February 2, 2014

Sunday. Lazy Sunday. The thing I did most today was play BF4. I haven't gotten any better at it. Possibly worse actually. But I still have fun. Most of the time. In my last game I unlocked the SKS, a DMR that just seems ridiculous. I think it fires as fast as you can click the mouse. That doesn't make me any better at using it but it does make me feel like I'm doing something when I'm furiously clicking away in the general direction of the enemy.

This afternoon I filed my tax returns. The federal return went smoothly because I just had to answer a few questions and fill in digital versions of a W-2. The state one was trickier because it was all questions and half the time they weren't very obvious. At one point they asked if I had a retirement plan, which was good for the school W-2 because KPERS was the next option. But for the theater I have a 401(k) and they didn't even mention the box that has that information on the W-2. So I'm assuming it isn't relevant but who knows. In the end I owed $56, which is more than I have ever had to pay before. But this is also the first year where I had two jobs the whole year so maybe that has something to do with it. And that is what I am hoping because another alternative is that I did something wrong. I'll be honest, there is a lot of guessing involved with filing my returns online. The first year or two that I did it, I filled out the paper version first and then transferred that information to a digital copy of those forms. Now they have made it “easier” by getting rid of the digital forms and going with a bunch of questions. There should be more options. Anyway, I am done with my taxes, way before I need to be, and fingers crossed, I haven't done anything jail-worthy.

Tonight I did laundry and managed to wash a pack of gum, two pencils, and a twenty-dollar bill. That's a new record for me. Now that I've taken to carrying things in my hoodie pockets, I should really get better at checking my pockets before throwing my clothes into the washer. The practice of carrying things is still too new and my memory hasn't caught up yet.

The Super Bowl was on tonight and I kind of watched it. It was on the TV but it was also on mute unless the commercials were on. And the halftime show. The halftime show was really good. Like, really good. I can't remember the last time the halftime show was so good. And relevant. They usually have people that were popular decades ago. That can be said of Red Hot Chili Peppers, I guess, but they were only on for one song and they nailed it. While the actual game was one, I watched YouTube videos, read from my Ruby programming book, and played BF4. I also briefly watched the Fish Bowl, which was on one of the animal channels. I thought they were just going to show an aquarium, maybe with some football related things inside. Instead, it was just a goldfish bowl with stuff happening in the background. Not quite as entertaining as the Puppy Bowl but it was still something.

February 1, 2014

Thanks to not having to work the early special show this morning I was able to sleep in a little bit. Life is better when you don't have to wake up to an alarm. I had enough time to click around on my computer for awhile and then go out and clear my car off. We probably ended up getting about four inches of snow last night, so I had at least a couple inches on my car. It was a pretty light snow that didn't really stick and that was really nice. I went out with a broom and swept off the front porch and then the walk to my car. Then I brushed off my car and the surrounding area. It didn't take too long and because I was sweeping rather than shoveling, I am hoping I won't be sore in the morning.

At work today I finished reading Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. It was a very enjoyable book. I bought the short prequel to it that tells about the life of Mr. Penumbra and will start reading that at some point. After finishing that I started reading The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd because I just got the sequel and it takes place fairly soon after the first book, and I only vaguely remember the first book. It's been almost seven years since I read it. I didn't make too much progress today but I did come across several of the lines that I had forgotten, but instantly remembered because they are really funny.

I was also able to watch the last half of That Awkward Moment. If you look at the movie as a whole, it wasn't that great. The writing wasn't that good, the plot was weak, and just the story in general could have been a lot better. Taken in bits and pieces, however, it was really funny and an enjoyable movie. It had a lot of good bits that do a fairly decent job of distracting you from the lack of any real substance to the movie. I would probably rent it.

Tonight I really didn't do anything. I watched a bit of TV and played some BF4. It really wasn't my night for that game. I played a couple rounds of Commander and then jumped into the real game. It took me forever to get into a server that had more than four people in it and the one I ended up going with only had about ten to start with. And it was a Conquest server, even though I wanted Rush, so I spent most of the match just driving around in tanks, capturing flags. It was kind of cool and I racked up the points. But once the server started to fill up, it went to crap pretty fast. I was never on the winning team and we tended to lose by a landslide. It didn't help that for awhile the enemy had almost twice the number of players as we did. There was also a lot emptying a magazine into a guy and not getting a single hit marker. That's pretty annoying.

Also annoying, is the pair of headphones I wanted to return but can't anymore. They were sold by an Amazon seller so instead of just being able to print a return label, Amazon had to request the return from the seller. I put in the request over a week ago and have been waiting to hear back. And I never did. Tonight I got on the site and checked and it said that the request had been approved on the same day I had made it. And the return had to be received by today. Yeah. That is really annoying. So now I'm stuck with a pair of headphones I don't want or need. I could go the eBay route but I probably won't. I think I'll just see if my brother wants them. A belated birthday present maybe.

January 31, 2014

Winter MAP testing is officially over. Right as school started this morning I went and got two first graders from one class, and a third from the other class, and got them started on finishing their tests. Shortly after that one of the second grade classes came to the lab to practice typing, and so a few of them could finish tests. And that was everyone, minus one first grader who hadn't been at school all week, including today. I'm calling it a success.

I spent a little time working on my MAP spreadsheets today but spent more time working on storybooks. I'm so close to being done. Sort of. Not really. But I'm getting there. One other productive thing from today was figuring out a workaround for Reading Counts on the third grade laptops. Whenever they would try to open the program they would just get a big white screen. It is Flash driven so I tried updating that but it didn't help. After a lot of Googling I found something off topic sort of but it ended up working. The post I found was about trying to watch internet videos fullscreen and getting a white screen, even when the video worked fine when it wasn't fullscreen. Reading Counts was doing the same thing because it worked just fine in a small, windowed mode, but not fullscreen. The solution to the problem was right-clicking somewhere in the Reading Counts window, clicking on Settings, and unchecking hardware acceleration. Or something like that. This change worked and seemed to be persistent so if you make the change, it will still be in effect the next time you log in. The only problem is I couldn't figure out how to make this a broad change, for all users on a computer. So every time a kid logs into a laptop for the first time, they will need to go through all the steps. It's not a great fix but it is a decent bandage.

This morning I did the mouth swab thing for the genealogy test and after school I dropped it off at the UPS store. They are sending it off tomorrow morning and in a month or so I should get a notification that everything has been analyzed. Part of me feels like it could be complete bullshit and I would never know, but it is through National Geographic, not an ad in the back of a comic book. I am intrigued. Certainly enough to pay the money for the kit in the first place.

At work tonight it was the same old thing. I made a lot of progress in my book, coming close to finishing it. I probably could have finished it but I got sent home early and I spent about forty-five minutes of my night watching the first half of That Awkward Moment. And I had planned on watching the second half during the last set but then got sent home early because I wasn't really needed and the snow was coming down pretty good outside and the managers didn't want to keep me there.

When I got out to my car there were about two inches of snow but it was cold enough out that their wasn't any melting going on, and I was able to just brush it off my car. I also drove home without turning the heat on in the hopes that I would melt any of the snow to my windshield. That way hopefully I won't have to worry about scraping ice off my car in the morning. I also put my windshield cover on so hopefully that stays on.

I was originally scheduled to close tomorrow night but I switched with the other projectionist (who is also a student intern at school now) because she had plans. This was a bit of a raw deal to begin with because I was supposed to come in at eight o'clock for a special show. But then the managers changed their minds so I don't have to be there until 11:45AM, closer to when the rest of the movies actually start.

And lastly, speaking of the projectionist / student intern, last week she accidentally started Wolf Of Wall Street instead of Frozen. From what I've heard the opening scene of Wolf Of Wall Street isn't very child-friendly, and a whole theater of children saw it. Understandably, a lot of parents were upset, and corporate got a lot of complaints. This lead to a new policy, rolled out nation-wide (and written by one of our managers) that basically states that a manager has to be present when a projectionist is switching from an adult movie to a kids movie. And I say 'basically' because I didn't actually read it, I just signed my name. In the end, it was a pretty big mistake, but she ended up causing a new policy to be enacted and leaving her mark on the company. Not bad.

January 30, 2014

New day, same old thing. More MAP testing at work. Today was the last day with scheduled tests but there are still a handful of kids that need to take tests tomorrow. And if they don't, oh well, they won't have scores for the Winter round of MAP testing.

When I wasn't testing (which felt rare today), I worked on storybooks, had a couple classes in the lab, and went to the first grade assembly for their Kansas Day performance. There was a little bit of choreography so it was worth it.

This afternoon I had a few fifth graders come to the lab to work on papers about the history of archery. I'm assuming they got in trouble during PE, where they are currently doing archery stuff, because they were spending their PE time researching and writing these papers and they were assigned by the principal. The principal emailed me beforehand and told me to keep them separated in the lab and it was kind of funny when they came in and tried to convince me that the principal said they were supposed to work together. Two of them used the internet and the other one used an almanac. The one with the book was actually done writing his rough draft first. Take that internet. One of the other kids thought, instead of 'bow and arrows' that it was 'bowing arrows'. And interesting take. They were in the lab for over an hour, made decent progress, and weren't too annoying. They were a little worked up when they first came in and the lab was empty but they settled down once the second grade class came in.

Yesterday Chipotle night was missed due to my brother's birthday. So I decided to go there tonight. And surprisingly, my mom and sister both wanted stuff, so it was an actual Chipotle night. Not just me eating half a burrito while they eat whatever else. I even had time to show some YouTube videos before going to see the new volunteer kid.

It was probably one of the better visits in awhile. It lasted about an hour and ten minutes and we sat and talked about testing in school and a lot about different books. It was pretty cool. The kid also got a job this week as a dishwasher. He's been looking for a job ever since he got to current placement so it nice that he was finally able to find something. Especially after all the crap he went through trying to get a job at Sonic, where he was hired but couldn't actually work because he couldn't get a picture ID.

My genealogy kit from National Geographic arrived today so I am going to try and do the cheek swabbing thing in the morning and get that sent off tomorrow afternoon after school. I'm kind of excited to see how that turns out. I have a vague idea of my ancestry but with both grandpas being adopted it is a bit limited.

All week I have been off a day. It has always felt a day later than it was. I think this is because of last week where we had Monday off. And every single day this week has felt off. I was convinced for the majority of yesterday that it was Thursday. And today really felt like a Friday. So tomorrow is really going to suck. At least I'll get some reading done at the theater. I just hope the weather doesn't get too crappy. It is supposed to snow possibly tonight and maybe do other stuff later. I'm obviously poorly informed but I remember hearing something about something.

January 29, 2014

I'm incredibly tired right now so this entry will probably be slightly truncated. Just saying.

The second grade spelling words this week are homophones (ex. Their, there, they're, would, wood, to, too, two) and that means I need to provide sentences so the kid knows which version of the word I am talking about. I learned this when I was handed the list so I didn't really have any time to think up good sentences. I was doing fairly well until I got to 'two'. I started off very confidently but then what I said hit my ears and I tried to save it. “I have two balls... in the batting cage.” Yeah. The sentence doesn't even make sense. I think I got away with it but I got lucky. I'll have to do better on Friday.

There were two more MAP tests today. The first went on for two hours this morning and it felt like at least eight. The other test this afternoon went faster. Mostly because first graders tend to race through the test. One kid actually had to redo the second part because he finished 35 questions in under four minutes. I'm glad they added that feature in this year but they need to up the time a little bit. I think now it is at five minutes. That comes out to less than ten seconds per question. Not enough time to answer most of the questions.

When I wasn't watching testers I was able to finish a storybook and start on another one. I'm down to only four left. So close. I haven't looked at them yet to see how much work needs to be done but I am hoping for not a lot. The one I just finished as fourteen pages plus the cover, and the one I just started is about half that, so it should go a little faster. Hopefully.

After work I went to Hobby Lobby and got frames for my Doctor Who prints. They look good and they were half price. When I got home I wrapped the books I got my brother for his birthday. I don't know if he ever reads the books he gets me but this time I put a twenty dollar bill in the back of both books, so even if he just flips through them he should at least find those, if not a good story.

A little bit later I went and picked my sister up and we headed down to the restaurant my brother picked for his birthday dinner. A steakhouse. At the last steak place we went to I was able to order several different sides and they put them all on one plate so I wasn't having to juggle a bunch of plates. At this place they had something called a Veg Plate, that was just the option to pick four sides. I went with green beans, rice, fresh vegetables, and french fries. They put it all on one plate but the only thing really on the plate were the fries, everything else was in a little cup. And, the best part, bacon on the green beans. I avoided the salad in the off chance that they put bacon on it (like at the one steakhouse I went to awhile ago) and then they put it on the green beans. I started to pick it out but then just gave them to my dad because the bacon was everywhere and the beans were kind of soupy so I might as well have been drinking bacon juice. Also, the fresh vegetables were somewhat overcooked broccoli and somewhat undercooked baby carrots. Needless to say, I've had better meals. The fries and rice were good and the rolls were really good. So there's that.

Ignoring the food, dinner was good. I talked to my brother about videos games, my dad about elephant teeth, my dad and sister about corporate business, and my dad and grandma about the book I read for book club, Orphan Train. It turns out there wasn't much of a story to my grandpa's and his sister's orphan train experience. She was three years old and my grandpa was three days old and they don't really know the history for why they were on the train. It is good that they were so young though because they were picked out and adopted for the fact that my great grandparents wanted children, not because they wanted someone for manual labor.

At one point during dinner, and this is apparently a thing, they turned up the music and all the waiters and waitresses in the place started dancing and kind of singing. Never have I seen so much energetic movement on people who's faces are dead. None of them were into it and it showed on their faces, but their bodies hadn't gotten the memo. There was one girl who had been in the middle of cleaning off a table so she did a miniature version of the dance while standing between two of the chairs at the table, looking less than thrilled. My dad had been in the bathroom when it started and as he walked by one of the waiters dancing in the aisle he asked him “I don't have to dance do I?” and the waiter replied “Tell me about it.”

When I got home I ate a little food to fill out my dinner a little, cleaned the frames for my Doctor Who prints and put the prints in the frames, clicked around the internet, and watched the best of Jimmy Fallon on SNL. I've been tired since this afternoon and I have a headache from having to talk over the music and background noise at dinner. So I'm going to go to bed and hope I wake up feeling rested.

January 28, 2014

I had a glass of orange juice with my breakfast trail mix and it was amazing. I forgot how good cold orange juice can be.

This morning was almost non-stop testing, from just before 9:00AM to noon, with a fifteen minute break thrown in the middle (thanks to a teacher thinking her test was at 10:30AM instead of 10:15AM). Three hours of staring at the back of kids' heads is rough. I'm not a fan. There were actually only two tests this morning but the first class didn't all finish so as the second test was wrapping up, kids from the first class started coming back in. There were also kids from another class that came in to finish tests during the first class's test. The lab was basically just a revolving door of test takers this morning.

In the afternoon I had a bit of a break from it with the two kindergarten classes but then I had kids back in to finish tests. Including the fifth grader who finally managed to finish today. It only took her three hours and seventeen seconds. It would have been about five minutes shy of the three hour market but she ended up taking a nap during the middle of the test this afternoon. She was the only one in the lab, sitting in the back row, and I got tired of standing there watching her stare into space, so I went back to my computer to work on storybooks. After a little while I stopped hearing the scratch of a pencil or the click of a mouse, and when I got up to check, she had fallen asleep. Whoops. But she finished, thank goodness.

After school I stopped a few places before going home. The first was the Post Office. And color me surprised, my missed package yesterday turned out to be my Doctor Who prints. I'm still trying to figure that out. I just got the email yesterday morning saying that they had gone in manually and found my payment, and shipped my order. But what I received obviously wasn't shipped yesterday. So did they actually know about my payment last month and ship the prints but not update the website? And did the email yesterday refer to updating the website and acknowledging the shipment of my prints (even though it specifically said they were shipped yesterday)? Or was the person who responded not aware that prints had already shipped and shipped another set? It's all very confusing. Not in a troubling sort of way because I have my prints so I don't really care. But I wouldn't object to a second set of free prints for all the confusion.

My second stop was to the bank to deposit a check I got for Christmas and just remembered the other day. And then I went to the store. I wanted to get another head of lettuce and I also got some lemons and a couple cans of soup for my mom because she is still sick. I found out when I got home that she had my sister go to the store earlier in the day and get her soup. So now she has a whole bunch of soup. Good thing that stuff lasts awhile. My sister also made some bread and brought it over because my mom wasn't a fan of the wheat break I bought yesterday. My sister included some honey and cinnamon butter she made. The combo of that and homemade bread is really good.

I continued my new thing of reading when I get home up until dinner, instead of getting on the computer. I'm still reading the latest issue of National Geographic and read an article by Garrison Keillor. He did a personal geography of his town, telling about the landmarks that have important personal significance to him, like the area on the river where he swam as a kid and where one of his friends drowned, or the apartment where is ex-wife lived and having to clean it out after she died, or the library he would go to instead of going to swimming lessons because they were done in the nude and he was shy. It was a really good article and incredibly personal and honest. That is the kind of writing I would like to do. It is kind of hard to be that honest in writing. It takes a lot of internal searching to reach the truth about certain events and not just the things we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better.

I spent most of my night getting into Ruby, the programming language. My book arrived today and I'm not too sure about it. Rather than teaching you to swim by starting out in the shallow end of the pool, it throws you into the middle of lake. There were a couple other books I had my eye on so I might think more about those. But I'll keep reading in the current one to see where it goes. All I know is that the beginning started with a lot of assumptions and I was confused. So I skipped that and worked through a tutorial online that made a lot more sense because it actually stepped through stuff, starting in the shallow end. I am liking the potential of Ruby so far. It is also fun writing code again. It'll be even cooler when it starts making more sense and I can come up with my own stuff, not just typing what a tutorial says. We'll see if I make it that far.

January 27, 2014

There were only two MAP tests today, one first thing in the morning and the other in the middle of the afternoon, but it felt like I was testing all day. Unless I put some effort into the thought, I would say I was testing all day. But I wasn't, there were some breaks. I got to help out with second grade reading groups for the first time in awhile. My first group was the listening center but the CD wasn't available so we sat on the carpet and the kids took turns reading. It could have gone better but it also could have gone way worse. I think it helped that the principal was in the room, only a few feet away at the time. My second group wasn't really a group. I just watched kids playing a game where they had to draw words from a pile, pronounce them, and then put a token on a game board depending on the type of word it was (ex. ir, er, ar, or , ur). I watched two kids and then a group of three. I've done it before and I enjoy it because a tiny group is easier to handle, and I like annoying the kids by asking them after every word if they know what the word means.

The afternoon MAP test was first grade and it was a bit rough. At least for a few of the kids. One kid was having a massive allergy/boredom attack so he was finding it hard to focus. One girl got caught up on how hard the test was and spent most of the time crying. She eventually finished. And then there was a kid, blissfully ignorant, answering maybe a three or four questions right out of the nearly forty questions in each part of the test. The teacher and I were standing behind him at the back of the room watching as he got question after question completely wrong. A lot of times you can see the thought process behind a wrong answer but with him there weren't any connections. And you would think that, even guessing randomly, he would get more right. But he didn't.

During that test I had three fourth graders come down to finish, and then a fifth grader. She ended up staying down there the rest of the afternoon and is still somewhere in the 30s, out of 53 questions. She took forever last time and that appears to just be her thing.

After work I went to Target. I planned on just getting bread and trail mix, because I have a very sad diet, but then I also picked up some saltines and Sprite for my mom because she's sick. And I got some orange juice because I have been in the mood for orange juice lately. I got on a kick several years ago where I was drinking a lot. To the point where my dad was worried I was going to hurt myself. I don't think I'll get to that point but I need to change things up every now and then. The only thing I really drink is water.

Last night I think, I decided that I need to read more. I get in at least twelve hours a week thanks to working at the theater Friday and Saturday, but I could be doing a lot better. Especially considering the number of books I want to read. And the number of books I haven't even heard of but probably want to read. So, the plan is to read when I get home for work, and go until dinner time. That's about an hour and a half, depending on the day. That's a decent amount and I can add in more if I read before bed or something. Today was the first attempt so I didn't turn my computer on when I went into my room, I sat down on my bed and opened up the latest issue of National Geographic that arrived in the mail today. I read all the random stuff in the beginning and then started reading about the human brain. One of the random bits was about elephant teeth. Humans have two sets, starting with baby teeth and then going into adult teeth. Elephants have six sets. They have two teeth on the bottom, two on top, and they start growing from the back of the mouth and move forward, until they get ground down and fall out, with the next teeth growing in behind them. They can reach the size of a phone book. When they're kids the teeth last about three years but as adults they last about ten years. But once they make it through the six sets of teeth, that's it. Apparently older elephants in captivity often die from starvation after they lose their teeth and are unable to chew. Asian elephants eat about 300 pounds of food a day and African elephants eat between 400 and 600 pounds of food a day. That is incredible.

Before Christmas I ordered some Doctor Who prints and the order showed up on my bank statement a few days later, but it didn't show up on the website. I little while ago I emailed them to find out what was up but never heard back. I emailed again last night and got a response this morning saying they never got the notification from PayPal but when they went in manually to check they did have the money so they updated my account. And they finally mailed my prints so I have that to look forward to in the next month or so (shipping from Europe). On a slightly unrelated note, I almost got two things in the mail today, not counting the National Geographic, which would technically make it almost three things. The thing I did get was the book my mom got me for Christmas, but a textbook was sent instead. After going around and around with them, the book arrived today. It looks a little beat up, and I think some of that is an intentional design choice, but I also think part of it is just a poorly handled book. Sometimes third-party Amazon sellers are garbage. The thing I didn't get in the mail today is a mystery. In it's place is a card saying they attempted delivery and that I can pick it up at the Post Office tomorrow, because I guess I need to be present to receive it. I've been trying to think back on anything I may have purchased recently that would come via USPS and require my presence, but nothing is coming to mind. The only thing are the Doctor Who prints, but it obviously can't be those. I'll have to wait until tomorrow.