February 9, 2016

 Today went by fast. And now I want to go to bed.

A good chunk of my day was spent working on the STEM slideshow for the principal. I finished putting borders on the pictures and then created the slides by putting two pictures on the backoground I found yesterday. I also created a title slide using the same background but I put a black layer on top of it and made it transparent so I could still see the background but it made the words on top of it more readable. Then I dumped all of the slides into Windows Movie Maker, put the basic cross fade transition on them, selected random pans and zooms, and added in the music, making the slideshow run as long as the music. The first time I rendered it I picked the highest resolution but I might have gone with an online video which had a lower bit rate and it kind of looked like crap during the panning. So I rendered it again and picked the highest settings, which came out much better. I ended up rendering out two versions, one with my first choice song and a one with my second choice. I gave both to the principal so we'll see what she thinks once she has a chance to watch. She wanted it by Friday so if she hates it I still have time to correct it. I think it turned out pretty well, though. Surprisingly well for finishing it in less that two days.

This afternoon when one of the kindergarten classes was in the lab, one of the kindergarteners was getting frustrated with Compass Learning because he couldn't figure something out, so he decided to take that frustration out on his neighbor. He looked over at her screen for a little bit before standing up and trying to take her mouse while saying “Let's get this straight, Annie, that's not math.” They argued about it for a few seconds while I walked up to them. I had him sit back down in his seat, pointed at the thing he needed to click on his screen that he had missed, leading to his frustration, and I had his neighbor go back to her work. And, for the record, she was working on math.

The slideshow took up most of my day, and classes in the lab filled most of the rest. Near the end of the day I was able to scan a few more baby pictures for the sixth grade slideshow and I was able to edit one of them. Not great progress but pretty good considering the amount of time I had.

I also emailed my interview questions to the two potential interviewees. That was later in the afternoon and didn't hear back but hopefully tomorrow. I know they need to talk about it and figure out who will actually answer the questions and if they want to meet in person or stick with an email interview. I would prefer email because that has the least impact on the schedules of both parties and I can refer back to typed out answers rather than my memory and scribbled notes. In-person interviews are also good, and I gave both options in my email today, so we'll see.

Tonight I read an article before dinner that nearly put me to sleep and gave me a headache, all at the same time. That's impressive.

After dinner I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and finally managed to pick two options to review for the partner assignment this week. One was a single journal and the other was a database. I was leaning toward the journal because it was less involved and the database would probably get a little overwhelming with the time we have left. I didn't mention that in my email to my partner with the recommendations because I didn't want to show any bias but when I heard back from him later in the evening he thought it would be better to go with the journal as well. Hooray for that. I'm going to email him back when I finish this to confirm the journal and maybe lay out how to divide up the criteria we are using to review the journal. It would be nice to get a start on that tomorrow but I've got Thursday and Friday off from work and tomorrow is Chipotle night, so the motivation probably won't be very high.

Firewatch came out today and I played it for about an hour and a half tonight. A lot of that time, if not most of it, was spent wandering around once I made it to the woods. I really like the art style and it was relaxing to just wander around in the woods at night with all the nature sounds. Made me wish I was actually in the woods. When I did finally start playing the game I enjoyed it. I like the voice acting, particularly the lady on the radio, and the game mechanics are pretty good. It's a little awkward using 'R' for run but 'Shift', which is a typical run button in games, is used for the radio. Getting used to that difference will probably screw things up for me when I get back to a game with more traditional controls but I'll deal with it. I also like how you can walk with your compass out to navigate or with your map and compass out to better find your way. With the five day weekend coming up I will probably be playing a bit more of it.

Not tonight, however, because it is after eleven o'clock and I am tired and I want to sleep. If I didn't have to wake up for work tomorrow I would probably go back to playing the game, but I'm going to be a responsible adult.