April 14, 2013

Last night I used my webcam to record myself sleeping. That sounds kind of creepy but I have always wondered what I do in my sleep. One of the main reasons I bought a webcam, along with recording guitar riffs, was to record myself sleeping. It was very underwhelming. I changed positions several times but I didn't snore or talk in my sleep. At one point I put both of my arms in the air and then slowly itched each one. That was the most interesting thing. I'm disappointed. I might try it again tonight. Or several more times just to get a wider sample. Or never again. I haven't decided yet.

Today was an uneventful day. Like all of my Sundays. I played a lot of Black Ops 2 and spent most of that time feeling frustrated because the lag was ridiculous. I played a lot of games and I had maybe two or three where the lag wasn't awful. It is even more evident when you're using a shotgun and you aim point-blank at a dude and nothing happens. It's hard enough using a shotgun to begin with, lag can make it miserable. Despite all that, I came “close” to getting the gold camo on the KSG. I still have a few Revenge medals to get which shouldn't be too hard, but I have to get six more Bloodthirsty medals. Those are a pain in the butt. In a game today I managed to get two in a row, which turns out to be a Merciless medal (ten kills in a row). That will never happen again.

Here is some stuff from The Book Of The Dead.

To get back at Marianne Charpillon for not sleeping with him and then stealing all of his money, Casanova trained a parrot to say Miss Charpillon is more of a whore than her mother. Charpillon wanted to sue the parrot for libel.

John Harvey Kellogg was a trained gynecologist and he was still a virgin when he died at 91.

In 1942, Henry Ford and George Washington Carver had the idea to make a plastic car body from soybeans that weighed 30% less than a steel body and ran on grain alcohol. WWII sidetracked these plans.

“I'm not a paranoid deranged millionaire. Goddamit, I'm a billionaire.” - Howard Hughes

“If a chap can't compose an epic poem while he is weaving a tapestry, he had better shut up.” - William Morris.

“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird.” - Richard Feynman

“As for fame, what is it? A gilded butt for ever pierced with the arrows of malignancy.” - Edward Jenner

Vaccination is short for vaccine inoculation. It comes from the Latin vacca, “cow”, because cowpox was used to inoculate people against smallpox.

From 1822 to 1855, the presidency of Mexico changed hands thirty six times. General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna became president eleven different times during this period. Even after he gave half of Mexico to the United States. Along with other horrible things.

“The late 1860s found [Santa Anna] living in exile on Staten Island in New York. Here, inadvertently, he made his most significant and lasting contribution to world history. He had become friendly with an American inventor, Thomas Adams. Adams was intrigued by the general's habit of chewing chicle, the gum from the evergreen Manilkara tree, something Mexicans had been doing since the times of the Mayan empire. Adams hoped to make it into a cheap rubber substitute and bought a tone of chicle from Santa Anna, just in case. He failed to make rubber, but discovered that, by adding sugar, he had a terrific new confectionery product: chewing gum. In 1871, he launched it as Adams New York No. 1. His company later merged with Wrigley's. In 2006 the chewing-gum giant had a turnover of $4.6 billion and a 63 percent global market share.”

April 13, 2013

A fairly short entry because I didn't have a lot going on today. I played more Black Ops 2 today. I had some good games and some bad games. The bad ones were mostly caused by lag. There were a couple games where I would chase people around with my shotgun, shooting them several times at point-blank range, in the back, without getting any hit markers. And instances where I would seemingly get the first shot on a guy, which should have been a kill shot, but he would kill me instantly, and the kill cam would show that he had been firing at me long before I even saw him. Lag sucks some balls.

One of my hard drives briefly disappeared today. The one where I save movies, game capture stuff, my daily recordings, and back everything up. I was more upset about the idea that I would lose my daily recordings because I hadn't backed those up anywhere yet. Not counting the first introductory recording I made, I have been doing it for sixteen days now. That isn't a very long time but it still would have sucked to lose all that. Thankfully the hard drive returned after I restarted my computer but just in case I copied my recordings to one of my other hard drives. And I might start emailing them to myself. I do that with these entries every so often, just in case the two hard drives they are currently saved to decide to crap out.

Tonight at work I continued reading The Book Of The Dead and I watched most of 42. The Book Of The Dead was as interesting as always but I am going to put off writing about it because it is late once again and I am tired. Fascinating stuff though. I like learning interesting tidbits about famous people from the past. It's like reality TV but actual reality. And not awful. 42 is a really good movie. The main actor looks a lot like Jackie Robinson, which is a bit odd but also very cool. The movie itself does a good job of covering the drama and seriousness of the situation but there is also a lot of humor thrown in which makes the movie more uplifting than potentially dry and depressing. It is a movie I would definitely watch again.

April 12, 2013

I have nine pillows on my bed. I'm obviously a fan of pillows. Even with my tiny bed. Early this morning, around five o'clock, a group of these pillows decided to lead a minor revolt. Second only to accidentally suffocating someone, the best way for pillows to revolt is to fall off a bed. This is what happened to me, and it has happened before without incident but this morning they decided to take a very noisy metal ruler, that was located next to my bed, on their journey to the floor. It was very disorienting in my groggy state.

It was an early release day so school got out at 1:30PM instead of 3:50PM. There also weren't any assessments today so that made the day go by even faster. I read with kindergarteners in the morning, helped out with literacy centers in both kindergarten classes, and had my second grade reading group. The reading group actually went pretty good until the end. I think because I had them distracted with Math for the majority of the time. Today was our last day with Freckle Juice and next week we are moving onto Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary. I came close to buying those books back around the time the movie came out but I never did. True story. It is a much bigger book than we have previously worked with so I'm not entirely sure how that is going to work out. Mainly, how long we are supposed to take with it. We'll find out soon enough. I think in the coming weeks I might miss a few days due to testing but I'm not sure about that either. Just an observation.

After work I stopped by Target to pick a few things up and actually used a basket for the first time ever. I usually just pile everything up in my arms and stop buying stuff when I can't carry anything else. Today I decided that if I got to the back of the store and they had baskets available, I would continue shopping. This allowed me to get the chips and undershirts that were the last two items on my list that I would have not been able to carry.

When I got home I played maybe an hour of Black Ops 2 because they are having a double XP weekend in anticipation of the new DLC coming out next week. I haven't gotten any of the DLC because the only map I like is Nuketown 2025. Which is why I played today because on double XP weekends they also have Nuketown 2025 24/7. My wrist and forearm were starting to feel a bit twingy so I cut myself off before I normally would have but it was for the best. We'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow and Sunday. I am a bit worried because I heard they got rid of the Chaos Moshpit playlist, which consisted of “small” maps, and was the only playlist that had Nuketown 2025. Now that the map is available for free, they got rid of the playlist because they added the map into all the other playlists. I guess that is good because now I can pick a specific gametype and be forced to play all the other maps (which I don't really like) but I would still prefer a dedicated Nuketown 2025 playlist. Battlefield 3 lets you pick individual maps so it can obviously be done on consoles.

Anyway, after I played Black Ops 2 I took a nap, then had dinner, and got ready for work. At work I read Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and felt like a badass for reading an entire book in a matter of a few hours. I am ignoring the fact that it was under 200 pages, had giant font, and is written for small children. I also continued reading The Book Of The Dead and have some cool stuff to write about but I'm not going to because it is after 2:00AM and I want to sleep. So once again I am going to that off for a later date. Or until I forget.

April 11, 2013

The old guy at book club last night was telling us how his parents had the only ballet bookstore in New York way back in the day. I am assuming it was a bookstore specializing in books about ballet. His mother was apparently very small and everyone assumed she used to be a ballet dancer, which she hadn't, but she didn't mention that fact and played it up for the customers. Also, because it was the only bookstore of its kind, when kids would come to New York to do ballet stuff they would eventually end up at this bookstore. And when their parents hadn't heard from them in awhile, they would end up writing this bookstore asking about their kids, and the old guys parents would basically be the go between, telling the kids they needed to check in with their parents.

Yesterday the first assessment of the day took forever for some kids to log in, today it was the second assessment. At least half the class had to try and log in more than once, some kids more than five times and on multiple computers. It seemed like maybe every other school in the state was trying to take the assessment at exactly the same time. Eventually everyone was able to take the assessment, even if some of them had to start half an hour late.

I have to collect the scratch paper after the assessments and “destroy” it for security reasons and during the second assessment the teacher came up and handed me a piece of scratch paper and said “Here are all the answers.” I mentioned that I would go sell them on the black market and she replied “Probably not from that one.” Later she handed me another piece and said “Now this one you can sell, it has a lot of right answers on it. You need to cut me in for half.”

We had another assembly today, this one was the second grade classes singing and doing little skits. I think the whole thing was called School Days, I didn't get a program, but it was pretty good. The first song sounded very old-timey to me and it just seemed like it would be a musical interlude in a movie from the 1930s. I couldn't get Laurel And Hardy out of my head. Then there were the occasional hip-hop songs which involved attempts at choreographed dancing. It was so epic. Not a single kid was in time to the music or to anyone else. They were all definitely dancing to the beat of their own drummer. And several kids were really getting into it. I loved it. After the first dance number I turned to my para friend and told her that second graders dancing was my new favorite thing. After the assembly my para friend and I put away chairs but we actually got a lot of help with it today. We decided that maybe we have just been setting such a good example that other people are wanting to join in the fun.

My sister recently bought a Cross Canadian Ragweed USB-bracelet that was supposed to come loaded with a bunch of music. Instead it came broken. Whenever she plugged it in, it would ask her to reformat it, which would delete anything that was on there, if there actually was anything on it. So she asked me to check it out. I downloaded a file recovery program and was able to get a bunch of stuff off of it, including 30 songs. The strange thing was that after I got everything off and reformatted the bracelet, I couldn't get all the stuff back onto the bracelet. There wasn't enough room. It was like that triangle that when you cut it up into pieces and rearrange them you end up with a triangle that has the same dimensions on the outside but there is a hole in the middle. Except kind of the opposite of that because I took a bunch of stuff out but couldn't get it all back in. So maybe like when you take something apart and end up with an extra screw? Yeah, that analogy makes more sense. Anyway, the point is I was able to get the music off of it. I'm not sure what all the other stuff was but hopefully it wasn't important. But if it is I still have it backed-up on my computer.

Tonight I had the visit with the new volunteer kid. It was a pretty good forty-five minute visit. I was a little worried it wouldn't happen because when I called the foster dad he was over here but said a visit would be fine. So I crossed my fingers and headed out on my thirty minute trip in the hopes that the kid would get the message and have the time or interest to hang out. But he did so it was all good.

When we got in the car I asked him how he was doing and he said “excellente”. I then asked him how school was going and he said he had just gotten a 'C' on his English test. I said maybe it was because he was speaking in Spanish. Classic me. Another zinger. For the rest of the visit we continued talking about school stuff. His English test had been over To Kill A Mockingbird which is a book I didn't read until late in college or maybe even after, but it is one of my favorite books. I really related to Atticus Finch. I actually need to read that book again. I could definitely see it as a once-a-year kind of book.

On the topic of the kid. I got on the Jostens website today so I could recreate his class ring. My supervisor got the money for it but the order form he gave me seemed like the ring was a lot more expensive than I remembered. So I got on and entered everything just how he had it until I got to the type of metal. I was thinking White Lustrium because that is what I got and it is the cheapest. It looks good and I think it is more than enough for a ring most people don't wear for too long. So I left that option on White Lustrium, which was the default, but when I tried to move onto the next question, a window popped up asking if I wanted to upgrade the metal type to Silver Elite for only $144. Only. By default that option was picked so if you clicked to go on, the metal type would be switched to Silver Elite. So kind of a tricky way to get people to spend more money, even unintentionally. With the Silver Elite the ring came out to just over $400 before tax. With White Lustrium it came out to under $265 before tax. I emailed my supervisor about all this and my recommendation was White Lustrium but we'll see what she thinks.

And on that note, I'm going to almost go to bed. I need to edit my recording of my day and then go to bed. I am tired. So I think I will edit my recording tomorrow.

April 10, 2013

I parked in the garage over at my sister's again last night and once again there was no hail. I know correlation does not equal causation but I am thinking that maybe by parking in a garage I am preventing the hail from coming. That could totally be a thing.

There were two assessments today. The first one started out a little iffy because several kids had to try and log in several times before they could connect to the server. Luckily everyone eventually got in but I was beginning to question it for awhile. Other than that, the assessments went fine, other than being boring as hell because I'm just watching kids take a test. Part of me really wants to take the test so I can feel like a badass and ace a third grade assessment. I don't like the idea of standardized tests but I kind of like taking them. I might be a little weird.

This morning I sent out an email to the school reminding them that there was a folder on the server where they could put pictures for the yearbook. It has been there for at least a few weeks and there was only one picture in the folder. Which I put there. I warned everyone that if they didn't put pictures in there I was just going to put that one picture in the yearbook many many times. Or possibly come around and take pictures but let my finger partially cover the lens. I ended up getting several pictures from one of the second grade teachers so I could scan them, and maybe two other teachers had added pictures by the end of the day. Not an incredible turnout but better than just the one picture I started with.

We had a brief assembly today and my para friend and I put away the chairs. At the end of the assembly all the kids were cheering for the lady who was talking about the upcoming walk-a-thon. My para friend was saying something to my mom about how we never get any recognition for putting the chairs away while the cheering was still going on so I mentioned that the kids were actually cheering for us in anticipation of how great a job we were about to do at putting the chairs away. Several other people ended up helping with the chairs today and my para friend and I think that word of my letter must have gotten out and people think there might actually be some money in going outside your job description and putting chairs away after assemblies. It was good times as always though. There is supposed to be another assembly tomorrow morning so more chairs. The whole thing is ridiculous fun, which is the best part of a job. I used to have a lot of that at the theater but now I just sit upstairs and read books. I need more ridiculous fun in my life.

In my brief bits of downtime today when I wasn't scanning/editing pictures, making copies, submitting a trouble ticket, watching kids take tests, or putting chairs away, I read a little bit in my book. I am really tempted to write about what I read but I am equally tempted not to. I keep saying I am going to write about the stuff I'm reading but then not doing so. Maybe this weekend I'll sit down and type it all up. Maybe. I have been mentioning stuff in my daily recordings. So there's that. Not really that helpful here but whatever.

Tonight I had my book club and it went pretty well. I was the first person to say something about the book and chimed in at least a few more times during the discussion. I always read the book but I feel like if I don't talk that maybe they won't think I actually read it. And I would like to be a part of the discussion just so there is a discussion. It's boring if only one person talks the whole time. The old lawyer was there tonight which was great. He always has good stories about growing up in New York or just random events in his life. The book we read was The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande and he told us a story about getting an illegal alien nanny to testify in a custody hearing. He asked the judge to explain the Fifth Amendment to her so that the other lawyers couldn't fluster her by asking about her citizenship or lack of citizenship. He said the judge went beyond that and basically forbade the lawyers from cross examining her or even hinting at whether or not she was in the country illegally. He also told us about the history of his parents coming to this country. Old people are fascinating. They are living history books and I love history books.

April 9, 2013

I forgot to mentioned something that happened yesterday when I was talking with my favorite substitute in the computer lab. A group of adults comes in to read with some of the kids at the end of the day. I don't know how often this happens but they come in at least every Monday because that is when the second grade class comes to the lab and shortly after that the adults show up to go read with them. I think it's called the School Of Hope or something. Anyway, it turns out one of the guys is a local politician. I didn't know this but when he came in the substitute teacher started talking to him saying that she voted for him in the recent elections and asking him different questions. Then, immediately after he walked out, she turned to me and in a lowered voice said “I didn't vote for him. I voted for all the women.” I lowered my voice and replied “Me too.”

The toilets at school all have sensors. The sensor in the faculty bathroom has been awful since the beginning of the year and I would always have to hold my hand over the sensor for what felt like forever, even though it was probably less than ten seconds, just to get the toilet to flush. Recently however, someone tweaked it and the sensor has become an oversensitive sensor. Today it flushed three times and I was just standing there.

During the third grade state assessment today the teacher and I were standing in the back of the lab and watched two kids in a row make a simple Math mistake and neither of them even attempted to use the provided calculator. (Even though the teacher and I aren't supposed to be looking at the computer screens. Shhh). So the teacher looked at me and whispered “Do you think I can remind the class to use the calculator?” I started to say something but then she raised her voice and said “Hey, do you think I can remind the kids to use their calculators?” She really emphasized all of her words and it was hilarious. One of the kids went back and used the calculator but the other kid is stubborn and apparently has a history of not doing something when he knows it is right, if the teacher tells him to do it. So he got the wrong answer.

Today there really wasn't a lot going on. Kind of the same old day. My second grade reading group was all present so they were awful and we didn't get a lot done. Kind of frustrating.

Shortly after work I took my car over to park in my sister's garage again because there was a chance for a severe thunderstorm and hail. An hour or so later there was a bit of torrential rain that lasted for a few minutes but that has been about it. It better start hailing in the middle of the night. I'm fairly certain the one time I don't take it over to park in the garage it is going to hail.

Tonight I have just kind of been feeling out of it. Once again I really want to do something. I want to be creative and do something purposeful with my free time but I just can't bring myself to do anything. I want to find a passion and dive headfirst into it but I have no idea what that passion would be and I can't bring myself to start anything. A thought will come to mind and then my over-thinking mind will think all the way through the thought, with all the various outcomes, and I don't see the point in starting. I have that problem a lot in my life. I apparently don't like surprises because I always feel the need to come up with every possible outcome for any given situation. This has been the case in past relationships as well as school and work and possible future endeavors. It can be exhausting and is in no way productive. I kind of use a variation on this when trying to pick a movie to watch. If I really want to watch it but can remember almost the entire thing for the last time I watched it, I won't watch it because I feel like it would be a waste of time. Especially after I just kind of re-watched the whole thing in super fast forward in my head. But the same thing happens when it comes to possible relationships or just possible things to do with my time or life. If my mind can run through the whole thing and all the different outcomes, I don't see the point in even starting. I don't like this but I can't seem to turn it off.

I just want to be productive and do something meaningful with my life. The majority of my days just seem wasted. I am fully aware of the finite life I am living but even that can't seem to give me the kick in the pants I need to stop wasting my time.

I need to get out of my head.

April 8, 2013

I keep meaning to write the interesting things I have recently read but the mood has not struck me. I've talked about them in my daily recordings but it is a lot easier to read a passage than it is to type it up. But I still plan to write about them. Eventually. Or I'll wait too long and forget about it.

It ended up not hailing last night so I didn't really need to park my car in the garage over at my sister's but better safe than sorry. I might end up parking over there again tomorrow night because we are supposed to get a decent storm including hail on Tuesday night.

This morning when I walked into work one of the receptionists asked if I wanted to try some baked kale. She had a painting restorer staying at her house over the weekend and she was a vegan so the receptionist had been introduced to some new foods. I think she was trying to get rid of the baked kale. It actually wasn't awful but it wasn't that good either. It tasted like I was eating foliage.

Shortly after that I was in the principals office to pick up assessment tickets and she had one of the second graders in there from my reading group. She basically chewed him a new one because over the weekend him and one of the other kids in his class climbed up onto the roof of the school. They got up there by putting a trash can and probably something else on top of a picnic table. They were discovered by one of the fourth grade teachers who was in her room on the third floor. They both got in-school suspension and lost recess for the week. A small price to pay for something that could have ended in horrible injury or death.

State assessments have started again and this morning one of the fifth grades classes took the first part of their Math assessment. Several of them came into the lab vigorously stroking their pencils in a somewhat inappropriate manner. None of them were giggling though which told me they didn't get the suggestive part of their actions and they weren't doing it to be inappropriate. It turns out their teacher had given them color changing pencils, similar to a mood ring, and the kids stroking their pencils were trying to make the pencils hotter in order to change the color.

This afternoon one of first grade teachers was telling me that she ate lunch with her class on Friday in the lunchroom. One of the little boys told her he was going to eat his fruit like a white person and then started to eat it with his fork. She then asked him how black people eat fruit if white people eat it with a fork. Then the little boy changed his mind and decided he was going to eat the fruit like a rich white person. So he stuck his pinky finger out. I wish I had been there when he was told or figured out how white people eat fruit.

Also this afternoon, a fourth grade class was coming into the lab immediately after the other first grade class. The last few first graders were engaged in some random conversation that had them turned away from the door, so they missed the rest of their class leaving. The fourth grade teacher is a bit of an authoritarian and she was waiting on these kids to leave the lab so she could come in. She didn't know the kid in front with his back to the door so she just called out “Hey, blue shirt. Come on.” It was hilarious. It reminded of me of a comedian (who I can't remember) who has a bit where black guys call out to girls on the street by referencing their clothes.

My favorite substitute was subbing today so I got to talk to her for quite awhile when she brought her class to the lab at the end of the day. We talked about a whole bunch of random stuff and were laughing through most of it. At one point my para frame came in and the sub hijacked her for awhile into our conversation. The topic of our unpaid chair job after assemblies came up so I printed off the letter I wrote to Obama for the sub to read and I have never seen her laugh so hard.

After work I didn't do much until dinner. And I didn't do much for dinner other than eating food, which is what I tend to do at dinner. So yeah. After dinner I watched DVRed stuff from last week and worked on the interior of my Minecraft TARDIS. More specifically, the false night sky above the swimming pool. I haven't worked on that in forever, mostly because it is incredibly tedious, but I think I have finally made it past the halfway mark. I might finish it at some point. So far the only room I have finished in the TARDIS, other than the control room, is the library, the most important room in my opinion. I still have two more doors leading off the control room that have no hallways attached. I want one to lead to bedrooms but I'm not sure about the last one. At one point I thought about making a meadow. I really need to put more time into it.