April 29, 2016

Despite yesterday feeling like a bit of a fail, I carried on today and ended up being pretty productive.

For the first forty-five minutes of my day at work I set up thirty iPads for MAP testing. That should be the last time I have to handle that many iPads, thankfully. At some point I'm probably going to have a nightmare about having to do the same thing over and over and over again on a million iPads.

The iPad cart was right outside the gifted teacher's office so when I finished the iPads I went in and updated her browsers so she could use the programs she needs to write reports. Her issues were probably fixed up until I left her office. Things always seem to go wrong when I'm not there.

Following that, I started tracking down and taking pictures of new kids for the yearbook. I got all of them but one of them this morning and got the last one during lunch. This afternoon I was able to edit a few of them and hopefully Monday I'll be able to do the rest and get them put in the yearbook.

I also scanned and edited a few pictures for one of the sixth grade teachers and helped the math enrichment teacher install printers on her loaner laptop.

Throughout the day I had classes in the lab but when I didn't, and when I wasn't running around doing other things, I was able to tweak and print out my resume, as well as update the curriculum vitae I made several years ago. Tomorrow afternoon after all the resume and interview presentations we are supposed to have one-on-one breakout sessions to go over our resumes and I thought it would be a good idea to get some tips on the curriculum vitae as well because that is what I'll need for academic jobs.

Before dinner I read the article I should have read for my discussion post, and then after dinner I started writing the second version of my discussion post. It was a little trickier, and I think my first one might have been better, but I got it done. I also responded to a post. Now I just need to do that at least once tomorrow and Sunday. Preferably more than once.

More emails were sent back and forth today for the group project, all between me and the other guy working on the technology stuff. I'm becoming a little more comfortable with what my role is in terms of the paper but it still all feels a little up in the air. This assignment is worth way too many points to still feel that way this close to the deadline. After I get back from the workshop tomorrow I need to sit down and really dig into this stuff. Hopefully people will have sent me their slides by then so I can also get a better idea of how the presentation is shaping up.

Now I'm going to bed so I can wake up early and hit the road by eight o'clock. Or at least close to eight o'clock.

April 28, 2016

I currently feel like an idiot, but we'll get to that soon enough.

Today I had one class in the computer lab and that wasn't until the very end of the day. Normally I think there is only one class scheduled on Thursday morning but they were on a field trip today. I was productive with my time, however, and started my morning by setting up nineteen iPads for MAP testing. It would have been twenty but the twentieth one wouldn't connect to the Wi-Fi. If you've never carried twenty iPads up a flight of stairs, let me tell you, it's a workout. I'm not in great shape to begin with but I think even if I was I would have felt the burn. It's really a whole body exercise.

When that was done I laminated all of the note cards I made for the library clerk the other day. I don't think I've laminated anything this year so that was long overdue. As a thank you for making the cards in the first place and then laminating them, the library clerk brought me several cookies that she made. I would really like to eat healthier but when people keep making me delicious treats they must be eaten.

Beginning in the morning and then throughout most of the afternoon I worked on the end of the year slideshow because I've been neglecting that recently. I finally go the large student portraits for the yearbooks so I was able to edit those to add into the slideshow. I also edited a couple other pictures and put several slides together. I've got twelve kids and six group slides done, which is decent. Despite being completely burnt out by the video tutorial assignment, I am looking forward to editing the slideshow. There are way less restrictions and I am interested to see how it turns out.

The morning was quiet because there weren't any students in the lab. This afternoon it was quiet because there were several students in the lab taking the ACT Aspire test. Thankfully it worked this time so we won't have to worry about rescheduling it. For as bad as the state assessments have been, the testing system used for this test sounds pretty awful. It only works through Firefox, which has to be completely updated, Java also has to be completely updated, and I think the computers have to be authenticated. That would be an incredible hassle if I had to go through that for the whole school. I mentioned how awful it would be to deal with for the state assessments and the lady running the test told me that some states had actually adopted it as the state assessment, and that one state was actually suing the company because of how bad it was. I'm not surprised.

I got an email from the PR lady at the public library today telling me that I needed to start polishing my resume because a position was opening up in the next couple of weeks at the library. I told her that I was actually going to a resume and interview workshop this weekend and her response was a picture of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons with the word “Excellent” on it. It was pretty great.

As for the job, I'm torn. I don't think I want to work in a public library. I'm pretty sure I want to work in an academic library but I won't really know until I get into the practicum this summer and get some experience. That being said, I don't have any experience in a public library either, and maybe I'll love it. I also don't know that I'm really a “shoe-in” for the job at the public library. I know that the PR lady has been dropping my name into conversations with the administration and other librarians whenever possible, but there are definitely more qualified people out there. And what happens if I get the job and then find out an amazing job opens up at the academic library and they want me for it after I finish my practicum? And how stressful would it be juggling the practicum and a brand new full-time job? These are things I need to set aside in my mind for bit so I can finish this semester.

Speaking of which, I spent all night writing a lengthy discussion post. It was a blind discussion, so we could only see the question we were supposed to answer and not anyone else's responses until we posted our own. So I wrote up my long post, posted it, and after glancing at a couple other posts, realized I had done it completely wrong. I based my response on what I thought was the model laid out in out in the textbook chapter we read this week. I was a little confused at first because it didn't specifically say it was a model for assessing the value of electronic resources, but it was about evaluating electronic resources. Turns out there was an article in the weekly overview that I completely missed, and in the title of the article it said it was a model for assessing the value of electronic resources. I feel like such a complete idiot. And as punishment for my stupidity I probably won't get full points for this week's discussion because I will only be able to post three days out of the week instead of four like I usually do. Hopefully I don't get additional points off for posting and revealing my classmates responses. To be fair, I didn't actually read any of their responses. I scanned just enough to get the full-body shiver/sweats thing when you realize a terrible mistake has been made. I saw one reference to an article by the professor I hadn't read and when I looked back at the weekly overview, there it was. Such an idiot. I'll have to read the article tomorrow and write another response. And respond to someone's just to try and keep my potential point loss at a minimum.

Going back to the morning, the professor posted the sign-up for when we want to give our presentation. This led to several emails back and forth between three out of the four in our group. We have yet to hear back from the girl in the group but it turns out the other two guys work at night so they were both wanting to present in the morning. How I ended up in a group with people who don't work normal day jobs I don't know. One guy even wanted to request a time late next Friday or even on Saturday but I kind of vetoed that. She gave us pretty much the full day, Monday through Thursday to pick from, 9:00AM to 6:45PM, and until 2:15PM on Friday. That felt generous enough. And inconveniencing the person responsible for giving you a grade didn't seem like the best idea. I immediately got stressed out, assuming I will now have to take off work to give this stupid presentation. A presentation that no one is really sure about, including myself, and that we probably won't have time to practice. It's also worth 40 points, which is a lot. There is a reason group projects are assigned on the first weekend and presentations are given on the second weekend. The stress of coming up with the presentation is compounded by having to get everyone online at the same time and having to figure out the technology of presenting online. If I wasn't already losing my hair this would definitely make it start.

On top of all that, all of this presentation discussion happened in the same email thread that we were discussing the project itself, so now the initial information is buried and new information is being tacked on to the presentation discussion which hasn't been resolved yet. We have our own workspace online but people have opted to just have a single email thread. More stress.

This semester has been super easy and relatively low stress up to this point, the last week and a half of class. But like all semesters, now the stress level is through the roof. I would really like to just curl up in a bawl. I can feel that I'm trying to keep track of too many things at once and it feels like I'm on the verge of collapse. I just need to make it to the Monday after next, without crashing and burning in spectacular fashion.

The only bright spot of my evening was finally writing with my fountain pens. I was considering buying another one because it was on sale but wanting to actually try writing with one before I bought another one. I started with the Platinum Preppy which has an extra fine nib. It has some ink flow issues and isn't the smoothest writer (probably due mostly to the extra fine nib) but I liked the thin line. After that I tried the Pilot Metropolitan with a fine nib. That pen is so smooth to write with. Like ridiculously smooth. It took me a little bit to figure out how to hold it so the ink flowed best and to realize that I didn't really need to apply any pressure to get it to write. You don't really realize how much effort it takes to write with a ballpoint pen until you've written with a fountain pen.

Now it's almost 12:30AM and tomorrow is going to be a long day. As is Saturday. And Sunday. Ugh.

April 27, 2016

 My head hurts. Let's do this thing.

This morning I finished setting up the third grade iPad cart for MAP testing. Tomorrow I will try and get through the whole sixth grade cart. And maybe the new cart on the third floor on Friday.

There was no formal testing today but I did have several kids finish MAP tests and one fifth grader came down to finish his state assessment. I think there will be more kids finishing MAP tests tomorrow during their regular lab times.

I added the preschool pages to the yearbook and went back and adjusted some of the other pages so that both classes in each grade had the same layout because the pages face each other and it looked odd when one class had a 25 portrait layout and the other class had a 30 portrait layout. The only thing left for me to do is take and edit the portraits of the new kids so I can get them added. Hopefully I can do that tomorrow or Friday.

During my lunch break I perfected my French-ruled paper template. I switched over to Publisher because I could make the lines much thinner and it felt like I had more control over the spacing. It took a bit of tweaking to get the line thickness and color so that the lines would show up when printed but I got there eventually. And I think it looks pretty freaking good. I still plan on getting a French-ruled notebook or two but I like that I now have a usable template and if I want to, could buy some better printer paper and print off my own practice sheets.

Near the end of the day we had a character award assembly and the music teacher called the kids up and read their awards because the principal lost her voice over the weekend and it still isn't back. The music teacher spoke way too slow, though, and it made the assembly go on for far too long. We got there in the end.

After work I picked up Chipotle and headed home. YouTube was cooperating better this week so I was able to show videos after dinner. I also got some pictures of a bird. A painted bunting to be more specific. It was probably about a year ago that one showed up on our back porch for a day or two. And then this morning he returned. It's gotta be the same one because what are the odds of more than one showing up when I don't think we are typically in their range. After the storm last night I thought maybe it was blown off course but if it is the same one from last year then it seems more purposeful. Anyway.

Tonight I read the last three articles for the week. They were boring but also short. Despite the length I struggled with them because for most of the day I had a sharp headache behind my left eye. I think that is a combination of being next door to the music room and loud drum playing all day, and staring at a computer screen all day. Some of it might also be my left eye, which still has a little bump on the eyelid and it is still a little puffy and I think that causes my vision to go blurry in that eye. I should go to the doctor. Soon. Maybe. I would still like the issue to resolve itself.

This afternoon I sent an email to my group because they had gone silent. I posted the technology price table on Monday and one person commented yesterday saying it looked good. That was a nice statement but it was still incomplete and needed work. I didn't hear anything from the other two members so I sent the email today to touch base and see where they were at in the project. I also reminded them that we are supposed to present sometime next week and it would be nice if I could get the presentation information sometime this weekend so I could put the slides together with enough time for everyone to look over it. Then I pointed out that the presentation and the paper for this assignment was more than a quarter of our grade and it would be nice to get things done early enough to make revisions if necessary.

I heard back from one of the group members a few hours later and he said he had in his mind that we still had two weeks before the presentation. Good grief. He seemed to have a plan to get things done, though, so hopefully that works out. I heard back from the other group member tonight saying he would take care of the rest of the technology table. I'll email them back tomorrow when I'm less tired and have less of a headache. I can still help out with the table because there are some things I want to add and I've been doing a little research on the prices of things.

There are still a lot of things on my To-Do list, which I should probably write down so I don't forget anything. But not now. Now it is time for bed. I can't wait. I'll end with an email I sent out to the school today because we ran out of Kleenex in the computer lab. It was entitled “Computer Lab Kleenex (Or Non-Branded Tissue of Choice)”:

The computer lab has become a BYOK party. My supply has been sullied by avoidance, testing tears, and occasionally mucus. If your kids have allergies, an illness, or just need an excuse to not log into Compass Learning, you might want to make sure they have a pocket full of Kleenex before coming to the lab. You could also donate a box to the cause, knowing full well that a significant portion will be used for applications other than their intended purpose, like the wiping of a nose that is not currently in need but may be at some point in the future and it is better to be safe than risk logging in and actually accomplishing something on the computer. 

April 26, 2016

 Last night I got nine hours of sleep and it was fantastic.

This morning I had one MAP test and it went well. There were several kids that weren't able to finish but they're going to finish up during their lab time later in the week. I think there are still a few kids in the building that need to finish their state assessments, which has to be done by Thursday. Thankfully I am not responsible for any of them.

I had regular classes in the lab throughout the day. In my downtime I nearly finished my part of the yearbook. I readjusted all the class page layouts, added in the kids who I had pictures of from the retakes (even though they are smaller and have a white background), added in the teacher portraits on each page, and added the teacher's name. There are three or four kids that I need to go take pictures of so I can edit them and add them to the yearbook. I also think we might be including the preschool, so I might throw in those pages tomorrow. If that ended up putting us over the budget we can just delete them later.

I also made a word flower thing for one of the kindergarten teacher using a simple kindergarten word list. It is like a Wordle but I don't think you can use specific images in Wordle so I used Tagxedo. I found a clipart picture of three flowers, edited it in Gimp to get one flower, uploaded it to Tagxedo, typed in the words I wanted, switched it so the original flower colors would be used, and then downloaded it. I wasn't that happy with the colors so after that I opened it in Gimp, erased the background, selected just the head of the flower, and used the Colorize option to shift the colors until they looked better. In the end I came up with several different color options. I printed off a black and white version from the copier and gave it to the teacher so she could see if it was what she wanted. She liked it so tomorrow I'll create a PDF with the different color options and send that to her.

During my lunch break I made a template for French-ruled (Seyes) paper in Excel. The lines are a little thicker than I would like because the cell borders only go so thin, but it doesn't look that bad. The measurements are also off slightly because Excel isn't accurate to the millimeter. It's close though. After working on that I found a website that had a Clairefontaine notebook cheaper than Goulet Pens and I could choose the color of the cover, so I decided to order it. But then there wasn't an “Add to Cart” button. I sent them an email and the first response came really quick. Unfortunately they just told me to click on the “Add to Cart” button. I emailed back saying it wasn't just grayed out, it wasn't on the page anywhere. They got back to me a little while later with a copy of the page that didn't allow the choosing of cover color but it did have an “Add to Cart” button.

When I got home I checked to see if they had updated the original page and they hadn't so I was just going to order it with the new page and request a color in the order notes. I made it to the ordering screen and it said it would update the shipping amount once I put my address in. But it didn't update. I tried a couple different things and it wouldn't show up. That's when I started having second thoughts. Or maybe third thoughts after the thing with the missing button. I searched for information about the website and there wasn't much there. They hadn't used Twitter since last year, which seemed odd. The website has a store but the main point of the website is to sell a subscription box that is supposed to come out every other month. On Facebook, which they also haven't used since last year, the last posts were people either wondering when they were going to get their box because it had been three months and one hadn't arrived, or people not getting what they had ordered and not hearing back from the company after they said on Facebook that someone would contact them. With all of that I decided not to risk it and didn't order the notebook from them. I'm sticking with Goulet Pens because they have a great social media presence, are active in their community, and I had a really good experience with my last order. A few bucks isn't worth the hassle, which seemed inevitable with that other website. I probably would have had to pay a ridiculous amount for shipping, anyway.

Going back to work. The weather was predicted to get bad near the end of the day and that came true. The last thirty minutes of school was filled with near constant all-calls from the office asking for kids to come to the office because their parents were there to pick them up. Nothing like that has happened before. I had planned on leaving as soon as the bell rang because the weather was only supposed to get worse but as I was about to turn my computer off there was an announcement for everyone to go to the basement, which is where the lab is. We were put under a tornado warning so everyone that was left at school had to follow our drill procedure and congregate in the basement. Luckily a lot of kids had already left but it was still a close fit and it does not take very long for it to get super hot down there. After fifteen minutes or so we opened up the music room and the work room and moved some kids into those rooms to spread the heat out a little bit. After about ten minutes of that my mom found me and said she was leaving to check on the dogs so I headed out, too. I learned later that the warning had expired a few minutes before I left but they were keeping everyone down there because they didn't know if another warning was going to come.

The drive home involved heavy rain and the occasional ping of tiny hail. Not long after getting home Tanner and Beau got into a bloody fight, which was great. I was standing up on the seat of the coat area right off the kitchen, looking for the weather radio, and they got into it right beneath me. I couldn't do anything but my mom was able to go grab the gate which we use to safely separate them, and I got Tanner corralled in the laundry room while my mom got Beau and Alfie outside. Both Tanner and Beau ended up bleeding everywhere but it didn't take too long for them to get over it, although there were occasional growls the rest of the night. I love dogs.

Nothing really ended up happening with the storm. Lots of rain, some small hail, and some big gusts of wind. In the lower parts of town I know the streets were flooding, because the drainage down there is horrible, but I haven't heard of anything other than that. It turned out better than expected overall. My mom was annoyed and thought it should have been treated like a snow day, especially considering we missed out on one of those earlier in the year. It makes sense because this storm was in the forecast since yesterday or the day before and it is potentially more dangerous than anything we would get on a snow day. Considering all of the schools had to use their tornado procedures at the end of the day and a bunch of parents at our school (and probably throughout the district) came to pick up their kids early, the superintendent is probably going to get a lot of angry phone calls and emails. With the snow day he sent out a kind of apology for not calling it when he should have. It will be interesting to see if anything happens this time.

After dinner tonight I managed to read a textbook chapter and an article. Not bad. I should be able to read the remaining three articles tomorrow. And start formulating my answer to the question for this week's discussion post.

I heard back from the librarian who I will be doing my practicum with this summer and she had a more formalized list of what activities and projects I would be working on this summer. I need to write those up and tie them to the outcomes of the program and send that to my adviser so she can approve of everything.

One of my group members commented on the price table I posted yesterday saying it looked good but I haven't heard from the other two. We're supposed to present next week some time and at least from my perspective we barely have anything done. The paper we have to write and the presentation combine to a little more than a quarter of our overall grade in the class. That is significant to say the least. I'm hoping everyone steps up this weekend, and in a timely enough fashion that they get me their slide information so I can make the PowerPoint and send that back out to them. The semester is almost over but with so many points still on the table we really can't afford to slack off. I think at the beginning of every group project we should have access to our group members' past grades so we can get a better idea of what kind of student they are. That way you don't put too much faith in the slackers.

April 25, 2016

I made it to bed around 12:30AM last night. I was wrenched from my sleep around 1:45AM when the smoke detectors went off. Worse than alarm clock is the sound of a smoke detector that not only has an shrill alarm but also has an automated voice that says “fire”, or whatever the hell it says. Yet again there was no fire, just a smoke detector being an asshole. The same smoke detector, in fact, that has caused all the previous grief. I went upstairs and pulled it off the ceiling and took the battery out. I think it was replaced the last time we had trouble but that particular spot must just be possessed. My guess as for the cause this time is that we haven't cleaned them in awhile and over the past few weeks with all the burning in and around town they probably got a little dirty. Regardless, it was awful. And this was made even worse by the fact that the alarm got me so riled up that I wasn't able to fall back to sleep for over an hour.

This morning I helped out with kindergarten literacy centers and the slow third grader came in to finish her test. And she actually finished her test. She told me it was her birthday today so I can only assume it was a birthday miracle. There's no other explanation.

This afternoon I had first grade, third grade, and fifth grade classes in the lab. And no testing. It was great. The fifth grade class hasn't been there in awhile due to testing and field trips so it was a little odd. I got to hear the story of the teacher and her fiance having to spend some time last night in the meat locker of a grocery store because the weather was getting so. There were apparently a lot of knives around and one of the other customers didn't seem to think being surrounded by knives was the best location during a potential tornado. But everyone survived.

I spent most of my day at work when I wasn't doing work things, looking up prices for my group project. I got most of them sorted out by there are still a few things, like a self-checkout stand and databases, that I either didn't have time for or couldn't find pricing information for them. I uploaded it to the group page so they could take a look at it. We still need to come up with the quantity for each item and figure out the refresh cycle, or whatever it's called. Maybe my partner on the technology stuff will take on some of that.

After work I volunteered at the public library. I worked on the flyer map and found that my original idea didn't quite work out. I was able to import all of the businesses on one layer but I learned that I couldn't import duplicate addresses on another layer. My solution is to manually add markers on subsequent layers that will break up the different areas of town. That really increases the amount of time I thought it would take but it will eventually get done. Two more things. The PR lady wrote me a thank you note for all my help and gave me a gift card to a new ice cream place in town. At least I'm assuming it is new because I've never heard of it. But it may have been here for years with as often as I get out. Secondly, she showed my tutorial video to several people around the library, who are going to use it as a tutorial for new people I guess, and the new head of the reference department wants to send it to several other librarians in the region. So that's cool. If I had known all that I would have tried to make a better video, or at least one that was more entertaining. I'm just glad all the hours I put in will pay off a little bit more than just having my professor and a few of my classmates watch it.

About halfway through dinner the tiredness really caught up with me and it became a struggle to keep my eyes open. Needless to say I did not accomplish much tonight. I downloaded the articles I need to read this week. They are all pretty short, as is the chapter I need to read. That is nice. I should be able to read most of it tomorrow. Hopefully.

It's nine o'clock now and I think I'm going to try and respond to one more discussion post before going to bed. We'll see. Tomorrow I'm going to do things. I need to work on the yearbook and the slideshow. Maybe that will happen.

April 24, 2016

 This morning I was laying in bed reading a textbook when all of a sudden a spider came around the edge of the textbook and started walking across the page. I slowly got up and tried to go for the cup I use to catch spiders but as I stood up the book flopped a little and the spider disappeared. I got down to look for it but it was gone. My biggest question is how the spider got on my book in the first place. I think I was holding it up from the blankets the whole time which would mean it had to crawl up my arm to get to the book. Or it rappelled from the ceiling and managed to land on the backside of my book. Or maybe my book had touched the blankets at some point and the spider just climbed on up after traversing what to it must have seemed like quite mountainous terrain. Basement life. Where cups dedicated to the capture and release of spiders are a must.

After the reading and spider catching I got on the computer and reviewed my conference proposal. I think I might have made a minor change. Throughout the day I kind of worked on the group project but didn't make much progress. I got hung up on trying to figure out how many computers we would need to buy for an academic library serving 20,000 students. I wasn't sure if I should go with a ratio based on the number of students or if I should try and come up with the number of computer labs, random computers throughout the library, and staff computers. The plan now is to go through the technology list I came up with and get individual prices. Then the guy I'm working with on the technology portion can come help come up with total units needed.

I was going to do that tonight after dinner but got sidetracked by a tornado warning. Or a watch. Whichever one means a tornado has been seen. There wasn't one in my town but one was spotted not too far away so we spent some time hanging out with the dogs in the basement just in case. I could have kept working on school stuff but instead I watched the weather guy on TV and then listened to the weather guy on the radio when the TV cut out, while reading the beginning of the Spencerian penmanship book.

Going back to dinner for a second. We ordered pizza from Papa John's and it took almost an hour and a half to be delivered. Even though the street we live on has been around for almost two years now it hasn't been added to Papa John's map. They have the street across the street, which has the same name but it is a court instead of a circle. This was confusing to the guy taking the order though and my mom had to say the name of the street at least five times. She even spelled it out twice. After over an hour of waiting she called to see if it was coming and they said it was out for delivery. Not long after that the delivery person called and said they had either delivered the pizza to a different address or they were looking for a different address. The number was right but the street name was wrong. My mom again said the name of the street a couple times and about ten or fifteen minutes later it finally showed up. In the end it wasn't the delivery person's fault because the address on the pizza box said the street the delivery person had gone to. Someone, after being told five times and having it spelled out twice, the person taking the order had put down the wrong street. And I can't figure it out because the names didn't sound or look alike. That is probably the last time for that we order from Papa John's in a really long time.

After dinner, before the storm stuff, I read over my proposal one last time and submitted it. We ended up not losing power or the internet during the storm but if we had I would have gotten my assignment submitted just in time. So I'm pretending it is impressive.

Now I'm going to bed because it is midnight and I have to wake up for work in the morning. It doesn't mean we won't have testing but at the moment we don't have anything scheduled for tomorrow. I need to continue working on the yearbook but I also wouldn't mind getting a start on finding prices for my group project. I want to have that all done by tomorrow and posted so I can get some feedback from the group. There are also a couple jobs I want to apply for, so maybe I can start writing the cover letters or at least turning my resume into a CV. Years ago I had a CV but I have no idea where that ended up and it probably wasn't that good. I've got the resume/CV writing workshop next weekend but who knows how long the job listings will be open so I would prefer not to wait.

April 23, 2016

 I woke up sometime after eight o'clock this morning and then stayed in bed until almost nine o'clock thinking about my conference proposal. I finally got out of bed and went to my computer when I had everything figured out in my mind.

It took me all day to finish the proposal, as I suspected it would because I gave myself all day, but I did finish it. I got quite a bit done before lunch and finished everything but the statement of originality. I didn't think that would take me too long but it ended up taking about three hours to finish, which included researching and reading articles. But it's done. At least the first draft. I'll read it over again tomorrow because I'm sure there will be at least a couple things I'm not entirely happy with.

Tomorrow I also need to start on the group project for my technology class. During our class weekend I came up with a list of all the technology stuff I thought we would need to buy. Tomorrow I need to try and visualize our imaginary library and see how that technology will be placed in the library. We need to know if we will have a computer lab (or how many), a technology center, work areas, and that sort of thing. That will give me a better idea of how much stuff we will have to buy. Then I can start looking up prices and creating a table with all that information. I also need to read the short textbook chapter about technology plans. Which I might actually do before I get out of bed tomorrow morning to get it out of the way.

In my my meal breaks today I watched some YouTube videos, most of them were pen related because that's my thing at the moment. If I can make decent progress on the group project tomorrow I might finally get to play with my new fountain pens. We'll see.

Now it is after one o'clock in the morning and soon I will go to bed. Can't wait.

April 22, 2016

 Today was a light testing day. First thing I had a first grade class and the slow sixth grader showed up to finish her test. This afternoon I had a handful of second graders finish during their regular lab time. And that was it. The third graders had a field trip today and there was an assembly this afternoon so my slow third grade friend was unable to test. The break was much needed for both of us I think.

This afternoon we had the Physics assembly, which we have every year. An old Physics professor comes with two or three assistants and they show off various Physics things. It was mostly the same stuff as previous years but there was some new stuff thrown in. He had a large plastic tube that he held horizontally and heated one end. When he turned the tube vertically with the heated end down it made a loud noise, that stopped with the heated end spun upward, and sounded again when the heated end was down. Pretty cool. The last experiment inside was filling a large styrofoam container with liquid nitrogen and then an assistant got decked out in a coat, glasses, and gloves before climbing a ladder with a big container of hot water. He then poured it all into the liquid nitrogen at once and it erupted into a large white cloud and then spread across the floor. Very cool. The assembly ended as always with a small bottle of liquid nitrogen submerged into a large trash can filled with water, which then erupted in a geyser of water when the bottle exploded. Eruptions are cool.

Throughout the day when I there wasn't testing or kids in the lab, I worked on the yearbook. There is no easy way to resize the teacher picture on each class page so I have to eyeball it and try to line it up kinda sorta with the grid lines. It also doesn't help that the site is incredibly laggy, so I'll move the picture and nothing will happen, so I move it again, and then it move way too much because it has caught up with both moves. Simply listing the dimensions of the picture as it changed would be an amazing addition to the website. The same goes for lining up the text for the teacher's name. They have a lot of premade layouts and they don't seem to be a fan of people thinking outside the box.

I also came up with a rough idea of a graduation announcement using Canva. It will be passable if I don't come up with something else but I think I can do better.

When I got home I had three packages. All of the pen stuff I ordered arrived today. The Amazon order took an extra day, which is annoying because it is supposed to be two-day shipping, but I wasn't expecting the orders from Goulet and JetPens to arrive until next week at the earliest. It was a pleasant surprise. I looked at but didn't use the fountain pens or the penmanship books because I said I wasn't going to do that until after I finished my conference proposal. I did write a sentence with each of the gel pens I got and the Skilcraft pen. I really like the gel pens. They've all got Japanese writing on them, which is cool, but they also write really nicely. I especially like the Pilot Hi-Tech-C with the 0.25 tip. It kind of feels and looks like a fine mechanical pencil, which means I can write really tiny in pen and it is still legible.

Tonight I did not work on my conference proposal. I apparently really want to see how successful I can be under extreme deadlines. I don't like it. I think part of me is still burnt out from all the effort I put into the tutorial video. It's been a week though so that is really a weak excuse. Much like last Saturday was devoted to my tutorial, this Saturday will be devoted to my conference proposal. The really annoying thing is that I get to write it over a topic I am genuinely interested in, but that is still not motivation enough to get it done in a timely manner. I don't get it.

I did reply to a discussion post and paid the dues to join Phi Kappa Phi tonight. So that was productive. I committed to go to the initiation ceremony, even though I don't want to. It will mean getting another hotel room, which I'm not thrilled about, but it does mean I can sleep in a little bit before graduation because I'll only have to drive ten minutes to get to campus instead of an hour and fifteen minutes. Trying to think positive.

It's midnight and I need to go to bed so I can wake up and work on my proposal. Before I go to bed I'm going to close all the distracting browser windows on my computer so when I sit down in the morning I can focus on the proposal. It's going to be a long day.

April 21, 2016

 There was more testing today. That is my life now. There were three full classes throughout the day and then random kids finishing up. The slow third grader came in the morning and in the afternoon. Trying to keep her focused is like herding cats. She's all over the place. This morning she managed to suspend her own test twice. The first time I looked up after hearing a bunch key pounding and she was going to town on the keyboard with her eyes closed. I don't know if the overwhelming number of key presses suspended her test or if she managed to hit just the right buttons to cause it. Either way she had to log back in. The second time I think she had the exact opposite problem. She had been working on one problem for so long that I think it considered her idle and timed her out. That happened about 11:50AM, which is when I was planning on stopping her anyway, so we called it for the morning.

This afternoon there were two tests and a fourth grade performance. I only got to see the second half of the performance because after stopping the third graders test again so she could go to the gym, I was about to walk out the door when the slow sixth grade came back to finish her test. We tried this morning and it wasn't reactivated so I sent her back to her room until I could get it reactivated. About five or ten minutes later I got that sorted and went to grab her, which worked out well for the class because one of the students was trying to do a PowerPoint presentation and it wasn't showing on the projector. I played around with it until it worked and then went back to testing.

The sixth grader had to stop the other day because the audio question only played for a few seconds and then stopped. The same thing happened this morning but it played for fourteen seconds before stopping. Better but still not great. I had her stay there while I went and got it reactivated again to see if that would help. It didn't. Still fourteen seconds. I suggested the sixth grader just guess based on her prior knowledge but this is the girl who spends forever answering questions and then spends an equal amount of time going back over them. So of course she wasn't going to guess. By the time she came back this afternoon a trouble ticket had been put in and things apparently got resolved because she was able to listen to the full audio clip. This allowed her to finish stage three of her test but because that stage had been reactivated stage four wouldn't show up until tomorrow. It would have been nice if she could have gotten it over with but it was also nice to get out of the lab and go to the performance.

After work and tonight I didn't accomplish anything, once again. I'm at that stress level where I'm just kind of shutting down. I really need to work on my conference proposal because that is due on Sunday, and that alone really isn't that overwhelming, but on top of all the other stuff I need to do it feels overwhelming. The only way to lessen those feelings is to actually start checking things off my list but I'm struggling with that. Tomorrow night I actually need to do something. It is obvious that all day Saturday will be spent on the proposal. My goal is to get it done Saturday which would allow me to look it over Sunday and make and last edits before submitting it. The majority of Sunday should be spent digging into my group project. It all sounds so good written out but the reality will probably be far different. I need to just start chipping away at this stuff.

My penmanship books, ballpoint pens, and first fountain pen should be arriving tomorrow. I'm not sure about the arrival dates for the pens and paper I got on the other websites. I will definitely take a look at the stuff that comes tomorrow but I'm going to hold off getting into the penmanship books or playing with the fountain pen until I get my proposal done and at least get a start on the group project stuff. Hopefully I can stick to that and it will be incentive enough for me to get work done.

Now I think I'm going to go to bed. Last night I got to bed after midnight and as soon as my head hit the pillow I was wide awake. That is always annoying. I feel equally tired at the moment but hopefully that doesn't escape me when I get in bed.

April 20, 2016

 I think this week my overall physical state is just going to be exhausted. I got a decent amount of sleep last night but by the time work is over I just feel drained and lack all motivation to do anything. The end of the semester is pretty much here and I am starting to get the overwhelmed feeling. I have my conference proposal and group project, along with the smaller weekly stuff for my classes. I have also found a couple academic library jobs that I am actually qualified for that I want to apply for, and that requires writing cover letters. At work I have started working on the yearbook, which is due in two weeks. I finally got the higher resolution CD yesterday or the day before but it doesn't have the retake pictures on it for some reason, only the ones from earlier in the year, so I'm missing the newer kids who were here for the second picture day. I think I'm just going to throw in the low-res pictures that I can download from the website and then take pictures of the kids who missed both. I also need to make the end of the year slideshow. I've made a few of the slides but I need to make the rest and started putting everything together. I probably won't get to that until after this semester is over because I'll still have time before the end of school. Thinking about everything is stressful and I am constantly thinking about everything. That is why I have become super intrigued by fountain pens and inks over the last several days. It is a chance for me to push all the stressful thoughts out of my head for the briefest of moments. They are always there in the back of my mind but they aren't as loud. It was really nice yesterday at the library stuffing brochures in a totally quiet environment just zoned out. I couldn't think about any of the stressful things for more than a fraction of a second because I had to focus on counting to ten over and over again. It was kind of meditative. My last assignment, the group project paper, is due May 9^th, so it will all be over soon, for better or worse.

Now for my day.

First grade tested first thing in the morning and then second grade came in at 12:15PM. I had a few kids here and there come in to finish tests throughout the day and one actual class at the end of the day. When I wasn't dealing with people in the lab I started working on the yearbook. It took me a bit but I got all the pictures uploaded and arranged alphabetically by last name, not first name (which seems to be the default). I also started going through and shifting the student pictures on the class pages, down one row so I can put the teacher's picture at the top of the page. They have improved the website since last year so it is a little easier to use but it is also slightly more confusing and it is still super laggy. I think I got kindergarten finished and one of the first grade classes. Progress.

I also worked a little bit on note card labels for the library clerk. They have the name of a school in the district on it and the clerk puts them on the outside of the bags of books that are loaned to the various schools. I typed them all up yesterday and she picked out the font she wanted today, so I could have had them printed off today, but then she showed me a card with an outline drawn on it to show what portion of the card was actually visible through the little window on the sleeve it slides into. It's smaller than the text I used and it is slightly off-center. That's going to take me awhile to sort out.

After work I picked up Chipotle and headed home. They didn't have lids for the burrito bowls so I got a burrito for the first time in awhile. It was delicious. I miss the tortillas. I'm going to go back to the bowls next week, if they have lids, so I can keep the novelty of the burrito alive.

I tried to show videos after dinner but YouTube has been a pain in the butt the last couple days. Well, YouTube and our internet connection. A large portion is probably due to the internet connection. I don't know what is happening in the neighborhood but it feels like everyone is downloading all the movies ever illegally put on the internet and using up all the bandwidth. I think it is ridiculous that a service provider can sell you a plan at a certain speed but then it is completely dependent on how many people near you are on the same provider and how much they are using the internet.

Before I gave up on showing the videos I was able to show my mom and sister my video tutorial (with several stops for buffering). After it had been playing for several seconds and I was explaining things about it my mom asked, completely seriously, if we were going to get to hear me talk in the video. I paused for a second to maker sure she was serious and then said we were hearing me talk. My own mother didn't recognize the sound of my voice. I guess I was speaking differently for the video than I normally do, although my sister knew I was the one talking, so I'm blaming my mom for this one.

After dinner I found out we had a discussion post this week for my technology class. We had to answer one of five questions from our textbook. Most could be answered in a few sentences, and some people ended up doing that, but I pulled a typical me and ended up rambling for almost six hundred words. I also found out the professor put up a discussion forum for us to post our tutorial videos. Only about have the class have posted their videos so far, probably because it wasn't announced, but I am happy that at least in terms of video quality, mine is the best. Content-wise, who knows, I doubt it, but I am glad that at least some of the hours I put into it are apparent.

It is now almost 11:45PM, somehow, and I'm tired and have a headache. Bedtime. Tomorrow there will be more testing, yearbook, and note card labels. I'd guess some other stuff might come up as well. Tomorrow night I need to make some real progress on my conference proposal, reply to a discussion post (maybe), and think about my group project. I just need to keep spinning all these plates for a little bit longer.

April 19, 2016

 It's almost 9:45PM and I am going to attempt to go to bed early tonight. Relative to midnight. Last night I got to bed sometime after 1:00AM, which is way too late.

I started off my morning by setting up a few more iPads for the MAP test. And then the first graders came to the lab to take a MAP test. Or rather, I went to their room to remind them that they were testing this morning. And then they came to the lab.

Not too long after they left, third grade came in to test. The teacher cut off the ones who hadn't finished at 11:50AM so I was able to get a quick twenty minute lunch before the second graders came to test. I got all their tests started and then I went to clock in. Hopefully I will get as lucky the rest of the week.

The second graders lefts a little early because we had a choir assembly with some kids from the high school. Immediately following that the other third grade class came to test. This is the one with the slow tester. She maintained that reputation by spending another couple of hours with me. She got super distracted near the end so thankfully she had to leave early and didn't have to continue testing for the last half hour of the day. I don't know how she has survived this round of testing. She's put in so many hours. And she's got several more to go, because she only made it into the teens I think out of over fifty questions on the Math test. We've got about a month left in the window, which may be enough time.

While watching kids test today I focused on thinking about my presentation proposal assignment. I heard back from my professor about my email last night and said my idea would work for the assignment and that was a relief. I came up with a very rough draft of an abstract while the first graders were testing and then when it was down to just the third grader this afternoon I started doing some preliminary searching for articles. And I found a few, which is a good start. Good enough, apparently, for me not to do any other school stuff for the rest of the day. It is surprisingly exhausting standing up and watching kids test all day after not getting enough sleep the last two nights. I'll do better tomorrow, because I have to.

Near the end of work I got two calls from the office ladies, both warning me that the annoying yearbook guy was waiting in the office to talk to me as soon as school was over. They ended up clocking out for me so I didn't have to deal with him.

I was volunteering at the public library after work but after the bell rang several kids came into the lab for yearbook club. I didn't remember that was starting today. Or maybe I never knew about it. I can't remember. Anyway, I got the kids authenticated and then the mom who is more in charge of the yearbook took over and I ducked out.

The laptop wasn't available at the public library today so I spent about a half an hour putting a piece of cardstock into a brochure and then putting those into stacks of fifty. I made it through 430 brochures. Not bad. I then spent the next hour talking to the PR lady about a bunch of random stuff. At one point she asked me if I would actually want to work at the public library because they have two positions opening soon. She said she has been dropping my name into conversations and at meetings but then thought maybe she should actually check with me and make sure I would want to work there. I said I would. I don't see myself ending up in a public library but I need to start somewhere and I've been going to the public library since I was a little kid. Granted that fell off when I got a job and started buying books instead of checking them out. Even with the possibility of the public library job I need to start applying to some academic libraries. If nothing else just for the experience of applying. There is a business librarian job opening at the academic library I will be doing my practicum in this summer and I actually meet all of the qualifications. There isn't a closing date on it and it says it will be open until it is filled, which could be tomorrow for all I know, so I need to see if I can put together application materials before that happens.

Tonight I ordered pens and stuff. I bought a cheap starter fountain pen (a Platinum Preppy) and a sample pack of paper from Goulet Pens. Paper seems to be a big thing and it is a cool idea to offer a sample pack from five different brands. Now I can see which one I like best. I bought a few gel pens from JetPens, two Uni-ball and one Pilot. They all have really fine tips (.25, .28, and .38) and the ink color of one of the Uni-balls is Bordeaux Black, which looks really cool. I like writing small so I thought a really fine tip would be a good idea. I also got a Pilot Metropolitan fountain pen, a box of blue Skilcraft pens, and the Spencerian Penmanship theory and practice books from Amazon. The Pilot Metropolitan pen is supposed to be a really good inexpensive introductory fountain pen. I have been wanted to get the Skilcraft pens forever because they are ridiculously cheap and are supposed to be really good quality. I don't really want to carry fountain pens around with me but I have needed a replacement for the Zebra pen I have had for awhile now. I could also use a few random pens laying around for when I need one. The blue Skilcraft also just look like a classic pen.

It is now almost eleven o'clock because I have gotten distracted a couple times. I'm going to go to bed now.

April 18, 2016

 I've been tired since I got home from work and it is already creeping up on midnight. This is going to be a long week.

Today there was testing all day. In the morning a third grade class came in for their usual time and the one really slow girl started working on the last stage of her Math state assessment. Last week it was believed that she was done, but no. She ended up being in the lab until sometime after noon. Over three hours of testing. Third grade goes to lunch at noon so the teacher went and got the girl's lunch and took it back to the room. And then came back to the lab so I could clock out for lunch.

When I got back to the lab I had just sat down to eat when one of the second grade classes came into the lab. I was utterly confused. And the teacher was confused by my confusion, and probably the fact that I was holding a peanut butter sandwich in my hand. She thought her class was testing today, but they weren't, they test tomorrow. Thank god. It did make me realize that the principal scheduled tests for the rest of the week during my lunch time. There are also tests first thing in the morning and classes in the lab in the afternoon. So I'll either be eating lunch at ten o'clock in the morning, if there aren't any testing stragglers, or at four o'clock in the afternoon. It's going to be a great week.

This afternoon the same third grade class came back to the lab to take their first MAP test. The slow girl was there until the end of the day finishing her test. Another two and a half hours of testing. She definitely didn't have any time in the classroom today to learn things. We need to just be real with ourselves and stop this pretense of school's being a place where we teach kids. School is a place to test kids and then use their scores for political gain.

I set up the MAP test on a few iPads today and will eventually need to do it on a bunch more before the upper grades start using them to test. The test takes place in the Safari browser on the iPads and apparently the browser menu options are still accessible, so they have to be covered up in Guided Access. The whole process involves: turning off the pop-up blocker for Safari so the test can actually load, going to the testing website, creating a shortcut on the home screen, dragging it to the dock, going back in, opening Guided Access, drawing two boxes to cover up the top of the browser but leave the Refresh button accessible, turning off the dictionary feature in Safari, and then getting out of Guided Access. Full classes start testing in two weeks so I've got some time and I'll need it to set up over sixty iPads.

I wore a pair of my new jeans today and no one commented on them. It was great. I don't want to be noticed or commented on. I find it awkward and I was worried that it was going to happen today. I almost didn't wear the new jeans. But I did and the world didn't end.

After work I got a haircut and then went home. In the mail I got an invitation to join Phi Kappa Phi, which is an academic honor society. They're basically inviting me to give them money, but I guess there are benefits to being a member. I was elected into Psi Chi, the honor society for Psychology, as an undergrad and nothing ever came of that, so I don't really see anything coming out of Phi Kappa Phi, but who knows. There's an initiation ceremony that I don't think is mandatory but would probably be a good thing to go to. The annoying this is that it is the night before graduation. I could leave work early, drive down there for the ceremony, drive back home for the night, and then drive back in the morning for graduation. Or get a hotel for the night, dropping another hundred bucks on a hotel room. Or skip the ceremony and just go down in the morning for graduation. I've got a little bit to figure it out.

I was invited to join because I am apparently in the top ten percent of my class. That sounds pretty cool but then I remembered I've been in groups with a lot of these people and it sounds less impressive. I've had several good experiences with group work but I've also had a couple doozies that made me lose my faith in humanity a little bit.

Tonight I read an article about marketing e-resources and looked into stuff for my presentation proposal assignment. I have an idea for what I want to do that is related to something I want to do for real in my career, but I'm not sure if it will work for the assignment. So I emailed my professor to check. I don't want to fully commit to it and then get screwed on the grade because I missed the point. I told her my idea and asked if I was in the right ballpark and if my idea was too broad or narrow. Hopefully I am in the right ballpark because I would prefer not having to think up another topic.

It is now half past midnight and I need to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to probably suck with testing. Can't wait.

April 17, 2016

 I stayed in bed until almost ten o'clock this morning. It may have been nine o'clock but I'm pretty sure it was ten o'clock. Part of me was enjoying being comfortable in bed instead of sitting at a computer and editing a video. And part of me was thinking about how I wanted to edit my video. Always thinking.

When I finally got out of bed, I spent more time tinkering with my title screen. Despite all the variations I tried I ended up going with the plain Canva logo with the logo I made the other night in Hexels, on top of a background that I got from the Canva homepage. Would have saved myself a lot of time had I not tried to complicate things in the beginning. I went with the same screen for the end of the video when I wrap things up.

I also added in the tiny transparent version of the logo I made in Hexels to the lower right corner of the video as a type of watermark. I had to move it for the time-lapse portion because it was on top of the Help button in Canva. After trying a lot of different stuff and moving it around a pixel at a time, I finally got it positioned under the tabs in the menu on the left side of the screen in Canva.

The last thing I had to do was come up with the list of objectives to put on the on-screen notepad. That took longer than it probably should have because the objectives I listed in my opening were pretty broad. And I wasn't going to think up more specific ones and re-record the audio. I ended up trying to be a little more specific based on what I actually talked about throughout the video and threw in some broad things, too.

Then I watched the video a couple times before rendering a final copy of it, double-checking that it wasn't muted this time. About twenty minutes later it was finished and I uploaded it to YouTube. I watched it once through once it was up just to make sure nothing weird happened in the upload. After determining it looked as I intended it to, I submitted the link. Fingers crossed I didn't miss something horribly obvious. I think I covered everything but part of me always worries. In my other class this semester I kind of missed part of the point of the license review assignment and got a point off, so there's a precedent. Based purely on the amount of time and effort I put into recording and editing the video I should get full points. And probably extra points because it is up there with building websites in my web design class in terms of time spent. I much prefer this type of work over writing a paper because I'm actually creating something, but it is way more time intensive.

I will say, one of the things I am proudest of in this assignment is getting my video to be exactly seven minutes long. It was supposed to be between five and seven minutes long. I had a fairly decent amount of control over the length due to the time-lapse portion, which I was able to adjust to fit my time constraints. I would have liked to add in more of an intro and outro but making the time-lapse any faster would have made it kind of pointless. When I rendered the video out it was six minutes and fifty-nine seconds long. Several years ago I learned from watching VlogBrothers videos on YouTube, where John and Hank Green make videos to each other with a four-minute time limit, that YouTube adds one second to videos. In the case of the Green brothers, if they went over four minutes they had to go through a punishment, and I think at some point there was a debate whether going one second over counted because the original video was four minutes. Anyway, the point it I knew a second would be added by YouTube, so I made my video one second short, and when it was uploaded to YouTube it came out at exactly seven minutes. I like it.

I honestly cannot remember what sparked the idea last night but during a break from video editing I started looking up fountain pens and fell down the rabbit hole. Over the years I will occasionally become intrigued by the idea but that intrigue has hit new heights. Between last night and today I have watched hours of videos about fountain pens. Reviews, how to clean, how to turn cartridge and converter pens into eye dropper pens, unboxings, and I even dipped into ink, paper, and journal reviews. I discovered The Goulet Pen Company and the owner makes YouTube videos. I've watched so many of them at this point. And gotten lost on the website.

I like the idea of writing in a subtle green ink and it seems like fountain pens, with the ridiculous amount of ink options, is the way to achieve that. It also seems very classic and also very adult to write with a fountain pen. In the last few days I have become more interested in being an adult. I went and bought jeans for the first time ever by myself of Friday. That is not really a big deal but it is for me. I got out of my comfort zone by volunteering at the public library and I got way out of my comfort zone on Friday with the whole adventure of meeting the librarian to talk about a practicum. It kind of feels like I'm on the verge of finally being an adult. A lot of that probably has to do with my impending graduation. Although not until August, walking in May will make it feel pretty real. And this one feels a lot more real than the two times I walked for my undergrad degrees. I just need to turn this degree into a real job.

But going back to the pen thing, a fountain pen is just one more thing that feels adult. I want to get an inexpensive cartridge pen just to feel things out and see how I like it. I have learned that there are quite a few inexpensive pens out there that are actually pretty decent. I was always concerned about leaking but that really doesn't seem to be a very big issue. They can be a bit messy when refilling from a bottle but that isn't an problem with cartridges, although the ink selection isn't as great with cartridges. I also think part of my worry comes from thinking of quills, not fountain pens, and working with an open bottle of ink, constantly having to dip it in. Along those lines, I learned tonight that glass pens are a thing, which is kind of quill-like I guess because you have to dip the pen in constantly to get ink to go up the little groves on the end of the glass pen, but it is cool as hell. They are apparently good for testing ink samples because you only need a little bit of ink for that and the glass pen is much easier to clean.

It feels like I've rambled all over the place with this pen thing. The bottom line is I want to get an inexpensive fountain pen to try it out and see if it is for me. I also want to get a collection of practice books for the Spencerian method of writing so I can improve my penmanship. It seems like working on that with a fountain pen would allow me to practice with the pen while improving my handwriting. Two birds with one stone. Very adult.

Have I rambled enough for one entry? I think so. It's creeping up on midnight and I have to wake up for work. MAP testing starts tomorrow. Hooray. I logged into the MAP site tonight just to make sure I remembered how to. I was glad to see the test sessions I created last time were still there, because that is something I didn't think about until tonight. I'll just have to add in the new kids, which shouldn't be too hard. Now I'll get to keep track of both MAP and state assessments. Oh joy.

April 16, 2016

 This morning I got out of bed around nine o'clock and minus maybe a few hours, I spent the entire day working on my video tutorial. I have lost track of how many hours I have put into this assignment. All for a seven minute video. It's ridiculous.

Half of the day was spent recording the video to go along with the audio I recorded yesterday. I finally decided on recording in small chunks based on the original breaks I put in my script. Each video was between seventeen seconds and a minute long, which were much easier to deal with. I highlighted that section of audio in Audacity so it would only play that section. Then I would practice the movements on the website several times before recording the video. After each video I would drag it into my video editing program and, line up the audio of the video (which was muted in the video editing program) with the audio for the tutorial, and then did a bunch of tweaking to make sure things looked right.

The second half of my day was spent working on the captions. At first I was overly concerned about only having around thirty-two characters per line because I read that on some website about ADA compliance. I would be doing that until next week if I kept it up so I ended up copying my script into a new landscape document, made the text the same font and size I was using in the video, and made the margins so each line was around eleven and a half inches long. I had to adjust things manually a few times but that was a lot faster than counting letters for each line. The most tedious part then became syncing the captions with the audio. If I talk too much my voice gives me a headache. Today I spent hours not only listening to my voice but listening to a broken record of it, sometimes in full sentences, like when I was recording the video, and sometimes in chunks of a few words when I was syncing captions. Needless to say, I ended up getting a headache. Probably also aided by staring intently at multiple computer screens all day.

After all that work, I am nearly done. I put in a little time on a title screen tonight when I finished the captions but I'm not happy with it yet. I also need to put the objectives on the notepad I have in the video the whole time. There is also the end of the video, after the time-lapse, where I recap what has happened. I have the same background screen as my title slide but I think I want to list the objectives across the screen. Right now it is just blank and it looks odd.

Even though I still have those things to add, I just rendered the video out to make sure it would actually look good when it was an actual video, not just a preview of my edits. It took around eighteen minutes and when I played it, there wasn't any sound. I forget I had muted the master volume when I was trying different versions of the title screen because I was tired of hearing my voice. Whoops. I'm rendering out another one right now, hopefully with audio this time. Despite that mistake, the video itself looked good, so that is positive. Also, if something horrible happens and I lose my project file and am unable to tweak the last few things tomorrow, I will at least have a somewhat done version of the video as proof that I did actually do something.

Tomorrow will involve more video editing. I'll finish all of the things mentioned previously and I'll have a chance to look at things with a fresh perspective so maybe I'll catch some things I missed. Hopefully nothing big because I've put in enough time already. There are already things I wish I would have done differently or would like to do but I'm trying to ignore those things because they don't have any real impact on the overall video.

The second render finished and I just watched the video, this time with audio. It's not bad. Not counting the things I still need to do, I'm fairly happy with how it has turned out. It could definitely be worse. Due to the amount of information I was trying to squeeze into a small amount of time, I don't think it would be that useful for people wanting to follow along, which was my original hope for the video, I think it may at least serve as a good overview of the website. The audio quality is also way better than all of the library webinars I have watched and most of the tutorials I have watched on YouTube. So there's that.

Now I'm going to go to bed because that has sounded like a good idea for a couple hours now.

April 15, 2016

 The last bit of my day has gone down hill a bit, but ignoring that, I had an incredibly productive day off from work.

I woke up this morning and got ready and thankfully checked my email before leaving for my meeting. I got an email from the librarian I was meeting saying that she had forgotten about a meeting she had before our meeting and asked if we could change venues from the library to a coffee shop on campus. I was already going out of my comfort zone meeting a stranger to talk about my practicum so why not throw a few more twists on top of it.

I asked about parking because it has been awhile since I've been on campus and I wasn't sure what the parking meter situation was like these days. She sent me a parking map which was helpful but did not look very promising for people without a permit. I ended up leaving the house a little later than I had planned and first tried driving through campus to where I knew parking meters would be. I found them, and there were spots open, but the meters were only for thirty minutes. I didn't know how long the meeting would be but I knew that from the closest parking meter I would waste at least fifteen or twenty minutes walking to and from the coffee shop. I checked a side street across from the campus and saw some possible spots but saw a sign that looked like a permit was required, so I decided to head to the parking garage. I was originally going to park there because it was the closest to the library but it is across campus from the coffee shop, to exaggerate a little bit. It's probably only a few minutes walk farther. When I got to the parking garage it said that there was student and faculty parking but the public parking was full. I pulled up to the gate anyway, because I'm an idiot, thinking I could just pull through the garage and then get out on the other side. Turns out that really wouldn't make much sense because then someone could just park in the garage. It also doesn't make much sense to have spots available for students and faculty but not any open for the public. I would be annoyed if I was a student or faculty member that had paid for a permit and there wasn't a spot for me, but financially, if you have spots open why not let someone in and take their money? I know there's a system to it but I'm just picturing a half empty parking garage and me not being able to get in. Anyway, after the lady at the gate got the guy behind me to back up so I could back up, I went back to the side street and parked. The sign said no parking between 2:00AM and 9:00AM, and it was after that, so I was good. I was also probably slightly closer to the coffee shop than I would have been from the parking garage.

It has been awhile since I've been on campus over by the dorms and it felt weird being there. The path from the dining hall to the coffee shop was also a lot better looking thanks to some nice landscaping. The coffee shop area was also a lot different than when I went to college. For a start, the coffee shop used to be a parking lot. That's a pretty big difference. They also cut off a road that used to cut in front of it. There is currently a lot of construction going on around campus so it will be interesting to see several years from now when everything is done.

Moving on. When I made it to the coffee shop, which is actually located inside another building, I took a quick look at the people sitting in the shop and then went and sat in the lobby area of the building. I realized that I had no idea what librarian looked like and she had no idea what I looked like. Due to the last minute venue change she gave me her number this morning in case I needed it, so I texted her to say I was there and that I was wearing a green jacket. She texted back and said that she was in the shop and wearing a green dress. I got up and went back to the shop and after looking around for a second I made eye contact with a girl and she waved at me. To be honest, her dress was white with green flowers, and she was wearing a denim jacket over it, so it is a good thing she waved because I would not have picked that outfit out of the crowd.

Despite all the parking stuff I got there several minutes early so she had me sit at another table while she finished up her other meeting and then she joined me. The conversation went well. I don't think I was too awkward. I try to cover up the social awkwardness in one-on-one meetings but I'm not really too sure how good I am at that, given the whole social awkwardness thing. Anyway, we talked about stuff. Her big project for the summer is revamping the freshman library experience class. It currently consisted of a tour of the library and twenty minutes of instruction on how to use the catalog tied to their English class. So the same thing I had. And I'm pretty sure when I did it was because I had to and I forgot everything that was said immediately after. This librarian is wanting to change that, not only making it more interesting for the students, but also more worthwhile and less time consuming, both for the students and the librarians. Giving eighty tours a semester gets a little time consuming, especially when that isn't someone's full-time job. It sounds like it will be a fun project to work on. She also said she would look into letting me shadow or even work at the reference desk, which is something I'm interested in.

My only concern right now is that she only got her degree a year and a half ago and she moved here last August to take her current job. Which means she is pretty new to the profession. She certainly has way more experience than I do so I will learn a lot, but she is also very new to the field. So I might be missing out on some insights that I might get from a more veteran librarian. It's not really a big concern though because she seems to know what she's doing and she's excited about what she's doing, something that is very important. I'm looking forward to the summer. She's going to write up a more formal list of activities I can do and sent that to me next week. I will take that and write my prospectus, which will involve, among other things, aligning those activities to program outcomes or something along those lines. I will then send that to the librarian and my adviser, and if she approves it, I will officially be enrolled in the practicum. That will be one less thing to worry about.

After I walked back to my car I drove down to the mall to buy new jeans. Without checking old journal entries, I'm going to say it has been about three years since I went shopping for new jeans. The three pairs I currently have are starting to get progressively bigger holes in the inside corners of the back pockets. When you have to start considering the color of underwear you're wearing, trying to pick underwear that won't make the holes more obvious, it's probably time to get new pants. I had thoughts of patching the holes but it would still look like there were holes there. It's also been three years and I needed to update my look. I haven't really liked the look of my old jeans since I first got them. I liked them in the store but the honeymoon period was short.

It took me an hour to get jeans. I started with three pairs, each from a different brand and a couple different sizes. None of them was quite right so I went back and got the same brands but in different sizes. One of those worked so I tried different sizes in the other two. One of those worked and another was really close but I wanted to try shorter length just in case. So I went and got that and it was way too short. A half inch, maybe an inch shorter would have been good but going to the next size shorter was way too much. So I went with the longer ones. I got five pairs and saved almost $90, which was unexpected. There was a sign on one of the brands saying something about buying one and getting one for a penny, but the wording on it made it sound like they were talking about accessories from that brand, like socks or something. Nope, it was the jeans, so I got one pair for a penny. The other brands were all fifteen dollars off because there was apparently a big sale going on that I was unaware of. Go me. I did some math when I got home and figured if three pairs lasted three years, than five pairs should easily last five years, and that comes out to a cost of about eight cents per day. Not bad.

On the way home I drove by Jimmy John's but there weren't any parking spots so I kept driving and made my own lunch when I got home. After lunch I spent the rest of the afternoon recording the audio for my tutorial. I initially tried record the video at the same time but it is pretty much impossible trying to read from a script while also controlling a mouse and clicking on things in a web browser. I decided I would record the audio first and then listen to it while I recorded the video. Then I could cut the two together. Sounds like a lot of extra work, and it is all because of the need for captions. It would be much easier to just record the video and talk as I did it, but then I'd probably end up with a lot of weird sentences, which I would then have to type out in the captions. So I'm doing it this way. At least I'm attempting to.

The two pairs of Chucks I ordered from Converse arrived today. A green pair and an orange pair. I'm pretty sure the orange pair are going to be my graduation pair but I don't want to wear any of them until I decide for sure because I don't want to get one dirty and then change my mind.

After dinner I recorded the video but then spent the rest of the night trying to convert it to an MP4, because OBS records in FLV but my video editing program needs MP4. In the past I have been able to convert videos using VLC Media Player but tonight it wasn't working. I could get a video in 720p but I recorded in 1080p and that is what I wanted to convert to. Whenever I did convert to that the video would get corrupted and the video editing program would recognize it. I wrestled with this all night and it turns out the best solution is also the easiest. In OBS I can just change the video filepath from including '.FLV' to '.MP4' and it will record in MP4 instead of FLV. What the hell. I read about this yesterday but people were also saying FLV was better because if OBS or your computer crashed while recording in MP4 the file would get corrupted, but that wouldn't happen with FLV. I came across the filepath thing again tonight after losing track of how many videos I tried converting. Wish I would have remembered sooner. I just did a test and I was able to record an MP4 with OBS and I could drop it right into my video editor. Good grief. I am currently far too tired to record the full video again so I will have to put that off until tomorrow.

I was hoping to spend all day tomorrow working on the captions but now it will probably be spent editing and syncing the video to the audio. I knew this project would be tedious, especially wish my high standards, but this is exceeding my expectations. I'm going to go to bed now so I can wake up and keep working on this lovely project. Positive thoughts.

April 14, 2016

 Today already seems so long ago. I didn't have any scheduled testing today but one of the third grade teachers found me at the beginning of school talking to the librarian and wanted to send our very thorough third grade friend. It took me awhile to get the access codes but I went and picked up the kid and she spent the next two hours testing. And because why not, the teacher sent her back after lunch to continue testing. She got lucky and didn't have a four stage of Math. Or so we thought. The principal sent me an email after work saying that when a test is reactivated in the third stage it can take up to a day for the four stage to show up. I have lost track of how many kids we reactivated on the third stage and then assumed they didn't have a fourth stage. There is still a chance they don't have a fourth stage but they'll have to log back in so we can find out. If this third grader ends up having a stage four then that is at least another four hours of testing to look forward to. Along with the sixth grader who also takes her time. Just when I thought it was over.

The third grader was on a role with her Reading test but then slowly but surely lost that momentum. It took her at least thirty minutes, probably closer to forty-five or maybe even an hour, to answer the final question. The second to last question was a short audio clip describing how to boil an egg. The last question was putting the five or six steps to boil an egg in order. That took her an absurd amount of time because rather than listening to the audio track and then quickly going to the next question and putting the steps in order, she decided to transcribe the audio clip. She opened up the notepad and listened to the audio over and over again, slowly copying it down. It was incredible. I kept trying to get her to move on and eventually got her to just look back at the last question and see if she could at least put some of the steps in order with what she had written so far. And she was able to do the whole thing because it was super simple and she had listened to the audio clip god knows how many times. Painful.

This afternoon was the kindergarten performance. It involved a bedtime theme so they were all wearing their pajamas today, which is always cute. Add in attempts at dancing and choreography and it is adorable.

There was supposed to be another test in the lab this afternoon, not a state assessment, but it didn't happen because the test wouldn't load. At first I was annoyed because the lady showed up two hours early to set up the test, and if the test was working that would have been way too early. But then the test was broken. The lady called tech support and got an international center with a poor connection and a lady wasn't quite proficient in English. It was a painful conversation to listen to, much like watching a third grader take a test. The test lady repeatedly asked to speak to someone higher up because along with not being able to understand what was being said, the lady on the phone kept repeating the same possible fixes that weren't an issue. The test lady was eventually passed on but then gave the phone to me because she thought I would be able to follow what the new guy was saying. I was able to but could only do so much because I wasn't familiar with the test and I didn't have high enough administrative privileges to do some of what he was asking. After an hour of messing with it the lady had to cancel the test. She eventually had her tech guy come, and then got the testing tech guy back on the phone and had them talk. Her tech guy is a super loud phone talker. He was sitting six feet away from me and it was really tempting to cover my ears but I thought that might be rude. My mom told me latter that at one point he was a coach, which makes sense. I think in the end things were figured out at another school so the lady came back and rescheduled the test in two weeks. Can't wait.

After work I went and picked up the second attempt at framing the dwarf librarian drawing. It looked much better. And it was awkward because I was being helped by another woman but the woman who didn't do a good job the first time was right there. She said a few words to the other woman but didn't even make eye contact with me. Awkward. But the drawing looks good now. I sent a picture to the guy who drew it, telling him it was going on my desk when I got my first library job and that if I ever wrote a children's book he was definitely going to be the illustrator. He really liked how it looked in the frame and said I had his number whenever I came up with a book idea.

My first new pair of Chucks came today. The light-ish green ones with the light brown laces that look professional. I like them. Soon, maybe early next week, my other two pairs should arrive. Exciting times.

At work I did some research and came up with the electronic resource I wanted to post about for this week's discussion post. I was able to write that up and post it before dinner. Or maybe it was slightly after dinner. Probably that one.

Also at work I had enough time to edit my video tutorial script and when I did the math I shaved off about a minute. When I got home and actually read through it I was actually down to five minutes and forty seconds. That excludes the conclusion I still need to come up with and the time-lapse. I spent a lot of time tonight figuring out the layout. Rather than worrying about putting a transparent box on the screen for the captions and potentially blocking stuff on screen, I decided I would raise the bottom of the browser up to show the black desktop and I can type the captions in there. I still have the example flyer on screen and the notepad below it. I need to come up with concrete objectives to put on the notepad so it's not just a random blank notepad on the screen.

After coming up with the layout I wanted I eventually decided on how I wanted to record the time-lapse. I wanted to figure out the overall layout first because originally I was going to record the time-lapse in that layout and it would look weird if I did it in a slightly different one. In the end I decided to make the browser full screen to record the time-lapse so it would be the main focus.

I recorded myself making the flyer and now I am working on speeding it up. I just finished rendering out the first pass which got me from around eighteen and a half minutes down to four and a half minutes. Right now I'm rendering it again to get it down to just over a minute. I won't know how fast I actually need to make it until I finish the rest of the video but I also want to make sure it doesn't look ridiculous going so fast. If it doesn't I'll have to rethink the rest of the video. I'll know shortly.

I've got my meeting with the academic librarian tomorrow about my possible practicum. I really hope that goes well because it would be nice to have that figured out so I knew for certain my class schedule was set for the summer. After that I kind of want to go buy jeans but we'll see. I would also like to get home from the meeting and get my video recorded. Having all Saturday to work on captions and editing would be nice.