with a few computer things. That didn't take too long but we ended up talking for quite awhile. She is older and should have probably retired years ago but I learned during our talk why she hasn't. She followed her ex-husband around the country as he got various jobs and because of this wasn't able to stay at a place long enough to build up a retirement account. The plan anyway was for him to make the retirement money. But then he became an ex-husband. She also helped her kids pay for school even though she really didn't have the money. And now she is forced to continue working. She likes her work but it is still pretty sad.

Tonight I watched the Garfield Halloween special and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. After writing a couple more responses on the discussion thread for this week. Then I played a little bit of Minecraft, finishing the heart pattern I started the other day. While I was writing this I went back to watching Bob Ross. It reminds me of my childhood and I like it.

Tomorrow I have to get up kind of early because I am going to pick my Navy friend up at the airport. I have never seen an F-18 in person so hopefully I'll get to see him land but I've never been to this airport before so I don't know what the layout is like and if I'll be able to see the runway. The positive thing is that the airport is only an hour away. The last time I picked him up from an airport it was two hours away.

Now I'm going to go to bed because I'm tired. That is reason enough for me.

October 29, 2015

 Yesterday I watched the livestream of the spacewalk. Two astronauts, Scott Kelly and Kjell Lindgren, went for a seven hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station. It was fairly dull viewing but I found it fascinating. I watched a guy using a grease gun for an hour. But it was in space so it was interesting. After the spacewalk they came back into the space station and had to stay in a small chamber, still in there suits, for quite awhile so they could decompress. Or something like that. After that they were pulled into the station one at a time by one of the other astronauts. Several pictures were taken, mostly of their gloves, and then their suits were taken off. It kind of looked like they were being born, slowly pulled from the small chamber into the station and then the suit being slowly taken away, one piece at a time to reveal the person inside. It was pretty cool and only made more so by the fact that the guy doing the work (and the other astronauts taking pictures) were all floating around the two in the big bulky spacesuits.

I had my dentist appointment this morning. I learned when I got there that my new insurance through the school district has separate health and dental insurance. I learned after school when I went to the HR department that vision is also separate. It was my fault for assuming that everything was combined because that is how my insurance has always been. It was the districts fault for not making that separation more clear. Apparently there was a box to check somewhere. A box that was not mentioned when I went to sign up for insurance. It is also too late to sign up for dental and vision. Fantastic. After school I went back to the dentist and paid $150 for my cleaning. A cleaning that was kind of pointless because my teeth are great, as confirmed by both the hygienist and the dentist.

Today at work I had a clever bit of troubleshooting. The projector in the small ELL room in the back of the computer lab wasn't showing red. All the other colors seemed to work fine but red always showed up as black or blue, if it showed up at all. This is kind of an issue when you're trying to teach kids English and you want them to find the red object on the screen. We tried various setting on the projector itself and reset everything just in case it was a setting that got mixed up. That didn't fix it. Then I decided it was either the cable or something inside the projector. To narrow it down I went down to the library and borrowed a VGA cable and a VHS/DVD player. I plugged the VHS/DVD player in, crossed my fingers that a black and white VHS wasn't in there, and hit 'Play'. It was an old VHS (obviously) but there were clearly red objects in the scene, so that eliminated the problem being inside the projector. Then I swapped out the VGA cables and the color red could be seen. Success. It probably took less than ten minutes to get it sorted out and the teacher was impressed with my troubleshooting skills. I'm right there with her.

I sent out another email reminder to everyone about sending me pictures for the yearbook. It was well crafted, if I do say so myself. And it worked because I got several pictures from several different teachers. I'll have to continue sending them out every couple months but we're getting there.

After lunch I went up to the office to wait for the librarian to get out of a meeting because she wanted help with a projector issue. The meeting went about fifteen minutes long but I had a magazine and nothing else to do so I was fine. But everyone who walked by asked me if I was in trouble. It was all in jest but I began to wonder if I give off some sort of vibe if everyone's first thought is that I'm in trouble. Then my mom walked by and asked if I was in trouble and everyone started laughing.

My group member sent out a spreadsheet that had all of our book lists compiled and asked for feedback. Tonight I did a little formatting on it, tweaking the color, some border heights, and froze the heading rows, but everything else looked pretty good to me. I ended up with way more books that everyone else because they were able to include some reference materials that were pretty expensive. I probably should have looked for that kind of stuff. I also made a couple posts on this weeks discussion thread.

I didn't do much with the rest of my night because I had a headache that was only getting worse. In the past few minutes it seems to have gotten a little bit better and I don't know if it was because I was rubbing my temples and neck or if the Ibuprofen I took a few hours ago finally kicked in. I'm not complaining either way.

I'm going to go to bed now, though. I want sleep.

October 28, 2015

 It is going to be eleven o'clock in ten minutes and I have a dentist appointment before work tomorrow. I should be in bed already. Anyway.

We had a fire drill today, continuing with our safety week. It was a bit on the chilly side outside and the wind was greatly to blame. Then we had to stand outside for a considerably longer time than normal. When the principal finally came out she said that it was due to a new plan where instead of going through the building to check that all the kids were out of the building, she goes out front and talks to the firefighters. We found out later that this was a lie. Earlier in the day someone signed in but never signed out, so it was assumed they were still around somewhere. This left the principal and possibly the firefighters going around the building looking for this person. And the person was never found, which means they left at some point without signing out. How nice. We stood out in the cold wind for some asshat

Things I did today. I fixed one of the kindergarten teachers' computers by deleting a bunch of stuff off of it. I brought in my display port cable so one of the fifth grade teachers could use it because it is the only way she can connect her computer to her projector. She was being evaluated today and needed to project stuff I guess. I installed a printer on a loaner laptop for one of the fourth grade teachers. I had several classes and small groups in the lab throughout the day. And when I wasn't doing that stuff, I read some articles. I think I found one or two more for my research paper but then I got sidetracked by one that was a survey of people on hiring committees at libraries that gave insight for new library school graduates. Which led to reading a couple things about interview questions. I feel like there may have been a couple other things mixed in there but nothing else is coming to mind at the moment.

After work I got Chipotle and my Powerball ticket before heading home. After dinner we watched videos and they went over really well. Can't go wrong with a cat video or videos with a drunk on wine guy ranting about stuff.

When I was done with the videos I came down and wrote a response on the discussion thread. Goal accomplished for the night, I switched over to Minecraft because I wanted to zone out for awhile. I'm still doing the cross stitch pattern thing and tonight I made the phrase “Oh Fuck” in the shape of a Christmas ornament and I got started on a very elaborate heart. That turned out to be a little ambitious and I wasn't able to finish it because when I looked up it was after 10:30PM. I ended up streaming all of this and I got my first follower. They never showed up in chat but I heard the new follower sound. I didn't see the pop-up but I also wasn't watching the stream at the time so hopefully it did actually work. I made it so long ago that I'm don't really remember how it works. I need to look into it. That will probably be my only follower ever but it's still pretty cool.

It is now after eleven o'clock so I am going to go to bed. So I can wake up and hopefully remember that I need to leave the house quite a bit earlier for my dentist appointment.

October 27, 2015

 Today we had our lockdown drill. The one where we pretend there is a threat in the building and we hide. I had a second grade class in the lab this morning that was supposed to be there when the drill started but they had a substitute so the librarian had them come to the library early so she could discuss the whole process with them. The past few years I have gone to the library during the drills because I don't have a key to lock the computer lab. This morning, however, I didn't actually unlock the computer lab doors. I just propped them open. I was still planning on heading down to the library but just in case I didn't want to unlock the doors. Which ended up being a good thing because I wasn't going to be stuck with twenty-five second graders in the library. Especially this years second graders. I ended up closing the computer lab doors and then going into the back room. That door locks but again, I don't have a key, so I just closed it and turned the lights off. It isn't the best place because it had giant windows to the playground (covered with blinds) and a big window looking out over the computer lab. That window also has a shade on it but it is in the computer lab, not the small room, so if someone is in the computer lab they can easily lift the shade and see in the small room. Because of this I ended up piling a couple boxes in front of it and when I heard the pounding on the computer lab door I laid down on my side in front of the counter below the window, which is about the only spot in the whole room that isn't visible from the computer lab window. That turned out to be unnecessary because the cops doing the door pounding and shouting didn't come to the back room.

I spent my alone time in the back room reading an article on my phone about a school librarian using Minecraft to teach digital citizenship to students. It was a pretty interesting idea and I ended up sending the article to our school librarian. She's not a big video game fan or a fan of the fact that so many kids are obsessed with Minecraft so we ended up sending a few emails back and forth joking about it. I still think the kids would like it, maybe a little too much though.

Throughout the day I found several more articles for my research paper and now I'm up to at least thirty, probably more. That's more than enough in my opinion but I'll probably keep looking until I actually start writing the paper. I haven't actually read any of the articles just abstracts and findings, and some of them probably won't end up working out, so it won't hurt to keep searching. I'm beginning to get a better idea of how I want to research paper to be laid out and that helps a lot.

This afternoon one of the kindergarten teachers asked me about editing a couple of his vacation pictures. He had two shots of his family on the beach. One had the whole beach but one of his daughters was standing weird. The other had a better shot of the family but most of the beach was cropped out. He wanted to know if I could put the two together. I said I would give it a shot. It ended up being a little more worth than originally anticipated but it kind of turned out alright. If you didn't know that it had been altered, meaning you weren't looking for discrepancies, you probably would think it looks like a nice family portrait. But if you look closely you can tell the family is slightly blurrier than the rest of the picture because the second picture was quite a bit blurrier than the first picture. Just don't look too closely.

Tonight I eventually got around to watching and summarizing the webinar on the art of scanning. It was actually kind of interesting, and entertaining because the presenter had a good sense of humor. I learned some things, too. I had been avoiding it mostly because of the summarizing thing, and then having to relate it to academic libraries, but I powered through. Now I just have to comment on other posts throughout the week. Piece of cake. I could even start working on my research paper. But I probably won't.

Now it is after 11:30PM and I am tired. I got a lot of sleep last night but I am not that lucky tonight. Hopefully I will make it through the work day without falling asleep at my desk.

October 26, 2015

 I went to bed late last night and it took me forever to fall asleep. I got maybe five hours of sleep so that was great.

This morning we had our evacuation drill. The last couple of years I have been driving down to our evacuation point with the librarian and a few other people to help set up. This year I got a yellow vest and an intersection to block off while the kids crossed. This was the street the church was on that we were evacuating to, which was a pretty decent walk from the school, so I ended up getting a ride with the librarian again because I'm lazy.

I had two observations about the evacuation, both related to the fact that it is spirit week at school and today was pajama day. The first, the library clerk, who is an older lady, gets really into spirit week and dressing up for things in general. Today she was wearing her pajamas, a green robe, and her hair was messed up. She rode with us to the church and I mentioned that it kind of looked like we had abducted her from somewhere because none of the rest of us in the car had participated in pajama day. The second, so many of the kids were in pajamas, and with them all walking along the sidewalk to the church, it looked like the orphanage had burned down in the middle of the night.

I ended up only having one class in the lab throughout the entire day. That made for a boring day. I fixed the printer in the SPED lab but that was about it for productivity. I spent a lot of time looking at reviews for office chairs. I switch back and forth between two right now, one that is really old but has held up well, and the other I got for my birthday a few years ago. I kind of want to invest a little more money and get one that is built to be sat in for long periods of time, because I spend a lot of time at my computer. They have “gaming” ones now that are pricey but are supposed to be really comfortable. The main selling points for me are that you can rock back really far, which I like, and also recline the back almost horizontal. I probably won't buy a new chair any time soon because I'm also still interested in getting a sewing machine, but it is fun to look.

We had an assembly this afternoon with the local college's women's tennis team, with a surprise appearance from the mascot. The head coach, who's kid goes to our school, got a grant for our school to get tennis equipment so this was the kickoff to a week-long tennis unit in PE. The most interesting thing about the tennis team was that other than the assistant coach and one of the players, all the other players and the main coach were from different countries. Interesting.

For the rest of the afternoon, with no classes showing up to the lab, I looked for articles for my research paper. I found some good ones, and some that don't relate to my paper but I saved because I want to read them later.

On my way home I stopped by Target to get a few things. Then I didn't really do anything the rest of the night. I had lofty goals of watching the hour-long webinar and summarizing it for class but I'm freaking tired after so little sleep last night. So that's on my list of things for tomorrow. It's not quite nine o'clock now but I'm struggling to stay awake. Tomorrow will be better.

October 25, 2015

 I think I am beginning to hit a wall when it comes to school. On paper, since last January I have only had two weeks where I wasn't taking a class. One week between Spring and Summer, and one week between Summer and Fall. I actually had almost two weeks after Summer because I finished early but I was still technically enrolled in two classes. Even when I have had downtime there was still the stress of being in a class, even if it was just floating beneath the surface. It's exhausting and I am starting to feel a bit burnt out. Part of it could also be do to me just going into one of my slumps where I generally feel like crap, but I think that is in turn, due to constant schoolwork. I'm not a fan of this feeling.

I spent my morning and a couple hours after lunch reading textbook chapters and articles. That's all I managed to do today. I wanted to do the assignment for this week but that involved watching an hour-long webinar, summarizing it, and talking about it from the perspective of the type of library we want to work in. That last bit is part of the reason I didn't do it today because the few webinars that sounded really interesting to me pertained more to a public library than an academic library. Also, the quality of webinars are always shit. They're almost always just PowerPoint slideshows and the microphones are hard to listen to. I just couldn't put up with an hour of that today after all of the dry reading I did earlier. Hopefully tomorrow after work.

I also didn't work on my research paper at all. I've got just under three weeks to finish it. Plenty of time if I would actually put the time in and work on it. I am reminded that I really dislike writing research papers, even though this one is on an interesting topic. I like doing the research (most of the time), which is why I want to be a librarian, but I don't like putting it all together in paper form. I'll get through it.

Tonight after dinner I played more Minecraft. I added a few more cross stitch patterns. That was easily the highlight of my day. Just getting to turn off my brain and focus on counting blocks for various patterns.

I think we have a full week of work this week. Maybe. I'm kind of looking forward to that because I've had enough time sitting at home, feeling crappy because I'm not being productive. Hopefully being back at work and around people will get me out of my funk.

October 24, 2015

 I spent a lot of time today look for articles for my research paper. Not as much time as I probably should have, but still a lot of time throughout the day. I ended up with seven, eight if you count the one I requested through interlibrary loan. And the reference sections of those articles will hopefully lead to several more articles. I am hoping that as I search and collect articles I will get a better idea of what I actually want my paper to turn into. I have learned that research often evolves throughout the process. At least that is what I'm going with this time around because I don't quite have a clear idea of what I want to write about.

Also related to school, I went through I marked all the chapters and downloaded the articles I need to read for class this week. The goal will be to read all of that tomorrow. I can't wait.

Tonight after dinner I did laundry and played Minecraft. I added three more cross stitch patterns to my new cross stitch world. It really makes me want to cross stitch. Hopefully sometime soon. I kind of want to make my mom a little owl for her birthday. Or Christmas.

Now I'm going to go to bed because I am tired, have a headache, and it has taken me an hour to write this because I keep getting distracted. I need sleep.

October 23, 2015

 This morning I woke up around 7:30AM and watched a little opossum in the backyard. It was on the patio eating fallen birdseed. Every now it would stop and look up at the trees and eventually it must have heard something it didn't like because it ran off. We have one or two big ones that come into the yard and they are kind of ugly but the little one is really cute. I have to desire to make friends with it but I will watch it. Speaking of the bigger one(s), Alfie caught another one and brought it up on the deck the other morning. My mom saw it when she went to let them in. At first she was afraid it was dead but after about ten minutes it regained consciousness. She said it looked around completely confused, like it had no idea where it was or how it got there. I imagine that is kind of what it feels like to blackout after drinking. It was eventually able to find its way down the stairs and back to the yard but it crapped all the way down. I can't blame it. I'm hoping they are learning not to come into the yard but I'm not so sure.

Today was a bit of a fail in terms of schoolwork. I think it was a mistake to give myself the morning off because that pretty much turned into the rest of the day. I looked over the selection list I created and sent that off to my group member who is compiling all of the lists. And that was pretty much it. I'm really hoping my slacking doesn't come back to bite me. I will say that even when I'm slacking I'm still constantly thinking about school stuff, so things are happening, they just aren't always that productive.

I spent my day watching a lot of livestreams and YouTube videos. I got into the creative livestreams on Twitch and watched several people draw, someone working on a cosplay costume, someone sewing a dress, and someone crocheting. That gave me the idea to livestream my next cross stitch. Not really for the sake of letting people watch, but because it will be recorded on Twitch and then I can upload it to YouTube, unlisted, and be able to watch the whole process. It will give me a better idea of how long a cross stitch actually takes me, and I could potentially edit the videos together and speed it up so I can see the whole thing come together quickly.

Thinking about this got me into the streaming mood. I made a banner and profile picture for Twitch based on the offline and intermission screens I made. Then I actually streamed a bit of Creativerse just to make sure I remembered how to do all the streaming things.

Tonight I was still avoiding schoolwork and I had the idea of making my cross stitch patterns in Minecraft. Pixel art in Minecraft is a thing that people do and cross stitch is basically pixel art. I created a flat world and started off fairly simple with the next phrase I want to cross stitch. It took awhile but it was fun. I also streamed it just for the sake of being able to get the video. I could just record the video directly but then I'd have to upload it to YouTube. By livestreaming I don't have to worry about taking up space on my computer, everything is handled online.

I also watched a livestream today of the coast of Mexico as a hurricane rolled in. The feed wasn't great so I might as well have just been watching a slideshow, but it was still interesting.

We had a family dinner night at the Chinese buffet. Always delicious. I had rice noodles, green beans, fried rice, roasted potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and mozzarella sticks. I stopped myself at two plates because I knew I would regret it if I didn't. Two was probably too much but whatever.

It is now one o'clock in the morning so I am going to go to bed. Tomorrow I will be researching my research paper. Sources will be collected.

October 22, 2015

 I kind of blew off the morning but I got to work after lunch. And I worked until dinner. And then after dinner I worked until sometime after eleven o'clock. And, after reading hundreds of book reviews I finally hit my $2600 budget. I actually went $8.42 over but I figured better over than under. And tax isn't figured in, so really I went way over, but this way there will be options. I ended up with 142 books. In terms of a library, that's not a lot of books. In terms of my own collection, that's still not a lot of books. But having to pick all of them individually based on a pre-defined subject and time frame and using book reviews, made it feel like a million books. I'm done now though. I'll look over it tomorrow and check for any errors and then send it off to my group member who is going to organize all the different lists.

With most of my day spent reading, I didn't really do much else. I finished watching Back To The Future 3 this morning and throughout the day I watched YouTube videos and a few livestreams, but that's pretty much it. It was a very productive but uneventful day.

Tomorrow, I'm probably going to blow off my morning again as a break from everything today. My afternoon needs to be filled with research for my academic libraries paper. That is a thing that really needs to happen.

October 21, 2015

 I spent most of my day at work reading book reviews. It was a slow day but at least I made progress on my project. I had the usual classes in the lab and this afternoon we had a character assembly. On the way there a second grader sneezed and ended up with the biggest booger hanging from her nose that I have ever seen. She immediately stopped and said she needed a Kleenex. The closest room that I thought I could find one was kindergarten so I told her to come with me and we went down and got her a Kleenex. This was good because she ended up being recognized for a big award and then later also got a character award.

After work I got Chipotle and my Powerball ticket before heading home. I didn't show any videos after dinner because it was a slow week for videos. This was alright though because today was Back To The Future Day (because this is the date they go to in Back To The Future 2) so we ended up watching the first movie during dinner. There was a marathon on so I spent the rest of the night watching the other two movies. I'm actually still watching the third one. I'm freaking tired though so we'll see how close it is to being over when I finish this. I might have to finish it tomorrow.

While watching those movies I played Minecraft. I rebuilt my enchantment area, cleaned up my branch mine a little, and did a lot of mining. It was a nice zoning out kind of night. I figured I earned it after spending all day working on the collection development project.

I have the next two days off from work and I will hopefully be spending most of that time on schoolwork. I need to finish the collection development project this weekend and I also need to get a substantial start on my research paper. Or at least collect enough resources so I can start writing it next week.

Now, I think I'm going to go to bed. There is another hour and a half to go in the movie and I don't want to be up that long. It'll just be something to look forward to tomorrow.

October 20, 2015

 I briefly jumped into Creativerse this morning to check out the creative mode, which they call creation. Turns out it is more like Minecraft's peaceful mode, rather than creative mode. You still have to collect and craft everything in the game, and it seems like all the mobs are still there, they just don't attack you. Unless you attack them. So it's not really what I was looking for. I would like to just build stuff. Maybe someday.

Today was a lot like yesterday. I had classes and small groups in the lab and I had my small reading group in second grade. And that was about it. In my downtime I read book reviews for my collection development project. I can't remember the totals but I am fairly certain I hit the halfway mark. Only $1300 more to spend.

When I got home from work I managed to finish my weekly assignment for my collection development class. I had one or two searches that were as difficult as some of the ones last night but then it was smooth sailing. I figured I'd only make it through half of what I had left but I managed the whole thing, so that was a nice surprise.

Sometime after dinner I went and picked up my sister and we went to hang out with my grandma because she is in town for a day or two. She went out to dinner with my step-mom and awhile later my brother and dad got home from a fire meeting. I was finally able to give my dad his belated birthday presents, less than two months late. Not bad.

I got home around eleven o'clock and we are now approaching midnight. Tomorrow will probably be a long, tired day. Something to look forward to. I'll end with a few second grader quotes, with the names changed to protect the innocent.

2^nd grader talking to the principal in her very staccato/enunciated/robotic voice: I have two things to tell you. I am not a fan of Mrs. So-and-so. And I like your necklace.”

The same second grader came up to me today after another second grader had accident sat at her computer: “He is tampering with my seat.”

The second grade teacher was telling me that one of her kids was pretty smart but didn't have very good social skills. As an example she said the second grader came up to her the other day and said she didn't like one of her classmates. She may have even said it to the other girl's face. The response the teacher wanted to give but couldn't was: “No one likes her, but we can't say that out loud.”

October 19, 2015

 It is nearly eleven o'clock, I've got a headache, and I'm tired. Maybe this will be a short entry.

At work today I installed a few printers on the new speech teacher's laptop, I put some shortcuts and installed a couple programs on a couple laptops for one of the third grade teachers, I helped out with literacy centers in one of the kindergarten classes, and I had various classes and groups in the lab throughout the day. In my free time I worked on my collection development project. I made it past $1000 so I'm nearly halfway there. Hopefully I can surpass the halfway mark tomorrow.

Tonight I briefly played Minecraft after dinner just to check out a server I read about that is supposed to be the biggest and longest running server. Also the worst. There weren't many people on when I got in and none of them seemed to be around the spawn so I was able to make it out without a problem and found enough apples to keep me alive. Then I found a portal, ran through the Nether for awhile until I found another portal, and then wandered around the world for awhile before building a boat and setting off into the ocean. And then I got kicked because of a server error. I took that as a sign to do schoolwork.

Instead of a discussion, or painful group project, this week in my collection development class we have to conduct four different searches on the library's website and write down information about the first ten results for each search. The goal is to get a full-text copy of each result. The first search went pretty well because I was able to find everything fairly easily. The second search ended up taking a lot longer because I had to do a lot of extra work in an attempt to locate the full-text copy of something. My goal was to finish half of the assignment and I did that. That leaves twenty more searches to go. Maybe ten tomorrow and ten the next day.

I really need to start working on my research paper. At least devote a little bit of time for it each day. I would feel a lot better about it if I at least a little bit of information on it. It is due in less than a month, which is going to be here before I know it. Hooray.

Now I'm going to bed.

October 18, 2015

 Before lunch, which I delayed slightly, I was able to finish the five textbook chapters I needed to read for this week. After lunch I read the one article and read through the notes of a slideshow. It was a chore. But I finished it. I was glad that all the chapters were in an actual book and not PDFs because I don't think my eyes would have survived five chapters in PDF form. I want an iPad-sized e-reader so I can see a full PDF page at time and have the e-ink display that won't fry my eyes. I have a Kindle but the six-inch screen is not PDF friendly. I did a little searching and Sony has a thing called Digital Paper that has a thirteen-inch screen and would be perfect for viewing full-page PDFs. It even has a pen for writing notes. The downside is that it is $800. I could print every PDF article I need to read for the rest of my classes on really fancy paper and not come close to $800, so I'm going to pass.

I spent the rest of my afternoon and a couple hours after dinner reading reviews for books and selecting more for my collection development project. I am now up to thirty-nine books and almost $730. I'm getting there. Slowly. I think it is due on November 1^st but I would like to have it done by the end of the week so I can put more focus on my research paper, which I have yet to really work on. I don't quite have a clear vision of where I want to go with it yet and that is largely due to not having any sources yet. I have some vague ideas but I won't really know until I start looking through articles.

Earlier this weekend I found out about the new Coheed and Cambria CD, which I then listened to several times on repeat. I have spent the rest of the weekend working through their other CDs. I probably haven't listened to them since college, so I've missed out on quite a bit. I am falling in love with them again, though, because their music is just so good. It makes me want to dig out my guitar and my bass and start playing again.

Tonight I played more Creativerse. I climbed to the top of a really tall tree and then worked my way back down collecting all the wood as I went. I wanted to make wood flooring for my house and I made a few but I'm not sure how I feel about it. I might switch to stone with carpet. I also made a cooking station and a couple bowls of soup, which will hopefully be more effective than eating the red mushrooms that I am currently eating. I want to start a new creative world and see what that is like because there are so many building options that will take me forever to get in the regular world. The regular game is quite a bit more tedious than Minecraft and it takes a lot longer to accomplish things. I think I might enjoy the creative mode better, if it is the same as Minecraft where you have access to all the blocks and don't have to worry about surviving. What I would really like is a Creativerse skin for Minecraft. All the game mechanics of Minecraft with the visuals of Creativerse because it looks so good.

I have no idea what I'll be doing tomorrow. We have parent-teacher conferences this week so we have Thursday and Friday off from work. We really don't work much this month. I can't complain but I probably will when I get my next paycheck. On the plus side of that, I don't have to pay for health insurance anymore, so at least I don't have to worry about that.

October 17, 2015

 Most of my day was devoted to working on my collection development project. Or thinking about the project. Or avoiding the project. Either way, that was my day. I have a newfound respect for librarians that have to buy books, especially one at a time. I totally get the appeal of buying packages to avoid having pick out individual books. I spent hours today reading through syllabi and reading book reviews trying to find Sociology-related books. I'm lucky that it is a fairly broad subject area but it is still narrow enough to make it a bit of a challenge. Added to that is the goal of not having any books over five years old. I'm trying to be less selective, however, because I have $2600 to spend. So far I have found eighteen books and spent $358. A drop in the bucket. With an average of about $20 per book that means I have over 100 books to go. Good grief.

In the process of looking for books I came across Jane Elliot's anti-racism experiment with her third grade class back in the 60s. She had the idea after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and she was struggling with how to explain it to her class. Her idea was to divide her class by eye color. One day the brown-eyed kids were made to feel more important and the blue-eyed kids were inferior. The next day it switched. I ended up watching two documentaries, one of the original experiment and one where she did the same thing with a group of college kids. It was shocking how quickly the kids changed, assuming their new roles, either seeing themselves as inferior or seeing the other group as inferior. It was pretty powerful.

I called it a night after dinner and played video games. Like last night I started with Minecraft and then switched over to Creativerse. In Creativerse I did more digging and exploring, upgraded some things, started a garden, dug out more to make my house bigger, and decorated the outside a bit. While doing that I watched YouTube videos and two Kevin Hart specials. Not a bad night.

I forgot to mention this but yesterday morning I watched Tremors 5. I had no idea there was even a plan to make another movie in the franchise and there it was on Netflix. I own the box set of the first four so of course I had to watch the fifth one. And it was surprisingly good. I'll have to go back and watch some of the other sequels but I think this one was better than some of the previous ones. That was surprising enough but the co-star of the movie was Jamie Kennedy. I didn't even know he was still doing stuff. I'd watch it again.

Tomorrow I want to do my reading for the upcoming week and maybe add another twenty books to my collection development project. Lofty goals.

October 16, 2015

 Today was not a very productive day. I did things but not anything I planned to do. Those things being finding Sociology books and working on my research paper. That is probably going to come back to bite me in the near future. I have fallen out of the school mode and I've still got two classes to worry about.

I emailed my metadata professor today to see if there was anything I could do to earn 0.05% to bring me up from an 'A-' to an 'A' and she said not to worry about it. She had already rounded my grade up to a 96% and even though it isn't reflected in the unofficial grades on Canvas it will show up as the final grade. That was good to hear. Now I can officially stop stressing about that class. It feels pretty good.

I called to cancel/renew my XM radio today. Every time I go into it fully prepared to cancel but then they give me a good deal and I keep it going. I'm a little afraid that if I cancel I'll immediately be back in the mood to listen to the radio again. I also want to see how far they'll go to keep me from canceling. I always stop when I get five months for five dollars a month but I wonder how much lower they go. My favorite part about calling is when the person on the phone reads me my email address because it always catches them by surprise. You can tell they start to read it and it hits them a split second later that it is ridiculous. The lady today had that moment of hesitation in the middle and then laughed a little and said it was a pretty good email address.

The sub-group of my collection development group, the one writing the collection development policy, sent out their finished policy for the rest of the group to look over. They sent out a rough draft earlier in the week maybe to me and one of the other group members to look over. I gave a little feedback on that version and on this one most of my feedback was just grammatical and formatting stuff, which they appreciated. Now I need to step up and finish my part of the project, selecting Sociology books.

I picked two new wallpapers for my monitors today. I kept the cupcake and typewriter ones and I would have kept the turtle one but it disappeared and I couldn't find where I saved it. I added a Halloween drawing that looks really cool and a Fall picture from the Rocky Mountain National Park that is beautiful. I put it on the top monitor and I spent a lot of time today just staring at it and pretending I was there, walking on the trail.

I listened to the new Coheed and Cambria CD several times today. Even as I write this entry. It is either their first non-concept album in a long time or their first one ever, which would also constitute as a long time. I like it. And it helps that I don't have to try and pay attention to the story being told across all the songs, like their previous albums. Although there could be a story, I guess, but I tune most of the lyrics anyway, so I wouldn't know. It's a good CD, though.

Tonight I played a little bit of Minecraft and then I downloaded Creativerse and tried that out for awhile. It is a game that is free to play this weekend and I didn't know anything about it until today. I was watching a video on YouTube that was a recording of a Minecraft livestream and the two guys briefly talked about one of the guys who used to play on their server but had recently switched over to playing Ark because he got in early on that and his YouTube channel exploded in popularity. That led them to a discussion of only playing one game, like Minecraft, or branching out and trying other things. And if you only played Minecraft, maybe adding mods in and not just playing the vanilla version of the game. Then one of the guys mentioned Creativerse being free this weekend so I looked into it. It looks like a fancy version of Minecraft in terms of graphics and they throw in some more hi-tech kind of stuff.

Despite looking pretty cool, I will admit I was little skeptical when I first got in the game. I really liked the look of it but I wasn't completely convinced. I'm kinda into it now though. It's better once you get the first death out of the way. And then the several after that. It also helps once you're able to start crafting more things. My goal now is to get the last few ingredients for the obsidian digging tool because that unlocks the hoe or plow tool so I can plant the lettuce and turnip seeds I found. Farms are usually one of my first goals when I create a new world in Minecraft and that seems to be the same case here. Eventually it would be cool to build a house but I've dug out a pretty cool little place in the side of a hill that I'm happy with at the moment. I will probably end up buying the game. Not only is it pretty fun but it is also 50% off this weekend. It seems to be one of the most polished early access games I have played, definitely more so than Minecraft was when I bought it way back in the day. I don't see Creativerse dethroning Minecraft as my go-to escape but I am sufficiently intrigued.

Tomorrow, school stuff. I need to pick out some Sociology books and I need to find some sources for my research paper. Those are the only two things I should be concerned with.

October 15, 2015

 Last night I put my cutout in my car and this morning I left about ten minutes early so I could get to work before the librarian. And it worked because I beat her by a little less than ten minutes. Last night one of the kindergarten teachers, a fifth grade teacher, resource teacher, and para went to the school and decorated the window of the library and hung a sheet from the roof of the building. The sheet was originally hung up by the kindergarten teacher when the resource teacher turned fifty. They crossed out her name and wrote the librarian's name.

When I got to school I put my cutout in the library and that reminded the custodian that he knew where the cardboard cutout was of the old fourth grade teacher, so he went and got it and we put that one up, too. There was also a cake that one of the office ladies made and black balloons everywhere. When the librarian got there she loved it. Most of the staff were wearing black, including myself. I opted for a black hoodie instead of my usual green one. Awhile after that we all went into the gym and the principal had the whole school sing the librarian happy birthday. After that I went back to the library and gave the librarian the cross stitch I made. I didn't want to do it when everyone was around because I didn't want the attention. The fifth grade teacher ended up coming in, and then the principal, so they saw it, but that was better than everyone being there. The librarian ended up hanging it above the printer.

The rest of the day was pretty boring. When I didn't have classes in the lab, most of my day was spent editing pictures for the end of the year slideshow. I made it through all of the ones I found on the shared drive. I probably won't start asking for baby pictures until we come back from winter break but we'll see. If I can't find any more projects to work on I might see if I can get the pictures early. Or I could just work on schoolwork.

After work I didn't really do much and for dinner I had the second half of my Chipotle burrito. It was really good. Better than the first half. The rest of my night was spent watching YouTube videos, playing Minecraft, and finishing the first season of iZombie. In Minecraft I took a break from making minecart tracks and started digging a branch mine because I was in the mood to just zone out and collect resources. Not think about building. Minecraft is my happy place. Although I have been playing too much this week and I need to shift my focus back to school stuff.

Grades for the metadata crosswalk and the last discussion were posted today and I got 100% on both. Unfortunately that only brought my grade up to a 95.95%. That is 0.05% or 0.15 points away from an 'A'. Frustrating. Not counting the four and a half points I missed for turning in the assignment that I completely forgot about several days late (and I got 100% on the assignment, which I did in one night), I only missed one point in the class. That was on a discussion where I posted three times instead of four or more. Even though the discussions call for you to post once and then respond to two other posts. And my posts were long, even if there were only three. So missing a whole point for that really sucks because that is what screwed me over in the end. It's disappointing knowing that I did all the work for an 'A' but made one mistake and lost it. I don't think the grades are final yet so there is still a small chance that she would give me 0.15 points. A professor last year gave me 0.20 I think when my group grade dropped me down to an 'A-', so there is a precedent, but that was a different professor and this time it was my own fault for losing points. At least I know I earned an 'A', even if the transcript says 'A-'.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it is late and I'm tired. I have the day off from work tomorrow so my goal is to get some schoolwork done. I need to make some serious progress on my research paper and I would like to start finding books for my collection development project. If I could accomplish both of those things it would be awesome. I'll settle for one but I'll shoot for both.

October 14, 2015

 I have a headache and today wasn't too exciting so hopefully this will go quick.

I got caught up with everything at work today. I printed the last MAP reports because they were finally updated. I checked on the new fifth grade teacher's laptop, using my new display port to HDMI cable to plug into the projector and that worked, so I'm assuming the problem is with her VGA port and not a graphics issue. But I could be wrong. I printed DIBELS reports for the principal, which was mildly tedious because they needed to be printed front-to-back to save paper but each kid had three sheets of paper. So the first two were front-to-back and then there was a one-sided sheet. The printer doesn't have a setting for that so I figured out the page numbers for the front-to-back sheets, printed those first, and then went back and printed the one-sided sheets. There were classes in the lab but nothing eventful happened. And then I ran out of stuff to do so I started looking up stuff for my research paper. I didn't make that much progress but every little bit counts.

After work I picked up Chipotle and I felt bad because there was a moment of confusion and I ended up with meat on my burrito so the girl had to start over. In the end my burrito was pretty good, though, so it all worked out.

After dinner I played Minecraft because that's the mood I've been in lately. I need to step up the school work though. I've got to come up with a selection list of Sociology books for my collection development class, and these are books that could actually be purchased because this project is for an actual library, so there's a little bit of pressure. And there's the research paper. So even though I'm done with one class I need to keep my head in the game and finish out the semester strong.

Tonight I wrapped the cross stitch for the librarian because her birthday is tomorrow. I think I did a pretty good wrapping job. So many layers. I wrapped the box in newspaper, and stuffed a bunch of loose newspaper in the box, but the cross stitch itself in wrapped in pages from my desk calendar because I had them laying around for some reason. Tomorrow I will need to juggle carrying the present in (which I put in a canvas bag to make it a little easier) and my cutout, because I had a request to bring that in. I'm not going to leave it at school though because it gets dinged up when it is moved all over the building because people aren't that careful with it. It's going to be a pain in the ass taking it and bringing it back in the same day but I'll survive.

Now I'm going to go to bed because of the aforementioned headache and I'm tired. I haven't gotten a lot of sleep this week so tonight I'll make up for that.

October 13, 2015

 I am tired so I will probably forget stuff that happened today. I guess that is what tomorrow's entry is for.

I finished editing the bookcase pictures and crafted a decently worded email to go with them. Then I sent it to the principal so she could read it before I sent it out to the 1800+ people in the district. It's a tad bit nerve-racking sending an email out to that many people. The principal thought it was pretty good so I pulled the trigger and sent it to everyone. Not too long after my inbox started pinging and I got quite a few emails in a very short amount of time. Overall I got somewhere between twenty and thirty, which isn't a lot considering the total number I sent it to, but that is still a lot. Most were interested in the bookcase but a few just sent an email thanking me for making them laugh, so that was pretty cool. It only took four minutes to get rid of the bookcase. And all the books that have been sitting in the workroom since the beginning of the school year.

This morning I told a second grader to put his headphones on in the lab when he was working on Compass Learning so he could hear what the little cartoon animals were trying to teach him. He responded with “I can read lips... You don't know my life.” I responded with “They're cartoons, that's not how that works. Put your headphones on.” He's an annoying kid and it's only getting worse as he gets older. He's really disrespectful.

This afternoon he came back to the lab, dropped off by a para to work on Compass Learning again. I'm assuming he didn't have a good day in the classroom. I wasn't opposed to this because he needs all the extra education he can get and he generally screws around instead of trying to learn. Last week he worked for maybe five minutes out of twenty-five and spent the rest of the time either in the bathroom or repeatedly screwing up while logging in. Anyway, this afternoon I was standing in the back keeping an eye on him and about five minutes later he turned around and asked me what time it was. I told him that it didn't matter and to get back to work. Then he told me it was time for him to go. I told him he didn't even know what time it was and he needed to get back to work. Thirty seconds later he asked me again, I said it wasn't important, he said he needed to go back to the classroom, I said someone would come for him, he said it was time for him to go back, I asked him what time it was. Variations on this theme went on for awhile and he eventually gave up. And then one of his classmates came and got him.

Along with all that stuff and classes in the lab throughout the day, I added shortcuts to three laptops for one of the sixth grade teachers, I returned the laptop carrt I was working on last Friday to the third floor, I made classes for a teacher in Compass Learning, I helped a teacher with her phone, I helped the kitchen ladies with Excel and their printer, I tried to help the new fifth grade teacher with her laptop and printer, I helped with second grade literacy centers, I made a sub chart for one of the SPED teachers, and there was probably some more stuff mixed in there. It was a fairly busy day. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself tomorrow. Hopefully something comes up.

After work I mailed a bill, bought a Powerball ticket, and picked up my framed cross stitch. I really like how it turned out. I was a little uncertain when I was picking out the mat color but it turns out I didn't need to be. The frame shop hasn't failed me yet.

Tonight I had the last of my barbecue pineapple pizza so that was kind of sad. What wasn't sad was the arrival of my new hard drive, flash drive, and the connector so I could hook up my other TV to my computer, giving me a total of four monitors. It took me way too long to clone my old SSD to my new one but I eventually got it figured out, and got the boot order changed, and now everything appears to be running smoothly. I'm not going to wipe the old SSD for awhile until I know the new one isn't going to crap out on me.

Now I'm going to go to bed so I can wake up see what happens with my day. This morning I watched iZombie and played Minecraft before work. I will probably do the same thing tomorrow morning. Something to look forward to.

October 12, 2015

 One thing I forgot to mention in terms of productivity yesterday was that I bought a new SSD for my computer. I also bought a connector so I can connect my second TV to my computer, bringing me up to four monitors. Hooray.

A good majority of my day was spent reading. It was pretty much all about dealing with serials in collection development, both print and digital. Slightly interesting, and most likely important in my future career, but reading a couple chapters and a few articles back-to-back was a little rough. I managed to avoid a nap so I was able to finish everything before dinner.

I spent the rest of the night playing Minecraft and I started watching iZombie on Netflix. In Minecraft I made a lot of progress on my minecart tracks. I built two more depots, finished one tunnel, dug a new tunnel, and almost finished laying the track in that tunnel. I also started making the tunnels look better. Progress. As for iZombie, it took a couple episodes but now I'm a fan. It might be my new morning show, until I finish it.

I also watched Parallels, a movie which felt like it should have been a TV show. It seemed like one giant buildup for something big, like an extended TV pilot, and then it was over, because it was a movie that forgot the third act. The basic premise was that there was a building that would transport people to a parallel Earth every thirty-six hours. Intrigue and mystery was added into the mix but was never resolved. I was slightly disappointed.

Tomorrow it is back to work. I checked my work email today and found I've got at a least a couple projects to attend to in the morning. Along with finishing up the pictures of the bookcase and sending out an email to the district. I got a call today from the frame shop letting me know my book cross stitch is done so I will be picking that up after work. Other than that, who knows what the day will hold.

October 11, 2015

 Today I finished up my metadata crosswalk and submitted it, replied to a few discussion posts, added a bit more to the clusterfuck week-long group post, read over a draft of my groups collection development policy, and I vacuumed. So it was a pretty productive day. I've been wanting to use my new vacuum for quite some time now and today was finally the day. I think the suction might be a little too good because it was a bit hard pushing it over the thick carpet, but other than that it seemed to do a pretty good job. There really wasn't anything visible that I was wanting to vacuum, however, so I can only assume it did a good job.

I also got to play a little bit of Minecraft today, in celebration of finishing my metadata class. I fully dug and laid the rail for another minecart track and made the small depot for it near my Nether portal. Then I dug out most of another tunnel for a track that will run to a spot that I want to eventually build a library on. I think I still want to dig one out to the underwater temple and possible one over to my farm, even though it is right next to my house. We'll see.

We had a family pizza night and I got barbecue pineapple pizza. It was delicious. My friend was in town so after dinner I went over to her parent's house and watched the sixth movie in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise with her, her mom, and her sister. I had no idea there were that many in the series. And apparently there is at least one more, not counting Freddy VS Jason (which is the only one I have seen). Her and her mom have been working on a marathon of the movies yesterday and today. The movie was good in that kind of cheesy, ridiculous 90s horror movie kind of way. I liked it. At some point I need to check out the other movies because the sixth one is apparently very meta because it involves Freddy going after the actress who played a lady in the movies within the first movies. It makes sense. Of all the creepy things in the movie, the worst was Freddy's tongue coming out of the phone. I do like older horror movies much better than modern ones because the scary stuff isn't as real. All the gore and stuff in modern movies is just too realistic. I don't need to see realistic bone breaks and horrific accidents. That's just not my thing.

Tomorrow my main goal is to read stuff for the upcoming week. Now that I don't have metadata reading it should be a lot more manageable. I should also probably start researching my paper for my academic libraries class. And looking for books for my group project in my collection development class. We'll see what I get done.

October 10, 2015

 I'll be honest. I didn't spend the entire day working on my Metadata crosswalk. I did work on it off and on throughout the day, though, which is kind of what I expected to happen. And it worked out because I eventually managed to finish the assignment. Minus the reference list, which is probably the easiest part, so there is no real reason why I didn't do that other than I was kind of done for the day. It won't take me too long to do that tomorrow and it'll give me another chance to read over my paper again. I also posted a summary of the assignment to the discussion thread and responded to one of the posts. I'll respond to a few more tomorrow and submit the assignment, officially finishing my metadata class. Thankfully. It has been very interesting but also stressful.

There is an advanced metadata class that starts after this one, which is a two credit hour class. I think the idea is that you would take those two together in one semester, leaving a single three credit hour class to bring it up to a full six credit hours in the semester. That way you would have one class throughout the semester and then the two metadata classes, one after the other, which would mean you only had two classes at any given time, not three. Unfortunately for me, I wanted to take the academic libraries class this semester, which is two credit hours, and that left me needing one more credit hour. Metadata was used to fill that need and I wasn't even aware that it could be paired up with the second metadata class later in the semester. It's probably for the best though because after the stress from class I need a break. At least from metadata. I've still got plenty of work to do in my remaining two classes.

At one point during the day I opened the backdoor to check on the weather because it looked nice out and I wanted to open my window if it wasn't too hot. When I opened the door I was met by a pretty big spider, right at head level. Upon closer inspection I saw that it had a web across the entire doorway. Just the other night I had gone out to see if I could see the meteor shower (which I couldn't because it was cloudy) and I thought I felt a spider web on me. Not a full web, just a little string, but didn't think much of it. My main reason for going out that door is to release spiders I have caught in the basement. That usually happens at night and I usually turn off the light before I open the door because I want to reduce the chance of the bugs that hang out at the light swarming my face. I don't think I'm going to turn off the light anymore, because I'll probably forget to check first to see if there is a giant spider ready to touch my face. Although that also means I'll probably forget to not turn the light off. Basically, a big spider will probably be touching my face in the near future.

While working on my metadata crosswalk tonight Word froze on me. Not too long after I got a message about Word being unable to save a backup or something because my C:\ Drive was out of space. When I checked on that it turned out to be an accurate statement because I was at a big fat zero on my C:\ Drive. I've been dealing with that issue for awhile now because it is a small SSD but this is the first time I completely ran out of room. I ran CC Cleaner and found out that Chrome and Firefox were both taking up a whole bunch of space, Chrome in particular. After I ran the program and deleted all the temp files I gained back more than 8GB of space. That is crazy. I need to close my web browsers more often so they don't build up so much crap.

The experience of losing a few sentences of my paper in the crash was enough to get me to finally buy a new SSD before something worse happens. I've been looking at them for awhile but was putting it off because prices were continuing to drop and I didn't have a sufficient reason to spend the money. But now I do so I will be doing that tomorrow. It will also be a good excuse to finally use the gift card I got for my birthday. I also might pick up a cable so I can hook up my other TV to my computer so I can have four monitors. It would have come in handy during my metadata assignments when I had a million browser tabs and various Word documents and PDFs open.

Anyway, it is now two o'clock in the morning and I need to go to bed so I can wake up tomorrow and do things. Like turn in my metadata crosswalk, reply to some discussion posts, and try and add more to the group clusterfuck weekly assignment that has been causing me so much anxiety over the past week. Hooray.

October 9, 2015

 I'm tired. That seems to be my general state of being this week.

This morning I took pictures of the bookcase that no one at school wants so I can send out an email to the district to see if another school wants it. I took some without anything on it, with several books on it, and with sixteen reams of paper (just because). Throughout the rest of the day I edited the pictures to make them look better. I also cut out the bookcase and added it to a picture of a beach and to a picture of a pasture. Because of other things I didn't get around to actually sending the email so that will have to happen on Tuesday.

My favorite sub was there today so I got to talk to her for awhile. When I was clocking out for lunch she was in the office so we ended up sitting in the chairs in there while she waited on her lunch to arrive and talked about stuff.

I spent my entire afternoon installing Type to Learn on a laptop cart. Seventeen laptops altogether. It was kind of awful. It takes forever to install because it is a huge file (1GB) and it has to be on the computer or it takes even longer. The fasted solution ended up being downloading the file to a flash drive, copying it onto the laptop, installing it, and then deleted the setup file. Even with five laptops going at a time it took me four hours. With that and juggling classes coming into the lab at the same time, I didn't really have time to do anything else. Like sending the email about the bookcase.

Tonight I had a Frosty for the first time in a long time. I want to say several years. It was really good.

I didn't work on my metadata crosswalk tonight. I did add a little to the group discussion thing for my collection development class. That damn thing. It is a big reason for my lack of motivation this week, which is impacting my metadata class. The whole assignment is kind of an unorganized clusterfuck. A poorly designed assignment. The groups should have been three or four people at most and been restrained to the case study. There should have also been more communication within the groups about dividing up the work. Not the free-for-all it turned into, especially after individuals did most of the original assignment by themselves before anyone else had a chance to contribute, leading to the expansion of the assignment. But at this point I'm beating a dead horse. I just hope I am able to contribute enough that I don't lose too many points. My frustration about this assignment and the anxiety it has produced has been incredibly distracting all week. Hopefully next week we can go back to a regular discussion, with clearly defined guidelines.

For the past little while now I have been watching a Minecraft livestream that is in French. I don't even kind of speak French. I know they aren't talking about the game but other than that I don't have the slightest idea what the conversations are about. And the whole time the girl has just been building floor after floor of a big building. I originally turned it on as background to my work, figuring I wouldn't be distracted by the talking. Then I ended up not working.

Tomorrow. Metadata crosswalk. All day. Mostly. It will be done tomorrow so I will have time to edit it on Sunday before turning it in. That's the plan. I need to move on with my life and I can do that as soon as I finish that assignment because it will be the end of my metadata class. Hopefully the rest of the semester will be a little less stressful without having to juggle three classes.

October 8, 2015

 Another day. They are kind of becoming blended together. I had classes in the lab this morning and this afternoon. In between I finished my MAP spreadsheets, printed them out, and gave them to teachers. This afternoon I had my second grade reading group again. On Tuesday we do vowel stuff and Thursday is Dolch word stuff. So today was Dolch word stuff and it went better than Tuesday.

After school my fifth grade teacher friend brought me a new office chair. I think she was originally sent by the office ladies to one of the kindergarten teachers, who then sent her to me because he already had one. But I didn't need a new chair because I got one two or three years ago. So she left with it. A short time later she when I went to clock out she was pushing it back down to the kindergarten rooms and I think checking with the other kindergarten teacher to see if she needed it. I leave the building that way so I ended up down there and we started talking with the one kindergarten teacher about it, trying to figure out what was up. A little while later the principal came down and got it. There is a little ramp and she wanted to push it down the ramp but there was a Boys & Girls Club girl (I think) sitting nearby with a kid so she decided against it. She then pushed it down the hall to see if one of the first grade teachers needed it before pushing it back into the office. And then came back and pushed it into the library, which is when I left, so who knows if that was the end of the journey.

Other things happened throughout the day but I kind of want to go to bed so we'll just skip over that. I worked on my metadata crosswalk assignment a little bit tonight. I still have a lot to do, mainly the summary and stuff, but I also still have a lack of motivation. I wish it actually was due tomorrow, like it was originally, so I could just get it over with. And maybe focus on the group thing in my collection development class, which still feels like a complete disaster. I think it is going to bone several people's grades, at least for this particular assignment, because the only real directions for the assignment were completely hijacked by one or two people, leaving everyone else having to make crap up. I'll probably be annoyed about it for quite some time.

Tomorrow my only real plan at work is to take a picture of a bookshelf that no one in the building wants and send it out to the district to see if anyone outside the building wants it. I'm not a fan of people who email the whole district but it is a good way to get rid of stuff. This being my one chance to do it, I want to have some fun with it. I'll probably end up just sending out a very plain email but maybe inspiration will strike.

October 7, 2015

 The metadata crosswalk assignment is frying my brain. More on that later.

Today at work I continued to do things. I emailed student pictures to someone at the central kitchen so they can be added into their system. We usually send over the CD that we get but this year we didn't get a CD so I talked to the cook at school to see what information the central kitchen actually needed. She wasn't sure so she gave me the name of the lady at the central kitchen so I sent her an email to see if she needed the pictures named with the student number or with the students' names or something else entirely. And just in case I attached all of the pictures named with the student number, which is apparently what she needed because she just emailed back a thank you.

I came close to finishing my spreadsheets for this round of testing. And I probably would have but I had classes in the lab almost all day, and it was an early release day. The day flew by really. And my brain is currently fried so I am having trouble coming up with things to write.

One funny moment that I can remember is when a second grader came down to get help with is laptop. We were standing near the doors of the lab, which were open, and the art teacher walked by to go to her small art closet across the hall. Out of nowhere the kid says “You changed your hair.” The art teacher replied that she had and the kid responded with “It's nice.” And the art teacher after a short pause, thanked him. Written out it sounds like nothing worth mentioning but it was just so odd. The kid is kind of a pain in the butt, so there's that, but he also sounded like a mobster in a movie giving a compliment. It's hard to convey. It was just odd.

After work I went and got gas and cleaned my windshield while I waited. Then I went over and finally got the book cross stitch I made last year framed. I meant to give it to the school librarian last year, but never got around to it and then didn't want to spend the money so late in the year with summer approaching. I finally took notice of it in my closet last week and I knew the librarian's birthday was sometime this month so I decided to get it framed today when I would have a little extra time. I'm interested to see how it turns out. Also, when I got home later I had an email that said the librarian's birthday is next Thursday. And I will be picking up the framed cross stitch next Wednesday. Perfect timing.

Next I stopped by the gas station to get my Powerball ticket before going to Target. I ended up running into my mom there, which was unexpected, so I ended up walking around with her while she finished her shopping. I also forgot to buy baby carrots.

I went home for awhile before going back out to pick up Chipotle. It ended up being an alright burrito. Hopefully the second half will be better. After dinner I showed some good videos, including several educational ones that involved vision and perception.

The rest of my night was spent fighting my lack of motivation and trying to figure out my metadata crosswalk. It is mildly overwhelming. Not because of the amount of work but because I feeling woefully unprepared for the activity. I have never worked in a library and haven't taken a cataloging class. This assignment is my first time actually looking at a MARC record, a very confusing one that isn't formatted very well in the Word document. So rather than this being an assignment about converting MARC to Dublin Core, it is more like trying to translate one language I don't speak into another language I don't speak. I'm having to learn all the minute details about MARC in order to figure out if it will map over to Dublin Core. And that involves a whole other level of interpretation. And all of the frustration that comes from being completely out of my depth and lost and everything else has dropped my already low motivation to practically negative levels. It's a struggle right now.

Regarding my other struggle, the group work for this week, apparently my group wasn't the only one that got completely boned by a eager early posters. I know this because the professor took the time to record a short video explaining what the other group members could do if all the information from the case study had been done. And that is to basically to a lot of freaking extra work that wouldn't have been necessary if the early posters weren't unintentionally selfish assholes. Not to be rude.

Now I'm going to go to bed. My goal every day has been to finish my metadata crosswalk and that hasn't happened yet so I'm bumping it to tomorrow. I need to just suck it up and finish it. Stop over thinking it (or more accurately over thinking about my lack of knowledge) and just do it. So that's on the agenda for tomorrow. When I will once again be tired, because it is late now, and unmotivated. Sounds like a winning combo.

October 6, 2015

 My work days have been so filled with work lately. It's both good and bad. Today I had several different small projects going at the same time and I kept pausing one thing to do another. It was mildly hectic but I got things done. I exported data about the school pictures so I could import it into Excel, format it, cut and paste it into Notepad, save it as a .bat file, and run it in order to rename all the pictures, in bulk, from the student number to the student name. It was a bit of a process but I figured it out last year or the year before and it saves me a hell of a lot of time. It took me for-freaking-ever to figure it all out in the first place but not having to individually rename 350 pictures was worth it. I also made some more sub charts and imported all the new pictures to Infinite Campus.

I had classes and small groups in the lab throughout the day. I think the small groups are part of the reason that my days feel non-stop this year. I'm kind of always on edge because I never really know when kids are coming in. I have some small groups scheduled in but there are also random other ones that just seem to show up. I'm not necessarily responsible for them but if they have problems I'm the one they ask. And I have to keep them in line if they appear to be going off task. Fun stuff.

I had my second grade literacy group for the first time today. The teacher has so many lower level kids this year, which is usually the group she takes, so she split them into two groups and I got one. It didn't go great today but most of that was my fault because I needed a refresher on long and short vowels. I was relying on the kids, who I already mentioned were the lower level kids, so who knows. The activity involved picking a small pictures, figuring out what word that picture was supposed to represent, and then writing that word in their vowel book. A book I actually made but that was last year and have since forgotten if long vowels say their name or short vowels. I think it's the long ones. That's what we were going with anyway. I'll do better next time.

I helped the other second grade teacher with an email issue where every time she emailed someone on her iPad she got a copy of her email in her inbox. Turns out in a recent update the option to do that was automatically checked. We figured it out and she asked if I drank pop or ate anything out of the vending machine. I said I did not so she just gave me fifty cents and it was pretty funny. I also maybe helped one of the kindergarten teachers with her iPad. I'll find out tomorrow if I remember to check in with her.

After work I had a haircut, which was at least a week overdue, and then I came home and did nothing. I ended up not working on my metadata crosswalk tonight because I had absolutely no motivation. It is really hard to have a full day of work and then come home and do more work. My motivation already sucks. I eventually managed to post a few times to the discussion threads in my academic library class. Earlier today I emailed the professor in my collection development class about the group assignment this week where one person did everything on Sunday. I didn't do it in a “throwing her under the bus” kind of way, just a “wondering what to do now” kind of way. She agreed with the suggestion of providing more detail and granularity. That still kind of sucks because it means everyone has to do more work than was initially required because of the over-eager posting of one person. Whatever.

Right now I'm watching a livestream of the closed beta for Star Wars: Battlefront. It is from EA and the Battlefield people but has a different feel than Battlefield. It has a much faster pace, for one, and seems more along the lines of Call of Duty but the deaths don't come as fast. I will probably never play it but it is fun to watch.

Now I'm going to go to bed. Tomorrow is an early release day so I should have plenty of time to work on my metadata crosswalk. In theory. The professor moved the due date from Friday to Sunday, so that makes me feel a little better. I would prefer to not push it to the weekend, though, because I still don't have a firm grasp on MARC and it's still going to require quite a bit of thought. So tomorrow. Things will happen.

October 5, 2015

 This morning I helped out in both kindergarten rooms for literacy centers. I might end up with a cold tomorrow because I got coughed on several times. But the kids were mostly well-behaved, so it could have been worse.

I printed off MAP reports today and gave them to the teachers. All except for one that I'm still waiting on for a score to be deleted. It is one of those tricky ones where the kid went so fast that a score doesn't show up on screen and they have to take the test again. But in reality they do get a score and it shows up in their overall score instead of the score they got the second time. It is annoying. I'm still working on my spreadsheets. I finished the main page but I also have a second page that shows the change from the previous test. I will get that to the teachers eventually.

This year instead of getting a CD with the school pictures on it we got a website where we can go and download the pictures. So that is what I did today. I would have preferred the CD because on the website you have to download a zip file with the picture software and all the pictures, which is exactly what the CD has, but it doesn't take as long to download. Whatever. Also annoying, is the fact that you can't get the hi-res pictures from the website, like we need for the yearbook, you still have to contact them and have them send you a CD with the hi-res pictures. I imagine the main reason for not having them on the site would be the increased bandwidth from downloading them. But they aren't huge pictures so it is still kind of ridiculous. Anyway, I downloaded all the stuff and made sub charts for the teachers, which is just a page with all the kids' pictures and names that a teacher can leave in their sub plans so a substitute can put a name and face together. Tomorrow I might make some for some of the other, non-classroom teachers in the building, like SPED and resource.

When I got home I checked on the group discussion thing for this week that involves us answering the questions from a case study in one of our books, in the form of a wiki page that we all add to throughout the week. Well, I ended up with the largest group with thirteen people, out of a class of thirty I think, and one of those people is a huge overachiever. To the point that over the course of five edits yesterday she pretty much finished the entire assignment. It is mildly frustrating to say the least. We are being graded like we would for a discussion post, so multiple posts throughout the week. If one person fulfills all the requirements for the assignment, the day before the week even starts, where does that leave the other twelve people in the group. Selfish is a word that comes to mind but I think that insinuates malicious intent, which is not the case with this classmate. She's just very on the ball. To the detriment of everyone else in her group in this case. I managed to squeeze a couple, very tiny things in tonight but it certainly won't put much of a dent in the twelve points I need for the week. If no one else speaks up I might send an email to the professor just to see if there is something else we can do in addition to what is asked for in the case study to actually give the rest of the group a chance at participation. Maybe treat it like an Etch-a-Sketch, now that it's all done we can shake it clear and let everyone else have a go. Especially considering most people don't even start posting on the discussions until Wednesday at the earliest and this was done on Sunday. We'll see what happens.

Tonight I went to a comedy show and it was hilarious. The first opening act was really good and the next two had their moments. The headliner was worth the price of admission, though. He added in a bunch of new stuff and he was just as funny all of his TV specials. He definitely deserves all of his success because he is such a good storyteller. Because of the new material they really harped on the use of cellphones. They went on and on about if you were caught with a phone you would be kicked out. I didn't see this happen to anyone but all the roving security were probably enough to scare people from trying. Each aisle had two people walking up and down the entire time, non-stop. There were also people near the exit doors and a bunch of people roaming around the floor seating. It was kind of incredible.

The best part of the show was probably the fact that we started out in row 32, which is two or three rows from the top, and ended up getting moved down to row 6 because they were trying to fill in the more expensive seats that didn't sell. Those seats were $16 more per ticket, so that's a decent amount of money. And rather than shift everyone down they started at the back and started sending rows down at a time. I kind of liked that we were near the top and didn't have to walk all the way down the stairs, but then we did, and we were way better for it. I don't think we would have been able to hear as well from where we were originally. The funny part was that there were at least a couple groups of people a few rows in front of us who had moved down several rows already when it got closer to the start time and they were filling up. Then all the rows at the back, including the ones these people were originally sitting in, got moved down all the way to the front. If only they had waited.

I was reminded today that the last day for my metadata class is on Friday. Which is great news but it also means that my metadata crosswalk assignment is due on Friday, not Sunday like most of our assignments. Yikes. I'm glad I got a start on it this weekend but I really could have used another weekend. It doesn't help that I didn't get to work on it at all tonight, though I do not regret my decision to take the night off, regardless of how things turn out. I'll just need to put in some late nights this week. Hooray.

October 4, 2015

 I did productive things today. I worked on my metadata crosswalk a bit. I still don't like MARC although this is only the second time I have worked with it. The first time being yesterday. It looks like someone with poor fine motor skills tried their hand at typing and failed miserably as they just slammed their hands on the keyboard.

I also read three textbook chapters and responded to two discussion posts. I'm now kind of ready for the week to come. I still have more reading to do but I'm closer than I was yesterday. Most of my week will probably be devoted to my metadata crosswalk and the week-long group activity for my collection development class, which we have in lieu of a regular discussion. Hooray for group work.

I replaced the batteries in the smoke detectors today because a few days ago one started beeping in the middle of the night and another one started beeping yesterday morning. We're hoping this was due to dead batteries and not defective detectors. Interestingly, all but one of the detectors required a 'D' battery. The 'D' battery thing is normal, the interesting thing is that one of the detectors, even though it looks just like all the other ones, requires two 'AA' batteries.

I tried messing with the fifth grade teacher's flash drive again but didn't make any progress. It is time to throw in the towel, at least for me. It either needs some soldering that isn't being accomplished by holding the connections back together or it truly is damaged beyond repair.

Having spent most of my day doing schoolwork, I spent an hour playing Minecraft after I finish reading the third textbook chapter of the day. I built my first set of rails leading to my barn, which is probably the closest destination. This also involved building a small station near the barn which I think turned out really well. I built it correctly the first time and that surprised me a little. I also made it look pretty cool. I would like reuse the design for all the small stations I end up building so there is a sense of continuity. The next track will go to my Nether portal and that will be a much more involved project because it is far away and there will be some bends. The one plus is that I'm doing it in creative mode because I don't have the time to do it legit. I don't really have the time to be doing it in creative mode either, but if I went with survival I'd still be digging in a mine looking for red stone and iron. Which actually sounds like fun but school comes first. Unfortunately.

I don't know what the week has in store for me in terms of work. I imagine the same old stuff but only time will tell.