SEARCHING FOR MALUMBA cover question/reveal

On July 22, 2015July 22, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing20 Comments

These are both roughs; I think the image is happening but I’m not convinced about either the font or the text placement. Anybody have suggestions? (“Scrap the whole thing” is a fair suggestion, by the way.) You can click for a higher-res version but I think you get the idea.

Also, weird– the yellow on the right looks darker to me right now. It’s exactly the same. The only differences are caps vs. lower case.

Thanks!

EDIT: After reading the first couple of comments, let me take a second and explain my thinking here: this is my first (probably only) nonfiction book. It’s going to be about teaching, and it is mostly, but not exclusively, drawn from blog posts. About half of the material in it is on this very blog. I do not expect, even in comparison to my other books, that this one will sell very well, and I’m mostly doing it as a vanity project.

That said: I need something that screams “teaching!” when it’s the size of a couple of postage stamps on Amazon’s website, and thus the simple image of the broken pencil, which frankly fits my feeling about teaching right now anyway. The font choice is because I like the simplicity and the humility of it, although I think my second commenter is right that it does look a little low-rent and I may need to jazz it up a bit.

There will be a print and ebook edition; I have no illusions that anyone other than me will ever buy the print edition. I’ll print half a dozen of them to have some with me at cons and I suspect I won’t have to reorder that often. 🙂

Also, the image was purchased from SelfPubBookCovers.com, which means that I can’t just arbitrarily rotate the pencil or change the background color. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear those types of suggestions– if the cover is bad, it’s bad, and I want to hear that– but understand that when you suggest that you’re saying “redo the entire cover,” not “alter this in Gimp.”

(All that said: my wife hates the cover, so if you feel the same, please don’t hesitate to tell me. If everyone thinks this is a misfire I’d rather know now.)

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: mystery WTF addendum!

On July 21, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

That’s hardwood. From the BEDROOM. And it is a good 1/8″ higher than the subfloor around it, which is gonna play hell with leveling this mess.

Those of you with a carpentry/contracting background are welcome to speculate as to just why the hell the bedroom’s flooring extends an inch and a half into the bathroom. I’m hornswoggled.

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Screw your plans, boy! edition

On July 21, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy2 Comments

So the big job today was to pull the sink. This is the sink; by the time I took this picture I had already removed the doors from the front of the vanity to make getting at the rest of the thing easier:

I’ve never actually disconnected a sink from a wall, mind you, so (much like every other step in this process) I’m being real careful to make sure not to fuck anything up along the way. First step in pulling a bathroom sink is to turn off the water. I didn’t get a picture, because cutting the water to the toilet was a piece of cake. The shutoff valves for the sink, on the other hand, were 1) stuck and 2) started crumbling in my hand when I tried to apply a bit more force to them.

I don’t know much, but I know when I’m about to make a big mistake, and shearing the shutoff valve sure as shit sounded like a big mistake. So, maybe ten minutes into the big job of the day, I called a halt and called a plumber. That was at maybe 9:00 this morning or so; it’s 3:15 now and the plumber left about half an hour ago, so yay for folks who can get out quickly. The plumber disconnected the sink for me and replaced the shutoff valves, all the while swearing at the shitty plumbing job the builders had done– which is not the first time I’ve heard that. Every plumber who has ever entered this house has left wanting to travel back in town and beat hell out of the dude who built the place.

There was some careful examination of the way the sink attached to the vanity, because it looked like the most obvious way to pull the sink out had a good risk of dropping it through the countertop, potentially wrecking my new shutoff valves. This seemed bad.

So I went with the second most obvious way, and just grabbed the countertop and yanked. Amazingly, it worked:

Just in case you were wondering if this was a quality vanity or not:

And then we pulled the rest of the thing, and the swearing started, and the swearing really hasn’t stopped yet; I’m actually swearing uncontrollably under my breath while I’m typing this, because this fucking bullshit was what was under the vanity:

Make sure you look closely, there, and note that several of the long broken pieces on the right there actually match missing pieces elsewhere on the tile, meaning that they tried to pull up the tile, gave up quickly, and then just threw the shit under the vanity.

Also, five will get you twenty that that’s asbestos tile, and it’s also a good quarter-inch lower than the rest of the floor, meaning I have to redo my flooring plan again. I’m hoping I can just find a piece of plywood of the right size and slap the fucker in place, because otherwise I’m going to have to pull the entire floor, because unless I miss my guess those tiles are made of cancer.

Take a wild guess how happy I am right now.

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: Today’s agenda

On July 21, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Got a lot done yesterday, including averting/dealing with one major setback when the floor didn’t turn out to be quite what we thought it was. Ordered new underlayment for the tile today that ought to be here by Friday, so we didn’t lose much time over it.

Anyway, here’s what’s happening today:

Pull out the old sink and vanity
Get rid of the rest of the wallpaper
RedGard and mud the piece of cement board we put in yesterday
If time allows, dry-fit the floor tile

That’ll be a day, I think. Whee!

TERRIBLE DECISIONS: The backonthehorsening

On July 20, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy13 Comments

If you’ve been reading this blog for way too long, you may remember the Terrible Decisions series, in which my wife and I decided to redo our bathroom. That process led to a (if I don’t mind saying so) good job re-tiling our shower, and then… stalled.

She has the week off. We are unstalling.

Hello, over-the-toilet shelf!

Goodbye, over-the-toilet shelf!

Hello, floor trim tile!

Goodbye, floor trim tile!

Hello, toilet!

Goodbye, toilet! Hello, wax ring!

Goodbye, wax ring! Now, the raggedy hole in the wall there is the reason this entire nightmare project got started in the first place: we had a leak behind the tile, and the water was running down the side of the tub and basically turned that corner of the drywall into mud. (I just spent ten minutes looking; I posted a picture of it at one point but hell if I can find it.)

That one simple thing– ripping that piece out– turned into a full-bathroom renovation. Which we WILL FINISH this week because if we don’t we only have one toilet and I will not live in a house with one toilet. At any rate: I cut out the diseased part of the wall, carefully avoiding cutting a hole in the stack and thus necessitating what would probably be thousands of dollars in repair costs.

Yes, I know this is cement board, not drywall, and you’re not supposed to use cement board in place of drywall. However! It’s also in the same spot as the bad part of the wall. If we end up with the same leaking problem in the future, I want it leaking into cement board, which is going to be RedGarded and thus a lot more waterproof. This part of the wall will be behind the toilet anyway and so the minor difference in texture shouldn’t be too noticeable.

Next step: Get rid of the rest of this goddamned wallpaper. Which I expect to take the rest of the damn afternoon. If not my entire life.

In which I pretend things will happen

On July 20, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

landing_todolist I actually want to start by talking about this picture; I found it, as I often do before writing a post, by idly Googling a phrase from the post to see what pops up. At thumbnail size, I didn’t read “Skill” and “Whom,” I read “Kill” and “Maim,” which caused an immediate click, and now that I’ve seen the thing at full-size I’m just as confused as hell, because 1) weird and gross and 2) inaccurate in an oddly specific way, because I don’t know that I believe anyone who would put this together would ever use “whom” in the second column instead of “who.” We’re going for middle school verisimilitude here, yes? No middle schooler has ever said “whom,” ever.

Anyway.

My wife has the entire week off, and the two of us are devoting it to Getting Shit Done Around the House, meaning a fair number of not-huge projects and at least two that definitely count as huge– including finally finishing off a project that we started a very long time ago that is quite shamefully not finished yet. We’re also planning on tearing out the disaster of a carpet in our bedroom, finally bowing to reality and crossing our fingers about the hardwood underneath.

This is the part where I pretend this might affect my posting schedule, as I haven’t missed a day in 2015 yet and I can imagine a world where I’m kept busy. This is nonsense, of course, because if we get anything done then the posting can be “take pictures of the shit we wrecked/fixed/put in.” What it is gonna screw up is the book-writin’ schedule, and tha’s not been going great anyway, so I expect to end the week even further behind than I am now, which is already Oh my god this will never get finished.

Still need to find a new job, too.

Wheeeeee Monday!

Oh, also

On July 19, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized3 Comments

The Sanctum of the Sphere picked up its third review at Amazon today, another five-star, and a pretty damn enthusiastic five-star at that. This book hasn’t done as well online as I’d like, so be sure to check the review out if you haven’t read it yet.

REVIEW: “Ant-Man”

On July 19, 2015July 19, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews13 Comments

images tl;dr version: You should go see this, even (and perhaps especially) you were skeptical about the idea of Ant-Man getting a movie.

I’ve seen every Marvel movie in theaters, and I think I’ve seen all of them opening weekend, although it’s possible I’ve missed one or two first weekend. I feel like Thor: The Dark World may have taken a few minutes for some reason. Ant-Man is the movie I’ve come closest to actually skipping; if it hadn’t been for my wife wanting to see it I can’t guarantee I would have ever prioritized it. I’m not a fan of the character, really, and I would have survived without seeing it.

I have learned to follow my wife’s lead in these things, as she’s always right, because Ant-Man is great, and it’s possible I enjoyed it more than Age of Ultron, which I also liked a lot. AoU had the disadvantage of being a sequel, and there’s a lot going on in Ant-Man that you haven’t seen on screen before. Evangeline Lilly’s hair, for example.

Also notable, although I can’t for the life of me find a still of this anywhere, is whatever sorcery they used for the brief 1989 portion of the film, where they appear to have traveled back in goddamn time to capture Michael Douglas and bring him forward to act in this movie. I don’t know if that’s CGI or a body double with CGI or insanely good makeup or a combination of the three but it is creepy as hell because however they did it it looks completely perfect. I remember what Michael Douglas looked like 26 years ago, guys; that’s him.

Anyway. On to the observations part:

Good stuff:

Paul Rudd. I’m not a huge fan of Mr. Rudd’s; he’s one of those actors where I’m absolutely certain I’ve seen him in other movies but hell if he was memorable enough that I can tell you who he was. But he nails this role and fulfills the number one thing actors have to do to make me enjoy your movie: make it seem like you enjoyed playing the role.
The action. Watching a guy fight who can miniaturize himself on command led to some great fight scenes, particularly the one with <spoiler> at the <spoiler> base.
The effects. The ant stuff was awesome.
Actually, all of the actors, with the exception of the guy playing Yellowjacket, were pretty damn good. Douglas is no slouch, obviously; Evangeline Lilly was great, and the three comic relief guys were funny. I’ve seen some reviews that complained that the familial relationships between Hank and Hope and Scott Lang and his daughter felt forced; I didn’t feel that way at all.
The bit with the tank, which I swear was a throwback to my favorite incarnation of the Hank Pym character– the lab-coated West Coast Avengers version.
Bug zappers. ‘Nuff said.
Both of the reveals at the end. The end reveals in this film were my favorite ones since the end of Captain America.

Less good stuff:

I could do without ever hearing another male character say the words “I was just trying to protect you!” to a female character again. (Note that this led to a good scene or two, I’m just really tired of the trope.)
The plot is basically Iron Man crossed with Ghostbusters. Perfectly serviceable but a bit fill-in-the-numbers, especially since…
…Yellowjacket was not great, and in fact I think he seems to have broken a couple of the movie’s rules along the way. Hope van Dyne seems to think that the Pym particles were affecting his mind, which would be a good idea, except for the part where he was wearing the suit for the first time at the end of the movie. That said, for someone wearing said suit for the first time, he was pretty darn good at it.
The whole don’t-cross-the-streams bit wasn’t well-used. It’s good that Sony still controls the X-Men, because who knows how many people would have died had anyone had access to adamantium.

Make sure to see this, guys. It won’t be the end of the world if you don’t see it in the theater– although I’d like the movie’s box office to be better than expected– but don’t sleep. It’s well worth seeing.