Specimen Keyboard

My new specimen keyboard is all-consuming. Each key is going to have a specimen corresponding to the output letter. It was such a simple and compelling idea (similar to a periodic table composed of element specimens) but it is overtaxing my measuring and planning skills so I've had to redo loads of things.

 I measured my new keyboard and made a box that size. But that is not how containing works. So I took it out of its housing and used the grinder to make it smaller. Each key had a little silicone cup underneath it for a spring, and those all fell out, but I put them back. But when I was building a brace to hold all the cups in without the underside of the keyboard I got glue on the plastic sheets with circuits printed on them and it wouldn't scrape off and then the whole thing was broken. So I got a new keyboard and made a new wooden box.

Right now I am test fitting the keys. The test fitting stage is very long. I planned for the top to be removable for repairs, and so each dowel post is fastened to the keypad with a pinch of swimmer's earplug, but it is not holding very well so I think I will glue them down.

Here is how it handles so far:

wjee//////////////////////////////. taxtilke llllllleyboaes''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Dala Horse Bed

I made a piece of furniture from scratch! I just went to home depot and got five 3x1x6es and some plywood pieces and sawed them all apart and screwed them together. When I took up floor sleeping I wanted to do it like in my special friend Japan, but really Americans cannot handle having bedding on the floor. I was looking on pinterest for how other people handle floor beds and I found that Montessori thought indicates floor beds for very young children (since they can crawl in and out, it mitigates their anxiety about bed) but American moms can't face putting their kid's mattress actually on the floor without comment, so there are headboard decals available. This shows that the child is well loved and well tended, but also shows the aforementioned anxiety.

I myself gave up mattresses in principle in 2005 when I was pushing a California King mattress up the front steps of my parents' victorian (also couches), and in practice when I finished college and got rid of my secretly mildewing mattress. I handled my transition to floor sleeping by doing my lying-on-the-floor-breathing-into-the-pain-in-my-back exercise before I went to sleep, and then doing it as I fell asleep. Now I am totally acclimated, but I do still feel the anxiety that Montessori moms display- the floor is not a sleeping surface! A functional adult does not floor sleep! I just ignored these feelings until an actual impetus arrived for building this little platform in the form of the return of fall, which made my nearly weatherproof yurt a really terrible floor sleeping location.

As soon as I realized my woodworking skills were poor enough that there was no way for me to do anything imaginative with the form, I got excited about painting it like a dala horse, which it somewhat resembled due to stockiness and what I thought would be four leggedness (see: woodworking skills). I had a plan involving gesso and diluting one ounce of cadmium red paint in two cups of varnish, but then in a super-exciting coincidence, Dawn had a GALLON of cadmium red. (If you aren't familiar with artists' paints, this is like going to someone's house and finding that the peanut butter they have is the half-crunchy roasted kind you prefer. Oh also a bathtubful, but that's not the part I was analogizing.)

As for the blue and white detailing, I spent a little bit of time on youtube despairing of my kurbits (Swedish folk painting) skills, but honestly I think this came out fine.

U Haul Training Course

At U Haul new employees have to do an online training course. My manager said I could do it on the clock if I don't have a computer at home, but most people do it at home and that's the best way to do it. That is exploiting, but because I was almost certain I was going to get to drive a truck, I said I would be happy to. I was tearing up at the thought and my heart was full. So I was indifferent to the particulars. But then the training course took 8 hours.

The exam question at the top of this post is something I was really asked. I got it wrong.

Butterfly House

The county fair is in town, and I picked up a couple of weeks' work at the Butterfly House. It was a really fun environment. It's nice to work with the public when the public is happy and having a special treat on a special day as a family. My personality is such that customer service is easy for me when the person feels stressed that they won't get a bed for the night, or has a fit because it made them mad to imagine that my hispanic manager is monolingual, but it was so unstressful to facilitate families having a nice time at the Butterfly House. I spent half my time working the front, controlling how many people went in at one time and explaining what to expect, and the other half working the exit, answering questions and taking butterflies off people. 

 I sat right next to this monarch chrysalis display and I only saw two monarchs actually emerge!

 This particular company, Butterfly Adventures, lets people feed a butterfly with a q-tip dipped in nectar. The nectar bowls had plastic beads in them to stop the butterflies from drowning, and people had no end of trouble intuiting this.

Since I worked half-days, I would go a little early or stay a little late and check out just one or two things at the fair. I got to sketch the livestock, the rides, and the Hall of Flowers. I also got to visit the entries in domestic arts, fine arts, and crafts- there was way too much to take in in one session. I like taking things in slowly, like when I lived in DC and everyone around me was in a rush to work or keep their tourist family of children engaged and out of harm's way, but I just sat in the free museums and worked on watercolors.

Substitute Teaching

Should I become a substitute teacher? I can't decide. I think I would like the work and the hours fine, but the requirements are so frustrating. I attended a 2-hour sub orientation yesterday and made a note of the different requirements. Everyone I live with is completely tired of hearing about the hoops and how much I hate them, so I will put this little write-up here. Below, I have marked requirements with an X if I think they should obviously be stricken from the substitute teaching requirements, or if they are plausible, an O. 

[X] $60* CBEST

This test lets BA or BS holders prove they are educated to a middle school level.

[X] $90 2xFingerprinting

I can see that it would be negligent to let folks who are or have been criminals of any sort run a classroom for a day. But if the state thinks you are cleared to be around children, the district doesn't need to prove it also. 

[?] $25 TB test

  I don't know, does anyone ever get TB? Is it not a required vaccination for children? Is there no vaccine? Can children with TB attend school? I think the tip-off that this is not necessary is that you can be infected with anything else in the whole world.

[X] $40 county processing fee

The county needs to figure out how to pay to process applications. Obviously. Everyone has to process their own job applications unless it's a program that's for the benefit of the applicants.

[O] $40 Classroom management course

Okay, yes. This is relevant to the actual job. 

[X] $60 Medical Exam

I can't believe this is legal. I think super flexible 6 hour days where you just don't schedule a shift  if you are having a flare up/bad symptoms is completely ideal for people with disabilities or who are getting on in years. The medical exam form does say it's checking for disabilities "on the basis of functions which will be required of the applicant upon employment," but it asks specifically about arthritis, asthma, MS, and affected vision, speech, and hearing.

[O] $72 30-day sub permit license

Sure. It is appropriate to pay for licenses. It's silly that the one year period starts when the application is received, instead of when the license is granted, but an academic year is shorter than a calendar year, so it doesn't matter. 

[O] $30 2xcollege transcripts

Even with all that, I still haven't decided against applying. I do want to teach, although not in a California public school (I've been). 

*This would have been $40 had I registered on time, but on the other hand it would be $100 if I wanted to take the computer-based version. 

Here is some found poetry I generated

Preface"

{ 

Preface: O 

Preface: O

 {

 ;

 Preface: I am ;

 { 

Preface" 

{ 

Preface: I am leae

 {

 { 

Preface: O 

{ 

Preface: O

{

 Pr

 Pe

 Preface: I aml

 : 

Preface: O 

Preface: I am learning to tu 

Preface: I am learning to tup

 PrefaceL 

Pteface: I amm 

Preface: I am ; 

Pred

 Preface: I am

 ;

 Predac 

Prefacd a

 Preface: I am ;ea

 { 

:

 { 

: 

PJ

 Preface: I am learninf

 Preface: I am ; 

Preface: I am learning to tu

 PrefaceL

 { 

Preface: O 

Preface: I am ;ear

 ap

 { 

Preface: O

 { 

PJ 

Pe

 Preface: I am learning to type. 

And use mu 

And use my ;ef

And use my left sji 

And use myleft shifrk 

Anf 

And i 

And use my left shift key.

Typing in Japanese

Japanese people can all read roman letters, butthe romanization systems for showing Japanese words are a bit cumbersome and so students learn hiragana, the syllabary, as soon as they get started studying. So I have been able to write in hiragana for years of course, without learning to type. After a year's worth of false starts, I learned to type in Japanese in an afternoon.
Here is all I actually had to do:
1.Activate the Windows Japanese Input mode
      This step is really easy to find out how to do. Control Panel ->Region and Language -> Keyboards and Languages -> Change Keyboards -> Add -> Japanese -> Apply, and then in the task bar switch between EN and JP at will.
2. Label the keyboard
       I just pressed every key and wrote down what it rendered.
3. type the gojuon/syllabary in order
      Realize the keyboard is not actually a confusing mess of characters.

So here is the gojuon, which is the alphabet analogue. It's arranged by vowels across and consonants down. 

Here is how it applies to the qwerty keyboard. It is mostly clusters with a bunch of outliers, I do not know why. Also, just a note if you are reading this and fairly detail oriented but haven't studied japanese: chi and tsu are in the t category, shi is in the s category, and fu is in the h category. I don't know the reason for most of those, but fu is because the japanese h is like an h/f hybrid. 

My two workarounds before I learned to type yesterday were to use my phone, or type in English into google translate and then copy/paste. The phone keypad is actually perfect for the gojuon. It works like the T9 system in English. Multiple taps take you across the columns of the gojuon, and there is one key per row.