Category: idiocy

On unanswerable questions

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

After I finished yesterday’s blog post I browsed around on that hat website for a little while, coveting many of the hats and wondering how many hats is too many hats, when I noticed that the bottom of their main page claims to “find your perfect hat” in less than 60 seconds. Well, hell, I want my perfect hat! They made me give them my email address, but whatever; I just had Safari make one up for me, which is one of my very favorite features of that app, and then jumped into the process.

This was the first question:

… as God is my witness, I have no fucking idea. I need a z-axis. I don’t fit on that scale at all and I have no idea what even the middle point between the Pope (which Pope? The Jesuit current guy or the previous dude, whose shoes were made from baby seals and dyed with the blood of virgins?) and Elton John, and Christ, which Elton John?

I chose a 5. I couldn’t justify any other number. I don’t know what the fuck a five even means here; I thought the pain scale didn’t make any sense but this is so much worse.

At any rate, I didn’t particularly like the three hats they suggested. None of them are my perfect hat. I’m considering going through the test again and answering that question with a 1 and a 10 to see what changes. The really inexplicable part is that I’m pretty certain that neither the Pope nor Elton John would be caught dead in any hats being sold on the site.

The weirdest thing? This image appears elsewhere on the site:

I think four of those people look great and one looks amazingly, uncharacteristically dorky. Guess which one?

Anyway, how many hats can I have? That was a real question.

Okay that’s enough

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Today was awful; I had to put a kid out in five of my six classes, which is fucking ridiculous, and I got asked if I qualified for a fucking senior citizen’s discount while attempting to buy a whole rotisserie chicken and two boxes of cookies at the grocery.

No I do not shut the fuck up.

So yeah. Gonna go crumble to dust in my bed now.

Not right now god damn it

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy5 Comments

I have had my current desktop for just a noodge over five years, and I am starting to think that I might need to replace it sooner rather than later. It is the most insanely aggravating tech problem I have encountered, in that it isn’t one tech problem. Shit just Keeps Going Wrong, and I can’t for the life of me isolate what the problem might be beyond a vague suspicion that my dedication to Apple products is about to bite me in the ass. If this were a home build, I could start replacing parts– I mean, that would be expensive and insane, but I could do it. I could keep replacing bits of the computer until this random fucking series of crashes, application hangups and hardware shutdowns — my trackpad, for God’s sake, keeps shutting down, and it has a physical on/off button– stopped, or I’d managed to create the iMac of Theseus and just gave the fuck up.

The Music app crashes. Chrome crashes. Safari crashes. The monitors are going wonky. The trackpad shuts down randomly. The entire computer keeps hard restarting in the middle of the night and when I first wake it up after a hard crash it takes a good ten minutes before everything starts behaving, and then it’s fine for an unpredictable amount of time– anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days– until it’s not anymore.

I don’t know how to diagnose this. I thought a Safari patch had cleaned it up but that only lasted a few days and now Music is crashing, and there are 65 fucking gigabytes of music on this damn computer, so moving to another one is going to be a huge pain in the ass. Also, just to make it worse, Apple isn’t making 27″ iMacs any longer, so I can either move to a smaller main monitor or a Mac Studio, and those start at two fucking grand before you buy a monitor to go with it. I mean, I can spread that out, and truth be told I can afford it, but I really don’t fucking want to right now. I want to fix this, and normally “fix my computer” is included among my skill sets, but there are enough things going wrong that I’m starting to suspect it’s either the motherboard or the hard drive, and … that’s a new computer, since I can’t replace either.

I mean, I could go back to Windows, but I could also shoot myself in the fucking face and not have to worry about it, and those options are of equal attractiveness right now. I loathe Windows and I’m not interested in going back into that ecosystem when every other piece of tech in the house has a picture of a piece of fruit on it. If Apple was still making 27″ iMacs this wouldn’t be that hard of a decision, because $1600 is a lot more palatable than $2000 plus a monitor. But even if I stuck with the two I have (and remember, I’m running a supervillain lair here)* it’s still $400 more than the iMac I’d probably end up with, which is pushing it.

Anyway, I’m off to spend three hours Googling “everything is wrong with my computer” until it crashes again. Wish me luck.

*Three monitors and a standing desk, and how the fuck is it possible that I can’t find a picture of my desk on this website anywhere? NO way.**

**EDIT: Found one, and added the link.

My Boomer moment

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

My wife and I went to Best Buy last night– I tell you, date night has gotten really lazy lately– not because we particularly needed anything from there but because they’d sent me an email that I hadn’t used my card in a long enough time that they were going to close it out soon if I didn’t use it again. I don’t have any particular need for anything from them right now, but that card has come in handy plenty of times and there’s no reason to take a credit score hit in six months if we decide we need a dryer or a new TV or something. She wanted a new paper shredder, which we weren’t sure if they even carried, and I went in just intending to find literally anything I wanted, buy it on the card, leave, and immediately pay the card back off.(*)

This should have been easy.

I considered a few random things and then Bek found paper shredders and we decided to just grab one of those and call it a day. And we walked to the front of the store, where the registers have been for as long as this store has been there … and there were no registers.

We eventually noticed two signs hanging from the ceiling that said “Checkout,” both located in the middle of the fucking store, like we were in a fucking department store or something. One had no employees anywhere near it. The second just appeared to be a sign dangling randomly from the ceiling, with nothing at all to indicate where one might make a purchase. No kiosk, no computer, no self-checkout, nothing. And, again, in the middle of the fucking store. Why? Why the fuck is checkout in the middle of the store and not up by the doors?

The customer service desk was still there, clearly labeled for returns and Geek Squad and online pickup and such, but no signs for purchases, and the couple of employees behind that counter looked straight at me, a customer, clearly carrying a rather unwieldy box with the intent of purchasing, and didn’t, like, wave me over, or point me at where to go, or anything like that. We probably walked around, again, carrying merchandise, for five minutes, unable to figure out where to buy something in a fucking retail store that only exists to sell things, and at that point I decided I’d had enough, left the paper shredder on a random shelf and walked the fuck out of the store. On the way home we stopped at Target and bought a different paper shredder.

And, I gotta tell you, I didn’t believe any of this was happening while it was happening and I only barely believe it happened now. If it had just been me on the trip I’d just assume I was some variety of idiot and not worry about it. But my wife was with me, and she couldn’t figure out how the hell to give someone money in exchange for goods either, and that tells me I’m not fucking crazy. That said, I’ve been scouring the internet since then trying to find other people complaining about this and I can’t find any– there are tons of complaints about their website having issues but no one else saying I went into the story to make a purchase and couldn’t find the registers, which just … God, that just sounds insane. Selling things is the only reason the store exists. This cannot possibly have just happened. This isn’t an “I couldn’t find someone to unlock the case” situation. I had the thing I wanted in my hands and could not find a place to get someone to sell it to me.

What the fuck, Best Buy.

(*) The punch line to this fucking ridiculous story is that after hitting Publish on this post, I went and looked for the email, wondering what the deadline was and also trying to decide if I wanted to still keep the card (surely I can just order something online without drama, right? A PS5 gift card?) or just let it go … and I can’t find the email. My personal email is through Gmail. I have never deleted an email. So maybe I am completely nuts.

Mean but true

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Music

My favorite moment at my kid’s Spring Concert tonight was realizing I recognized a piece of music they were playing, asking my watch to recognize it basically for no reason at all, and being greeted with an error screen I had never seen before– “No Music Detected.”

No Music Detected being tossed at me during a middle school band concert is a little on the nose for a smartwatch music app, don’t you think?

You’ve got to be kidding me

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy3 Comments

My son and I needed to pick up our new glasses, so after dinner we went to that place, you know the one, the place that specializes in bulk goods and isn’t Sam’s Club. The one that promises … low cost. Yeah, them. I’m only being cagey because of how this story ends and I don’t particularly want it showing up in search results.

You tell me: Do you see a problem with this display of potentially explosive propane products? And, having seen this potentially problematic display of potentially explosive propane products, do you then draw any particular conclusions about the tanks themselves?

One way or another, my wife works in health and safety, and is therefore precisely the type of person for whom a triple stack of propane tanks, indoors might be a problem, and while I’m not a specialist, I’m not keen on, y’know, exploding. Or being exploded at. And I’ve worked retail, and am perfectly comfortable with the idea that some manager might have told some employee to get some shit out on the floor and either been misunderstood or not been smart enough to realize what he was ordering the underpaid nineteen-year-old he was talking to to do.

So yeah: I went and found a manager, and trying as best I could to radiate this is insanely dangerous and you need to take care of this while not radiating I am an asshole and we are both about to end up on YouTube, I pointed out that maybe this wasn’t a good idea or even maybe legal and please reassure me that you’re going to take care of it.

“It’s not dangerous,” he says to me.

I blink at him a few times, reconsidering my approach to the conversation as well as my entire understanding of how the world works.

“Were you under the impression that those were full?” he asks.

Well, yeah, and okay, I didn’t exactly pick one up and shake it, because again: dangerous, and while I don’t think any right-thinking person would stack propane tanks indoors, I am quite familiar with idiots. I actually find it more likely that an idiot might stack propane tanks indoors than that a retail store would have a giant display of items that you cannot buy and cannot be used for their intended purpose, especially without any signage indicating that if you want a propane tank you should, I dunno, go to the propane and propane accessories department located in Aisle F.

So no, I had not considered the idea that the tanks were empty, and I’m not sure how bad I feel about that, and I’m pretty sure this guy thinks I’m a moron but I’m also not sure how I feel about that, because I think I’d rather be thought a moron by a stranger who I’m never going to see or speak to again than not say anything about a situation that could potentially cause a huge fucking explosion.

Maybe I’m weird? I dunno. How would you have handled this?

Well, that’s better

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching

Joe Lieberman died today, so it’s already kind of a heavy lift to make today a bad day when that’s the main headline, but school didn’t go poorly either, although I’m going to wait until tomorrow to make any judgments about whether my new method of test prep worked at all. They appeared to know things about transformations at the end of the day, but we all know the evidence of your eyes can be tricksy.

Oh, and I sent my wife a text begging her to prevent me from falling asleep on the couch at 6:47 and then when I woke up at 8:04 I sent another text that just said “LOL,” because I don’t think Christ and an army of horny angels could have kept me from falling asleep on the couch today. And now I’m here, writing a blog post, and hopefully within half an hour or so I’ll be asleep again, so there’s Wednesday done and dusted, I suppose.

On overthinking

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching

We do Students of the Month in my building, awarded … well, every month, as you might expect. Each teacher gets to name one every month, and there are no rules for who you choose to nominate, or at least none that have ever been presented to me. The kids get their picture taken for a trophy case in the hallway, a small assortment of goodies, and free admission to any sports or school activities for the following month. We got the email today to fill out our spot in the spreadsheet for March, and … damn, am I having a hard time picking a kid this month.

My usual rules, or at least guidelines:

  • Someone I like (obviously);
  • with good grades, or poor grades that have shown recent and notable improvement;
  • not a behavior issue, or, again, a former behavior issue who has shown significant improvement;
  • Good attendance;
  • I try to pay attention to gender and racial diversity, but there aren’t, like, quotas;
  • and — and this can be the hard one — has not been nominated before by another teacher.

It’s entertaining to wonder about what might happen– the answer is almost certainly “nothing,” but whatever– if I just nominated the same kid every month; I doubt anyone would say anything, but I like to pick less obvious kids, even if it occasionally leads to kids who are doing great in my room hassling me about how I haven’t chosen them yet. Generally that type of kid is willing to accept “I would, but you’ve already been nominated four times this year,” and if not I can always just tell them I don’t nominate anyone who asks.

But yeah. I don’t have any obvious choices this month, and a couple that might have been good choices earlier in the year have been on my nerves lately, and there’s one kid who I’d like to reward, because he has improved, but he’s still failing all of his classes– he’s just gone from scores in the zeroes and tens to high forties and low fifties, and I’m worried that if I nominate him he’ll immediately get himself suspended.

Which is a thing that happens, more often than is statistically reasonable. Not just with my kids, but with the whole list– I’m pretty sure I could get a decent office pool going each month betting on which two or three kids from the SotM list are going to be suspended within two days of getting the award. Which, by the way, cancels your free tickets, although you get to keep your pencils or whatever and we don’t scratch your face out of the picture.

Hell, that would be kind of hilarious. A big, theatrical X over the face of every kid who got suspended right after being named Student of the Month. Even better if we didn’t explain it, since the trophy case is literally right by the main door to the building. I’d love to see the parent looking at all those pictures and then realizing that 15% or so of them have their faces marked out. Maybe we’ll put a camera in there.

At any rate, I’ve got a tentative choice, and I’ve got until next Friday to decide, but it’s taken a lot of thinking for an honor that is not exactly going to change a kid’s life. Maybe I’ll take a look at the kids who won in August and add them back into the pool. True story: my original August choice got arrested the day before SotMs got announced and I had to switch her out on short notice. This genuinely is a thing, I swear.