March 31, 2017

Today was a pretty good day.

I made a new sign for my Thrills and Spills display involving a race car and a banana peel. I got input from other people in the department and ended up going with the one with the two dogs, minus the confetti. I printed off the car one just in case I get any grief over the dogs.

I also made the sign for my gardening display. I went basic with the main side, going with a picture of a bunch of fruits and vegetables. I also made a small sign to put on the back of the display because more people are on that side now. For that one I went with a picture of a finished farm in Stardew Valley. I wanted to go with that for the main display because I really liked the colors, but we thought it would be a little too confusing for people.

I had enough time off desk today that I was able to pull DVDs and books for my displays. I'll need to pull more books for the gardening display on Monday but there are at least enough to fill it for this weekend.

After printing out the small sign for the gardening display I spent some time figuring out why my small sign templates weren't printing out right. The measurements were right on the screen, they came out right when sent to the copier (copying the sign from the Publisher document into Word), they came out slightly too big from our printer (but not equally because it was more taller than it was wider, which was weird), and the actual signs when printed to the copier came out too big. I think Publisher is to blame. We print on 11”x17” so we can print a full 8.5”x11” sign. I've noticed that if I make the background one color, and put an image on top of it that is exactly 8.5”x11”, when I print it at the copier it will come out with an eighth of an inch border of the background color, even though that isn't visible on the screen. When measured, the picture prints out at 8.5”x11” but for some reason there is that border. I'm sure there is an explanation but I just find it annoying. It's also annoying that not all of our sign holders are the same size. So sometimes that sign will fit, despite being larger than 8.5”x11”, and other times it will be too big or too small. Good grief.

I also helped patrons today, as I do every day. I helped one lady with the copier. She ended up spending however much money copying pages out of a book and I think it would have been cheaper for her just to buy the book.

The other memorable interaction was helping our old curmudgeon with his dash-cam video. He had mentioned being in an accident a little while ago and he was not exaggerating. He was driving down the road (with a speed limit of 45mph) and came to an intersection. There was a driver in the oncoming turn lane, who sat there until the curmudgeon entered the intersection (while the light was clearly green), and then slowly turned right into him. This knocked the curmudgeon from the left lane into the right lane, where he was slammed into from behind by another car and knocked into the ditch. He said to top it off, one of drivers had expired plates and the other didn't have insurance. Kind of terrifying.

He had the video and needed to send it to his insurance so I showed him how to get it off his flash drive and then capture just the accident using VLC to make the file size smaller. It was still too big to fit in an email but I told him he could probably upload it to Google Drive and email that link to his insurance company. He seemed to know what I was talking about and thanked me for my help.

It ended up being a really productive day. It also managed to be very relaxed and I had plenty of time to talk with my coworkers. And most of that talking was work-related, as always. It was good times.

On my way home I stopped at Target to get some stuff and then I came home and ate dinner. I spent most of the night watching YouTube videos. When I caught up on those I watching It Might Get Loud, the documentary with Jimmy Page, Jack White, and The Edge. It was really interesting. It cut from them sitting around and talking to individual clips of them talking about their history. I don't think I had been aware of Jimmy Page starting out so young, being in bands before rock n' roll was a thing, and then becoming a session musician before going on to The Yardbirds and eventually Led Zeppelin. Also, he got into guitar because his family moved to a new house and the previous owner had left a guitar. What if they hadn't? I also learned that Jack White had nine siblings and that The Edge sings.

It is now late and I need to record my audio journal so I can go to bed.