March 18, 2016

Last night I thought Julia Child was going to make a recipe involving sweet breads and grains. Turns out it was sweetbreads, which is a very pleasant way of describing the heart and throat area of an calf, and the grains I was looking forward to were actually calf brains. I could not have misunderstood her to a greater degree.

This morning I didn't come anywhere close to waking up early. Or at least getting out of bed at a decent time. I didn't sit up until eleven o'clock. My back in not a fan of the reintroduction to vertical gravity in the morning. I can't even imagine what it must feel like going from space for months and then back to Earth's gravity.

While I was laying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, I developed a game plan for my day. When I made it to my desk and got my computer up and running, I closed the few windows I had open that were filled with tabs that would tempt me to distraction. I only left the school-related windows open and that was a major help.

Before lunch I was able to transfer all of the notes I wrote down yesterday into comments in the PDF version of the license. After lunch and for the rest of the afternoon and evening I went through the two license checklists and added additional comments based on the recommendations of the checklists. In general I think the license I picked was pretty solid and was favorable to libraries, but I had to really nit-pick so it actually looked like I put some effort into the whole process. When I finished up with the second checklist I went back through all of my comments and made minor edits, making sure I had justified my reasons for suggesting alternations to the license. I'm pretty happy with the result but it isn't due until Monday so I'm going to sit on it for a bit so I can look back on it with a fresh perspective before turning it in.

I took a brief break before dinner from working on the license review so I could run on the elliptical and when looking for something to watch I saw that the Ultra Music Festival was live on Twitch. I started following their channel last year and knew the festival in Miami was soon but I didn't realize it started today. I missed the first few performances but that's not bad for having no idea it was today and having spent the day with my schoolwork blinders on, ignoring all the usual online distractions. The timing of my elliptical run was a little unfortunate with Kygo's performance, which started right before I got in the shower. I recorded it though so I can watch it later. Kygo is the guy I discovered during last year's festival and ended up using one of his shows for the end of the year slideshow. Before he came on this year there was a group called Tycho, which has a pretty chill sound and there is a possibility I might use one of their songs for this year's slideshow.

While finishing up my license review I had on the festival livestream, which was only mildly distracting. The dogs spent some time in my room tonight and it was handy that I had the festival on because I was able to turn it up kind of loud to keep the dogs from hearing random noises and barking. The loud music was a little distracting when trying to think but it was also good music, so I can't complain too much. I can complain about the fact that the dogs smelled really bad for some reason. It was like when kids come straight to the lab after having a long recess in the baking sun and they're all sweaty and gross. But this was worse because it was a gross dog smell. It was almost like they had rolled around in something. After they left the room I had to leave my door open and I turned on the little melty, smell good thingy I have. I can't tell if it worked or I just go used to the smell. Hopefully it worked.

When I called the license review done I switched back to the Minecraft flyer I am making for my technology class. I nearly finished that up, at least getting all the information on it that I wanted. I still wasn't quite happy with the layout, though. And after writing about it just now I opened it back up and made a few edits that I think look much better than what I had before. I still want to figure out a better design for the library logo but I can do that tomorrow.

After I felt like I had been sufficiently productive today, pretty much finishing the license review assignment like I wanted to and pretty much finishing the flyer, which is a good start toward my tutorial video, I turned my attention back to The Division. I watched more trailers and videos, read more about it, and played with the numbers a bit. Earlier when I had considered buying it I could get a 20% off coupon. Today, I could get a 23% off coupon. That would save me nearly two more dollars. And I decided to buy it. I could have waited until next week to see if there was a 25% off coupon, which there very well could be, but there is no guarantee that it would be valid for The Division. And if I waited I would either lose interest or be knee-deep in another school assignment, like the paper I have to write about Universal Design or whatever that is due next weekend. So I pulled the trigger. I waited long enough, and it is a big enough game, and my internet is slow enough, that it is only about halfway through downloading. That means I won't be playing it tonight but that is probably for the best.

Tomorrow I am going to go over my license review again. I am also going to try and finalize my flyer. If that works out I may also try to recreate it relatively quickly because that is what I will be doing for my video tutorial. Being able to recreate it smoothly will make the filming of the video tutorial go much better because I won't have to edit out as many long pauses. I will also being playing some of The Division tomorrow because after the full day I put into schoolwork today, I could use a little break.