March 19, 2018

Last night I woke up at least a few times, which was annoying. Sleeping through the night is always preferred.

It was raining this morning and I finally got to use my new umbrella. By the time I got to work it wasn't a downpour or anything, but it was still a successful test of keeping me dry. I have talked to the teen librarian a couple times about it and she was actually hanging out by the reference desk when I got to work just to ask how it went.

My boss tried out the paper footprint for the desk this morning and her sons were there to help. At one point something wasn't going right and her old son, who came in to help on Friday with the curved pieces, said maybe they should wait for me to get there. My boss looked at him with mild frustration, and said “You know I'm his boss, right?” She thought it was pretty funny.

For the first two hours of work I went out an pulled books for homebound (as well as for my green display), and I was able to get all of them checked out. I was on desk for two hours after that and I was able to get all of the bookmarks printed, cut out, stuff in the books, and the books stuffed into bags. I also updated my spreadsheets and had a little bit of time to look at the news.

When I go back from lunch I had two walkthroughs, during which I refilled the DVD display and added books to empty book stands on several displays. Today was a popular day for displays.

After my walkthroughs it was a little crowded at the desk with two librarians and an assistant so I went up to the cubicle. On the way I stopped and talked to the teen librarian about the description I wrote for the next adulting class, and then we talked about summer reading books and the remodeling project. When I made it to the cubicle I worked on creating a more efficient homebound bookmark. At the moment I have to update my spreadsheet for each patron with the author, book title, date out, date due, and eventually comments. Then I open up Publisher for my bookmark template and type in the patron's name, book title, author, and due date for each book. It's very redundant and time consuming. My idea today was to create the bookmarks on a separate sheet in each of the Excel files for each patron. The idea is that I will update the spreadsheet, copy and paste that information onto a second sheet (that will make it easier to grab the information because it will always be located on the same rows), and then the information on the second sheet will be pulled onto the third sheet that has the bookmark template. The formulas were pretty easy to figure out (the trickiest involving separating the authors' first and last names (because they're listed last name first on the main sheet) and then putting them back together the correct way because that's how they're listed on the bookmark). The tedious part was formatting the bookmarks so that I could get four, evenly spaced, bookmarks on each page. It took awhile but I think I'm happy with it. I kind of want to redo the whole layout, rather than just recreating the old one, but I'll worry about that later. Now I just have to create all the blank templates for each patron. My thought is that I will create the same number of bookmarks for each patron as the number of books they currently get, so I won't have to worry about creating new ones each month. The annoying part of this is that when I create copies I have to adjust the formulas for each bookmark because they don't copy over correctly. There is a lot of tweaking, and it will take time, but in the long run it will save me a lot of time, and it will be less stress on my wrists and fingers.

For the last hour of the day I was on the desk but ten or fifteen minutes of that was spent running around. A patron called and asked for a book. We had a copy available and he asked if we could pull it because he was on his way. I said we could and I headed downstairs to grab it so I could give it to Circulation and have them put it on the 1-day holds cart. The book was listed as a new book but I couldn't find it in the new book area. I went to tell someone in Circulation that if the patron came in to let him know I couldn't find the book but that I was going to put a hold on it for him. Right after explaining that I turned around and the patron was walking up to the desk. I explained the same thing to him and he was appreciative that I put in that much effort. As almost an afterthought I went back up to the desk via the stairs that would take me by the area the book would be if it weren't new. And I found the book on the shelf, sans New sticker, which is why it was shelved up there, even though it is still listed as new in the catalog. So I went back downstairs and walked back and forth a couple times looking for the patron before finally catching him coming down from upstairs. He was really happy that I had found the book. As was I.

On my way home I stopped and got gas, and then ate dinner and watched videos when I got home. After dinner I got everything set up to play with my new drawing tablet. Everything worked beautifully for maybe fifteen minutes, and then I decided to install a color set from a Bob Ross painting. I don't think the version of the software I have supports adding color sets because I couldn't find an option in the program. So I decided to drop it directly into the color sets folder. And that broke the software. It would immediately crash after flashing the opening screen. When I took the color set out of the folder, everything was fine. I tried it one more time just to make sure and the same thing happened, but this time the color set I added completely disappeared and the software was still crashing. I tried repairing the files and well as uninstalling and reinstalling a couple times, but nothing worked. Online I have found a number of solutions for different versions of the software but nothing that has been helpful for my version. It's frustrating.

I ended up playing CoD: WW2 but had trouble enjoying it because I was still annoyed with the software issue. I had planned on spending my night drawing. But nope.

And now it is late and I have to open tomorrow, so it will be another long day after a lack of sleep. Hooray.

March 18, 2018

I only got six and a half hours of sleep last night but after spending most of the afternoon in bed yesterday, I woke up feeling pretty rested.

I spent most of my morning doing laundry and watching tutorials for the new painting program I got yesterday. I wasn't really able to follow any of them because I don't have my drawing tablet yet (it should be here tomorrow), but the tutorials were pretty informative.

This afternoon I messed with an audio program that I got for a dollar in a Humble Bundle today. It came with an EDM loop pack, so I worked on creating the beginning of an EDM song. I'll never finish it but it was fun to play around with.

Later in the afternoon I played a little CoD: WW2. I had a couple games of War where I obviously had a team that had very little experience. It was mildly frustrating but I played well and had a good time. I also got a robot charm for my guns in one of my loot boxes. The charms came out with the St. Patrick's Day event and I like the idea of them. But I think I really only see them at the beginning of the match. Once the game actually starts I'm so focused on looking around for bad guys that I don't really pay any attention to my gun. But they're still fun.

I ate a late dinner because I had to roast vegetables and make rice, and then spent the rest of the night watching videos and livestreams. Overall, I felt better about today than yesterday. Yesterday just wasn't a good day. Today was more of a typical weekend day. That's not to say it was great, because I need to be better with my free time, but it was a definite improvement over yesterday. Baby steps.

And now, once again, I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed. I could have easily taken a nap this afternoon but I didn't, so my eyelids are feeling pretty heavy.

March 17, 2018

Today could have been better. I woke up this morning after about seven hours of sleep and spent the morning watching videos and clicking around the internet. I also ate dry Cheerios using chopsticks. That's a bit more challenging than popcorn or Cheetos.

At two o'clock, I was bored, unmotivated, had a haircut, and nothing sounded interesting, so I crawled back into bed. For the next four hours I laid there, listening to music, napping off and on, and occasionally playing a game on my phone. There were a few different times where I thought about getting up but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Instead I just rolled over and went back to sleep.

I did finally get up around six o'clock, mostly just so I could make dinner. This included making cornbread. The last time I made it I did it from scratch, and forgot the sugar (even though I got the sugar out and had it sitting right in front of me. Tonight I used a box mix, so no need to worry about forgetting something. It tasted pretty good but I think I over-mixed it because it was very crumbly. Live and learn. I'm just glad it tasted good.

After dinner I played CoD: WW2, took a break to take a shower, and then played some more. I discovered the Shipment playlist tonight, which is just random gamemodes on the updated Shipment map, which is a classic CoD map. It is super tiny and when you get twelve people on it, it makes for some chaotic gameplay. I had a lot of fun with it, as long as the teams weren't horribly balanced. There were a couple games like that, and it definitely takes the fun out of it when you can't take two steps without getting shot from three different angles.

It is now late, and I'm not exactly tired after laying in bed all afternoon, but laying in bed does sound like the most appealing thing to do, so I'm going to record my audio journal and go back to bed.

March 16, 2018

Last night I woke up to the sound of heavy rain. It took a lot not to get up and check my basement. I did in the morning however, and the window well was bone dry. I still need to get a window well cover.

My day at work didn't go exactly as planned. Pretty much my entire morning was spent working on creating a paper “footprint” for our new reference desk. We want to get an idea of what kind of space it will actually take up in the new area. The main issue was that two pieces of the desk are curved, and there weren't specific measurement for those pieces in the specification catalog we had access to. And those pieces would need to be drawn at an angle to get them to fit on the butcher paper we were using. My boss ended up calling her teenage son to bring a protractor (and she also needed him to bring some papers she needed) because he is currently taking geometry. Early in the process one of the librarian's suggested projecting the drawing of the desk on the wall to scale, taping the butcher paper on the wall, and tracing it. She also offered to call her husband, who's really good at math (and who later on quickly wrote down the equation needed to figure out the actual dimensions of the curved desk when we only knew the degree of the curve and an assumed depth). After an hour or two my boss's son also suggested projecting the drawing on the wall, so I said screw it and that's what we did. With the help of the teen librarian we got it traced, cut out, and laid out across three tables in one of our meeting rooms. I'm not convinces the drawing were entirely accurate because our paper desk didn't quite come out the size I think it should have. But it should be close enough to at leave give us an idea.

In the brief period I was on desk before going to lunch a patron asked if we had headphones to loan out. I said we didn't and she pointed out the headphones we had for our computers, and I explained those her just for our computers and we didn't have extra to lend out. She then asked where the restrooms were and I directed her to them. Not too long after that I got a call from the director and she asked if we had headphones to lend out. I told her that we didn't and that I assumed it was due to them having a tendency to walk off, but said she could call the tech desk and see if they had a different explanation. She said my explanation sounded about right and thanked me for the information. The admin office is right next to the restrooms. I kind of feel like the patron detoured to the admin office and ended up talking to the director about headphones. It could be a complete coincidence but it doesn't seem very likely.

I was just amused at the idea of this lady not getting the answer she wanted, going all the way up to the director, and then the director referred back to me. I appreciate that. At the movie theater we were always the ones on the front line, explaining and enforcing policy. But as soon as a patron got annoyed they could go to a manager and without missing a beat, the manager would throw us under the bus and bend over backward for the patron. It was incredibly frustrating. At the library, I'm pretty high up, so that helps, but there is still the atmosphere of respecting other people's knowledge and opinions, whether they're a volunteer, page, or higher up on the ladder. It's just nice feeling respected.

Most of my afternoon was spent working on my homebound lists. I had a couple moments of working on the paper desk project, and a walthrough, and helping the closing librarian with printing off the room schedule for the weekend. But other than that, as a few news articles, it was all homebound stuff. I pretty much finished the lists, but I didn't have a chance to go out and pull books. I should have plenty of time to do that on Monday, my only fear is that too many of the books will have been checked out. For the most part I pick books based on their current availability, but that information is no longer current as soon as I put it down on paper, and especially if it takes awhile to actually go out and look for the books.

On my way home I stopped by the grocery store. There were still a lot of cars in the parking lot but it wasn't nearly as busy as it was yesterday. I picked up all the stuff I needed, and I also ran into one of my Mom's old friends and one of my old daycare teachers (same person). I haven't seen her in at least a decade probably, and it took a few seconds for us to recognize each other, which was weird, but it was cool to see her.

When I got home I ate dinner (which included a baked potato with salsa because that has sounded good for awhile). After dinner I continued watching videos for awhile before playing CoD: WW2. All of my mojo from last night had definitely worn out. And I would say that was mostly the internet connection not being in my favor. I was back to riddling players with bullets and then they turn and take me down with one or two. It's annoying but back to normal, so I'm used to it. And I had fun, mostly.

Tomorrow, who knows what I'll do. Probably read a little and play video games. I also think I have all the ingredients for cornbread, so that might be a thing that happens. I need some redemption after the last time I made it when I forgot to put the sugar in. We'll see what my motivation is like tomorrow.

March 15, 2018

All the usual morning stuff happened and then I went to work. Yesterday it was in the twenties when I went to work and it was seventy when I left. Today it was in the mid-forties when I went to work, which is much more pleasant. And to skip ahead for a moment, it was eight degrees when I left. I'm really hoping we don't jump from Winter right into Summer. A slow transition would be nice.

Anyway, when I got to work I did the opening things, refilled audiobooks and tax instruction books, and sharpened a few pencils. And then I was on desk for two hours. A busy two hours. I got a call from a substitute teacher (who is the husband of a third grade teacher I used to work with) and I pulled a book for him, which he picked up a few minutes later. I also helped out one of my old scout leaders who was conducting interviews at the library today. He had forgotten a few documents so he called someone and they emailed them to our reference email address, and then I printed them off. He gave me money for them and I was able to give him change thanks to the money I was given the other day by the older patron who wanted me to buy a Coca Cola. I also talked to the teen librarian about book ideas for summer reading prizes, and the one-on-one tech trainer about part of our schedule for the Fall semester. And when all of that wasn't happening, I dealt with emails, answered phone calls, and read some library-related articles. I got a voicemail from one patron (because I was working with another patron and couldn't answer the phone) and he wanted to request that we borrow a book. I called him back to let him know that we already had it, but it was checked out, so I had put him on hold for it. He was pretty happy about it. But yeah, it was a very full two hours.

I had a walkthrough after that and then spent some time coming up with a longer list of possible book prizes. The hard part is trying to find books that only cost around five dollars.

I was off desk for two hours after lunch and that time kind of disappeared. I talked to one of my fellow librarians for awhile because we were both trying to avoid doing other things. To that end, I also went down to the basement to dig out some giant coloring pages, to be used as a potential time filler for the craft class tonight. And I read more of the pre-release Supergirl comic. There was some actual work stuff in there as well, but nothing memorable enough for me to write in my notebook.

Then I was on desk for an hour, which also went by fast. I started reading a long article about misinformation but didn't finish it because I was distracted by other work stuff. Like helping a lady find books about the Civil War.

For the last hour of the day I had a walkthrough, which involved refilling tax forms, rearranging my green display, and refilling my audiobook display. While working on the audiobook display I got a call from the assistant on desk who said there was a patron at the desk who wanted to file a report, so I went upstairs.

The patron said she had come to the library last night and was stopped outside by a man. He struck up a conversation and kept asking progressively more personal questions that made the patron feel uncomfortable, including constantly bringing up how young she looked. When she was finally able to get away from him and walk into the library, she noticed that he had followed her in. She went toward the young adult area and he didn't follow so she headed up the stairs in that area to put more distance between her and the guy. But then she saw him come up one of the other sets of stairs, so she quickly headed back downstairs and left the library before he could bother her again. We told her that next time she should head to our desk so we could deal with it, but it was pretty awful hearing what she had to deal with at the library. People shouldn't have to question whether or not it is safe to come to the library. I feel bad for her and I'm kind of angry at the dude for behaving that way, not only just in life, but also at the library. Some people suck, and it would be nice if they would just keep that to themselves.

When the patron left I started writing the incident report but was then sidetracked by another patron who was interested in books about plastic canvas doll furniture. It took me a little bit to figure out that the plastic canvas was that plastic grid stuff that you can weave yarn through and make Kleenex box covers, or apparently doll furniture. I had some success finding out that the books exist but no luck tracking any of them down. “Plastic canvas” is a broad enough term that it leads to a lot of other results, as well, which doesn't help. It's like when a band picks a super generic name and they aren't popular enough to be recognized anywhere near the top of a Google search. But I gave it a decent effort, spending at least fifteen minutes with her trying to find anything of use, to no avail.

That took me up to a few minutes before five o'clock, so I quickly went back to the incident report. And then one of the librarians came back from dinner with her husband, who wanted to talk to me, so I was trying to carry on that conversation while also trying to finish the report, because now it was five o'clock and I was supposed to be leaving. But I had to finish the report, so I wrapped that up, had the one librarian proofread it because I had been so distracted while writing it that I had no idea if it was coherent. Then we posted it, she left the message on all the phones about it, and I wrote it down in the log. I finally left the library at 5:13PM. And hopefully no one tells the boss tomorrow.

Oh, and I got to take home ten weeded books today. I apparently sent up seven yesterday, and today one of the other librarians wanted to weed three of the books on my cart (which all need to be weeded but I put them on my cart so I could read them first). So she took those three upstairs to tell the lady processing all of the books that I wanted them, and she came back with the seven that went up yesterday. And later in the day the other three came back. I wasn't expect that, so it's pretty cool.

I was going to stop at the grocery store on the way home but the parking lot was almost completely full, and I wasn't going to deal with that, so I just kept driving. When I got home I ate dinner, watched videos, and then had the best CoD: WW2 session ever. I definitely peaked, and of course I wasn't recording it.

I had at least five games in a row where my team not only won, but I came in first place. It may have been a lot more than that, actually, but I'm feeling safe by saying five. The best part, and the reason I know I peaked, is because, for the first time ever, I was accused of cheating. That is basically the ultimate compliment in CoD. Way above being called horribly offensive things. Unless of course you are cheating, then it's just calling a spade a spade. But I wasn't cheating, so it was awesome. He was accusing me throughout all the matches we were in together (always on opposite teams) and my favorite exchange was when he once again said I was using an aimbot. I said my aim was awful, to which he said that's why I was using an aimbot, and I replied, no, that's why I was using extended mags. My goal on any gun is to unlock extended mags because there is a lot of spraying and praying. Tonight, however, was just a perfect storm of good luck. The other teams weren't that great, including the kid complaining, and my connection must have been the best it's ever been. My best game, which I'm pretty sure is a new record for me, I got forty kills and only had twelve deaths. The only downside is that I'll never have that string of luck again. I've tasted what it's like to be good, so hopefully that doesn't mess with my expectations.

And now it is getting late so I'm going to wrap this up so I can record my audio journal and go to bed. I'm afraid I have too much to ramble about in my audio journal and it will take forever. We'll see.

March 14, 2018

Today was uneventful, which is nice, because it is getting late and I want this to go quickly, because I open tomorrow.

This morning I woke up, did the usual stuff, and went to work. I was on desk for the first two hours and that was dominated by phone calls. There weren't an overwhelming amount of calls but it was just a constant stream. When I wasn't taking on the phone I caught up on emails, and read a bit of news, most notably, the death of Stephen Hawking. He was such a common, odds-defying, figure and it seemed like he would always be around. It's weird.

I was off desk for two hours after that and I went back to weeding. It has been awhile since I weeded and it took me a little while to get back into it. But I found my groove and made it through about thirty pages of my list, which brought me to the halfway point of my 426-page list. Slow and steady progress. I weeded up until my lunch break, and when I got back from work I withdrew all the books I had weeded. There were several from the ones I pulled, and a couple from what the other librarian pulled, that looked interesting so I requested them after they had been withdrawn. More often than not I have gotten the ones I request but not all the time. I'm not really sure of the system. I offer to buy them but so far the ones I have gotten just showed up in my mail tray. I'm thinking that maybe the ones I don't get are chosen to go to the library system maybe, in order to be sent out to other libraries. Just a guess. But we'll see what happens this time around. After I finished withdrawing books I talked to my coworkers for a little bit and then we had our department meeting.

Our meeting started with a tabletop active shooter exercise, where the assistant director presented us with different scenarios and we had to talk through how we would handle them. I brought up the idea of having a specific location to meet up after we made it out of the library. We have that in the event of a fire but that is much too close for an active shooter situation. The elementary school I worked at had a location two or three blocks away, and we would practice going there, so that everyone would know where they needed to go if we had to evacuate the school. Parents also knew the location. I think this would make it easier to quickly get back together, do a headcount, and hopefully make sure everyone made it out. It sounds like it might be something we discuss further. After that, we talked about communication, went over the latest details concerning the construction, and then gave out kudos.

I had to do a bit of running around after the meeting, but then spent the rest of the day (less than an hour) looking through a library magazine. I pretty much finished it but was slowed down by a list of recommended games for building a library game collection. That is something we still need to do.

After work I picked up Chipotle and headed to my Mom's for dinner. We ate, talked, and watched videos, as per usual. And it was good times, as per usual. It seemed like it had been a long time since I had seen them. I saw my Mom earlier today but other than that it was sometime last week.

When I got home I played a little CoD: WW2. It was not the best of sessions, but I had a couple good games. In one of my loot boxes I got a shamrock uniform, but my main goal is the green hat, even though it is something I'll only ever see in menu screens and in the headquarters. And it will probably make me an easy target in the game, but I still want it.

March 13, 2018

This morning I woke up before my alarm went off and watched videos for awhile before running on the elliptical, taking a shower, eating lunch, and going to work. The first thing I did when I got to work was go upstairs so I could call one of my homebound patrons, who had called and left a message for me. On my way to our cubicle I stopped to talk to the teen librarian about the adulting class tonight. One person had registered, so we decided to cancel it. No offense to that person, but one person isn't enough to warrant police officers, firefighters, and a fire truck (unless there's an actual emergency, obviously). Later on I learned that the one patron who had registered was only coming because they needed to watch and write about a presentation for a class assignment, so in my mind it was less for us and more for her class. I did, however, recommend a presentation on Thursday happening at the library, trying to be helpful because I did actually feel bad that we had to cancel.

When I made it to the cubicle I called my homebound patron, and then I worked on updating the webpage for today's tech class. And then I was on desk for two hours. After emailing the patron about the canceled class I made a post on the staff blog letting everyone know the class had been canceled. I didn't get any responses to my earlier post about the class, so I was fairly confident no one was interested, but just in case anyone planned on stopping by at the last minutes. I ended up including a GIF of David Tennant as the Doctor, looking sad, standing in the rain. I thought about using one of Charlie Brown saying “I don't think anyone likes me” or one of Bill Murray saying “Well, I want to die”, but I thought that would be a little too dark. Funny, but dark. I also resisted being super snarky. I have my moments of restraint in writing. When I was done with that I updated my homebound list for this month with requests sent by one of my patrons, and I formatted the new interlibrary loan book kit list and updated the link for it on our website.

I was off desk for an hour before my dinner break and spent most of that time reading a library article about VR and talking to my coworkers. After dinner I was on desk for an hour and was able to finish the VR article, which just makes me want to dive back into my idea for creating an augmented reality app for the library. I also spent that hour helping patrons, talking to my coworkers, and sending an email.

I had two walkthroughs after that and then the rest of the night was open due to the canceled class. Most of that time was spent trying to catch up on attendance and feedback information for tech classes. I didn't make it very far on the feedback front but I made decent progress. I also read some news articles, because I hadn't really looked at the news today. Oh, and I wrote a post on our department blog about finding the old articles this weekend using the Wayback Machine.

When I got home I logged into CoD: WW2 just to get my daily log in reward, and there was an update. The new theme for the rest of the month is St. Patrick's Day, and it's awesome. There is a giant golden mug in the middle of the Headquarters, pots of gold, clovers, and other random decorations all over the place. There are also new uniforms, emblems, and weapon camos with green and clover themes to unlock. I'm a big fan of green, and love St. Patrick's Day just because it gets people to wear green, so this event is awesome. And I have even more incentive to play now, trying to unlock all of the cool green stuff.

Following that, I ate a snack, watched videos, and got distracted by the internet for awhile. And now I'm going to record my audio journal and go to bed.