June 29, 2017

Last night I played Elite Dangerous for a little more than a bit. I got rid of all the cargo space on my ship so that I could get a fuel scoop and detailed surface scanner. I made the mistake at first of getting rid of my regular scanner, thinking the detailed surface scanner was an upgrade, so I could keep a little bit of cargo space. Turns out you need the original scanner for the detailed surface scanner to work. I had already traveled out to the area I was going to explore, which was unpopulated, so I had to travel back to a populated system and find a station where I could buy my scanner back. But then I was able to start exploring. The list I'm using is nice because it tells you what you need to scan, but until you scan something, nothing is labeled. I think I should be able to tell the planet type by the icon that shows up when I lock onto it, but I'm not there yet. I just fly around and hope for the best.

This morning when I woke up I got ready and then played another hour of Elite Dangerous. I ended by finding a station and selling off the cartographic data that I could. I'm only six official scans into the list, one or two of which I wasn't able to sell yet, and I got over three million credits. Not bad.

Today at work was uneventful. Which I'm okay with. I re-did my coloring page sign. I came up with a new way to do it that worked out better than using the bucket fill tool, which looked pretty bad. For the new one, I got rid of all the white leaving just the black lines of the page. I then put that on top of the same coloring page, with the white, and manually colored the bottom layer. In this way, I could color a little over the lines, to make sure I filled everything in, and it was hidden under the lines on the top layer. If that makes sense. It worked out pretty well.

I also made a small sign for my NPR display, and filled out my book lists for my two displays. It was a productive sign and display day. I ended up deciding not to pull any of the books today because I should have time to do that first thing on Monday.

I heard back from the university librarian who wants to submit a proposal for a library conference in the Fall. It sounds like she really only has the idea of wanting to propose something but doesn't really know what that should be. We exchanged some ideas and I'm going to see what I can come up with in the next few days. It will be interesting because I'm off work tomorrow (when she wanted to meet) for the wedding this weekend, and she is going to be out all next week. With the proposal due next Friday. So we'll see what happens.

And I think that was pretty much my day, along with all the summer reading stuff. I ended the day pulling out the prize tickets for one of the teen prizes because they were starting to poke out of the top. I didn't have time to count them but I at least got them organized.

On my way home I stopped by Target to get a card for my friend's wedding and some other random things. When I got home I put that Target stuff away and then did the same old nightly things. Super exciting stuff.

It is now 11:30PM so I cam going to record my audio journal and go to bed. I will be taking a break from my audio journal tomorrow and Saturday but I'll still be writing this and just record three audio journal entries on Sunday when I get back home.

I'm still not entirely sure about tomorrow. I think I'll leave town around noon so I can get to my destination in time to try on my tux and hope all goes well with that. I guess the rehearsal is at five o'clock and then dinner at six o'clock. I'm happy for my friend but I will be happy for myself when this weekend is over so I can get back to my comfort zone.

June 28, 2017

I took notes today, so that's exciting.

I woke up with a headache, which always awesome. It eventually went away but it was kind of a bitch for awhile. I had a little extra time this morning so I ironed my last two pair of pants for the week. So the headache was a downer, but ironing was nice to future me. The world needed to even itself out with a bias toward the negative because then I forgot my lunch. I don't think I've ever forgotten my lunch before. I made it and everything, so I'm not sure how I forgot it. I will admit something felt a little off as I walked out the door with my jacket and half-filled water bottle (which is weird because I usually always fill my water bottle before I leave the house). I don't know what was happening.

Yesterday I got an email from the lady who organized the tour I gave awhile ago. I thought she was just a grad assistant but it turns out she got her Library Science degree in May and she wanted to know if I would want to present at a conference in October. She doesn't have the idea flushed out quite yet but she was thinking something about being new librarians. I told her I'm game. Trying to get outside my comfort zone.

I created two display signs today and started on a third. The first was for a patriotic/America display. I spent a little too much time putting fifty stars on a textured blue background. I ended up creating a table, making the stars about the size of a cell, and then eyeballing it. I also used a white marble texture for the stars, added a shadow, and beveled them. Paired with the requisite maroon title box, it looks pretty sweet. The second sign is for an NPR display. At first I went with a big old microphone and a wood background. It wasn't quite what I wanted and then I found a stock image of a phone and headphones, which I ended up going with. I figure a lot of people listen to NPR via podcasts, so it made sense. The third display sign is for the coloring pages we're putting out on Sunday. I was going to use a picture of a coloring page and then fill it in with Paint, but I think that may look weird. So now I'm thinking just an uncolored coloring page. We'll see what comes to me tomorrow.

For lunch I went home, because that's where I left my lunch. It takes me longer to get to my house and I have to leave earlier, compared to my Mom's house, so I'll try my best to remember my lunch from now on. The plus side is that I was able to finish watching Big Game. It kept freezing when I was playing it on my computer over the weekend but it played fine on my Blu-ray player, so I was able to finally see the ending and I will no longer lose sleep worrying about whether or not President Samuel L. Jackson got out of the woods.

This afternoon I showed the new librarian how to print stuff from the copier. That part went smoothly. We then tried to figure out how to scan and email from the copier. There's a good chance that feature isn't set up on our copier. So our figuring went nowhere. At least we tried.

And lastly, I worked on my book lists for my displays. Really it was only the NPR list because that was easier and I already have a bunch of books for the other display. I'll continue working on both tomorrow. Probably.

After work I picked up Qdoba and headed to my Mom's house for dinner. After dinner we watched YouTube videos and then I took a look at an old printer my sister had. It was broken and it is still broken, sadly.

I got home around nine o'clock, clicked around the internet, watched YouTube videos, and wrote this. It's 10:30PM but I kind of want to play Elite Dangerous because I haven't done that recently. I keep getting sidetracked by editing the book image in GIMP. And I have another idea for what I want to do with it, so we'll see where that goes. I think I might jump into Elite Dangerous though. Just for a little bit...

June 27, 2017

This morning I didn't get anything on my pants right before I walked out the door. Or at any other point during the day, so that's an improvement over yesterday.

Today was mostly spent helping patrons and playing with prize drawing tickets. Some of the prize jars were getting to the overflowing point so I started pulling the tickets out and writing a number on the back of each ticket. The main point of this is so that we can use a random number generator to select winners. An added bonus is that we will be able to see how many overall tickets have been used, which I think will be interesting. I nearly made it through the adult tickets but not quite. I'll need to space the rest of that out because I have been avoiding other things that I probably shouldn't be avoiding.

I helped a lady several times throughout the day (as did all the other librarians) with PDFs on a DVD. It's been a month or two since she was in with the same thing. I have no idea what she's doing but she is not a big computer user, which she mentioned every ten or fifteen minutes when she asked for help. There were two things that really confused her.

The first was that the document she was looking at was broken into multiple documents. She was looking at the first document, which was basically just a standalone table of contents. And she kept wanting to click on the thing she wanted in the table of contents and didn't get why it wouldn't go to where she wanted. I remembered this from the last time she was in and explained to her again twice today, that the other documents on her DVD were named after the items in the table of contents, and she needed to open the document she wanted, not just click on the table of contents.

The second issue was understanding that the number on the scanned document was not necessarily the same as the digital page number. She kept trying to print page ranges based on the scanned document rather than the digital file. Thankfully when she was doing this she was picking ranges outside of the digital range so she wasn't accidentally printing things she didn't want to print.

I've got to give it to her, though, she stuck with it. For hours. Many many hours.

At the end of the day I started making a book list for one of my displays next month. And I was given an idea for my other display, so that should be fairly easy. Now I just need to finish my book lists and come up with display signs.

After work, on my way home, I stopped by Home Depot to get a new stopper thing for my toilet and a gift card for my friend for his wedding. I still need to get a card.

Tonight I did much of the same. I watched YouTube videos and livestreams, and I played with GIMP and the book thing. I tried a bunch of things and I'm getting closer to what I want. And by the time I get there I will probably be over the whole idea of needing it. We'll see.

Writing this has taken me forever because I started watching a stream of people talking about and debating Twitch's addition of an affiliate program. The broad concept is that now streamers can become affiliates, which is below the partner level, but gives them a sub button so their followers can subscribe to them. I don't really care either way because I don't have the dream of being a professional streamer, but it seems like the affiliate program is only good for Twitch, and in turn Amazon, who owns them now. Internet drama.

It is now creeping ever closer to one o'clock in the morning and I still need to record my audio journal. So I'm going to go do that.

June 26, 2017

This morning I had the opportunity to wake up fifteen minutes early. I went back to bed. And I stayed there until thirty minutes after my alarm went off. It didn't seem like a bad way to start the day, and I was feeling good about this Monday. And then, right as I was about to walk out the door, I noticed some sort of stain on my pants. I think it was breakfast related. That was annoying because I was already running a little late. I'm just glad I noticed it before I got to work. It would have been really frustrating to discover it after getting to work.

It was a very laid back day at work. I spent most of the morning working on my latest personalized reading list, which was packed with feminism and strong female protagonists. I think it's a pretty decent list.

This afternoon I watched a webinar about a new app for one of our digital libraries. It was way easier than the current app, which requires you to log into the app and then into the library itself. It's a pain and very confusing. They have also integrated a help feature, so maybe more patrons will go that route instead of coming to the library with issues that we then have to go to the help section to answer. Overall, it's way better and I look forward to introducing it to patrons.

The other main thing I did today was watch usability videos. I am nearly caught up with the videos for May. Good grief. I don't know what I have going on tomorrow but I should be able to finish up the May videos and start on June. I have plenty of other things I could be doing but most of them are far enough off that I don't feel too compelled to do them yet.

Other than that stuff, I did all the regular stuff. Helping patrons in the library, in chat, and over the phone. I also gave out summer reading prizes and signed a few people up. So all the regular stuff.

Tonight I didn't really do much. I ate dinner, which was leftover sweet potato and marinated vegetable taco stuff (minus the taco part because I just ate it in a bowl). Still delicious. After dinner I watched YouTube videos and livestreams and played with GIMP. I couldn't stop thinking about my book GIF today so I had to jump back in. I tried some different border options and I also wanted to try something with my original GIF. I think I may be able to do the GIF with a completely transparent background so I can put a slightly transparent PNG behind it, making it look like the book has a semi transparent background, which I can't do with a GIF. I think I will need to remake the whole GIF but knowing that it should be possible is helpful. I am also thinking of trying one without the border and giving it a title to make it look more like the HUD items in the game. If I didn't have to open tomorrow I would probably be working on that now. But it's already after eleven o'clock and will probably be at least midnight before I get to bed, so I'm already pushing my luck.

I adjusted the grandfather clock tonight, trying to match the pendulum with the seconds ticking on my phone. I don't think that was the way to go about it. I noted the time that I set the clock and I am going to check back tomorrow at the same time so see what has been lost or gained, and then make some adjustments.

Now I'm going to stop writing so I can record my audio journal. And then, I'm going to go to bed.

June 25, 2017

This morning I once again woke up around 7:30AM and I refused. I went with it yesterday morning but this morning I wasn't having it, so I rolled over and went back to sleep until ten o'clock. It was nice.

When I got up I took a shower and headed over to my Dad's house. When my sister arrived we carried the grandfather clock downstairs and loaded it into my Dad's truck. And then we waited because it had started to sprinkle out and the bottom of the grandfather clock was sticking out from the cover of his bed cover.

There was a break after a little while so we went for it and drove over to my house, where my sister and I unloaded the clock and got it set up in my living room. I even got the weights set up and got it running, which it hasn't done since it was at my Grandma's house. The first time it struck an hour it chimed and it was like a flashback to my childhood. It was pretty cool. It has been running for about ten hours now and I think I've lost about four minutes. That means I need to adjust the pendulum. There is an adjustment screw at the bottom of it and apparently one full turn of the screw is equal to thirty seconds over the course of twenty-four hours. I need to find out which direction is faster and slower. My plan is to set it to an hour and then come back twenty-four hours later and see how off it is and make adjustments accordingly.

After my Dad left, my sister and I set up a shelf, and then when she left, I made a late lunch. I made an egg sandwich and it was by far the best one I have made so far. I toasted sourdough bread with butter and garlic powder. For the eggs I added in red bell pepper with a little garlic powder, put a little cheddar cheese inside when folded it in half, and a little mozzarella cheese on top. It was so good. I was genuinely surprised.

It felt like the rest of my day was spent watching movies/livestreams/videos and messing with GIMP. I spent way more time than I needed to with GIMP because I thought something was wrong but it really wasn't, so I was trying to correct a problem that wasn't really there. My goal was to make a neon green book to go on the screen when/if I do the book reading thing with Elite Dangerous in the background. I found a black outline of an open book, erased all the white, figured out how to make neon looking lines in GIMP, made a metal border for it, and then spent a bunch of time turning it into a GIF. When I finally got what I wanted I saved it and checked it in a browser and I kept seeing a big white border around the whole thing, instead of the transparency it should have been. I spent so much time trying to figure out what was going on and nothing I tried worked. Then I pulled up OBS and found out it was actually transparent, even though the browser wasn't showing it. I don't know. It was a waste of time.

I continued working on it and then moved on to trying to have a slightly transparent background. That's a thing that I think is beyond GIFs. They can do fully transparent but not slightly transparent. I tried to fake it by having a fully transparent background, and then putting that on top of a slightly transparent PNG in OBS, but in order to do that I had to replace layers instead of combine layers. Combining layers works without transparency because each layer just covers up the last. With a transparent background, if you combine layers, all the layers are basically there at once, so it creates a blurred effect. But, with replace and a transparent background, at least with the image I used, it kind of looks like crap. It is a much smoother animation with a plain black background. So I think I'm going with that. At least if I want to go with a GIF.

I eventually called it a night because I had already spent way too much time messing with it.

The movies I watched were Power Rangers (for a second time) and Chips. Power Rangers is still good and I hope they make a second one. I feel like it did well enough for a sequel. And I know Chips got completely destroyed by critics, but I liked it. It was a very Dax Shepard movie, and I'm a fan of his movies, so I didn't have a problem with it. I'm also a fan of Michael Pena because he is really funny. I think people were expecting a more faithful adaptation of the TV show, forgetting who Dax Shepard is, maybe. Using the Chips name was probably the downfall. I imagine people would have enjoyed it much more if it was just a standalone movie about bike cops. Oh well.

It is now midnight, as the grandfather clock has reminded me, and I should have been in bed awhile ago. I'm going to record my audio journal, and hope I don't ramble on too long about my GIF making.

June 24, 2017

This morning I kind of planned on sleeping in but that didn't happen. I was wide awake way too early for my own liking but I got up anyway and read for a little while. I don't know that I did anything productive with my morning. Nothing that I can remember anyway. I may have played some Elite Dangerous but that game is still causing me grief. I think it was yesterday maybe that I tried underclocking my GPU to see if that would help with the crashing. I didn't crash after that so I assumed all was good. All is not good, however. I'm still randomly crashing, even with the underclocking. At this point I don't know what else to do.

This afternoon I went to my Mom's house to do laundry. While I ate lunch I watched Star Trek: Voyager and then eventually read off and on. I also looked through most of my books (because they're all still at my Mom's house) trying to find old books that are in the public domain. I still like the idea of doing a “book club” on Twitch. It would basically just be me reading to myself, but again, the idea is cool. I want to park my ship somewhere in Elite Dangerous as a backdrop but I still need to test that out and see if I can handle streaming that. I did manage to find quite a few old books that could potentially be read. I want to start with Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog) because it has been awhile since I've read it and it is pretty funny.

When I got home I had dinner. When I went to the store the other day I got a couple blocks of cheese (cheddar and mozzarella) because they were cheaper than a bag of shredded cheese. Originally my idea was to make a grilled cheese sandwich, which I don't think I've ever made. Tonight I decided I wanted some cheese on my vegetable tacos. And at first I was going to use the small grater that I have, but then I remembered my food processor. I was quickly able to shred both blocks of cheese and got way more shredded cheese than I would have if I had purchased a bag of shredded cheese. And it cost less. I did the cheddar with the fine grater and the mozzarella with the larger one, just to see what the output would be. I like both. Now I just need to make more stuff that needs cheese.

While I ate dinner I started watching the movie Big Game with Samuel L. Jackson. I got nearly an hour into it when the DVD decided it was going no further. I tried a few different things and it always stopped in the same spot. I think I can skip a few minutes ahead and be good, but at the same time this was happening I was fighting with Elite Dangerous.

It crashed a couple more times and then it got to the point where the game wouldn't even load. I just got a black screen and eventually a crash report pop-up. It was frustrating. All I want to do is play the game and it seems to really hate something in my PC.

The other day I downloaded the game onto my laptop. Tonight I transferred over my custom keybinding file and my custom HUD color file, and then dragged my laptop and HOTAS down to the basement and got everything hooked up to play on my projector. Thankfully the game seems to be working on my laptop. I got the occasional hiccup in my frame rate but it never crashed. To be fair, I don't think it crashed the first day I played on my desktop, so I'm not holding my breath quite yet. The real test will be the next couple times I play on my laptop. Also, it looks pretty sweet projected up on my wall. If you go with the diagonal method of measuring screens, my projected image is about 100”, or by rectangular dimensions it's about 4' by 7'. Not bad.

After dinner I made cookies for the first time. Or rather, I baked cookies for the first time. I didn't actually make them. My mom gave me a pack of pre-portioned cookie dough that you keep in the fridge. They came out a little on the crisp side and I'm not really a fan of crunchy cookies. They still seemed way too gooey when I pulled them out but they were a darker shade of brown and when they cooled they were crunchy. So maybe with the rest of the package I'll try pulling them out earlier, when they look good, rather than trying to do it based on feel.

Right now I'm listened to the new 311 album, which I didn't even realize was a thing. I'm liking it, but that's not surprising considering the number of 311 CDs I own.

It is nearly 1:30AM and I need to wake up in the morning, so I'm going to stop writing so I can record my audio journal. And then go to bed.

June 23, 2017

I forgot to mention yesterday that one of the kindergarten teachers I used to work with came to the library with the daycare he runs to watch a movie. He stopped by the desk to give me a Thank You card and gift card for helping update the graphic for his summer daycare shirt. I went back back over to the auditorium with him so I could talk to one of the paras and my fifth grade teacher friend who I haven't seen in forever. It was good to catch up with them and made me feel very nostalgic for the school.

Last night, the moment I stopped the video recording for my audio journal my laptop died. Turns out I forgot to plug it in before I started recording. I would say I got incredibly lucky that it died at the very end instead of in the middle. Or even right before the end. When I started everything back up my Audacity file cut off the last few seconds and the last few seconds that were there were only mono instead of stereo, which was interesting. And we'll say the video is fine because it won't let me skip to the end for some reason. I'm just glad both Audacity and OBS create files as they go so I didn't lose everything in the crash.

Last night I set my alarm clock for when I was supposed to be at work, not when I was supposed to wake up. At 6:57AM I opened my eyes, realized it was much too light. It was then that I put my glasses on, looked at the clock, and said “God, damnit.” Then I rushed around and made it to work on time, even though I lost an hour from my morning routine. It was a great way to start the day.

Also, John Green announced his new book yesterday, Turtles All The Way Down. Apparently it's been five and a half years since The Fault In Our Stars. That seems impossible. Time goes so fast. I'm pretty excited for the new book.

Today should have been a note-taking kind of day, so we'll see what I remember. I spent a lot of today coming up with a description for the video game discussion in the Fall. I hadn't decided on a game yet so I looked at the lists I have made and clicked around Steam. I ended up decided to do a simulator theme. I still don't know what game I want to play but I want to talk about simulators as a genre, why they're popular, and see what other people think about them. With that in mind, I was eventually able to come up with a description that may or may not be good. I sent it to the PR lady so we'll see what she thinks.

I got a brief start on a personalized reading list this afternoon. I think I'm three or four books in. It was another pretty broad request, other than wanting books with strong female characters and feminism. Which is fairly specific, I guess, but I don't want all the books to be about that. I'm figuring it out.

I helped a lady who works at one of the nursing homes we deliver hombound books to with her Kindle. I was mostly successful and she left happy, so I'm counting it as a win.

And I think that was pretty much my day at work. We'll say it was anyway.

When I got home I made dinner. It was a mash-up of two recipes and it worked out pretty well. I made sweet potato tacos with marinated vegetables. I marinated red onion, broccoli, yellow squash, and zucchini in mix of balsamic vinegar, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, olive oil, oregano, basil, and garlic powder. I tossed the sweet potatoes in olive oil, maple syrup, paprika, and chili powder. Along with that I made brown rice and black beans. And then I put it all in tortillas and ate it. It was delicious. And now my house smells like a restaurant. It's pretty great.

After dinner my dad stopped by to drop off all of my Grandpa's old woodworking plans. Very cool. I stood out in the driveway and talked with him for a little over an hour or so and then came back inside to write this. It has been a very long, distracted process because it is now 12:20AM.

June 22, 2017

I forgot to mention that yesterday I helped a girl who needed a librarian to verify her submitting an application. It was some government thing and it was odd. The employer specifically said a librarian needed to confirm the girl was who she said she was. She had to get my information to send to the employer so that the employer could send me an email with a link and log-in information. I then had to input information from the girl's driver's license and social security card. It was just weird that they wanted a librarian doing this. I'm glad we're trusted but it seems like there is someone out there whose job it is to do that sort of thing.

This morning I slept in, which was nice. Then I did some stuff I don't remember, ate lunch, and went to work. My day at work was pretty much completely spent working working on turning my verbal abuse presentation slides into GIFs. That has been such a long process. Way too many hours. But I finally freaking finished it and around eight o'clock I started putting it on the staff blog. At first the GIFs didn't work, which made me panic, but then I learned that you have to post GIFs at their original size, not small, medium, or large. After that everything was all good.

When I wasn't working on that, I helped patrons, signed people up and gave out prizes for summer reading, and talked with coworkers. It was a pretty laid back day. And it warm because they are replacing the compressor in the AC unit tomorrow and for some reason they turned the current compressor off this morning. It was nice when I got there but a few hours later it was up to 80 degrees. It's weird because you can walk twenty feet away from the desk and it is chilly, but the desk is 80 degrees. In theory everything will be fixed in the morning. Hopefully.

Tonight there was an event at the library that was livestreamed on YouTube. I had to be on desk so I just watched it on the computer while I worked on the GIF thing. It was pretty cool. The only problem was that a few people held the microphone too close to their mouth and it was hard to understand them. It was also interesting hearing applause in real life and then after a delay hearing it on the livestream.

After work I went to the store. This morning I saw a recipe for marinated and grilled vegetables that looked pretty good. They also suggested combining them with a recipe for sweet potato and black bean tacos. So I got the ingredients for all of that. Minus the asparagus because apparently that was on sale today and long gone by the time I got there. I'm going to substitute in broccoli because why not. I only have a George Foreman grill (which I've never used), not a real grill, so I think I'm just going to roast the vegetables. I may make it for dinner tomorrow night.

When I got home I unloaded my car and the ate a small havarti and mustard sandwich while watching YouTube videos. And now I'm going to record my audio journal because it is getting late and I need to go to bed. I open tomorrow and I'll be trying to function on less than a full night of rest. We'll see what the day brings.

June 21, 2017

It's nearly midnight and most of this entry will probably be typed with my eyes clothes because I'm tired.

When I got to work this morning I was going to call my homebound patrons but that was quickly forgotten about when my boss asked me to go around and put up the weekly scoop, which is just a single sheet of interesting things for staff, that we put in staff areas. Normally it is done by one of the assistants over the weekend but it got buried in her inbox, so the task was given to me this week. It was quite a journey from the basement up to the third floor. But I think I got them all delivered. And after all that running around I completely forgot about calling my patrons. Something I didn't realize until right before lunch while I was still on the desk so I couldn't actually call anyone. I also forgot to mail the letters to two of my patrons who get letters instead of phone calls. It was not a good month for contacting.

I got to use the paper cutter in the basement this morning. I printed off another 400 prize tickets and didn't want to slowly cut them on the regular paper cutter. The hardest part was finding the key to the one in the basement. Admin was supposed to have one but the three people I talked to knew nothing about it. I lucked out when I asked the assistant director because the head maintenance guy was with him and he had a key, so I met him down in the basement. The cutting went very well and it is still fun to use the cutter.

When I gave the key back to the maintenance guy he made me hold up all of my fingers so he could check to make sure I still had them all. He said something along the lines of “Good, you still have all ten fingers.” And my immediate response was “But I started with eleven.” Earlier when I ran into him talking to the assistant director he said they were talking about me and it wasn't anything good. And my response was “So only great things.” I was on fire this morning.

After lunch we loaded up the minivan and headed out to deliver books. I startled my first patron a little bit because she was asleep when I walked in her room and had to shout to wake her up. I had a good conversation with my second patron. One of my patrons in the first nursing home was gone for the day, which I kind of didn't mind because she's the messy patron that I have to clean all of her books after we bring them back to the library. At the second nursing home I had enough time to cool off in the van and read about fifteen minutes of a book while I waited for the other librarian. It took me awhile to start the book so the overall wait was closer to twenty or thirty minutes. Her patron had fallen earlier in the day and landed on her walker. She was meeting with a couple nurses and the librarian had to wait for them to finish.

My last patron is the one with macular degeneration and I was looking forward to telling her about the rating system I came up with. But then her daughter answered the door and let me know that her mom was dying. She was in a hospital bed in the family room and wasn't looking too good. It apparently came on pretty suddenly. I offered to leave the new books but she wasn't interested in listening to anything so I took them with me. Along with the rating system I had also pulled a bunch of new authors for her and I was looking forward to a month from now, seeing if she liked any of them. The inevitable end is the worst part about homebound. This will be my third patron to die and not the last, unfortunately.

Following that we stopped for gas and then went to Wal-Mart to look for the Pioneer Woman magazine because a patron requested it and it is only available at Wal-Mart. We had no luck finding it and later on my sister said the first run sold out really quick, so we were never going to find it. So we headed back to the library.

We unloaded all the books and got the ready for circulation to check them back in. I took the audiobooks upstairs with me because I was on desk and I needed time to take all the pockets off that I had taped onto all of the cases for the rating shapes.

While I worked on that I talked with the teen librarian because she was at our desk. We continued talking while I worked on inputting the comments I got from my homebound patrons. I was nearly able to finish that. In my last hour of work I had a walk through, continued inputting comments, and talked to the new librarian about programming and other library stuff.

After work I picked up Qdoba and headed to my Mom's for dinner. We ate food, watched YouTube videos, listened to music, and talked. It was a good night and I didn't leave until ten o'clock.

When I got home I watched YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, and eventually started writing this. There have been numerous distractions. One of which was one of the streamers I watch, VernNotice reading a book. He has apparently started a book club, where he just reads on stream for awhile. Being a librarian, I really like that idea. I have dabbled in streaming before, doing some where I make cross stitch patterns in Minecraft, ones where I made my Mom and sister's cross stitch owls, and one playing CS:GO. I like the idea of just sitting and reading, though. My thought is to pull up somewhere in Elite Dangerous with a cool view and just reading. I started my audio journal as an excuse to talk during the weekends when I may go a day or two without speaking to anyone, which would present a problem when I got to work on Monday and my voice wouldn't work properly. Reading a book out loud would definitely help with that and it would be another excuse to read books. I'll have to think about it. My main concern is about the legality of it. I'm pretty sure reading a book on a livestream is probably a copyright violation. So maybe I would need to stick with public domain books. And then if it actually becomes a thing, asking authors or their agents if I can pay for the rights to read the book. I know on YouTube artists can pay a small fee to cover a song and I wonder if it is the same with a book. Maybe I'll find out at some point.

And it is now nearly 1:45AM and I am just finishing this. Good grief.

June 20, 2017

Waking up this morning kind of sucked but I did it and then I went to work. Today the pencil sharpener got stuck running. Every now and then it will do that but the next time I stick a pencil in it will shut off. Today it did not shut off. I decided to take advantage of that and sharpened as many pencils as I could. And eventually, as it does, it passed out from heat stroke. Maybe five or ten minutes later I was going through emails when out of nowhere the sharpener started up again, all by itself. It scared me a little bit. I sharpened a few more pencils that weren't quite sharp and then I unplugged the sharpener because it was still running and I didn't want it to randomly start again.

I was on desk for two hours this afternoon, had one walkthrough (that I missed), and the rest of the day I didn't have anything scheduled. It was an interesting schedule day. I spent a decent amount of time this morning cutting out the circle shapes for my homebound patron's rating system. I then made some pockets for the shapes, taped them on the audiobook cases, and put the shapes in them. The idea being that if she likes a book she can pull the plus sign out of the pocket and put it in the audiobook case. And if she hates the book, she can use the circle. I thought using a rectangle as a minus sign might be slightly confusing with the sharp corners like the plus sign, so I figured a shape with no corners would be the quickest way to distinguish between the two. It all makes sense to me because I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. The true test will be tomorrow when we go out to deliver books. I hope my system makes sense to the patron and that she actually wants to use it, now that she can't see well enough to write feedback.

Throughout the day I worked on turning my PowerPoint slides with GIFs in just GIFs. It's a pain in the butt and no one will know or appreciate the effort that is going into this. But I will. The big pain today, and it continues to be a pain because I'm not done with it yet, is a slide with three GIFs on it, at least one of which I had to partially cover up because it was really wide and I didn't want that. That GIF has eighty layers so I had to create a mask for each layer and merge them to that layer. Super tedious. But it worked kind of. I'm getting a weird frame at the end of it and I'm not sure what that's about. I'll have to play with it some more. I also need to add the other two GIFs, which will be super confusing with all the additional layers added in. And I can't group each GIF by itself because the GIFs won't work if they are in a layer group. Because that would be too convenient. I might add in a hidden layer in between each set of GIF layers just to help me organize things a little bit.

On a slightly more positive note, I figured out how to access the GIFs I included in the PowerPoint. When you embed a GIF you can't just right-click on it and save it as a GIF, which I didn't realize. Most of them I copied and pasted directly from the internet. And I worked on the presentation on several different computers, so if I did download any of the GIFs, who the hell knows what computer they're on. So I had been going back and trying to find them again, which was a pain because I couldn't remember my initial search terms. Well, it turns out you can change the file type of a PowerPoint to a ZIP file, extract it, and navigate to the media folder, which has all the GIFs in it. I very interesting technique.

I emailed one of the possible presenters for our adulting series to give her an updated date (because we changed the schedule a bit) and got a response. I hadn't heard from her before today because she just got back in the office yesterday and was still catching up on things. She said she is going on sabbatical next semester and the other person who could teach the class may not be there either. Sooo, that kind of sucks. She said she was going to check with some people tomorrow, though, and my fingers are crossed.

I also heard back from my former practicum supervisor and she liked the idea of helping with the alternative facts class. Either her and some other librarians at the university or a joint effort with us. So that is cool. I think the only group I haven't heard back from are the car people at the technical school. Not bad considering it's still June.

I also emailed a presenter for a program next month just to touch base. So I was on top of things today.

I had a surprise of a whole bunch of National Geographic magazines when I got to work today. Over the weekend it came up that I kind of collect them (or at least never throw them out) and the lady from circulation that I was talking to was upset because earlier in the year she and her husband recycled their collection that went back to the 1960s. Well, I guess someone brought in a bunch yesterday, completely coincidentally. And now I have them. I carried half of them to my car when I went to lunch and the other half when I was going home. It was heavy at lunch and even heavier when I was going home. I definitely underestimated how far away I had parked and felt like I was close to dropping the box by the time I finally reached my car. I did managed to carry them all inside my house in just one trip. An impressive feat considering how weak I am.

Tonight I ate dinner, watched dinner, and played a little Elite Dangerous until it crashed on me. It was a frustrating crash because I decided to take a salvage mission, which I still don't fully understand. It took me forever to find them right spot and literally the moment I got it in my sights, the game crashed. I was kind of pissed.

I've seen a lot of similar descriptions around the internet but no solid answers. When there are solutions they seem to be very specific to individuals, nothing obvious for everyone. In my event log it looks like the crash might be related to Radeon stuff crashing. I have now downloaded the latest non-recommended driver and turned on shader caching or something in the Radeon settings for the game. So we'll see if that does anything. The really annoying thing is that it doesn't crash immediately, it seems to at least take an hour, so I can't just tweak something, jump in and see if it works, and then try something else. I have to get fully invested, feel like maybe I have finally fixed it, and then boom, crash. I still need to try the game on my laptop so see if I have any more luck. Although I've seen accounts of it happening with Nvidia, too. Who knows.

The most interesting version of the crash I read about was someone who could only fly in specific ships because other ships would crash the game every time he tried to jump to hyperspace. I kind of wonder if part of my thing is related to that because I played a whole bunch the first and second day I had the game and don't think I started having issues until I bought my new ship. If the game crashes again I might try switching back to the first ship and seeing if that helps.

I have rambled on far too long in this entry and it is now nearly midnight. I need sleep.

June 19, 2017

 Today was a good day. I woke up earlier than I would have liked but that's not out of the norm.

This morning did things, probably. I think I played some Elite Dangerous, watched videos, and clicked around the internet. All the usual stuff. At some point today Elite Dangerous started crapping out on me. It crashed several times, seemingly randomly, and it was kind of frustrating. It brought back the cursing I thought I got past after the initial learning curve for the game. Tonight I updated a Radeon driver and I hope that fixes the problem. When I got back in the game after that I only played a tiny bit but it didn't crash, so fingers crossed. I also downloaded the game on my laptop to see if I will have the same issues. It would also be cool if it worked on my laptop because then I could play on my projector. Elite Dangerous would look pretty sweet up on my wall.

After lunch I went to my Mom's house to do laundry. While that was going I read. I've neglected reading since Elite Dangerous. I also picked up my other office chair because the one I had at my house started slowly moving down the other day. It only seemed to happen when I was at just the right angle but it was still annoying. Getting the other chair in my car was a pain in the butt. It wouldn't fit in my trunk or front seat. It also didn't quite fit in my backseat. And then I got it stuck in the back seat, unable to push it in or pull it out. Eventually I said screw it and unscrewed the base from the seat because the width of the wheelbase was the main holdup in every location. I still couldn't get just the base in the trunk or the backseat and it just barely fit in the front seat. Kinda ridiculous. But I got it in and I'm sitting in the chair now. I need a new chair. I'm back on that kick. I spend way too much time in my chair to not have a decent one.

When I got home I did responsible things. I put my laundry away, ironed my pants for the week, watered the flower on my porch, and washed my dishes that I neglected the last couple of nights. I then sat down and finished Adulting: How to Become a Grown-Up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps by Kelly Williams Brown. I enjoyed the book. It would be cool if we could connect it somehow to our series in the Fall.

Once the book was finished I ate dinner and watched YouTube videos. Then I played Elite Dangerous until it crashed. While I worked on getting that sorted out I watched an Elite Dangerous stream because I needed my fix. It was the same streamer I was watching before I got the game. And now I'm watching a stream that he hosted. They're working on setting up a fighter race through a canyon, which is a thing I didn't even know existed. But to be fair, I still don't know most things about the game.

Now I need to record my audio journal so I can go to sleep. I open in the morning. I'm not looking forward to that but at least I get off at five o'clock.

June 18, 2017

 This morning I slept as long as I needed to and woke up without an alarm. It was great. Every day should be like that.

I got to work about ten minutes early because I crushed the drive across town. I didn't hit a single stoplight and for the most part I was able to drive the speed I wanted.

I was done counting the money five minutes after I was supposed to be there, which gave me a whole bunch of time before we opened. I used that to get a start on my homebound stuff. Over the course of the day I was able to pull books for my last two patrons, make bookmarks and put them in the books, pack up all the books, and update spreadsheets. I ended my day by starting to cut out shapes I printed out on cardstock for one of my homebound patrons. She has macular degeneration and it has gotten to the point where she can't write comments to let me know what she thought of the books. My idea was to come up with two shapes, a plus-sign and a circle, and she can put a plus sign in the audiobook cases that she likes and a circle in the ones she doesn't. This way she doesn't need to worry about writing. I'm still not sure about the best method for delivering/holding the shapes. They need to be easily accessible but also contained so they don't get lost. I'm going to ask my coworkers to see what they think.

I played with my test spreadsheet a little bit and think I settled on the icons for hiding and unhiding rows. And I haven't tried it yet but I imagine it can also be used to hide and unhide columns. I don't need to do that at the moment but it may come in handy as I figured out a better way to layout my homebound spreadsheets.

Yesterday I printed out three hundred more grand prize drawing tickets and today I cut them out. I wasn't able to use the big industrial cutter in the basement so I did it with a regular paper cutter. That was super tedious after experiencing the efficiency of the cutter in the basement. But I survived and we're good on tickets for at least a little bit.

There was a man over in the new seating area today that was having a conversation with himself while doing something on his phone or tablet. It occasionally dipped into argument territory. After listening to that for an hour or two I came up with this: “The Public Library: The interesting characters aren't just in the books.” It is very accurate. Another example is the bible study group that had a Father's Day party for the Heavenly Father. They went all out with balloons and everything.

On my way home I got gas, stopped at Target, and stopped at my Mom's house. At Target I did self-check because the only register open had a lady with a cart overflowing with tiny items. She might still be there. I ended up annoying the machine by not placing the items in a satisfactory way into the bagging area on two occasions. Both times the girl supervising the area had to come over and push a bunch of buttons to get it sorted out. I started to feel bad. At my Mom's house I picked up the books I got my Dad for Father's Day (which he'll get whenever I see him again) and talked to my Mom for a little bit.

When I got home I unloaded my groceries and heated up some pizza for dinner. While I ate I watched YouTube videos and after dinner I made a picture based on the phrase I came up with about characters in public libraries. It's just the words on a background of green-tinted wood, but I think it looks pretty cool.

I played one race in Ridge Racer Unbounded but couldn't play another because I was too lazy to go down to the basement to get my controller. The only keyboard option for driving was the arrow keys and space bar. That is not the ideal for racing. I did horribly. And then I switched over to Elite Dangerous because that is my new obsession. I made a decent amount of credits transporting stuff and I unintentionally stumbled upon the Leonard Nimoy space station, which orbits Vulcan. I took a bunch of screenshots.

I also became the victim of a bug that has apparently been a thing for a least a year or two. I took a mission to deliver to one place but when I got there they changed the location and offered a bonus for the inconvenience. I couldn't reach the new location because it was too far away and my ship couldn't make the jump. I eventually decided to buy a new ship that could jump farther because I've been looking to upgrade anyway and I would be make more than enough on the mission to cover the cost. Well, I got to the new location and there wasn't anyone there accepting the delivery. So I traveled all the way there for nothing. I got a couple more missions after that that changed the location of the delivery at the last minute but thankfully those actually worked out.

It is not way too late. I think I set a record with the number of distractions and rabbit holes I went down while writing this entry. Good grief.

June 17, 2017

 Today was a pretty good day. This was helped greatly by the counting of the drawer this morning at work going very smoothly. I figured out the new cash register and there was plenty of money in the register so I didn't have to do any math or get any change from the bank.

It was an uneventful day at work, which is always appreciated on the weekend. My main focus today was homebound stuff. I was able to finish my lists for all but two of my patrons (those two being the ones I just go to the shelves and pull for). I also pulled and checked out the books for those patrons. I ended up having to get a lot of alternate books because several had been checked out since I started making my lists, which is always annoying. Tomorrow I should be able to pull the books for my remaining two patrons, print bookmarks for everyone, and get them all bagged up. And then I won't have to worry about it next week.

When I had finished all I could with homebound for the day I played around with Excel, still trying to figure out how to make my homebound spreadsheets better. I got the button system working so I can click one button to hide certain rows and another button to unhide those rows. And I figured out I can use any image or shape I want and assign a macro to it, so I can click one of those instead of using a boring looking button. I'm getting closer to figuring out what I actually want to do with the spreadsheets.

Throughout the day I also signed up patrons and handed out prizes for summer reading, and helped other patrons with various patron things. Two of the summer reading people were girls I graduated high school with. I was not friends with either of them and have no idea whether or not they actually knew who I was but either way we didn't acknowledge that possible connection. One of them is a cool mom of two little boys now, which is strange because I remember her being a nerdy high school girl. When I look at myself I don't feel like a grownup but then I see people I graduated with that are married with kids and they seem super grownup. Life is weird.

Right before leaving work I ordered a Papa Murphy's pizza online. Maybe not entirely professional but I don't feel too bad because I don't take breaks so we can say I took a short break to order the pizza. And, my timing wasn't too bad. It said it would be ready at 6:15PM and I got there at 6:17PM. When I got home I baked the pizza and it turned out pretty good. I really want to make my own pizza at some point but tonight was not that night.

After dinner I watched YouTube videos and then eventually jumped into Elite Dangerous. I am enjoying it. I only cursed a few times but that was because I would accidentally click something on the map and it would kick me out of the game to open up a browser window. But other than that, I had a pretty decent session. I even leveled up a couple times thanks to all the trade missions I did. I decided to stick with the missions where I was given something and asked to take it somewhere else. I didn't want to get involved with the missions that required me to find random things. I'm sure it really isn't as hard as I made it out to be yesterday, but I didn't want to risk it. Not yet anyway.

It is now one o'clock in the morning and I am struggling to stay awake, which is why it has taken far too long to write this entry. I need to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I must sleep.

June 16, 2017

 I forgot to mention that it felt like 106 degrees outside yesterday. It was kind of like opening an oven door every time I stepped outside. I have no idea what it ended up like today because I wasn't outside after nine o'clock this morning. I'm okay with that.

Waking up this morning sucked, but I did it. And it was worth it because I finally got my hair cut. It should be the last haircut where the lady who cuts my hair can't hear. She had cochlear implant surgery last week and next week she goes back to get the processor. They have upgraded the whole thing now so instead of having a big thing hooked on your ear there is a magnet in the processor and in the thing they put under the skin, so it just sticks right on there. That's pretty cool. During my haircut today another customer called to schedule an appointment and I talked to her as a go-between, which worked out pretty well. I've gotten much better at talking to strangers on the phone thanks to working at the library.

Before I went to get my haircut I bought and started downloading Elite Dangerous because I couldn't stop thinking about it. When I got back from my haircut I washed dishes, refilled my fountain pens, switched out the water in my scallions, and then got down to business.

I set up my joystick, which I haven't used in years since I played Wings of Prey for not even forty-five. It was not a well thought out purchase. I enjoyed Wings of Prey but then got distracted by other stuff apparently. Even if I never touch it again, today I definitely got my money's worth out of the joystick.

Elite Dangerous very easily lives up to the reputation of having a very steep learning curve. I was probably eight or nine hours in before I got to the point where I wasn't cursing the game every five minutes. I have never hurled so many expletives at a video game before. It was basically a constant stream for hours. But I stuck with it. Partially because I paid full price for the game, but also because I knew the potential for fun was there if I could just get past that initial learning curve.

It finally started to kind of click after dinner. Before dinner I had spent way too long trying to do a mission and flew all over the place and apparently missed something because went I went back to collect the reward nothing popped up. Except a 10,000 credit fine because the tobacco I randomly found floating in space and picked up, was apparently illegal contraband. I only had 10,000 credits at the time and that was about the last straw. So after dinner the first thing I did was delete my save and start from scratch. Which was interesting because when I started the first time it apparently didn't take into account that I had the DLC. When I started my second game I had another ship option that came with the new land rover for exploring certain planets, and I started on a planet instead of a space station. I also didn't have an introductory mission to get a quick 10,000 credits. That was a little annoying but I got over it.

It didn't immediately start of better because I had also downloaded a new joystick keybinding because the one I had been using before didn't seem very efficient. I was still having to use the keyboard a lot and it didn't seem like I was using the joystick to its full potential. The new keybinding goes above and beyond and actually has four different layers for most of the buttons. So trying to figure out all of that was hard, and I'm not there yet, but I'm slowly getting better. One issue I have with the new keybinding is using the hyperdrive. I can activate the fast speed below the hyperdrive, and I think you're just supposed to lock onto a target and hit the same button again to go into the hyperdrive, but it wasn't working. At first I thought something was wrong with my ship and I spent at least twenty minutes just trying to reach my next destination because I was in the middle of nowhere. The only good thing about that was that I can push the throttle forward on my joystick and it stays, I don't have to hold a button down. I spent that time reading my book before it got to the point where I was almost out of fuel and decided to look a little deeper. I finally discovered I could activate the hyperdrive from within a menu and I was eventually able to reach my destination before running out of fuel.

I am also getting better at not overshooting my destination, which was a huge frustration. It's a pretty simple mechanic once you realize it but I was completely missing it for the longest time and it was really annoying.

At the moment I am still not great at the game but I am making progress. My goal is to get to the point where I can get a better ship and get a mining laser so I can start mining asteroids. I like tedious things and being a space miner is pretty tedious. If there isn't a lot of money in it my interest will probably fall off pretty fast, but we'll see when I get there.

For dinner I made another egg sandwich but I stepped it up this time. I added a little garlic powder to the buttered bread as I was toasting it in the pan. I also added fresh dill and cilantro to the eggs. It was pretty tasty. I might have the same thing tomorrow because I need to go to the grocery store. I was going to go tonight but I'm really not a fan of leaving the house on my days off.

Other than the haircut and video game, I watched some YouTube, and that was about it. It was a very frustrating day, filled with cursing, but it got better, and that's pretty exciting. I look forward to sinking way too many hours into flying around space.

June 15, 2017

 This morning I woke up before my alarm and had the pleasure of laying in bed with my eye closed, thinking about nothing in particular for awhile. It was nice.

Eventually I went to work and I did things. I came up with several different versions of a bookmark for the teen librarian. She already printed a bunch of the old ones but I felt compelled to improve it after I saw her pull it up the other day.

When she was at the desk today we talked about the adulting series and tried to come up with an image for the flyer. We both know what we want but don't actually know what that is, if that makes sense. She came up with a couple examples today and I'm going to ponder it for a little while and see if I can get past the tip-of-the-tongue feeling.

I worked on my homebound stuff today. I only finished one patron but that's more than I had yesterday. I already have a start on most of my other patrons thanks to the leftovers from my lists last month, so that is good. I should be able to finish all the book lists on Saturday and maybe get the books pulled on Sunday. Regardless of the time line I should be able to finish everything this weekend.

Tonight I did a bit of weeding. We have moved on to fiction and the new librarian took my section for weeding duplicates, so I didn't have to do that. Now that duplicates have been pulled we are pulling books that haven't been checked out in forever. Rather than getting a giant list and figuring out the math ourselves, the technical services manager just sent us lists of the exact books to pull. That made it really easy and I was able to get it done very quickly.

When I got home after worked there were two cars in neighbor's driveway that I didn't recognize. The house has been on the market for about six months I think and it looks like the just lowered the price last week. So maybe someone is interested or they're trying to get someone interested. Something to keep an eye on. I have liked not having to worry about my noise level.

I spent the rest of my night watching YouTube videos and a livestream of Elite Dangerous, which I have become minorly obsessed with today. As of late I have been sucked into the idea of space games, which is why I was playing Star Conflict the other day. And why I have watched Star Citizen streams in the past. And why I pre-ordered No Man's Sky. But No Man's Sky left a bad taste in my mouth because it was so over-sold and that raised my expectations way too high. I still enjoyed that game for what it was at the time but it wasn't all that I wanted. Star Conflict was fun but it was more mission-based, so you can't really fly around and explore outside of missions. Elite Dangerous is said to be like an MMO in space, so there are all of the tedious quests and things like an MMO, but it's also a giant world (simulating the 400 billion star systems in the Milky Way) and you can pick different paths/classes (like a pirate or a fighter or a miner or whatever) and just fly around and explore space. It also looks really nice graphically and the sound design is apparently really good. I hoped in the chat of the livestream I was watching tonight and the streamer and the other people in the chat were helpful in answering my questions and talking about the game. It also helped that the streamer was listening to Star Trek music while playing.

And good grief it is one o'clock in the morning. I have to wake up early for my long overdue haircut but after that I might have to take a nap.

June 14, 2017

 The book I finished yesterday was All The Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders. I think I liked it but only a little bit. I thought it was an interesting concept but it seemed much longer than it needed to be. It could have been much more concise. There seemed to be a lot of stuff that was unnecessary to the plot while I would have liked other stuff to be explained better. I am kind of annoyed when I get sucked into trilogies because I think maybe this story would have been better if it was spread out across three books with more focused detail going into the story. There also could have been less random cussing. I have no problem with cussing but it seemed to come in waves, so I guess whenever the author was in the cussing mood, and it was more often than not just awkward and didn't really seem to fit the characters. Basically, it felt like a rough draft that could still use some polish. So yeah, I think I liked it but only kind of. If there is ever a sequel I'll just read the plot summary and save myself the time.

Moving on. Today was a new day with a lot less reading.

At work today I got a tad bit sidetracked and didn't really make any progress on my homebound lists. My day started with pulling books for the parent cart display because it surprisingly checked out six books yesterday, bringing it down to seven books left on the cart. We'll see how the next round of books goes over.

On Sunday our next passive program for adults goes out. It has been Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys and next we're going with jigsaw puzzles that match our summer reading theme. I spent way too long today making a sign for it but I think it was worth it. Originally I wanted to just find a picture of a puzzle, but nothing I found was quite what I wanted. Then I found a jigsaw puzzle generator and used a picture of colorful buildings, which was then turned into a puzzle. I took screencaps as I put the puzzle together so I could try out varying states of done-ness of the puzzle for the sign. I think the one I'm going with is the puzzle solved except for one piece. I think it looks pretty cool.

We had a department meeting today where we talked about planning. An exciting topic indeed. I need to get better at planning, mostly so I can see all the plates that I currently have spinning. At the moment I tend to keep track of everything in my head but I'm only able to focus on one thing at a time so all the other stuff just kind of drifts in and out of focus when I shift my attention. So far I have been able to manage it but it would be nice to have everything sorted in a more efficient way. If nothing else I think it would greatly reduce my stress level. There are still a lot of things to figure out but I'm slowly beginning to figure things out.

After work I picked up Qdoba and headed to my Mom's house for dinner. After we ate we talked and watched YouTube videos. The first several of them were mine and then my sister showed a bunch of music ones. It was a good night.

Not too long after nine o'clock I made my exit and came home. I spent the rest of the night watching YouTube videos, clicking around the internet, deliberating over cheap video games, and losing track of time. It is now somehow 12:21AM. I'm not quite sure how that happened. Thankfully I close tomorrow so I can sleep in.

Now I need to record my audio journal so I can go to bed.

June 13, 2017

 It's after 11:30PM right now so let's do this.

I opened this morning and sharpened pencils until the sharpener betrayed me. Throughout the morning I worked on the personalized reading list I started the other day and at some point today I was able to finish it. I also had an ongoing chat about an ILL. It lasted a couple hours and I learned more about the status definitions for ILLs. So it was a productive two hours on desk. I posted all the definitions to our department blog just in case anyone else is as confused by the different statuses.

I also signed several people up for summer reading and gave out a bunch of summer reading prizes. At one point I had a line of teenagers at the desk because they all stopped by after the teen program this afternoon. A lot of nerdy teens with gardens in a jar. Way better than angry old patrons.

The last part of my day was spent playing with Excel after making a brief attempt to work on my homebound lists. The Excel thing was an attempt to improve my homebound spreadsheets, so it was somewhat productive. The goal became figuring out a way to auto-hide or unhide the rows at the top of the spreadsheet that have all the patron's information that is good to have but mostly unnecessary. I found out a way to do it on the mouse-over of an image or on a button click. I got both to work once and then they didn't until Excel crashed and I restarted it. Not sure why it started working after that. I think I like the idea of the button click, after all the time I spent trying to figure out the mouse-over thing. I'll mess with it some more in the future.

After work I came home and read a whole bunch. I read for a little over an hour, took a break for dinner, and then read the rest of the night. That ended up being about five and a half hours worth of reading tonight. Good grief. But I finished the book that is overdue with a hold on it, so now whoever has a hold on it can actually get it and I can stop feeling bad for it being two days overdue. I can now focus on the other book I've been reading as well as the new book I picked up today that was just released. I put a hold on it a few weeks ago because it was the sequel to a novella that had just won an award. This one is also a novella, so it is nice and short. Also, I need to finish listening to Ready Player One. So much to read, so little time.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed because I'm freaking tired.

June 12, 2017

 This morning was weird because I was ready for the day way before my alarm went off. I refused to get out of bed, though, and just laid there until my alarm did go off.

My main accomplishment at work today was sending all the emails I wrote on Friday to the various people and organizations we are hoping to partner with for the adulting series in the Fall. The main delay on that was coming up with subject line for the email. I wanted something that didn't sound like spam but would also be something they would click on. I also got my first response so it looks like the budgeting class is covered. The group doing it is the one I tried to get for my last budgeting class but they needed a guaranteed number of attendees. They didn't mention that this time so they've either gotten rid of the guarantee or they assume I know of the guarantee and wouldn't bother them again unless I had the requisite number of attendees. Regardless, they said they're in and asked if there was someway they could help promote it. Heck yes.

I also had someone from the mall stop by to get a summer reading prize but they also wanted to get the file for the scavenger hunt so they could print them out and promote it. We're all about the free promo and I think it is great that people are willing to do that kind of thing to support the library.

The other main things I did today was update homebound spreadsheets with the information I got last week when I delivered books, and I started on a personalized reading list. I think I only got three or four books in but that's not a bad start. Tomorrow I should be able to finish that list and hopefully I can get a start on my own homebound lists. I think coming up with homebound lists every month is probably the most anxiety inducing part of my job. It's like one of those nightmares where you are trying to run but it feels like you can only go in slow motion and there is no hope of ever escaping what you're running from. That might be a little over-dramatic but it conveys the gist.

When I got home I ate dinner, watched YouTube videos, and watched the Sony E3 livestream. Well, I watched it via a livestream of someone I follow on Twitch, who was watching the Sony E3 livestream and throwing in his occasional thoughts. Video games are pretty freaking sweet. I will almost certainly be spending $60 in November on the new Call of Duty game because they're going back to WWII and I'm a sucker for WWII CoD games. The new Wolfenstein also looks really good, possibly because its aesthetic is a mix of WWII and steampunk. I've been interested in playing the newest iteration of that franchise and this might be the excuse I need to pick them up on sale.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal. And then I need to read a little bit before bed. One of the books I have has a hold on it so I can't renew it. I'm only halfway through it and it was due today. It's going to be overdue. My idea is to read a bit before bed and then do a deep dive when I get off work tomorrow and knock it out. It will be a little late but that is better than returning it, putting a hold on it, and waiting three weeks to get it back. Also, there won't be any pressure on the person who gets it next, at least from me, so they can renew it if they aren't able to finish it within three weeks. I do feel a little bad that I am one of those people now that takes advantage of not getting late fees, but I promise not to make a habit out of it.

June 11, 2017

 Today was a very laid back day. I woke up at nine o'clock, even though I didn't really want to. Then I read for awhile before getting out of bed. For lunch I made an egg sandwich with pan-fried toast. I don't have a toaster so I thought I would try making it in a pan, and it worked out pretty well. Once I made the toast, I turned down the heat, let the pan cool a little bit, and then made my eggs. Rather than scrambling them, I let them sit there and basically made an omelet without any of the extra stuff like vegetables or cheese. That would have made a good sandwich but at the moment I only have cauliflower and scallions. I should have added some dill because I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of it. Maybe next time.

Throughout the day I clicked around the internet and played video games. I tried out Star Conflict, which is a game I hadn't heard about until today. It is a game about buying and upgrading space ships and dogfighting in space. At least that's the best description that comes to mind. It was pretty fun. It would have been cooler if I could have gotten out in the hangar and walked around my ships.

I played about ten or fifteen minutes of Far Cry 3. It has been far too long since I played that game and I had no real idea of what was going on or what I was doing. And it turns out I wasn't in the mood to figure it out.

I played more Creativerse and spent most of my time collecting resources and making the outside of my house look nice with a little landscaping. While I worked on that I listened to the Ready Player One audiobook.

While I ate dinner I watched a few episodes of Friends. I would have continued watching that probably but Netflix started being a butt and I couldn't watch anything. So I spent the rest of the night playing Farming Simulator 15 and listening to Ready Player One. I listened to over four and a half hours of Ready Player One today and have made it to disc seven. Progress. There are thirteen discs altogether so I'm getting there. It would help if I listened to it during the week and not just on the weekend.

I started catching up on video uploads today for may audio journal. I apparently haven't uploaded a video since May 2^nd. That was a long time ago. I managed to upload fourteen videos today. Two of them didn't have audio so I had to convert the original video file to an MP4, put that in my video editor along with the plain audio file, and then render that out so I could upload it to YouTube. I have just come across a third video without audio and that is going to have to wait for another day.

Now I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. I spent most of the day tired because I woke up early. I took a short nap on my couch before dinner but I think I am still sufficiently tired to fall asleep at a decent time. We'll see.