November 30, 2014

I slept in this morning and then spent awhile longer laying in bed, thinking over how I wanted to rewrite the reflective journal paragraph I wrote last night. I eventually came up with something and got up to type it out. It went a lot better than the one I wrote last night. I was also able to knock out two more paragraphs and finished the entry before lunch. I was pretty happy about that.

I wrote each entry in its own document so after lunch I went through and consolidated each entry into one document and then organized all of the references into alphabetical order. Tomorrow I will start on reading over everything and making any edits that I need to. I also need to start reading the chapters for my other class for the final discussion post.

I played some Minecraft today. I started making my map wall. The first try was a fail because I got my maps messed up. The second time was a little bit more of a success but I did kind of mess up near the end. And I think the maps are a little messed up on the wall because I had to rotate them but I forgot how many times I had to rotate them, so some of them probably aren't rotated correctly. I also ran out of room even though my wall is pretty big. I need to continue playing around with it when I have more time.

Over the course of the day I ended up finding seventeen baby spiders in my bathroom on the ceiling and wall above the mirror. I managed to catch them all and put them outside. Originally I caught eight and was hoping that was all of them but on subsequent trips to the bathroom I found more. Maybe there were only seventeen. Fingers crossed.

November 29, 2014

Waking up this morning sucked. I ended up staying up a little later after I got home because I started watching a Ricky Gervais special on TV. Always funny but I probably should have just gone to sleep. Live and learn.

I woke up with a headache behind my left eye, which seems to be a popular spot for my headaches recently. It stuck with me for the rest of the morning and I spent a lot of the first part of my day at work sitting in the dark with my eyes closed. Thankfully it eventually went away.

After I had recovered, I got a start on my last reflective journal entry. I did a lot of reading in my textbook as well as a bunch of online articles I had saved about net neutrality. By the end of my shift I had managed about 500 words on net neutrality. Not a bad start.

I spent my breaks playing a bit of Minecraft. I had it running in the background the whole time so my crops and trees would grow. So when I needed a break I would just run around and harvest everything and then go back to reading and writing. I decided I want to make a giant wall map in the basement of my house. Or maybe in a cool room near the beginning of the cave beneath my basement because I don't know how big of a map I will actually need in the end. I'm surrounded by a lot of ocean.

Near the end of my shift I was still trying to read but kept getting distracted by thoughts of having Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner. This distraction lead to less than stellar reading comprehension so took another break and texted my friend about my thoughts of food. She asked if I was thinking of my dinner in a good way or in a “God I'm so full” way. And my response was “The former, but in half an hour I plan on partaking in a journey that will lead me to the latter.” I was instantly a fan of that response.

And speaking of dinner, it was delicious. I also finally finished the piece of chocolate pie I started eating on Thursday but wasn't able to finish because I had too much for dinner. My sister knocked the chocolate pie out of the park this year. It is really good.

After dinner I dragged the Christmas tree up from the basement and then helped my mom put it together. It was heavy as hell but it went together easily so I can't complain too much.

When I was done with that I tried to work on my reflective journal entry. I got distracted by a Foo Fighters documentary and I really didn't know what I wanted to write about after the net neutrality thing. I threw together another paragraph but I'm pretty sure I'll have to delete it and start again tomorrow because it really felt disjointed as I was trying to string it together. So that's something to look forward to tomorrow. But I should be able to wrap it up tomorrow. Then I'll be able to spend the week editing the whole thing and have it ready by Friday. I'm getting there.

November 28, 2014

Today was one of those exciting days. I slept in and then spent the next several hours reading a textbook and taking notes on potential topics for my last reflective journal entry. I still haven't started writing though. I took a break for lunch and had Thanksgiving leftovers. I took another break to set up the new TV my mom got for her bedroom. She's been using a small old one and had mentioned wanting to get a bigger one. I've also been looking at TVs so I was going to show her those. I put my 24” monitor in her room just to see what it looked like, and it looked tiny, so I was going to recommend at least a 32” TV. But before I could tell her this she came home with a 32” TV she got on sale at Target today. I was still debating on the size I wanted for my room so after putting hers together I took it down to my room to see what it would look like. I decided that a 32” would be plenty big enough. I was leaning that way but the 40” was also tempting. I also put the TV on the mantel above the fireplace downstairs to get an idea for a TV there and we both decided that we'd need at least a 40” up there so it didn't look tiny.

After all of that I ended up heading over to the old house so I could buy my TV. It will be here sometime next week. Tuesday, I think. I'm kind of excited about it. Until we get the internet at the new house I'll still have my 24” monitor in my room so I can have my laptop hooked up to either that or the new TV and watch TV on the other one.

Tonight for dinner I had the second half of my Chipotle burrito, rather than Thanksgiving leftovers, just so I wouldn't have to worry about it later. Then I went to work, where I split my time between cleaning theaters and reading a textbook. I'm still not sure how I want to start my reflective journal entry. There are so many things to talk about. I'm leaning toward starting with net neutrality. That is a topic that I could probably right the entire entry over but I'd like to squeeze in some other stuff as well. I'll figure it out. I still have more to read but tomorrow I need to actually start writing. I want to be done this weekend so I have enough time to go back and edit. I will also have the final reading and discussion post to do for my other class so it would be nice not to have too much work to do on my reflective journal. I also hope that in the editing process I don't come across something completely awful that doesn't make any sense. Thankfully, most of my entries are pushing the upper limit of 1000 words so I have some wiggle room if I need to cut something out. Although this could also be a bad thing if I find something that I need to expand on a little more. I'll find out later in the week.

I ended my night by playing Minecraft because my brain was a little fried and I needed a break. We didn't have any late shows tonight so I got off a little after 1:30AM. Late, of course, but it could have been worse.

November 27, 2014

I slept in and then spent the rest of my morning, and a lot of my afternoon, sort of reading through my textbook and sort of watching TV. My attention was very divided. I learned that there is a TV series based on The Transporter movie franchise. I'm a big fan of those movie because Jason Statham is a badass and the movies were perfectly cheesy. Especially the first one. The TV series is obviously not as good as the movies but it is decent. The lead actor reminds me of Sting, the singer, not the wrestler, so I couldn't really believe him as a transporter. I kept waiting for him to break out in song. Another slightly annoying thing about the series is that it was originally made for a channel that allowed cursing and nudity because there are a lot of curse words that get muted and the occasional blurred nudity.

Speaking of cheesy things, while watching The Transporter I kept seeing commercials for the upcoming TV series based on The Librarian movie series, which were super cheesy but I really liked them. The show, called The Librarians, looks to be even more cheesy than the movies, which I'm not against, and I know that I like at least a few of the actors in it. Now I just need to remember to watch it.

Going back to reading my textbook, I kind of got a start on my last reflective journal entry. I started reading through the chapter and writing down potential things I want to talk about. One of which is net neutrality, which I learned some new things about. The textbook came out four years ago and it is interesting to see how topical this particular chapter has become as of late. I'm not exactly sure yet how I'm going to tie it into libraries and librarianship but I'll figure it out. I'm still on track to have the entry finished this weekend so I can spend next week editing all my entries and putting it all together. I got a hundred percent on my infographic assignment, which I believe currently gives me a hundred percent in the class. So as long as I'm not completely off-base with how I've been doing my reflective journal entries, I should be able to get an 'A' in the class. I'm okay with that.

For dinner tonight I actually contributed for the first time in Thanksgiving history. I used the toaster oven I got from my grandma's house and made Brussels sprouts. It was my first time using a toaster oven but it turned out to be just like a tiny oven and everything worked out great. I would say the Brussels sprouts were probably the best I've ever made. I took a picture of them and tonight I emailed my grandma and included the picture. She hates Brussels sprouts but I wanted to tell her about me contributing to the dinner and that I used her toaster oven. And the picture looked delicious, I think even if you don't like Brussels sprouts.

As for the rest of the dinner, it was also really good. I had green bean casserole with tater tots, mashed potatoes with gravy, stuffing, rolls, cornbread muffins, deviled eggs, and half a piece of chocolate pie. I tried for a whole piece but I ate way too much during dinner and I just couldn't force myself to finish the piece of pie. I don't know that I have ever eaten to the point of hurting like that before. Now that I have recovered I can say that it was worth it because all the food was really good.

Tonight I watched YouTube videos, clicked around the internet, and researched TVs. I'm still vacillating between getting a 32” and a 40”. Right after becoming fully convinced I want the one size I go back to thinking I want the other size. I want to make my decision by tomorrow because the TVs I'm looking at dropped in price this week and I don't want to wait too long and have the prices go back up. So we'll see.

November 26, 2014

I was late to bed last night and early to rise this morning because the dish guy was coming to give us cable. Originally he was coming between 8:00AM and 12:00PM. That was then refined to 8:45AM. And then it was even later because five minutes away turned into closer to twenty or thirty minutes because he got lost. His GPS didn't have the street. No surprise there considering we don't exist to the cable company either.

He set up a temporary pole outside to put the dish on and someone will come around in the next week or so to put in the real thing, that way it won't have to be attached to the house. He was also able to connect to the cable already on the outside of the house so he didn't need to drill any holes or run any cable. That sped up the process quite a bit. It still took over two hours and a lot of that was updating and setting up the wireless receivers. Rather than picking the four rooms we wanted wired we went with a wireless option for the three rooms other than the living room so in the future if we change our mind, we can just move the wireless receiver to that room. Now we just need the internet.

After the dish guy left I had lunch and then went down to my room to work on my reflective journal entry. I ended up finding an easy listening music channel on TV and taking a nap. And then I worked on my reflective journal entry. I made a little progress and was able to finish it up after dinner. I ended with a bit of a rant about Amazon offering a monthly subscription for ebooks. Like a library that you have to pay for. People act like it is a great thing when they could just go to the library for free. My suggestion is a campaign, kind of “Got Milk?”, to remind people that libraries exist and they offer a lot of what Amazon offers but they do it for free.

Tonight was Chipotle night and for the first time in awhile they actually listened to me when I asked for extra rice and beans. And then I got sofritas on top of that so my burrito was humongous. That would have been nice on a week that didn't include Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving leftovers.

After dinner I showed my sister LEGO: Pirates of the Caribbean because she was looking at Little Big Planet and saw the LEGO games recommended and wondered what they were like. Luckily I happened to have a few of the games downloaded on my laptop. She played that for a little bit and then I showed her my latest Minecraft world and letter her play around in that for awhile. Her run ended in death by zombie while I was having her move some meat down to her hotbar. Thankfully I have keepInventory on so I didn't need to worry about making it all the way back to the far off island we had traveled to.

I ended my night by clicking around the internet and watching YouTube videos. Not a bad way to spend a night, in my opinion.

Tomorrow I will be attempting to participate in Thanksgiving for the first time. My contribution is going to be Brussels sprouts. I haven't made them in quite awhile and my main concern is that I am going to try and make them in the toaster oven I got from my grandma's house. I've never used a toaster oven before. I think it will go alright but even if it doesn't, the meal isn't dependent on the outcome of my Brussels sprouts, so the world isn't going to end or anything.

November 24, 2014

I helped out with second grade reading groups this morning. Really I just watched one group of kids color turkeys and a couple other groups cut out words and glue them on a page. At one point one of the kids was confused about silent “e” words so they asked the parent helper in the room and it was like seeing a live interpretation of Who's On First. The mother kept trying to explain it but the kid just wasn't getting it. All I could do was stand back and laugh because it was really funny.

The second grade teacher had another doctor appointment today so a para and I were in charge of the kids when the teacher dropped them off at the lab. The teacher wrote “Cool Math” up on the board and the idea was that if the class got too loud than the para and I would erase letters off the board. If they made it to the last ten minutes of lab and there were still letters on the board than they would get to go to Cool Math. We got down to “Cool M” but overall they were pretty well behaved. Normally they leave the lab at 11:15AM so I told them to log off and line up at that time. And then the para mentioned that they were actually supposed to stay until 11:25AM and go straight out to recess. So even though all but one or two of the kids had already logged off I told them “just kidding” and had them log back in and go back to playing games. Some of the kids groaned about having just logged off but when I told them the quicker they got back on the more time they would have to play games, they changed their tune. Then, tent minutes later I had them log off for real and we went back to the classroom so they could get their coats and cold lunches if they had them and head out to lunch recess.

I passed the other second grade teacher and she asked me if I was supposed to be watching the kids because her class was also outside and there weren't any recess supervisors or whatever they're called. I said I had no clue what was going on but I went down to the office to check. All they knew was that the guy who usually comes wasn't coming in today. So I went down to the lunchroom to find the acting principal, also known as one of the kindergarten teachers, and asked him. He said the regular dude had a replacement and by the time I made it down to the lunchroom she was already outside. So all was good.

One of the third grade classes came to the lab this morning just so the teacher could see what their typing ability was. They have to write on the state assessment this year and the teacher just found out about this. There was a really wide range of skills. I don't know that any of them used home row but some were fairly “fast”, average between five and nine words a minute. And then there were kids who averaged around two words a minute. I don't really think the typing thing is fair for the younger kids on the assessment. It is going to be an indicator of their typing ability much more than their ability to form a well thought out point.

I had already clocked out and was about to eat lunch when one of the paras came down to ask for my help with a projector. I went up and messed around with it for about twenty minutes and didn't get anywhere with it. I finally went down and looked up a manual online while I ate my lunch. I went back up later in the afternoon to grab the projector so I could play with it down in the lab and not interrupt the group of kids she had in her room. The manual ended up not really being much help so I ended up just doing a factory reset on it and everything started working just fine. That took me maybe two minutes once I got the projector turned on. Should have done that to start with.

This afternoon I had one of the kindergarten classes because the teacher was the acting principal and whenever he has a sub he generally tries to get into the computer lab if it isn't already his day. That's just thirty minutes less that he doesn't have to worry about planning something so I would probably do the same thing.

Tonight I started reading over the chapter for my next reflective journal entry and formulating some ideas. I should be able to make a decent start on it tomorrow. Going back to what I mentioned yesterday about personal library organization in a virtual environment, I just thought about the Oculus Rift. There is definitely some potential there. Actually being able to walk around and browse in a virtual space would be a lot nicer than scrolling through a list. When I have an urge to read a history book but have no idea which one, I like to go to the bookstore and just wander around in the history section until something grabs my attention. It would be cook to be able to recreate that because it is lacking when browsing an online catalog. Pictures of book covers just aren't the same.

Before coming over to use the internet, I briefly finished putting together a couple bar stools that my mom started. The foot part was kind of tricky.

Tomorrow is the last day of the work week. Until I go work at the theater on Friday and Saturday. Can't wait for that. In the mean time, I'll be working on my reflective journal. I'm almost there.

November 23, 2014

I got to sleep in a little this morning, not as much as I would have liked but there was work to be done. And I eventually got around to doing that. I think it might have been after lunch before I actually typed anything but by the end of the day I was able to finish my fifth reflective journal entry. Only two more to go. And as soon as I finish the next one I'll be all caught up because technically I should be on the seventh one at the moment. Almost there.

During lunch I watched the A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and The Mayflower Voyages (because it was on the same disc). A Charlie Brown Thankgiving always reminds me of my grandma and grandpa because I remember watching it over at their house when I was kid. And we watched it while eating air-pop popcorn because they eat popcorn in the movie. In The Mayflower Voyages I learned that the average speed of the Mayflower was two miles an hour. I don't know how accurate that is, and I don't want to look it up because I want to believe that ridiculously slow speed.

In my reading about libraries today I learned how easily the organization of materials in the library can become biased. Even the Dewey Decimal System has been accused of being preferentially biased toward Western cultures. In my journal I argued that the organization of materials will always be biased by some degree for the same reason that all research is biased, because a human is behind it and just by virtue of being alive in a certain place at a certain time in history, a person becomes biased. My offhand solution was that someday libraries will be able to be modeled virtually and people can organize them however they see fit. I think that is an interesting idea.