In which I cave

On January 22, 2025January 22, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

Dammit.

You might remember a few months ago where I went back and forth endlessly for a little while about watches. My existing Apple Watch was starting to have battery issues and I was getting tired of constantly having to pay attention to my wrist. So I ordered a nice analog watch and committed to a less connected life. Or at least I tried to.

So, yeah, I went and bought a new Apple Watch today. I’m not, like, throwing the old watch away, or anything like that, and I think I’ll continue to wear it on days where I need to dress up a little bit, but I’m going back to the Apple Watch for daily wear.

Why? Turns out the Apple Watch was useful for way more than just notifications, and part of it is definitely my fault for picking the wrong watch if I was going to walk away from a smartwatch. For example, I went super minimalistic on the new one– no visible numbers, no date, no complications at all.

I don’t think I realized, at the time, just how many times I look at my watch in a typical day, and just how often I am capable of forgetting the date in any given day. I am, as it turns out, not very bright! And I also write, with no fear of exaggeration, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20-30 hall passes each and every day, all of which must have the current time and the date on them. And that means that 20-30 times a day I’m forgetting the date and needing to look at my wall clock.

And I probably should be embarrassed about this part, but with no numbers at all it takes a second or two to parse the exact correct time on an analog watch. I’m not sure if “a second or two” makes me slow or not, but when it happens over and over again over the course of every single day it makes me regret at least not buying a watch with numbers around the outside. I didn’t think it would make a difference at the time– I can tell time on a clock– but if I’m writing a pass I want to be done writing the pass immediately because I have more important shit to be doing. Even just a couple of seconds each time adds up.

The analog watch had no light on it, and it turns out that I frequently want to look at my watch in the dark.

(I am not buying a digital watch that isn’t a smartwatch, by the way. I realize that a number of those issues could have been solved with the same kind of digital watches that have been available since I was in fourth or fifth grade. I just don’t want one of them.)

I use a data-heavy watch face, too, and it turns out that I frequently want to know what the temperature outside is. That image to the right there is my current watch face, and I genuinely after four months was unable to check my urge to look at my wrist every time I wondered what the temperature was. The Spotify song-identification app comes in handy a hell of a lot, and that’s my calendar in the top left. I feel like I had one more piece of information on the old Apple watch– my activity circles, maybe– and I might go back to that after a while, maybe instead of the Messages icon, since I’m supposed to get notifications anyway. I don’t need that on there all the time.

Driving and using a map app with the watch on is significantly easier and safer than using the phone, and my car isn’t new enough for CarPlay or something similar.

But yeah. I feel like four months with an analog watch should have been enough to cure me of my bad habits, and it wasn’t, and on top of that I was constantly missing notifications that I wanted to get– like texts from my wife to come help her with something, for example. I kept my phone muted because I can’t stand getting a beep or a chime all the Goddamn time, and the vibrate on the actual phone itself wasn’t strong enough (and hasn’t been on any phone I’ve owned for probably a decade or more) to consistently make me notice it if it was anywhere other than on a hard surface or in the pocket of a pair of jeans. I’ve had comfy pants on for most of the last several days. I haven’t noticed a single damn notification through the pockets of those pants.

So yeah. Back to being tethered to technology, I suppose. If I get annoyed with my wrist buzzing at me all the goddamn time I’ll figure out what apps don’t need to ping the phone and go with that. But the analog watch experiment is done, unfortunately.

Oh come the hell on

On March 11, 2021March 11, 2021 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

Okay, damn it, I get it, logistics decisions that make sense on a nationwide level often don’t make sense on a specific, individual package level, and these large shipping companies have to make decisions that make sense on a nationwide level.

But I cannot help but notice that this package, which sat in a warehouse in California for five days after being received, was originally supposed to be here yesterday, then was rescheduled to today, and now has been rescheduled to tomorrow, appears to have been routed completely around where I live.

I assume that you will not look askance upon me if I reveal that I find this fact moderately frustrating. There is nothing especially important in the package; it’s not, like, insulin or something, and I’m not being harmed by having to wait an extra day or two for it. But if it’s in Chicago the day before it’s supposed to be in South Bend and you know that for some reason it has to go to Indianapolis and then to Detroit before coming to South Bend, which is in between Chicago and Detroit, maybe you update your scheduled arrival then? And then maybe don’t keep insisting it’ll arrive by 2:45 on that day right until the moment where that is temporally impossible?

In other Stupid But Annoying news, the last time I bought a new watch band for my Apple Watch at the beginning of the school year it got stuck while I was installing it, and I’ve never been able to remove it. The band is starting to look more than a little raggedy but I still can’t get the sumbitch off, and I am going through this spectacularly stupid mental calculus where I’m starting to seriously consider buying a new watch rather than continue to deal with this nonsense. I’ve had the old watch for over four years and I feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth out of it, but that sort of means that I’m buying a new, $500-800 watch depending on the options I choose because a thirty dollar band is stuck, and that also is on my last damn nerve.

(Why the hyperexpensive option? Because the stainless steel case and the sapphire glass screen are what are on this watch, and four years after buying the damn thing and wearing it 20 hours a day there is not a single mark anywhere on it. No scratches, no paint chips, no dents, no nothing. The stainless steel case with the sapphire glass screen are indestructible, and I don’t know how close the cheaper model comes to that ideal. I don’t like scratches on my watch.)

So, yeah. I’m having a Day. How are you?

(EDITED TO ADD: I just received a helpful text message from FedEx informing me– no, two helpful text messages from FedEx!– informing me that my package has been rescheduled to Thursday, 03/11. Which is … today.)

On low standards

On January 4, 2017January 4, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek2 Comments

I want my Pebble back. In fact, after a week (?) of Apple Watch ownership, I’m kind of tired of Apple as an entity, for the first time in quite a while.

(Before you say it: yes, I’m aware I can turn this shit off. And I’m going to, as soon as I’m done complaining about it. I shouldn’t have to turn annoying shit off. This annoying shit should not happen.)

I am a smartwatch fan, as the three entries under this one that WordPress will select will no doubt demonstrate. I have simple goals for my watch: I want it to alert me when I get an important notification (“important” being determined by me) and I want it to be a watch and an alarm clock, and to have a battery life compatible with being both. I was worried about the Apple Watch’s battery; I plug it in while I’m reading at night and it’s fine, and it appears to be good to go to make it two days without a charge with no real trouble. It’s at 80% right now and hasn’t been charged since last night. That’s fine.

I just got a notification congratulating me for standing for one minute during each of the last twelve hours.

Read that sentence again, and drown in the banality of the universe. And realize that I was on my feet for the entirety of at least seven of those hours. I walked four and a half miles while I was at work, 9000 steps (less than usual; it’s Wednesday, my half day) and collapsed on the couch at home and fell asleep. I didn’t hit either of my “fitness goals.” I can’t set a step goal, which is kind of annoying. I feel like that ought to be available. But I can for damn sure be nagged to stop doing things and freaking meditate like some sort of techno-hippy once an hour and be congratulated at the end of the day because once per hour in the past 12 hours I, I dunno, got up to take a piss or something. But the watch doesn’t notice seven straight hours on my feet.

Bah.

Also, whatever was in the iOS update that pushed out Tuesday bricked my phone, and I was nearly late to work trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong and restoring my most recent (ie, months old) backup. So I’m not super keen about technology right now in general. But yeah: Bah.

(WordPress probably ought to not choose this entry as another chance to constantly re-add Uncategorized as a category or delete half my tags while I’m adding them. Just saying.)

On having owned an Apple Watch for around seventeen hours

On December 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek9 Comments

xNope.jpg.pagespeed.ic.xecQlXJhis My watch, just now, upon having determined via vile sorcery that I was awake but not yet out of bed, just vibrated on my wrist to suggest that I get out of bed and move around for one (1) minute. This is related to my health somehow. I note, looking at it now, that apparently getting up at 3:30 in the morning to take a piss apparently also counted as exercise. It was certainly difficult, I’ll agree to that.

And here’s the real bullshit: I did it. I have left my warm, cozy bed, a bed that had an attractive woman in it, and now I’m up. Because my watch decided to tell me to.

I don’t mind when my watch wakes me up with an alarm; that’s part of what it’s for and I set those on purpose. I’m not sure how I feel about the idea that it basically just told me to get my lazy ass out of bed on a day when I’m not supposed to go to work and don’t have to take the boy to school. Part of me thinks that’s neat and the rest of me feels like it’s probably the first five minutes of a Black Mirror episode about a dystopia.

In which I make poor decisions but am somewhat successful anyway

On December 28, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Work2 Comments

5547000_sd.jpg;maxHeight=550;maxWidth=642.jpeg So I caved and got an Apple Watch. It was an accident, I swear; I went into the store intending to just go on a fact-finding mission, secure in the knowledge that even if I were able to pick out one I liked there was no chance of there being any Series 2 watches in stock, and I wanted to physically put my hands on the watches to see how they felt and how they wore and pick one out based on that.

Well. Uh. Oops. Turns out they had exactly two of the exact one I was thinking I wanted– I’ve ordered a knockoff Milanese loop band (don’t tell anyone) that is literally like a seventh of the price that Apple wants, but the fluoroelastomer will do in a pinch, especially since I like to say “fluoroelastomer.”

Right now I’m a trifle underwhelmed, but the UI is largely responsible for that and it’s gonna take me a bit to learn. We’ll see how the battery life works out. I’ll report back in a few days.

I’d heard from my co-workers that the last week of December was going to be insane, but the same people who said that had been telling me that December in general was better than November. I have sold more furniture in the last two and a half days (I left at 2:30 today, as I usually do on Wednesdays) than I did in the entire rest of the month, and this week is already my second highest week of sales ever, with the weekend left to go, which is utter fucking madness. And that’s without any really big sales; I’ve just had a bunch in the 2-3000 range. Yesterday and Monday I was so busy that I could barely keep up with the customers; it was bloody insane.

I can put up with a little bit more of this, though, if the universe would like to keep sending it my way. It’s a problem I’m willing to put up with.

RIP

On December 7, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

Pebble went under today, which makes me very sad. How long until I have an Apple Watch? Do you think I’ll even last through my weekend? Will I last through tomorrow? Who knows!

(I almost forgot to blog today. I was seriously a minute or two away from going to bed. Sorry, this is all you get. Hugs!)

In which I dislike some things and like other things

On September 23, 2015September 23, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

It has been… a really rough week.

For like ten minutes now, that’s been the only sentence of the post. I had four kids in my afternoon class inside the office before they even got to my class for real— one for bullshit heading down the stairs, two for post-lunch bullshit on the way up the stairs, and the fourth for what she was doing when I came back into the room after dropping the previous two off.

I came home early yesterday because I simply couldn’t cope with the idea of dealing with my afternoon class. Just couldn’t do it. I basically had a panic attack in the morning and insisted that they cover me in the afternoon. Luckily, our building secretary loves me so she was able to take care of it. I came home and collapsed into bed for a few hours and then spent the evening job-hunting again. I made it through today, and a couple of suspensions from the Magnificent Four will likely help with tomorrow, but…

Yeah.

Anybody knows anything about a job I might be good for– especially if it involves telecommuting and I can do it from anywhere, because chances are I’m not uprooting my family to move to you– let me know.

One good thing that’s happened this week: my Pebble Time Steel finally showed up! It’s one of these two watches:

One of those two models cost $250 and is on my wrist right now; the other costs $17000 and… is not. I know I’ve made this point a bunch of times before– probably every time I’ve mentioned the Pebble Time Steel– but I just find it so insanely ridiculous that I can’t stop talking about it.

A quick review? Well, it’s basically the same as my original Pebble, with a color screen, a bit more stylish… styling, and a few days more battery life. There’s also a microphone on it but apparently that feature’s not available for the iPhone version of their app yet. In other words, I love it, but most of the differences between it and the original are cosmetic. The new Timeline interface is interesting but hardly life-altering. I still halfway suspect that my next watch will be an Apple Watch but they need to radically improve the battery life before I jump ship. The battery on the PTS is supposed to last ten days between charges. The Apple Watch needs to be charged every night. The prettier screen simply cannot overcome that difference, especially when you include the considerably higher price of the Apple Watch.

So, yeah: point is, I like it, and eventually somebody’s gonna crack my skull open for it and then be very disappointed. But, hey: I won’t have to teach anymore once the mugger kills me!

In which we need to have a talk, #Apple…

On March 10, 2015March 9, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy8 Comments

First things first. This is my desk:

Now, normally it doesn’t look like this, but I’m trying to make a point, and that is: it is extraordinarily difficult to be more of an Apple fanboy than I am. I literally have one of every device Apple produces, and there are two iPads in that picture. I have so many Apple devices, in fact, that I forgot one while taking the picture– although I wouldn’t have disconnected my Apple TV from my set in the living room anyway– and I currently can’t find my old clickwheel-style iPod.

This is my current watch:

The only difference here is I have a leather strap on mine, as the rubber one my initial Pebble came with broke in half a couple of weeks ago.

I do not want an Apple Watch. Ordinarily (some of you will laugh at this, but I swear that I at least think it’s true) I do not believe my opinion to be a bellwether of broader reality, but I have to believe that if I don’t want an Apple Watch, then no one wants an Apple Watch. I own every device that Apple produces and am at this exact second wearing a smartwatch, a device that I have on multiple occasions referred to as my favorite tech purchase since my original cell phone back in 1998-99 or so. I am a white male with sufficient disposable income, a demonstrated interest in tech gadgets, and a distinct preference for Apple hardware. There literally cannot be a more accurate picture of the target demographic for this item than I am.

And I have no interest in this thing.

It gets worse. There are two watches in this picture. I have preordered one of them.

The watch on the right is a Pebble Time Steel. It will cost me $270 at the end of the month when the Kickstarter finishes and Pebble actually charges me. It comes with a backup strap made of metal in addition to the leather one, and is made of stainless steel. I’ll get it, if I remember right, at the end of June. Maybe July, I’m not sure. My current watch will be fine until it shows up.