On overthinking things

On March 4, 2017March 4, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Work8 Comments

vFZ9eminem-hi-my-name-is-slim-shady-name-tag-design-4-x-2.jpg So technically we’re supposed to wear nametags when we’re at work. In practice this almost never happens unless there’s a corporate visit coming; sometimes someone will put theirs on for the hell of it and then it tends to spread virally; if a shift starts with one person wearing a nametag, everyone will have theirs on by the end of that shift, but it usually doesn’t happen.

Our previous work nametags are pretty utilitarian; they’ve got the corporate logo on them and a space for your name (printed on a laser printer and slid into a little hole on the side) and that’s it. Recently for some reason corporate has decided that our nametags need to be more “fun.” And we have a visit coming by a Lord High Muckety-Muck next week, and so the new, fun name tags need to be at least ordered if not actually on everyone’s shirts.

They require that, in addition to our names, we reveal our hometowns and, and this is the kicker, a passion. Like so:

NAME:
Luther

HOMETOWN:
Chicago, IL

PASSION:
Butt stuff

Only it can’t say “butt stuff,” because, I dunno, reasons, and I also have to admit that I grew up here in Somewhere in Northern Indiana, which I find vaguely annoying. I should have just put Chicago and dared someone to correct it.

The problem is that “passion” part. One, I’m philosophically opposed to it. I’m a goddamn furniture salesman. I know that connecting with customers is supposed to be a great help in making sales and blah blah blah, but goddammit I’m at work and I’m doing my job and the fact that you want a chiffarobe does not entitle you to know shit about my life.

Plus, it has to be something that’s not intrinsically alienating to any substantial percentage of our customer base, and it has to be something that doesn’t lead to conversations with customers that I don’t want to have. So, for example: I could say politics! I am, in fact, passionate about politics! Only no, because the last fucking thing I want to talk to any of my customers about is politics for a wide variety of reasons. I could say writing! That is also a true thing! The only problem with that is that it leads to talking to people about my writing, which I really don’t want to do at work, and even if they happen to be sci-fi/fantasy people who might enjoy my work, handing them one of Luther’s cards would lead them back here, and that opens all sorts of potential cans of worms that I don’t really want open. I don’t badmouth my customers all that damn often and it’s incredibly rare (I can’t think of any examples, in fact, although I’m sure there are some) that I tell stories about specific individuals but still. I don’t need those worlds mixing. Books? Okay, but I don’t want to get into talking about reading (or the fact that my customers don’t read) with every jamoke who reads my name tag.

The other possibility is to make it a joke. I spent a long time considering just putting “Apples” as my passion, because hell, who doesn’t like apples? Another one I considered: extispicy, which is fortunetelling using the entrails of sacrificed animals. My manager shot that down for some reason, and pointing out that another staff member had chosen “charcuterie” did not gain me any points.

I ended up picking astronomy, which means that I’ll be explaining the difference between astronomy and astrology a lot. But it’s true and will probably not lead to obnoxious conversations. Fact of the matter is, once the muckety-muck is gone I will go right back to not wearing the nametag, so any amount of thought past the first five minutes that I put into this is probably wasted time anyway. But what the hell. I gotta do something when I’m not selling furniture.

#REVIEW: Ada Twist, Scientist

On January 15, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews8 Comments

61pu8UIQ+kL._SX406_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg Something a little different tonight, if you don’t mind (and it’s my blog, so I’m doing it anyway whether you mind or not): I need to make sure you’re aware of a certain children’s book I just read to my son. I was considering making this part of my Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews series, but decided not to.

So here’s the deal: if you have kids under, say, 12 or so, or if you teach science to any kids of any age, or really if you teach at all, you need to acquire a copy of Ada Twist, Scientist and make reading it out loud to said children a part of your mission in life for the near future. Educators will already be aware of this: it’s occasionally a great idea to read out loud to kids, regardless of their age, and it’s also occasionally a good idea to read what are ostensibly children’s books to kids who are on paper too old to be reading those books. You should all find your kids and then find this book (in that order, preferably) and then read it to them.

Here’s why: Ada Twist, Scientist does a great idea of breaking down how science works and how the scientific process works and how scientists think in 32 pages of simple, rhyming prose. The fact that the titular scientist is a young black woman is just icing on the cake. Representation is important, and young women of any race need to see themselves as scientists. So do black children of either gender. And my white male son needs to see scientists who don’t look like him. Plus, again: it taught my five-year-old the word hypothesis. Which he’ll be using in sentences by the end of the week.

Go check it out.

Yeah haha whatever

On September 7, 2016September 7, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn ReadingLeave a comment

Normal blogging is suspended today because I damn near just stayed up last night until I had Chuck Wendig’s INVASIVE finished, only that would have meant very little sleep, and I was enough of a zombie at work today as it was. I have tomorrow off, so I’m ferdamnsure gonna get the thing finished before I sleep.

Expect a review soon. In the meantime, spoiler alert, I’m gonna tell you to buy the damn book so you may as well go ahead and do that.

WTF

On August 21, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized5 Comments

What the hell is this?

On August 3, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography9 Comments

It’s… growing? attached to? a tree near the boy’s day care. Been there for weeks.

In which, no shit, I review a pillow

On July 7, 2016July 7, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Reviews12 Comments

This is not a joke: I spent $170 on a pillow yesterday. And, while I probably wouldn’t have done it had I not just had a birthday and received surplus money from it, I do not feel bad about my purchase.

I have slept on it once. It is possible that I’ll update this after I’ve put it through its paces for a couple of weeks, but I figure one night is probably enough to have an idea of whether the pillow is a pillow or not. And when I woke up at 6:30 this morning, before my alarm went off, I woke up fucking refreshed. Which qualifies as a minor miracle, as I’ve been having a hell of a time getting out of bed lately.

Here is the deal, guys: I have no idea what this pillow is made of, and the description on this website is not super helpful. What I can tell you is that I wish to hell right now that I had access to an infrared camera, because this goddamned thing is made of magic and violates the laws of physics. As far as I have ever understood, cool things that are not being actively refrigerated somehow or pumping out heat are going to assume the ambient temperature of whatever space they’re in sooner or later.

This pillow’s made of foam. There’s nothing in there to disperse heat. And yet it’s cool. It’s always cool. It’s in my bedroom right now, and while I’m no better than you are at determining temperatures by touch I’d bet it’s a good ten degrees cooler than anything else in the room. And when you lay on it? It stays that way.

Yes, I know that’s impossible. And yet I tell you that I slept on this fucker last night and that if I laid in the exact same position for a while the pillow might assume the same temperature as my face eventually, but that if I rolled over the “warm” part would be back to being cool again within a minute. It was surprising. You should see the looks on people’s faces when they touch this thing. I don’t know how it works. It shouldn’t work. And yet somehow it does.

I’m itching to buy another one so I can cut it in half and see what’s going on in there. But right now this is literally the best pillow I’ve ever seen/touched/slept on, bar none, ever. It’s magic. Y’all have been around here for a while. Do I seem like the type to handwave stuff away like this? I have no fucking idea how it works. It shouldn’t work. But it does. So, until I find out otherwise, magic.

Some minor drawbacks:

While I’ve found it online for less than I paid (wtvr), one way or another it’s expensive as hell. Absolutely worth it, but expensive as hell.
That said my aunt went out and bought one today after touching mine yesterday and getting a text from me about it this morning.
There is, right now, a slight chemical smell. I assume the pillow is offgassing a bit and this will go away. It wasn’t annoying enough that I even considered not using the pillow but it was there. It might bother others more than me.
Right now I don’t have it in a pillowcase. The outside is very quilted and comfortable, as you can see from the picture, but my best guess is that airflow has something to do with how this pillow works and I can imagine a universe in which putting it in the wrong kind of pillowcase screws up the magic somehow. I plan to follow up on this with my Pillow Guy in the near future. I’ll report back.
I have a Pillow Guy now.

Regarding the airflow thing, actually: notably, the pillow was not noticeably cool to the touch when I first removed it from its packaging: a sealed plastic bag inside a cardboard box. I am betting that, in an airtight environment, the cooling effects won’t work. It took no more than a couple of minutes outside the box before its temperature dropped. Speaking of reasons to use an IR camera… There’s not, like, an app for that, is there?

Find this pillow and buy it, guys. You will evangelize for it too. I swear. More later if I’m able to science this shit out somehow.

Just to make sure we’re clear…

On May 29, 2016May 29, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting3 Comments

…this is what a chimpanzee can do to a small creature that it finds in its enclosure and doesn’t want there. I suspect there is not much weight difference between a toddler and a large raccoon. There is, however, an enormous difference between the strength level of a chimpanzee and a silverback gorilla:

I just figured, judging from the chatter I’ve seen on the internet today, that this might be a useful thing to think about.

On hills, and the dying thereupon

On May 11, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting2 Comments

I watched The Force Awakens with my son for the first time a few weeks ago. Since then we’ve watched it once or twice more and a curious pattern has arisen: every time, and I mean every God Damned time, Kylo Ren appears on screen, the boy asks who he is.

“Kylo Ren,” I say.

“Oh,” he says, then he waits until his next scene and asks again. If he wasn’t four I’d be certain he was trolling me. This has, lately, extended to toys as well; we were in Target the other day and he picked up a Ren figure and asked me who it was.

I generally walk into school with him at Hogwarts and escort him to his classroom; it’s not entirely necessary but he enjoys it and there’s no good reason not to do it. After he drops off his stuff at his cubby there’s a plastic box he’s supposed to put his lunch and snack into and take with him to the classroom. The kids have all decorated theirs with stickers, and I think the teachers use cubby-stickers for minor rewards. He always shows me when he has a new sticker. And the other day there was a Kylo Ren sticker on his mailbox.

“Look!” he says. “It’s Skylo Ren!”

“Kylo Ren,” I say.

“No,” he says. “That’s Skylo Ren.”

I swear, you could hear my teeth grinding from the moon for a brief moment.

“It’s Kylo,” I said. “It’s been Kylo every single time you’ve asked for weeks. Which one of us can read, again?”

“Mrs. McGonagall says it’s Skylo,” he says, as if that settles the issue. I think Mrs. McGonagall is the gym teacher, maybe?

“Mrs. McGonagall is wrong,” I say. “His name is Kylo Ren. K-Y-L-O.”

“Skylo,” he says. He’s getting loud and insistent. I drop it, until the next time I am with him in a store and see a Kylo Ren toy, at which point I force him to spell the name to me and, after doing so, he asks who the toy is.

I give up.

They have been studying birds in class, for what seems like weeks, and the boy has acquired a legitimately impressive store of facts about ornithology. We are putting him to bed, and I walk into his bedroom as my wife is giving him a hug and he, in his way, is explaining to her that cowbirds put their eggs in the nests of other birds because they are lazy.

My wife is a biologist. I actually see her eyes twitch.

“Who told you that?” she says.

“Mrs. Dumbledore,” he says. Mrs. Dumbledore is actually his teacher.

“That’s not quite true,” she says. “It’s actually an evolutionary strategy–”

He interrupts. “Lazy!”

There is another twitch.

I watch my wife be dragged unwillingly down a road where she actually uses the phrase brood parasitism in a conversation with a four-year-old. There is a large smile on my face, and eventually the boy wins again. Okay. Fine. Skylo Ren. Lazy cowbirds.

We give up.