Fire EVERYBODY.

On September 15, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy6 Comments

Well, this had better be the worst thing I see this week.

Not what I expected to be talking about

On September 14, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Cooking5 Comments

I just, somehow, got sucked into spending half an hour reading this brutal-ass report on everything Olive Garden is doing wrong nowadays. Warning: it’s a 290-page PDF file. Second warning: it is, somehow, despite being full of investorspeak and MBAtalk, startlingly compelling.

And, again, brutal. Whoever was responsible for putting this together pretty much thinks that everyone who works for or at Olive Garden, or any other restaurant owned by Darden, sucks, as well as all upper management and most of their investors. And he pulls no punches at all, ever. What can I say; I love invective in basically all its forms, and this is some great hate going on here.

The funny thing is, while I don’t have any real animus against Olive Garden, I don’t particularly like the place either. We eat there… yearly? Twice yearly, maybe? I’m a fan of Red Lobster, which at least used to be owned by the same people, but doesn’t seem to be anymore, and I don’t think I’ve ever entered a Longhorn Steakhouse. So it wouldn’t be any real skin off my back if Olive Garden went under. I know some people who might be upset, I suppose. I’m not one of them.

I might miss the Penny Arcade comics, I guess.

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On September 14, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking, WritingLeave a comment

I’ve decided to start doing periodic– maybe once or twice per month– reminders on the main page of the blog of the various places I can be found on the Interwebs. I pick up 50 or so new followers a week and my Twitter account is pretty active too, so it’s probably a useful thing for new readers. Regular folks, if you see the STATION IDENTIFICATION tag, feel free to ignore it.

So here’s where to find Luther Siler on the interwebtron:

IMPORTANT ONES:

You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here. I am on Twitter pretty frequently as I use it for whining while I’m writing in the mornings. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
I’m starting to try and use Goodreads more often too. My author page is here; I am accepting any and all friend requests at the moment.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.

PLEASE HELP THIS BE LESS SAD:

Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here.

THREE VERSIONS OF THE EXACT SAME PAGE:

My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
My sites on the Independent Author Network and Self Publisher’s Showcase.

RECENT ADDITIONS:

I’ve created two new social media accounts lately, and I’m not sure how well-known the sites are, but I’m including them here anyway. You can order my books through Koobug here, and my about.me page is here.

In which I am so very screwed

On September 13, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Parenting6 Comments

10689603_10152725579744066_3989070658350097557_n I will note that we have, only just tonight, finally converted my son’s crib to a toddler bed. Developmentally speaking, we probably ought to have gotten to this a bit ago, but he never really got to the point where he was trying to crawl/climb out of his crib so it didn’t make itself a very high priority.

This means, of course, that now, once we put him to bed at night, he can get out.

There are not that many ways in which I look back at my childhood and recognize that I tormented my parents. I’m fully aware that I was a pain in the ass, mind you, as all kids are, but there aren’t many specific ways that I can name. One of them, though, where I’m not sure how my parents got through my early years without killing me, was my penchant to get out of bed over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to go to ask my parents– well, anything. Requests. Demands. Complaints. Existential horror. Whatever.

I have mostly not wanted to turn the boy’s crib into a bed because I can feel the evil claws of Karma scratching at the back of my neck. The boy, as much as he might not want to admit it, is me writ small in a plethora of ways, and I suspect that we’re about to find one of them. Tonight, it begins. There will never be privacy again.

Sigh.

In which memes are dumb

On September 13, 2014September 11, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

…even the science ones.

You know what else is hard to do with things we can’t see?

Seeing them.

It is, indeed, difficult to map things we cannot see. Especially when the reason we cannot see them is that they are covered by kilometers of water.

This is dumb.

Last Patrick McLaw update

On September 12, 2014September 11, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

So, one more thing, because I just noticed it– if you go to the article I linked the other day, and you actually play the video, which I almost never do on news articles, they actually show two shots of the letter itself that got him noticed by law enforcement– apparently because some of the people he sent it to turned it in. The first picture is insanely blurry but you can read bits of it in motion and, I dunno, maybe some of you are graphics wizards and can sharpen this or something:

The second shot is from the last page, and is much clearer, and gives just enough detail to make it clear why people read the letter and called the cops. Weird thing about suicide letters: saying “This is not a suicide letter!” is actually not very convincing.