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.