Monday, April 11, 2016

April 11, 2016

 Today there was more testing. I forgot that the first class was done testing so I had a little bit of a reprieve first thing, which allowed me to get the sheets put away and mentally prepare myself for a day of testing.

It also gave me a chance to check to see if Canva was working. I checked on my work computer and it was fine. I also brought my laptop and when I checked on it, Canva was still not working in Chrome, but it did work in Firefox. I can't remember but I don't think I checked Firefox on my laptop yesterday. I do know that it wasn't working in Firefox or Chrome on my desktop. Having it narrowed down to only one browser on my laptop led me to believe it was browser-related so I started digging around. I cleared cookies and the cache and even signed out of the browser just in case. That stuff didn't work. Then I dug a little deeper and when I looked in the exceptions it showed that Canva was blocked. What the crap is that about? I had been working on it all day and then in the time it took me to eat dinner it suddenly became blocked. So very weird. When I got home I checked and it was blocked. After deleting that it worked fine. A frustrating relief.

There were two tests this morning back-to-back leading up to lunch. Earlier in the morning one of the kindergarten teachers brought me her new iPad. Over the weekend she kept getting a pop-up asking for my password, which is super strange because I had never even touched her new iPad. Her old iPad used to be mine and after I wiped it and gave it to her she would occasionally get a pop-up asking for my password. I think it eventually stopped happening but I don't know. At least when that happened it made sense because that iPad used to be in my possession. This new iPad, however, was a bigger mystery. I did a lot of searching and it seemed one possibility involved apps. If someone downloads an app, even a free one, then gives the iPad to someone else and the new owner downloads the same app, there is a chance that the iPad will associate the app with the old owner, so when there is an update for it the iPad will ask for the old owner's password, even though it was downloaded by the new owner. It's stupid. Near the end of the testing in the morning I figured all this out and was able to sign in as me and find out which apps I had that the teacher had. Turns out there was just one, The Weather Channel. I deleted it from my account, logged out, logged in as the teacher, deleted the app from her account, and re-downloaded it. I restarted the iPad and waited for awhile, checking it periodically, and the pop-up for my password didn't show up again. So I think I fixed it. Time will tell.

This afternoon I had one class in the lab and then the rest of the afternoon was testing. One of the third grade classes came in to test at 1:30PM and one of the kids was in there until the end of the day. And she didn't finish the section she was on. After the assembly, which I didn't get to go to because of the continuous testing, the long-testing sixth grader came back to work on her tests and two third graders came back to finish their remaining stages. It was a long afternoon.

I was productive during the tests today. Someone people talk about having shower thoughts. I have testing thoughts. There is a lot of time for me to just stand there and get lost in my head. This morning I came up with an idea for how to make my tutorial go faster. Rather than going step-by-step through the making of my flyer, I think I'm going to spend time explaining each of the different sections of the site, how to add things to a project and edit them, and then timelapse through the actual making of my flyer. It shouldn't be a tutorial on how to make a specific flyer, it should be a tutorial on how to use the website. The flyer is just an example of what can be made with the site, so I need to focus less on that and more on the functionality of the site. Makes sense and I was kind of missing that yesterday.

This morning the music teacher asked me if I could come up with clever or ironic alternatives to “healthy choices” because she and some friends are getting together to support each other in making healthy choices. I came up with several throughout the day but I have two favorites. The first is “vegetables before confectionables”. 'Confectionables' is not a word but I like it. The second one is “et tu, brownie?” A classic.

I also had a genius idea for the library flyer project I'm working on at the public library. Rather than making little dots on a physical map and figure out a route that way, why not use Google maps. I didn't know how that would work out but it seemed like a good idea in my head. Near the end of the day when there were only a few kids testing I got on a computer in the back row to test my theory. Turns out you can make custom maps. You can also import addresses in an Excel spreadsheet, which is great because I already have all of those typed up already. I did a test with just one entry and it worked perfectly. You can also create different layers, which is perfect, because now there can be one layer for the whole town, one for each section of town, one for the “important” locations, and whatever else. Each layer can be a different color and have their own routes, both for driving and walking. The PR lady emailed me and thanked me for helping out on Saturday and said I could take the afternoon off because of all the time I put in Saturday. I decided to take her up on that because I needed to talk to the school librarian after work, take my drawing back to the frame shop, and maybe work on my tutorial. I told her my idea for the map and she said she would look into it if she had time this week and if not we could start on it next week.

So after work I talked to the librarian and went to the frame shop. That was a little awkward because I had the same lady I talked to originally and it turns out she was the one who framed the drawing. So I was pointing out all the things I didn't like and she was the one responsible. Awkward. I tried to defuse that awkwardness by saying having my things framed there had raised my expectations really high. I think it worked. Maybe.

When I got home I didn't work on my tutorial because my head was feeling weird. Near the end of the day at work I started feeling light-headed. Whenever I would move my head just right it felt like the world was about to start spinning. Or maybe I was just gaining the ability to perceive how fast the Earth is actually rotating on its axis. Either way, I wasn't enjoying it. The feeling persisted when I got home and it did not lead to productive things.

After dinner I still didn't work on my tutorial because of the head thing but I did eventually create a logo for my tutorial using Hexels. It is a 3D-looking cube with an 'L' on the left face, a 'T' on the right face, and on the top it says 'library tutorials' embossed in Morse Code. I think it looks pretty cool. It gave me a chance to be lazy but also productive, if that makes sense.


My head is still bothering me and it is late and I need to go to bed and this entry took way too long to write. I'm going to bed.

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