February 6, 2014

There was a very small opening between piles of snow to get out of my driveway this morning. And then there was a trash can making that opening even smaller. And I'm not coming at it straight on because I'm parked off to the side of the driveway. Needless to say, I backed into a pile of snow and had to pull forward and come at it again. It didn't help that my back window seemed to immediately freeze over as soon as I started to reverse. But I did manage to get out of the driveway, no thanks to the trash can.

In my car the temperature is displayed next to the clock. This morning it said -2 when I got in my car, and dipped down to -4 during part of my drive to work. I didn't even know it could display negative numbers. I would have been fine never finding this out.

Because of all the snow, all the streets surrounding the school were much narrower today. There was a bunch of snow where I usually park, and I could have pulled it off if I drove a truck, but I drive a car that is very near the ground, so I drove around the block. One of the streets on the other side of the school is narrow to begin with but this morning there were cars parked over a foot away from the curb on both sides. I barely fit. I ended up parking on the corner adjacent to the open I usually do. So I was parallel to the side of the building rather than being parallel to the front of the building. Not that it really matters.

Work was pretty much the same old thing. I finished working on my MAP spreadsheets, completely updating them with the data from the Winter round of testing. Now I can focus on other stuff, most importantly the storybooks. I didn't actually work on those today but I plan on doing that in the near future.

I helped out with literacy centers in kindergarten this morning and their room was freezing because the AC was messing up. It was a drastic change from the lab which was also broken but in the opposite direction, turning it into a sauna. I had the listening center but the space heater popped a fuse or breaker or something, killing the CD player, so I ended up reading the book to my group before we went over to the tables to work on their favorite toy drawings.

I also had second grade reading groups but it was sort of a catch-all day due to it being a two day week, so I just kind of wandered around the room, talking with the kids, getting them to kind of halfway stay focused. It was a lot better than trying to get a group of them to listen to a story two or three times in a row. And having to hear the same story two or three times in a row.

There was a middle school choir assembly today, that I learned about when there was an intercom announcement saying it was going to be slightly delayed. I had already logged in the first kindergarten class to Odyssey in case the assembly ended early enough. Thanks to being delayed, it didn't, but I left right after the last song so I could log in the second kindergarten class. And then they didn't show up because apparently right after the choir assembly there was a fundraising assembly. I think all this was mentioned in an email at some point but I obviously forgot about it. So I logged into twenty-two computers, and then logged forty-three kids into Odyssey, all for nothing. I certainly don't need the practice.

After school I went to Hobby Lobby to get pipe cleaners for a possible craft project. I also had my dark blue yarn with me to check on the color match with the dark blue yarn in stock. And I got really lucky because it was a decent match. Way better than the last time I checked. So maybe at the theater this weekend I can work on my crocheted blanket.

From Hobby Lobby I went to Chipotle and then stopped by one of my bankets to get a blank check so I could get the information I needed to add that account to my Roth IRA account. Now I can withraw money directly from that account, rather than writing a check to myself and depositing it into my other account. When I got home I added it and made another payment into my Roth IRA. It is kind of scary putting so much money into what is essentially one big gamble. I just need to remember to check my next bank statement because to verify my account, the IRA company is going to make two small deposits and then withdrawal it, and I will have to tell them the amounts. I could check my account online but the last time I tried setting that up it was pretty much a fail. So I'll just wait for my paper statement, whenever that shows up.

I didn't have a visit with the new volunteer kid tonight because I didn't want to trust the roads. I'm sure the highway and interstate would have been decent but maybe not, and all the roads leading to the main roads would probably suck. I didn't want to risk it. So instead we texted. Turns out he had three snow days so there wasn't a lot of education happening on his end this week. I asked him if he did anything productive with his free time and he said that he slept a lot, so productively conserved energy. I thought that was pretty good.

With the rest of my night I played a bit of BF4 and watched YouTube videos. My first game in BF4 sucked because when I joined my team was already pinned down to one flag (out of five) and there was no getting out of it. I kept trying to push but it needs to be a group effort, overwhelming the enemy and pushing them back, and none of my group was pushing. That seems to be a big problem in the large, close-quarters matches, trying to get everyone to push at once. They tend to just find a corner and hunker down. This is all well and good when you are on the team doing the pinning but when you are against a wall you need to push, or get crushed against the wall and wait for the match to end. In the second game, I was on the team doing the crushing. For most of the game we only held three of the flags, which makes the game more interesting for both sides because everyone has more options in terms of how they get around the map. At the very end we ended up pushing forward and captured four flags but up until then it was pretty fun. Still one-sided though, which isn't as fun as when the teams are evenly matched and the whole game is a back and forth struggle. The best part of the game though was that I managed to beat out the other sixty-three players and ended with the highest score. My K/D ended up being positive but I didn't have that many kills, and over half of my points came from dropping ammo boxes and getting resupply points. Thousands upon thousands of resupply points. I ended up with 63 resupply medals, which is insane. And cool as hell because I finally came out on top, which far removed from my usually spot somewhere in the bottom half. It'll probably never happen again so I made sure to save the report for the game. The only thing cooler was in BF3 when I one a game of Gun Master. Unfortunately that happened before I could record gameplay so I have no proof of it. Just the memories.

February 5, 2014

Snow Day: Day Two. Just as boring as the first. Not productive in the least. So basically a waste of two days off. And I'll probably do the same thing Friday until I have to go to work at the theater. Unlike yesterday, I did leave the house, long enough to dig my car out. The guys came and cleared off the porch and driveway, and they came after the city so they were able to clear out the bottom of the driveway where the city guys had left a mound across it. Even with the driveway clear, I still had a massive amount of snow on my car as well as all around it. I started my using a broom to push and brush the snow off my car, and then used a shovel to dig out around it. Slowly working my way around the car. I think it ended up taking about an hour. And I know I'm going to be feeling it in the morning. As well as the bit of exercising I decided to engage in before going outside.

With the rest of my day I played a little BF4, read part of one of the books I'm reading now, watched YouTube videos, and read news articles online. Such an uneventful day. A day that really felt like a Sunday. And then tomorrow we go back to school for one day before having a three day weekend. Although I'll be at the theater for two of those days. And by the looks of the schedule I will be closing on Friday and opening on Saturday. That sucks big balls. Sort of. Depending on how long I'm there Friday night and how early I have to be there on Saturday morning. It is kind of nice not closing on Saturday because I can get to bed at a better hour. And Friday will be a little better because I won't have to wake up at six o'clock to go to school. So really, this weekend won't actually be that bad. But I still hate the place, despite giving me an excuse to catch up on my book reading, so it still sucks big balls.

February 4, 2014

Snow Day: Day One. Today kind of felt like a weekend, with a lot of snow outside. Throughout the day I monitored the snowfall outside my window, gauging it by the amount piling up on the front porch rails. When I woke up there was about two inches and at the time of writing this, there looks to be about six inches. This is not surprising because the snow was non-stop all day. Most of the time it looked like powder sugar coming down but occasionally the snowflakes got a bit bigger and came down with a bit for vigor.

On this side of my window, I didn't really do much. Treating my day like a typical Sunday. I played some BF4, watched some YouTube videos, watched some TV, and other things. Kind of disappointing really. Such is life.

I bought eggs yesterday because I wanted to start adding those into my salads. And today I hard boiled eggs for the first time ever. I have eaten quite a few in my day but have never had the opportunity, or need, to actually make them. Until now. And I totally nailed it. At least one of them anyway, the other five are still shelled. I left them out for a little bit on the counter before putting them in a pot with what I wanted to be cold water but it was apparently my first time using the sink because I couldn't remember which way was cold and ended up with some hot water, and then cold, so it was average water coming about an inch over the top of the eggs. I covered the pot, brought it to a reasonable boil, removed it from the heat, and left it covered for about thirteen minutes, before digging the eggs out and putting them in a bowl of ice water. Hours later when it was time for dinner, and the salad I was having with it, I peeled one of the eggs, relatively successfully, and when I cut into it, the yolk was a bright yellow and perfect. Kind of makes me wish I made more than six because I'll probably screw it up the next time.

While I was waiting for the eggs to come to a boil I also rinsed off some Brussels sprouts. The first time I made them they were good but a bit soggy, and I figured they were either cooked too long or maybe still a little wet from being rinsed off. So I got an early start to give them plenty of time to dry, as well as patting them dry with a paper towel. When it came time to cook them I mixed everything together in a bowl, making sure to use less seasoning than the first time when I used way too much, and I roasted them for a shorter period of time. They turned out better this time around. I think I could still cook them for a bit less time but they were pretty delicious.

Tonight, amongst other things, I watched a live debate between Bill Nye and a leading Creationist. It made me glad to believe in science. I have nothing against religion, when it isn't used as an excuse to hate and oppress and kill people, but there is something about Creationism that I find scary. It was just so strange seeing this guy debate his view that seems to be so contrary to common sense. He basically took the view of Occam's razor, that the simplest answer must be the only answer. Rather than try to figure out why stuff exists and how it came to be, just say God made it and move on. That just seems sad. Life and existence is so much more interesting than that explanation. And it is strange seeing someone so convinced that the Earth is so young. Honestly, I can't comprehend a 10,000 year old Earth any better than I can one that is billions of years old, but 10,000 years is way too short a timespan for all the things that have happened in our history. That and all the other things the only make sense if you ignore all the artifacts and other things discovered by science. In the end I could find out that I'm wrong about everything and religion is the answer, but for the time being, my common sense leans toward tangible evidence, not a book compiled a long time ago using passed down stories.

Tomorrow will be Snow Day: Day Two. And hopefully, for the sake of my paycheck, it won't become a trilogy. At some point I will need to go out and unbury my car. My forearms still kind of hurt from all the sweeping I did the other day to unbury my car so I'm not looking forward to that. Today I think one of the neighbors came and shoveled a path on our front porch to the door. It was very random, and in the end it was also pointless because a few hours later there was no evidence that it had even occurred. And maybe it didn't actually happened and it was all a figment of my imagination? 

February 3, 2014

Today went by incredibly fast. And it wasn't particularly action packed, it just sort of happened. The first part of my day was spent downloading all the MAP reports and printing them off for the teachers. That took awhile because it involved not only the class reports but individual student reports. So much printing. But I got it all done fairly quickly.

I only had two classes in the lab today, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. And I had second grade reading groups this morning but that was fairly uneventful. Which was nice. I had the listening center and they were listening to a story about George Washington Carver. Before they read the story they had to write down what they already knew about him and questions they wanted answered. One kid thought he was a president and another wanted to know which president he was, in terms of number. So close yet not really. The most surprising thing was that they actually sat through listening to the story. That is unheard of. And from the story I learned that he added his middle name of Washington when he went to college (I think) and there was someone else named George Carver, he came up with over 300 uses for peanuts and over 100 uses for sweet potatoes in order to prove their value to farmers, to get them to start rotating their crops which would improve the soil.

This afternoon a tech guy came to fix the broken computer. It has been broken for weeks, at least a week or two before MAP testing started. He replaced the hard drive and checked that it would boot up, which is did, and he called it good. Later on I went to check it and when I turned it on I immediately got a blue screen of death. After that, every time I turned it on I would have to choose to start Windows normally. When I got to the unlock screen it took at least three seconds for the computer to recognize my key presses and switch to the log-in screen. Then when I attempted to log in, I would get the Welcome screen with the spinning icon but it would never make it to the desktop. It would either spin forever or sometimes go back to the lock screen. So who knows. I need to submit another trouble ticket.

After school I went to the pet store to get dog food, the gas station to get gas, and Target to get foodstuffs. I really only intended to get trail mix but ended up with a lot more. Including Brussels sprouts because I want to make those again.

Tonight I played BF4 and had a lot of fun. I found a 64-man Conquest server that was 24/7 Operation Locker with a whole bunch of tickets. The first two games were pretty bad and we got beat with the other team still having over 1000 tickets left. But then there was some balancing and every game after that was a pretty close battle up until the end. It was a bit of a cluster at times but even when my team was getting completely dominated the first two games it was still fun. With fewer players it is easier to get completely pinned down and picked off before you can get a shot off. With 32 players on each team, it can be a lot easier for one side to cut off all the paths, but there are so many players that you at least get to kill a bunch while you're stuck in your spawn. I also learned the choke points are an easy way to get resupply ribbons by dropping ammo boxes where everyone is stuck. Thanks in part to that, and using some XP boosts I have gotten in battlepacks, I went from level 17 to level 23 tonight. That is pretty ridiculous. I feel I got somewhat lucky with the evenly matched teams but I added the server to my favorites so I can try it out again.

This afternoon the preemptively announced a snow day for tomorrow. The snow is supposed to roll in sometime tonight and continue through tomorrow, with up to ten inches of snow. So just in case that happens, school was canceled. And if we get all that snow, on top of the incredibly cold temperatures we are expected to have on Wednesday, school may be canceled that day too. That would kind of suck because it is an early release day and I'm supposed to go to a meeting after school and help a teacher with his iPad. But if Wednesday is also a snow day, then this will only be a two day week because we already have Friday off. I've got stuff I could be doing at work, and I like getting paid, so I would prefer not to miss anymore than I have to. I won't mind sleeping in tomorrow though. Especially because I am currently up way past my bedtime.

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.