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.