Tag: technology

In which this isn’t fair

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Politics2 Comments

It is an unbelievably perfect demonstration of how fucking perverse all of existence is right now that, literally less than ten minutes after telling my wife that I was getting (hah!) stir-crazy and wanted to go out and impulse-buy something, I went outside and checked the mail and found a brand-new Goddamned Best Buy card waiting for me. The card currently carries no balance at all; I typically use it only for large purchases (really, the only reason I ever enter a Best Buy nowadays) and the last thing I bought was my desktop, which is a 2017 model. I could use a new laptop, as the battery on the old one is starting to go, or I could make the smarter choice and just replace the damn battery. Similarly, for the first time since my initial upgrade I’ve cast an eye at the new Apple Watch, but there’s just no good reason to do that either. In either case it would be spending money just to spend money, and I’m trying to be smarter about that crap nowadays.

(I do expect to have to shell out the money for the laptop battery pretty soon, which will be a couple hundred bucks. But the thing is … six? seven? years old and there’s no speed issues at all, and if I bought a new one it would be north of two grand. The only problem is the battery, and since I don’t go anywhere I can keep it plugged in most of the time. I even still have my work laptop at home in case of emergencies.)

(Checks to see if BB has PS5s available)

(They do not)

In general, the election has failed to improve my mood. Other than the presidency, which is all over but the shouting at this point, I went from “it looks like I’ve lost every other race I care about” the other day to “I have lost every other race I care about” today. The School Board race was especially heinous; not only did the plagiarizer not lose her seat to the crank, but the other district seat up for reelection, another person who voted to return, also won, and the teachers lost their best advocate on the Board in favor of an imperious ass who I am not at all looking forward to having to deal with, ever. My personal interactions with her when she was with the district were never good, plenty of people have much worse stories than I do, and her husband was fired for incompetence.

And yet, because this is South Bend and we hate education here, she actually got the most votes of any of the At-Large candidates. So. Dandy.

But yeah: I’ve been waiting for that moment when it feels like the weight falls off my shoulders, and apparently Biden at least theoretically clinching the Presidency hasn’t done it yet. In theory the rest of the networks (particularly the AP) getting the fuck in line and making the call might help, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to relax until the fucker is hauled out of the White House by his hairpiece, preferably to be tossed directly into jail to die alone in a deep pit. Apparently the AP is waiting for Biden’s margin to exceed half a point before they call Pennsylvania; I’m not sure what the holdup is otherwise. Either way, I thought I was going to feel better about all this by now.

In which today just goes away

On By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

Totally had plans to do all sorts of stuff tonight but it all got derailed by having to spend over two hours trying to put together a five minute video for class tomorrow, a project that should have taken no more than fifteen minutes but kept running into truly stupid tech-related delays. And now it’s 9:30 and I haven’t done shit since I got home and all I want to do is go to bed.

One plus side of today, though: got asked, by a pair of the kids, to sponsor a LGBTQ club at school. THAT was unexpected and interesting. I agreed, of course.

On the new newness

On By Luther M. SilerIn Television1 Comment

After several years where I was reliably getting a new phone every single year and basically coming to terms with the fact that I’d become That Guy, I waited three full cellphone generations– from the iPhone 7+ I’ve been carrying around forever to today– to upgrade my phone, and finally caved and came home with an iPhone 11 Pro Max in the Midnight Green color. I told myself I was going to wait until I could walk into the store and walk out with a phone, and that happened today. What ended up getting me to jump was the massive improvement in the cameras– I’m super psyched about getting to play with the new triple-camera setup, and the damn phone is gorgeous, to the point where for the first time I’m getting a clear case. It’s currently in my bedroom transferring all of my settings and apps and photos from the original phone, a process that was originally projected to take two hours, then 24 minutes, so I figured I had time to come out into the living room and write a blog post before going back and checking on it.

This was a long and interesting week; I was out of my classroom for two days at that rarest of beasts, a really interesting professional development opportunity, and I had parent-teacher conferences Wednesday night, which was the busiest I’ve ever been at PTCs– I had a line out my door for two hours and fifteen minutes– and then I had a parent-teacher conference for my own son on Thursday. Today most the kids actually had a recess as a little reward for surviving the first quarter, and a dozen or so of them organized an honest-to-God, flag-waving-and-chanting impromptu gay pride parade (!!!) on the soccer field. This is the first year of my career where I’ve had more than one or two kids who were conspicuously and un-selfconsciously out of the closet– there are a lot of 8th graders in my building who are somewhere on the QUILTBAG spectrum and don’t seem to give a damn who knows it.

A genuine oddity: they exist alongside the rather large contingent of more typical 8th-grade straight boys who enjoy nothing more than ceaselessly calling each other gay, and yet I have never once— and I’m watching, God damn it– seen any anti-gay bullying of any of the actual gay kids, and there are at least two boys in the 8th grade who are gay at twenty feet, if you know what I mean. I’ve never seen anyone call either of them names, even the kids who are quickest to toss “gay” at any of their straight friends.

So there may be several posts this weekend, is what I’m getting at, depending on whether I decide I want to talk about these things more. The training, at least, will probably get a post tomorrow or Sunday.

OH YEAH SURE UNIVERSE

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching3 Comments

It is Saturday. I need to emphasize this– Saturday. And I am, in midafternoon, getting grading done. This is bloody unprecedented. It is Staying On Task to an unreal degree.

So naturally the God damn entire grading system has just gone down midway through me grading an assignment that a hundred students turned in, and it doesn’t appear to be interested in coming back up.

For fuck’s sake, universe.

In which cell phones ruin everything

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

We are all, I think, familiar with the idea that modern technology has managed to degrade our abilities to do things that we used to be able to do and now no longer need to. The most common casualty of this for most people, I think, is the ability to easily remember phone numbers. I used to know phone numbers for at least a couple dozen people at any given time, and right now I know four– mine, my parents’ home line, which has been their number for my entire life, my dad’s work phone number for some reason, and on a good day, my wife’s, which keeps getting interfered with by something else and I can only recall with some difficulty. It’s just not necessary any longer to commit random strings of ten or seven numbers to memory. Could we recapture this ability if we needed to? Sure. Our brains haven’t actually degraded, there’s just a very specific skill that we used to need that we don’t anymore, and so we don’t have it.

I got caught by surprise by something this morning, though. I was at my mom and dad’s house and the land line rang and I answered it. And it took me a few seconds longer than it probably should have to realize that it was my brother on the other end of the line, especially since he 1) recognized my voice, 2) commented on how he was surprised that I was there to answer the phone, and 3) referred to Mom and Dad as “Mom” and “Dad.” For a split second I thought he was one of my older cousins who it would not be completely unreasonable to hear use those words, and then the world kind of snapped back together around me and I realized what was going on and felt a little stupid.

Thing is, though, when was the last time I needed to recognize someone’s voice over the phone? It basically never happens any more. I see who’s calling before I answer the phone to begin with– and, for me at least, if I don’t recognize the number of the person calling I don’t answer the phone. So this scenario where someone calls me and just starts talking and I need their voice to tell me who they are just never happens any longer.

I mean, it was my brother. I should have recognized his voice, obviously, and I’m going to blame a combination of my head being in a weird place at the time and my first time being on a land line in a while for my sudden weird phonagnosia, which is a word I just learned. But still. Before cell phones a solid majority of my phone calls didn’t involve anyone saying their name; folks would just start talking and we’d know who it was. That doesn’t happen anymore. Makes me wonder what the next ability that I have now that I won’t need in twenty years will be.

Probably something involving surviving in a world with electricity and air conditioning, because climate change will have ensured the collapse of society, but hey! It could be something else, right?

In which I am supposed to be a tech person

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocy1 Comment

This is my desktop setup:

You will note that TweetDeck is on the right, smaller monitor, and that Scrivener is on the left, larger monitor, which is also the actual computer. That’s how I want it.

Tweetdeck opens in the primary monitor nine times out of ten, and if there’s a pattern to that tenth time I can’t find the goddamn thing. Scrivener opens in the secondary monitor every single time.

I understand that this is very much a first world goddamn problem but it is driving me nuts. I assure you I have Googled the shit out of this and I cannot find a solution that actually works to getting those apps to open where I want them, so if one of you could Google it and post the first link, which will be something I have never seen before and will solve the problem immediately, I would appreciate it. This issue has clearly decided that it will not be resolved until I am at least moderately humiliated and fuck it at this point I’m fine with that.

(Note that any solution involving right-clicking on an app and going to “options” no longer works with Mojave.)

And because it’s probably relevant:

(I have no idea if anything nasty can be done with the serial number for my computer, but I figure let’s not take chances.)

In which I am a supervillain

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek2 Comments

This picture is either a testament to Apple’s utter dereliction in terms of innovative design over the last eight years or a sign that they believe they’ve achieved actual perfection in the iMac’s form factor. From where I’m sitting, the 2011-model iMac in the middle and the screaming beast I purchased today to finally replace it look exactly identical. From the side, you can tell that the newer one is much thinner, but if I’d simply replaced one with the other and not told my wife I’d bought a new computer I doubt she’d ever have noticed.

If you were reading this and thinking Luther, weren’t we just talking about your tendency towards poor financial decisions earlier this week? that’s not unfair, but: I submit that I got this computer for fifteen percent off because it is actually the flagship of last year’s model and not this year’s, that I have enough cash on hand to pay for half of it at a single go, and that with all the overtime I’ve been making at work lately paying it off by the end of the summer is a very reachable goal despite the nice chunk of change I dropped on it. Am I going to do that? Probably not, actually, because it’s not strictly necessary– but as I’ve also said this week my initial desktop has been making worrying noises at me and generally behaving in a somewhat untrustworthy manner and I’d rather replace the computer at a time of my choosing and not because it decided to go away.

The third monitor on the right is just a monitor and will be remaining on the desk; I mostly use it to display TweetDeck and iTunes while I work on the primary monitor. I may look into if I can just use the older computer as a secondary monitor– I don’t think I can, at least not in the same plug-it-in-and-don’t-worry-about-it fashion that I can the actual monitor does. I can’t convince it that it’s just a monitor and not a computer, in other words.

Next step: move my actual keyboard and the touchpad over to the new computer. I’m typing this on the bullshit tiny wireless keyboard they included with it, and while it’s a substantial improvement over any other wireless keyboard I’ve used, it’s also tiny and ridiculous and I demand size and a number pad and high degrees of clickiness from my keyboards, and the Das Keyboard that I have on my desk is perfect for me. The wireless mouse also has to go. I don’t use this as a gaming machine, so I don’t need a mouse at all, and the touchpad is wonderful.

Welcome to the new hotness, I guess.

In which I level up

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Teaching3 Comments

Well, at least I can’t claim that I didn’t get anything accomplished over my Winter Break. You may possibly recall– I’d forgive you if you didn’t, but you might– that I took a three-hour test in September to gain Level One Google Certified Educator status, which signifies that I understand The Googles, The Internets, and The Tubes. Well, as of this morning, I have taken another three-hour test, and now I am Level 2 certified, which signifies that I understand … well, The Googles, The Internets, and The Tubes. I’m really not sure what the hell the difference is between Level 1 and Level 2 certification other than that 2 is a bigger number than 1 and the Level 2 test cost more money to take. As far as I can tell the test was exactly the same kinds of questions and I don’t feel like I needed any deeper understanding of anything to pass this one than I did the first one.

The punchline: they “give” you, as in they actually email it to you, that .png file up there so that you can put it in your email signature file to show off your new fancy-schmancy Level 2 certification. They did the same thing at Level 1, and I dutifully dumped it into my (otherwise quite minimal) .sig file for my work email.

I just spent half a Goddamned hour trying to add the Level 2 image next to the Level 1 one, and I can’t get it to work. I can get a little box with a question mark in it to show up, and that’s it– nothing I can do can get this image to show up in my signature file despite the fact that I have done this before with the first image. And, for that matter, I don’t remember any trouble doing it the first time. I can only assume that something is actually wrong with the functionality right now, because I’m not doing this wrong. It’s just not working. I just love that I want to show off my literal certification in Knowing How to Gmail and I can’t figure out how to do it.

EDIT: After typing this, I tried the exact same thing I’d been doing, and when I did it this time the interface that popped up when I clicked the “Add Image” button was completely different, featuring two tabs that weren’t there before. And despite that, it still didn’t work. Then I tried to do the exact same thing I’d been doing all along, only in Chrome instead of Safari, and it worked fine. So I’m not taking the blame for this, Goddammit.