April 8, 2015

I slept like crap again last night. Not really surprised about that. Seems to be par for the course this week. I really need this semester to be over with so I can just take a minute to breathe without a project looming over my head.

Even after the crappy night of sleep, I woke up early so I could go to my dentist appointment. That went as well as expected. They told me last time, after my four year absence, that I didn't need to come in every six months, but I'm paying for it already so I might as well take advantage of it. As I was leaving the parking lot I started eating my breakfast, part of which consisted of a cookie. I'm an adult.

This morning there were two state assessments. The fifth grade teacher read the directions in a very animated fashion that was pretty amusing and the kids enjoyed it. As for the tests, they were the same old thing.

After the tests I worked on the survey results for the principal. I ended up going with the survey with the percentages for each answer choice filled in, each with a color based on their number (more green for numbers closer to 100% and more red for numbers closer to 0%. I also included a table that showed the overall percentages for the answer choices (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree) divided by the grade level of the child who's parent filled out the survey, with separate data for families with more than one kid at the school. I wanted to know if those results would be different than single child surveys. They really weren't. And at the bottom I included a few areas for improvement, based on the survey results, because why not.

It was early release but I didn't actually leave the building until about an hour after the bell rang because I stopped by the library and was troubleshooting a laptop cart with the librarian. It's been screwed up forever, maybe always. All I know is that the laptops weren't charging and I don't think it has been used at all this year. After messing with it for awhile we discovered that it power cycles every ten minutes, and goes in order of the four power strips. So the first five laptops on the first power strip, then the next five on the second power strip, and so on. It was really interesting actually, but I had no idea how to fix it.

Tonight was Chipotle night. The guy at the front of the line kind of screwed me on rice and beans and I think the girl at the end tried to compensate with sour cream and cheese. More than half of my burrito was probably sour cream and cheese. The high school version of myself would have loved that but the current version of me found it way to salty. I like rice and beans, not mouthfuls of cheese.

After dinner I worked on my discussion post for this week and finally managed to finish it. Trying to wrap my head around orthogonality as it relates to the principals of faceted classification was a chore to say the least. I feel like I keep catching glimpses of it but then when I try to focus on it, it disappears. Very frustrating. It also doesn't help that I'm exhausted. And my throat hurts. My first thought was that I have been reading too much out loud when trying to get through my textbook chapter. And then I remembered that I had the hands of two strangers in my mouth at the dentist this morning. That could also be a reason for the soreness. I just hope it doesn't hurt in the morning. I don't really have time for that.

Now, fingers crossed for a decent night of sleep. It's already after eleven o'clock and I'm hoping I can fall asleep before midnight. And then stay asleep. As much as I love taking hours to fall asleep and then waking up every half hour or hour throughout the night, I would like to see what it's like to sleep all the way through a night. I feel as if I have forgotten in recent days.

April 7, 2015

There is something I have forgotten to write about for a couple days now, and I thought of it yesterday, but then it slipped away again. Annoying. Another forgotten thing was that I got a haircut yesterday after work. So yeah.

And now having written that, I remember that forgotten thing. On Sunday I watched The Grand Budapest Hotel. I enjoyed it. Wes Anderson movies always have a unique look to them, which I like. I am also a fan of the humor, especially in this particular movie, which was on point.

Last night I slept like crap. I would say a very generous estimate would be a total of four hours of sleep. I'm not sure what was up. I was tired until I laid down and when I did eventually fall asleep it felt like I was up every hour or so. The superpower of being able to fall asleep on command would be nice.

Most of my morning was filled with two state assessments. So exciting. When they were over I worked on the survey data for the principal. I found an online tally keeper thing last night so I opened sixteen copies of that across my two monitors at work, each with four tallies. Each instance stood for one question and the four possible answers. I then went through the stack of surveys clicking on the answer for each question as I went. I ended up having to go through the surveys twice because there were eighteen questions, not sixteen, but it was still a lot faster than if I had tried to keep track of it in another way other than the tally system.

This afternoon I had a few classes in the lab, including the kindergarten classes. The last time one of them was in the lab I kind of put one of the girls in timeout because she was so stressed out about one of the activities. She is constantly crying about every little thing, especially if is it some sort of quiz because she doesn't want to get the wrong answer. Thankfully she is moving so I won't have to deal with that during MAP testing next year. Anyway, she started freaking out again today but the teacher was there so he pulled her aside and basically told her to suck it up. But in a much nicer way. And it worked because she didn't cry for the rest of the class. Hopefully she maintains that composure next time.

By the end of the day I had finished inputting all the survey data and was able to start playing around with it. I'm still not entirely sure what all I want to do with it but I've got tomorrow to figure that out. I've got testing in the morning but it is early release so I don't have any classes in the afternoon. Plenty of time to get something worthwhile for the principal.

After work I went and bought a PowerBall ticket and then went to Target to pick up a few things. I can't remember the last time I went to Target. It's been awhile.

Tonight I finished reading a textbook chapter, taking a brief nap in the middle of it because good grief. Not only was it dense reading, I was also tired of hell. Now I probably won't be able to fall asleep but I wouldn't have been able to finish reading without the nap.

It is nearly eleven o'clock, and I'm still tired, so I'll try the sleep thing. I can pretty much guarantee I'll end up laying there for an hour but it's been than sitting here and staring at a computer screen. Spending so many hours a day engaged in that activity probably doesn't help things. Oh well. Such is life. I'm still looking forward to the end of the semester so I can shed the stress of juggling so many projects.

April 6, 2015

I've got a headache because I just spent the last few hours reading out loud so I didn't fall asleep while reading my textbook. My horribly boring textbook.

I feel like I had a lot to write about earlier in the day but now that it is ten o'clock and the headache thing and the tired thing and whatever else, not a lot is coming to mind.

We had more testing today and it was thrilling as always. I had good conversations with the two fifth grade teachers during both of their tests today. I don't get to have good conversations that often so I enjoy them when they happen. Again, I would have gone into detail had I been writing this earlier in the day.

In my downtime I worked on the yearbook, adding in the two preschool classes. I am trying to avoid looking at the candid pages because those are the ones that the kids are working on and they are all different. And not organized very well. Looking at them kind of make my eyes twitch. I want to fix everything and make it all look uniform. But I won't. Because it is for the kids.

The principal asked me to take a stack of surveys (147 surveys to be exact), a survey that I designed the format and layout for earlier in the year, and analyze the data for her by Thursday. The survey has eighteen questions, answered with a four-point scale. I'm not exactly sure how I will analyze the data yet but I first need to get it all entered into a spreadsheet. Which I am going to start doing after I finish typing this because Thursday is cutting it a bit close. And I've got so much other crap on my plate right now. If I were to fully acknowledge it all at once I'm certain it would be more than overwhelming. But I'm trying to avoid that. For my own sanity.

Tonight I read my textbook and did laundry. During my short breaks I played AdVenture Capitalist. It's basically Cookie Clicker. I found out about it yesterday and started playing the browser version. Then tonight when I was looking at Steam to see if I could use it for my discussion post this week for class I accidentally stumbled across the game there. Turns out it isn't just a mobile and browser game. So now I have it running in the browser and the standalone version going. I'll probably abandon the browser one eventually but right now it doesn't require any extra effort to keep it going. It would be nice if I could import my game into the standalone version but whatever.

Now I'm going to input a bit of survey data, just to get a start on it, and then I'm going to go to bed. I would like about twenty hours of sleep but I'm not going to get that.

April 5, 2015

Today I accomplished nothing. Thank god I did stuff yesterday. I slept in until eleven o'clock. I wasn't asleep the entire time but I refused to get out of bed. It was pretty great. I spent the rest of my day thinking about possibly doing something related to schoolwork but nothing ever came of it.

Instead, I watched videos, listened to music, played guitar, and read articles that I've been meaning to read for awhile. So in the near future I will probably regret today because I could have doe so much to help my future self, but for the moment I feel pretty good about my day.

One possible thing my future self will regret is the upcoming release of GTA5. I have wanted to play it for over a year now and when it comes out I'll be knee-deep in schoolwork. I need to just buckle down and knock everything out in the coming week. That won't happen but it would be really nice.

Tonight we had a family dinner for Easter. I ate way too much. I had stuffing, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, rolls, fruit, and my sister's chocolate pie, which she nailed, as per usual. My stomach hurts. And I'm already looking forward to leftovers.

And that is really all I have to write about today. Not very exciting. Thanks to my late start this morning, the the discomfort in my stomach, I think I'll play a little Minecraft and collect some resources until I start feeling tired enough to actually go to bed.

April 4, 2015

Today was super productive. Shockingly so, actually. It started by going over to the old house and loading stuff into the bed of a pickup truck and bringing it back to the new house. Then going back to the old house and loading up the pickup again and taking it to my sister's house. And that was all before lunch.

After lunch I joined a live video lesson from one of my professors who was discussing the research paper we have to write. I haven't even given that paper the slightest thought so I didn't have any questions to ask but it was good to hear her explain things because I think I got a better idea of what will be expected of me than I would have just reading the PDF instructions. During the brief question and answer portion at the end the professor unmuted everyone's microphones and this turned out to be a bit of a mistake. While she was answering one student's question another student started typing War and Peace on her laptop and her microphone must have been right on top of her keyboard because it completely drowned out everything that the professor was saying. Not only was that annoying but even more annoying was the fact that I could see exactly who was causing the ruckus but didn't have the power to mute them, only the professor did, and she couldn't hear it because she was talking. The problem was eventually resolved but not before the professor had given a long response to a question and she didn't spend much time going back over what she had said. Oh well.

When that was done I came up with the second part of my group project for this week. Yesterday I wrote about a directory and today I came up with a handbook. It took me awhile to figure out because I was getting hung up on trying to think of a useful almanac or yearbook. They mentioned some good ones in the textbook but I didn't want to go that route. When I switched my thinking to handbooks I started to see the light and eventually came up with graduate school handbooks. I think maybe this idea came to me fleetingly earlier in the week because it felt familiar but if so, I didn't remember it until today. All of the colleges I tried had some form of a graduate school handbook, either in website or PDF form, and they cover everything from admissions to expectations and policies to graduation. Perfect for prospective graduate students.

I was on a role after that so I also did a little work on my other group project. The one where my partner has been a bit absent. But maybe she is making a lot of progress behind the scenes. Hopefully. I created a page in our group and filled out several of the project objectives. I also started thinking about designing a visual example of what a search would look like using our metadata schema as well as what the results would look like. That isn't really part of it but I think it would look cool so I'm going to see if I can come up with something.

A also posted another response for the discussion post this week. I'll try and do one more tomorrow. I also need to give some serious thought to the standards assignment that is due next Sunday. I still need to pick out a standard and then make some sort of comic or video or infographic or whatever else to explain it. I think the artifact is supposed to be geared toward undergraduate students.

Tonight I streamed. I started with Blacklight Retribution. I played a little last night and did alright but apparently good people don't play on Friday night. After going to bed I remembered that the game has an x-ray vision type system that I had completely forgotten about. I had just been trying to listen to footsteps and I've gotta say, they don't offer very good directional cues in this game. I could tell when someone was kind of close but I couldn't tell which direction or if they were even on the same floor as me. Tonight I remembered the x-ray mechanic but was playing against much better players and I couldn't get away from them. It felt like cheating was involved but it could also be a combination of me sucking, the other players being really good, and the other players dropping a lot of real money on the game to get really good stuff. All I know is I couldn't win a gunfight against them to save my life. Especially against this one player who always tea-bagged after a kill. It was like trying to fight Neo in The Matrix with how fast he could move side to side and avoid almost every single bullet. There was even a time when I spawned behind him while he was in the little inventory thing. I started unloading in his back and he managed to turn around and kill me. That's when I had enough. I tried getting in a few different lobbies but for some reason always ended up back in that same lobby so I ended up just quitting. It's not fun getting three kills and fifteen deaths, most of which from the same dude, who then tea-bags you. When the game is balanced it is fun, things just weren't working out tonight.

I switched to Minecraft and started working on building my house. That was fun. It's going to have an interesting shape to it. I also discovered a deep hole at the base of the hill my house is on so I made some ladders and went down looking for coal and iron, both of which I found a bunch of. I think I'll end up turning it into my mine and hope it eventually breaks into a larger cave system. Right now it's just a couple of small hallways.

While I was playing I had some music playing in the background that was supposed to be VOD friendly. The VOD is the recorded video you get after a stream. Twitch has started cracking down on music that isn't royalty free so if you have it during your stream, that whole section of the VOD will be muted. Well, I found the record label that has recently created a streaming music channel on Twitch and they also created a couple playlists on Spotify. They say that you can use their music as long as you credit them on your page. Well, I did that, but then a really big chunk of the VOD ended up getting muted. Not really a big deal because I wasn't really talking much while I was playing Minecraft but I didn't think it would get muted. I think it was during the entire length of the first two artists so maybe there is a glitch. I also thought that maybe because I was listening to it on Spotify that maybe the ads triggered the muting. I can't remember any ads because I was kind of zoned out and not really listening to anything but I know there were ads because that's what Spotify does. Who knows. I messaged the record labels Twitch channel so we'll see. Next time I might try just playing their stream in the background instead of Spotify and see if that changes anything.

And now it is time for bed because it is two o'clock in the morning and I'm tired and I have a headache. I am going to sleep in tomorrow. And if I wake up and I deem it to be too early, I'm just going to lay there until I fall back to sleep. I want a sleep-in day. I think I've earned one this week.

April 3, 2015

 Today happened. It started, and then there were things, and now we're here. Super informative.

There was more testing today. More baby picture editing. The occasional class in the lab. And we almost had a yearbook club meeting. None of the kids showed up, which isn't a bad thing because there really wasn't anything for them to do, so I ended up just sitting and talking to the mom who's in charge of it all while I worked on editing baby pictures.

While standing and watching kids take tests I had a breakthrough idea for my group project this week. Half of it anyway. We have to come up with a directory and a almanac/yearbook/handbook for undergraduate students thinking about going to graduate school. I came up with a directory. All week I've had the vague idea of pizza, not only because it is good, but it also has a very college appeal. I originally thought about finding a directory for local pizza places so the prospective grad student could look and see what kind of pizza they could get while in grad school. And then today during testing TripAdvisor popped into my head. I briefly contemplated Yelp but I decided to broaden things and go with TripAdvisor. It would allow students to see not only restaurants but also local attractions and other stuff for the city where they may want to go to grad school. This way they'll know if they're going to have to roadtrip for Chipotle or what museums are in town. These could be the deciding factors if the grad schools at the top of the list come out tied. I think it's a pretty brilliant idea.

Going back to baby pictures, I may have my first song for the slideshow. I've been listening to Kygo a lot after seeing him on the Ultra music festival stream. I thought about taking a clip from one of his songs for the menu or credits music, and I still might, but I might use one of his full songs for the slideshow itself. I actually noticed the lyrics to Stole the Show tonight and it can either be about an amicable breakup or the end of an era. I'm going to run it by a few people and see if they can see it in the context of the latter.

Tonight I watched some YouTube videos and livestreams and listened to music. All while working on the annotation for TripAdvisor and writing another response on the discussion post for this week. A productive night but it would have been nice if I had finished my work sooner. Isn't that always the case.

Now I'm really tempted to jump into a game of Blacklight Retribution. But I also want to play Minecraft. And go to bed because it is after eleven o'clock and I like sleep. I might click on Blacklight Retribution before I can change my mind. Yep. Just did. So I'm going to check that out, see how much it has changed since last I played, which looks like was almost two years ago.

April 2, 2015

 Today my cutout spent most of the day in the staff bathroom. I didn't put it there, just to be clear. It apparently scared pretty much everyone who used the bathroom and eventually someone put a blindfold on it. At one point one of the second grade teachers asked me if I had seen my number two, watching people go number two. One of the cleverest things I have heard in awhile. The cutout was also briefly in the elevator, long enough to scare one of the paras to the point of screaming. Classic cutout.

My day was filled with more testing. No surprise there. The only problem was one test that wouldn't allow the student to answer the second half of the last question. I'm going to have it reactivated and hope that it will miraculously fix things.

When there wasn't testing I had a couple classes in the lab, yearbook club, and I edited baby pictures. So once again, a very typical day as of late. Tomorrow will be much of the same.

Tonight I finally managed my discussion post, finding examples that hadn't been mentioned already. Although I did discover someone who asked almost the exact same question I did, but screw it, I'm not wasting more time trying to come up with a new one. I also responded to two or three posts. I'll need to respond to more in the coming days so that I show activity on more than one day.

I spent the rest of the night watching the Neebs livestream and playing a little guitar. Tomorrow I want to focus on my group projects and take a look at my other upcoming assignments. Hopefully I can get a lot done this weekend.

The stream is still going but I'm going to bed now. I haven't gotten a lot of sleep recently and I have been feeling it. I miss the brief period of time when I was going to bed at ten o'clock. That is a great time to go to bed when you wake up at six o'clock in the morning.