Woo, pointless milestone!

On November 19, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking6 Comments

200

If you don’t mind indulging me in a bit more blogwanking: this, this shit right here, is Infinitefreetime’s 200th post. Which is kind of ridiculous considering that this is only Infinitefreetime’s 169th day. I have somehow not only managed to only miss maybe a handful of days during the 24 weeks this blog has existed, I’ve had enough double- and triple-post days to manage to average just over eight posts a week. That’s madness.

My last “real” blog, which lived over at Xanga before Xanga killed itself, lasted just barely over five years. I remember, because one of the very last posts was an anniversary post. I was active over there, but not to the level I’ve been here– and while I don’t remember what my traffic was like on a day-t0-day basis over there, a thousand hits was a good month. I’ll likely crack three thousand this month and I’ve only been here since June, so either blogging has exploded in popularity (which seems unlikely), my writing has improved substantially (possible, but I doubt it’s responsible) or WordPress just pulls a shitton more traffic than Xanga ever did, which… well, that’s probably the most likely reason. Either way, I like the exposure, even if I’m aware that it’s not actually worth much of anything in the real world.

…

Yeah, and half an hour ago I had three different places I wanted to go after I finished those paragraphs, and right now I have no goddamn idea what any of them were. So… yay, happy blogiversary? I’m stuffed full of lasagna right now; it’s screwing up my brain. Maybe I was gonna post about how awesome lasagna is. Sure.

(Thanks for reading. Assuming you’re real and not some sort of WordPress SEO-bot.)

In which what the hell is next?

On November 18, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking3 Comments

My internet is out now, which means not only is it unlikely that I’ll be able to watch Walking Dead tonight, I’m reduced to posting to my blog from my phone like some sort of caveman.

I HAVE PROBLEMS.

Well that’s just fuckin’ wonderful

On November 17, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Yes I know my phone’s oriented the wrong way. Shut up.

In which it gets bent

On November 17, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking4 Comments

If Bend it Like Beckham is any true indication of how the world works– and we all know it is– then tonight’s dinner ought to prove my marriageability for any number of eligible Indian bachelors. Chicken tikka masala, naan, rice pudding, and aloo gobi, bitches:

I actually do have a legitimately large amount of stuff to do today and yesterday was bananas around here so this might be it for the day. Go cook somethin’.

(Also: whoever turned on Autocorrect in WordPress? Die in a fire, then come back to life and tell me how to turn it off. Arrrgh.)

Blogwankery, etc.

On November 16, 2013November 16, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, idiocy2 Comments

photo-2 First things first: These text messages? Just happened. To me. And that’s how I reacted. Like a goddamn adult with a soul. I want karma points, universe.

Second thing second: My Fitbit just emailed me (it does that) to congratulate me on climbing ten flights of stairs today. It helpfully added that that was a hundred feet up.

Actual number of stairs climbed: 0. I did, however, mow the lawn– which gets me wondering about what it’s actually doing when it “counts stairs.”

Third thing third: I should apparently write about my grandmother more often, because today set records in 1) Likes on posts, 2) Follows (twenty, which means that the number of followers this blog has increased by 10% in a single day) 3) visitors and 4) overall page views. I’m fully aware that this all means exactly nothing but I have to confess that I’m a tiny bit disappointed that I didn’t also set a record in number of countries I had page views from, which is another metric I enjoy wasting time paying attention to.

Whee!

In which my wife destroyed my childhood– and you can too!

On November 16, 2013November 16, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting9 Comments

Both my grandmothers were crafty people. Not in the “sneaky” sense– although at least one of them probably qualified in that sense as well– but in the sense that they liked to make stuff. I have all sorts of stuff around the house that my maternal grandmother made, and a couple of quilts that my paternal grandmother made.

One of them, due to overuse– I literally slept under the thing for fifteen years, and it’s gotten a bit gnarly– is permanently inside a duvet cover because there’s only so long a teenage boy can sleep under the same blanket without staining occurring, no matter how diligent you are about washing the thing. One of them had Sesame Street characters on it, and while it’s gotten dragged out when we needed extra blankets for years, it’s mostly been on ice for a couple of decades or so.

My mom, who has had custody of it for a while, gave it back to us a couple of weeks ago, since she figured the boy was likely to appreciate it. And it’s a cute blanket– Big Bird, Grover, Cookie Monster, and Bert are on it, all reading books, and the background is the alphabet.

Again: I have had this thing since I was a toddler. And my grandmother made it.

The blanket, right now, is– rather ignominiously, I ought to point out– being used to cover up a couple of computers that I slaved over the other day so that they’re not immediately obvious from outside our front window. My wife walked past it this morning– all three of us were in the dining room for some reason– and said “Wow, this thing is filthy.”

“Wash it, then,” I thought, but didn’t say. “It’s been in a bloody box for like ten years, and it’s probably 35 years old. It’s not gonna be pristine.”

Then she points at the titles of the books that Cookie Monster and Bert are reading. (Big Bird is reading a seeds catalog, and the title of Grover’s book is not legible, as he’s lying down on top of it.)

And, wham, just like that, childhood destroyed:

You either get it or you don’t, I think, so allow me to provide two helpful Amazon links:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Joy-Sex-Revised-Completely/dp/1400046149

and

http://www.amazon.com/Story-Translated-French-Sabine-dEstree/dp/B001A80P4W/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1384612616&sr=1-2

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

So, here’s the million dollar question, right? It ain’t like Grandma designed the material from scratch. She bought it by the yard from a bolt and then sewed the quilts together. My mom and dad clearly never got the joke. There’s no way; they’d have mentioned it by now. They can’t have been waiting thirty damn years for their kid to figure it out. And I know for damn sure neither of my parents have read The Story of O.

(I have.)

Did Grandma?

I have at least one funny story involving my grandmother buying something without checking it out completely, one I might tell later in another post, that has resulted in one of my most treasured, if inexplicable, possessions. And she died while I was in college, so I never really got to know her as an adult. But, y’know, I kinda remember her having a bit of a salty sense of humor. And she was a nurse, so it’s not like she was squeamish.

(Oh god just noticed the looks on their faces)

I have moments where I intensely miss my grandparents; none of them are around any longer, and I lost my grandfather– her husband– when I was somewhere between four and six, so I never really knew him at all. I miss my mom’s dad on interestingly regular occasions– Veteran’s Day, for example, and Christmas– his birthday. I miss my mom’s mother whenever I pick up a book, or look at the Bunka dragon hanging over the fireplace in my family room.

My other grandma sneaks up on me. Reliably, I miss her on my birthday– she used to always take my brother and I out for lunch and to go shopping, just the two of us, every year, until I idiotically decided I was too old for it, which probably happened sometime around high school. But other times? Wham.

This is a “wham” moment. There’s literally nothing I want more right now than to be able to talk to her for five minutes to find out whether she knew what a filthy, filthy thing she had her grandsons sleeping under for years.

And I kinda hope the answer’s yes. 🙂

Gotta go. Crying.

In which I make things so complicated

On November 15, 2013November 15, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Music, Reviews1 Comment

I keep almost writing a music post and then not doing it; I’d like to pretend that I don’t know why, but the simple fact is that I don’t have the vaguest idea how to write music reviews. Despite that, I still write music reviews from time to time; they’re just bad music reviews. When I read them, I never have any idea what the hell the writer is talking about and half the time I feel like I’m reading word salad. I also can’t begin a music review without that disclaimer– I can review movies and books and food and other things coherently, but I always feel like I ought to begin any piece about music with an apology.

I’ve downloaded four new albums in the last couple of months. I even bought one of the four on CD as a backup copy– yeah, the physical version is the backup now. They are: Pearl Jam’s Lightning Bolt, Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Latyrx’s The Second Album, and… uh… speaking of things I always apologize for, avrillavigne’snewCDwhichsheselftitledsoit’scalledAvrilLavigneSHUTUPDON’TJUDGEME.

*Cough.*

Yeah. I have all seven of her albums (and I live in a world where Avril Lavigne has seven albums, Jesus, what the hell?) and I have felt dirty while buying each and every one of them. I don’t care, fuck you; I’m gonna keep buying them until she’s old. Ha!

The really scary part is that her new album may be my favorite of hers, or at least it’s the perfect antidote to spending several days trying to listen to Eminem’s new… thing. It’s thoroughly poppy and fun, even the bits where she brings in in Marilyn Manson and tries to be all… I don’t know, not cute, which Christ you can’t have a Marilyn Manson cameo on an album with a song called Hello Kitty where you spend most of it yapping in Japanese. Or something, hell, that might not be Japanese, I really have no idea. But fuck it, it’s fun, that’s the point. There’s a song on it called “Bitchin’ Summer” and the damn album was released in November. Gimme a break.

Eminem’s new album is not any fun, and in fact is probably the most relentlessly angry thing he’s ever released. There are still bits where he blows away any other rapper working today with his lyrical skills, but… God, the thing is so damn long and so damn pissed off that I just can’t deal with it. I’m sticking with my initial assessment, which is that it’s exactly like some horrifying hybrid of mid-197os The Who and Pink Floyd released something and decided to call it a concept rap opera, which kind of feels like I’m making shit up and sticking words together but I swear that it makes sense in my head. Also: that’s not a recommendation, in case you’re not sure. The thing is interesting in the sense that it’s so consistently unlistenable, and it’s not unlistenable because it’s bad, it’s unlistenable because Eminem made a conscious decision as an artist to make an album that no one anywhere could ever be happy while listening to, but without releasing an awesome piss-off-fuck-the-world album like, say, Rage Against the Machine or Ice Cube or the fucking Ramones used to be so good at. Which is an achievement of sorts. But I don’t want to listen to the damn thing ever again.

The new Latyrx is… well, Latyrx, which is always a recommendation. It’s deeply weird and experimental too, but in a much better way. I don’t have a whole lot to say about it right now because honestly I haven’t digested this album yet; the time I’ve spent trying to wrap my head around Eminem’s bullshit has taken away from The Second Album‘s richly deserved braincycles.

And you should already own the new Pearl Jam album because it’s a fucking Pearl Jam album and Pearl Jam is the greatest band on Earth. This one’s kind of weird too, though; it’s their first album with a title track, which I kinda think ought to be significant even though I can’t quite elucidate how, and there are a bunch of tracks that don’t really sound like Pearl Jam (Let the Records Play and Getaway and maybe a couple of others); the band’s clearly still pushing themselves. It’s not my favorite album by them (Vitalogy) but it’s got some great tracks on it– Sirens, Yellow Moon, Future Days, and Mind Your Manners, even though MYM took a while to grow on me. I need to memorize more of it so I can sing along; I can’t ever finalize my opinion of a Pearl Jam album until I can sing along with at least half of it.

There’s a reason I’m not talking about work much today, by the way. Maybe tomorrow.

On the Fitbit

On November 14, 2013November 14, 2013 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews1 Comment

You may remember that I have a Fitbit Force, and I have been threatening to post a review of the thing. Here’s the short version: it has made me want a Pebble. Which is disappointing, because I don’t really like the idea that I spent $130 so that I could figure out that I actually wanted to spend $150.

Here’s the longer version: As a device for the very specific purpose that the Fitbit Force is created for, it works well enough. It keeps track of how much I walk every day. This is useful information– I’m a data nerd by nature, and I like the idea of keeping track of my activity. It appears to keep a reasonably accurate count of my steps given that it’s attached to my wrist; I’ve driven places and noted that bumps or whatever have incremented the steps by a couple, but by and large hand/wrist/arm movements don’t appear to ever trigger it. I’ve also walked around my house watching the display change, and it adds steps as I walk. It’s not great about stairs– I live in a house without stairs (well, more or less, as I never enter the basement without good reason) and my school doesn’t have any either, so basically if it’s registered any stairs at all at the end of the day something’s gone wrong. Right now, for example, it’s telling me I’ve climbed two flights of stairs today, and I’ve literally not climbed a single step.

I assume that the calorie counts work, although it took a minute to adjust to the idea that it’s literally trying to calculate every calorie that I burn– waking up in the morning and discovering that it thought I’d burned 400-some-odd calories while sleeping was sorta odd.

It also serves as a watch and a sleep tracker; I believe it tracks sleep just by noting how often it moves over the course of the night, and when I wake up in the morning I can check a little readout that tracks “asleep” vs. “restless.” I basically have to assume that “restless” really means “awake,” though, because short of getting out of bed and walking around it’s not going to process anything I do as me being awake– up to and including actually checking the time, which seems rather impossible to do if I’m asleep.

And… well, that’s it.

The best thing about it? I can set an alarm, and it vibrates on my wrist rather than making noise. Given that I’m supposed to be wearing the thing to bed anyway, that’s awesome, and I really don’t ever want to be awakened by noise again. I love love love the vibrating alarm.

I don’t love having to use my phone to set it (which isn’t really avoidable, as the thing’s user interface on the watch itself is limited to a single button) and I despise the fact that there’s no snooze option. This is implementable with a single button, mind you– a tap snoozes, a long-tap silences, or vice versa.

The catch is annoying; while it doesn’t seem to be wearing or anything like that, it’s difficult to snap closed tightly and I regularly knock it off my wrist while brushing stuff off my chest (TMI: I have a bit of a beard dandruff issue, okay? I brush my chest off quite a bit.)

The app’s functionality is… lacking. I can get a sleep report, data on calories/steps/miles (although I never told it a stride length) and a couple of other things for that day, or I can scroll back through other dates– in other words, I can get a day’s worth of data at a time, and there’s no option to look at the last week or month or anything like that. I can get more data from the website, but that’s stupid; the thing is attached to my wrist and bluetoothed to my phone; why the hell can’t I get a week’s worth of data from the app? Given how detailed the stats on website visits that I can get through the WordPress app are, you’d think that a device whose sole purpose is keeping track of biometric data would have more robust data reporting available through its app.

Sleep reporting is cool, but ultimately useless. I had four moments of restlessness last night: great! And six hours and 32 minutes of “sleep.” Okay. What do I do with that information? No idea.

It supposedly interfaces nicely with MyFitnessPal and a few other things; I haven’t had any good reason to use that functionality yet because I got burned out on calorie-tracking the last time I lost a bunch of weight and it got really annoying. I haven’t gotten back on that particular horse yet.

It displays the time, and has a nice, bright display. It does not display the date. It has room to display the date– or at least could add it as another screen that you reach with an additional button press. This omission is annoying. I have to push a button to get it to tell me the time, which is… well, also moderately annoying, but it saves battery life so I can live with it.

Basically? I want a smartwatch. I want notifications beamed to my wrist, and I want to be notified of things by a vibration, not a beep or a tone. I want to be able to see those notifications without getting my phone out, and when I do get my phone out I want the data that I see to be useful to me.

I am aware that this is not what a Fitbit Force is actually for, for the most part, although supposedly there are some firmware updates coming that will let it do notifications if it’s paired with iOS. Which mine will be.

So, yeah. I bought a Fitbit to figure out that I wanted a Pebble.

Dammit.