October 4, 2013

Today was boring. I had a grand total of one class in the lab. And not a lot else going on. A bit of my morning was spent downloading a bunch of PDFs that one of the SPED teachers wanted. I also helped out with second grade reading groups and that went pretty well. Nothing of note.

In the afternoon I worked on my student directory and made absolutely no progress. Still can't get my report to only show the filtered records. I also spent some time trying to get a couple kids logged into their laptops and then connected to the internet. I got one of them on and had no success with the other. And I think the one I got on was more of an accident. There seem to be at least five kids who don't have the right privileges or something to log into the wireless network. So that was kind of a fail but I ended the day with a win. I helped one of the teachers get pictures from her computer onto her iPad. Apparently plugging the iPad in and dragging the pictures from the computer onto the iPad didn't work and I didn't want to try it again in case it did work, so instead I just emailed all the pictures to her so she could open them on the iPad and then save them to the iPad album. And then for good measure I added a couple printers to the desktop computer her student intern uses because the intern mentioned something about it the other day.

After work I came home and downloaded the Battlefield 4 beta for PC. I didn't actually have time to play it before going to work at the theater but I wanted to get it done today so I wouldn't have to wait on it tomorrow.

Tonight at the theater I almost finished a book, came up with ideas for the flower I have to decorate for school, and I watched Gravity. The visual effects in Gravity are incredible and I bet it would look amazing in IMAX 3D. As for the movie part of the movie, not just the tech demo, I really liked it. The story could have been better but I still liked it. I'd watch it again.

October 3, 2013

I'm not going to write much today because it is way past my bedtime and not a lot happened today.

Work was fairly boring. I printed out the class picture substitute sheets for several different people, looked at some different typing programs, listened to a bunch of This American Life, had my second grade reading groups, and had a few classes in the lab. Not a very exciting day and it went by pretty slowly.

After school I tried to play some Battlefield 4 but the Quick Match option was broken again and even the server browser wouldn't drop me into any games in progress. On the plus side, I was able to play by myself on the larger map which gave me time to figure out the helicopter. I messed around with all of the controller layouts and found one that made more sense to me than the others and I was actually able to have quite a bit of fun flying around. I imagine when I'm actually in a fight I will freak out and immediately crash into the ground, but on my own I can fly decently.

I almost had a visit with the new volunteer kid tonight. First I got a text saying he could hang out. Then right as I was about to walk out the door I got a text saying he had too much homework. I'm just glad he didn't send it any later. And I took advantage of my open night by actually getting into a couple Domination games on Battlefield 4, with real people, and did alright. Then I played a bunch of Terraria. I'll admit I cheated a bit with my new character and loaded into my old world where I had a bunch of extra hearts saved up, which I used to max out my life meter on my new character. I did this because I actually wanted to explore the new world without dying almost instantly. And it was worth it because I got to explore a giant ice cave. But it also lead me to stay up way past my bedtime so it was kind of a bad thing, too.

And lastly, I almost forgot. I got into an argument with a couple second graders today when I told them that 'cause wasn't an actual word. They didn't believe me that it was just a truncated version of 'because'. They kept trying to use it in sentences and every single time I said they should be using 'because'. But they didn't get it. Then one tried to say it was a family member (so cous or cuz). And I had to explain that was a completely different truncated word and was short for 'cousin'. And none of this had anything to do with the assignment.

October 2, 2013

Today never really took off. It was very boring. I think I probably peaked this morning when I fixed the pencil sharpener in the lab. It's an old non-electric one and it hasn't worked since I started last year. Maybe it never worked. I unscrewed it from the shelf it is on and then took it apart. The problem was that the handle would spin independently from the blades whenever there was a pencil in it creating resistance. The base of the handle had an opening that was flat on two sides and rounded on the other two. This fit onto the base of the blades but the base was entirely rounded. I am assuming it should have also been flat on two sides and rounded on the other. In fact, if I were making it using the same idea, I would have made all four sides on both the handle and the blades, square. But it was made by an idiot I guess. So I MacGyvered it. In a fairly literal way because I used a paper clip. I cut it up and put it in the spaces between the rounded edges of the blade base and the flat edges of handle. The goal being to gum up the works so the handle would stop spinning independently of the blades. And it worked. It turns out the pencil sharpener kind of sucks and it is faster to sharpen a pencil with my knife or walk across the hall and use the electric sharpener. But I fixed it.

With the rest of my day I printed off a page with all the student pictures for each class and gave it to the teachers. The intention being that they can leave it for substitutes to help them know who the kids are. The only annoying thing is that a lot of kids were absent on picture day. But most of them were present. I also finished up my MAP spreadsheet and started messing with my student directory again. I'm trying to figure out how to make student reports for a phone directory that will reflect the filter I have applied. So I can pick a single class and then hit the report button and get a phone list for just that class. That's how I did it last year and it was convenient. Right now I'm stuck on either getting the entire school in alphabetical order or getting an error in my code. I'll get there eventually.

I had the frustrating group for my second reading center today. All but one are super annoying most of the time and the one who isn't gets wrapped up in it every now and then and joins the team. Today it was pretty much the same deal but for some reason one of the kids, who started off whining, ended up buttoning up and behaving really well. It wasn't enough to compensate for the rest of the group but it was nice.

After school I played more of the Battlefield 4 beta. They fixed the quick match thing so I was actually able to get into actual matches in both gametypes. And I really wish I had been recording my first game because I did the coolest thing ever. Even cooler than shooting down a helicopter with an RPG from the back of a four-wheeler (which I did manage to record). I have been trying to get in a helicopter since the beta started (so yesterday) but I have no idea where they spawn and they are always being operated by someone not on my team so I can't spawn in them. But today my teammate was a pilot and I got in the backseat. It was a Little Bird and at one point we got into a bit of a duel with the enemy Little Bird. I couldn't really do much with my rifle so I pulled out my torch and kept repairing our helicopter every time we got hit. Then I decided to help out so I pulled out my RPG and when the enemy helicopter was in front of us but just enough on my side, I took a shot and blew it to pieces. It was freaking amazing. And it will probably never be repeated, by me anyway considering how often I find myself in a helicopter. I still haven't actually bought the game yet. I am liking the beta but I haven't decided if I'm still in an FPS kind of mood. I lost interest with Black Ops 2 and rarely play Battlefield 3 anymore. Mostly because they hurt my wrists and forearms. But Battlefield 4 does seem pretty fun. I'm going to wait for the PC beta and see how that performs on my PC. And how I like the mouse and keyboard because it still feels weird with Battlefield 3. We'll see.

I also played some more Terraria. I found my first heart to increase my health and I did a lot of spelunking. I also redid my house a bit because it was right on the spawn point so every time I spawn it knocks out part of the floor. I attempted to make the floor one block lower but then the stupid guide stood in the hole and wouldn't move so I can't finish the floor. Ridiculous.

It was Chipotle night tonight but my sister was feeling sick so it was just my mom and me. They did a better job with my burrito this week which means it was really big. Too big to eat half of it and not feel kind of gross. I have fallen off my exercising a bit and I would like to find that motivation again. I pretty much got scared when my knee locked up and I couldn't walk for a night. But I need to get back into it because overall I feel better about myself when I exercise and I think it makes my knees feel better. Until they start hurting. We'll see if I can actually talk myself into it tomorrow morning. I keep ignoring my alarm clock and sleeping a bit longer. Which ends up leaving me more tired. So exercise tomorrow. Maybe.

October 1, 2013

“I know I felt that thing up to an illicit degree. I mauled that coffee table.” (A blind man looking for a phone)

Today started off kind of boring but slowly became quite busy. A lot of my morning was spent working on my MAP spreadsheets. The only thing I have left are adding the the mean, median, and standard deviation for all the subject areas of the tests. My reprieve from this was second grade reading centers. The first round went relatively well because I had a big group but they were broken into groups of two and that was much easier to handle than a group of six kids.

I took a break after that group to go back to the lab to help the first graders log in. I found out yesterday with the other first grade class that they all pretty much forgot how to log into the computers after the three weeks of MAP testing where the computers were already logged in. The class today was no different and it took quite awhile to get them all onto the computer and then logged into Odyssey.

By the time I made it back to the second grade room the second round of groups only had about five minutes left. I kind of lucked out on that one because my second group was the one that is kind of a pain in the butt. And they proved it when I tried to switch them over from playing a match game to writing sentences. It was far from successful.

During one of the groups one of the kids walked by me, flipped my hood up on my head, and said “No hats in the building” as she walked away. It was kind of funny.

When I got back to the lab the first graders were still there. They decided to stay longer to compensate for spending most of their actual time trying to log in. And I was okay with this because no one else was on the schedule to come in.

After clocking back in from lunch I was standing near the entryway, waiting for the kindergarteners to walk by, when one of the secretaries asked me if I was busy. And I wasn't so I took on the project of downloading the new student pictures and updating their picture on Infinite Campus. When I followed her into the office to get the CD my friend/manager from the theater was there signing in. She's in Education or was in Education or something and she was there doing whatever she was there for. I saw her later with one of the sixth grade teachers so maybe she is just observing or something. I don't know, I'm just saying I saw her.

Uploading the pictures didn't take very long so I started messing around with the software on the CD because it is supposed to allow you to set up seating charts and class directories and other stuff. So I'm going to look into it and see if it is worth doing.

While working on that the librarian needed help changing one of the paras passwords so I went down to the library to have a look. She was doing everything right but it ended up being a compatibility issue with the browser. And then right when I got back to the lab a third grader walked in with a note from his teacher so I went down to her room to see if I could figure out why her Wordle wasn't printing. I couldn't. It was probably another browser issue. I think last year there was a problem with Wordle and one of the browsers. But I didn't think about that until right now so I might need to look into that tomorrow. I went back to the lab and tried it there and it worked so I ruled out the problem being with the website. After school we made sure it wasn't a wireless issue and then I ended up screencapping the Wordle, cutting it out in Paint, pasting it in Word, and printing it out. So it wasn't a total loss.

Today was the first day the kindergarteners tried Odyssey and it went about as well as could be expected. Which is to say it went pretty poorly. A lot of them didn't make it past the first thing because they kept clicking back or closing it before they finished it so they kept having to do it so it was register as being complete. Some of them never managed to finish it. There were also a lot of kids getting bored, mostly the kids who couldn't stay with it long enough to finish the first thing and move onto the next. For the older grades, when assignments are added in manually, the teacher can lock them so there is only one assignment clickable at a time. The next one will unlock when the previous one is finished. This would be nice for kindergarten because everything is unlocked, and they have a tendency to just click around and look for stuff that seems fun, instead of actually going in order and learning stuff. It gets annoying pretty quick trying to keep more than twenty kids on track. It's like spinning plates.

On my way home I stopped by my bank where I have a credit card to check on when I would be getting a new one. The one I have now expires this month and I think with my debit card it usually comes at least a month or two early. I guess with my credit card it comes in the middle of the last month. That makes sense I guess but my phone bill will be due before then and Ting apparently thinks my card has already expired. So I don't know if I should leave it as my payment method and see if they'll still charge to it or if I should switch to my debit card for this month and then go back to my credit card next month. I don't really want to risk a late payment.

When I got home I downloaded and played a little bit of the Battlefield 4 beta. I say a little bit because it is living up to the beta moniker. The Quick Match feature wasn't working and the Server Browser option showed all the servers as empty. When I clicked on one of those empty servers I got into a game and there was one teammate there too. After awhile a few more people popped up and eventually there were a couple enemy guys so we messed around for a bit and sometime later the server filled up and we had a decent game going. This was good until dinner but when I came back I wanted to try the other gametype and I kept getting put into a game by myself. Domination takes place on a smaller map and it was fun running around for awhile but it got old pretty fast. I would have had more fun alone on the larger map so I could mess around with the vehicles and maybe work on my helicopter skills.

I gave up on Battlefield 4 after awhile and switched over to Terraria. I created a new character and it is kind of rough going back to the beginning. I like being able to fall and not take damage or use my vine thingies to reach higher places. I'll get there eventually. Tonight I built a basic house and did a little bit of exploring. Scenery-wise the game does look quite a bit better but I think I'll need to put in a lot more time before I get to experience all the cool new stuff.

Tomorrow will be an all new day, looking very similar to this one, but I am going to go to bed now so I can check it out.

September 30, 2013

I meant to mail my friend's letter this morning but I remembered right after I passed both mailboxes on the way to work. And I am doing better at getting to work close to eight o'clock so I didn't want to ruin that and kept on going to work.

I spent my morning downloaded MAP reports and then printing all of them off. The process went a lot faster than last year because I recently learned that the printer can do the duplex thing. Last year I would have to print off the one student report, load it in the bypass tray, and hope no one else decided to print before I could walk back to my computer and print the other student report. It was a bit of a process. Knowing about the duplex option sped everything up and made it less of a chore.

I got to help out with second grade reading centers this morning, for the first time since MAP testing started. I was in the listening group but we still don't have the headphone hookup thing for the CD player so they can't really listen to anything, so I just had them go around and each read a page in the story. The story today was about not giving up. It had a little girl playing soccer, quitting when she wasn't winning, wanting to play the next day but others not wanting her because she was a quitter, and then learning to be a better loser and winner and not quitting. That is a poor summation but you get the point. The main character was named Mia and it turned out that the story was written by Mia Hamm. The kids had no idea who Mia Hamm was but I thought that was kind of cool. After they read the story they were supposed to fill out a sheet about the characters, the setting, and then write a summary of what happened in the story. Some of the kids finished that pretty fast so on the back I asked them to tell me what happened after the story. Some of the kids got it and others didn't. One girl was incredibly confused because the story ended, so nothing else could happen. I tried to explain imagination and pretend to her. We ended up running out of time before I got to see what she could come up with.

Most of the rest of my day was spent working on my MAP spreadsheets. And figuring out a printer and email thing for one of the resource teachers. It was a productive/slow/fast kind of day. After work I stopped by the post office to mail my friend's letter and then headed back across town to get my haircut. It was weeks overdue and I feel much better about finally getting it cut.

While I was at work today the city got around to replacing the curb next to the driveway by the mailbox. They've been working on the nearby streets for months and recently started on curbs. And I figured it would be limited to that, but when I got home they had torn up and put new concrete down in front of the entire driveway. It would have been nice if they had redone the entire driveway because it is kind of falling apart but whatever. As long as a neighbor doesn't back into my car while I'm parked in the street for the next day or two then I'll be happy.

For dinner I had my fried rice and it still doesn't really taste like fried rice but it tastes alright. After dinner I caught up with my DVR and then watched YouTube videos. It is one of those nights where I have been ready for bed since four o'clock. So I have been useless. Kind of like every night but I'm using the tired thing as my excuse tonight.

September 29, 2013

I had a pretty slow day. I watched several YouTube videos but spent most of my day trying to catch up on DVR stuff. I made it through The Big Bang Theory. Not a bad effort. I also hauled one load in Euro Truck Simulator 2 and it went horribly. There was recently an update to the game and I don't know if they tweaked the truck physics or if I'm just really out of practice because I flipped the truck once and ran into a bunch of guardrails trying not to flip my truck. I made 20,000 euros for the trip and it cost me 23,000 euros to repair my truck. So that sucked.

This afternoon I went to the store to get eggs. An older man was also getting eggs and he commented on how the price of a certain brand of eggs was really going up. I agreed but I had no idea what he was talking about. Then he mentioned something about how cows weren't legal in town but you could have chickens. It was an interesting egg shopping experience.

The eggs were for fried rice. Which I attempted to make. I changed the recipe a bit, excluding some vegetables but adding in sugar snap peas, broccoli, and corn. The rice cooked well in my rice cooker, and the vegetables did well in the pan, then I added them all together. It was still going well at this point and then I scooched it to the side of the pan and added the egg. That is when it went south. The recipe said to cook it on low heat for three or four minutes, stirring it constantly until the egg was cooked. I assume they were going for a scrambled egg thing because that is what I was going for. But it wasn't happening. It took way longer to cook and I had to turn the heat up quite a bit. And in the end you really couldn't tell there were eggs involved, which is a shame because that is my favorite part of fried rice. I also think I needed to add more soy sauce maybe because even though it kind of looked like fried rice, it mostly tasted like rice with vegetables and fake chicken in it. Not necessarily a bad thing but not worth the hour or so I put into making it. In the future I think I would do everything the same but I would scramble the eggs in a separate pan and then mix them in so I didn't miss out on the egg experience. Hopefully whatever recipe I pick next will go over a little better.

Tonight I watched more TV, did my laundry, and finished my friend's letter. I usually put rubber stamps on the envelope but this time it will be a naked envelope because the box with my stamps in it is currently at the bottom of a precarious stack of other things.

September 28, 2013

This morning I went to the frame shop to figure out the frame for my sister's cross stitch. I felt way more confident there than I do with the people at Hobby Lobby. The lady was helping another couple when I came in but she gave me a stack of purple mats to look through while I waited. I originally thought I wanted a double mat but I found a velvety one that went really well with the color of thread I used and nothing else really went with it. So I decided to just go with the one mat. When I was helped by another lady we briefly thought about a little silver mat and it actually looked pretty good with the purple thread and the purple mat but then moved on from that idea which saved me some money and I think it was a good choice.

Then I needed to pick out a frame and, being a frame shop, they had a ridiculous selection. They had four or five giant rotating rectangles that were covered in frame samples. The rectangle things were covered in carpet and the frame samples had velcro on the back so they could stick to the rectangle things. I was thinking either black or a dark wood and we looked at those along with silver and gold and everything else. I lost count. I eventually decided I wanted to go for a more classic look and ended up going with a dark frame that had curly flourishes on it that were a little lighter and matches the flourishes on the letters in the cross stitch. I think it is going to look really good when it is all put together. And it better for $275. Good grief. But I see it as something that is going to be around for many many years so that expense will be spread out and really not be a thing after awhile. And it is going to look incredible. Hopefully. The only downside is that it won't be ready for two-weeks, so I really missed my sister's birthday, but I think she will forgive the belatedness of the gift when she sees it.

When I got home from that I had lunch and watched some YouTube videos before taking a nap. And sometime after that it was time for my sister's birthday dinner. She decided on a Chinese buffet but a different one from the one we usually go to for birthdays. The other one is usually almost completely empty and the same can be said for the items on their buffet. The one we went to tonight is bigger and actually populated by patrons. And I'd say it is family run like the other one because I think the girl running the register was probably in middle school. On the buffet I got the rice noodles because that is one of my favorite Chinese foods, and I also got vegetable lo mein, a little macaroni and cheese because I wanted to live on the edge, green beans, and a donut. I would have gotten some rice but I couldn't find it. Which is kind of strange. I'm assuming it was somewhere obvious and I just completely missed it.

After dinner we came back to the house and my mom gave my sister her presents and I gave her my card with stickers and told her that she'd have to wait two weeks for her present but it might be worth the wait. Then we headed over to my grandma's for cake and ice cream. And before we got into that I hung up her fall wreath for her. I didn't have the ice cream but the cake was good. When we were done eating and talking we went into the living room so she could show us a short DVD about the St. Croix River because her sister (so my great aunt?) had recently gone on a kayak trip on the river and gave my grandma the DVD about the history of it. Some of the editing on the DVD looked like a bad PowerPoint presentation but it reminded me of the informational DVDs we used to watch in school or that the History Channel would show when they actually showed history stuff. And I like that kind of stuff. It made me want to go canoeing again, which is something I haven't done since high school. The St. Croix River looked a lot more scenic than the murky Kansas River. After the DVD we sat around and talked for awhile longer before finally calling it a night around 9:30PM

Somehow it is already pretty close to 11:30PM and I think I am going to call it a night. Tonight kind of felt like it should have been Sunday, and it wasn't, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself tomorrow. Probably nothing. I broke out Euro Truck Simulator 2 for the first time in awhile today, taking my big pink truck on a drive across Europe, only nearly tipping it twice. I was a little out of practice. So maybe I'll try that again tomorrow. Or another video game. Or maybe I'll do something actually productive. Yeah.