April 30, 2018

I got less than seven hours of sleep last night. And then I didn't run on the elliptical because my legs were exhausted from playing Space Pirate Trainer last night.

When I got to work I was off desk for an hour. I caught up on emails, read a few news articles, talked to my coworker, and got a brief start on making a display sign for the Biography display next month (also known as tomorrow).

I was on desk for two hours after that and a lot of that time was spent working on the display sign, while simultaneously compiling a list of books. I also answered a lot of phone calls and helped the occasional patron. While looking for books I came across a new icon in the catalog. These icons tell you the format of the item in the search results. A book with have a book, a DVD has a disc that says DVD, and so on and so forth. There are quite a few icons, which I compiled for a catalog tutorial that someday I will actually finish. But today I found one with a quill that stands for manuscript material. I wouldn't have even thought to look for that one. I sent an email to everyone in the department with a screenshot, because it was interesting and might be useful information, and I updated the slide in my tutorial to reflect the latest icon.

I had two walkthroughs before lunch and during each one talked for awhile with the person working at the childrens desk, because she's always entertaining. We covered a lot of topics in a short period of time, including an annoyance with overreactions to cultural appropriation (which we both believe has negatively impacted the power of that phrase), weird picture books, and documentaries about portrait photographers. After lunch I had another walkthrough and dropped off a three volume set filled with portraits of old Irish people, because they're really cool books.

I was able to finish my biography display sign. The last time I had that display I made a bookcase for the sign and put books on it that I was also putting on the display, which featured only female authors. This time around I'm going broader, but I still like the sign design, so I just replaced the books with new ones. I also added a shadow to the book covers, which I think makes them look more like books on a shelf. It looked really good when I printed it out.

I had about forty-five minutes after that so I checked out a laptop and went up to the meeting room because there were two people at the desk and another person in the cubicle. There are two computers in the cubicle but most of us avoid sharing that space because it's small and it's just awkward.

Then I had another walkthrough, spent the short time remaining in that hour in the cubicle, and then came back down to spend my last hour on desk. In that hour I finished making my list of books for the biography display, and I made a list of audiobooks, because I also have that display in May.

Over the course of the day I texted with the academic librarian who I presented with at the conference several months ago. On Friday, we're either making dinner at her house as friends, or it's a date. I'm not good at picking up signals, which is possibly quite evident given my history with the opposite sex. Regardless or what it is meant to be, it will give me an opportunity to get outside of my comfort zone and work on my social skills, which need a lot of work. She has led a really interesting life, so hopefully I can learn more about that.

Also over the course of the day, I think my inner ear decided to crap out on me. Starting late in the afternoon I started getting a little light-headed that was significantly twinged with dizziness, whenever I bent over or moved my head too much. It's not too noticeable if I remain still. At first it felt like the beginning of a migraine, which I get in the form of shimmering visual encroaching from my periphery. Thankfully that never manifested, but the feeling hasn't gone away. I'm thinking it might be related to an ear infection. Yesterday and the day before I would occasionally feel a sharp pain when I would chew food. I like being able to hear but my ears can be a bit of a nuisance.

When I got home I roasted vegetables and made couscous, because I didn't feel like rice, I've had the box in my cabinet for quite awhile now, and I felt inspired after the dinner I made last night. It was a different type of couscous but it was still really good. It was nice to change up the same old thing. And I've got leftovers.

After dinner I played a little bit of CoD: WW2. I was a little worried about my head but it seems to be entirely based on movement of my head, because moving my eyes around the screen didn't bother me. I wasn't about to try VR though. I'm pretty sure that would have had me on the ground. I don't need to add to the struggles of my inner ear by dropping it into a virtual world.

Now I'm going to go to bed and hope I wake up feeling rested, with a normal equilibrium when I sit up.

April 29, 2018

I got a lot of sleep last night and it was great.

Then I spent several hours trying to follow a seven minute Blender tutorial on making a 3D model of a book. I made it about five minutes into it over the course of those several hours. It was rough. It's the tutorial with the best looking book that I have seen but the tutorial kind of sucks. Or at least it sucks for someone with little to know previous experience with Blender. There's no talking and the only hint as to what is happening is a little thing in the corner of the screen that logs keystrokes and mouse clicks. But I don't think it catches all of them. And it is hard to follow things when there is a combination of things being clicked on the screen and keyboard shortcuts, because I had to keep going back over and over again to look at what the thing said in the bottom corner, and to see where the mouse was clicking. Also, there are things in the tutorial's version of Blender, that aren't by default in mine, so I was having to go out to the web and figure out how to search for whatever was there that I couldn't find. And there was a lot of just clicking around trying to find things or do things in the program that seemed to be glossed over in the tutorial. It was beyond frustrating, and kind of felt like a waste of my day. In the end I kind of got something that was passably book-shaped, and it almost looked decent only because I started with an actual book jacket. I think I might need to find a tutorial that is better at stepping through the process, with actual narration, and then maybe I would know enough to come back to this tutorial.

To get my frustration out I played a little CoD: WW2 before dinner. That helped. I am now ninth prestige, which is pretty cool. After ninth, there is tenth, and then after the tenth is master prestige, which comes with another emblem and then the numbers for levels just keep going instead of stopping at level fifty-five, which they do with a normal prestige. There is still a change I'll make it to master. The new Shipment map has really saved my interest in the game. It is this iteration of CoD's Nuketown, which is to say it is small and fast-paced. You die a lot but you're right back in the action, something that I like because I hate spending minutes running around a map trying to find someone, only to be killed, and have to start the process all over again. I was afraid the map was only going to be up for a short time but it has been available for awhile now, so hopefully it will stick around.

For dinner I made the last Hello Fresh meal, which was a Mediterranean-themed dish with roasted vegetables and couscous, topped with sliced almonds and feta cheese. It was very flavorful, which I was not expecting, but it was really good. Much like the pasta dinner also in this box, I want to get it added to my rotation. I need to do more than just roast vegetables and make rice. These two meals also involved roasting vegetables, but they included ingredients and seasonings that I haven't explored before, making them interesting to my palate.

After dinner I ironed my pants for the week, took a shower, and then played Space Pirate Trainer again. It's such a workout. Once again it feels like I did a hundred squats, mainly because I spent so much time crouched down trying to avoid getting shot. It was frequently insufficient to keep me alive. But I did make it farther in the game, and got to experience two bosses. One of which seemed huge, because I had only seen the smaller drones, but then the second one completely dwarfed the first boss. It's so much fun playing it.

To unwind a little bit I jumped into a new VR environment made to look like the Pacific Northwest. It's pretty big, set along a beach, and it was really nice. A perfect chill place. I spent a lot of time looking at the book models, because that's on my mind at the moment. Some of them were spot-on, and others were super simple, which I found interesting.

I jumped into CoD: WW2 after that, just long enough to finish one more daily order (because I was one away from a supply crate). It took me two rounds of TDM to finish it but that's not bad. And now I'm going to go to bed. I'm not sure what I'm going to do at work this week. Hopefully something productive.

April 28, 2018

Last night I got about six and a half hours of sleep. I decided to stay awake after I woke up for the first time, so I wouldn't end up sleeping the morning away. I read in bed for awhile and then played a lot of CoD: WW2. That was pretty much the rest of my morning and a decent chunk of the afternoon. I was completing challenges and orders that required a bit of work, and kind of lost track of time. One involved getting 150 hip fire kills. SMGs are pretty much designed for hip firing, especially in close quarters, but aiming down sights is so engrained in me. Right around the time I was nearing the end of that challenge it finally started to get a little easier to resist the urge aim down the sights. It was a struggle. But I managed it, and I didn't do half-bad. I had to play even more run-and-gun than usual because I wanted to get as close as possible to people before shooting. It was very similar to how I play with a shotgun, but it was a lot less frustrating than a shotgun.

Before dinner I went and laid down in bed for awhile. My house is a little warm today and my bedroom (thanks to the ceiling fan) is cool. I didn't sleep but I did lay there for awhile with my eyes close, thinking about random things. And then I played a game on my phone for a little bit before going down to take my last load of laundry out of the dryer.

After dinner, I played more video games. I played Marie's Room, which is a really short experience, rather than a game. You explore a room, clicking on various things to move the story along. It was basically an interactive short story. Not to be confused with a visual novel, which is a 2D game with walls of text. I think it's a great way to tell a story, and makes me wish I could not only write a short story, but had the ability to craft a virtual environment to walk people through the story. Maybe someday.

After a shower I switched to VR. I played Kartong, which is game set in a tiny cardboard world, like a kid built levels and you have to navigate through them, avoiding mouse traps (which look humongous) and scary toys. I jumped once. It was pretty fun. Then I played Space Pirate Trainer, which was a lot of fun. Also a really good workout. The first few rounds I played I didn't have the shield for some reason, so I ended up squatting a lot to avoid enemy bullets, and I can still feel the burn. It was a little easier when I got the shield, but there is still a lot of moving around, and it's great.

And I'll end with a random thought from this morning. If Tom Hanks was an athlete, but not the only Hanks on the team, his jersey would say T.HANKS. I went almost thirty-three years without realizing this.

April 27, 2018

Still taking a break from the elliptical. I want to wait until there isn't even a hint of pain in my knee.

When I got to work I learned that the opening librarian had gone home sick, which meant I was along for the first two hours, but I was okay with that. I answered quite a few phone calls and helped a few patrons, but for the most part is was pretty quiet. It gave me time to catch up on the news and proofread one of our assistants' newspaper articles. I can't go over things with a fine-tooth comb, like the other librarians with masters degrees in English, or the head of technical services who used to be an English teacher, but I can spot misspelled words and things that don't sound right. The assistant is a good writer, though, so I didn't really have much input. I changed her formatting a little to fit with the newspaper formatting, but other than that I didn't have much to say. I did suggest she run it by the other librarians, though, just to be safe.

My boss was back from her vacation today and she had taken a look at the new format for the new monthly reports, and she liked it, so I ended up spending a lot of the day working on a mini-tutorial/explanation to send to the rest of the people in the department. I included a lot of screenshots to make it easier to follow and it ended up being a little more involved than I was expecting. But I eventually got it done and sent out, so now we'll see how it goes over with everyone. The one other librarian who was there today spent some time playing around with it, changing the colors, and tweaking things, but for the most part she seemed pretty comfortable with it. I'm anticipating questions but hopefully my tutorial gets people going on the right track.

I had three walkthroughs leading up to lunch, and then after lunch I was back on desk for an hour. This is when I got the tutorial finished and sent to everyone. I also helped a patron print a few paystubs. This is the same patron I helped the other day print paystubs. I had completely forgotten where to go in her employee portal to get to the paystubs (and she had as well) so it took a bit of clicking around, but we got there in the end.

I spent the last part of my day creating thermometer icons in Publisher. Due to our lack of software on our computers at work, I end up using Publisher to do a lot of things it really wasn't designed for. The idea of the thermometers is to show the level of importance of various ongoing projects in the monthly report spreadsheet. At the moment I'm just using colored dots, but I thought a thermometer might be more interesting. Then the other librarian mentioned a stack of books, so with the last few minutes I created a 3D book in Publisher. It turned out surprisingly well.

For dinner I made scrambled eggs with a little bit of Parmesan cheese, and more Bisquick biscuits. The eggs were tasty and the biscuits were even better than last weekend. While I ate dinner I watched videos, and then I spent the rest of the night playing CoD: WW2. I started playing with the new sniper rifle, and it can be a little frustrating because it's slow and if you aim too low you just get hit markers, but it sounds really cool. I was able to completely level it and prestige it once tonight, so I think I'm going to keep using it so I can unlock the diamond camo like I have on the rest of the sniper rifles.

April 26, 2018

This morning I didn't run on the elliptical, once again, because of my knee. Instead, I paid a lot of bills. Nothing like spending over a thousand dollars before you're even fully awake.

I did all the opening things and then I was on desk for two hours. I helped patrons but spent most of my time working on the screenshots and email for my boss about the website. After wrapping up the stuff related to the usability videos I also threw in the contrast issues with the main menu. It's annoyed me from the beginning, before the new site even went live, but that feedback didn't lead anywhere. So getting that changed is going to be my new thing. I also got one of the other librarians on my side, she's going to start adding it in as a recommendation on her monthly reports, and the one-on-one tech trainer, who works with a lot of older folks who struggle with contrast and small text issues, is on board as well. The last thing I harped on and on about in my monthly report recommendation section was self-checkout upstairs, which should be happening when the remodeling eventually happens, so I need another cause. It should be a fairly simple fix, so hopefully I won't have to bug people for too long.

With the rest of my morning I had a walkthrough, caught up on the news, and got a brief start on redesigning the new monthly report form. Previously we used a Word document, but our boss would have to open that and a couple other documents from various places whenever she wanted to compile information for our reviews. Now she has moved it all to a spreadsheet file on our internal online portal, or whatever we want to call it. There is a page for our goals, one for the things we're working on, and then one for each monthly report.

The idea is good but the formatting wasn't great, and my boss was aware of that, and kept mentioning, half-jokingly, that I could make it look better. And that is pretty much all I did with my afternoon. I started by creating a mock-up in Excel and then recreated it in what is basically an open source version of Excel that we use in the portal. After the fact I figured out that I probably could have just imported the Excel file, but I didn't really lose much time recreating it.

My main focus was on the monthly report for itself, and I'm happy with how that turned out. I think it looks much cleaner and simpler. After getting that nailed down I copied it a bunch, creating pages for the rest of the months, including the first three (so I could go back and fill those in with the old reports, just to have a full year on the new system). Then I moved onto the other two page, which I also pared down and cleaned up. I'm biased, but I really like how everything turned out. Unlike the previous formatting, I don't feel the subtle hint of anxiety tugging at my periphery when I look at them. When I was satisfied with everything I spent the last bit of my day creating a template for the design that I can share with my coworkers, in case they want to use it.

When I got home I ate dinner and then eventually headed to my Mom's house. She thought we agreed on meeting a little before seven o'clock and I thought we agreed to a little after seven o'clock. In my defense, I nailed a little after seven o'clock. And we ended up having plenty of time to spare. We went to see an author and it was pretty great. I think I've only read one of his books, with other bits here and there, and I always enjoy catching him on NPR, so it was cool to see him live. He did not disappoint. It also makes me wish I could commit more to writing. Or at least writing interesting things. This journal is an obvious piece of evidence that I do write quite a bit, but it's not very compelling. I want to write something fun and interesting. Someday.

After the show, I looked at my Mom's TV when we got back to the house. It had apparently wouldn't turn on earlier in the day. I don't know that I did anything special but I was able to get it to come back on, so hopefully the not turning on thing was just a fluke.

Now I'm going to bed because that's what I like to do at the end of each day.

April 25, 2018

Yesterday's entry was exactly 1000 words. That's the first time I ever remember that happening.

Last night I got nine hours of sleep. I wasn't planning on it but I allowed for it, so it worked out. Before going to work I tried reinstalling Blender, to see if I could get the book add-on working. But I couldn't get that far because my computer kept saying I didn't have the right privileges to install it. That was obviously incorrect but I wasn't going to waste anymore time with it. On the plus side, I was able to reinstall it when I got home tonight. On the downside, the add-on still doesn't work.

When I got to work I was off desk for an hour. Yesterday one of the other librarians brought in one of her husband's bottles of ink for me to try. Today I brought in my glass dip pen so I could make a sample swatch of it. I don't think it's something I would buy but it was a good color and I think it would look cool with a broad nib. I spent the rest of the hour catching up on emails.

I was on desk for an hour after that and other than helping the occasional patron spent the rest of the time watching usability videos. And then I was off desk again. I refilled my backup cart for the bestsellers display and then I went upstairs to the meeting room on the third floor because both computers at the desk were taken and there was someone in the cubicle. I spent that time looking at library magazines, with a break to go on a walkthrough, and then went back to look at magazines until our all-staff meeting.

The meeting only lasted about thirty minutes, and I was going to go on an early walkthrough because I hadn't been given a dinner break and I was going to go at five o'clock. Then I got roped into helping a patron trying to move all of the pictures on her phone onto a flash drive. She had about four thousand pictures and not a lot of experience with computers, so it was quite the process. I ended up getting out by five o'clock but she was still working on it when I got back and she came over to the desk multiple times for more help. She was an over-sharer, and a bit of a Debbie Downer, but she was also oddly optimistic and a pretty good sport about the whole tedious process, which made for an interesting combination.

I had a couple walkthroughs when I got back from dinner, and after catching up on the local paper, I spent the rest of the night finishing the usability videos and then editing screenshots to show possible improvements to our website. These edits were based on things I witness patrons doing, or trying to do, in the usability videos, and just my own two cents about the website. I'm putting them into an email to my boss, along with explanations for them, because she is on the web evaluation team, and she can take them to their next meeting. I am not on the team, even though I watch all the videos for them and create all of the tech class pages. Who knows.

Near the end of the night the librarian I presented at the conference with stopped by the desk, and we talked until almost close. She has become acquainted with one of our regulars, the one who lives across the street and kind of treats the library as an extension of her house, so we talked about her for awhile, because she's actually a really interesting person. She has traveled all over the world, speaks multiple languages, and is apparently really good at the piano. She has become a bit of a character but it would have been really interesting to meet her thirty or forty years ago. The librarian is also a really interesting person, and sometime I want to find out more about her life. I know at one point she was an EMT, and she has worked in a bike shop, and tonight I learned she once drove a cab in Tanzania, not for a job, but to prove that she actually knew how to drive. I feel like everyone has led a much more interesting life than mine.

When I got home I watched videos and wrote this. And now I have to go to bed because I have to open in the morning. Can't wait.

April 24, 2018

Last night I got less than six hours of sleep, so that was less than ideal. Tonight I'll be able to get plenty of sleep, and I'm looking forward to that.

I opened at the library, and once again the usual things were done. I found out the teen librarian had her baby late last night. It happened a couple weeks earlier than expected but apparently they're both doing well, which was good to hear.

I was off desk for the first two hours so I went up to the cubicle. I listened to NPR and got work done. I edited the webpage for today's tech class. I swear the editing options change every time I log in and I lose so much time trying to figuring out how to do the same thing I did a couple weeks before. It's quite annoying. I also read a few articles, looked through a couple digital magazines that we offer (which I was reminded of because the tech class today covered them), made a trip downstairs to help one of the other librarians with the automated bookmarks I made, and made a list of books about mental health and teenagers for my sister's friend. I also had an uneventful walkthrough in there before going back to the cubicle.

I got to have lunch with my grandma, aunt, sister, and dad at Olive Garden. We were a little slow going so I pretty much had to eat and run (and thankfully I had an extra fifteen minutes, to make up for staying a little late the last weekend I worked), but it was good to see everyone and catch up a little bit.

I was off desk when I got back to work so I went back to the cubicle. I looked up some Chromebook tutorials and sent them to my grandma because she recently got one. I also sent a couple tutorials for Excel and typing to the one-on-one tech trainer because a patron called asking about our next tech drop-in and was interested in those things. I just wanted to give the tech trainer a heads up because she's scheduled to run the drop-in.

I had a walkthrough and stopped by the childrens desk to chat. I pointed out an empty shelf and, without missing a beat, one of the people at the desk replied “It's empty, just like your soul.” It was pretty great. A genius response.

I went back up to the cubicle briefly, to finish out the hour, and then I was on desk for two hours. Almost immediately I had to call the police because there was a patron asleep in one of our meeting rooms and she wouldn't wake up, despite two librarians and the assistant director basically shouting at her, trying to get her to wake up. All the while the guy she was with was laughing and muttering rude things under his breath. While I was on the phone with the dispatcher she ended up waking up and they both left, and both were obviously under the influence of some type of drug. They had been at the library pretty much all day so I have a suspicion whatever they were on was taken at the library.

The rest the two hours were much less eventful. I watched a bunch of usability videos, because the site was working today. I updated attendance and feedback information from the tech class. And I looked up and printed out maps of a place in France for a patron whose uncle died there during WWII. This is a regular patron, but one of the only times I've seen him upstairs, and I'm glad he was in a good mood, because he has a history of getting angry and ranting about God.

After work I picked up Chipotle and headed to my Mom's house for dinner. We ate and watched videos, and then I fixed my Mom's printer and doorbell. I'm not sure exactly what was going on with the printer, other than it disappearing as an option for my Mom to pick on her Chromebook, but after updating the firmware everything seemed to be alright. I'm not sure about the doorbell either. It was only ringing outside, not inside, and the battery was low. It's wired into the house so the battery shouldn't be draining, but I guess it is only charged when the doorbell is used regularly (because that is when the juice flows), and apparently the doorbell doesn't ring often enough. I kind of hope the battery is the issue, but it also may have been a poor wi-fi connection. I don't really believe that, however, because nothing has changed about that and it has been working fine until recently. To fix them problem I plugged in a little device that came with the doorbell that acts as a relay for the wi-fi signal, and plays the doorbell sound. That ended up working out, but I also took the opportunity to pull out the battery and hook that up to a charger. It would be nice if they included two batteries, because the doorbell doesn't work without the battery, but they don't, so my Mom is without a doorbell until it is done charging.

I got home around eight o'clock and played CoD: WW2 for awhile. I got into a game of War with a team that made it feel like it was day one with the game again. We got completely destroyed by the other team and my teammates pretty much just stood around and let it happen. It was rough. I also had one or two bad games on Shipment but that was mostly a connection issue, with the other team seemingly being able to shoot me around corners, while I could empty a clip into them and still get turned on. But for the most part the games were fun.

Now I'm on the cusp of bedtime and I'm looking forward to it.

April 23, 2018

Today just kind of happened. It was particularly exciting, and I'm in one of those places between things where it feels like I don't have enough to do. I need to remember these times when I am feeling overwhelmed.

I was off desk for the first two hours of work. I updated a patron's account so she could get on the computers, and then her kid cried quite a bit because the mom wouldn't let her run around. I helped another lady, whose first language was not English, print off paystubs, and that was a bit of a challenge, but her English was way better than my Spanish, so kudos to her. She also had a little kid that was running around and occasionally crying. So it was a loud morning upstairs. I also made signs to put up near our old desk to let patrons know we had moved. The librarian who worked this weekend sent out an email to the department asking if we should do that, and I just did it because I didn't feel like it was something that needed a group consensus, it was something that should just be done. And to round out the two hours I put out a new jigsaw puzzle and read a few news articles.

I was on desk for the next two hours. I caught up on reference emails and then went through and added descriptions for all of the tech classes and drop-ins next semester. That was the last thing I needed to do and now I don't have to worry about it any longer. And after that I caught up on the local paper.

I had a walkthrough after lunch and that involved talking to an annoyed patron in the tech center who was being annoying. He kept talking into his phone and the phone kept chiming. This would have been acceptable behavior at the second floor computers (still annoying), but the tech center is a quiet area. He apparently has a history of being confrontational and rude, and he lived up to that. Even though I was told this, I wasn't quite prepared for it, so the interaction didn't go very well. He started pointing out everyone that was wearing headphones, which doesn't mean he's allowed to talk but he thought that was a justification. He also complained about the knitters in the classroom behind him because he could hear them talking. I reiterated that he was in a quiet area and that if he wanted to make noise he could go upstairs. I also told him I would talk to the knitters. And then I went in and told the knitters that I was pretending to tell them to be quiet but that they were actually fine and could carry on with there conversation. Later on in the day the annoyed patron came up to borrow a law dictionary and he acted completely normal, like nothing had happened earlier. There are some mental health issues there, and he's apparently working on a child custody thing, which is a little disturbing and I think adds to his anger.

Following the angry patron I helped another patron in the tech center with a question about email pictures, and then another patron out at a catalog computer who was trying to find books for his wife. And I refilled the DVD display.

Our assistant was sick, so the other morning librarian did a split shift, which mean I covered another two hours on the desk. It was really slow. I wanted to knock out the usability videos for the month but the sight was being blocked by the firewall, which happens from time-to-time. If it is still blocked tomorrow I'll put in a ticket. Instead, I helped a few patrons, finished looking through the local Sunday paper, looked up information for an upcoming tech class, looked up information about augmented reality apps, and looked up information on how to model books in Blender. There is apparently an add-on that makes it easy to create a row of books for a shelf. I need to start playing around with that because I want to make 3D and VR environments involving books. I've had Blender on my computer for years probably at this point, but I've never gotten around to actually doing anything with it. Now may be the time.

I talked with one of the other librarians about her experience with racism in small Kansas towns back in the early 1960s. She had one friend that couldn't eat at certain restaurants, could only use the drive-thru at others, and couldn't sit at the counter at the drugstore. She had another friend who was charged double for food at a restaurant on a class trip just because he was black. When the professors found out they went back in and tore the people at the restaurant a new one and said they wouldn't be coming back, which seemed like it was kind of a big deal because it was a small down and they stopped every time they passed through with their classes. The restaurant charged double because they were assholes, and in return lost out on quite a bit of business in the long run. Sometimes it takes awhile for your action to come back and bite you, other times it's almost immediate.

I spent the rest of my last hour upstairs in the cubicle. I read some news articles and then looked into our latest personalized reading list request. They only want audiobooks and everything I looked up wasn't in our collection. So I'm hoping someone else takes it. And if not, I'll just include a lot of interlibrary loan books.

When I got home I ate dinner and then watched videos for awhile before playing CoD: WW2. I had one game where I needed to get three throwing knife kills and just managed it at the end of the first round. I was in last place, with I think two or three deaths for each kill I got, but I managed to get featured in the kill cam when I got a throwing knife kill immediately followed by three regular knife kills. It was pretty great, and just the sort of thing that is annoying as hell to the other person, because it is really hard to kill someone charging you with a knife. And despite my horrible first half K/D and being in second to last place, I switched to a gun for the second half of the game, nearly went positive with my K/D, and got first place. Quite the comeback.

Now I'm going to bed because I open in the morning and I'm going to end up getting around six hours of sleep. That's going to suck.

April 22, 2018

Today was pretty nice. This morning I slept in and then read in bed until I finished a book. After getting up I messed around with Elite Dangerous and got the browser window in game overlay working pretty well. It took a lot of fiddling but I eventually attached it to one of the controllers so I had more control over it's location in my ship. I could just put the controller on the desk and in the game it looked like it was in my lap, which is what I wanted. This way it didn't interfere with my view. It was pretty seamless to look down, see where I needed to go next, and then head that way. Typing is still a little tricky, having to find my keyboard each time, but other than that, it was pretty much exactly what I wanted.

After lunch I watched videos for awhile and then I played Shooty Fruity in VR. In the game you work at a grocery store and as you scan stuff at the register you also have to shoot giant fruit that is trying to attack you. It's a lot of fun.

For dinner I made another Hello Fresh meal. It was pasta with roasted vegetables and garbanzo beans, as well as Parmesan and goat cheese. There was a lot of flavor happening and it was really good. I was really surprised by how little pasta was used but when all the vegetables were thrown in it made a lot of food. I also made Bisquick biscuits, which might be the quickest/easiest thing I've ever made, and they were delicious.

After dinner I washed dishes, took a shower, and ironed my pants for the week. Then I played Duck Season, a VR game that is kind of a creepy take on Duck Hunt for the NES. I legitimately jumped at one point. It's interesting because there is the duck shooting game but there is also the stuff happening outside of the game. I like it. I made it through one ending but I've heard there are several. So I'm going to need to keep playing.

I played a little bit of Interkosmos, a VR game that puts you in a Cold War era Soviet space capsule that needs to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere. It's a bit claustrophobic and there are a lot of buttons and switches and knobs. I'm interested to see how it all plays out because I don't think I made it very far.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it's late and I'm tired. Almost always the best reason to go to bed.

April 21, 2018

This morning I woke up, read in bed for about an hour, and then made Bisquick pancakes. I still have an issue with the temperature when making pancakes, so they weren't pretty, but they tasted delicious. Bisquick knows what they're doing. Tomorrow I might make biscuits.

I watched videos while eating my pancakes and then played CoD: WW2 for awhile. And after lunch I jumped into Elite Dangerous for the first time in awhile. I started with one of the tutorials just so I could fly around and relearn the controls. I didn't want to go right to my ship and hit the wrong button and accidentally fly into a sun or something. It didn't take too long for a little muscle memory to kick in and I was able to go back to my ship and continue exploring and scanning planets. I was tempted to switch to VR, because the game is a lot more fun in VR, but I'm following a route and, as far as I know, there still isn't a very good way of accessing the route list in the game. When I did it before I would have to constantly peek out from under the headset to look at my second monitor so I knew where to go next. It's also hard to type in the next location using the keyboard while wearing the headset. There is a program I played around with that let you have an overlay but my first impression wasn't great. I was trying to use it for video, but maybe I'll have better luck with a browser window with just text.

I played CoD: WW2 for a little bit before dinner, and then I made dinner. My first Hello Fresh meal was vegetable quesadillas and they turned out pretty well. My house still smells really good. The only thing I didn't really like was the salad because the main ingredient was arugula. Turns out arugula is gross. It looks like a weed and can only imagine it tastes like one as well. It's really bitter and doesn't seem like something people should be eating. I added in some of the roasted vegetables, mozzarella, and the pico de gallo I made but that only made it barely edible. Speaking of, I ate pico de gallo. Several years ago my friend's mom made some and it was actually really good, despite the fact that I don't like fresh tomatoes. I hadn't had it again until tonight. And it actually wasn't bad. I cut the tomato like a bell pepper, cutting out everything on the inside and only leaving the outside. After mixing all the ingredients together I wasn't getting the fresh tomato taste that I don't like. It was also a smaller tomato, and I've heard the different sizes have different tastes, so maybe that was part of it. But who knows. I might have to experiment more in the future.

After dinner I took a shower and then played a little more CoD: WW2. I recently passed the 300 hour mark and I'm close to passing my time in Terraria. But I've spent a lot of time AFK in Terraria, farming special event drops, so in actual playtime I've probably easily passed Terraria. There isn't an actual count for playtime in Minecraft, which is unfortunate but also probably a good thing, but it is easily in first place. I think saying I've put hundreds of hours into Minecraft would be an understatement.

While I ate dinner I started watching Toonstone, an animated movie by the Neebs Gaming guys, and after playing CoD: WW2 I finished watching it. It is really good, and I'm not surprised by that because I like all the other stuff they do. I'm going to have to watch it again at some point. But not tonight because it is late and I should have gone to bed a long time ago.

April 20, 2018

I got a bunch of sleep last night and then I went to work at eleven o'clock. That means I ate lunch around ten o'clock. That's the main downside of closing on Friday. It's like being back in high school.

I was on desk for the first two hours and my main accomplishment was finishing the nonfiction handout by picking a picture. In the last few minutes I had to work on it last night I found a few options and threw them into the Publisher document. Today I sorted through those, cropped and resized them, and eventually settled on an image that I think looks pretty good. I also caught up on the past week of the local newspaper. I need to get better at checking that out on a more regular basis.

I was off desk for the next three hours and most of that time was spent at the second computer updating statistics stuff. I updated my spreadsheets for the web traffic on a few of our pages, and I watched 100 usability videos for March. I'm obviously a little behind on those, but I got the recording for this month started, so I might be able to watch those sometime next week. After watching several of the recordings today I took a break to create a counter in Excel. It has a big cell to display the number, a big green button to add one to that number, a big red button to subtract one from that number, and a small black button to reset the total. I made it because a lot of the videos now start with someone searching the catalog and then it's just our stagnant homepage for however long the video runs, sometimes over forty-five minutes. With our updated website, when someone does a catalog search, the result opens in a new tab, and the video recording doesn't go to that tab, but it also doesn't stop the recording, it just sits on the page that no one is on anymore. It's not very helpful. And I didn't want to make tallies on a piece of paper to keep track of how many videos were pointless, so I made the counter, and it worked really well. I really just need the green button, but I figured I would make it more robust in case I need it for something in the future.

Near the end of those three hours I went upstairs to show one of the other librarians how to use the folding machine, because she printed out a few hundred of the new handouts we've all been working on. Folding those by hand would have been ridiculous. It took a bit of fiddling to get the settings on the machine right, but I got it dialed in and we knocked out the folding in minutes. It would be really cool to have a paper folding machine like that but I have absolutely no need for it in my daily life outside of work.

When I got back from dinner the first thing I did was pull books for the staff picks display. I even picked a couple books that I have actually read, which is rare. The librarian in charge of that display had already left but she gave me the bookmarks to put in them so I added them to the record set and put them down with the rest of the backup books. Later on another staff member dropped off books, and I didn't want them to sit at our desk all weekend, because if someone wanted one of them they wouldn't have been able to find it. So I added them to the record set, printed out more bookmarks (because she was one short in her backup supply), and put them downstairs with the rest of the books.

After I pulled the books I took down my tax display. We're past the submission date so I felt it was safe to do that. I put the display boards back in the basement and took the posters upstairs to put in my drawer for next year. I left the books and forms down in the mail room just in case anyone comes looking for them, but soon we'll recycle them.

The rest of the night was pretty much spent catching up on library articles from Library Link of the Day, which sends a daily article, and I was about three weeks behind. It was a pretty quiet night. I handled some purchase requests, and tracked down an ebook version of a bestseller from 1913 for a patron, but that was about it.

On the way home I made two stops. The first was the grocery store to get milk and eggs because I bought Bisquick (which I haven't had in many years but have fond memories of) and I needed milk and eggs. Then I stopped at my sister's because she had a plant to give me. I'm really hoping I can keep it alive.

When I got home I pretty much spent the rest of the night watching videos and clicking around the internet. And now I'm listening to music and writing this. I'm listening to Avicii because he died today. He was only twenty-eight years old, which makes the news that much more sad. In a relatively short career he managed to have a huge impact on the music world, his name almost becoming synonymous with EDM. He's got a lot of songs you know and bunch more you didn't realize were his but can still hum along to. It's crazy.

This weekend I want to make pancakes or biscuits with Bisquick, make one of my Hello Fresh meals, read a book, and play Elite Dangerous, because watching Lost In Space really made me want to jump back into a spaceship. Doing it in VR would be ideal but it has been so long I think I'll need to play it normally so I can see my cheat sheet for my joystick. But maybe I can graduate back to VR.

April 19, 2018

Last night I got nine hours of sleep and it was fantastic. I can't remember the last time I slept so well.

When I got to work I had two walkthroughs, after which I took all of the books off of my parent cart display and replaced them with twenty new ones. And not long after that I had another walkthrough.

I spent some time at the desk after that and it is hot sitting at the second computer. There is a fan almost directly above the other computer but the air doesn't make it over to the second computer. It's just stagnant heat. Earlier in the week one of the other librarians turned the ceiling fan down because it was blowing her papers around and it was drying out one of the other librarian's eyes. But it was just too hot today so I turned it back up. It didn't really help out but it made a difference later in the day when I was on desk.

Not long after playing with the fan, I got to help another librarian find call numbers for books for my favorite substitute for her church's library. A lot of nonfiction books will have a recommended Dewey number at the front of the book. A lot of the books the substitute had did not include that recommendation, so I found most of them using the Library of Congress catalog. It worked out. And then I went up to the cubicle for a little while before it was time for dinner.

When I got back from dinner I had an hour off desk but I spent that time at the second computer. I talked to one of my coworkers and eventually played with the water fountains. At some point earlier in the day the water was turned off on that side of the building, and I guess the water fountains don't get used that often. Our assistant came back to the desk and said the water fountain water was fizzy and white looking. My first thought was that there was just air in the pipes. I went over to look at the water fountains with her and as she was showing me what the water looked like, both fountains started sputtering and basically turned into water guns and started hitting high up on the wall behind the fountains. I tried holding a paper towel near the fountain to block the water so I could hold down the button and get all of the air out, but there was just too much pressure. I ended up getting a small cup and was able to use that to block the water and it worked out pretty well. I only had a few minutes before I was on the desk but I was able to run each fountain long enough for them to stop shooting against the wall and the water looked clear again. I would have liked to run them a little longer but I think I at least got most of the air out of the pipes. But, I'm not a plumber, so there way have been a completely different issue going on. Who knows.

I spent the rest of the night on desk because the assistant was leading a craft night. Other than helping the occasional patron, I spent the entire night working on the nonfiction handout. It was a lot of work but I think I finished it, minus the picture on the front. I picked one previously but I'm not satisfied with it. It's really hard to capture “nonfiction” in a picture. I think I'm just going to go with a landscape, but that just seems very generic. I'm going to play with it more tomorrow.

When I got home I had a HelloFresh box on my porch. I'm looking forward to making one of the meals this weekend. I decided to get another box because they sent a 50% discount. I have gotten several for twenty dollars off but $40 still feels like a lot, even though I would technically be getting six meals for that price. That's not bad for a meal at a restaurant but it seems steep for something I'm making at home. But a five dollar meal sounds alright. I would want to do that every week, but every now and then is nice because it gets me to try things I never would.

After unboxing that and getting everything put in my fridge, I ate a snack, and spent the rest of the night watching videos and writing this. And now I'm going to go to bed. I close again tomorrow, so I don't go in until eleven o'clock, which means I will get to sleep in again. Always look forward to that.

April 18, 2018

This morning I opted to sleep an extra half an hour (bringing me up to six and a half) instead of running on the elliptical. My knees are still feeling a little iffy and I don't want to push it.

When I got to work I did the usual opening stuff. And then I was off desk for two hours. I ended up getting completely sidetracked and didn't get to work on the non-fiction handout, which was the only thing I planned on doing this morning. Instead, I made more end-cap signs for the shelves. There has been a pause in shifting so I decided to make new signs for the shelves that weren't quite filled, instead of waiting for them to be filled, because patrons keep getting confused.

I also made a new version of the button template. This one is just a single button and then it can be printed multiple times on a single page. Rather than trying to recreate the same button over and over, you just have to make it once. Simple.

Before lunch I had a walkthrough. Most of it was spent pulling several books off of my bestseller display and adding about twenty-five new ones. I want to do the same with the parent cart but we'll see when I can get to that. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

After lunch we went and delivered homebound books. Our first stop was actually to pick up a newspaper that a few vocal patrons have been bugging us about for a little while now. There was a probably with our subscription so we haven't gotten it in a month or two. We have been trying to sort it out with our rep but the patrons continually bug the people in circulation about it. Last week the librarian in charge of periodicals discovered that we can actually buy the newspaper for a dollar from a place a few blocks away. These patrons have been giving us grief for weeks, all the while probably driving past the very place where they could buy their very own copy of the paper. People are interesting.

I finally got to deliver books to my patron who gets sixteen large print non-fiction books each month. She has spent the last month in a rehab facility and just got home today. I met her son and his wife and daughter, who were all very nice, and she looked like she was doing pretty well. One of my other patrons hurt her back and hip recently, so I'm hoping she'll recover quickly because she looked like she was in a decent amount of pain. The rest of the deliveries were uneventful, and then we stopped at the grocery store to pick up cookies and candy for library things coming up.

When we got back to the library we got our books processed and then I returned the van keys and the large print books that we swapped out at one of the nursing homes, to the basement before heading up to the cubicle for about twenty minutes.

And then I was on desk for the last hour of work. I helped a patron on the computer, signed the teen librarian up for a state library card so she could get access to their audiobooks, and got a start on updating my homebound spreadsheets with bookmark comments.

I picked up Chipotle and made a brief stop at my house before heading to my Mom's house for dinner. We watched a lot of videos and talked for quite awhile about all the random things. On the way home I stopped at the grocery store. I only needed a few things so it was a pretty quick trip. And there weren't too many people, which is always appreciated.

When I got home I put my groceries away and then spent the rest of the night watching YouTube videos and clicking around the internet. I managed to catch up with videos from yesterday but didn't touch the ones from today. I need to take a step back from YouTube videos. I keep saying that but haven't done anything about it yet. It's such a waste of time. I need a break.

Tomorrow I close, which is good because it is after midnight and I'm not in bed yet. But I'm going to fix that shortly.

April 17, 2018

This morning I only ran on the elliptical for ten minutes. There have been so many stairs in my life recently with the furnace issues and my knees are a bit angry. On the plus side, I got to start watching the final episode of season one of Lost In Space.

When I got to work I was on desk for two hours. I continued working on homebound bookmarks, caught up on email from yesterday, and helped a patron with the microfilm machine. It was a pretty quiet start to the day.

Then I went up to the cubicle for two hours because there wasn't room at the desk. I caught up on the news and then continued working on the homebound bookmarks. It's such a tedious project.

After lunch I showed my boss and one of the other librarians how to use the button template I made and then how to use the button machine. We're going to use it for badges that will be earned by going through various training courses about library things, like using technology or navigating our resources. We used one of the meeting rooms and I checked out a laptop for the first time. I then returned it, which turned out to be premature because I had to check it out again about an hour later. And then I ended up not needing it but I hung onto it anyway because I knew if I returned it I would have ended up needing it again. Anyway.

I had my individual monthly meeting with my boss after the button meeting. That managed to fill the whole hour, which I think has only happened once before. Typically they last maybe half an hour, but even that is a stretch. There was some off-topic filler in today's meeting but for the most part it was all work-related, and I think it was pretty productive. I'm at a good place right now at work, not overly stressed, so I can take the time to think more long term and try to put things in perspective. Next semester has the potential to be stressful but I won't have to worry about adulting classes or tech workshops, so that will lighten the load a bit.

I had two walkthroughs after the meeting and spent the rest of the time up in the cubicle. Originally I thought one of the other librarians was in the cubicle (which is why I grabbed the laptop, thinking I would end up in the meeting room), but she ended up being in the meeting room, so I went with the cubicle. I was able to listen to music (rocking out to some 311) and finish updating all of the bookmarks. I also sent any email out to everyone letting them know about the bookmarks and how they work. It ended up being a long email, and probably more confusing than helpful, but I let them know they could ask me questions and it would probably be easier to explain in person.

When I got home the new furnace ignitor had arrived so I went down and installed it. I was hoping that would do the trick, but I wasn't surprised when it didn't because the error code flashed by the LED on the control board isn't related to the ignitor. According to the error code it is probably an issue with the pressure switch hose (but I think I checked that), a blocked flue, or a few other things. Either way, I'm tapped out, so I'll be making a service call in the near future.

While I ate dinner I finished watching the last episode of Lost In Space. I like the show. And now I have to wait however long for the next season to come out, which is annoying because it ends with a cliffhanger. I hate cliffhangers.

After that I started watching Greg Davies' comedy special before going to play some CoD: WW2. It feels like it's been awhile since I really played it, and I got sucked in tonight. It was a lot of fun. There is a new event happening and they have also updating some things. One is that special weapon attributes that were tied to classes, like SMG suppressors in the Airborne division or the bayonet on rifles in the Infantry division, are now an attachment that needs to be unlocked. That's kind of annoying Instead of starting with that, you have to completely level up each weapon. Oh well.

While writing this I finished the Greg Davies special and now I'm listening to music because moving pictures are too much of a distraction. But now I'm going to bed because I'm tired and it is almost midnight and I have to wake up at six o'clock. Tomorrow will be a long day. But it's one step closer to the weekend.

April 16, 2018

This morning I woke up and read in bed for awhile. Always a good way to start the day.

I watched videos and clicked around the internet but spent most of the day working on the app development class. That ended in frustration. I made it through the Java part and then installed the stuff I needed for the Android part. But then I had to switch to my other computer and install it on that because my old desktop couldn't run the virtual phone. And almost immediately I ran into one part of the code that wouldn't work. And I couldn't fix it. The videos I'm watching are a few years old so the software I'm using is slightly different, and it possibly builds and compiles things differently. It also doesn't help that the Java part was like riding a carousel and the Android part jumped right to wild stallion levels. I was lost right off the bat. I might try to figure it out. Or I might try a different course. I have a few others that involve Java and Android, and I could definitely use some more training with Java.

I continued watching Lost In Space on Netflix. I like it but Parker Posey's character is infuriating. She reminds me of James Callis as the doctor/president on Battlestar Galactica. That was also an infuriating character. They just constantly get away with things and you just want something horrible to finally catch up with them.

I also did laundry today and ironed my pants for the week. But that was pretty much it. Tomorrow it's back to work. I'm not really looking forward to going back to work. It's nothing against work, it's mostly that one day off from work isn't enough. It goes by too quickly. Also, the new desk setup with all of us there is going to be annoying. I'll survive though. And tomorrow's already Tuesday. One day closer to the weekend.

April 15, 2018

I didn't run on the elliptical this morning because I went up and down the stairs so many times last night while messing with the furnace that my knees were a bit achy.

I went down to the basement again this morning to take the ignitor out of the furnace. This was a pain because the gas pipe runs right over the top of the screw so I could use screwdriver or socket wrench. I ended up using a crescent wrench, turning it less than a quarter turn each time because that's all the room I had to work with. But I got it out. The point of this was so that I could test it. My multimeter was at my Mom's house, and I thought I would swing by there before work to grab it but I wasn't moving fast enough for that to happen. I also thought I would go to Home Depot after work to get a new ignitor but all the ones I saw on their website that looked like they would work, weren't available in the store. Instead I tracked one down on Amazon that has the same model number, which means I don't have to worry about it working.

Work went by pretty quickly today. I probably spent too much time creating a diagram in Publisher for a possible desk layout using the two tables we use for the print station, instead of the one big table and two smaller ones we are currently using for our temporary desk. Despite putting too much time into it, I think it looks pretty cool.

One of our semi-regulars, a younger guy who has had some incident reports regarding the phone, was briefly back in the library today. Now that we are so close to the computers it is a lot more apparent when people are being annoying, which makes it harder to ignore. This patron was listening to music a little too loudly so I went over and asked him to turn it down a little. A minute or two later he shouted out something I can't remember but it involved the word 'fuck', which is not appropriate, even if he wasn't saying it to anyone in particular. I went back over to talk to him and pretty much kicked himself out of the library for the day. He said something about being mad at a girl, being heated up, and doing a male dominance thing. And then continued mumbling as he left. Made my job easier.

I had several other positive patron interactions throughout the day. We are now in a much more central and visible location which I think is increasing the chances of patrons coming up and asking us questions. So far this is the main positive of our new spot. Today I helped people with printing, finding books, and using the microfilm machine.

The second half of my day was spent adding the automated bookmark sheets into the workbooks for the patrons of the librarian I deliver homebound books with. It's tedious for multiple reasons, the first being that Excel doesn't like copying one-for-one when it comes to copying a sheet from one workbook into another. Each time I had to go through and adjust the column width for all of the columns, which were all slightly off. The other tedious part is changing all of the formulas on each bookmark so they reference the new workbook they're in, not the one I copied the template from. Despite all that, I nearly finished. I just need to finish changing the formulas on one more patron. It was a very productive weekend.

On my way home I stopped at my Mom's house to get my multimeter. I tested the ignitor and it seems to be working fine. Which is frustrating because that would have been an easy fix. I'm still going to try the new ignitor when it gets here on Tuesday. If nothing else, now I'll have a backup ignitor. When I got home I also tested the voltage going to the ignitor and it seemed low but the furnace was on for maybe a second or two before shutting off without the ignitor in it, so I think maybe there just wasn't enough time for it to get up to full power. I'm just glad this is happening on the tail-end of Winter weather.

I finally got around to roasting vegetables for dinner, and then watched videos while I ate. After dinner I played a little bit of CoD: WW2. I had several really good games on Shipment because there is currently a challenge with a sniper camo reward and so many people were using snipers to complete the challenge. I don't want the camo, so I was using my favorite rifle, and I was destroying. It was fun.

Now it's far too late so I'm going to go to bed.

April 14, 2018

Today was filled with ups and downs. Nothing amazing or tragic, just subtle ups and downs.

I didn't sleep very well last night and I think it was mostly related to the heat. Throughout the night it was warm but by early morning I had to throw some more blankets over me.

One of the other librarians sent me a picture yesterday of our new temporary desk setup, so it wasn't a total surprise when I got there this morning but it was a lot smaller in person. One of the weirdest things is that our chairs are really short now because we're sitting at tables. Instead of being about eye-level with patrons, now we're looking up at them. One of the nice things is that we're under a ceiling fan, but I was still kind of hot throughout the day, so the fan isn't as effective as the freezing vent that would blow down on us at the desk. But at least there's a fan, even if the sound of it lulls me to sleep. I'm interested to see how this little temporary setup evolves over the next few months, or however long it takes for our new desk to come in.

I was on desk for the first two hours and that time was spent working on my homebound lists. I lost more stuff because I apparently didn't save before I went to deal with the group over-staying their welcome in the auditorium Thursday night. Live and learn. I had a walkthrough at eleven and after that I was able to finish my lists.

My lunch was spent in the cubicle. I watched YouTube videos and parts of the Coachella livestreams. I didn't even know that was happening this weekend. But it is, and they have some good acts.

After lunch I was on desk for two hours and there were a lot of patron interactions. I dealt with the group in the auditorium that was setting up for their poetry event tomorrow. The lady in charge of it is the sister of one of our regular patrons, and she's kind of the mean version of her sister. But the kind of mean that comes with a smile, which makes it more annoying. She wanted to know why the event wasn't showing up on the digital displays, and I showered her that it was and explained why it didn't say what she wanted it to say. She didn't appreciate that but I told her I would try and fix it. She then mentioned something about putting a sign up down in the atrium and I told her that we couldn't put signs up in the atrium. She wasn't very pleased with that either, so I imagine that will come back up tomorrow.

Following that interaction, I went back to the desk and called a patron that I had been in the middle of calling when I was interrupted by the sister. Then I went in and edited the poetry event for tomorrow so it would show the name of the event on the digital signs. And to round out that first hour after lunch, I helped a couple different patrons find books and printed off tax forms for a different patron. In the second hour I filled out my timesheet and got the tech classes and drop-ins for next semester added to the events calendar. I didn't put the tech workshops on the calendar yet because I want to talk to my boss about them. They were not successful at all this semester so I don't know if it is worth the effort next semester. I'm thinking of changing what day they're on, but I also thought maybe we could do a board game night instead. We'll see what my boss thinks.

I had two hours off desk after that and I went and pulled books for homebound. Then I checked them out, updated my spreadsheets, made bookmarks using my new automated bookmark template (which worked perfectly), put the bookmarks in all the books, put the books in bags, labeled the bags, and stowed them in the closet. That least bit bled into the last hour of the day, and before I knew it, it was time to go home.

On my way home I got gas and then stopped at Sonic for dinner. I have vegetables that I want to roast but I'm going to do that tomorrow night. I thought it would be faster to pull into a stall at Sonic so I did that and hit the button. And then I sat there for a few minutes. And despite being the only person there (no one else in a stall and no one in the drive-thru), nothing happened. So I backed out and went through the drive-thru, which worked out much better because they actually acknowledged me. The guy at the window was super friendly and it wasn't in that put on sort of way. He was just a nice kid and it made me happy to see an example of a good person out in the wild. Sonic is just a stepping stone to a very successful and fulfilling life for that kid.

When I got home I ate dinner and then my night kind of got derailed after that. I was going to play CoD: WW2 but then realized that even though my thermostat was set to 67 degrees, it was only 63 degrees in the house (quite the difference from 84 degrees yesterday), and the thermostat wasn't on. That's not how the thermostat works. I ended up spending about an hour looking up what could be wrong, opening up the furnace, cleaning the heat sensor, and getting nowhere.

Then I played a little bit of CoD: WW2 while texting my Dad, until he called, and then I spent another hour or so on the phone with him trying different things. And then probably half an hour talking about random other things after we exhausted everything furnace-related and thermostat-related that we could think of. Before calling a repairman I might see if I can track down a new ignitor and see if that is the issue. Unless those cost more than a service call.

I got off the phone with my Dad after midnight and went back to my office. It is now 1:30AM and I have spent the last hour writing this and watching Post Malone perform at Coachella. He was drunk, high, and smoking cigarettes. Not the best combo for a live performance that involves singing. I'll stick with his non-live music from now on. Or at least mostly sober music. Now I'm watching Highly Suspect perform. They're only two songs in, and the lead singer performed the first song with his pants around his ankles, until a friend helped him take them all the way off during the middle of the song. Interesting. But he's still singing better than Post Malone.

April 13, 2018

This morning I slept until I did need to sleep anymore. It would be nice if that was an everyday thing. Then I laid in bed for an hour or so and read from a couple different books. I spent the rest of morning watching a few YouTube videos and then working on the app development class.

Throughout the day it was 84 degrees in my house. That's kind of hot. I spent the day sitting in front of a box fan in my office or laying on my bed under the ceiling fan. After lunch I went back to bed and read some more. It is nice getting back into reading.

I watched a few more YouTube videos this afternoon but I spent most of my time working on the app development class. So far I've watched about twenty videos which makes up about twenty-five percent of the course. I've got about an hour and a half left of the Java lessons and then I'll move into Android stuff. I'm feeling pretty good about the progress I'm making. I have enough experience with various programming languages that a lot of the stuff covered so far is either somewhat familiar or relatable enough that I can wrap my head around it. I'm looking forward to getting past outputting lines to the console and actually creating things.

Now I'm on the second episode of the new Lost In Space series on Netflix. I'm going to have to pause it because the episodes are long and it's getting late. But I'm liking the show so far. There is a lot of mystery and intrigue happening. But I'll have to save it for another day.