December 14, 2017

 This morning I did all the normal morning things and then I went to work. I spent the first two hours upstairs and I didn't really accomplish much. I read articles, listened to music, and watched a few videos. One of them was about how they used VR to create a 3D model of Auschwitz to show that a Nazi security guard couldn't have been ignorant to what was happening at the camp. The guard was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of 170,000 people and was sentenced to five years in prison (he was 94 years old at the time). He appealed the conviction but died before it went back to trial.

I had walkthroughs after that and in between spent my time sitting at the table behind the desk and looking at library magazines. I also had a conversation with the teen library and we decided to cancel the two classes we couldn't find instructors for. It kind of sucks but we're both dealing with other things and it wasn't worth the stress of trying to track someone down.

I was off desk for an hour after lunch and I sent some emails, printed my timesheet, and looked at library magazines.

Then I was on desk for two hours and it was a little overwhelming for a little while. For over an hour I had a chat with someone trying to reserve a room. It would have been maybe a five minute conversation in person or a ten minute conversation on the phone, but in chat, over an hour. It was crazy and it was constant for that whole time. While that was happening I helped a couple patrons with printing, answered the phone, reviewed some instructions one of the other librarians wrote about room reservation, and looked up and emailed the history of a couple street names to someone who sent a request last night. I think the streets were actually named after the person making the request and his father. Interesting.

I needed some non-computer time after all that so I spent the last hour of work back at the table looking at library magazines. I think I finished two magazines. Progress.

When I got home I played a little CoD: WW2 while my dinner cooked, watched YouTube videos while I ate dinner, played more CoD: WW2, and now I'm back to being distracted by YouTube videos while trying to write this.

I don't go into work until eleven o'clock tomorrow but I have to wake up early for the health coach call. But I'll get to sleep in on Saturday, so I'm looking forward to that.

December 13, 2017

 This morning I had to wake up earlier than I would have liked after only about six hours of sleep. But I did get up, ironed a couple pairs of pants, and got ready. I ended up getting up earlier than I needed to but I figured better safe than sorry because I didn't want to miss the furnace guy.

He showed up shortly before 9:30AM and it didn't take him too long to do his thing. He said my it only needed a little bit of cleaning and he said it looked like my furnace was pretty new. Once less thing to worry about.

After he left I played CoD: WW2 for awhile. I fear the player-base is already disappearing. To be fair it was a Wednesday morning and most PC gamers were probably at work or school, but it is still a little disappointing. But I got a few good games out of it.

I got to work at noon and spent the first hour upstairs because there wasn't any room downstairs. I sent a few emails, caught up on my time sheet, read a few news articles, and wrote kudos for my coworkers.

I was on desk for an hour after that and helped a couple patrons with printing, answered one question in chat, and worked on my homebound lists. A productive hour. I was then off desk for an hour and spent that time reading through our emergency quick guide to get ready for our meeting, and looked through a library magazine.

Our department meeting lasted the entire two hours and we covered a lot of information. I spent most of it freezing because the air conditioner was on for some reason and it was blowing right down my collar.

Because of the meeting I had my dinner break at five o'clock instead of four o'clock, which is a much better dinner time but it was also weird. When I got to my Mom's house I helped her troubleshoot her TV because apparently Dish had been acting up since last night and she was only able to watch three channels. Turns out we just needed to unplug the main receiver thing.

The real weird part of a five o'clock dinner was driving back to the library in the dark. It felt way later than six o'clock. Or super early. Just an observation. The good part of going to dinner an hour later was that it made the rest of the night go by that much faster.

I had two back-to-back walkthroughs when I got back to work and then the rest of the night was just hanging out at the desk. I helped a patron figure out a printing issue and then spent most of the night working on homebound stuff. And then near the end of the night I kind of got lost on Novelist and Amazon just looking at books I was interested in reading. I also went upstairs before we closed to bag up all the treats (because today was treat day) but two circulation people were just finishing up the process. So I just stood there and talked to them while they finished up.

When I got home I watched a bunch of YouTube videos and eventually got around to writing this. And I've been distracted by the videos. But I've finally reached the end of this and now I can record my audio journal and go to bed. Hooray for bed.

December 12, 2017

 Well December is flying by. Once again another month is disappearing.

This morning I woke up after about six and a half hours of sleep, laid in bed for awhile, got up and ironed my pants, got ready, and went to work. I hit the lights just right on my way and got to the library a few minutes early even though I left a few minutes late. Not bad.

I did all the usual opening stuff, including sharpening a bunch of pencils, which I haven't done in quite awhile because I had sharpened all the pencils we had.

When we opened I was on desk for two hours. I was supposed to have the first two hours off desk but one of the librarians called in sick so the schedule had to be shifted around a bit. I spent that time reading news articles, re-formatting my room schedule template because I got confused with the saving of it last time apparently. I also got the briefest of starts on homebound stuff. I had an uneventful walkthrough after that and eventually went to dinner.

After lunch I went upstairs for two hours and read the last two chapters of the book we have been slowly reading and discussing at our department meetings. It's a good book with some good information but I'll be honest, it has taken us so long to get through it that I have forgotten pretty much all of it. Including what I read today. That might say more for my memory than the amount of time it has taken to read the book.

I was on desk for an hour following that and that hour completely disappeared. At one point I looked up and thirty-eight minutes had gone by and it felt like maybe five minutes had gone by. It was really weird. I helped a couple patrons through email, read a couple articles, and kind of worked on my homebound stuff.

I ended the day with a walkthrough. After the walkthrough I sent an email, made a brief post on our department blog, and started looking through another library magazine from my stack. And then the day was over.

After work I stopped by Target to get peanut butter and tortillas, and then headed home. With my night I ate dinner, watched YouTube videos, and played CoD: WW2. I encountered another blatant hacker. It was on Operation Neptune and he was headshotting people through all objects, with pistols and smgs from across the map. He was bragging about how many times he has been banned, which is kind of annoying because you'd hope once would be enough. My team stopped playing, reported him, and then just chatted amongst ourselves while we waited for time to run out. Other than that experience, I had a lot of good games. I got in the top three several times, which is not a frequent occurrence.

It is now after 12:30AM because I've been distracted by 8 Out Of 10 Cats while writing this. I don't work until noon tomorrow but I have to wake up early for furnace servicing. Tomorrow is going to be a long day.

December 11, 2017

 Last night I was watching a streamer who I subbed to a week or so ago. She plays music and at least when I have been watching, usually has around 100 people watching. She was going to get off for the night but decided to play a couple more songs. And then someone raided/hosted her with around 1100 viewers. And it was magical. She went from being pretty low-key and then the raid happened and she flipped the switch. A consummate performer, she rolled right into a high energy, multi-layered song with her guitar and looper, and the chat exploded. She held over 1000 people for that song and she maintained over 500 for several songs after that. I've joined in on raids before but I've never been hanging out in a smaller channel when such a big raid hits them. And I've never seen someone capitalize on a raid to such an impressive degree. By the end of it she had gained over 330 new followers and around twenty or thirty new subscribers. It was cool to watch.

Last night I got seven hours of sleep, because that's apparently what I needed. I spent my morning playing CoD: WW2 and I got in a match with the most blatant hacker I have ever seen. He had a diamond LMG and he pretty much spent the whole game just standing the middle of the map, turning in circles, and shooting everyone through walls on the other side of the map. They ended up going sixty-four and one. Maybe the one death was an attempt to make it look realistic. Tonight I got in another match, on the same map, with a different hacker. This time they were on my team and it really took the fun out of the game. We basically just ran around and captured the points in Hardpoint to get the game over with, all while chatting with the other team and apologizing for having such a horrible teammate.

After lunch I went over to my Mom's house to install her new video doorbell. It was kind of a pain in the butt. First I had to figure out which breaker the doorbell was on. You'd think it was on the Entry breaker, but it was on the Kitchen breaker. Maybe because the doorbell itself (not the outside button) shares a wall with kitchen. Regardless, I got it figure out so I didn't shock myself. The hardest part was getting the angled base plate things level and screwed into the wall. I had to use two of them stacked on top of each other, one to angle the doorbell up and the other to angle it to the left. And there wasn't a hole to screw threw, there was a slot, which I guess is convenient if you need to make it slightly off-center or something, but it my case it was just annoying trying to get everything lined up and level. But I managed it, and I got it all set up with the app, and it works. When it senses motion outside within your specified range, you get a notification on your phone and you can go to the live video to see what is outside.

The most annoying part of the entire process by far, however, was that I put the dogs outside so I could keep the front door open, and two out of the three kept scratching at the door to be let in. This happened persistently at random intervals for the entire time I was working. So annoying.

A quick aside. My laptop just shut off randomly and I lost a paragraph. Not sure what happened but let's hope it was a fluke and won't happen again. Moving on.

My Mom got back right as I was finishing so I was able to download the app on her phone and show her how to use it. She seemed pretty happy with it and I think the learning curve is pretty small, even though the app isn't perfect.

When I got home I played a little CoD: WW2 before making dinner, which consisted of rice and roasted vegetables. While the vegetables roasted I played a few more rounds of CoD: WW2 because why not. While I ate I watched YouTube videos. I'm really behind after dog-sitting last week because I didn't watch a lot of videos last week. I probably won't be caught up for awhile.

After dinner I played more CoD: WW2 and by the end of the night I was able to prestige for the second time. I played a few games after that and it was a bit rough not having the loadouts I am used to. I need to jump into War and gain some quick levels. Even though they seemed to have nerfed the points I still think it's one of the quickest ways to level up. And it's fun.

It's now eleven o'clock and I need to record my audio journal and get to bed. I open tomorrow morning, which I'm not really looking forward to, but I'm off at five o'clock, so that's something to look forward to.

December 10, 2017

 I got a full eight hours of sleep last night and it was pretty great. I woke up feeling rested, which is a rare occurrence. I spent my morning watching videos and clicking around the internet before getting reading, eating lunch, and leaving for work at 12:05PM, which was the correct time, unlike yesterday.

I got to work slightly early and was able to count the drawer fairly quickly thanks to the fact that I got all the change yesterday. There was actually quite a bit extra that I had to put in the safe. After that I turned on a bunch of computers and checked email before we opened.

We were doing the exam thing again today so I made coffee. It sat there all day. No one drank it. When I was cleaning it up I tried it again. It's not gross but it's not good. It still smells really good but it's not something I want to acquire a taste for. I also singed my tongue a little bit. Not to the point of burning it but to the point of being aware of it. Kind of annoying.

Most of my day was spent working on my catalog tutorial, with occasional breaks to read news articles or make a few formatting tweaks to my room schedule template. I made decent progress on the tutorial. I'm almost through the slides covering tips for searching and then I'll move onto account stuff. I think this will definitely be a tutorial that needs to be split up into at least a couple because it's covering a lot of information.

And that was my day at work, along with occasionally helping a patron and talking to coworkers. Most of the day went my excruciatingly slowly. There were a couple times where I thought I was going to fall asleep at the desk, and I wasn't even tired, it was just warm and quiet and nothing was going on.

After work I went to my Mom's house and we went to the Chinese buffet for her belated birthday dinner. My sister's husband apparently found someone throwing up in the bathroom sink and I'm hoping it was related to a previous illness and not something they ate at the buffet.

We went back to the house afterward for cake, ice cream, and presents. My sister also gave my Mom and I her yearly homemade Christmas card and it is really impressive. Among other things, the front is embossed with snowflakes. It's cool.

I got home sometime after nine o'clock and spent the rest of the night watching 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown, YouTube videos, and livestreams, and clicking around the internet. I thought about playing CoD: WW2 but I didn't. I'll play tomorrow. Probably. Before and/or after I go install my Mom's new doorbell.

December 9, 2017

 Last night I slept with both my space heaters in my bedroom and it was quite cozy. Despite not wanting to leave my bed (and leaving my house later than normal because I was got it in my head that I was still at my Mom's house, in terms of when I needed to leave), I still made it to work on time. The counting of the drawer went fairly well but I did end up requesting sixty dollars in change because they ended up with a surplus of twenty dollar bills yesterday.

For the first two hours after we opened I read news articles and tweaked the room schedule template. The tweaking was because my coworker accidentally saved over it so the blank template was no longer a blank template. I ended up having it saved with the latest update in one of my folders but the first two backups I checked were older versions, so I decided to redo the latest edits. And then I found the right file. But I ended up keeping some of what I came up with today.

Later in the day I worked on the template even more. This time I added a few more sheets to cover the weekend room schedule, which includes Saturday and Sunday on one page. It requires running two reports, pasting each on their own sheet in Excel, and doing the same sort of editing on a third sheet where all the information is imported. The best part of this round of editing, is that I came up with a few different combinations of the TODAY formula that will, in theory, automatically update the date line for the printed schedule. People kept forgetting to manually update the date line so I figured I would automate it. The regular daily one updates the day of the week as well as the date. Saturday does the same and then Sunday does the day and date for tomorrow (because we print them on Saturday).

The other big chunk of my day was spent working on my catalog tutorial. I made progress. Slow progress. We'll see if I can get anywhere with it tomorrow. I'm kind of tired of tutorials. But I'm in charge of making a whole bunch of them. Hooray.

We had a passive thing today for studying, an “exam cram” because finals are next week. There wasn't really anything set up though or instructions left by the person in charge of it, so we didn't really do anything. And then while I was taking my lunch break upstairs, a patron asked about the coffee that was mentioned on the calendar. When I got back I made a pot, put it out, and then no one drank it. It just sat there for five hours. I might make some tomorrow at the beginning of the day and we'll see if it goes over any better.

After work I went to the grocery store. The parking lot was packed but I kept my head down and made it out quickly. When I got home I ate dinner and watched highlights from 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown because that show is great. I'm currently be distracted by an episode. And before that I was distracted by a different episode. It has taken me forever to write this.

I played more CoD: WW2 tonight and it was pretty fun. There have been updates recently and they have definitely tweaked some things. Some guns seem worse, others seem like laser beams. I also think they buffed the turret guns on tanks, or as someone in game chat put it, they nerfed the fun. I think they also reduced the overall points for the War game mode. I feel like I was getting a lot more last week. But like everything else, it could all be in my head.

It's now after 12:30AM and I need to record my audio journal so I can go to bed. I work at noon and then after work we're going to have a belated dinner for my Mom's birthday. But none of that can happen unless I go to bed, so let's get a move on.

December 8, 2017

 I got eight hours of sleep last night which was pretty great. When I got up I got ready, fed the dogs, and then put air in my tires. As I was decompressing my compressor I got a call from the delivery people. It was just after ten o'clock but they said they were about twenty or twenty-five minutes away. So I finished up with the compressor and headed to my house.

When I got there I moved the couch and footstool a bit, wanting to provide as much of a walkway as possible, and I turned on the lights in the basement. Then I listened to music and read a book. The delivery guys showed up around eleven o'clock, so about thirty minutes after they said they'd be there, but still an hour before the 12:00PM – 4:00PM window I had originally received. Not bad. And it only took them about half an hour to get the washer and dryer moved in and set up. They carried them in with an interesting strap and harness setup, with the appliance balanced on straps between them, it was pretty cool. And now I have a washer and dryer. It's pretty exciting.

After they left I called and scheduled a service appointment for my furnace next Wednesday. When I got to my house this morning it was forty-seven degrees inside. That's a little ridiculous and I'm kind of glad I've been staying at my Mom's this week during the really cold weather. I also called to cancel/renew my XM subscription for the regular discounted rate. Why pay twenty dollars a month when you can pay five dollars a month. And this time I got it for six months instead of five, so I'm good until June.

I did laundry when I got back to my Mom's. I know I have a washer and dryer now but I still need to get detergent and dryer sheets. I thought about going today but when I was walking backwards with my air compressor I nearly tripped, which caused my right foot to go up and my toes to flex, slamming my broken toe into the top of my shoe. I was then back to limping and didn't want to walk all the way through the store like that.

I spent the rest of my afternoon watching the original Star Trek series, clicking around the internet, and working on my texting spreadsheet. For dinner I decided to pick up a sandwich from Jimmy John's, a drink from Sonic, and fries, soft pretzel sticks, and a frozen hot chocolate from Dairy Queen. Too much food, and I still feel it hours later. But I'll survive. While I ate dinner I watched Psych: The Movie for a second time. I really enjoy it and it's definitely going into my Christmas rotation.

After the movie I packed up all my stuff because my Mom said she would be back home by midnight. Once I was all loaded up, I headed home. One of the neighbors' cars was parked particularly far over the center of the driveway and I ended up having to park in the middle of my driveway. So, the first thing I did after unloading my car was write out the note (which I drafted earlier this evening) and put it in an envelope under their windshield wiper. Hopefully it will survive the night so they'll be able to read it and, fingers crossed, they'll start parking fully on their side of the driveway.

When that was done, I tried to play CoD: WW2 but it said something about corrupt files and having to reset my rank and wipe all my unlocks. Umm, no thank you. I manually downloaded all the updates, and while I verified the local files I recorded my audio journal. Then I restarted the computer and after all that, I was able to get into the game. I was really glad I didn't have to go back to the beginning because I'm creeping up on reaching second prestige. If I can get there before Christmas I'll probably go for it because there will be an influx of new players so I won't have to worry about the player-base disappearing immediately after I prestige and go back to rank one.

It's now close to midnight and I need to go to bed because I have to work in the morning. I'm not looking forward to waking up but maybe I can have a productive day.