April 13, 2016

 Today was a very quiet day at work. Work-wise, anyway. Literally speaking it was a very loud day because the drums have returned to the music room next door and the kids were beating the crap out of those all day. I love drums.

At the beginning of the day I needed to get the testing access codes from the principal and I was a little late in doing that. The kids go to the gym in the morning until their teachers come to pick them up. After all the other grades had left, the principal had both second grade classes circle up in the gym and she gave them a long talk, basically about how awful they are and that they need to stop. She presented it much better. But it took forever. And I don't think it worked.

When one of the classes came to the lab about an hour later, and then as they were leaving one of the kids got is jacket caught in the cord so when he picked his jacket off the ground and went to leave it pulled the headphone jack out of the computer tower and the headphones crashed to the ground. This also pulled his jacket out of his hands. He looked back, untangled his jacket, looked at the headphones, and then walked out. The teacher heard the noise and called him back in to pick up the headphones and asked him if he knew what happened. He said he didn't and the teacher was about to tell him to be more careful but then I ratted him out because of how deliberate he had been about not only nearly breaking the headphones and ignoring it, but then looking the teacher in the eyes and lying. And even though it was maybe two hours into the day, and they had started their day with the principal talking to them about being better people, lying about the headphones was this kid's third strike and he had to go up to the SPED room. At least one other second grader ended up in there and one spent some time in the office for pushing his classmates.

I discovered that last one when I went to clock in from lunch. I came into the office and the kid was sitting there and one of the office ladies was having a very serious conversation with him. She was telling him that every time he was sent to the office it was put on his permanent record and that record would follow him. Even into adulthood. She told him that when he was looking for jobs they would be able to see his permanent record and she asked if he thought someone would want to give him a job if they saw on his record that he pushed his friends in line. It was great. Throughout the day I saw this kid three times and each time he was crying. He was not having a good day.

I ended up not having any testing in the lab today. My third grade friend came back for the last hour of the day and she managed to answer five questions. She worked on the first question for over twenty minutes and in the end she didn't even answer it. She flagged it to come back to it later. She also spent a lot of time creating a multiplication chart. When I looked at it after she left I noticed that she had started her first row in the first cell, instead of offsetting it one to the right. It looked like her multiplication was correct but if she was working from the first row and first column, that math wouldn't line up. It's hard to explain, but she put so much time into it and it was just slightly off. It is painful watching her but at least she is actually working at it the whole time, even if she is taking the scenic route of the scenic route's scenic route.

Without testing, I had three classes in the lab this morning and one class this afternoon. That left a lot of time with nothing work-related to do. I found a song online for one of the cooks. Her dad recently passed away and it was his favorite song. She would listen to it whenever she was sad and it still makes her happy. The only thing she could find was an old YouTube video but I was able to find the actual song and sent it to her.

The rest of my day was spent working on my video tutorial script I made it to the conclusion but didn't have time to write it. I went with the idea of describing and demonstrating the various aspects of the website and then set it up for a time-lapse of making the library flyer. When I got home I was able to read it straight through at a decent clip and it came out a couple three seconds over seven minutes. That didn't include a possible brief title slide, the time-lapse, a conclusion, and actually clicking around the website. The whole thing is only supposed to be five to seven minutes. Good grief. I need to talk less and show more I guess. This is shaping up to be a very stressful weekend.

Chipotle was good tonight and the videos went well. After dinner I read an article for class and thought about my tutorial. I also got briefly distracted by thinking about serendipitous discovery. Along with starting a tool library I want to do things with serendipitous discovery. I want to be done with school already so I can work on that. My ideas for it involve expanding my small bit of programming knowledge, which is not something I can dive into on top of schoolwork. I hope I am still interested in it when it is no longer just a distraction from schoolwork.

Now I'm going to go to bed because I'm tired. Tomorrow I want to come up with truncated script. I'm not even going to pretend like I'll get around to recording the video. I just want to have a script that I can work with on Friday when I do record the video. I would also like to read my second article for the week and write my discussion post. I looked and it isn't much of a discussion post this week. We have to pick a resource and find two instructional materials for that resource and then write a short post about how and why we picked it. Should be a piece of cake if I pick a popular enough resource. Famous last words. If I could knock that out tomorrow then I could focus fully on the video tutorial. That would be great.

April 12, 2016

 When I laid down to go to bed last night the room immediately started spinning and it wouldn't stop. I ended up having to prop my head up with another pillow which seemed to alleviate the spinning a little bit. Enough for me to eventually fall asleep anyway. When I got to work I was talking to the librarian and one of the paras about it and they both suggested I try a decongestant. I took one of those after dinner and my head still feels a little loopy, and I still feel congested, but we'll see what happens when my head hits the pillow.

I didn't have a test first thing so I got the basketball pictures from the librarian and started working on that slideshow. Throughout the day I downloaded the songs, imported the pictures, and started tweaking things. I rearranged some pictures and set up random transitions between all of them, which I then adjusted on an individual basis as I watched through it. I ended up having to edit one of the songs because it started weird, which then made the transition from the previous song weird. I opened it in Audacity, trimmed a bit off the front and also made it fade in, which got rid of the weirdness and made the transition much better. I also made a title slide. I used the wood background I found this summer when making the website for a basketball organization. It was made to be tiled for the background of a website so I opened it in Gimp and tiled it a bunch until I got up to 1920x1080. On top of that I added words and the high school logo, which took a bit of work. I could only find a small image of the logo and it looked a little odd when I scaled it up and erased the background. I went through and did my best to change everything to one color and trim/add bits here and there. Then I played with the brightness and contrast to turn it from light blue to black to make sure it was all one color and I hadn't missed anything. Then I was able to use the paint bucket and turn it back to the right color of blue. It was a bit of a process. It took between forty-five minutes and an hour to render and it was after the first render that I noticed a few things I needed to change. I wasn't able to start the second render until 3:30PM so I left it going and the librarian said she would check it before she left to see if it was done. If she has any critiques I'll be able to adjust things tomorrow because I don't think the banquet is until tomorrow night.

And speaking of the librarian, as a thank you for everything she gave me an Amazon gift card this morning for $100. That is ridiculous. I thought the $50 gift card she gave me for Christmas was way too much and this one is definitely way too much. I also don't want to bring it up and make things awkward, because that will happen. I help her with all the tech stuff at school and the slideshows and stuff for her kids because I like doing that stuff and it gives me something to do. It also gives me a chance to learn new things. I'm already on the clock when I do most of it and don't need to get paid more for it but I don't want to offend her by not accepting it. I haven't eaten candy for quite awhile now but I still accept it as payment from teachers because I don't want to make things awkward. Trying to deny money is way higher up on the awkward scale than candy.

There was more testing today. The third grader who tested for two and a half hours yesterday put in another hour and a half today to finish up the first stage of Math. She still has three stages of Math and one stage of Reading to go. It's going to be a long rest of the month.

The music teacher, and one of the second grade teachers that she showed the list to, liked the ideas I came up with for alternatives to healthy choices. Their two favorites were also my two favorites: “Vegetables before confectionables” and “et tu, brownie?”

I was supposed to meet with the academic librarian today regarding a practicum but she had to cancel. Kind of disappointing. I would really like to get this all sorted out so I can get everything submitted and get enrolled in the practicum so I can stop worrying about it. We are now working on rescheduling.

Tonight I started re-writing the script for my video tutorial. It is going much better. I can't remember what my schedule looks like tomorrow but it would be nice if I could get the script finished at work. Then I could maybe consider recording the video tomorrow night. Although to be honest that probably won't happen because I still need to read the articles and write my discussion post for my other class. Realistically, I see me reading the articles tomorrow night, and maybe even writing the discussion post, but that probably won't happen until Thursday. The recording of the video should also happen on Thursday, but might get pushed back until Friday. We have the day off from work so I have all day to record and edit it. At this point I am hoping adding the captions doesn't take as long as I think it will. Fingers crossed on that one.

I bought two pairs of Chucks tonight. Green ones and bright orange ones. The green ones are because I have wanted new green ones for over a year now. The orange ones are for graduation. At least that's the plan. We'll see what they look like in person.

Now I'm going to bed. It isn't even 10:30PM yet and I haven't made it to bed before midnight in way too long. Hopefully I sleep better than last night.

April 11, 2016

 Today there was more testing. I forgot that the first class was done testing so I had a little bit of a reprieve first thing, which allowed me to get the sheets put away and mentally prepare myself for a day of testing.

It also gave me a chance to check to see if Canva was working. I checked on my work computer and it was fine. I also brought my laptop and when I checked on it, Canva was still not working in Chrome, but it did work in Firefox. I can't remember but I don't think I checked Firefox on my laptop yesterday. I do know that it wasn't working in Firefox or Chrome on my desktop. Having it narrowed down to only one browser on my laptop led me to believe it was browser-related so I started digging around. I cleared cookies and the cache and even signed out of the browser just in case. That stuff didn't work. Then I dug a little deeper and when I looked in the exceptions it showed that Canva was blocked. What the crap is that about? I had been working on it all day and then in the time it took me to eat dinner it suddenly became blocked. So very weird. When I got home I checked and it was blocked. After deleting that it worked fine. A frustrating relief.

There were two tests this morning back-to-back leading up to lunch. Earlier in the morning one of the kindergarten teachers brought me her new iPad. Over the weekend she kept getting a pop-up asking for my password, which is super strange because I had never even touched her new iPad. Her old iPad used to be mine and after I wiped it and gave it to her she would occasionally get a pop-up asking for my password. I think it eventually stopped happening but I don't know. At least when that happened it made sense because that iPad used to be in my possession. This new iPad, however, was a bigger mystery. I did a lot of searching and it seemed one possibility involved apps. If someone downloads an app, even a free one, then gives the iPad to someone else and the new owner downloads the same app, there is a chance that the iPad will associate the app with the old owner, so when there is an update for it the iPad will ask for the old owner's password, even though it was downloaded by the new owner. It's stupid. Near the end of the testing in the morning I figured all this out and was able to sign in as me and find out which apps I had that the teacher had. Turns out there was just one, The Weather Channel. I deleted it from my account, logged out, logged in as the teacher, deleted the app from her account, and re-downloaded it. I restarted the iPad and waited for awhile, checking it periodically, and the pop-up for my password didn't show up again. So I think I fixed it. Time will tell.

This afternoon I had one class in the lab and then the rest of the afternoon was testing. One of the third grade classes came in to test at 1:30PM and one of the kids was in there until the end of the day. And she didn't finish the section she was on. After the assembly, which I didn't get to go to because of the continuous testing, the long-testing sixth grader came back to work on her tests and two third graders came back to finish their remaining stages. It was a long afternoon.

I was productive during the tests today. Someone people talk about having shower thoughts. I have testing thoughts. There is a lot of time for me to just stand there and get lost in my head. This morning I came up with an idea for how to make my tutorial go faster. Rather than going step-by-step through the making of my flyer, I think I'm going to spend time explaining each of the different sections of the site, how to add things to a project and edit them, and then timelapse through the actual making of my flyer. It shouldn't be a tutorial on how to make a specific flyer, it should be a tutorial on how to use the website. The flyer is just an example of what can be made with the site, so I need to focus less on that and more on the functionality of the site. Makes sense and I was kind of missing that yesterday.

This morning the music teacher asked me if I could come up with clever or ironic alternatives to “healthy choices” because she and some friends are getting together to support each other in making healthy choices. I came up with several throughout the day but I have two favorites. The first is “vegetables before confectionables”. 'Confectionables' is not a word but I like it. The second one is “et tu, brownie?” A classic.

I also had a genius idea for the library flyer project I'm working on at the public library. Rather than making little dots on a physical map and figure out a route that way, why not use Google maps. I didn't know how that would work out but it seemed like a good idea in my head. Near the end of the day when there were only a few kids testing I got on a computer in the back row to test my theory. Turns out you can make custom maps. You can also import addresses in an Excel spreadsheet, which is great because I already have all of those typed up already. I did a test with just one entry and it worked perfectly. You can also create different layers, which is perfect, because now there can be one layer for the whole town, one for each section of town, one for the “important” locations, and whatever else. Each layer can be a different color and have their own routes, both for driving and walking. The PR lady emailed me and thanked me for helping out on Saturday and said I could take the afternoon off because of all the time I put in Saturday. I decided to take her up on that because I needed to talk to the school librarian after work, take my drawing back to the frame shop, and maybe work on my tutorial. I told her my idea for the map and she said she would look into it if she had time this week and if not we could start on it next week.

So after work I talked to the librarian and went to the frame shop. That was a little awkward because I had the same lady I talked to originally and it turns out she was the one who framed the drawing. So I was pointing out all the things I didn't like and she was the one responsible. Awkward. I tried to defuse that awkwardness by saying having my things framed there had raised my expectations really high. I think it worked. Maybe.

When I got home I didn't work on my tutorial because my head was feeling weird. Near the end of the day at work I started feeling light-headed. Whenever I would move my head just right it felt like the world was about to start spinning. Or maybe I was just gaining the ability to perceive how fast the Earth is actually rotating on its axis. Either way, I wasn't enjoying it. The feeling persisted when I got home and it did not lead to productive things.

After dinner I still didn't work on my tutorial because of the head thing but I did eventually create a logo for my tutorial using Hexels. It is a 3D-looking cube with an 'L' on the left face, a 'T' on the right face, and on the top it says 'library tutorials' embossed in Morse Code. I think it looks pretty cool. It gave me a chance to be lazy but also productive, if that makes sense.

My head is still bothering me and it is late and I need to go to bed and this entry took way too long to write. I'm going to bed.

April 10, 2016

Today was kind of a fail but it wasn't my fault. I spent the vast majority of my day working on my video tutorial. I made a wallpaper for the monitor I'm recording that has a picture of the flyer I'm making and a notepad on one side of the screen. I will have the browser window filling up the rest of the screen. I also wrote down a list of objectives, which will eventually be on the notepad but I think I'm going to put that in when I edit the video. I also went through and wrote down all the different fonts and sizes I used on the original flyer so I can reference that as I recreate it. I made one dry run through the tutorial without a script just to see how it would go. I came in just under thirty minutes. And the tutorial is supposed to be between five and seven minutes. So I've got a bit of trimming to do. I think I'm going to rely heavily on cuts in the editing phase. And possibly fast forwarding through parts that are redundant.

I did all of that stuff done before dinner and the plan was to record the tutorial for real after dinner. At least get all the various parts recorded so I had enough to edit together. But then after dinner I couldn't log into the website. I tried every password I could think of and I even reset my password, but it didn't work. I also tried creating a new account but that didn't work either. The log in screen would just refresh when I hit Log In. When I had been doing my practice stuff I used random, made up email addresses and random passwords. When you log in it shows your username on the screen the whole time and I didn't want my username in the video so I was going to make up a random email that made more sense for the tutorial when I actually started recording the tutorial. I thought maybe all the random log-ins got my IP address flagged so I also tried using a VPN but that didn't work either. The VPN either didn't hide my IP address or there is another problem entirely. Multiple browsers and a different computer didn't do anything either.

I decided to tweet Canva because even though I don't use Twitter, I've heard tweeting a company can usually get a quicker response than contacting them through the website. They got back to me in about fifteen minutes but they just gave me a link to contact them through the website. So another fail, but I submitted my problem and hopefully I'll hear back from them tomorrow. If not I'll have to start considering another tutorial option. I am going to need all the time I can get to add the captions so I can't really wait around for the problem to get fixed. I'm going to check the website at work tomorrow and see if it will work for me there. If it is, and it's still not working at home, I'll assume it is an IP address thing. Which would be great because it would mean I could record the video someone else. But that would also mean I had to record the video somewhere else. I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope everything is resolved by the time I wake up tomorrow morning.

Before lunch today I was able to write and post my try new tech post for this week. I was originally going to do it over Squishy Circuits, which I learned about at the teen event at the library last night. I looked up a bunch of information about it and was about to start writing my post when I decided to check the class wiki to see what other people had written about this week. And someone had already written about Squishy Circuits. What the crap. I'm just glad I checked before I started writing.

I ended up switching to Sphero. The Sphero SPRK to be more precise, which is a small robot in the shape of a clear plastic ball. It's kind of like a hamster in a ball because the robot drives around the inside of the ball and that causes the ball to roll around. You can program it by dragging and dropping command tiles, kind of like LEGO Mindstorms, or you can just use your smartphone or tablet to drive it around. Without realizing it I had actually heard of the company before because around the time the new Star Wars movie came out this company made a BB-8 version of their robot, and I saw that all over the place.

I made my post and checked back a couple hours later to see if anyone else had posted. That is when I discovered my post had disappeared. I looked at the page revision history, and my name and post were there, but there was another post two minutes after mine, and my post disappeared after that post was made. I assume that person had been working on the page while I submitted my post, so even though my post showed up for me, when they submitted their edits to the page, it overwrote what I had posted. This was annoying because even though I write my post in a separate document, I add in all the hyperlinks within the wiki. This meant I had to open up my browser history and open up all the pages I linked to again and create the links all over again. I checked back several times throughout the rest of the day to make sure my post was still there. And it is, so I think we're safe.

Tonight I recorded my first audio journal in three years because I had my microphone set up and I felt like voicing my frustration... vocally. It was almost three years exactly, which is weird. I don't know that I will start recording them on a regular basis again but I like the idea of it.

I accomplished things today, and made progress on my video tutorial, but I'm still considering the day a fail because I got locked out of Canva tonight and was unable to actually record my video. It is very frustrating. My fingers are still crossed for tomorrow.

April 9, 2016

I should have gone to bed awhile ago. I'm tired.

I woke up earlier than I thought I would today but I got to sleep in so that was nice. Most of my day was spent figuring things out for my video tutorial. I worked on the script, the video layout, and my microphone. For the script I haven't even made it up to making the flyer, which is annoying. I think tomorrow I'm going to record a dry run just to see what more I need to add into the script and to get a sense for how long the presentation will be.

For the video layout I think I'm going to have the browser on most of the screen, have a smaller picture of the flyer on the upper right, and have a list of things that will be covered on the lower right. At least that's the plan now.

I tried both of my microphones and I'm going to go with my first one because it doesn't really pick up my mouse or keyboard. I also noticed when recording with OBS my audio would drop out randomly for a fraction of a second. I had already planned on recording audio in Audacity as well, just in case, but now Audacity will be the source for audio and I'll just mute my microphone in OBS.

My main concern is still the captions. That is going to be a pain in the ass. Not only having to focus more on what I'm saying because it is also going to show up in text, but also have to put all that text in the video. And worrying about what is on screen and if it is going to be blocked by the text. I will feel better about things if I can get the video recorded tomorrow and then have a week to worry about the captions. That would be ideal.

Tonight I “helped” with the teen night at the public library. The quotes are because I kind of felt unnecessary most of the night. The librarian in charge said she usually has twenty or twenty-five kids but tonight there were six. The first activity involved a scavenger hunt of sorts around the library and I was in charge of one of the stations. The kids had to do an activity, get a clue, and find the next station. It was all based on the 5^th Wave trilogy and my station involved the kids identifying three symptoms of five different illnesses and diseases. It was really a crap shoot and I ended up helping out quite a bit because we would have been there all night if I hadn't.

After the scavenger hunt the kids made crossbows with pencils, pens and rubber bands that shot Q-Tips. Then there was a brief attempt at makerspace stuff but that didn't really work out. Next there was a failed attempt at a capture the flag type game. Originally it was going to be in the dark but it was too hard to tell when the Nerf darts were going through the hula hoops (which was a part of the game). It was also kind of hard to do the capture the flag part because there were only two small lanes to get to the other team's side so no one could actually get across. The final nail in the coffin was being unable to find the light switches to turn on the lights so we could see. I think the game has potential in a different space.

The next game was Monkey Sand, which had a seeker with their eyes closed and the people who were not it trying to stay off the ground. If the seeker said “monkey sand” when someone was on the ground than that person became the seeker. This was kind of a fail because there were too many places for the kids to stand off the floor so the “monkey sand” didn't work and there was too much space to move around to stay away from the seeker. Also, one of the girls fell while jumping to a different spot and got a giant knot on her knee.

The final game was freeze tag, which was also kind of a fail. It included almost the entire bottom floor of the library and that was probably too much space for such a small group. The first kid who was it lost interest so one of the other kids took over. The rest of the game involved him running around freezing people and then the remaining people unfreezing them. It only ended when the kids started losing interest and stopped unfreezing each other. It was also a little terrifying watching the kids, and one of the adults, running at full speed around the library, which is all hard surfaces.

I had been told I would only be there from 5:30PM to 7:30PM but I ended up being there until after 9:00PM. It was helpful having me there for the scavenger hunt but after that I was kind of just there. I'm decent at talking to young kids thanks to working at an elementary school but don't have much experience with teens. The other adults and the teens also had previous relationships from the library and other teen events so that kind of made me feel like an outsider. I'm not great at inserting myself into social situations. I need to be invited in and given time to warm up to people. We never really reached that tonight.

I was going to do things when I got home tonight but that was when I thought I'd be home two hours earlier. Instead I ate a late dinner, replied to a discussion post, watched some livestreams, and played a couple video games to get my daily rewards. And now I'm going to bed because good grief.

Tomorrow I want to record my tutorial video. That's the main goal. If I could come up with a new tech and maybe even write that post, that would be great. I also need to respond to another discussion post or two. And probably do some other things. The tutorial is the priority though.

April 8, 2016

Today was another day. I didn't have a test first thing but then there were two tests from 9:45AM to noon. This afternoon I had a couple kids come in at different times to test and a couple classes in the lab.

When I wasn't testing and there weren't classes in the lab, I cleaned. This morning when I came in there were several places around the lab kids in Boys & Girls Club last night had been coloring with marker and got it all over the desks. Thankfully it was marker that could be easily scrubbed off (although it wasn't) but I didn't want it to eventually progress to the point of permanent marker like what happened to my desk during the summer. So I scrubbed it off and then emailed the Boys & Girls Club lady and asked if the kids could color on the floor in the future. I didn't want my email to come across as angry so I threw in that the desk graffiti had created some nice abstract art but I didn't think the lab could handle the foot traffic generated by an avant-garde student art gallery.

Scrubbing the marker off led to cleaning off all of the computer towers. Then I moved onto the monitors and the desks. It ended up having to be spread throughout the day but I got it done. I need to do it more often but I get sidetracked and usually only clean little bits here and there.

After work I went and picked up my framed dwarf librarian drawing. Overall I like the look of it but I'm going to have to take it back next week and have them try again. There are two faint lines on the white mat that are pretty noticeable once you know they are there. Also, the corners on both the white and green mat are cut pretty sloppily. I didn't really notice either when I went to pick it up but now I can't see anything else. I have had nothing but good experiences with them in the past but everyone has off days. Hopefully we can get it all sorted out next week.

At the end of my work day I had enough time to write a response to someone's discussion post and when I got home I submitted it after I had a chance to read over it again. Then I took the rest of the night off. I watched YouTube videos and looked at shoes. I ended up buying a new pair of Chucks that I don't think will be my graduation Chucks but they are more professional looking. They are a mossy green with light brown laces, a red top stripe and a blue lower stripe. I ran across them awhile ago but my size wasn't available. In my random searching tonight I found them again and this time they had a single pair in my size, so I got them. I'm still can't decide on what color I want for graduation. I'm leaning toward green, because I just want a new pair of green Chucks, but I wore green for my Psychology graduation and I feel like I should try and change it up. I've still got some time to figure it out.

Tomorrow I want to respond to another discussion post and finish the script for my tutorial video. It would also be nice if I could figure out what technology I want to write about for the try new tech post that is due on Monday. In an ideal world I could that all figured out tomorrow and then record my tutorial on Sunday and write my try new tech post. The tutorial video is due in a week and I know it is going to take awhile to do the captions, so I really need to record it this weekend so I have the time to edit it.

So those are the goals for tomorrow. I also have the volunteer thing at the library tomorrow night. That just means I need to be super productive before and after lunch. Totally doable.

April 7, 2016

Let's make this entry quick because it is midnight and I am tired.

This morning there were two state assessments, which was much better than three. When we weren't testing and there weren't classes in the lab I watched another video presentation about video game preservation, and digital preservation in general. I also read one of the articles I requested last night through interlibrary loan last night. That is pretty good turnaround time. Especially from a publication like the Society of Georgia Archivists, which seems fairly obscure.

Throughout the day I helped a few more teachers with their iPads. Today was the day they had to get everything off of them so they can turn them in and then this afternoon they picked up their new iPad 4. I already got one question about setting those up and I imagine I might get a few more in the coming week. I'm not really an Apple person anymore and don't have an iPad so I'm having to learn as I go, but I am learning, so that's something.

My aunt and grandma were passing through town on their way to Nebraska to see my cousin in an opera or play so I went to dinner with them and my sister, dad, and step-mom. I sat across from my aunt and we had some good library conversations. She worked in an academic library in college and is currently the volunteer librarian for her church library. Dinner ended up lasting three hours and I talked a lot, and had to do so over a somewhat noisy environment, which gave me a headache and a sore throat. But it was worth it because I had a good time.

I wanted to post my video game preservation discussion post today because Thursday tends to be the day I do that. It allows me to get four days of activity on the discussion thread which is enough to get full credit for the week. I had started conceptualize my post before dinner and ended up writing down my introductory sentence in my notebook as we sat down at the table in the restaurant, because I had been thinking about it and it finally clicked and I didn't want to forget it. When I got home it took about an hour and a half to write my post. It ended up going long and I still didn't get everything in it that I wanted to. It took me about a half an hour to make my reference list, which was more of a further reading list because I didn't reference most of the articles in my post but wanted to include them in case anyone else was interested. I was able to post to the thread a few minutes before midnight, which was my goal because now it will show up that it was posted on today, on Thursday, not on Friday, which it would do had I posted it after midnight.

Now I'm going to take some Ibuprofen and go to bed. I haven't gotten a full night of sleep all week and I am looking forward to sleeping in on Saturday. I got an email from the PR lady at the public library today asking if a I wanted to help out at a teen event at the library Saturday night. Basically just to be another adult presence. I agreed so I have that going on this weekend but it won't interfere with sleeping in. I need to stop typing now. Sleep needs to happen.