Month: October 2022

A project and a Project and a PROJECT

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy5 Comments

I decided that the basic, entry-level Rubik’s Speedcube that I have wasn’t as much of a challenge as it used to be– I still need the directions in front of me, don’t get me wrong, but I can solve it from basically any scramble to done in a few minutes, so I lost my ever-loving fucking mind and bought a Gan Mirror M Speedcube today. It took a good half-hour to solve from a pretty thorough scramble and broke my mind about halfway through. What the image to the right doesn’t really show you is that the colors will shift, going from blue to purple depending on your angle. It makes the cube absolutely beautiful to look at, but it means you can only go by the size and shape of the various sides to solve the thing, which is absolutely maddening, especially the first time you have to wrap your head around it and that one piece looks like it’s in the right place only shit it’s half a millimeter too thick so it can’t be the right piece.. I managed it, though, and once I can solve it as fast as I can a traditional speedcube I’ll start working on actually memorizing the algorithms so I can do it without the damn instructions on the screen in front of me.

I have been having a really relaxing break so far– recall that even if I hadn’t quit my job, this would be a four-day break because of fall break, and I’m technically employed by my previous district through next Friday anyway– and I spent a couple of hours a day working on the Lego set for the Space Shuttle Discovery that I bought a month or so ago. The thing is a beast, coming in at just over 2300 pieces, so naturally as I was moving it from my office to my room, where it will be displayed alongside all the rest of the NASA Lego sets (excepting the Apollo Saturn V rocket, which I haven’t built yet) I managed to knock half the fucking wing off by bashing it into the doorway. I got it fixed, nothing missing, but the torrent of swearing attracted attention all over the house. I think this will probably turn out to have been more fun to build than the Saturn V, which is probably going to end up kind of repetitive, but either way it was a blast to put together and I think the model of the Hubble Telescope that came with it is cool enough that I’d happily have bought it as a separate purchase on its own.

Also, somehow, my wife and I went from “Should we replace the carpet in the living room?” to having an appointment for a man to come out on Wednesday and measure our living room for our new carpet in less than 24 hours. Have I posted pictures of my living room recently? Because there are thirteen completely full bookshelves, a sofa, and a fucking piano in there. Guess who said the words “I have the next three weeks off, I can get the room cleared out!” out loud, like an idiot?

Sigh. At least I’m not gonna be bored.

Let me know when you see it

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Reading5 Comments

This is the author of the book I’m currently reading:

And this is the cover of the book I’m currently reading. I had to take it myself because there doesn’t appear to be a properly high-res version online, which is why it’s a little crooked:

Just … let me know if you notice anything.

Moving on, Pt. 1

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Don’t get too hyped up about the “part one” business; it just indicates that I’m done with the kids, and that tomorrow I have my actual last day. Today was bittersweet as hell; the kids in general were a lot more upset today than they were yesterday, and I walked out of the building with a ton of cards and such at the end of the day, but also in a couple of ways more pissed off at my district than I’ve ever been before, for reasons I’ll get to tomorrow.

Then after school like half the staff went out to a local restaurant for piles of Mexican food and margaritas, and that was a lot of fun, both for the obvious reasons and the slightly less obvious reason that I haven’t done anything like it since before Covid hit. And now I’m waiting to throw up, because I really did have quite a lot of Mexican food. An unreasonable amount, really.

Tomorrow I finish off my grades and then clean out my classroom. And then … well.

Then everything else starts.

Never mind

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

I was going to write a whole post about telling my kids that I was quitting, and instead I got into a half hour clusterfuck with a website where I was trying to change my payment method for something and it just went wrong in every imaginable way and now somehow I am paying twice as much for the item in question, which I don’t even really want any longer, plus I hate everything and I’m resolved to never use this particular retailer ever again. Pfah.

There’s not even much of a story, really. If anything, they were … resigned? Let’s go with resigned.

Whatever. One more teaching day and then I clear out my classroom.

In which my timing is poor

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

I discovered two things on Friday: one, that not only had my job already been posted, but that my district had actually managed to announce my resignation before I got around to telling anyone about it. The school board has to approve all hires, which makes sense, but they also have to approve resignations and terminations, which makes a little less sense, and it turns out that the agenda for the next meeting got posted on Friday, and … oops. I got a couple of “What the hell is this?” type of emails and had to hurriedly compose a group email to everyone who I might have told in person. I didn’t tell the whole staff, just the teams I work with, but schools being what they are I’m sure everyone in the building knows by now. I have to tell the kids on Monday, and I’m not looking forward to that at all. The next few days are going to suck pretty much no matter what I do.

The second thing? I’ve talked about what a nightmare class coverage has been around here, and I believe I’ve discussed the fact that I ended up picking up two extra sections of math classes, meaning that I am responsible for roughly 2/3 more students than I am supposed to be. Now, I’m getting paid for both the class coverage and the extra math classes, mind you. I have receipts and everything because I made absolutely sure to get shit in writing before I agreed to do it.

And, well, I took a few spare minutes of my time and added up exactly how much class coverage I’ve done since school started.

With two days of school left before I leave forever, I am owed five thousand six hundred and seventy dollars for all the class coverage I’ve been doing. And I get paid on the 20th, and I should have at least one more paycheck after that if not two, but I can smell fuckery afoot, and I decided to get ahead of the issue by emailing my boss and asking her to confirm for me that that money would be on my last couple of paychecks, because I hope no one is foolish enough to think I’m just going to leave five and a half grand on the table. You owe me a hundred bucks? I might not make a stink. $5600 is more than I currently make in a month, and I will be getting my money.

Come to think of it, I need to check and find out how my summer money works too. I don’t remember what happened the last time I quit these guys back in 2016, but they ought to owe me another couple grand for the funds they usually hold back for summertime too.

Also, it’s been definitively established that I can’t start at the other place until November 10th, so I’m going to have a nice little between-jobs vacation. I should come up with a project. Other than yelling FUCK YOU PAY ME at HR flacks, mind you.

#REVIEW: Seed, by Ania Ahlborn

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews2 Comments

I am trying really hard not to make this review a single sentence: This book is deliciously fucked-up, and you should read it.

Because, really, that’s the money graf, right? Nothing else I write is going to matter much more than that single sentence, other than maybe the content warnings, because man, this book needs itself a content warning. Because if you are a parent of young kids there is a real good chance this book is going to fuck you up hard, and my son is roughly the age of the older daughter in this book. This book will grab you by your daddy-brain or your mommy-brain and shake you until you’re concussed, and I would understand if you don’t want that to be your reading experience.

Seed is a slim volume, totaling only about 220 pages, and I read it in two big gulps over two nights. The first night it scared the shit out of me and the second night, going in prepared, I was able to resist freaking the fuck out until I started to get a horrible inkling of how the ending was going to go, and this is one of those books where it’s going to hit you how it’s going to end and then you are going to spend the rest of the read with your skin crawling and hoping that you’re wrong and then you’re going to be right and it’s going to be awful anyway. It’s one of the most effective horror books I’ve ever read. Your mileage may vary, especially if you aren’t or haven’t ever been a parent,

(Jesus, why did I phrase it like that?)

… especially if you aren’t a parent, but if you are? Christ, I can’t let my wife near this book. Seed features generational curses, abusive parents, demonic possession, amnesia, grinding poverty, pet and animal death, murder, disintegrating marriages, poltergeists, car accidents, projectile vomit, ghosts, disapproving stepmothers and what may Goddamn well be the devil himself and it has crawled under my skin and it’s going to live there for a while. Ania Ahlborn has written a bunch of other books and I absolutely will be reading more of them. This is a great book to read in October if you don’t mind losing sleep and possibly a couple of sanity points to it. Go pick it up.

Because I love you

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music2 Comments

My son encountered this horror at school, and he exposed me to it, and now it’s yours. This is not all of it, as the full video is paywalled on this guy’s site and I suspect this formatted-for-Tiktok version is probably going to get yanked off of YouTube eventually. But you need this song and this nightmare in your lives.

(For those of you who know no Spanish: “How much does that shirt cost?” “This shirt costs five dollars” and “It’s a bargain. What a bargain!”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjDWz7ww2AM

Age quod agis

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Okay. It’s done. I put in my resignation today.

And if you knew me, which you more or less do, and you wanted to guess how many HR departments I am currently arguing with, how many would you guess? Would you guess both? Because I am currently arguing with HR at both my current district and my new district– one because their salary guidelines as they have been explained to me make no Earthly sense (I am being very gentle with this argument, as I’m still getting a raise with their proposal, just not as much of one as I think I’m entitled to) and the other because they are attempting to hold my license up for breaking a contract that I have not only never signed but which was not even presented to me for signature.

You, uh, can’t hold my license for breaking a contract with you if no contract with you exists. Sorry. Maybe HR should have gotten our contracts for 2022-23 ready before mid-October if you wanted that to work.

It’s gonna be a fun last week and a half.