April 13, 2018

This morning I slept until I did need to sleep anymore. It would be nice if that was an everyday thing. Then I laid in bed for an hour or so and read from a couple different books. I spent the rest of morning watching a few YouTube videos and then working on the app development class.

Throughout the day it was 84 degrees in my house. That's kind of hot. I spent the day sitting in front of a box fan in my office or laying on my bed under the ceiling fan. After lunch I went back to bed and read some more. It is nice getting back into reading.

I watched a few more YouTube videos this afternoon but I spent most of my time working on the app development class. So far I've watched about twenty videos which makes up about twenty-five percent of the course. I've got about an hour and a half left of the Java lessons and then I'll move into Android stuff. I'm feeling pretty good about the progress I'm making. I have enough experience with various programming languages that a lot of the stuff covered so far is either somewhat familiar or relatable enough that I can wrap my head around it. I'm looking forward to getting past outputting lines to the console and actually creating things.

Now I'm on the second episode of the new Lost In Space series on Netflix. I'm going to have to pause it because the episodes are long and it's getting late. But I'm liking the show so far. There is a lot of mystery and intrigue happening. But I'll have to save it for another day.

April 12, 2018

I got a decent amount of sleep last night, which was a nice change. The past two days my alarm was set for six o'clock, yesterday because I opened, and today because I had a haircut. Yesterday I woke up at 5:53AM and today I woke up at 5:54AM. It would have been more interesting if it was the same time both days, but I still think it's kind of interesting.

My haircut was at eight o'clock and it went well. My hair is shorter now, so mission accomplished. When I got home I watched videos, finished reading Guardian Angels and Other Monsters (a collection of short stories by Daniel H. Williams), and started the e-course on app development. Mr. Williams might be one of my new favorite authors, at the very least one of my new favorite short story authors. He had a lot of interesting ideas and the narrator/protagonist in All Kinds of Proof, one of the short stories in the collection, was great. There were lines that I had to read over just because they were so entertaining. At one point he even breaks the fourth wall a little bit and gets antagonistic toward the reader, which I thought was pretty cool. As for the e-course, I only had time for the introductory stuff and, downloading the software, and making the first Hello World output using Java. But I'm looking forward to whatever happens next.

I went to work at 1:30PM and I was off desk until 4:00PM. I spent that time at the second computer, so it was kind of like I was on desk, and I helped the occasional patron and may have answered the phone once or twice. I also talked to my coworkers a little bit, but most of my time was spent writing a letter (email) of reference for one of our former assistants. He is apparently one of the final candidates for an assistant librarian position and he put me down as a professional reference. That is the first time that has happened and I think it's pretty cool. And, not to toot my own horn too much, but I think I nailed it. It helped that he was a genuinely nice human being and a really good worker, so all I had to do was tell the truth and try my best to accurately convey how good he would be as an assistant librarian. When I got back from dinner I was on desk for an hour and that gave me time to put the finishing touches on my reference letter (email) and get that sent off.

I also learned when I got back from dinner that a few of our regular teens (who actually haven't been to the library as a group in quite a while) and one of our regular patrons (who is probably a racist) were asked to leave for the day. When the teens came in the were a tad noisy and one of the other librarians had to go over and ask them to calm down, but by the time I left for dinner they had quieted down. At some point after that the old guy came in, and he inevitably came over to the desk to complain that the teens were being too loud, even though they weren't at that time. The librarian on desk went over to talk to them, however, because one of them had smacked one of the other ones to get his attention, and the librarian wanted to tell her she couldn't do that in the library. The old patron stood there during this exchange, as he does because he likes to put his nose in places where he shouldn't, and that led to exchanges between him and the teens. And at one point he used the phrase “you people”, which one of the teens took as being racist (and in this instance, given the history we have had with that patron, I would agree with the teen). This heated things up and finally the librarian just told everyone to leave for the day. I'll be interested to see if the older patron goes and talks to the assistant director tomorrow. He has a tendency now of bypassing us and going straight to the assistant director because he feels that is more effective. But it's not, because the assistant director trusts our judgment and supports the decisions we make, which is greatly appreciated, especially when dealing with rude patrons.

My night was pretty uneventful, until the end. I had a couple walkthroughs but most of my night was spent at the desk because no one signed up for my video game discussion. During one of my walkthroughs I ran into one of my old Scout leaders (who I have seen several times recently). He thought he had a room reserved, and didn't, but we were able to get him set up in a room and everything worked out. After that I read news articles, set out a new jigsaw puzzle, and worked on my homebound list. And then my computer froze and I had to turn it off. When it came back on it took around twenty minutes to get to the point where I could log in because it decided it needed to install updates. Slowly. While I waited I finished a library magazine, so I was at least productive. And then I had to redo the work I had done on my homebound list because that hadn't auto-saved before the computer crapped out on me. A little annoying but thankfully it was fairly easy stuff to recreate.

Near the end of the night I had to go in and kick a couple hundred people out of the auditorium because closing time was quickly approaching and they were still giving speeches. It also looked like they had plans of moving in because they had there crap strewn all over the place and the walls were covered in giant pieces of paper. They accomplished quite a bit in a relatively short period of time in terms of picking up and putting things back in place, but then it petered out and it was a struggle to get the last of them out. I got the last of them out of the auditorium a few minutes after nine o'clock, and then still had to do the walkthrough upstairs, lock the keys up, and get all of my crap together. It was definitely to the point of needing to make up some time later, but I'm not going to say anything. The tricky part will be that the assistant director closed with us tonight, so hopefully he doesn't say anything either.

It was close to 90 degrees outside today and when I got home it was 79 degrees in my house. That's warm. But I don't want to turn the air conditioning on because we're still supposed to get snow on Saturday. Because apparently that's how Spring works now. I'm not really holding my breath on the snow thing, because the forecasted temperature keeps creeping up each day, but either way, having the AC on when we're still getting into the 30s and 40s at night, if not colder, seems unnecessary. I set up a box fan under my desk, which has been effective, and I've got a ceiling fan in my bedroom, so I should be good tonight.

And it's now almost midnight, far later than my average of a ten o'clock bedtime this week, so I'm going to go to bed.

April 11, 2018

Last night I went to bed early enough that I should have gotten eight hours of sleep. Instead I woke up a bunch of times and probably only got about seven hours. Once again, another restless night. I'm not sure what has been up recently but it is getting kind of annoying.

I opened this morning and did the usual opening stuff. Then I went upstairs to grab the old summer reading raffle tickets so I could continue shredding them. I stopped to talk to the teen librarian and she asked what I was doing with the tickets. When I told her she held up a small plastic bin with random paper in it and told me to put them in. There is apparently a big trash can in the copy room (which I have seen before but never paid attention to it) and it is for bulk shredding. I guess we fill it up and at some point it gets shredded. That is good to know, because shredding thousands of paper tickets a few at a time is incredibly tedious, and loud. So I'm really glad I stopped to talk to the teen librarian. After that I had some extra time to kill without the shredding happening, so we talked about books and music for awhile before I headed back downstairs. It's going to be weird when she's out on maternity leave, but at some point after she comes back she'll be joining our department, so that will be cool.

I was scheduled to be on desk for the first two hours, which I was, and I spent that time working on the non-fiction handout, reading news articles, and talking to my coworker's husband about ink and fountain pens. Then I went on a quick walkthrough and was back on desk for another hour because one of the other librarians called in sick and when my boss redid the schedule she missed putting someone on desk. And even if she hadn't, that someone would have been me, because the only other librarian was covering the outreach event that the sick librarian was supposed to be going to.

When I got back from lunch I was off desk for an hour and caught up on news, including local stuff. I diligence of keeping up with local news ebbs and flows. I need to get better at that. After that I was on desk for an hour and worked on coming up with the tech class schedule for the Fall. And I made decent progress. I got everything scheduled but the workshops. And I'm kind of debating whether or not it is worth even doing the workshops because the attendance is so poor. They don't require a whole lot of effort on my part but I still put work into them and then when no one signs up it is a bit demoralizing. So we'll see.

Then it was time for our monthly meeting. It was restricted to an hour, instead of the usual two, but the content really only took about half an hour. We managed to drag it out for another fifteen minutes talking about random things, and then we called it good. Following that, most of us headed down to the storytime room for a presentation about the new keycard system, which will go into effect sometime early next month. We'll have new badges, which will serve as the keycard, and they will get us into the building, as well as a few places in the building. The main focus on this first wave is the outside entry to the library. Keeping people out that don't work at the library. Later on, we might start expanding it to more of the internal doors, which would be really convenient.

For the last thirty minutes of the day I talked to one of my fellow librarians about the keycards and then spent a lot of time talking about the genre handouts we're making. She's the one that created the new template and is having us update the old handouts. Apparently I'm the only one who has actually followed the template so far. I'm a big fan of formatting and paying attention to the little details, and the other librarian is very detail oriented, so we were able to relate in our discussion of what wasn't happening with the other handouts that should have been happening. Sometimes you just have to vent a little with someone on the same page as you.

When I got home I ate dinner and then spent the rest of the night watching videos and investing in some game, VR, and app making online courses. The goal is to learn how to make apps and VR experiences. I'm not terribly interested in making VR games but I do want to make hangouts, like a cool room, and maybe eventually a virtual library. As for the app making, that goes back to my interest in making an AR app. And the game making courses will give me more experience using the programs needed for making apps and VR stuff. It all makes sense right now, I just need to maintain interest and actually get through some of the courses so I can make what I want to make later on. I just need to pretend it's for-real school stuff and set aside time to work on it. I need to get my school discipline back. That'll be tough.

And now it is just after ten o'clock and I'm going to attempt to go to bed, because I have to wake up early for a haircut. Hopefully I can sleep tonight. My house is warmer because we got into the 80s today, and it is supposed to be even hotter tomorrow. But I'm not going to turn the air conditioning on because there is a chance of snow on Saturday. Mother Nature. Killing it.

April 10, 2018

I technically got eight hours of sleep last night but for one reason or another it was not very restful. Feels like kind of a waste. And now I'm yawning constantly even though it isn't even 9:30PM yet. So let's get this show on the road.

When I got to work I was off desk for the first two hours. I printed off the sign-in sheet and handouts for the class this afternoon, and then I spent the rest of the time updating the webpage for the class. Too much of that time was spent trying to center the slideshow thumbnail on the page. Aligning it to center looked good in the editor but the preview always had it aligned to the left. I have the trouble every time but then I play with it for awhile and it eventually works. That wasn't happening today though. I ended up finding a solution online that involved going into the code and using the <div> tag and aligning it that way, which worked out. We'll see if I remember that the next time I need to center something.

I was on desk for an hour and a half after that and finished getting ready for the class. That involved playing around with Pixlr for awhile just to reacquaint myself with it, in regard to editing old pictures. It still works pretty well. After that I went to lunch, half an hour early, hence only being on desk for an hour and a half. Originally it was supposed to be the full two hours but that would have had me coming back right when the class was supposed to start, which wouldn't have been good. So my coworkers covered for me so I could leave early.

The class went well. Of the ten signed up (which is the maximum number), nine showed up, so that's not bad. We started with scanning the photographs they brought because the scanner was open and I didn't want to risk putting it off until later and then having to wait for a patron to finish scanning an entire book (not that we would allow that because that's definitely a copyright violation). After that I briefly went over why you would want to digitize your photographs, scanning basics (which was just reiterating what I talked about while we scanned the photographs), and then covered the basics of Pixlr before having everyone follow along and do the basic steps along with me. There were a lot of good questions, and I knew the answers to them, which was nice because it means I don't need to spend the rest of the week researching answers. And the feedback I got from the surveys was pretty much all positive, so that makes me feel good.

After the class I had a little over an hour before I was on desk again, and there wasn't any room at the desk, so I went up to the cubicle. And most of that time was spent compiling the feedback and attendance information for the class. It took a lot longer than I thought it would. I also caught up on emails.

And then I was on desk for an hour and accomplished nothing. I talked to my coworkers that whole time. It started with finding out there is going to be a Babymetal graphic novel, which led to a conversation with one of my coworkers about K-Pop groups and anime. If anything, Babymetal would be J-Metal, maybe, I don't know if that is even a thing, but we diverged from them into other things. The graphic novel doesn't come out until sometime in October, and I'm never going to remember that, so I put a reminder in my phone. This will create a pleasant surprise when it pops up months after I have forgotten about it, and by that time it will hopefully be available to order so I can submit a purchase request for the library. That conversation then went into a discussion with one of our other coworkers about movies and actors. It was a nice way to end the day, even if it wasn't the most productive.

When I got home I ate leftover spaghetti for dinner, which was still delicious, and I spent the rest of the night watching videos and clicking around the internet. Another productive evening.

April 9, 2018

This morning when I got to work I was off desk for two hours. I demonstrated to my boss the AR thing I came up with this weekend and she liked the idea, as did the other people I showed it to. No one was overly excited but it wasn't very flashy, so I can understand that.

I sent an email to everyone signed up for the class tomorrow, reminding them that they're signed up, to bring a photograph, and to bring a thumb drive if they have one. Then I updated my homebound list for this month with some requests from one of my patrons, and spent the rest of the time looking up information for the video game discussion later this week. No one is signed up yet, so we'll see what happens with that.

I was on desk for two hours after that. Based on the game I picked for the discussion, I ended up reading about game developers in Mexico. And that led to reading about Leap Motion because they just came out with a plan for building an AR headset for $100 (if you're producing it in massive quantities, so for a single headset it would be a lot more than that). I think they're going to release the full specs in a week or two, along with making their hand-tracking software open source, if I read the article correctly. That's pretty cool. I also managed to work on my new Sci-Fi handout a little bit.

When I got back from lunch I had a walkthrough and then went upstairs until 5:00PM. I read a few articles and then spent the rest of the time working on the Sci-Fi handout. It took forever but I managed to finish it. Now I need to work on the non-fiction handout.

I was on desk for the last hour and almost all of that time was spent messing around with another AR creation tool that I read about in an article my boss gave to me when I came back downstairs. It seems a little more stripped down than the one I was using this weekend. But also possibly more complex, if that's possible. I would still like to figure out how to make my own app.

When I got home I made dinner. Originally I was going to roast vegetables but by the time I got home I didn't want to spent the time cutting up all the vegetables so I made delicious spaghetti instead. Then I spent the rest of the night watching videos and clicking around the internet.

It's around ten o'clock now and I think I'm going to go to bed soon. I've got a headache and I'm tired.

April 8, 2018

I forgot that I was going to catch up on my audio journals this weekend. Specifically, today. That didn't happen. Dang it.

I slept in this morning and then read in bed for awhile. Still my preferred method for starting any day. Then I made bread dough, using the recipe for the tiger/giraffe bread (without the outside crust), and ate lunch while the dough did its rising thing and doubled in size. And then I read a short story while it baked. The bread turned out really well. Instead of eight rolls, I made two small loaves, and they're delicious. At least one of them anyway, I did feel the need to cut into the other one considering they both came from the same place.

I spent the rest of the afternoon playing around making an AR app thing. I found a website that lets you create an AR thing, it outputs a little graphical code, and that can be scanned by their app to show you the AR thing. It makes everything really easy and I was able to come up with a proof of concept AR thing that lets me know I can do the thing that I can see in my head. What I made is super basic, but I like that I made a thing. I need to play around with it some more, but ultimately I want to do the coding and make my own app so I don't have to rely on someone else's app. That is a long way off.

Throughout the afternoon I finished watching the James Acaster comedy specials. Turns out it was a four-part, interconnected special. He's very narrative in his comedy, telling big stories, and making callbacks to previous parts of the special. I liked it.

I have yet to finish the book but tonight I watched Ready Player One. There were a lot of changes from the book but I think it was a good adaptation. It was a lot of fun, and it just makes me want video games and VR to advance to the point they're at in the movie. It was also really cool seeing the shop and basement sets that I was able to walk around in last weekend in VR.

April 7, 2018

I got eight hours of sleep last night, in my bed, because I decided to see if my eye would be more swollen by laying down, compared to sleeping in the recliner. I think it has gotten to the point that the swelling isn't really that bad in the morning, so that's good.

When I woke up I read in bed for an hour or so. Then I got up, started my laundry, and looked around at different options for making augmented reality apps, while catching up on YouTube videos. After lunch I went out to the living room and read for awhile before taking a nap in the recliner. The recliner is much better for napping than for sleeping in at night.

After my nap I ironed my pants for the upcoming week, ran on the elliptical, washed a bunch of dishes, and took a shower. Then I ate dinner and watched Hilarity for Charity, Seth Rogan's comedy special on Netflix to raise money for Alzheimer's disease. And then I played CoD: WW2. It was an uneventful night for the game. I had fun, and I did well, but I didn't do exceedingly well, or exceedingly bad either, which is always good.

Now I'm watching James Acaster's comedy special on Netflix (which is really funny) and I've got Mister Rogers going on another monitor. James Acaster is wearing a green corduroy jacket in his special and I want it. I need a green corduroy jacket.

Soon I will be going to bed. I am looking forward to laying down and closing my eyes.