Tag: technology

On low standards

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek2 Comments

I wActivity-for-iOS-app-icon-medium-220x188.jpgant 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 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek9 Comments

xNope.jpg.pagespeed.ic.xecQlXJhisMy 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 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Work2 Comments

5547000_sd.jpg;maxHeight=550;maxWidth=642.jpegSo 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.

See effete tree dress red at Ra dress d

On By Luther M. SilerIn Blogwanking2 Comments

So I pulled my phone out of my pocket and it had opened the app and written that post title on its own. Thought I’d share.

RIP

On 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!)

Let’s do this again

On By Luther M. SilerIn Television1 Comment

hip-replacement-implantsThis is going to be another one of those posts where my mother and my aunt call me the next day to make sure I haven’t died since the last time I wrote anything.  It happens about once a week, maybe.  I don’t know what the hell the deal is, whether it’s the change in the weather or maybe I tweaked something while unloading the sofa truck this morning (I can recall one particular insanely heavy power sofa where  I felt like I was hitting my knees pretty hard on way down the ramp) or what, but every attempt to stand up from a seated position today resulted in crippling fucking pain in my right hip and right leg.  Like, sitting for a minute meant two minutes of standing before I was able to walk.  Godfuckingawful.  The weird thing is that so long as I’m still there’s no pain at all; I kind of want to take a thousand pain pills before I go to bed tonight but right now as I’m sitting on the couch typing this I’m fine.  I’m going to have to bite my tongue to keep from screaming when I stand up in a bit, mind you, but right now I’m fine.

It would probably help if I wasn’t as heavy as I am.  Then again, my knees have been screwed up my entire life– comparing my footprints to other people’s in the snow has always been funny, because mine are the ones at a much wider angle than anyone else’s– and sooner or later the fact is the fuckers are getting replaced.  I just wish that was a surgery that could be done electively rather than in fifteen years when my patellas have ground to dust and my joints are in splinters.

But, hey.  Something to look forward to.

I talked about this briefly last night, but at this point there’s no longer any doubt: I think I’m over The Walking Dead as a franchise.  We’ve pretty much entirely bailed on Fear the Walking Dead, having not watched a single episode of the second season, and I watched the Season 7 of the main show premiere last night, and I think it probably should have kicked my ass.  That show’s sent my heartrate through the roof on any number of occasions and not a single thing that happened in that episode did anything for me at all.  The comic book hasn’t been interesting in months either.  I’ll definitely finish out the current storyline just in case it gets better but I may have to be done after that.

I may write a longer post about this tomorrow or during my weekend sometime, but: I liked the Fox remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show quite a bit.  I kind of feel like making that a longer post, though, so more on it later.

More on audiobooks

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek9 Comments

bogart-bacall-on-the-radio-otrcat.com.jpgA few days ago I wrote a post about listening to an audiobook for the first time.  I’ve since completed the two-hour recording, using a combination of listening in the car and listening over headphones before bed.  Of the two, I much prefer the car; listening to headphones with someone next to me is weird and I found that I wanted to be doing something with the rest of me while I was listening.  I just have trouble concentrating on what’s coming through headphones for whatever reason; I want that to be the background while I do something else.

I ended up liking the story more by the end of it; the book started with a rather silly premise but at least investigated the implications of it in a really interesting way.  The book has some interesting theology going on, surprisingly enough, which appealed to the part of me that was working toward a Ph.D in biblical studies eons ago.

What I don’t like, it seems, is audiobooks.  I may have to listen to one more to see if the things I don’t like are specific in some way to Zachary Quinto’s reading or are a thing audiobook narrators always do.  Quinto tries to read each character in a different voice, for example, which is fine in concept but in execution we get “Zachary Quinto doing an old woman” or “Zachary Quinto doing a black woman,” and oftentimes it ends up coming off as at best a little stereotypical and at worst occasionally a bit racist.  I also never really got past the “Zachary Quinto is reading a book at me” part of audiobookery, which, okay, that’s what is supposed to be happening– it’s literally what audiobooks are— but it never stopped weirding me out.

Here’s what I realized: I think I might be interested in listening to old-school radio dramas.  I don’t want Zachary Quinto reading a book at me and doing a black woman voice.  I might be interested in Zachary Quinto acting as the narrator with an actual black woman doing her character’s dialogue, though.  I may need to start investigating podcasts a bit; there’s probably something like what I want out there somewhere, and podcasts are a thing that I know nothing about.  Feel free, if you’re interested, to recommend some good podcasts in the comments, and if you know of any audio dramas out there let me know about them.

In which I demonstrate restraint

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek4 Comments

compare-iphone-7-201609.pngI am… not immediately pre-ordering an iPhone 7?  Like, for real?  This is a thing that’s not happening?  I don’t understand; I currently own an iPhone 6, and before that I had a 5.  I re-order my phones when a new number comes out.  The 7 is out, or at least it’s about to be.  And yet I paid my phone bill this afternoon, meaning that I went directly to the very place where one might go to order a new iPhone, and yet somehow there is no new iPhone with my name on it either beginning to be shipped to me or being manufactured for my eventual ownership.

I’m confused.  I’m New Tech Guy.  I’m Ooh Shiny Guy.  What the hell?

Actually, I know the answer, if I’m being honest.  I’m perfectly happy with my current phone– the upgrade to the 6 from the 5 was a no-brainer because of the bigger screen, and I’ve got no complaints about it, no matter how hard I try.  And I will have complaints about the 7, because one of the ways I use my phone a lot is in the car, with the phone plugged both into the auxiliary jack on my car stereo and the… well, power thingy.  I don’t mind the idea of ditching the audio port in general, but it interferes with how I use the phone in my current car, and the phone gets a lot of use as an audio device in my car.  I don’t often use headphones one way or another, so the idea of eventually spending $140 on a wireless set doesn’t appeal.  I’m not gonna whine about it much, but right now this change doesn’t work for me.

Additionally, from what I’ve seen the best change to the device is the camera, and the biggest change to the camera is on the Seven plus.  The two-camera thing looks really cool. Being able to shoot bokeh photos with my phone seems really neat.  But I’m not sure I need (well, okay, need has nothing to do with this, I’m not sure I want) the bigger phone that I would need to buy in order to get the better camera– and, again, I have no complaints about my current phone, which includes the camera.  I love the idea of a better camera but I don’t really need it right now.

So… am I, like, maturing or something, or is the fact that I’m thinking new car, then new phone so that my phone can interface properly with the car a sign that I’m actually a bigger idiot than I was before?

(Oh.  Let’s not talk about the new Apple Watch until I have hard data on the battery life.  As soon as I don’t have to charge it every single night, I’ll jump ship.  I love my Pebble, but I’m waiting for Apple to catch up in a couple of key areas and then I’m done.)