Happy Father’s Day

Luther M. Siler

I just got off the phone with my dad (we saw him yesterday) and so far the highlight of my day has been trying to take a fatherly nap in my recliner in the living room while my son was playing video games and barking an endless series of questions at me. It was only marginally successful. But dinner is going to involve mashed potatoes, so the day is a win no matter what else happens.

…I dunno, that’s all I got for right now.

Not much today

Luther M. Siler

Kind of just had a Friday; nothing in particular, for once, that I feel the need to talk about. I got a few errands run and just finished a swim with my wife and the boy; the water in the pool was up to 82 degrees, which is damn near perfect.

What’s going on in your neck of the woods?

7:59 PM, Friday June 19th: 2,219,119 confirmed cases and 119,086 Americans dead. We had the largest number of new infections today we’ve had on any single day since April. April.

Hmm let’s see

Luther M. Siler2 Comments

Feeling kind of bullet-pointy today, so let’s do a bits and bobs post rather than trying to construct some sort of coherent narrative:

  • After discovering at least one other teacher was doing this, I’ve decided to just go ahead and record my e-learning lessons for the rest of the year and get them all posted as fast as possible. I’m already done with the rest of this week and so I only have three more to do; they’ll probably all be finished tomorrow.
  • In theory, the kids are done on May 20, although they have until the 27th to turn in their work, and the district appears to think that we’re going to be doing trainings until school would have actually ended in June, but they haven’t actually given us any details on how that would work. I’m sure I’ll be super psyched about it once I know.
  • If you live in South Bend, you should have requested your primary ballot by now, dammit. I’d appreciate it if you’d vote yes on the referendum questions that are on the ballot so that my job can afford to keep paying me and we can invest in roofs and drinkable water and such in our buildings.
  • The usual gang of dipshits has discovered our dastardly plan to raise tax money and then spend it in such a way that it has a chance to benefit brown children, so naturally there’s a Vote No movement. I’ve only actually seen two signs about town but every time I do I have to forcibly restrain the urge to either steal the sign or drive up into people’s lawns to destroy them.
  • It is possible that the whole home-isolation thing is affecting my generally genial and go-along-to-get-along personality, I’m not sure.
  • I think Mike Pence probably has tested positive for coronavirus, because there was an announcement today that they were isolating him from that other person. I do not think that there is a single chance in hell that the White House would tell the truth about either of them being infected. Hell, I’d trust North Korean media about Kim Jong Un before I’d trust this White House to tell me the truth, and that’s kind of scary.
  • I am Back on My Shit in a number of ways recently, and in my idle moments today have been researching larger monitors for my computer (utterly unnecessary, as my iMac is already the largest possible size and I sit no more than two feet away from it, plus I already have a secondary monitor) as well as bikes for fat guys (they exist, and as far as I can tell America’s fat men have already bought them all, because none are in stock anywhere) and green screens for my office, which will become much less necessary tomorrow, when I’m done recording e-learning lessons for at least the next few months.
  • I have not been on a bike in over 30 years, as I basically learned how to ride one because my brother wanted to learn and then never did it again. If it is possible to forget how to ride a bike, I have done so. This is an exceptionally poor idea, especially given how much any bike robust enough to support my fat ass would cost.
  • I am wearing shorts. It’s not warm outside or anything like that, but it’s fucking mid-May and I’m wearing shorts because fuck you, mid-May.
  • We just ordered a new refrigerator for our garage, because I need a place to store my many beverages that will keep them cold. I do not actually drink alcohol, so yes, I’m actually envisioning an entire refrigerator filled with Pepsi, tea, Mountain Dew, and Gatorade.
  • Additional Back-On-My-Shittery: I’m back on oh man I really want to do a podcast I should buy a bunch of equipment for podcasting pay no attention to the fact that I still don’t have the vaguest idea what my podcast would be about I just wanna buy shit.
  • That said, my Blue Yeti desk microphone has finally earned back the money I spent on it over the last couple of months, as it really does sound a lot better in my videos than the internal mic on my computer. It’s also not entirely impossible that I’ll let myself invest in a better webcam than the one that’s built in, but I shouldn’t.
  • Lurking in the back of my head is the certainty that we will absolutely be needing to teach from home again this fall. That will probably be what ends up getting me to pull the trigger on the greenscreen, at least.
  • I also spent a few minutes yesterday looking into an online Ed.D, which … nah.
  • I’m listening to Post Malone right now, and this track he does with Ozzy Osbourne is amazing.
  • 3:42 PM, Tuesday May 12: 1,358,901 confirmed cases and 81,650 American deaths.

Interior crocodile alligator

Luther M. Siler2 Comments

(If you don’t understand the post title, don’t worry about it and don’t ask.)

(Also, fun WordPress fact: if you change the size of an image, it will not display as centered once you publish even if it is resized and centered in the editor.)

Just a couple of things right now, mostly so that I can say I actually posted today, now that it’s nine PM: First, I left the house for the third time since all hell broke loose, and had both my wife and my son with me, since we were dropping food off for both of our dads and the boy hasn’t seen either of them in too long. We talked about when the last time the three of us had been in the car together on the way up to my stepfather’s, and determined that it was very likely in February. The trip home from Chicago on our anniversary, specifically. Insane.

I beat Nioh 2 yesterday, which somehow took ninety hours— I am a completist, and wanted to do everything— despite making progress at a pretty damn solid clip. I’m tossing around writing a full review despite having raved about it in a few posts already; suffice it to say it’s a spectacular fucking game; better than the original, I think, which was a game that I absolutely loved. I have been gaming since the Atari 2600 and I think we are reaching the point where the PS4 is my favorite game console I’ve ever owned.

Tomorrow is the last day of Spring Break, which is going to be weird, since I’m still not actually going back to work in any meaningful fashion. I’m going to try and get all of next week’s lessons set up by the end of the day so I can sort of set it and forget it; we’ll see how well that works. Anybody have suggestions on how to teach stats to 8th graders remotely? Because right now … yeah, it’s gonna be kind of challenging.

I am also going to try and get something up on Patreon tomorrow. Stop laughing, goddammit.

9:07 PM, Sunday April 12th: 555,398 confirmed infections; 22,023 American deaths.

In which I guess it’s Tuesday

Luther M. Siler2 Comments

I’ve applied to… five different jobs today?  Six?  Something in there– and I’m playing phone tag with someone who called me.  So hopefully we’re getting somewhere.

What I haven’t done is thought or done anything interesting enough to warrant a blog post, so you’re gonna get another Prince video, because I’m at OtherJob tonight so there won’t be a late post tonight one way or another.

Let’s pretend that I’m focusing on my speech for the wedding.  That makes it sound like I’m doing something.