October 10, 2015

 I'll be honest. I didn't spend the entire day working on my Metadata crosswalk. I did work on it off and on throughout the day, though, which is kind of what I expected to happen. And it worked out because I eventually managed to finish the assignment. Minus the reference list, which is probably the easiest part, so there is no real reason why I didn't do that other than I was kind of done for the day. It won't take me too long to do that tomorrow and it'll give me another chance to read over my paper again. I also posted a summary of the assignment to the discussion thread and responded to one of the posts. I'll respond to a few more tomorrow and submit the assignment, officially finishing my metadata class. Thankfully. It has been very interesting but also stressful.

There is an advanced metadata class that starts after this one, which is a two credit hour class. I think the idea is that you would take those two together in one semester, leaving a single three credit hour class to bring it up to a full six credit hours in the semester. That way you would have one class throughout the semester and then the two metadata classes, one after the other, which would mean you only had two classes at any given time, not three. Unfortunately for me, I wanted to take the academic libraries class this semester, which is two credit hours, and that left me needing one more credit hour. Metadata was used to fill that need and I wasn't even aware that it could be paired up with the second metadata class later in the semester. It's probably for the best though because after the stress from class I need a break. At least from metadata. I've still got plenty of work to do in my remaining two classes.

At one point during the day I opened the backdoor to check on the weather because it looked nice out and I wanted to open my window if it wasn't too hot. When I opened the door I was met by a pretty big spider, right at head level. Upon closer inspection I saw that it had a web across the entire doorway. Just the other night I had gone out to see if I could see the meteor shower (which I couldn't because it was cloudy) and I thought I felt a spider web on me. Not a full web, just a little string, but didn't think much of it. My main reason for going out that door is to release spiders I have caught in the basement. That usually happens at night and I usually turn off the light before I open the door because I want to reduce the chance of the bugs that hang out at the light swarming my face. I don't think I'm going to turn off the light anymore, because I'll probably forget to check first to see if there is a giant spider ready to touch my face. Although that also means I'll probably forget to not turn the light off. Basically, a big spider will probably be touching my face in the near future.

While working on my metadata crosswalk tonight Word froze on me. Not too long after I got a message about Word being unable to save a backup or something because my C:\ Drive was out of space. When I checked on that it turned out to be an accurate statement because I was at a big fat zero on my C:\ Drive. I've been dealing with that issue for awhile now because it is a small SSD but this is the first time I completely ran out of room. I ran CC Cleaner and found out that Chrome and Firefox were both taking up a whole bunch of space, Chrome in particular. After I ran the program and deleted all the temp files I gained back more than 8GB of space. That is crazy. I need to close my web browsers more often so they don't build up so much crap.

The experience of losing a few sentences of my paper in the crash was enough to get me to finally buy a new SSD before something worse happens. I've been looking at them for awhile but was putting it off because prices were continuing to drop and I didn't have a sufficient reason to spend the money. But now I do so I will be doing that tomorrow. It will also be a good excuse to finally use the gift card I got for my birthday. I also might pick up a cable so I can hook up my other TV to my computer so I can have four monitors. It would have come in handy during my metadata assignments when I had a million browser tabs and various Word documents and PDFs open.

Anyway, it is now two o'clock in the morning and I need to go to bed so I can wake up tomorrow and do things. Like turn in my metadata crosswalk, reply to some discussion posts, and try and add more to the group clusterfuck weekly assignment that has been causing me so much anxiety over the past week. Hooray.

October 9, 2015

 I'm tired. That seems to be my general state of being this week.

This morning I took pictures of the bookcase that no one at school wants so I can send out an email to the district to see if another school wants it. I took some without anything on it, with several books on it, and with sixteen reams of paper (just because). Throughout the rest of the day I edited the pictures to make them look better. I also cut out the bookcase and added it to a picture of a beach and to a picture of a pasture. Because of other things I didn't get around to actually sending the email so that will have to happen on Tuesday.

My favorite sub was there today so I got to talk to her for awhile. When I was clocking out for lunch she was in the office so we ended up sitting in the chairs in there while she waited on her lunch to arrive and talked about stuff.

I spent my entire afternoon installing Type to Learn on a laptop cart. Seventeen laptops altogether. It was kind of awful. It takes forever to install because it is a huge file (1GB) and it has to be on the computer or it takes even longer. The fasted solution ended up being downloading the file to a flash drive, copying it onto the laptop, installing it, and then deleted the setup file. Even with five laptops going at a time it took me four hours. With that and juggling classes coming into the lab at the same time, I didn't really have time to do anything else. Like sending the email about the bookcase.

Tonight I had a Frosty for the first time in a long time. I want to say several years. It was really good.

I didn't work on my metadata crosswalk tonight. I did add a little to the group discussion thing for my collection development class. That damn thing. It is a big reason for my lack of motivation this week, which is impacting my metadata class. The whole assignment is kind of an unorganized clusterfuck. A poorly designed assignment. The groups should have been three or four people at most and been restrained to the case study. There should have also been more communication within the groups about dividing up the work. Not the free-for-all it turned into, especially after individuals did most of the original assignment by themselves before anyone else had a chance to contribute, leading to the expansion of the assignment. But at this point I'm beating a dead horse. I just hope I am able to contribute enough that I don't lose too many points. My frustration about this assignment and the anxiety it has produced has been incredibly distracting all week. Hopefully next week we can go back to a regular discussion, with clearly defined guidelines.

For the past little while now I have been watching a Minecraft livestream that is in French. I don't even kind of speak French. I know they aren't talking about the game but other than that I don't have the slightest idea what the conversations are about. And the whole time the girl has just been building floor after floor of a big building. I originally turned it on as background to my work, figuring I wouldn't be distracted by the talking. Then I ended up not working.

Tomorrow. Metadata crosswalk. All day. Mostly. It will be done tomorrow so I will have time to edit it on Sunday before turning it in. That's the plan. I need to move on with my life and I can do that as soon as I finish that assignment because it will be the end of my metadata class. Hopefully the rest of the semester will be a little less stressful without having to juggle three classes.

October 8, 2015

 Another day. They are kind of becoming blended together. I had classes in the lab this morning and this afternoon. In between I finished my MAP spreadsheets, printed them out, and gave them to teachers. This afternoon I had my second grade reading group again. On Tuesday we do vowel stuff and Thursday is Dolch word stuff. So today was Dolch word stuff and it went better than Tuesday.

After school my fifth grade teacher friend brought me a new office chair. I think she was originally sent by the office ladies to one of the kindergarten teachers, who then sent her to me because he already had one. But I didn't need a new chair because I got one two or three years ago. So she left with it. A short time later she when I went to clock out she was pushing it back down to the kindergarten rooms and I think checking with the other kindergarten teacher to see if she needed it. I leave the building that way so I ended up down there and we started talking with the one kindergarten teacher about it, trying to figure out what was up. A little while later the principal came down and got it. There is a little ramp and she wanted to push it down the ramp but there was a Boys & Girls Club girl (I think) sitting nearby with a kid so she decided against it. She then pushed it down the hall to see if one of the first grade teachers needed it before pushing it back into the office. And then came back and pushed it into the library, which is when I left, so who knows if that was the end of the journey.

Other things happened throughout the day but I kind of want to go to bed so we'll just skip over that. I worked on my metadata crosswalk assignment a little bit tonight. I still have a lot to do, mainly the summary and stuff, but I also still have a lack of motivation. I wish it actually was due tomorrow, like it was originally, so I could just get it over with. And maybe focus on the group thing in my collection development class, which still feels like a complete disaster. I think it is going to bone several people's grades, at least for this particular assignment, because the only real directions for the assignment were completely hijacked by one or two people, leaving everyone else having to make crap up. I'll probably be annoyed about it for quite some time.

Tomorrow my only real plan at work is to take a picture of a bookshelf that no one in the building wants and send it out to the district to see if anyone outside the building wants it. I'm not a fan of people who email the whole district but it is a good way to get rid of stuff. This being my one chance to do it, I want to have some fun with it. I'll probably end up just sending out a very plain email but maybe inspiration will strike.

October 7, 2015

 The metadata crosswalk assignment is frying my brain. More on that later.

Today at work I continued to do things. I emailed student pictures to someone at the central kitchen so they can be added into their system. We usually send over the CD that we get but this year we didn't get a CD so I talked to the cook at school to see what information the central kitchen actually needed. She wasn't sure so she gave me the name of the lady at the central kitchen so I sent her an email to see if she needed the pictures named with the student number or with the students' names or something else entirely. And just in case I attached all of the pictures named with the student number, which is apparently what she needed because she just emailed back a thank you.

I came close to finishing my spreadsheets for this round of testing. And I probably would have but I had classes in the lab almost all day, and it was an early release day. The day flew by really. And my brain is currently fried so I am having trouble coming up with things to write.

One funny moment that I can remember is when a second grader came down to get help with is laptop. We were standing near the doors of the lab, which were open, and the art teacher walked by to go to her small art closet across the hall. Out of nowhere the kid says “You changed your hair.” The art teacher replied that she had and the kid responded with “It's nice.” And the art teacher after a short pause, thanked him. Written out it sounds like nothing worth mentioning but it was just so odd. The kid is kind of a pain in the butt, so there's that, but he also sounded like a mobster in a movie giving a compliment. It's hard to convey. It was just odd.

After work I went and got gas and cleaned my windshield while I waited. Then I went over and finally got the book cross stitch I made last year framed. I meant to give it to the school librarian last year, but never got around to it and then didn't want to spend the money so late in the year with summer approaching. I finally took notice of it in my closet last week and I knew the librarian's birthday was sometime this month so I decided to get it framed today when I would have a little extra time. I'm interested to see how it turns out. Also, when I got home later I had an email that said the librarian's birthday is next Thursday. And I will be picking up the framed cross stitch next Wednesday. Perfect timing.

Next I stopped by the gas station to get my Powerball ticket before going to Target. I ended up running into my mom there, which was unexpected, so I ended up walking around with her while she finished her shopping. I also forgot to buy baby carrots.

I went home for awhile before going back out to pick up Chipotle. It ended up being an alright burrito. Hopefully the second half will be better. After dinner I showed some good videos, including several educational ones that involved vision and perception.

The rest of my night was spent fighting my lack of motivation and trying to figure out my metadata crosswalk. It is mildly overwhelming. Not because of the amount of work but because I feeling woefully unprepared for the activity. I have never worked in a library and haven't taken a cataloging class. This assignment is my first time actually looking at a MARC record, a very confusing one that isn't formatted very well in the Word document. So rather than this being an assignment about converting MARC to Dublin Core, it is more like trying to translate one language I don't speak into another language I don't speak. I'm having to learn all the minute details about MARC in order to figure out if it will map over to Dublin Core. And that involves a whole other level of interpretation. And all of the frustration that comes from being completely out of my depth and lost and everything else has dropped my already low motivation to practically negative levels. It's a struggle right now.

Regarding my other struggle, the group work for this week, apparently my group wasn't the only one that got completely boned by a eager early posters. I know this because the professor took the time to record a short video explaining what the other group members could do if all the information from the case study had been done. And that is to basically to a lot of freaking extra work that wouldn't have been necessary if the early posters weren't unintentionally selfish assholes. Not to be rude.

Now I'm going to go to bed. My goal every day has been to finish my metadata crosswalk and that hasn't happened yet so I'm bumping it to tomorrow. I need to just suck it up and finish it. Stop over thinking it (or more accurately over thinking about my lack of knowledge) and just do it. So that's on the agenda for tomorrow. When I will once again be tired, because it is late now, and unmotivated. Sounds like a winning combo.

October 6, 2015

 My work days have been so filled with work lately. It's both good and bad. Today I had several different small projects going at the same time and I kept pausing one thing to do another. It was mildly hectic but I got things done. I exported data about the school pictures so I could import it into Excel, format it, cut and paste it into Notepad, save it as a .bat file, and run it in order to rename all the pictures, in bulk, from the student number to the student name. It was a bit of a process but I figured it out last year or the year before and it saves me a hell of a lot of time. It took me for-freaking-ever to figure it all out in the first place but not having to individually rename 350 pictures was worth it. I also made some more sub charts and imported all the new pictures to Infinite Campus.

I had classes and small groups in the lab throughout the day. I think the small groups are part of the reason that my days feel non-stop this year. I'm kind of always on edge because I never really know when kids are coming in. I have some small groups scheduled in but there are also random other ones that just seem to show up. I'm not necessarily responsible for them but if they have problems I'm the one they ask. And I have to keep them in line if they appear to be going off task. Fun stuff.

I had my second grade literacy group for the first time today. The teacher has so many lower level kids this year, which is usually the group she takes, so she split them into two groups and I got one. It didn't go great today but most of that was my fault because I needed a refresher on long and short vowels. I was relying on the kids, who I already mentioned were the lower level kids, so who knows. The activity involved picking a small pictures, figuring out what word that picture was supposed to represent, and then writing that word in their vowel book. A book I actually made but that was last year and have since forgotten if long vowels say their name or short vowels. I think it's the long ones. That's what we were going with anyway. I'll do better next time.

I helped the other second grade teacher with an email issue where every time she emailed someone on her iPad she got a copy of her email in her inbox. Turns out in a recent update the option to do that was automatically checked. We figured it out and she asked if I drank pop or ate anything out of the vending machine. I said I did not so she just gave me fifty cents and it was pretty funny. I also maybe helped one of the kindergarten teachers with her iPad. I'll find out tomorrow if I remember to check in with her.

After work I had a haircut, which was at least a week overdue, and then I came home and did nothing. I ended up not working on my metadata crosswalk tonight because I had absolutely no motivation. It is really hard to have a full day of work and then come home and do more work. My motivation already sucks. I eventually managed to post a few times to the discussion threads in my academic library class. Earlier today I emailed the professor in my collection development class about the group assignment this week where one person did everything on Sunday. I didn't do it in a “throwing her under the bus” kind of way, just a “wondering what to do now” kind of way. She agreed with the suggestion of providing more detail and granularity. That still kind of sucks because it means everyone has to do more work than was initially required because of the over-eager posting of one person. Whatever.

Right now I'm watching a livestream of the closed beta for Star Wars: Battlefront. It is from EA and the Battlefield people but has a different feel than Battlefield. It has a much faster pace, for one, and seems more along the lines of Call of Duty but the deaths don't come as fast. I will probably never play it but it is fun to watch.

Now I'm going to go to bed. Tomorrow is an early release day so I should have plenty of time to work on my metadata crosswalk. In theory. The professor moved the due date from Friday to Sunday, so that makes me feel a little better. I would prefer to not push it to the weekend, though, because I still don't have a firm grasp on MARC and it's still going to require quite a bit of thought. So tomorrow. Things will happen.

October 5, 2015

 This morning I helped out in both kindergarten rooms for literacy centers. I might end up with a cold tomorrow because I got coughed on several times. But the kids were mostly well-behaved, so it could have been worse.

I printed off MAP reports today and gave them to the teachers. All except for one that I'm still waiting on for a score to be deleted. It is one of those tricky ones where the kid went so fast that a score doesn't show up on screen and they have to take the test again. But in reality they do get a score and it shows up in their overall score instead of the score they got the second time. It is annoying. I'm still working on my spreadsheets. I finished the main page but I also have a second page that shows the change from the previous test. I will get that to the teachers eventually.

This year instead of getting a CD with the school pictures on it we got a website where we can go and download the pictures. So that is what I did today. I would have preferred the CD because on the website you have to download a zip file with the picture software and all the pictures, which is exactly what the CD has, but it doesn't take as long to download. Whatever. Also annoying, is the fact that you can't get the hi-res pictures from the website, like we need for the yearbook, you still have to contact them and have them send you a CD with the hi-res pictures. I imagine the main reason for not having them on the site would be the increased bandwidth from downloading them. But they aren't huge pictures so it is still kind of ridiculous. Anyway, I downloaded all the stuff and made sub charts for the teachers, which is just a page with all the kids' pictures and names that a teacher can leave in their sub plans so a substitute can put a name and face together. Tomorrow I might make some for some of the other, non-classroom teachers in the building, like SPED and resource.

When I got home I checked on the group discussion thing for this week that involves us answering the questions from a case study in one of our books, in the form of a wiki page that we all add to throughout the week. Well, I ended up with the largest group with thirteen people, out of a class of thirty I think, and one of those people is a huge overachiever. To the point that over the course of five edits yesterday she pretty much finished the entire assignment. It is mildly frustrating to say the least. We are being graded like we would for a discussion post, so multiple posts throughout the week. If one person fulfills all the requirements for the assignment, the day before the week even starts, where does that leave the other twelve people in the group. Selfish is a word that comes to mind but I think that insinuates malicious intent, which is not the case with this classmate. She's just very on the ball. To the detriment of everyone else in her group in this case. I managed to squeeze a couple, very tiny things in tonight but it certainly won't put much of a dent in the twelve points I need for the week. If no one else speaks up I might send an email to the professor just to see if there is something else we can do in addition to what is asked for in the case study to actually give the rest of the group a chance at participation. Maybe treat it like an Etch-a-Sketch, now that it's all done we can shake it clear and let everyone else have a go. Especially considering most people don't even start posting on the discussions until Wednesday at the earliest and this was done on Sunday. We'll see what happens.

Tonight I went to a comedy show and it was hilarious. The first opening act was really good and the next two had their moments. The headliner was worth the price of admission, though. He added in a bunch of new stuff and he was just as funny all of his TV specials. He definitely deserves all of his success because he is such a good storyteller. Because of the new material they really harped on the use of cellphones. They went on and on about if you were caught with a phone you would be kicked out. I didn't see this happen to anyone but all the roving security were probably enough to scare people from trying. Each aisle had two people walking up and down the entire time, non-stop. There were also people near the exit doors and a bunch of people roaming around the floor seating. It was kind of incredible.

The best part of the show was probably the fact that we started out in row 32, which is two or three rows from the top, and ended up getting moved down to row 6 because they were trying to fill in the more expensive seats that didn't sell. Those seats were $16 more per ticket, so that's a decent amount of money. And rather than shift everyone down they started at the back and started sending rows down at a time. I kind of liked that we were near the top and didn't have to walk all the way down the stairs, but then we did, and we were way better for it. I don't think we would have been able to hear as well from where we were originally. The funny part was that there were at least a couple groups of people a few rows in front of us who had moved down several rows already when it got closer to the start time and they were filling up. Then all the rows at the back, including the ones these people were originally sitting in, got moved down all the way to the front. If only they had waited.

I was reminded today that the last day for my metadata class is on Friday. Which is great news but it also means that my metadata crosswalk assignment is due on Friday, not Sunday like most of our assignments. Yikes. I'm glad I got a start on it this weekend but I really could have used another weekend. It doesn't help that I didn't get to work on it at all tonight, though I do not regret my decision to take the night off, regardless of how things turn out. I'll just need to put in some late nights this week. Hooray.

October 4, 2015

 I did productive things today. I worked on my metadata crosswalk a bit. I still don't like MARC although this is only the second time I have worked with it. The first time being yesterday. It looks like someone with poor fine motor skills tried their hand at typing and failed miserably as they just slammed their hands on the keyboard.

I also read three textbook chapters and responded to two discussion posts. I'm now kind of ready for the week to come. I still have more reading to do but I'm closer than I was yesterday. Most of my week will probably be devoted to my metadata crosswalk and the week-long group activity for my collection development class, which we have in lieu of a regular discussion. Hooray for group work.

I replaced the batteries in the smoke detectors today because a few days ago one started beeping in the middle of the night and another one started beeping yesterday morning. We're hoping this was due to dead batteries and not defective detectors. Interestingly, all but one of the detectors required a 'D' battery. The 'D' battery thing is normal, the interesting thing is that one of the detectors, even though it looks just like all the other ones, requires two 'AA' batteries.

I tried messing with the fifth grade teacher's flash drive again but didn't make any progress. It is time to throw in the towel, at least for me. It either needs some soldering that isn't being accomplished by holding the connections back together or it truly is damaged beyond repair.

Having spent most of my day doing schoolwork, I spent an hour playing Minecraft after I finish reading the third textbook chapter of the day. I built my first set of rails leading to my barn, which is probably the closest destination. This also involved building a small station near the barn which I think turned out really well. I built it correctly the first time and that surprised me a little. I also made it look pretty cool. I would like reuse the design for all the small stations I end up building so there is a sense of continuity. The next track will go to my Nether portal and that will be a much more involved project because it is far away and there will be some bends. The one plus is that I'm doing it in creative mode because I don't have the time to do it legit. I don't really have the time to be doing it in creative mode either, but if I went with survival I'd still be digging in a mine looking for red stone and iron. Which actually sounds like fun but school comes first. Unfortunately.

I don't know what the week has in store for me in terms of work. I imagine the same old stuff but only time will tell.