Month: August 2024

Ow

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy4 Comments

So: today I spent the morning reading a book, cover to cover, that I hated so much I might hate-review it and yet I couldn’t put it down, and then I spent a good chunk of the evening playing a game to the point where my wrists hurt, which hasn’t happened in a very long time, and I’m not sure if I like the game.

So, to be clear, today has been a day absolutely stuffed with bad decisions and I strongly recommend you pay no attention to anything I think, forever.

Typing hurts, so we’re gonna call it a night early, my apologies. I’ll wear my brace tonight and see if I can’t complain about the shitty book tomorrow.

Survived the first full week of school

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

And now I am a monkey-man with a staff, so I’m going to whack people with it.

Seeya tomorrow.

Today’s dilemmas

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy7 Comments

Dilemma the First: I have a student this year who is quite easily the most profoundly disabled kid I’ve ever had in my classroom. Today, somehow in my room without his supposed-to-be-constant paraprofessional– someone else just brought him into the room in his wheelchair and left— he got out of said wheelchair to lie down on the floor and cry about how he wasn’t allowed to use his iPad in his previous class. He has spoken to me a few times. I have only understood perhaps 20% of what he has said to me. I have, literally, no idea how I might educate him, and even less idea why he is in a mainstreamed classroom.

Sub-Dilemma: I haven’t read any of my IEPs yet, including this kid’s, and I am terrified of what I might find in it. I am hoping to find time to read IEPs this weekend.

Dilemma the Second: Kamala Harris is speaking after my bedtime tonight, and I am not sure how I am going to be both asleep and watching her speech. Furthermore, there is a Big Surprise coming tonight, and I am not only not sure what the Big Surprise might be (Taylor Swift will endorse Harris and then announce a new album the day after the election, but only if Harris wins) but I also don’t know when it is, and I bet I’ll be in bed for it too. I have otherwise ignored both conventions this year, although some of the clips I’ve seen on TikTok have made me regret not paying more attention to the Democratic one.

Dilemma the Third: I have too many video games to play and books to read. I need another month before school starts, please. Black Myth Wukong just came out and I’m still not really done with the Elden Ring DLC. Can we redo the calendar?

Dilemma the Fourth: My son turns 13 tomorrow, meaning that I will be the father of a teenager, which is incomprehensible. Unfortunately, he is also his mother’s son in addition to being my son, which means that he doesn’t want anything for his birthday and also won’t commit to making any plans. This is not teenagerdom and wanting to avoid his parents raring its head; it’s his biological destiny. I am the only fucker on either side of my family who it is possible to buy things for. It’s bloody annoying.

Dilemma the Fifth: I have not quite told the truth in Dilemma the Fourth. He would like a “gamer laptop.” He has never touched Windows and does not know a single damn thing about how computer specs work. We’d be looking at $1000 easy and probably $16-1700 for a decent rig (“decent,” not “good”) so that he can play Minecraft.

Dilemma the Sixth: I will likely talk about this more in the future, but my co-teacher in one of my classes sucks. I need her to not suck. I have never actually had to have a “you suck at this and you need to stop” conversation with an adult before and am not sure how to approach it. One presumes I should not actually say the words “you suck at this and you need to stop.”

Dilemma the Seventh: I intended for this to be one or two dilemmas and I have like four more without thinking about it too hard but, again, I’d like to be reading and/or playing video games. So I’m gonna stop now.

Pretty!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek2 Comments

In lieu of a post with actual content, please enjoy this photograph of my pretty new watch on my somewhat less pretty, keratosis pilaris-riddled wrist.

There’s something weird going on with the angle there, btw. The watch band could stand to be a tiny bit bigger, no more than a centimeter and probably not even that much, but I swear it fits nicely and is not cutting off my circulation in any way. 🙂

Now to see if I can make it through the day without any notifications.

In which I’m officially old

On By Luther M. SilerIn Music3 Comments

Pearl Jam, otherwise known as the greatest band on the planet, is on tour right now in support of Dark Matter, their most recent release, which somehow is one of the best albums they’ve ever done. Bands that had their first release in 1991 aren’t allowed to release one of their best albums in 2024. This doesn’t make any sense. They did it anyway.

Anyway, tickets to Deer Creek– fuck you, I don’t know what the hell the Ruoff Center is, it’s Deer Creek– were absolutely fucking ludicrous when the show got announced. Like $600+ for lawn seats.

I’ve been keeping an eye on them anyway, and … well, they’ll be at Deer Creek next week and tickets on the lawn (which, at Deer Creek, are still pretty damn good seats) are down to a much more reasonable $120 apiece, and even actual seats are at a price I’m willing to pay for them.

Now, note that I said “next week.” What do you think that implies about the actual date of the show? Or, more relevantly, the day of the week?

Because the Goddamned show is on a Monday. And I’m sorry, even building in taking the next day off, I absolutely cannot go to a rock concert on a Monday night when I am 48 years old. I just can’t. I have seen these guys in concert three or four times (I am so old I can’t immediately tell you exactly how many) and I have still somehow never seen them play Black live so I absolutely have to see them at least one more time before I die or one of them does, but I genuinely think I could get free tickets and the creeping existential horror that takes over when I even contemplate going out on a Monday night, much less to something I have to drive a couple of hours to, would keep me from going.

I mourn my lost youth. Not a lot; I didn’t really use it that well when I had it, but still.

So far so good

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek3 Comments

WordPress is being wonky and I don’t have a ton to say tonight anyway, but so far school is going pretty well– fourth hour continues to be a sore spot but it’s the only one– and I finally got around to actually ordering a watch tonight after literally months of dithering about it. We’ll see if it actually fits once it gets here! I expect to tumble into despair if it does not.

Anyway, I had to reload about a dozen times to get the page I’m typing this on to actually become available, so I’m going to hit Publish until I actually have a post now.

Whee!

#REVIEW: Incidents Around the House, by Josh Malerman

On By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, ReviewsLeave a comment

Fuuuuuuhuhuhuhuuuuuuuuuuck.

I … uh … nope. Nope. I’m going to go put this book in the freezer, and it’s going to stay in there, forever, and I’m going to be very very happy that I started reading it in the morning (and finished it by noon) because being up at 3 AM last night reading this and then trying to sleep would not have worked very well.

Nope. Uh-uh. Noooooooope.

Watch Poll 2 Update

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

Before I reveal the truth, let me remind you of the watch:

And, while I agree with the person who said it’s much harder to tell from an image than it is from something you can touch and manipulate, only two people successfully stated that this is a $15 watch, and other similar variants are even cheaper.

Two possible clues: one, and this kinda surprised me, while quartz watches actually keep more accurate time than traditional clockwork/mechanical watches, they are much cheaper, and the largest face has the word “quartz” on it. Second, the larger crown on the right side is visibly out of alignment, and if that thing’s on a funky angle in the picture they’re using to sell the watch, we’re not dealing with a stellar example of build quality here.

So, fully confirmed at this point, and with no slight intended to anyone who was wrong: no one has any idea how much watches cost just from looking at them.