February 27, 2017

 I didn't take notes today. I thought about it once but nothing came of it. Luckily, it wasn't a very exciting day.

I watched and took notes on the first lecture for the week. The main goal for this week is to actually make the tutorial because next week we are going to do the peer review thing. Good grief. I came up with a lot of ideas for what I want to do but I don't really have it all put together yet. The ideas are a bit scattered. I'm thinking I can make a table of contents for the tutorial and skipping between “chapters” by using annotations in a YouTube video. I also think I can make a quiz because I've taken quizzes in YouTube videos before. I need to play around with how accurately I can make the annotation outlines on videos, because I've never messed around with them before, and I need to see if I can create “buttons” on my video that are then surrounded by the annotation link so that people can click the button. There are lots of possibilities and I don't have a lot of time. I think it will help having the experience of making a tutorial in one of my last grad school classes, but that was a pain in the butt and I've tried to forget it. I imagine the hardest and most time-consuming part will be the subtitles, because that was the hardest and most time-consuming part of my last tutorial. Those will be saved for last and if I can't get to them I'll just say they are forthcoming. The instructors said a rough draft or work-in-progress is okay, so I might take them up on that.

I was reminded that this is a short month and that displays switch over on Wednesday, so I made a sign for my display. A month or two ago one of the other librarians did a display that only had books with blue covers. We decided it would be a cool idea to do the same thing for March with green books, and because I like green, I was elected to make the display. It took a little while to figure out my background image but then I found a really good picture of clovers and it was perfect. The green is just right and it makes sense with the month. And I think I've got my title: “Feeling Lucky?” And a subtitle: “Well Do You?” I'm afraid people might take the title literally and expect the display to be more about luck or something. But I am hoping they will catch on to all of the books having green covers. Although it would also be a fitting title for a display filled with books wrapped in paper so you couldn't see what they were about. I may bend the rules a little bit to include books about Ireland and Saint Patrick, even if they don't have primarily green covers.

I was on desk for two hours this afternoon and did all the reference things. I helped patrons in person, over the phone, in chat, and through email. And when I wasn't helping people I caught up on chat stats for the month. I hadn't updated my table since the eighth, which left a lot of chats not added to the table. I'm glad I got assigned all the stats stuff mostly for the chat stat thing because it is interesting and informative to look through all of the chats that we have. Most of them I only skim but frequently there are ones that are pretty good, either because it is something I wouldn't know for sure how to answer or because it's just an interesting exchange. I almost think it should be required reading for everyone in the department.

One of the IT guys stopped by when I was on desk to tell me he had read through my email and that the other IT person was incorporating it into the training she was making, which she was almost finished with. This was news to me but I didn't point that out. It was my understanding that I was going to be doing the training because the other IT person has been saying for years that it wasn't part of her job every time someone asked her about it. We'll see what my boss has to say about it when she's back at work tomorrow. If the idea of me training people on IT-related things was enough to spur a little motivation in the IT staff to do what should be their job, and it saves me that extra work, I'm cool with it. I am a little annoyed by the lack of communication on their part. My first thought is that they were avoiding it so they could get the training started and almost finished so they could keep me out of it. Office politics are an interesting thing. I have not really had to deal with it since the movie theater when the occasional manager would go on a power trip. There really needs to be a required interpersonal class for IT people in general. That field seems to attract people who are lacking interpersonal skills, but so often that type of work involves interacting with people, and so often they fall short. My social skills are definitely not great but I can usually fake it when it comes to the workplace.

My shock mount for my microphone came today. It was missing the screw adapter but thankfully I was able to take one out of the microphone clip that came with the arm I got recently. Unfortunately, the shock mount makes absolutely no difference in the sound being transferred to the microphone when I hit the table or use my keyboard. I can't say I'm surprised for the price I paid for it but I'm still a little disappointed. Life goes on.

I spent my night watching YouTube videos and researching possible art prints that I want to buy. I found two that I want to get but I've been spending too much money recently so I'm going to hold off. It also didn't help that my gas bill was almost $100 this month. That was almost twice my bill from last month. I'm wondering if it is my increased use of the stove for cooking. We'll have to see if I stay consistent with the cooking next month and if the bill stays high.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I'm not doing great about getting to bed at a decent time. I need to work on that.