November 9, 2017

 I got seven and a half hours of sleep last night night and woke up feeling pretty good. It helped that I woke up at seven o'clock and just laid in bed until 7:30AM.

When I got to work I went over to the auditorium to find out how many people were supposed to be at my presentation. With that number in mind I went to make enough copies of the news audit handout, but the copier wasn't sucking in my paper at the top and that annoyed me enough that I wasn't going to put it inside on the glass. Instead I decided to log into one of the computers and just print off what I needed. And then the computer wouldn't connect to the network drives so I couldn't access the file. I tried logging out and back in a couple times but it didn't work so I restarted the computer, which took way longer than usual. I did finally manage to get the handout printed and there was a little less stress in my life.

The presentation went well. At least I think it went well. Along with the question portion I ended up taking the full hour, which was good. I warned them at the beginning that depending on how much I rambled or forgot to say it was either going to last ten minutes or forty-five minutes, and I'm glad it didn't take ten minutes. For the most part I read from my script with a little bit of improve and speaking from memory. I had to use a microphone, which worked great because had I been reading from my script without a microphone I would have been talking into the podium and my voice wouldn't have carried to the back of the auditorium. It was also nice because I wasn't having to project, which saved my voice. At the end they were a little slow to ask questions but I ended up getting quite a few, which was a pleasant surprise.

After the presentation I went downstairs to the childrens' workroom so I could make sure the Spheros were ready. I charged a couple just to be safe. I also played with the Little Bits, a little bit. After that, in my remaining time before my four hour break, I started adding my script into my presentation as subtitles so that I can eventually get it sent off to all of the attendees.

And then I had a four hour break. When I got home I ate lunch, watched YouTube videos, started playing a new idle clicker game called Idle Champions which is set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, and played a little more of the CoD: WW2 campaign. There was a weird glitch in the cutscenes where I could hear the random background noises but the dialogue was inaudible. I'm just glad I had subtitles turned on. I'm also even more convinced that I'll never be able to play this game on the hardest difficulty. There have been more than a couple times now where I have completely had my ass handed to me, repeatedly, and it has taken me multiple tries to get past certain parts. I can't imagine the hardest difficulty.

When I got back to work I was on desk for an hour and, among other things, I spent that time creating a perler bead egg wearing glasses as an example for the craft night next week that one of the other librarians and myself are leading. I haven't made anything with perler beads since I was a kid but I have been tempted to the last few years. I like all the 8-bit stuff you can create. That's also one of the reasons I like cross stitch.

When I got off desk I had a walkthrough and then I started setting up for my workshop. I pulled a few tables together and set up a little maze thing like I did last time. I made little gates to drive the Sphero through but a couple people pointed out they looked more like a croquet setup, and they were right. I also had one of the iPads hooked up to the projector, just in case we had a lot of and they couldn't all see the iPad screen. That ended up not being an issue but it was still a good idea.

The first people to show up were women. One looked really familiar and she ended up being the mom of a kid at the school I used to work at. She was looking for robotics-related activities for her Girl Scouts, so that was pretty cool. About forty-five minutes into it they transitioned over to the Little Bits and a couple came in and I got them going on the Spheros. The husband ended up being an engineer and he was super methodical about figuring out the Sphero, which was a lot of fun to watch. He also really liked it. Later on he played with the Little Bits and also really like those. So overall, I would say it was a successful workshop.

I got everything picked up fairly quickly and then headed downstairs to close. When I got home I watched YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, and now I'm writing this. And now, I'm going to record my audio journal because It is after midnight and I want to go to bed. Due to distractions it has taken far too long to write this. Will I never learn?