November 30, 2015

 Best laid plans. Today was a little rough. I woke up at seven o'clock this morning which is unacceptable for a snow day. I also didn't get to bed until around two o'clock and I knew five hours would catch up with me and just be an excuse to take a nap and avoid work. Turns out I didn't really need that excuse.

I laid in bed until I fell asleep again and ended up not getting out of bed until ten o'clock. I spent some time working on my collection assessment but didn't make much progress. I'm still hung up on picking a library. It would have been nice if we had been give a list of libraries to pick from. Or even a fictional library. I am overwhelmed by choice. I looked at a couple different libraries and came up with a list of possible cost cutting measures based on the notes I took during the last class weekend. I could probably use some more of those. Then I just need to pick a library and personalize those cost cutting measures to the library (somehow) and throw in references to the textbooks and articles we've read. Piece of cake, right? It's going to be a long week.

I emailed my adviser today to check on the whole graduation thing. I plan on graduating in August but there isn't a ceremony in August, only May and December. There are also cutoffs for when you have to fill out an intent to graduate, which is what had me worried. For August graduates the due date is March, no problem there. For May graduates the due date was November 1^st. I missed that a little bit but didn't realize at the time that there wasn't a ceremony in August so I didn't even pay attention to it. So I emailed my adviser to see which due date actually applied to me if I wanted to walk in May and if I missed it if I would have to wait until December to walk. She directed me to a guy who is in charge of graduation stuff and I sent him basically the same email. He got back to me and said that I could use the March deadline and there would be an option when I filled out the intent to indicate I wanted to walk in May. That took a load off my mind. My mom would have been pissed if I couldn't walk in May. It'll be weird walking before I finish school but I think it would be weirder to walk several months after finishing school.

This afternoon I had a haircut, which I thought I might have today and confirmed it this morning by texting the lady who cuts my hair. That kind of through off my plans to work on my school stuff but ultimately that is just another excuse. It was also the first time I've left the house since last Tuesday. Unless you count hanging the Christmas lights on Wednesday. So a little fresh (cold) air and a haircut is pretty good.

I also replied to a couple discussion posts today. So I was slightly productive today. I gave up tonight though. After dinner I became almost immediately lethargic. It's been a struggle just to write this. And it's just now creeping up on nine o'clock. We'll see if I can push it to ten o'clock and then hope for a better tomorrow. Maybe I can get some schoolwork done at work.

November 29, 2015

 I woke up this morning around five o'clock to go to the bathroom and then woke up again three hours later thanks to the dogs barking. I laid there and after they were outside and the barking had stopped, I became distinctly aware of how quiet it was. I looked at my alarm clock and then at my second alarm clock and neither showed the time. And then I realized that my fan was off, which would explain why it was so quiet. It was still relatively warm in my room, so the power hadn't been out for that long but it didn't take long for it to become progressively colder.

I stayed in bed for a little bit but then got up so I could be slightly productive. I put on some layers, opened up the curtains in my computer room, and read a little bit about academic libraries in my textbook. Would have been nice if I didn't do all my weekly reading yesterday. Speaking of that, I'm glad I posted my weekly discussion last night. I didn't actually save the document I typed up the post in but had a feeling I should post it online instead of waiting until today. My computer ended up saving everything but it would have sucked if it hadn't and I lost my post.

After an hour, maybe more, maybe less, the power came back on. Thank goodness for that. I decided to work on my website and get that finished so I wouldn't have to worry about it during the week. It is also due first, so it made sense to get it done first. In the process of looking up academic libraries I came across a couple that I might want to use for my collection assessment assignment instead of the one I picked yesterday.

It ended up taking me until after midnight, and actually working that entire time, but I finished. I found three libraries for my academic libraries page and two librarians for my librarians page. I got all that added into my website, including small descriptions for academic libraries and academic librarians taken from the ALA website. I also cut and pasted my introduction from the beginning of class onto the first page. A lot of time was spent tweaking the code to make everything look right and respond to resizing. Once I was happy I logged in remotely to the school's server so I could upload my files and view my page live on the internet. I went back and forth several times making small changes to things I had either missed or didn't quite look the same as they did in my offline preview. For now, I'm calling it good.

This afternoon I got the best text message ever from the district notifying me that school is canceled tomorrow. Hooray. That made me feel better about spending my day solely on the website assignment. Now, I can spend tomorrow on the assessment assignment. The weather is supposed to be bad again tomorrow, hence school not happening, but hopefully the power will stay on so I can work on the assignment. It would be amazing if I could find a little inspiration and knock a significant chunk of the assignment out tomorrow. That would reduce my stress level tremendously.

My new mouse and microphone arrived today. I got to look at my microphone but didn't want to get distracted by it so I set it off to the side of my desk. It weighs a lot more than I was expecting. Which is good because it doesn't feel cheap and it won't be easily knocked around on my desk. I went as far as to plug my new mouse in and mess with the DPI a bit to try and get it to where my old mouse was. The mouse looks really cool and I like all the buttons but I'll have to wait until I have more time on my hands to actually go through and set up different profiles and actually make use of the buttons. After using the mouse for most of the day now I would say the one downside is the weight. It is so heavy and I'm pretty sure I can actually notice fatigue in my right wrist from trying to lift it. Most of the weight is in the back end, too, so when I do lift it the back end tends to stay on the mouse pad. The mouse has a third finger button for my ring finger so all the lifting is done with my thumb and pinky, which makes the weight that much more noticeable. I am hoping that after awhile I will get used to it

It's now after one o'clock and I'm tired so I'm going to go to bed. Hopefully I will wake up and the power will still be on in the morning so I can work on school stuff.

November 28, 2015

 I have been on a bit of a nostalgic music trip the last couple of days on Spotify. The music of my high school and college days is still good and hopefully I will always think that.

This morning I slept in and it was pretty great. It was one of those sleeping-ins where I wasn't really asleep the whole time but just laying there, enjoying not having to get out of bed.

I did things today. I should have done more things but it's too late to worry about that now. I looked through the instructions for the collection assessment assignment and it immediately made me feel overwhelmed. Such a horribly familiar feeling this semester. Just to pile more on that I looked at the reading for the coming week and the discussion post. Three chapters. Thankfully two of them were fairly short, because the third was forty pages. The assessment is due next Sunday, the discussion goes until next Monday, and my website is due next Friday. Good grief.

My dad wanted to have a family dinner tonight but I ended up getting out of it after realizing how much work I have to finish this week. Also, the weather is super crappy with everything covered in ice. I wasn't entirely sure I could make it up the hill out of the cul-de-sac, and then along the winding road leading down a hill, before ever reaching the main road. Last year I went out in crappy weather for some reason and ended up sliding into a curb almost immediately even though I was going just over zero miles per hour, so I didn't want to risk it.

I took the opportunity to read. I finished the big chapter before dinner and the two small chapters after dinner. While also doing laundry, because multitasking. I then eventually got around to writing my initial discussion post for the week. Now I just need to worry about responding to my classmates throughout the week, which won't require too much thought.

I think I've decided on the library for my collection assessment. Mainly because it was the first library I came across that seemed promising. I need to reach that cleared mind state where I stop over thinking and can get stuff out on paper. I am hoping I can find that tomorrow. I could potentially finish the entire assignment tomorrow but I don't think I'll get there, especially knowing that it isn't due for another week. I'm going to at least try to get some ideas, though. I also want to work on my website. I need to pick libraries and librarians. I think I need to write a little blurb talking about academic libraries and librarians in general on each page but the actual content can just be cut and pasted (with appropriate attributions of course). So it should be fairly straightforward once I find the libraries and librarians. The tricky part will be coming up with the layout and coding it all for my website.

Soon I will be going to bed so I can wake up and be productive tomorrow. Positive attitude.

November 27, 2015

 Today didn't really turn out the way I planned. Which is not surprising in the least. I started out looking at stuff for my collection assessment assignment but quickly got distracted by Black Friday stuff. I ended up buying a new microphone and a new mouse. The microphone was kind of an impulse buy but I've actually been thinking about it for quite awhile now. And the mouse is because mine is starting to act up. It's my second Razer mouse and just like my first one, it has started randomly double-clicking when I only push the button once. This can be annoying when I want to close one thing and end up also closing the thing behind it. I also noticed while playing BO3 last night that the scroll wheel click has started to miss clicks. It is my grenade button and I'd go to throw a grenade and it either wouldn't throw or it would immediately throw even though I still had the button held down. And then today trying to open new browser tabs I noticed the tabs not opening. So I watched a bunch of different mouse reviews and took advantage of a Black Friday sale. I was tempted to go with the Razer Naga (I currently have the Razer DeathAdder) because it was on sale on the Razer site, but I decided to try something different, in the hopes that it will last longer that a couple years, or however long I've had my current mouse. That probably isn't too bad considering how much I use the mouse but still. I felt like my first Razer mouse also gave out prematurely so I'm branching out. I went with the Logitech G600 because it seems to be fairly well liked and I wanted to try a mouse with a bunch of buttons. We'll find out on Sunday.

This afternoon I started reading stuff for a discussion post for my academic libraries class that I keep forgetting about. Thankfully it doesn't have a due date. The topic was about whether or not academic librarians should get tenure. I read a few different articles about it and they were really interesting. It made me think about it from perspectives I never would have thought about before, which is always interesting. I ended up writing over a page, single-spaced about it. Apparently I was in the mood to write. I also looked at the various website building options the professor mentioned for putting together our portfolio for that class. I wanted to see if any of them allowed for importing HTML and CSS files but they all seemed entirely template based. Which is nice but I've have put a lot of hours into my HTML and CSS files so yeah. I'm going to email the professor in the next couple of days to make sure he is cool with me uploading my files to the school server like I did this summer for my web design class, which gives me a web address and makes the site available online. Fingers crossed.

Tonight I played a little BO3. Not much though because it turns out I really wasn't in the mood for it. I had one epic moment though where I spawned, started running, and right as I was throwing a grenade I was killed. I then spawned and was immediately blown up by a grenade. My grenade. By some random chance I respawned right on top of the grenade I had just thrown. It was crazy, and thankfully I was streaming it so I was able to make a short, twelve second clip out of it. A few rounds after that I ended up calling it a night. I think a big part of my mood was the awful lag issues. In one game I had a guy teleporting around the map, once he even appeared out of nowhere standing on the car in front of me. And another time I was randomly spraying and ended up killing him, but he didn't actually show up on my screen until I saw his dead body fall. In another game my ping was close to 200 and it was nearly impossible to play. I mainly focused on shooting down UAVs because that was about all I could hit. And the last thing about BO3, I would really like to play Demolition but apparently I am the only one on PC who does because the player count is always at 0%. Same with Gun Game except that sits at 4%, and I've sat in lobbies for quite awhile and they never fill up. PC only has a few game modes that ever have people in them and it is kind of annoying. Win one for the consoles I guess.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it's late and I need to do things tomorrow. That's the plan anyway, and we know how that usually goes.

November 26, 2015

 I pretty much gave up all pretense of doing schoolwork today, which was freeing. Instead, I did nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, because that would be boring. I mostly watched videos on YouTube and followed all the random thoughts I had on the internet. Not a bad way to spend a day. I also hung up some Christmas lights on my stacks of books in my computer room. White and blue lights. I think they look pretty cool.

Tonight we had Thanksgiving dinner. I ate way too much, because that's what happens during Thanksgiving. And when I make spaghetti. I ate to the point that I wasn't sure if I was going to throw up or not for about thirty minutes. I was good with the first plate and I knew that a second plate was going to push me too far. But the food was so good. And then there was the chocolate pie my sister made. Delicious but definitely more than I should have been eating. But I sucked it up and powered through.

After dinner I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and then played a little BO3. I had a few “good” games and even made it in the top three of the winning team so my character was featured on the end screen. I think that is the second time that has happened. Still didn't really come anywhere close to breaking even with my K/D in a match. I think that has only happened once. There have been games where my team was dominating and if I really cared about my K/D I could have slowed down and stayed away from the enemy while my team did work. But that would be boring. So I ran around and engaged in gunfights I was sure to lose. But I had fun.

Now I'm going to go to bed. I really need to start working on schoolwork tomorrow. So that's what I have to look forward to. Yay.

November 25, 2015

 I woke up at eight o'clock this morning but refused to get up that early so I went back to sleep for another hour. Before eventually getting out of bed I had a lot of great thoughts on how I was going to be productive today. I didn't accomplish any of that. I thought about my schoolwork a lot but didn't really work on anything. I'm not surprised by that.

This afternoon I hung up the Christmas lights outside. Apparently the weather is supposed to get progressively worse over the next several days so the goal was to beat that. And it was really nice out today so it worked out well. It also allowed me to feel like at least accomplished something today, if not schoolwork.

Tonight I played Black Ops 3, because that seems to be my new thing. Starting today and going through the weekend there is double weapon XP so you can level up weapons faster. I managed to max level two weapons but I didn't prestige either yet. I haven't decided if I want to do that because it means starting with a stock gun again. Also, one of them is the launcher that I am still working on getting the camos for. But we'll see how I'm feeling later. I'm awful at the game so the main source of fun I have is trying to level up and unlock things, whether it's my character or the weapons. I switched from the one assault rifle I maxed out to another to start working on it. It's a three-burst rifle and I'm not really a fan. I need to spray and pray in this game. And all the camos for it seem to be based on headshots, which I only get by accident. So we'll see.

I watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving tonight and it always makes me want popcorn. I might need to make some for lunch tomorrow. But now I'm going to go to bed because it is almost midnight and I'm tired. Tomorrow, maybe I'll do some schoolwork. I need to at the very least find a library with an available collection development policy for my assessment assignment. That is going to be the major source of stress in my life until the end of the semester and it would be nice to start picking away at it.

November 25, 2015

 Today seems so long ago. I had classes and small groups in the lab today. And I only had to send one kid from a small group back to class early because he ignored multiple chances to follow directions. This afternoon we had a character assembly and then the day was pretty much over. Throughout the day when I had free time I worked on my website. I think I'm caught up with everything as far as the style and layout goes. And I've got my research paper and librarian interview formatted and everything edited so it looks good. Progress.

I turned today into Chipotle night so that I could have the second half of my burrito tomorrow and not have to worry about it when I also have Thanksgiving leftovers. After videos my sister brought out a box full of Christmas ornaments she made. She got slightly addicted to making them over the past week or so and they are really cool. She let my mom and I pick whatever we wanted and we just kept picking. My mom said it kind of felt like that episode of Big Bang Theory when Penny is borrowing money from Sheldon and she acts like she's only going to take a little and then takes some more, thinks about it, takes some more, and it keeps going. Long story slightly shorter, I'm going to need a bigger Christmas tree.

My grandparents used to make ornaments every year. My grandpa would cut them out of wood in his shop and my grandma would paint them. I want to start that tradition. My sister has done it for at least a few years now. I think it will be easier when I'm done with school and have more time for extracurricular activities. Or I'll have to come up with a new excuse for why I'm not making ornaments.

Tonight I played Black Ops 3. My main goal for the night was to unlock the camos for my rocket launcher. Whatever the second launcher is. I unlocked a couple and then I got into a game on Nuketown where the other team just kept putting up UAVs and Counter-UAVs. The launcher has four rockets and there were at least a couple times where I ran out of rockets. I think that was the game where I got double digits in both UAVs and Counter-UAVs and unlocked maybe four camos, one after another. It was pretty epic. The next two or three involve killing sentry guns and drones and stuff, which will be a bit of a challenge. I also spent half an hour designing a new emblem. I wasn't sure what I was going for in the beginning but it ended up looking like those novelty glasses with the big nose and busy eyebrows. I think it looks pretty cool.

Tomorrow I'm going to sleep in. Then I need to do at least some schoolwork. If I'm setting big goals for myself, it would be nice to find a library for my collection assessment project, as well as find at least one academic library and one academic librarian to write about for my website. Lofty goals. Hopefully I don't end up sleeping through the morning.

November 23, 2015

 Today wasn't too eventful. I unintentionally slept in about a half an hour because when I was checking the radio station and volume on my alarm clock (after plugging it in after the hotel this weekend) I turned the alarm off instead of on. I also turned my space heater on last night, mainly so my room would be warmer in the morning and I wouldn't have the excuse of a cold room for staying under the covers. It did make it easier to get out from under the covers but it was also cozier, which made me want to stay in bed, so there's that.

At work I helped out with literacy centers in both kindergarten classes this morning. I also finished designing the golden ticket for the librarian. I didn't really change anything I came up with last week but I did add a couple things. And the librarian liked it. I'm interested to see what it looks like once it is printed out on yellow or whatever paper she's using.

Once again, throughout the day I had classes and small groups in the lab. When that wasn't going on, I read through and edited my reflection for class. I also worked on my website for my other class. It's coming along nicely. Tomorrow maybe I'll be able to finish the editing my research paper, which I added in today. I need to edit the code for the reference list and then go through and add in the code for quotes and dates and stuff. Today I also went through and fixed all the links, adding the correct names and titles for everything. For the assignment as a whole I still need to figure out my favorite academic libraries and librarians, along with discussing academic libraries and librarians in general. Shouldn't be too hard. Hopefully. The collection assessment assignment in my other class, however, will be a pain in the butt.

When I got home I read through and edited my reflection paper again and then submitted it. With that and all the work I put in on my website today, I took the night off. And played Black Ops 3. I actually had a couple decent games. Nowhere close to a positive K/D but I played the objective like a champ and almost went even once or twice. And I had fun, which is the whole point. For me at least. There are some people out there who take it real serious. To each their own.

Sometime in the near future I will be going to bed. Tomorrow is the last day of work for the week. I've got about two weeks to start/finish my collection assessment assignment, so maybe I'll start on that tomorrow. The major hurdle right now is picking a library. It'll all be downhill from there. But yeah, bedtime. Soon.

November 22, 2015

 This morning I slept in until eleven o'clock. Apparently I needed some sleep. There really wasn't time to accomplish anything before lunch so instead I played a few rounds of Black Ops 3. After lunch I eventually got around to starting my reflection paper on the collection development group assignment. It was actually closer to right before dinner but I did start it before dinner.

After dinner I replaced the light on the mailbox that has been burnt out for quite awhile. I originally attempted to change the bulb when it first went out but couldn't figure out how to open up the enclosure. Which sounds kind of ridiculous but I tried several things and nothing worked. It turns out there were two small screws on the underside of the lid that I missed the first time around. Literally the only thing I didn't try. But I did this time and now there is light. I let there be.

When I finished that I continued laundry and I finished my paper. I wanted to play a little Black Ops 3 after that and take advantage of the double XP once again but apparently the servers are down. There is a website that shows the server status and it says all is well, but that is false. I couldn't get into a game and several streams I looked at on Twitch also couldn't get on. So yeah. I played a little bit of the campaign but I'm still stuck in the same spot and I wasn't in the mood. I played a custom game against bots which was fun because I was actually able to kill them. I also had my ass handed to me a few times, because even against bots I'm not great. I eventually managed to get in one game online but afterward I got kicked and couldn't find another game.

On a positive note to the crappy servers, while watching a stream of a guy trying to pass the time, I learned about a new easter egg on Nuketown. Several days ago I learned about the one where you shoot all the heads off the mannequins in under two minutes and they turn into zombies and attack you. Tonight I learned if you shoot all their arms off in under two minutes they start acting like the weeping angels in Doctor Who. When you're looking at them they don't move, but when you're not looking they try and sneak up on you and kill you. It's freaky because they freeze in whatever position they were in when you weren't looking. Super freaky.

This week we only have two days of work before Thanksgiving break. Also, I don't have any reading for school this week, which was a nice surprise. Hopefully I can be productive in other ways. I need to put some work into the final assignment for collection development and I need to work on my website for academic libraries. I need to take advantage of this time off from work.

November 21, 2015

 I slept well last night. I was a little worried because there were some drunk guys wandering around, and there was a semi truck parked right outside that was noisy, but neither ended up being a thing. Getting out of bed this morning was unfortunate. I would have liked to lay there until noon.

Class today went well. It was better than last night because I was rested and not dehydrated. We had two more guest speakers from the serials vender business. Both interesting. We also did our group presentations. I think they all went pretty well, including my small group. The two people ahead of me went a little long so I skipped a little bit of mine but I also improvised a funny opening line, which satisfied my desire to get at least one laugh in every presentation.

We had lunch provided by the student library group and it was interesting. I sat at a table by myself and was then joined by one of the guys in my class. The socially awkward one who was also in my small presentation group. I'm also socially awkward so there's that. He sat across from me and immediately started reading stuff on his phone. We didn't talk the entire time and it was mildly awkward. I kept wanting to say something but I didn't want to interrupt whatever he was reading.

When I got in my car this morning the low tire pressure light was on. I'm pretty sure it was because it was 30-something degrees this morning. After class it was still in the thirties and the light was still on. I picked up Spangles and was debating just driving home but decided to do the responsible thing and stopped at a gas station. I didn't see an air pump so I went in and asked and it was in the one spot I hadn't looked. That's how it goes. I only filled up two tires because when I looked up there were two cars waiting, but I'm pretty sure only one of the tires had low pressure. And shortly after getting back on the interstate the light went off, so all was good.

I made excellent time on the way home and only had to pass a couple cars on the highway.

Tonight I took the night off and played Black Ops 3. I played one round of zombies and finished the intro levels of the campaign. I didn't think I hit a checkpoint on the train the last time I quit in frustration but apparently I did because I didn't have to start at the beginning again, I got to start at the part where I climbed onto the top of the train. And that went surprisingly well when I just hid and waited for the robots to come to me. I probably spent most of my time playing multiplayer because it is a double XP weekend. I played awfully but still managed to rank up several levels. I think I was in the single digits and now I'm in the upper twenties. That was nice. The last several games I played were in a lobby with several multiple-prestige players, like high prestige people. To the point where everyone else was accusing them of cheating because they were ridiculously good. It was kind of fun when I was on there team because it almost made me feel not terrible, even though I never managed to go positive. It was kind of frustrating when I had to go against them but to be honest, I didn't really do that much worse than normal. I'm just a killstreak feeder for the other team, regardless of how good they are.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it is two o'clock and I should have gone to bed a few hours ago. Tomorrow I need to wake up and write my reflection for the collection development project. That is my goal for tomorrow because it is due on Monday. I would also like to do the reading for this week but that probably won't happen.

November 20, 2015

 Today has been a long day so maybe this can be a short entry so I can go to sleep. I would like some sleep.

I got to sleep in an hour but I was up late so that didn't help that much. After getting ready I headed down to the public library for the beginning of our day of library tours. I haven't been to the public library much outside of books sales and book clubs so it was cool to get a tour. I got to see the new children's room which was really cool. We got to go up to the third floor, which I didn't know existed, and that is where they do all the technical things, like order books and catalog them. There is also a volunteer who comes in and fixes books. He's apparently well over ninety years old but logged over 700 hours last year. I really liked the quiet and subdued atmosphere of the third floor but the children's area felt more natural with all the noise thanks to working in a grade school.

The next tour was for a library system which covers our area of the state. Conveniently, they are located in the basement of the public library. Something else I didn't know existed. That was pretty interesting but it involves a lot of travel and generally didn't sound like something I would be that interested in.

We broke for lunch and I ended up heading home. I needed a little break and the lunch I made myself was free-ish. At least cheaper than eating out. Interestingly, I turned on the History Channel and the episode of Modern Marvels on was about the Library of Congress. I need to go there sometime. It is just so freaking massive.

After lunch we went to the historical museum and I haven't been there since I was a little kid. We got to go back into the research area and into the back archives which looked just like what I would imagine those areas looked like. I got there early, which was good because I got a chance to wander around the exhibits. The group that went to lunch was late which cut the exhibit tour short and we didn't get to go over to the historical house. I live in the same town so I really have no excuse not to go myself.

From there we carpooled to the university to tour the academic library. The main lady giving the tour was actually the lady I talked to several years ago when I first had the idea of going to library school. And the guy was the person I interviewed via email during my first semester last year, so it was cool being able to put a face to the name. During the tool we went into a study room that is called the Great Room but is nicknamed the Harry Potter Room. Both are fitting titles because it is both great and looks like it was pulled out of Harry Potter. Maybe a year ago I saw it in a video but didn't realize it was in the library because I had never seen it before. Yet another thing I didn't know existed, despite going to college there and spending quite a bit of time in the library. At the end of the tour we had the chance to break into groups depending on our interest and talk to librarians who do those things. I ended up going with the public services group because that's where I'm leaning. People make work more interesting. I've learned that dealing with patrons at the movie theater and kids at school. One of the librarians in that group was the librarian I interviewed this semester via email. Also good to put a face to the name. I talked a little bit but I mostly sat and listened to the librarians talk about what they do and the random tangents they went off on. I can see myself fitting into that kind of group. And they said they have some job openings coming up next Spring or Fall so I need to look into that. I would have liked the academic library tour to have been a full day thing because it felt like we were just scraping the surface.

The goal was to leave town by four o'clock but that didn't happen, which isn't surprising. We maybe left the university at four o'clock, and after driving back to the historical museum I gave directions on how to get out of town to one of our group. I didn't actually get to the edge of town until 4:20PM. I got really lucky with the drive though, and didn't really hit any traffic until the very end, and it was only for a little bit. I ended up pulling into the parking lot a couple minutes after 5:30PM. That seems really fast.

Class tonight was rough. I usually don't feel the best because I don't drink enough water on the days I have to come down for class. There aren't a lot of bathroom opportunities on the drive down. On top of that, all the walking around for the tours today really hit me. My knees were aching and I just had a general feeling of exhaustion. It made collection development that much better.

Class started with a guest speaker, who was a salesman who works for a serials vendor. Vendors make life easier for libraries by handling all of their subscriptions. Rather than writing twenty or one-hundred or however many checks to different publishers, you can write one check to a vendor, who then does all the purchasing. They also act as the go-between, so if something is wrong they deal with the publisher. After working on the collection development project and having to read hundreds of book reviews, I wouldn't mind handing over some of that responsibility to a vendor.

The rest of the class involved analyzing a spreadsheet of the data collected from the accessibility assignment we did several weeks ago where we checked to see if we could find resources online through the library website. That was rough. I wanted to fall asleep. But I held in there. After class we had a brief group meeting to make sure we were all on the same page for the presentation tomorrow.

And now I'm in my hotel room. Waiting for myself to stop writing this so I can go to sleep. I'm going to do that now.

November 19, 2015

 This morning when I woke up my phone was turned off and I hadn't turned it off last night so that had me confused. When I turned it on it looked like there had been an update but I also noticed that my microSD card wasn't showing up. I opened my phone up and pulled the card out and put it back in several times and it eventually showed up. After getting to work I checked my phone again and the card was again missing. I pulled it out again and this time hooked it up to my computer with my adapter. I did the out and in trick again several times and it finally showed up. But only briefly before disappearing again.

I went through the process again and as soon as it showed up I dragged all the files over to the desktop. Twenty-five minutes later I had a cramp in my hand because I was afraid to adjust my grip on the adapter. I was able to save all 5,229 images and videos I had saved on the card, however, so I think it was worth it. And all of those images were very important. Like that time I took a picture of baked cauliflower, or the one of an abnormally large almond, or when I got twice as many fruit snacks than I should have in a single package. All things worth documenting.

Immediately after that I got on Amazon and bought a new microSD card which should be here on Saturday. Currently my card is still showing up but it showed me twice today that it can't be trusted. The new one will also be much bigger, which means I can increase my documentation of random food stuff.

The rest of my day at work was fairly normal. I finished reading an article and started reading another one. I had classes and small groups in the lab throughout the day, which took up most of my day. Near the end of the day one of the ladies who works with Boys & Girls Club asked me if I could write a riddle about myself to go with an activity she came up with for the kids to work on inferences. It would start with three pictures for hints and if they couldn't figured it out from those then they would hear the riddle. This was right before the kindergarteners were coming to the lab so I had to work on it while also trying to keep the kindergarteners on track. Despite that I think it turned out pretty well. I'll include it at the end of this. If I remember.

At the same time I had the riddle request the librarian stopped by to ask if I could make golden tickets for her. The idea is to put them in books that don't circulate that often, with the goal of getting kids to start checking out books they may not have before in order to find the tickets. I only had about ten minutes to work on it but I made a good start. I should be able to finish it before school on Monday.

I also made a couple edits to the group slideshow, but then only sent it to one person in the group instead of hitting “reply-all”, so two more versions came out that didn't include my fixes. Tonight I added those changes to my version and sent out the latest update. We don't present until tomorrow afternoon so we'll be able to talk about it in person tomorrow and work out the final details.

I spent all night reading. I read two textbook chapter and one article. I was supposed to read two articles but I just couldn't. It was about collection evaluation and I started it at work today, so I only had four or five pages to go but I just couldn't.

Instead I read through two of the email interviews I have done with academic librarians because they will both be at the university library for the tour tomorrow. Just in case I bring up the fact that we have actually “met” before I thought it would be a good idea to remind myself what we talked about.

And speaking of that tour, I need to go to bed. The first library isn't until 9:30AM but I need to pack in the morning and make my dinner. The tour could potentially last up to the point of having to leave town for class, which wouldn't give me any time to come home. The timing thing is stressing me out a little because the window was 3:30PM-4:00PM and I usually leave town around 3:50PM I think. And I usually come up first to get my stuff, make dinner, and just sort of mentally prepare myself for the drive. I'm not a fan of the idea of leaving straight from the last library, which is the academic library and the one I'm particularly interested in. I'm thinking about it too much. Here's my riddle:

I wear many hats

But not for the weather.

From printers to projectors,

I make them all better.

I like to play Minecraft

But don’t like the Creepers.

When I see them I run,

And yell out “Oh, jeepers!”

My favorite color’s green

And you may already know this.

When you see me in the hallway,

It is hard not to notice.

If you don’t know me yet

Here is one last stab.

Just look for the computers,

That live in the lab.

November 18, 2015

 Well here we are again with the things that have been forgotten. Last week a second grader got in trouble and had to take a note home to get signed. He didn't bring it back on Monday so he lost his recess. He brought it back today and gave it to the teacher as the class was coming into the lab. She stopped him because she didn't think his mom's handwriting looked like what was on the paper. She explained to him that if he were an adult he could get into serious trouble and even go to jail for writing someone else's name. She said she would be sending the note home again and emailing his mother so she knew it was coming home. Then she showed me the note so I could see it. On the parent signature line he had written “Mom”. That actually happens in real life apparently. And it is great.

I spoke with the librarian this morning and the football banquet went well last night. More importantly, the photo books turned out well, the word posters looked good, and the slideshow worked. And it wasn't obvious that most of it came together at the last minute. Hooray.

Today I had classes and small groups in the lab throughout the day. In my free time I read a long boring article and half of another one. And I feel like there was probably some other stuff mixed in there but that is all that is coming to mind.

Tonight was Chipotle night and after dinner and videos I read through my research paper one last time, made a couple changes, and then submitted it. Good riddance. It didn't turn into the paper I envisioned in my head but it is decent.

I started to read a textbook chapter but I kept nodding off thanks to not getting a lot of sleep the past however many nights. In my defense of not finishing the chapter, it's long, kind of boring, and pretty dense. Not something you can just read through because it's filled with a lot of lists (not in bulleted form but in-line text) and citations and crap that break up the flow of reading. I just can't do it tonight. In general, I'm pretty much over collection development. I get it already. I want to move on. The main thing I have learned from this class is that collection development is not the area of librarianship I want to go into, which is good to know. It might actually be better in practice, but reading about it is too much. And I still have the final project, a collection assessment, to worry about. Ugh.

Now I'm going to bed. Right now I feel like I want to sleep forever but I'll get up when my alarm goes off at six o'clock tomorrow morning. That's the plan anyway.

November 17, 2015

 Somehow I completely forgot that I nearly got T-boned yesterday morning on my way to work. At the first intersection after turning onto a side street near the school a car apparently ignored the stop sign they had. And completely ignored the presence of a vehicle passing in front of them. I saw them out of the corner of my eye at the last second. I accelerated, jerked the wheel to the right to create a little more space for me, and then jerked it back to the left so I didn't go up on the curb. Video game reflexes. Had I not accelerated or jerked the wheel I would have been hit full-on in my door. That would not have been a great way to start my day. When I was hit head-on in my pickup truck it almost felt like time slowed down when I saw the car coming right at me. The same happened today as I saw the car coming so close to running into me. It all happens incredibly fast but also incredibly slow. It's an interesting paradox.

Last night I finished my research paper, not too long after midnight. I even finished my reference list, minus a few things I wasn't sure about. Today at work I read through the whole thing once and made a few changes. I also looked up the reference stuff and got all that sorted out.

I had classes in the lab throughout the day and I spent at least a few hours helping the librarian with one final project for the football banquet tonight. They decided they wanted to make a slideshow using some of the pictures they used for the photo books they made for each kid. One of the moms was up until 4:30AM last night picking out the pictures and coming up with the order. It was the librarian's job to get the pictures off of that mom's laptop and turn it into a slideshow. That turned into a bit of a project.

Getting the pictures off was no big deal and then we tried to create a slideshow in Picasa because that is what they had been using for the photo books and it seemed pretty straightforward. They knew what song they wanted so I went about obtaining it. I downloaded a video, uploaded it to a converter, converted it to an MP3, downloaded it, and added it to the slideshow. All the pictures were out of order but I created the slideshow as a test to make sure it worked before I went through the effort of rearranging 126 pictures. This was a smart move because the audio ended up randomly stuttering throughout the slideshow, even though it was fine during the preview. I tried a different conversion of the song but that didn't help.

My next option was downloading Microsoft Movie Maker, something I knew was free because I messed around with it very briefly years ago. I uploaded the pictures and song, messed with a few things, and created another test slideshow. This one took forever so while I waited on that I went through and renamed all of the pictures, just giving them numbers, in the order that they appeared in the first mom's photo album. That took awhile because there were 126 pictures, the thumbnails were small, and a lot of them looked the same.

Right before the rendering completed the program crashed. The slideshow still worked up but there wasn't any audio, which kind of defeated the purpose of the test. I tried again and it crashed before I even got to the rendering phase so I called it quits on the librarian's laptop and went to lunch.

Thankfully I never got around to deleting Movie Maker off my computer in the lab so during lunch I worked on the slideshow. I uploaded the newly renamed pictures so everything was in order, added transitions, added automatic pans and zooms, tweaked several of those pans and zooms because they didn't look right, adjusted the timing, and started rendering the slideshow.

Many many minutes later it was done and it turned out just how I wanted. Which I was thankful for because my next option involved running home to get my laptop so I could use the program I use to make the sixth grade slideshow at the end of the year.

I put the slideshow on the librarian's thumb drive and her laptop and she started watching it but also started crying so she had to walk away. This happened a couple times. I ended up standing there and talking with the fifth grade teacher as the slideshow played through, just to make completely sure that it was still working. And it was. Hopefully someday these kids will fully appreciate the amount of effort their parents put into this football banquet.

Tonight I wrote the abstract for my research paper, added in all the formatting stuff, made a few edits, and called it good. For tonight. I didn't turn it in yet because I want to read through it at least a couple more times tomorrow just to make sure it is decent. It's certainly not good but I'm shooting for decent. I also made a few edits to the group slideshow for our presentation this weekend. We only have to speak for a minute each so it shouldn't be too bad.

It was after nine o'clock at this point and decided to take the rest of the night off because trying to read for class would have been pointless. I wouldn't have retained any of it. I can do that tomorrow night.

Instead, I played Black Ops 3 because I needed a momentary distraction. I played a little bit of zombies. I'm not good at that game, especially rolling solo, but I did make it to round five, which is a new record for me. I tried the free run game mode and I was unimpressed. It is a cool concept but it is way too slow. It feels like you're running through waist-high water the whole time. If they speed it up it could be pretty fun. Next I played the campaign a little bit. I'm still trying to beat the train level and I made it all the way through the inside of the train for the first time. And then almost immediately died when I got on top of the train car. There are robots in front of me and a bunch come up from the side of the train. I have no idea how I'm supposed to get through that. The worst part is that there wasn't a checkpoint after the inside of the train so I have to do the whole thing over again. I attempted it several times but couldn't get there. I ended up having to turn the voice acting off because I was sick of hearing the same line over and over again. I played all of these gametypes with a controller just to try it and I continued playing with the controller when I went into multiplayer. It didn't go great but I've also played a lot worst, so there's that. I did better after switching back to mouse and keyboard but I think that was mostly due to getting put on decent teams. At some point I need to jump into a bot match and work on my keybindings. At the moment I don't think the slide option is bound and it was fun to play around with on the controller so I need to get that added. I also need to map the two buttons on the side of my mouse. All things to work on in the future.

Now I'm going to go to bed so I can wake up and do stuff tomorrow. Reading school stuff and Chipotle are definitely on the agenda but who knows what else is in store for me. Time will tell.

November 16, 2015

 Shortly before we left to go to the church for my uncle's funeral, the lady next door had a heart attack and was taken to the hospital. I guess many years ago she had a heart attack and this time she needed triple bypass surgery. I'm not sure if that ended up happening but my dad informed me yesterday that she had passed away. She was only fifty-nine years old and her husband had just arrived home because they were going to come to my uncle's funeral.

My dad also told me that at some point, probably during the funeral, someone stole my cousin's wallet out of her purse. She's sitting in the sanctuary of a church, morning the loss of her father, and someone steals her wallet. And then proceeds to use her credit cards. There are a bunch of assholes in this world. Whoever this person is, they are definitely near the top of the list. And it would be nice if Heaven and Hell were real things, just for the satisfaction of knowing this person had an appropriate eternity waiting for them.

When I got to work this morning the internet wasn't working and it was apparently down throughout the entire district. That was a fairly large annoyance but it is also completely debilitating for the computer lab because without a network connection no one can log into the computers. They turn into giant paperweights. And even if they weren't, practically everything students use on the computers other than Microsoft Office requires an internet connection. Fortunately I only had to cancel one class before the internet was fixed.

I wasn't needed for kindergarten literacy centers, and with the canceled class, I had the majority of the morning to work on my research paper. And I made progress, making it to over a thousand words. I really caught a lucky break.

Along with paper writing, I also fixed a few computer issues this morning. And in the afternoon I had classes and small groups in the lab. It was a fairly typical day, minus the internet outage thing.

Tonight I continued working on my research paper and I have nearly finished it. I'm up to 1300 words and I only have the conclusion and abstract left. I took a break to write this but I plan on finishing the conclusion tonight. Then, maybe at work tomorrow, I can write the abstract. I hate writing abstracts but they aren't as bad as entire research papers. If I am able to write the abstract at work that will increase the chances that I am also able to work on editing and formatting. It would be nice to get that all done tomorrow so I could submit the paper and be done with it. I still need time to catch up on my reading for my other class before our face-to-face meeting this weekend.

Now I'm going to write my conclusion so I can go to bed. It's only 11:30PM right now and it is reasonable to think I could be in bed by midnight but I'll probably drag it out to one o'clock in the morning because I have managed to drag everything out regarding this paper.

November 15, 2015

 Well, I worked on my research paper today. Despite working on it all day, or at least it being my main focus all day, I only made it about halfway. That is a little disappointing. I am still interested by my chosen topic but I hate writing research papers. I hated them as an undergraduate and my feelings have not changed. I can't even put into words how much I hate them because I don't know that the words exist. And this attitude only adds to the struggle I go through every time I have to write a research paper. The act of writing isn't really that difficult. It requires a lot of cognitive wandering but it's a fairly basic activity. Overcoming my hatred and the mental walls I create is something I deal with every single time, without fail. It is overwhelming, exhausting, annoying, frustrating, stressful, and any number of other words in the same realm. I am completely drained by it and I always drag the process out much longer than it needs to be, which only serves to prolong the agony. The only upside at the moment is that the paper is due on Wednesday so I only have a few more days to go.

Thanks to the paper due date being extended I am dropping further behind in my reading for my other class. I didn't read anything from last week and I haven't read for the coming week either. The only positive at the moment is that we didn't have a discussion post last week and we don't have this week either because we have our second face-to-face meeting next weekend. I will have to catch up on all of this reading at some point in the near future, preferably before class, but that's a lot of reading so we'll see.

It is now almost one o'clock in the morning so I'm going to go to bed. I could pull an all-nighter and finish my paper but I'll leave that for Tuesday night if I don't manage to finish it before than. My hope is that I'm not too busy tomorrow at work and that I can focus long enough to make a decent contribution to my paper. It would be really nice if that would happen because it is so difficult to find the motivation to work on school stuff after working all day. Especially when I get five hours of sleep the night before. So I'm going to go to bed now.

November 14, 2015

 Today didn't go very well. I didn't even open up my research paper. I almost woke up early but I forced myself to stay in bed for another two hours. And I was still tired the rest of the day. I ended up taking a nap after lunch but that didn't seem to help and I woke up with a headache, which I still have.

Tonight I finished adding ISBNs to my group's selection list and sent it to my group members. It's too late for the grade but if it will make the list more useful than hooray. I worked on that tonight because I knew I wasn't going to work on my and I wasn't going to read any articles or chapters for class because of my headache. Staring at a spreadsheet didn't do much for my headache, either, but I didn't want my day to be a complete waste.

So now, tomorrow is all about the research paper. A statement that has made me a liar more than once now. I really can't afford to push it back anymore because it is due on Wednesday and I know my motivation to work on it will be even less if I try and work on it after work on Monday and Tuesday. It would be in my best interest at this point to get it done, or at least mostly done, tomorrow. I often don't seem to have my best interests in mind when it comes to schoolwork, however. We'll see.

I'm so burnt out with school right now. It's been non-stop since last winter and the end of this semester can't come soon enough. It's going to be a struggle. At this point I just want to fast forward to the part where I have a job that pays well and no homework. That's gotta be somewhere in the near future. Hopefully.

November 13, 2015

 Today was rough due to a lack of sleep and an overall feeling of exhaustion. I was not a fan.

Most of my free time at work was taken up with my selection assignment. We got a grade for it today and we lost a point because we didn't include ISBN numbers. We were never told to include the ISBN numbers so it kind of feels like a bullshit way to lose a point. So I spent my time today adding in ISBN numbers. I finished my list and most of another list. I figure it's too late for the grade but if it would be helpful for my other professor, who will be using our list to actually buy books, it's worth the effort.

As for actual work, I briefly helped out with kindergarten literacy centers and had several classes in the lab throughout the day. My patience was pretty thin today due to my exhaustion but I held out pretty well. Until first grade because there is a really annoying kid who causes trouble every single time he's in the lab. The teacher left after bringing them to the lab so she could go back to the room and set up for a party. I then spent most of their lab time telling this kid to stop doing various things, only to have him almost immediately start up again. The final straw was when he raised his voice and told people to log off their computers. This got other kids to shout out for people to log off and then one kid actually logged off. So I told the kid he was done and told him to go sit by the door. The kid has his moments, very brief moments, where he is tolerable, but then he ruins it. Every time.

I joined the Special Library Association today in an effort to learn more about corporate librarianship and possibly find out more about being a librarian at a video game studio. It seems like it is one of the best places to find this information. Or get in contact with someone who can point me in the right direction. I hope that it leads to something.

Near the end of the day I went down to the library because the office called and said the librarian needed help with something. By the time I got there she had it sorted out but I ended up staying and helping out with other things and we talked about random stuff. I also helped move book fair boxes out into the hallway.

Before heading down to the lab one of the fifth grade classes came to the lab. The teacher was working on a word poster thing for the librarian. I helped the librarian the other day figure out photo books that the parents of the senior football players are making for their kids. The librarian is one of those parents, hence her participation. The word poster is for the coaches. Originally the fifth grade teacher made the poster in Word on a regular size sheet of paper. Then they decided they wanted it bigger so she asked me how I would do that. I suggested changing the size of the paper in Word before she started because if she tried to blow up the small one it wouldn't look very good.

About an hour after getting home the librarian called me and put me on speakerphone with her and the fifth grade teacher. When they tried to save the poster as a PDF only part of it showed up and the rest was just a whole bunch of blank white space. I suggested a few possible fixes and then asked if she had tried copying and pasting it into Publisher. When she tried that all the formatting got messed up and parts of words disappeared. Basically, it didn't work at all. I tried everything I could think of but we couldn't get it to work. The fifth grade teacher was running out of time because she's going somewhere this weekend. By this point I was curious about the problem so I had her send me all the Word documents, a copy of the failed PDF just so I knew what it was supposed to look like, and a list of the different fonts she used for the different words.

After dinner I downloaded all of the fonts and got to work. I ended up having to copy the text boxes over one at a time and arrange them how they were in the original. It was tedious. I also had to arrange the text box layers sending some to the front and back to get them to fully show words and not get them to shift weird. Text boxes are annoying in Publisher. After a bunch of tweaking I finally got it all sorted out and sent copies of the PDF to the librarian and asked her to text a picture to the fifth grade teacher to make sure everything looked how she originally created it. The librarian said everything looked good so we'll see.

With my exhaustion, schoolwork wasn't going to happen tonight so I played a little Black Ops 3. I started with the campaign and made it to the train before I called it quits. It reminds me of the airplane mission in one of the Modern Warfare games. I played that so many times trying to beat it. And this train mission is turning into that. It is meant to introduce the melee ability and close-quarters combat is extremely difficult when one bullet kills you. And it is hard to jump around and strafe when you're in a tiny train with seats and median things. Every time I try and move around I get caught on things and destroyed by a robot. It's going to be entirely based on luck for me to beat the level. I should have started the campaign on the easiest difficulty so I could actually enjoy the story. I would also have a better idea of what to expect on all of the levels, which would be very helpful.

When I got tired of hearing the same dialogue over and over, and the death sound over and over, I moved onto multiplayer. I got my ass handed to me repeatedly. Every single time. It's rough. First-Person Shooters on the PC are unforgiving. Especially when all the players and jump all over the place.

Now I'm going to bed. Tomorrow, my research paper is happening. After I sleep in. Then I'm writing my paper. It's going to happen.

November 12, 2015

 Today was long.

I woke up at the normal time and got ready. I tried on various combinations of dress clothes last night and settled on my suit. I also settled on the idea of wearing my regular clothes for the two hour drive and then changing once we got there. One because wearing a suit isn't that comfortable. And two, because I didn't want to wrinkle my clothes.

To get down to my aunt's house I followed my dad. My sister rode with me and my dad had my step-mom and brother. When we got down there we stood around and talked for a little bit before having lunch and then changing so we could go to the church. Once there we stood around for quite a bit longer before going out to the small area where my uncle's ashes are going to be buried. He was in the Vietnam War so a couple soldiers came and folded a flag while a third one played Taps. It sounded amazing but I learned later it sounded so good because it was a recording. The bugle just acted like a speaker. Interesting.

I service was after this and it was really nice. There was live because before during and at the end with a piano, violin, and cello. The music was really good and the musicians played it well. Two pastors conducted the service, one is the current pastor at the church and the other was the pastor who married my aunt and uncle thirty years ago. They took turns and it worked out well. There was a mix between serious stuff and funny stuff, which is how it should be. They also read what my aunt, cousin, my uncle's sister, and one of my uncle's nephews on his side of the family, wrote about my uncle. I appreciated this a lot more than having to watch my aunt and cousin get up and talk. That would have been far too emotional.

After the service there was a reception and that lasted a really long time because there were so many people. I think there were at least 300 people at the service and a decent amount of them stopped by the reception. We probably got back to my aunt's house after five o'clock. We changed clothes and then sat around for a bit before eating leftovers from lunch.

I entertained the cat for awhile but we needed to leave so we slowly started that process. It probably took at least a half an hour from the time we decided to leave to actually making it out the door. That's how it seems to go at any family function.

About halfway home we stopped to get gas and ate a real dinner at Spangles. Delicious. We got back into town a little after 10:30PM and after dropping my sister off I headed home. I was not expecting it to be a whole day event. The service was at two o'clock and I figured we would be home around 5:30PM. 7:00PM at the latest. But that wasn't the case. And I can't really complain because it's family and that's just what you do. But I am completely beat right now. It's tempting to take tomorrow morning off as well just so I can sleep in. I won't, intentionally anyway, but it is tempting.

November 11, 2015

 I tried going to bed early last night but it ended up taking me awhile to fall asleep, which was annoying. I also woke up numerous times throughout the night. Also annoying.

This morning there was a Veteran's Day parade. Several classes were in the parade and most of the ones that weren't went to watch. Only the sixth grade classes didn't go and one of them played Sardines throughout the building. I believe that is the hide-and-seek game where you have to hide with the person you find until only one person is left seeking. I could be wrong. It was entertaining to watch, though.

I spent a good chunk of my morning looking for library-related jobs at game studios. I ended up finding an internship at Blizzard in their library and archive. Pretty much exactly what I have been looking for but and I'm surprised I haven't found more like that. I started going through the application process and only have the cover letter left. It's for the summer and in the description it says that I need to be returning to school for one more semester following the internship. And the summer will be my last semester, so that would be a problem, but I figure it is worth applying anyway. If nothing else, it will be good experience at applying for jobs. And it would be really cool if it worked out.

Throughout the day I helped one of the SPED teachers with a couple laptops, made a bingo game for the resource teacher, and had a few classes in the lab. Near the end of the day I went down to the library to help the librarian with a project she is working on for her son. We ended up working on that until almost five o'clock, or maybe a little after.

When I left work I picked up Chipotle and then stopped to get gas before heading home. I wanted to get it tonight so I didn't have to leave any earlier in the morning, and I didn't want to risk another overflowing incident while wearing nice clothes.

I accomplished nothing tonight. I got a message last night before going to bed that the research paper deadline had been bumped back to next Wednesday. That is great news but it also means I'm going to continue procrastinating. I'll still try for the goal of getting it done by Friday but I doubt I'll be in the mood after the funeral and all the driving tomorrow. We'll see.

Now I'm going to hold out a little longer and then try on my nice clothes before bed just to make sure everything still fits. I haven't worn my suit in quite awhile and I'm a little concerned it won't fit. I've got options if it doesn't.

Tomorrow will be long and depressing. I'm not looking forward to it.

November 10, 2015

Throughout the day I had classes in the lab. They were a fairly constant presence but there's nothing really worth writing about. After lunch I put together several book fair signs and then put then along the front of the school. I generally don't get to go outside during the day, or even see outside, so it was kind of nice to be out there for a little bit. This afternoon I was also able to donate money to buy books for kids who aren't able to get them. The librarian said I could pick them out but I figured she would have a better idea. Also, this morning she gave me a book called Be Yourself with the Peanuts characters because she was giving them out to the teachers and she had extra. I'm a big fan of the Peanuts cartoon, and actually just bought a bunch of Peanuts ebooks. So that was pretty cool.

When I didn't have classes in the lab and tweaked my website a bit, read a little bit for my research paper, and looked into the idea of a librarian working at a video game studio. Like a corporate librarian. I found an article where someone was making the argument that game studios should hire librarians as knowledge managers, which was interesting, but I was thinking more like having one for the purposes of research. Like how some corporations have their own book libraries in-house. I know there are video games out there that involve a lot of research and I would think some of the studios and publishers would have some sort of researcher. My initial searches didn't turn anything up, though. Along with books, video games are another constant in my life and I think it would be cool to get into that industry and do research for video games. I also have seen where certain libraries, even the Library of Congress, are building video game collections, so maybe I could find a job overseeing that.

Before heading home I stopped at Target and got the cashier who was way too friendly. There was a mom with three kids in front of me and the cashier ended up going over to another register and getting a big, pocketed-envelop filled with stickers for the kids to look through and pick out out. That took some time. I don't have the best of luck when it comes to picking checkout lines. I could relate to the girl in scrubs in another line who let a couple go ahead of her and they ended up having to price check something and then had to call someone over. That's usually my luck.

Tonight I didn't accomplish anything. I'm just so freaking tired and feel very lethargic. Just my brain revolting against the idea of writing a paper. Same old story. I really wish the paper was due on Sunday so I would have another weekend to work on it. But it's good that it is due Friday because that means I can do other things this weekend, like catch up on reading.

It is now 9:30PM and I will be going to bed shortly. I can't wait.

November 9, 2015

I am going to write this and then go to bed.

I didn't get around to looking through my research paper articles today at work. The day went by really fast. I helped out with literacy centers in both kindergarten classes this morning and had classes and small groups in the lab throughout the day. I briefly worked on my website, just to add a proper footer. I also wrote a response to the discussion post from last week because today was the last day for it and I wanted to be sure I got full points.

After lunch I went down to the library to help them set up for the book fair. And then back near the end of the day and stayed until five o'clock. I was aware of how many books are at a book fair but I never really thought of how much work goes into setting it all up. And how much random crap there is. There is so much stuff that is not anywhere close to book-related. The librarian told me to stop by tomorrow and pick out a free book for helping. I probably won't but if I do I'll definitely be donating money to buy books for kids. A first grader came in near the end of school to check out a book and he said his mom said they couldn't get any books at the book fair because they needed the five dollars for food. Super depressing. When he left the librarian said he would definitely be getting a free book. During each book fair kids are picked at “random” to come down and pick out a book, thanks to money that people donate. That's something I can get behind. When I was in middle school my mom put my name in a raffle at parent-teacher conferences and I won however much money in free books. It was amazing.

Tonight I accomplished nothing. It's rough. I'm not surprised but it's also a little disappointing. Hopefully tomorrow is the day. I just need a break. More than a week off from school would be nice. I think I'm down to less than a month until Winter break. There is still a lot of work to be done in that small amount of time but I'm getting there.

Now it's bed time.

November 8, 2015

Despite going to bed around two o'clock in the morning I woke up this morning at 7:30AM. That was unfortunate. I made the best of it though and got a start on my research paper. I worked on that for a bit and then took a study break.

I ended up buying Black Ops 3 last night because it was on sale and I downloaded it while I slept. Except I didn't sleep long enough because it was still going when I woke up. But it was ready for my study break so I went in and played with the emblem and calling card or whatever it's called. Then I went into Nuketown. It was a pre-order bonus and I didn't pre-order the game so when it showed up in the download I was pleasantly surprised. It was my favorite map in the first Black Ops and the main reason I bought Black Ops 2. I haven't played a CoD game in several years, since Black Ops 2, and I've never played on PC. This became very clear when I got into the game. I didn't do too bad the first match because I got in near the end and I used an SMG. For the second game I apparently wanted to torture myself because I went with a shotgun. I got 9 kills and died 51 times. One person posted in the chat after and just said “9 and 51. Wow.” That pretty much sums it up. Thankfully I know my skill, or lack of it, and don't play for the K/D.

Throughout the day I worked on my research paper. I did a bit of research, downloaded a couple more things, wrote the introduction, and started on the first section. I'm at about one page, which isn't great, but I'm getting there. I ended up calling it a night around 8:30PM because at that point I was just staring at words and not comprehending anything. Tomorrow at work I'll start looking through the articles I have and hopefully be able to divide them up to create sections for my paper.

I also replied to a couple discussion posts today. So it was a fairly productive day. I didn't finish my paper like I would have liked but I did things.

I ended the night with some Black Ops 3 campaign. I decided to go with the Realistic difficulty mode, which is one above Veteran, which used to be the highest level. My greatest gaming achievement is still beating CoD: World at War on Veteran. I'm interested in the story of Black Ops 3 but I mainly just wanted to make it last longer. I also think I want frustration that isn't school related. I can completely focus on getting completely destroyed. In Veteran, one bullet kills you. It's an interesting change from World at War Veteran where it turned into an endless grenade party. It is unforgiving and there are some definite BS moments but that's what you get. The worst part is actually hearing the restart noise over and over again. And the same dialog over and over again. It would be nice if there was a way to turn that off. Or set it so it only plays a certain number of times, because after the twentieth death it gets old.

It is now after 12:30AM and it has taken me forever to write this because I turned on The Race livestream. It's very distracting. But I need to go to bed because I got very little sleep last night and I'm going to get very little sleep tonight. My new goal is to get my paper tomorrow but recently my poor sleep schedule on weekends has led to early bed times on Mondays. That's not conducive to finishing a paper. We'll see how it goes.

November 7, 2015

Last night I had the best night of sleep I have had in a really long time. It was great.

Today was kind of a worthless day. I didn't write my research paper. Most of my day was spent avoiding it. I downloaded a few more articles for my paper and replied to a discussion post. So I didn't waste all of my time. But a lot of it was wasted. I'm not surprised by that in the least but it is still frustrating. I should have read some of the articles for the paper, or even done the reading for the coming week so I didn't have to worry about it tomorrow. Couldn't be bothered because I suck and apparently like to torture myself.

Tomorrow I'm writing my paper. No distractions. I just need to trick myself into thinking the paper is due Monday. It's only supposed to be 1500 words, so less than five pages, which shouldn't be too hard if I would just start. During my avoidance today I did come up with a rough idea of what I want the paper to look like. That definitely isn't half the battle but it's a start in the right direction.

Now I'm going to go to bed because I'm tired. Also, I want to wake up and get to work on my paper. At least that is what I'm going to tell myself repeatedly and hope it sinks it.

November 6, 2015

Today I was really productive at work, doing schoolwork. I wrote two discussion posts, came up with some layout ideas for my group presentation, and made some additions to my website. I was surprised by all of that.

As for work, we had an incredible number of substitutes today. There were people out sick, at meetings, and other things. It was very odd. The sub for one of the second grade classes dropped the kids off at the lab and left. Despite there being twenty-four out of the twenty-six kids, I managed to keep everyone under control. The one girl who misses computer lab a lot because she has freakouts and ends up in the office, had a mini-freakout in the lab but I somehow calmed her down before it got out of hand. I got lucky.

After work and for the rest of the night I didn't really do much. I watched the Bob Ross livestream because it ended tonight. It has been replaced by a countdown timer that expires in just under three days and “Stay Tuned...” painted on a canvas. I'm curious. I hope they keep playing episodes. In the past nine days the channel got over 300,000 followers and over 160,000 people watched the final episode.

Tonight I played a little Minecraft and livestreamed it. I briefly had one of my two followers stop by which was cool. I made the first fancy 'A' in the cross stitch alphabet I used to make my sister's name and I would like to eventually make the whole alphabet in Minecraft. That will take awhile.

Now I'm going to watch a Black Ops 3 livestream for a little bit and then go to bed. Tomorrow will hopefully be filled with my research paper. I really want that to happen.

November 5, 2015

My uncle died today. When I checked my phone I had two texts from my dad. The first was shortly after noon to say that Hospice had come into the hospital for him this morning and they thought he only had a few days left. The next text was from 2:45PM saying he had passed away an hour earlier. It really sucks. That is an understatement but there are no words to describe it. It doesn't seem that long ago that he was diagnosed with brain cancer. Cancer that was really too far gone to do anything about but they tried. It doesn't seem real yet because I hadn't seen him since the diagnosis so my last memories of him are when he was still healthy. I will always remember him most for taking a million pictures at every family gathering, enjoying movies and gardening, and picking out random but cool gifts for Christmas.

So today obviously sucked but I didn't find that out until later in the day. The majority of my workday was the same old thing. I had classes in the lab and I tried to occupy myself with whatever when I didn't. This morning I went down to help one of the cooks with her computer. I didn't really do anything because switching out cords didn't do anything, but her computer was working again when I left, so at least for today I'm claiming victory.

I helped one of the fourth grade teachers by installing a couple printers on her laptop this morning and then went back up to help her connect it to her projector this afternoon. I also went up there to help one of the fifth grade teachers with her laptop cart because one of the laptops had come unplugged and I had the key. While I was there I also helped her with one of the laptops by suggesting she make sure the wireless was turned on. It wasn't. I stayed up there and talked with her and a para for a little while and she lent me a book. I would say what it was but at the moment I can't remember. It is a book that I vaguely remember reading the first few pages or so of many many years ago. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't finish it but such is life. My goal is to maybe read a few pages each day at work until I finish up classes and then I can knock it out.

Speaking of classes, I ended up working a little more on my website today. I also very briefly looked into stuff for my weekly assignment before going to the sixth grade music assembly. I'm liking the look of my website, even though it is just the basic design and doesn't have any actual content yet. Tonight I added a few lines of CSS so that my menu bar stays locked to the top of the page when you scroll down. I also made it slightly transparent. Like barely perceptible but enough that it looks neat.

For most of the night I fought and lost with my motivation to do my weekly assignment. Then, when I finally managed to start working on it, the internet crapped out on me. It is really annoying considering the only part I have left involves looking at a few different library websites. Kind of hard to do that without the internet considering that's where websites live. I've tried resetting it multiple times so I'm pretty sure it is something on their end not ours. I hat our internet. We don't get the advertised speed because I think everyone in the neighborhood has the same service so we're all pulling from the same pool. It's also shoddy as hell and frequently drops for short periods of time. It really makes online classes difficult when you can't get online. I'm going to keep trying up until midnight, after which point it won't matter because even if I submitted my discussion post it would count as being submitted tomorrow. This means I'll need to post at least one response tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, so it doesn't look like I was slacking. Although that's what I get for slacking. If I had just done the assignment earlier in the week, or even earlier today, I would have been fine. Oh well.

I'm going to go reset the router again.

I gave up on the internet for about a half and hour and left the router unplugged the entire time just in case. When I came back and plugged everything in, it was working. I had enough time to look at a couple different library pages, finish writing my post, trimming it down because I tend to be a bit wordy and we were limited to 250 words this week, and then I submitted it. I feel mildly better. Now I need to find the motivation for my research paper.

November 4, 2015

I imagine I have said this numerous times over the years but I think my motivation has hit an all time low. Not good when trying to finish grad school.

Today at work I helped out for half of kindergarten literacy centers, had classes in the lab, and in my free time I worked on my website for my academic libraries class. For the class we have to create a digital portfolio of our assignments in the form of a website. The teacher mentioned several online options for building a website but I would like to make one so I can keep the stuff I learned over the summer in my web design class fresh in my mind. Or at least kind of fresh. I started working on it at the beginning of the semester but hit a wall with my menu not working. Today I had the same trouble but ended up figuring it out by cutting and pasting CSS code from one of the websites I made over the summer until I got it working. Then I slowly cut out the stuff I didn't need, checking after each cut to make sure I didn't need it. After I got it working how I wanted I went back and tweaked stuff so it looked better. I also added a picture of an open book for the banner picture and messed around with small stacks of books in the bottom corners. I'm not sure I'll keep those but we'll see.

It was an early release day and after work I went and got my oil changed before heading home. I then proceeded to do nothing. I had such lofty goals. Eventually it was time to go pick up Chipotle. The girl from a week or two ago who remembered my order was working on the line and was not stingy on the rice and beans so my burrito was huge. And delicious. I like when the workers don't act like they are personally having to pay for the amount of rice and beans they go through during their shift.

For dessert I had some of the apple crisp thing that one of the school cooks made me for helping her with computer stuff. I'm not a big fan of apple things but it was pretty good.

After videos I came downstairs and kind of worked on my weekly assignment. And by kind of I mean I searched for and read abstracts for several articles, which is part of the assignment. I figure maybe tomorrow at work I will have time to finish the rest of it. Hopefully. It will probably turn into tomorrow night if I'm being honest. I'm just kind of done with this semester. I'm a bit checked out. And burnt out. It's almost December.