April 30, 2017

Last night I slept with my earbuds in so I could listen to the white noise app I have. The app actually allows you to layer several different sounds and I went with brown noise (I think) and a fan. It's a pretty cool app. Somehow the earbuds stayed in the whole night and I didn't wake up a single time. It was great.

When I did wake up I looked over and my roommate for the night was gone, as was his truck. I guess he left first thing in the morning. It was as if he was never there.

For our last breakfast the other guys had biscuits and gravy with eggs. I had basically the same thing minus the gravy. It was pretty good but fried eggs don't make great sandwiches because the yolk tends to go everywhere when you bite into it. For the second egg and biscuit I cut into it, and I just went with strawberry jam for the third, which I got to take home with me. Yesterday was my first peanut butter and jam sandwich in I don't know how long. But now I'm going to keep up with it, at least until I finish the bottle, because it is pretty tasty.

After breakfast I took a shower and we all got packed up and ready to go. The other guys were going to go back to the lake and see if they could get some fishing in but I was headed home. All in all it was a good weekend. I went into it feeling pretty anxious and not feeling terribly excited about it but I really enjoyed myself. It was fun going out on the boat Friday night and it was fun just hanging out and playing video games all day with everyone on Saturday. That's my kind of bachelor party. And it only cost me $150 (plus a couple tanks of gas). That is pretty cheap for a weekend in a fully-stocked cabin and home-cooked meals.

We parted ways around eleven o'clock, I got gas, and then headed out. The trip back went much faster, but that is mostly due to not having to stop and give a presentation in the middle of it. I think it was also a more straightforward route without any tricky exits because I managed it without missing any of my turns. I was also glad that none of the roads I needed were flooded. One of the highways was pretty close and there was a spot on one of the interstates that was also pretty close, but I was lucky and didn't need any of the roads next to the interstate that were completely submerged. It was pretty crazy seeing so many roads and fields underwater.

It took me almost exactly four hours to get back (I was two minutes under) and the whole trip was almost exactly 500 miles (it was about five miles over). I thought that was interesting.

Oh, and on my way back I came across two horse and buggies. And saw two more off on a different road. I came up behind the first one right as they were next to the sign that said to share the road with them, but unfortunately I wasn't able to get to my phone in time to take that picture. I also had to drive behind them for awhile because we were coming up on a curve in the road and I couldn't see if another car was coming. The same thing happened with the second one except it was a hill so I had to drive behind them until I could actually see ahead. I don't know that I have ever seen one horse and buggy out in the wild and today I saw four, so that's pretty cool

When I got home I unpacked my stuff and then loaded my laundry into my car and headed to my Mom's house. I spent the rest of the afternoon doing laundry and watching movies. I saw most of Independence Day: Resurgence and then bits of other stuff. Independence Day: Resurgence is the last movie I saw in theaters, which was when I in Florida for the ALA conference. It's still not a good movie but it's a fun popcorn movie that kind of brings back the nostalgia of 90s action movies, which is fitting because it is a sequel to a 90s action movie. I need to re-watch the original I think, so I can familiarize myself with the characters again. The thing that still annoys me is how quickly they kill off Vivica A. Fox's character. There was absolutely no point to her being in the movie. I think they used it to show the impact of the alien invasion on citizens but they could have easily done that with a complete stranger. She didn't have enough screen time to really make you become invested in her so the death just seemed pointless.

I spent the rest of the night clicking around the internet and trying to catch up on YouTube videos. That may never happen because I still have some to get through from Thursday, and everything since then. So we'll see.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal. I still need to record one for Friday and Saturday so I might do that first, while they're still relatively fresh in my mind.

April 29, 2017

Last night one of the guys passed out on the couch and I tried to shake him awake so he could go to sleep in his room but he didn't even budge. At least I tried.

This morning I woke up before eight o'clock, which was surprising. No one else was up yet so I went back to my room and got on my computer for awhile. Eventually I started smelling bacon, which was a pretty good indication that other people were up. For me, breakfast consisted of a couple eggs over easy on toast. Not bad.

It pretty much rained all day today, and occasionally it came down super hard. A four to seven foot wide river formed between our cabin and the one next to us. It was pretty interesting to watch it form. Because of the rain, or rather the lightning that came with the rain, there was no fishing today. Instead, we watched Van Helsing while we ate breakfast and then eventually switched to video games, which is what we did for the rest of the day.

We started with some Call of Duty and then switched to Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10. We played all eighteen holes and that took quite awhile. I had only played a single hole before today, and I was far from good, but I had a couple lucky shots and managed to win a couple holes, so I'm cool with that. And at some point we switched over to GTAV, which we ended up playing for the rest of the day. It is now one o'clock in the morning and we're still playing it. We got into a system where each person got to play until they died, and each of us seemed to have our own goal when it was our turn. We tried to have a challenge of getting into the military base and stealing a jet but that didn't end up working out very well and everyone but me eventually lost interest. They switched to trying to get to four stars and seeing who could stay there the longest. I persisted, however, and just now was finally able to kind of do it. I got in the jet, took off, and just made it past the boundaries of the military base before getting hit by two missiles and blown up. I'm counting it as a success.

We did take a break from video games to go to the store to buy groceries for dinner. I was the only fully sober person so I drove a giant pickup. I'm not a big fan of giant pickups and I don't know that I could ever really get used to driving one. For dinner I ended up having a baked potato, grilled zucchini, and green beans, with chocolate pie for dessert. Everyone else's dinner included a steak, which smelled and looked really good. Sometime after dinner I drove one of the guys up to the convenience store so he could get more cigarettes. So I left the cabin twice today. That's better than I usually do.

One of my friend's other friends came down today, who is actually technically his boss. I'm in the room with the bunk beds so that means I have a roommate tonight. I probably should have jumped on one of the single rooms before they were taken. Oh well. It's only one night and I can pretend I'm back in the dorms. I've also got my white noise app in case he snores.

We have to check out tomorrow by eleven o'clock and I think I'll probably be heading home after that. I think the other guys want to try and get back out on the lake before they head home but I need to get back so I can hopefully do my laundry. I am a little concerned about all the rain. There is a lot of erosion in the roads around the cabins, so getting out is the first concern. Then there is getting back home, which involves some dicey highways, at least one of which may be under water at this point because it had a sign mentioning that it was impassable during high water. I have to imagine the water is pretty high right now. We'll see how it goes.

Everyone else has gone to sleep now so I am going to do the same. It's late and I'm tired.

April 28, 2017

This morning I woke up at eight o'clock, started packing, took a break to take a shower, and then continued packing. Then I decided to run and buy new windshield wiper blades because I've been battling the one on the passenger side for at least a couple years and rain is expected this weekend. I didn't want to have to worry about it while also navigating the anxiety of doing new things in new places. I was fairly certain I needed a 28” blade and a 14” blade. They didn't have 14” blade in the type I was looking at so the guy “looked it up” and told me I needed a 13” blade. So I got a 13” blade, and shockingly it was an inch shorter than the blade I already had. I haven't had the chance to actually try it yet but I am hoping the lack of that inch doesn't cause any problems.

When I had all my stuff loaded in my car I made lunch and then headed to my Mom's house. While I ate lunch I printed off the directions to my presentation, to weekend cabin, and from the cabin back to my house. Originally my goal was to leave town at 11:30AM but, not surprisingly, I didn't actually leave until noon.

The drive to the presentation was thankfully uneventful. And, I didn't make a single wrong turn. The conference was in a fancy hotel and when I got there I parked out front and went in to check at the front desk about parking. The conference had paid for valet parking so that's what I went with. I've never used valet parking before but in sounds super fancy. In reality it's just some teenagers and early twenty-somethings taking your keys and parking your car.

The conference was in the basement of the hotel and it felt a little bit like the basement of a castle because there was a lot of stone and it was all kind of closed in. It was a very quaint conference. Or maybe it is a normal conference. The only ever conference I've been to is the ALA conference, which is ridiculously big.

I texted my former supervisor when I got there and she found me a few minutes later. We went down to the room we were presenting in and she got the presentation set up. The room reminded me of a really small theater. It was very closed in and pretty cool. A little while later the guy who I had emailed about registering late found me and we went to get my name tag. I got a green presenter badge to put on it as well as a golden alumni one.

We presented at two o'clock to a decent-sized crowd. I had the script with me that I had started writing but I ended up not looking at it. Maybe I should have. I know I ended up skipping over a bunch of stuff. I wasn't timing it or anything but I know I didn't make it to the ten minutes that I was hoping for. I got some laughs though so that was good. In the end the presentation ended up being thirty-eight minutes, including the question portion, which lasted a decent amount of time. So we could have gone longer but we did better than the eighteen minutes we had during our initial dry run.

After the presentation I talked to a couple of the attendees about it and then sorted out my driving directions before heading back upstairs to get my car. Valet parking sounds like a good job for stories. While I was waiting I talked to the two valet guys a little bit. They were talking about a really bitchy sorority lady they had just had to deal with. They were saying they have to deal with sororities and fraternities, as well as the parents, quite a bit. That would definitely make the job less appealing.

The driving down to the weekend cabin seemed to take forever. I only missed my exit once, and it didn't set me back too much, so that was nice. On the last stretch I was certain I had messed up again, and I may have, but I ended up where I was supposed to so it worked out. The last stretch of highway was also really sketchy, which maybe have been part of the reason the whole trip seemed to take forever. It was one of the first times I have ever followed the recommended speed on corners. Rather than being two lanes wide, it felt like it was closer to one and a half lanes wide. And it immediately dropped off the edge, so if you get too close to the edge you're going to get sucked into the ditch. I was not a fan. It was like the road version of a rickety old wooden roller coaster.

I finally made it to the cabins, and eventually found the right cabin, but no one was there because they were out on the lake. And I had no idea where to go. On top of that, I didn't have a phone signal or a connection to a network so I couldn't Google it. I ended up stopping at a nearby gas station and going in to see if they knew what my friend was referring to when he told me where he was. The girl at the register didn't but she got another worker and she was able to point me in the right direction.

I managed to find my friend's vehicle by the lake and about five or ten minutes later he came to pick me up. I changed my shoes and jacket but other than that I trusted him with my work clothes as I climbed in his boat. He completely opened up the throttle on the way back to where he had been fishing and I think we nearly hit 70mph, which is pretty freaking fast on a boat. The wind caused my eyelids to flutter so fast that it created a strobe effect with my vision. I also couldn't feel my face by the time we stopped. It was pretty cool.

On my friend's very first cast he got a fish, but he didn't get anything after that. That was alright with me though because I wasn't fishing. He continued casting and we talked for awhile until we called it a day. We met back up with his two friends at the dock and got everything put away. Then we stopped by the grocery store on the way back to the cabin.

The cabin is really nice, and it's got four bedrooms so we each get our own room (because there are only four of us). Originally there were supposed to be more but the others weren't able to make it. That works for me. I had met both of his friends before and they're pretty cool guys so it hasn't been nearly as awkward as I thought it was going to be.

We didn't get back to the cabin until nine o'clock and I don't think we actually ate dinner until around eleven o'clock. I ate lunch at 11:00AM so not eating again until 11:00PM was a little rough. I've got a pretty big headache right now and I think a lot of that has to do with not eating. And a lack of water for most of the day. Whenever I have a lot of driving to do I tend to hold back on the water so I'm not having to stop every five minutes. That catches up to me by the end of the trip, though.

It is now 12:45AM and I'm going to bed. I am hoping to sleep off my headache. And maybe sleep until noon. I would be okay with that.

April 27, 2017

Waking up this morning really sucked. One of the roughest mornings I have had in awhile. I think it was around one o'clock in the morning by the time I got to bed and yesterday was just exhausting. But I eventually got out of bed and went to work.

I don't think I really accomplished much at work this morning. I had three free hours and one walkthrough and no real goals in mind because I was too distracted by this weekend. I watched some usability videos and worked on catching up with chat statistics, but that was about it. At least from what I can remember.

This afternoon I think I was a little more productive. I came up with the last descriptions for the tech classes and workshops. I also emailed back and forth with one of the people from the library system in our basement to do a 3D printer workshop next semester. I am dropping one of the video game discussions and moving the Sphero workshop in order to get the 3D printer workshop to workout but I think it will be worth it. Hopefully. I really want the video game discussion thing to become a regular thing but my boss wanted to do the 3D printer thing so it only made sense to cut one of the two video game discussions.

I also had various discussions about mostly library things but not always, because that happens sometimes. One of the library things was microfilm. Microfilm is incredibly expensive, about $60 per roll, which comes out to around $3000 a year. My boss had planned on canceling it when we got our latest online newspaper service because it would be available to patrons from home and they claimed they would remain up-to-date. This service costs around $3500 a year and at the moment they are three months behind. We were initially really impressed with the service but not staying up to date is a major drawback, along with the fact that it is text-only. I know that the local newspaper has PDF copies of each newspaper page, because they sent me one with my correct name after they used the wrong name for my first article. I suggested the idea of trying to get them to send us PDF versions of the newspaper. Even if it was delayed, like our microfilm which I think is three or four months delayed, that would be the best option I think. My boss suggested having volunteers scan and digitize the newspaper at the library but those files would end up being much bigger than the PDF files and we most likely wouldn't be able to search them, so it would be just like the microfilm. We would be able to search the PDF however, which would make certain reference questions a lot easier. Even if they wanted to charge us $3000 it would be a good deal. I think my boss said she would give the newspaper a call because the assistant director said it couldn't hurt to ask.

Other things may or may not have happened today but I am quickly losing interest so let's move on.

After work I stopped by my Mom's house to pick up some stuff for this weekend, and I got two donuts out of it, so that was cool. When I got home I ate the last of my leftover pizza and watched a few YouTube videos before spending the rest of my night working on the presentation. I typed out the first 400 words just to get the ball rolling. I started practicing that and then eventually rolled it into the rest of what I wanted to talk about. I should probably write that down as well so I don't forget but I'm tired and my shoulder and wrist hurt, so I don't want to type any more than I have to. With my various ramblings I have gotten my part to around ten or eleven minutes. That will probably go much quicker once I'm up there and start racing through it and forget stuff. I think it will go well though. Hopefully. I'm interested to see how many people actually come.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I need to wake up early enough that I have time to pack for the weekend and possibly stop by my Mom's house to print out directions before I go, because I still like physical directions when I am driving alone. It would also be nice if I could use the elliptical for a little bit because I am going to be spending a lot of time in the car tomorrow.

April 26, 2017

It is nearly eleven o'clock and I am tired so we'll see how this goes.

This morning I woke up, got ready, and went out to do a couple things. The first was getting measured for a tux because I need to send that off to wherever my friend is getting the tuxedos for his wedding done. Then I went across town and got my oil changed. I was coming up on needing to have that done and I thought it might be good to do it before driving all over the place this weekend. After that I came home, ate lunch, changed into my work clothes, and went to work.

I feel like I didn't really accomplish much at work today. I found a couple books for an elementary school girl about the wives of university presidents, I found a book on state cemeteries for a college girl, and I found a few books for a gentlemen interested in electric cars and how they are changing the world, kind of how gasoline cars changed the world back in day. It was interesting in finding out how long it took gasoline cars to have a noticeable impact on the lives of people and wondering if something similar would happen with electric cars. We had a pretty interesting conversation about that.

I talked a lot with my boss and other librarians about our future reference desk when the renovations happen. The latest idea from the builders is a big round desk that we all instantly hated. We would constantly have people walking up behind us and it would just be a big hassle. We currently have two desks and people are constantly walking up to the one that no one is sitting at, which can easily be just out of view of the person at the other desk, and then quietly waiting there to be helped. It's annoying. And with a circular desk they would be walking up fully behind us and expecting to be noticed. We all agree we just want a simple, one-person desk that has room for a computer and room to lay out some work stuff if we're helping someone. This would also allow people to more easily come behind the desk if we needed to show them something on the computer, which is kind of difficult and awkward to do at the moment. We'll see if the designers go for it.

We had an all-staff meeting today at four o'clock which meant my dinner was at five o'clock. It was kind of nice having a dinner break at a more reasonable dinner time. When I got back to work I didn't really accomplish much. I looked at maps to get an idea of where I'll be going this weekend and how much driving I'll have to do. It's about an hour and a half to the conference, three hours to the cabin, and four hours home. It's going to be a long weekend. And I don't sleep well in new environments so it will also probably not be a very restful weekend. I need a real vacation where I can just stay at home and not interact with anyone.

Tonight I went to the coffee shop / bar for the book club event. I brought a stack of books, summer reading brochures, and a May calendar, just in case. The bar area was full so I went back into the coffee shop area, which only had a few people. And then I read books. And no one showed up. In the last half hour the librarian who started this event stopped by just to see how it was going. It kind of felt like in those movies where the little kid is just defeated by life and their older sibling comes and gives them a pep-talk. It was kind of dreading tonight because I'm not really a go and hangout at a coffee shop or bar kind of person. Or really just a socializing kind of person. And then there was no socializing, which was disappointing in that it was an event that no one came to, but also nice because it meant I didn't have to talk to strangers. I had a good conversation about random things with the other librarian, though, so that was nice. At 9:56PM we called it a night and I headed home.

And it is now 11:34PM and I am tired. I'm going to record my audio journal now so I can go to bed.

April 25, 2017

I spent a decent amount of my morning, pretty much all of it, making a list of Korean books that we can get through interlibrary loan. There is a university that has a collection of various Asian books and it includes about 200 Korean books. I couldn't find a way to save the entire list and it only displayed ten or so books per page, so I ended up copying and pasting each book into a Word document. That took a really long time. Then I went back and numbered all of them because I figured if we do end up getting books for this lady it would be easier for everyone involved if she gave us the numbers for the books she wants, rather than the titles. In the list, each title is listed twice, first with the Korean alphabet and then with the English alphabet. I can't read either version so I don't really know what the books are but my fingers are crossed they don't all suck.

This afternoon I got sucked into two reference questions. The first was via chat, where someone asked us the history of one of our street names and if it was named after the same person that a town in the state is named after. I looked all over and even had two other librarians look and we didn't come up with much. I had a short blurb from an old newspaper in our history files that just said the street was named after the person who donated a bell and money for the first college. But it doesn't actually list the person's name. The last name is obvious but the first name not so much. Searching online we found a letter written by someone in town to the person (who was on the East Coast) asking them for money to support the building of a new college. That apparently worked out but we couldn't find any mention of him in any of the books we have about the history of the college. It was very strange.

The second question was internal and stemmed from the street name question. In that search I ended up on a county website that mentioned a boil water advisory in a particular water district. This got me thinking, and eventually all the other librarians in our department and even people in Circulation, that we didn't know what the water districts were in town. Or even if there were specific districts. The boil advisory was for a place outside of town and the last time there was a boil advisory in town it was for the whole town, not just particular areas. We ended up looking all over but couldn't find any maps or anything that laid out what the districts were or how things were divided in town. I assume it would be by water tower and the GIS website can show the various water tower locations, but they aren't named on that map and there is no indication of what areas each water tower covers. It seems like this information would be much easier to find. I ended up emailing the person who's name was on the statement about the original boil water advisory. So we'll see if he gets back to me.

Other than that stuff, I walked an older patron to our cookbook section, and I helped a kid print things. I originally helped her with figuring our printer and then I went down to the children's room with her to show her how to change the printer from the default black and white one to our color printer. I kind of miss helping kids learn things.

I also ran into my former practicum supervisor in the cookbook section. This was after I had shown the older gentleman the section, when I was doing a walkthrough. We talked briefly about our presentation, she's adding GIFs and I am definitely okay with that. I also emailed with whoever is in charge of the conference to figure out registration. We aren't presenting until the afternoon and I didn't really want to be there at eight o'clock in the morning if I didn't have to be. He said they planned on closing the registration table at eleven o'clock but he said he would leave my name tag out and that I could meet up with him later and pick up the other stuff. I'm cool with that. There is a chance that I may go earlier, possibly use it as a networking opportunity, even though it's an academic library conference and I work in a public library, but we'll see. I think it's a very slim chance. It would be more likely if I wasn't having to drive to another state as soon as our presentation was over.

I am working tomorrow night so tonight was Chipotle night. It took me a few trips around the block and a wait in a long line but after twenty-five minutes I finally had food. I took a detour on the way to my Mom's house to drop off the list of Korean books at the nursing home. The girl I spoke to said she would give the resident the list and have the staff member I talked to the other day get back to me. If the resident ends up wanting books we can get her signed up for a library card and then we should be good to go.

Dinner went well. I'm still underwhelmed by the food but I'm not a fan of change. The videos were good, however, but I am biased because I picked them. After dinner we sat around and talked and watched TV until I finally called it a night a little after nine o'clock.

When I got home I spent the rest of the brief night watching YouTube videos, clicking around the internet, and writing this. And it is now 11:30PM so I need to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I don't go to work until one o'clock tomorrow and I am tempted to go get an oil change in the morning if I don't sleep it all away. We'll see.

April 24, 2017

 Today was a very unexciting day and there isn't much to write about. This morning I woke up, got ready, and went to get my haircut. The lady who cuts my hair still can't hear very well but she is going to see a specialist next week to see if she is a good candidate for a cochlear implant. At the moment I think she is completely deaf in one ear and had 95% hearing loss in the other ear, before she woke up one morning and could hear even less, and the hearing aid isn't helping anymore. My fingers are crossed for her being able to get a cochlear implant because that's pretty exciting.

After my haircut I went back to my house to make a lunch and then headed to my Mom's house to do laundry. While my laundry was going I watched movies and read National Geographic. The movies were Central Intelligence, which is still funny, and The Terminator, which I don't know that I've ever seen. Or at least don't know that I've seen more than bits and pieces. I don't think I knew that Arnold Schwarzenegger was the bad guy. I always thought Terminator 2 was the first movie. I was definitely wrong about that.

In National Geographic I read about a lot of things but one of the most interesting articles was on the gelada monkeys in Ethiopia, which are apparently the last grass eating monkey. The article described how for researchers watching the monkeys, it was a lot like a soap opera. In order to more easily identify the monkeys the researchers gave them names. This is the best excerpt: “Five Dollar Footlong (named for a sandwich) once stood on hind legs with arms outstretched as if desperate for a hug. Instead, his mother, Frodo, slapped him.” I thought that was pretty funny.

Speaking of funny, I started watching The Village but then vaguely remembered what happened and lost interest. But not before I read Wikipedia about the reception of the film. In Roger Ebert's review he wrote: “To call the ending an anticlimax would be an insult not only to climaxes but to prefixes.” Zing. I still feel a little bad for M. Night Shyamalan and his compulsion to always include a twist ending. It just makes people expect it and their imagination of what the twist could be only sets the real twist up for failure.

When my laundry was done I came home and watched YouTube videos for awhile before eating dinner. Leftover pizza is always delicious but I think there is a very noticeable difference in how I feel after eating pizza and how I feel after eating roasted vegetables with brown rice and quinoa. I'm going to continue eating pizza, though.

While I ate dinner I watched the lasted Jack Reacher movie. I only remember parts of the first one, but I do remember liking it. I also liked the new one. I don't know that it is something I would want to watch on a regular basis, but I might watch it again somewhere down the road.

My mom picked out a bunch CDs that she wanted me to copy onto her new flash drive for her car. So after dinner and then throughout the rest of the night I had that operation going on. I hooked an external DVD drive up to my laptop (because my laptop doesn't have one) and let it do its thing. I set it up so all I had to do was put the CD in and it would automatically copy to the flash drive and then eject when it was done. I managed to make it through all of the CDs (minus the ones that ended up just being empty cases) and I think she said she has a few more coming in the mail.

After the movie was over I played more Gat Out of Hell. It's still a lot of fun and I am enjoying flying around and collecting orbs. I'm also trying to knock out some of the storyline so maybe I can actually get through the game before I lose interest in it.

When I called it a night with the game I went and ironed my pants for the week and put my pillow cases on my pillows (because I washed them today). Now I don't have to worry about ironing this week and I don't have to worry about my pillowcases when I got to bed tonight. It's always a little annoying when you try and go to bed and then remember you have to put sheets on the bed or pillowcases on the pillows.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal so I can think about going to bed. It's going to be an interesting week. I don't know that I'm entirely looking forward to it.

April 23, 2017

 Oh goodness, it's already after midnight.

This morning I got to sleep in and it was pretty great. I woke up a few times but just rolled back over and went back to sleep. Despite that, I still got up before my alarm went off. It was only three minutes before it went off but that still counts.

At work today I did things. I forgot to mention that yesterday I worked on a display sign. Today I decided to change the background picture but that took about five minutes and then I printed it out. It's a very simple sign but I really like it. Mainly because I changed the regular title background from a rectangle into the shape of the state because the display is about notable books in our state. It's really subtle but I like it.

My main accomplishment for the day was finishing three personalized reading lists. That's a lot for one day. We got them earlier in the week and I decided that if no one claimed them before the weekend, I would do them because the weekend is generally slow and a good time to work on personalized reading lists. And no one took them so there you go. I picked out all of the books but didn't have time to put them together and send them out. That will have to wait until Tuesday.

I know I did other things today, like helping the occasional patron and various other things, but no specifics are coming to me.

Near the end of the day there was a commotion in the meeting room where a Bible study was happening, and then one of the woman came bursting out and ran by the reference desk, followed shortly after by another woman. Not too long after the maintenance kid came up to the desk and told us there were cops outside. I went with him to see if they needed anything and on the way out he told me what had happened. Or at least what he had seen while he was outside taking care of the trash. He saw a kid in the parking lot run out between two cars and then a man (presumably his dad) grabbed him from behind and forced him back in their car. I guess this is also what the women in the Bible study saw and I think they also thought they saw the dad hit the kid. At some point the kid got back out of the car and ran off in another direction and the dad came into the library. And at some point the police were called.

Right after we closed when we were about to leave one of the cops came to the door to ask us about our security cameras. I told him that I didn't know how helpful they would be because I didn't think they pointed where he needed them to be. He was still interested in seeing the tape or at least the TV to see where they were pointed but that generally required a police report and warrant as well as the presence of the director or assistant director and the HR person, I think. None of those people are there on the weekend so we gave him the card of the assistant director. The cop also wanted to see the view from the room where the Bible study was, so I took him up there. I had to get the key out that unlocks the cabinet where our other keys are kept and I told him the key location was a secret so I told him I was trusting him with that secret, which got a little laugh. After he confirmed what could be seen from the window and had the officer down in the parking lot test some things with the car that was still there to check visibility inside the car, he thanked me and went back outside. And then we got to leave, probably about ten minutes after we closed. I think that might count as late enough that I have to get time back for it, but I'm not going to say anything and we'll see if it will be forgotten.

On my way home, instead of going to the store like I originally planned, I went to Little Caesar's to get a pizza. The Bible study group had pizza delivered and it smelled really good. The lady who walked in before me had a nearly $80 order and a huge stack of pizzas. It had to have been at least ten and she stacked them up and got them in one trip. I was impressed.

When I got home I ate pizza, which was delicious, and watched YouTube videos. Then I was going to watch a movie but nothing sounded good so instead I bought Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell because it was $3.74 (usually it is $15) and I've wanted to play it for quite awhile. I put forty-seven hours into Saints Row: The Third and forty-nine hours into Saints Row IV, so you could say I like the franchise. Gat Out of Hell is a standalone mini-spinoff of Saints Row IV and as you may guess, it takes place in Hell. It has been a really long time since I played Saints Row IV so I'm having to get used to it again, but it's pretty fun. And pretty funny, which is one of the things I really like about the games. It's a little weird getting used to the third-person camera being so close to the character but other than that I'm doing okay with it. My favorite part is definitely being able to fly around and collecting the various orbs. Fishing and flying are two of my favorite things to do in games. In Saints Row: The Third the best thing was all the cars and the customization but when they went the superhero route with Saints Row IV they really nerfed the car aspect, which was annoying, but all the cars in hell look awful so I'm cool with the wings. And speaking of looking awful, at first I thought the game hadn't aged very well but after the initial opening I went into settings and it was set to 720p with Low graphics settings. I bumped that up to 1080p with High graphics settings and that helped a lot. Overall, it makes me want to jump back into Saints Row IV. I'm assuming because it is still installed on my computer, my character was in the opening cut scene of Gat Out of Hell but you don't actually get to play as your old character. I might need to go visit my old character.

While writing this I have been listening to music. I started with the new Incubus album. I didn't even know they had one, so that was a pleasant surprise. And now I'm listening to the all their old hits. Incubus is pretty great.

It is now 1:30AM. It shouldn't have taken me so long to write this but I kept getting distracted. Now I'm going to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I'm glad I chose a ten o'clock haircut tomorrow morning and not eight o'clock.

April 22, 2017

 This morning when I was about to walk out of the house my Mom called me on her home phone because her cell phone was acting weird. I guess yesterday it drained really fast and she couldn't charge it because every time she plugged it in she got a message that moisture was detected. Due to construction I drive by her house on my way to work so I told I'd stop by and grab it. Which I did.

When I got to work I counted the money drawer and it went really well. I like when there isn't some random shortage or odd collection of money that causes me to do extra math. And because it went so well I was able to restock my DVD display before we opened. There were thirty DVDs when I left work Thursday and this morning there were three left. It has easily moved hundreds of DVDs this month. It's kind of crazy.

For my Mom's phone I read a little bit and tried a couple things that didn't work so I ended up setting up a small fan in our storage room and putting the phone in front of it, with the plug-in jack facing the fan. After a couple of hours I checked it and it was still giving the moisture detected warning and not charging. So I put it back in front of the fan for another four or five hours. When I came back to it again and plugged it in, there was a little hesitation and then... it started charging. Thankfully. By the end of the day it was back up to 100% and all was good. At least as far as I know. My Mom has texted me a few times since I dropped it off and hasn't mentioned anything about it crapping out. Although maybe it died so she has been unable to tell me about it. Hopefully not.

I pulled books for the staff picks display because we were down to only two in reserve and the librarian in charge of it texted me last night asking if I could pull some to get us through the weekend. She even left me bookmarks for the books. I think I've mentioned before that my new goal for my staff picks are to go with books I want to read. Today I pulled books based on RUSA reading list for this year and I think there notable nonfiction books from last year. There are so my interesting books out there that I will never get to read.

A school librarian came in today and was looking for poems about wolves, because one of the teachers at her school ask her for poems about wolves. She didn't want to go through every single poetry book and looking through the table of contents and index and was hoping we had a better solution. We did not. I gave her a couple books to look at but then got her email address so I could keep digging. I ended up finding three websites that may potentially be useful. To varying degrees they all allowed searching large databases and archives of poetry from throughout history. It seems like wanting poems about wolves is such a simple question but it turns out it isn't.

I got a call from circulation this morning because there was a teenager who had read an historical fiction book about female spies during WWII. The spies were fictional but they were inspired by real women in WWII. The teen needed to either dress up like or make a presentation or something about one of the real women. The book was helpful for this because it had information in the back about the real women, but the girl had left the book at school and we didn't have a copy of it. And that's where I came in. They had done some searching in circulation but were just getting a bunch of reviews that mentioned the inspiration thing but didn't give any of the names. My initial searches turned up the same thing but then I stumbled across one of the pages in the back of the book on Google Books that listed three of the real women that inspired the book. Bingo. Using those names I searched our collection and found two books that mentioned them. I emailed the teen the excerpt from the book, and the call numbers for the two books in our collection.

We had several geocachers in the library today. What they were looking for was not in the library but it was in our parking lot and all the clues were based on Dewey Decimal numbers, which I thought was pretty clever. They helped people down in circulation and I had one person at the desk that I helped, thanks to my handy Dewey Decimal Word document.

This afternoon I helped an old man scan several pages out of an old yearbook. I believe they were all pictures of him when he was an athlete in college back in the 1950s. And by helped, I mean I did it for him because sometimes you pick speed over teaching moments. And he really wasn't interested in learning how to use the scanner, he just wanted the pictures. Originally he had been using the copier but that wasn't working out so circulation called up to the desk and I came down. I got everything scanned and emailed and then ran back upstairs to get it all printed out for him. He was very thankful.

And I think that was pretty much everything that happened at work today, minus whatever I have forgotten.

On my way home I got gas, cleaned off my windshield and back window because they were covered in something from a tree I had parked under, and then stopped by my Mom's house to drop off her phone. I also got to see her new car for the first time. At leas the inside for the first time. I got a brief glimpse at the outside this morning when I picked up her phone. It's pretty cool. It also doesn't have a CD player so I told her what kind of USB drive to get and now she's working on picking out CDs for me to put on it.

When I got home I ate dinner and watched YouTube videos. Then I watched Killer Elite to keep with the Jason Statham theme from last night. There were a lot a scenes in the movie that seemed vaguely familiar but other parts did not, so I'm not sure if I actually saw the movie or if I just watched parts of it while working at the theater. I think the latter is more likely.

Without even thinking about it I put my computer to sleep this morning and it actually went to sleep without waking back up. So maybe that issue has resolved itself. The issue of my new hard drive disappearing has returned however. I now believe it is associated with my computer coming out of sleep mode, because it seemed to be working just fine when I was shutting my computer down every time. So who know what's up with that. I've looked into it a little bit but haven't come up with anything yet. I might just start shutting my computer down. That will at least encourage me not to have a million different windows open.

It is now after midnight and I am going to record my audio journal. Because it has been a long, productive day.

April 21, 2017

 This morning I got up and scheduled a hair appointment before I did anything else. Thankfully she's able to get me in on Monday. I'm so long overdue. After that I got ready and headed to the university to meet my former practicum supervisor for our meeting.

We talked a little bit about the presentation and then she had one of her fellow librarians come be an audience so we weren't just giving the presentation to an empty room. The goal was to go for about thirty minutes and it ended up being eighteen minutes. Sooo, yeah, we'll need to beef that up a little bit. I was worried that I was going to ramble on too long so I ended up going really light on things. But now I know I can ramble for awhile and we'll be alright. We also got some good feedback from the other librarian but she also pointed out that she already knew what we were talking about so her view of the presentation wouldn't be the same as someone who didn't know about the project. Which is important to keep in mind.

We parted ways around sometime and I headed home. For lunch I ate the lunch I made yesterday but didn't eat because I went to Olive Garden with my grandma, aunt, and sister. I put it in the fridge and a cold peanut butter sandwich is interesting. Also, I think Cheez-Its lose a lot of their color when refrigerated, because they looked really pale. Interesting.

Originally I had planned on doing laundry today but I decided I'd be good until Monday. So I spent the rest of the day just hanging out. One of the things I accomplished was messing with hard drives. I copied a bunch of the stuff from my “missing” hard drive to my new hard drive because the new hard drive hasn't disappeared in awhile. And I'm hoping it doesn't disappear again because I figured out how to fix my old “missing” hard drive but that involved erasing and reformatting it. To save me some grief I changed the drive letter of my new hard drive to the same letter as my old one so all my old links work again. So that's exciting. And I'm up to four hard drives with plenty of room on all of them, which is also exciting. Until something happens, like the new drive disappearing again.

I spent a lot of time wanting to buy stuff today. That involved shoes, keyboards, video games, and computer things. I didn't end up buying anything but I've definitely been in the buying mood lately. I'm not entirely sure why that is. I bought my new Chucks fairly recently but other than that I've really only bought groceries, paid bills, and put gas in my car. Boring grownup things. So I feel like buying something is in my future. Or I might just move most of my money into savings and put some into my retirement account. You know, more boring grownup things.

With my recovered hard drive stuff I was finally able to catch up on uploading my audio journal videos. I think I had seven videos on the old hard drive, which I uploaded, and then I had even more on my laptop, which I also uploaded. I wanted to do them in order because it's annoying when they're out of order. But now we're good.

I started watching Iron Fist on Netflix. I watched the first four episodes and that might be all I watch. It's such a slow show and in those first four hours (because each episode is an hour long for some reason) they haven't made me really care about any of the characters. There isn't even a fun sidekick. The main character is a lot like the main character in Arrow but not as engaging. The brother character is a dick and I don't really care that he is being pressured into things my his dad. I wanted to like the sister because they made her seem a little sympathetic in the beginning but then she turned out to kind of suck. And there is the dojo lady who discovers she likes to beat the crap out of dudes in an underground cage fights. And I don't care about any of them after a four hour investment. The only thing that actually got a response out of me was the revenge the dad took on the dude that hit his daughter. The dad has obviously got some stuff going on but he's really the only entertaining character in the show so far. So yeah, I doubt I spend any more time on it.

The best part of the show was that I played guitar while watching it.

After that I played Tera and watched The Mechanic and The Mechanic: Resurrection. I had seen The Mechanic before but thought I should refresh my memory before jumping into the sequel. Both are fun action movies. The second one is way more over the top but that's not surprising.

And now it is freaking midnight and I need to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be a long day and I will be sleep deprived. Can't wait.

April 20, 2017

 Waking up this morning was not fun, thanks to going to bed exhausted and not getting a full night of sleep. Loved it.

I opened at work this morning and the pencil sharpener lasted way longer than normal. I was probably able to sharpen twice as many as normal, which was surprising. It's the little things.

Today was interesting because it seemed to go by without a lot happening. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. I spent a lot of time looking for books written in Korean because in one of the nursing homes yesterday one of the staff members asked if there would be a way to get some for a new resident who's first language is Korean. That turned into a bit of a thing. We only have five books in our collection written in Korean and they are all children's books. And it turns out there really isn't an easy way to search interlibrary loan in a broad way. If you know a particular book you can search for it and then filter by language. But if you just want all books written in Korean, you can't really do that. I ended up going about it very inefficiently. I found the Korean equivalent of Amazon, used Google Translate to find my way to the books page, and then slowly started copying and pasting ISBNs into our ILL system. I probably search close to a hundred numbers and only found a single book. I ended up emailing and then talking with our ILL person and she put the question out on a listserv to see if anyone had better ideas. So fingers crossed on that. I'll keep looking this weekend. I would like to be able to come up with a list of books that we could get and then take that back to the nursing home so the resident could see if anything would interest her.

I remembered at the last minute when I was leaving the building for lunch that my grandma and aunt were in town today. And by remembered I mean I looked at my phone and saw the text messages from my sister saying they were meeting at Olive Garden at noon. And it was noon when I looked at my phone, so I headed to Olive Garden. It's always good to see my grandma and catch up with my aunt.

It took awhile for the food to get there so I had about five minutes to eat my food, and spent about three minutes removing mushrooms. So I didn't have very much time to be impressed by the meal, and I wasn't, but the salad and breadsticks were good. And I got to hang out with my grandma for a little bit, and that's always worth it.

This afternoon we had a meeting about summer reading. I am still pretty much riding the coattails of the other librarian in our department because she has done all the work getting everything ready. I'm really just there to make sure everything doesn't fall apartment when she leaves. And until she leaves I don't really have much to do except hang out and act like I know what's going on.

And that was my day at work. I answered the occasional question in person, on the phone, through email, and chat. I worked on various little things that I can't actually remember, and I talked to a fellow librarian for a long time about dogs and cats and things of that nature. It was a pretty good day.

When I got home I had leftover Chipotle for dinner and watched YouTube videos. I spent a decent chunk of the night listening to music and trying to come up with what I want to say for the conference presentation because we're going to practice tomorrow. I'm still not really sure. The more I looked at it the less I feel my participation is really necessary. The vast majority of my work was not actually used in the final scavenger hunt. I spent a lot of hours wandering around the library, taking pictures, and coming up with about thirty clues. The final scavenger hunt included ten clues, one of which wasn't even mine. My supervisor narrowed down the questions, worked on the implementation, and did the assessment after it was all over. So she has a whole bunch to cover and I basically just need to say “and I came up with some clues.” But we'll see how it goes.

Now I need to record my audio journal. I've talked too much tonight trying to come up with what I want to say for the presentation and I've given myself a headache. And my throat is a little scratchy. That'll make the audio journal fun.

April 19, 2017

 This morning at work I took down the tax display and counted all the leftover forms and instruction books. I didn't do anything with those numbers because in the middle of counting I remembered that I needed to call my homebound patrons to let them know we were coming out this afternoon. During those calls one of my patrons told me she was getting through her books too quickly and wanted five more, on top of the seven I usually bring her. Thankfully I had enough time to pull and process all of those books before I went to lunch.

After lunch we went out and delivered books. It was in the low 80s today and that was enough to make it kind of miserable while lugging around a bunch of books and going in and out of warm houses and nursing homes. I pretty much spent the whole time sweating. And it is going to be so much worse as summer approaches. As for the deliveries themselves, they went well. I met my new person, who is really nice and she wants to give me a list of books every month, which makes my job a lot easier. I had another patron request more books next time, so now I'll be taking out more than 60 books each month. I learned that one of my patrons sat next to my grandma for many years at church. The patron recognized my name in one of the yearly family letters my grandma sends out to friends and family. I also spoke with my last patron for thirty-five minutes, according to the librarian I deliver with. She ended up coming to the door because she was worried I had been killed or something. I think if you combine all of my interactions with all of my other patrons the entire time I've done homebound they wouldn't equal thirty-five. It was kind of crazy. The conversation just kept going and I'm not good at getting out of conversations. I kept trying to subtly move toward the door but the patron is nearly blind so subtlety probably isn't the best tactic. It was a good conversation and I think she just needs more people to talk to, but we ended up cutting our schedule pretty close.

Normally when we get back we take our books to circulation to take all the bookmarks out and drop them off so they can be checked in. Today we got back a few minutes before four o'clock, which is when I was scheduled to be on desk, so I had to go directly to the desk. After responding to an email from the teen librarian about shifting books, which required a bit of math, I was able to deal with the homebound books. I still need to go through and update my spreadsheets with comments, and double-check accounts to make sure I got all the books back from last month. That can be a tomorrow project maybe.

Near the end of my desk shift someone in circulation reported that a puppy had been tied up in the front of the library for over an hour. They wrote down the phone numbers on the tags and thankfully the first number worked. A man answered and I told him I was calling from the library and asked his he had a puppy. He immediately knew what was up and sent his daughter out to the puppy. He told me they were just checking out DVDs but good grief, that doesn't take an hour.

After my desk shift I took my homebound books down to circulation and then eventually got off work. Tonight was Chipotle night and I got really lucky, finding a parking spot on my first pass, and I didn't have to wait in line. The food was about on par with what I have come to expect lately. After dinner we watched YouTube videos and then we talked for awhile. The night ended up being a little shorter than normal because of some potential bad weather coming through.

When I got home I spent the rest of my night watching YouTube videos and clicking around the internet. I've been kind of exhausted since the deliveries this afternoon. Which means I should have gone to bed awhile ago. And I didn't. So here we are. But now I'm done with this and it is eleven o'clock so hopefully I can knock out my audio journal quickly so I can go to bed. I open tomorrow which means waking up at six o'clock. Can't wait.

April 18, 2017

 This morning I woke up, got ready, and went to my eye appointment. My new eye doctor is an interesting dude. He's very animated but also kind of hard to understand because he's got a deep voice that sounds like it's coming out of his throat, not his mouth, and it sounds like his mouth is full of marbles. But he's nice and seems to know what he's doing so that's good.

He took a much more detailed look than the nurse practitioner did back in June (which makes sense because he's an eye doctor) but it just confirmed what the nurse practitioner said. And the remedy is the same, warm compresses and hot water in the shower. Maybe I should be more vigilant about it this time. But that is only supposed to speed up the process, it should clear on its own. It has been a thing for a year now though, so I'm not too sure home remedies will work. He said to give it a month (but again, it's already been a year) and if it doesn't get better the next step would be eye surgery, where I would got to another eye doctor who who cut the thing open and manually drain whatever is in the bump. I think that would involve a local anesthetic, I imagine in shot form, and that sounds kind of awful. So my fingers are crossed this is a successful month of hot compresses. I got the ball rolling tonight, now I just need to keep it going.

After the appointment I went home, ate lunch, and then went to work. The first thing I did went I got to work was put all the homebound bookmarks I printed out into their respective books. And then I was eventually on the desk. And then it was eventually time for tech drop-in. I wrote a sign on the mobile white board and put it down by one of the entrances. Then we sat in the room for an hour waiting. The volunteer wasn't able to make it so one of the other librarians was there as backup. She had a stack of books she was reading for a newspaper article she's writing and I started doing some research for a video game discussion. Then, about an hour after it started, our old curmudgeon of a patron stopped by. He initially had a couple tech-related questions but then it eventually transitioned into just random conversation. He told us about a landlord/tenant meeting he had gone to this morning, which provided a lot to talk about, and then we talked about road construction, like roundabouts and the weird crossover thing they're working on now. It was interesting. We learned a lot more about him, including his time working on electrical stuff in celebrity mansions in Florida. It sounds like he's definitely led an interesting life.

When the two hours were up I went to my Mom's house for my four o'clock dinner and then came back to work. I pulled books for my final patron and pulled another book for one of my other patrons because the book I put on hold for her didn't come in. There are three copies and two were supposed to be back by now but neither was. The problem with not charging seniors overdue fees is that some of them will take advantage of it. Some library employees take advantage of it, too. I think that is why fees exist. If they didn't the library would be lucky to keep a single book on the shelf.

I spent the rest of my night looking over stuff related to the scavenger hunt I made last summer for my practicum and thinking about how I wanted to do the presentation. I think we have forty-five minutes to speak (maybe) and I don't really have much to talk about. My former supervisor should have plenty to cover so maybe my lack of stuff is a good thing. I figure I'll just cover my thought process when coming up with questions, trying to cover the things I thought would be relevant to students, and making them go all over the library, so even if there wasn't a question about everything at least they would see everything. And then I can include some of the questions I came up with along with the pictures I took. So I've got some ideas floating around, I just need to makes some slides.

And we'll say that was my day. I also contacted the person who will be leading the resume workshop next month, because I was reminded of that yesterday, and helped the occasional patron. And probably some other stuff.

When I got off I came home, watched some YouTube videos, and now I'm writing this. And very soon, I'll be recording my audio journal. And then inevitably, sleep.

April 17, 2017

 This morning I woke up, ironed my pants for the week, got ready, called the eye doctor, made my lunch, and ate breakfast. I was able to schedule an eye appointment tomorrow morning and I am hoping good things come from it. I'm kind of tired of whatever is happening with my eye. I'll be seeing a new doctor because apparently mine retired. As long as the new doctor is competent, I'm okay with it.

At work today my main goal was to work on homebound stuff, and I accomplished that goal. I was able to pull books for all but one of my patrons, that one being the one I have to pull old books for. I was also able to process all of the books, update the spreadsheets, and make/print/cut all of the bookmarks. So the majority of the work is done. I'm feeling good about that.

When I wasn't doing all that stuff, I came close to finishing a webinar write-up, restocked my DVD display, helped patrons, and read a bit of a Library Journal. And I think that was it. At least all that I can remember given my current tiredness and headache.

Over lunch I got an email with a Steam Guard code because apparently someone had logged into my account from a new location. I am often annoyed when my own computers are considered a new location even when I had just been logged in. Today, however, I appreciated it. It turns out I had not flown to Vietnam over my lunch break and tried to log into my Steam account. So it appears Steam Guard saved my butt. Whoever in Vietnam wasn't able to get into my Steam account and I was able to change my password without any issue. Thankfully my Steam and email passwords were different.

After work I went to my Mom's house for a belated Easter dinner. Dinner was good and afterward we sat around at the table watching TV and talking about all the random things. Always good times. Also, my mom got me an Easter card that has two kids with Easter baskets on the front standout in front of an outhouse. The boy is saying “Gee, I'm pretty sure Mom said to hunt for eggs at the Schmidt house!”, and on the inside it says “Hope your Easter is a Schmidtload of fun!” It's hilarious.

When I got home I was going to recover the files from my old hard drive and put them onto my new hard drive. I even bought the real version of MiniTool Power Data Recovery so I could recover everything. But now my new drive is missing. It was there yesterday and then when I woke my computer up tonight it was gone. What the hell? I don't know if it is worth messing with it more or if I should just send it back and try again. I don't want to get everything moved over to it and then have it crap out again because then I won't want to send it back with all my crap still on it. Good freaking grief.

It's now creeping up on midnight and I need to record my audio journal, so I'm going to do that, with my eyes closed, just like how I'm typing this, and then I'm going to go to bed. I am hoping I don't wake up with a headache. And that the eye doctor has an easy solution to whatever is happening with my eye. Let's cross our fingers that the eye and the headache right behind it aren't signs of some sort of horrible disease. I'm a fan of my depth perception, it's pretty sweet, so if I could keep both of my eyes that would be great.

April 16, 2017

 I feel pretty good about the first half of my day. Things kind of went downhill during the second half.

I woke up this morning and had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Then I put the elliptical back together. It was much easier than taking it apart. It helped that I had the right tools this time. I knocked it out with a socket wrench and this weird circular wrench that adjusts to the right size when you close the handles. It's pretty sweet. Following that, I cleaned the small shelf my mom got me yesterday and cleaned off the sticker residue that was on it. I'm still not entirely sure where I want it but I put it in my living room with some magazines and things and I'm going to see how I feel about it.

I played my guitar for awhile, learning the main riff of a Two Door Cinema Club song, and watched YouTube videos. And then I had the genius idea to install my new hard drive, which I went about very stupidly. The vast majority of my work happened with the computer still on. That was a mistake. At first I didn't think much of it because my PC case has two swappable hard drive bays, so you can easily pop a new hard drive in or take one out. Well, that method didn't work and it led to a lot of tinkering, still with the computer on. After some troubleshooting I determined that one of my SATA cables going to the swappable bays was bad. I changed that out and the hard drive showed up briefly I think, but the hard drive in the other bay disappeared. I tried several more things but could only ever get one hard drive in the bays to show up at a time. So something is happening there but I don't know what.

At one point I unplugged the power and SATA cables from my DVD drive and plugged them into the new hard drive just to see if the hard drive was bad. That ended up working so I ended up getting another power cable (thankfully I had one), plugging that into my PSU and then into the hard drive along with the new SATA cable.

The real downhill started when somewhere along the way one of my other hard drives disappeared. I'm not really sure what happened but it was most likely a result of playing with it when the computer was still on. After a lot of playing I got it to show up in Disk Management but only as a disk, not up top with all the named volumes. I tried to give it the original letter it had, in the hopes that it would then show up in My Computer again, but it wouldn't let me rename it. I eventually ended up downloading MiniTool Partition Wizard, which let me rename the drive (though it didn't stick) and let me “explore” it so I could see that all of my files are apparently still there. So I guess that's good. At least there's hope. Right now I am using MinitTool Power Data Recovery to see if I can actually recover the files. That's going to take many hours because it's nearly 2TB of crap. But we'll see what happens. If I can recover stuff I think the plan will be to put it on the new hard drive, reformat the one I messed up, and then move the stuff back to it. At the moment I'm right back where I started, minus nearly 2TB of information, so I've really taken a step or two back. The really annoying thing is that I had several audio journal videos on there that I still need to upload. The audio files are safe because I save those to my Dropbox, and I guess I should probably start doing that with the videos until I can get them uploaded. Lessons learned.

After my annoyance with that I went and laid in bed for an hour or so just to give up for a little while. It was nice.

Then I took a shower and got ready to go to my Mom's for dinner. But as I was about to put my shoes on I got a text from her postponing until tomorrow because she wasn't feeling well. So I fended for myself. I realized at five o'clock that I had forgotten to eat lunch. I can't remember the exact time line but I think I got sidetracked by the hard drive thing. I think the elliptical and shelf were solidly morning activities, so I don't think they are to blame. It is very weird though. I can't remember the last time I forgot to eat. I guess it made dinner better, because once I realized I hadn't eaten lunch I was pretty hungry.

Tonight I finished watching Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. As a whole I don't think I liked the movie. It could have been such a better movie if it had a better story. It's three hours long, most of it was spent showing how much Batman hated Superman, and then boom, Batman is over it and he's helping Superman. And then Wonder Woman shows up for the last battle. And the whole time Lex Luthor is killing a bunch of innocent people and I'm not entirely sure why he hated Batman or Superman so much. I may have missed it but they seemed to spend so much time on Batman beef with Superman that they forgot to explain Lex Luthor and his whole thing. Or maybe they did and I wasn't paying attention. Also, the ending. I get “killing” Superman as kind of like a palate cleanser because so many people in that world were upset with him. His death let them see him in a better light and reflect on their animosity toward him. But, Wonder Man could have easily wielded the spear and finished the job. She's a badass and and totally could have done it while Superman was distracting the dude. Oh well. In the end, I didn't like the story or Lex Luthor, but I liked the other three main characters (and Alfred). Even Ben Affleck as Batman. I think the potential is there when they get passed the origin story and his hatred of Superman.

After that I watched Coachella streams and the new Louis C.K. special on Netflix. I'm switching back and forth between the two. I'm a little annoyed because I want to see a few things that are going to be on later but I can't stay up that late. Or watch multiple streams at the same time. So far they only seem to be releasing individual songs but maybe they'll put up whole sets after the festival is over.

Also, an observation about Coachella fashion. It seems to be a thing now for some of the women who are performing to wear what I think looks like a high wasted diaper. They aren't bulky like a diaper, I guess it's more like a conservative bikini bottom shape that goes over the bellybutton. Right now Tove Lo is wearing these shorts, and early so was Kiiara and the lead singer of Phantogram. I think it looks weird but I'm not a fashionista, so what do I know.

April 15, 2017

 This morning I woke up around 8:45AM. Not really sure why it was that “early” but I rolled with it. I spent most of my morning watching YouTube videos and figuring out what happened to all the space on the larger second hard drive in my laptop. Around 900GB was taken up on the hard drive and I couldn't figure out where all that space had gone. I did a lot of reading, which helped a little bit, but then I found a program called SpaceSniffer which scans a drive and shows you a visual representation of everything on it. So large files show up as big boxes and small files show up as smaller boxes. When I did it on my second drive a whole bunch of big boxes showed up. They ended up being backups going all the way back to 2014. Seemed a bit unnecessary. After deleting all but the latest backup and a few other files, I'm back up to 768GB free, and that sounds a lot more realistic.

I called to schedule an appointment about my eye but it was about thirty minutes before they closed and the girl who answered the phone said a nurse or assistant or whatever would need to schedule it because it was more than just an eye exam. Understandable. So I'm going to call back before I go to work on Monday. This time led with the fact that my eye is bothering me, which I think is the way to go because last time I think they just assumed I wanted a regular eye exam. I need one of those too but I need to get my eye sorted out first.

Before I headed to my Mom's house to do laundry, she brought over a low shelf thing she got for me. We just put it in the middle of the living room for the moment. I need to stare at it for awhile to figure out what I want to do with it.

I spent most of the time while my laundry was going watching movies. I saw the last five minutes of Road To Perdition (which is a major spoiler and I've never seen the movie before), the last half of 16 Candles, and the first half of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. I am almost certain there was another movie in there but it's not coming to me. Oh, it just came to me. I also watched Deadpool. Or at least most of it. More of it than the other movies. And the parts I didn't see I listened to because I was downstairs taking apart an elliptical.

I'm doing somewhat better at eating healthier but I still need to get better at exercising. My only excuse at the moment is that my shoulder is still hurt from carrying Tanner a month ago, but that doesn't really prevent me from doing that much. There are loads of other things I could be doing. And that is why I wanted to bring the elliptical over. My excuse for that had been that it wouldn't fit in my car, but today I decided to just take it apart. That was kind of a pain, and it still barely fit in my car, but I made it work. Tomorrow I plan to put it back together.

When I got home I unloaded my laundry, tools, and the elliptical, and then made dinner. I roasted vegetables, and also made brown rice and quinoa to go with the vegetables. I decided to try just drizzling the oil over the vegetables while they were on the pan and I think I like it better when I mix them all together with the oil and seasoning in a bowl. The drizzle works for asparagus but I'll stick with the mixing bowl for my other vegetables.

Tonight I watched YouTube videos and researched minimalist shoes. They've got an interesting look and I kind of like them. They're all advertised as running shoes for people who want a back-to-basics approach to running and for proponents of forefoot running. A lot of people land heel-first when running and this is apparently bad and unnatural (according to some people), and I think is caused (or at least encouraged) by wearing shoes that have more of a heel, which a lot of shoes do. Minimalist shoes are mostly, if not always, zero-drop shoes, which means they are completely flat and there is no drop from the heel of the shoe to the toe. I think Chucks can be considered pretty minimalist, but I don't know about the zero-drop thing because they aren't perfectly flat on the inside. Or maybe they are until you wear them for awhile and they start forming to your foot. I don't know. Anyway, I looked at a lot of shoes and watched videos about proper running techniques and how to get your feet back to how they should be naturally. My knees hate me so I have no interest in running but it's something to think about.

Right now I am watching Two Door Cinema Club perform at Coachella. They actually played earlier but I spaced out and only caught the last two or three songs. But then I discovered I could click back in the livestream and I'm able to watch the whole performance. Pretty sweet. Now I'm going to have to pause it, though, because I need to record my audio journal. It's late and I'm tired. And I'm going to try and wake up at a decent time. This morning I made eggs for breakfast but I'm not sure if I am going to make anything tomorrow. We'll see how I'm feeling.

April 14, 2017

 I thought about taking notes today. And it remained just a thought.

This morning I watched another webinar on fake news. I liked it better than the fake news webinar we had to pay for. Such is life. I also wrote a blog post about it because that's what we're supposed to do after watching a webinar. I still haven't written about the first fake news webinar but I did start working on that this afternoon. And I probably would have finished it but I started talking to one of my fellow librarians. I think we started with 13 Reasons Why and then ventured into a lot of other things, including religion and philosophy. Always good conversations.

Most of my day, both off desk and on, was spent working on webinar related things. Outside of that, I helped the occasional patron and I had a meeting this afternoon about the summer reading program because I am now going to be in charge for our department because the librarian currently in charge in moving, because she sucks. The summer reading thing sounds a little overwhelming but I think part of that is because I'm joining in the middle of the planning. Although a lot of the big stuff has already been worked out, so that makes it less stressful. It'll all work out.

I showed one of my fellow librarians how to use the loud folding machine. I was shown several months ago and it took a little bit but I eventually figured out how to use it again. I was surprised by how fast it came back to me.

My favorite thing today happened when one of the ladies from circulation came upstairs. I was at the desk and when she stepped off the elevator she said she just came to see the pretty things. Without missing a beat I responded “So, me and my [coworker]?” because we were both sitting at the desk. I was simultaneously impressed and really happy with how quickly that came to me. She had really come to look at the new seating area and large print section, but she was very amused by my comment.

Tonight I roasted asparagus to go along with my dinner. So tasty.

I watched Logan tonight. I am still in need of something happy after 13 Reasons Why and Logan is definitely not that. Had I not so recently spent thirteen hours falling into the rabbit hole of a show about a teenager committing suicide, I may have been more affected by Logan. It was sad but also felt inevitable and was obviously fictional. 13 Reasons Why is also fictional but resides in the realm of reality because bullying and suicide are very real issues. Superheroes losing their abilities seems a little less serious. All that being said, I liked the movie. It had interesting pacing because it seemed slow but it also flew by. The girl was also a badass and it was cool seeing a glimpse of a young Wolverine.

I spent the rest of the night watching YouTube videos and reading some of the articles I have left opened in my browser and never got around to reading. There are still several to read but at least I made a dent. Right now I am watching a Coachella livestream and Phantogram is playing. I think they're on their last song, and when they're done I'm going to record my audio journal.

April 13, 2017

 I slept in this morning, ate breakfast, got ready for work, ate lunch, and then went to work. Oh, and I fixed my computer. Or at least got it working. I wouldn't say it's entirely fixed yet. I heard back from tech support and that mostly just confusing because I couldn't follow the instructions, not only because they were not written by a native English speaker, but also because it required me not being stuck on the EaseUS screen and being able to click things. It was helpful in that it mentioned something about a preOS function. That got me thinking and I went into the boot order of my computer. There was something listed first, I can't remember what, and then the hard drive that I know my OS is on was listed second. When I selected that hard drive I was able to get into Windows just fine. Once I had done that I wanted to uninstall EaseUS, or at the very least disable the preOS function. But I couldn't find it. I have no recollection of ever buying it and have no idea where it came from. This is a little bit of a problem because tech support wants me to install the latest version and send them my order number so they can send me the license code. I found an EaseUS Partition Master folder from four years ago but haven't found anything else. It remains a mystery.

The positive of the whole situation is that I discovered my laptop can handle recording videos of Tera and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, which my desktop cannot do. So I might start recording my audio journal videos with my laptop so I can expand my game options.

When I got to work I had a walkthrough and then wasn't on desk until three o'clock so I headed upstairs. Pretty much all of that time was spent working on homebound stuff. It is so time consuming. I finally got in a groove right about the time I had to go back downstairs. But I made a decent start and by the end of the day I was able to finish all of my book lists. That is always a relief.

This morning before we opened they moved the large print books upstairs. I walked right by the shelves upstairs on my walkthrough but didn't notice it until I passed the empty shelves downstairs where the books used to be. Kinda crazy.

This evening I was supposed to have my Twinery workshop but no one signed up. Kind of disappointing because I think it would have been a fun program. I might try it again in the future if I can ever attract a core group of people, maybe once the stuff I'm doing to attract younger people becomes more established. I'm going for a demographic that typically doesn't look to the public library for activities, so it has been a little slow going.

I spent my newly found free time tonight finishing homebound stuff and then researching various resources for fake news. Good times. It was a fairly busy night for a Thursday, but it did die off in the last hour or two. It was also pretty uneventful but I did have to talk to a group of kids a couple times. They were running all over the library, randomly being loud and annoying people. At one point I think they may have been playing hide and seek. Kids. I spoke to a couple of them first, told them to pick a spot and stay there and tell their friends. I didn't notice them after that but we got a complaint via chat (because people who hang out in libraries don't like confrontation and face-to-face interactions) that they were still being a nuisance. I managed to find them all together and let them no that we were glad they were hanging out at the library but that we had received complaints and if they didn't stop running around I was going to have to ask them to leave for the day. It was all good after that, thankfully.

On my way home I stopped at the store to buy cereal and then ate a bowl of it when I got home. Cereal is still my thing of the moment. Then I watched a little bit of YouTube before starting this. I'm freaking tired so I'm going to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I got a new hard drive today because I'm running out of space but playing with it is going to have to wait until tomorrow.