October 21, 2015

 I spent most of my day at work reading book reviews. It was a slow day but at least I made progress on my project. I had the usual classes in the lab and this afternoon we had a character assembly. On the way there a second grader sneezed and ended up with the biggest booger hanging from her nose that I have ever seen. She immediately stopped and said she needed a Kleenex. The closest room that I thought I could find one was kindergarten so I told her to come with me and we went down and got her a Kleenex. This was good because she ended up being recognized for a big award and then later also got a character award.

After work I got Chipotle and my Powerball ticket before heading home. I didn't show any videos after dinner because it was a slow week for videos. This was alright though because today was Back To The Future Day (because this is the date they go to in Back To The Future 2) so we ended up watching the first movie during dinner. There was a marathon on so I spent the rest of the night watching the other two movies. I'm actually still watching the third one. I'm freaking tired though so we'll see how close it is to being over when I finish this. I might have to finish it tomorrow.

While watching those movies I played Minecraft. I rebuilt my enchantment area, cleaned up my branch mine a little, and did a lot of mining. It was a nice zoning out kind of night. I figured I earned it after spending all day working on the collection development project.

I have the next two days off from work and I will hopefully be spending most of that time on schoolwork. I need to finish the collection development project this weekend and I also need to get a substantial start on my research paper. Or at least collect enough resources so I can start writing it next week.

Now, I think I'm going to go to bed. There is another hour and a half to go in the movie and I don't want to be up that long. It'll just be something to look forward to tomorrow.

October 20, 2015

 I briefly jumped into Creativerse this morning to check out the creative mode, which they call creation. Turns out it is more like Minecraft's peaceful mode, rather than creative mode. You still have to collect and craft everything in the game, and it seems like all the mobs are still there, they just don't attack you. Unless you attack them. So it's not really what I was looking for. I would like to just build stuff. Maybe someday.

Today was a lot like yesterday. I had classes and small groups in the lab and I had my small reading group in second grade. And that was about it. In my downtime I read book reviews for my collection development project. I can't remember the totals but I am fairly certain I hit the halfway mark. Only $1300 more to spend.

When I got home from work I managed to finish my weekly assignment for my collection development class. I had one or two searches that were as difficult as some of the ones last night but then it was smooth sailing. I figured I'd only make it through half of what I had left but I managed the whole thing, so that was a nice surprise.

Sometime after dinner I went and picked up my sister and we went to hang out with my grandma because she is in town for a day or two. She went out to dinner with my step-mom and awhile later my brother and dad got home from a fire meeting. I was finally able to give my dad his belated birthday presents, less than two months late. Not bad.

I got home around eleven o'clock and we are now approaching midnight. Tomorrow will probably be a long, tired day. Something to look forward to. I'll end with a few second grader quotes, with the names changed to protect the innocent.

2^nd grader talking to the principal in her very staccato/enunciated/robotic voice: I have two things to tell you. I am not a fan of Mrs. So-and-so. And I like your necklace.”

The same second grader came up to me today after another second grader had accident sat at her computer: “He is tampering with my seat.”

The second grade teacher was telling me that one of her kids was pretty smart but didn't have very good social skills. As an example she said the second grader came up to her the other day and said she didn't like one of her classmates. She may have even said it to the other girl's face. The response the teacher wanted to give but couldn't was: “No one likes her, but we can't say that out loud.”

October 19, 2015

 It is nearly eleven o'clock, I've got a headache, and I'm tired. Maybe this will be a short entry.

At work today I installed a few printers on the new speech teacher's laptop, I put some shortcuts and installed a couple programs on a couple laptops for one of the third grade teachers, I helped out with literacy centers in one of the kindergarten classes, and I had various classes and groups in the lab throughout the day. In my free time I worked on my collection development project. I made it past $1000 so I'm nearly halfway there. Hopefully I can surpass the halfway mark tomorrow.

Tonight I briefly played Minecraft after dinner just to check out a server I read about that is supposed to be the biggest and longest running server. Also the worst. There weren't many people on when I got in and none of them seemed to be around the spawn so I was able to make it out without a problem and found enough apples to keep me alive. Then I found a portal, ran through the Nether for awhile until I found another portal, and then wandered around the world for awhile before building a boat and setting off into the ocean. And then I got kicked because of a server error. I took that as a sign to do schoolwork.

Instead of a discussion, or painful group project, this week in my collection development class we have to conduct four different searches on the library's website and write down information about the first ten results for each search. The goal is to get a full-text copy of each result. The first search went pretty well because I was able to find everything fairly easily. The second search ended up taking a lot longer because I had to do a lot of extra work in an attempt to locate the full-text copy of something. My goal was to finish half of the assignment and I did that. That leaves twenty more searches to go. Maybe ten tomorrow and ten the next day.

I really need to start working on my research paper. At least devote a little bit of time for it each day. I would feel a lot better about it if I at least a little bit of information on it. It is due in less than a month, which is going to be here before I know it. Hooray.

Now I'm going to bed.

October 18, 2015

 Before lunch, which I delayed slightly, I was able to finish the five textbook chapters I needed to read for this week. After lunch I read the one article and read through the notes of a slideshow. It was a chore. But I finished it. I was glad that all the chapters were in an actual book and not PDFs because I don't think my eyes would have survived five chapters in PDF form. I want an iPad-sized e-reader so I can see a full PDF page at time and have the e-ink display that won't fry my eyes. I have a Kindle but the six-inch screen is not PDF friendly. I did a little searching and Sony has a thing called Digital Paper that has a thirteen-inch screen and would be perfect for viewing full-page PDFs. It even has a pen for writing notes. The downside is that it is $800. I could print every PDF article I need to read for the rest of my classes on really fancy paper and not come close to $800, so I'm going to pass.

I spent the rest of my afternoon and a couple hours after dinner reading reviews for books and selecting more for my collection development project. I am now up to thirty-nine books and almost $730. I'm getting there. Slowly. I think it is due on November 1^st but I would like to have it done by the end of the week so I can put more focus on my research paper, which I have yet to really work on. I don't quite have a clear vision of where I want to go with it yet and that is largely due to not having any sources yet. I have some vague ideas but I won't really know until I start looking through articles.

Earlier this weekend I found out about the new Coheed and Cambria CD, which I then listened to several times on repeat. I have spent the rest of the weekend working through their other CDs. I probably haven't listened to them since college, so I've missed out on quite a bit. I am falling in love with them again, though, because their music is just so good. It makes me want to dig out my guitar and my bass and start playing again.

Tonight I played more Creativerse. I climbed to the top of a really tall tree and then worked my way back down collecting all the wood as I went. I wanted to make wood flooring for my house and I made a few but I'm not sure how I feel about it. I might switch to stone with carpet. I also made a cooking station and a couple bowls of soup, which will hopefully be more effective than eating the red mushrooms that I am currently eating. I want to start a new creative world and see what that is like because there are so many building options that will take me forever to get in the regular world. The regular game is quite a bit more tedious than Minecraft and it takes a lot longer to accomplish things. I think I might enjoy the creative mode better, if it is the same as Minecraft where you have access to all the blocks and don't have to worry about surviving. What I would really like is a Creativerse skin for Minecraft. All the game mechanics of Minecraft with the visuals of Creativerse because it looks so good.

I have no idea what I'll be doing tomorrow. We have parent-teacher conferences this week so we have Thursday and Friday off from work. We really don't work much this month. I can't complain but I probably will when I get my next paycheck. On the plus side of that, I don't have to pay for health insurance anymore, so at least I don't have to worry about that.

October 17, 2015

 Most of my day was devoted to working on my collection development project. Or thinking about the project. Or avoiding the project. Either way, that was my day. I have a newfound respect for librarians that have to buy books, especially one at a time. I totally get the appeal of buying packages to avoid having pick out individual books. I spent hours today reading through syllabi and reading book reviews trying to find Sociology-related books. I'm lucky that it is a fairly broad subject area but it is still narrow enough to make it a bit of a challenge. Added to that is the goal of not having any books over five years old. I'm trying to be less selective, however, because I have $2600 to spend. So far I have found eighteen books and spent $358. A drop in the bucket. With an average of about $20 per book that means I have over 100 books to go. Good grief.

In the process of looking for books I came across Jane Elliot's anti-racism experiment with her third grade class back in the 60s. She had the idea after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and she was struggling with how to explain it to her class. Her idea was to divide her class by eye color. One day the brown-eyed kids were made to feel more important and the blue-eyed kids were inferior. The next day it switched. I ended up watching two documentaries, one of the original experiment and one where she did the same thing with a group of college kids. It was shocking how quickly the kids changed, assuming their new roles, either seeing themselves as inferior or seeing the other group as inferior. It was pretty powerful.

I called it a night after dinner and played video games. Like last night I started with Minecraft and then switched over to Creativerse. In Creativerse I did more digging and exploring, upgraded some things, started a garden, dug out more to make my house bigger, and decorated the outside a bit. While doing that I watched YouTube videos and two Kevin Hart specials. Not a bad night.

I forgot to mention this but yesterday morning I watched Tremors 5. I had no idea there was even a plan to make another movie in the franchise and there it was on Netflix. I own the box set of the first four so of course I had to watch the fifth one. And it was surprisingly good. I'll have to go back and watch some of the other sequels but I think this one was better than some of the previous ones. That was surprising enough but the co-star of the movie was Jamie Kennedy. I didn't even know he was still doing stuff. I'd watch it again.

Tomorrow I want to do my reading for the upcoming week and maybe add another twenty books to my collection development project. Lofty goals.

October 16, 2015

 Today was not a very productive day. I did things but not anything I planned to do. Those things being finding Sociology books and working on my research paper. That is probably going to come back to bite me in the near future. I have fallen out of the school mode and I've still got two classes to worry about.

I emailed my metadata professor today to see if there was anything I could do to earn 0.05% to bring me up from an 'A-' to an 'A' and she said not to worry about it. She had already rounded my grade up to a 96% and even though it isn't reflected in the unofficial grades on Canvas it will show up as the final grade. That was good to hear. Now I can officially stop stressing about that class. It feels pretty good.

I called to cancel/renew my XM radio today. Every time I go into it fully prepared to cancel but then they give me a good deal and I keep it going. I'm a little afraid that if I cancel I'll immediately be back in the mood to listen to the radio again. I also want to see how far they'll go to keep me from canceling. I always stop when I get five months for five dollars a month but I wonder how much lower they go. My favorite part about calling is when the person on the phone reads me my email address because it always catches them by surprise. You can tell they start to read it and it hits them a split second later that it is ridiculous. The lady today had that moment of hesitation in the middle and then laughed a little and said it was a pretty good email address.

The sub-group of my collection development group, the one writing the collection development policy, sent out their finished policy for the rest of the group to look over. They sent out a rough draft earlier in the week maybe to me and one of the other group members to look over. I gave a little feedback on that version and on this one most of my feedback was just grammatical and formatting stuff, which they appreciated. Now I need to step up and finish my part of the project, selecting Sociology books.

I picked two new wallpapers for my monitors today. I kept the cupcake and typewriter ones and I would have kept the turtle one but it disappeared and I couldn't find where I saved it. I added a Halloween drawing that looks really cool and a Fall picture from the Rocky Mountain National Park that is beautiful. I put it on the top monitor and I spent a lot of time today just staring at it and pretending I was there, walking on the trail.

I listened to the new Coheed and Cambria CD several times today. Even as I write this entry. It is either their first non-concept album in a long time or their first one ever, which would also constitute as a long time. I like it. And it helps that I don't have to try and pay attention to the story being told across all the songs, like their previous albums. Although there could be a story, I guess, but I tune most of the lyrics anyway, so I wouldn't know. It's a good CD, though.

Tonight I played a little bit of Minecraft and then I downloaded Creativerse and tried that out for awhile. It is a game that is free to play this weekend and I didn't know anything about it until today. I was watching a video on YouTube that was a recording of a Minecraft livestream and the two guys briefly talked about one of the guys who used to play on their server but had recently switched over to playing Ark because he got in early on that and his YouTube channel exploded in popularity. That led them to a discussion of only playing one game, like Minecraft, or branching out and trying other things. And if you only played Minecraft, maybe adding mods in and not just playing the vanilla version of the game. Then one of the guys mentioned Creativerse being free this weekend so I looked into it. It looks like a fancy version of Minecraft in terms of graphics and they throw in some more hi-tech kind of stuff.

Despite looking pretty cool, I will admit I was little skeptical when I first got in the game. I really liked the look of it but I wasn't completely convinced. I'm kinda into it now though. It's better once you get the first death out of the way. And then the several after that. It also helps once you're able to start crafting more things. My goal now is to get the last few ingredients for the obsidian digging tool because that unlocks the hoe or plow tool so I can plant the lettuce and turnip seeds I found. Farms are usually one of my first goals when I create a new world in Minecraft and that seems to be the same case here. Eventually it would be cool to build a house but I've dug out a pretty cool little place in the side of a hill that I'm happy with at the moment. I will probably end up buying the game. Not only is it pretty fun but it is also 50% off this weekend. It seems to be one of the most polished early access games I have played, definitely more so than Minecraft was when I bought it way back in the day. I don't see Creativerse dethroning Minecraft as my go-to escape but I am sufficiently intrigued.

Tomorrow, school stuff. I need to pick out some Sociology books and I need to find some sources for my research paper. Those are the only two things I should be concerned with.

October 15, 2015

 Last night I put my cutout in my car and this morning I left about ten minutes early so I could get to work before the librarian. And it worked because I beat her by a little less than ten minutes. Last night one of the kindergarten teachers, a fifth grade teacher, resource teacher, and para went to the school and decorated the window of the library and hung a sheet from the roof of the building. The sheet was originally hung up by the kindergarten teacher when the resource teacher turned fifty. They crossed out her name and wrote the librarian's name.

When I got to school I put my cutout in the library and that reminded the custodian that he knew where the cardboard cutout was of the old fourth grade teacher, so he went and got it and we put that one up, too. There was also a cake that one of the office ladies made and black balloons everywhere. When the librarian got there she loved it. Most of the staff were wearing black, including myself. I opted for a black hoodie instead of my usual green one. Awhile after that we all went into the gym and the principal had the whole school sing the librarian happy birthday. After that I went back to the library and gave the librarian the cross stitch I made. I didn't want to do it when everyone was around because I didn't want the attention. The fifth grade teacher ended up coming in, and then the principal, so they saw it, but that was better than everyone being there. The librarian ended up hanging it above the printer.

The rest of the day was pretty boring. When I didn't have classes in the lab, most of my day was spent editing pictures for the end of the year slideshow. I made it through all of the ones I found on the shared drive. I probably won't start asking for baby pictures until we come back from winter break but we'll see. If I can't find any more projects to work on I might see if I can get the pictures early. Or I could just work on schoolwork.

After work I didn't really do much and for dinner I had the second half of my Chipotle burrito. It was really good. Better than the first half. The rest of my night was spent watching YouTube videos, playing Minecraft, and finishing the first season of iZombie. In Minecraft I took a break from making minecart tracks and started digging a branch mine because I was in the mood to just zone out and collect resources. Not think about building. Minecraft is my happy place. Although I have been playing too much this week and I need to shift my focus back to school stuff.

Grades for the metadata crosswalk and the last discussion were posted today and I got 100% on both. Unfortunately that only brought my grade up to a 95.95%. That is 0.05% or 0.15 points away from an 'A'. Frustrating. Not counting the four and a half points I missed for turning in the assignment that I completely forgot about several days late (and I got 100% on the assignment, which I did in one night), I only missed one point in the class. That was on a discussion where I posted three times instead of four or more. Even though the discussions call for you to post once and then respond to two other posts. And my posts were long, even if there were only three. So missing a whole point for that really sucks because that is what screwed me over in the end. It's disappointing knowing that I did all the work for an 'A' but made one mistake and lost it. I don't think the grades are final yet so there is still a small chance that she would give me 0.15 points. A professor last year gave me 0.20 I think when my group grade dropped me down to an 'A-', so there is a precedent, but that was a different professor and this time it was my own fault for losing points. At least I know I earned an 'A', even if the transcript says 'A-'.

Now I'm going to go to bed because it is late and I'm tired. I have the day off from work tomorrow so my goal is to get some schoolwork done. I need to make some serious progress on my research paper and I would like to start finding books for my collection development project. If I could accomplish both of those things it would be awesome. I'll settle for one but I'll shoot for both.