Some Sunday odds and ends

On November 2, 2025November 2, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn Reviews2 Comments

Had an enormous traffic spike the last couple of days– yesterday was the highest traffic day in years, possibly since the Syrian refugees post hit a couple hundred thousand views ten years ago. And other than the fact that most of them were from America (with a much smaller but still weird four-day pop from Chile, of all places) I don’t know anything about any of the visitors.

It was probably a bot– I’ve also been getting a lot of traffic from China lately– but I thought bot visits didn’t count? I wish I could get more detail on my views.

Today? Dead quiet.

We are finally, after fourteen years of living in this house, replacing the hideous curtains in our bedroom and the gross miniblinds in our living room. I found this behind the hardware for the curtains and I would like a word with whoever built this place. I just wanna talk.

I’m not doing a full review of it, but this is a really good book. My only problem is that Hastings has a weird habit of drawing attention to the race of any American who isn’t white when it isn’t necessary– there was an actual chapter about race relations among American troops, and I’ll cut some slack on that one, but just for example, referring to the youngest soldier to die in Vietnam as “a black kid” in a weirdly flippant way really stuck out. My only problem is that now I want to read twelve other books on Vietnam that he mentioned (sidenote: are there any histories of the war written in English by Vietnamese scholars?) and my backlog is bad enough already.

This image from my email is not exactly inaccurate, but I feel like maybe Amazon is still having some tech problems.

After over a year of threatening to watch it, my wife and I finally sat down to watch John Wick 4 last night, and I will forever refer to it as The Dumb John Wick. I’ve seen all of them now, and I never really loved the series, but this one takes everything that was sorta ridiculous about the first three movies and turns those up to 12, while also not adding anything of real value to the series, ignoring the cliffhanger ending of 3, and being way, way, way too long. Is there a lore reason why there are literally no cops at all in the John Wick universe, for example? Blech.

You might not be able to tell, but this picture was taken outside the window as I was removing the curtains earlier today. At 6:30. I fucking hate daylight savings time. Hate. Can we please be a society just for a little while and get rid of this bullshit? Please?

And finally, as of tonight I’ve read just over 2600 pages on my new Kindle, which means that I’ve managed to adopt the thing into my lifestyle successfully … and the battery is still at 16%, which is bloody impressive.

In which maybe I am good at this

On October 9, 2025October 9, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn TeachingLeave a comment

We took a field trip today, to a manufacturing plant, and got a tour and little presentations by a dozen or so different people over the course of the trip, and … man. Maybe talking to kids is a lot harder than I think it is? Not teaching, mind you, just talking to kids. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate these folks, and there’s something to be said for trying, and everyone was really nice, but it was really, really clear that these folks have been embedded in manufacturing-speak and boat-speak for forever and that they had no idea how much of the vocabulary they were using would be completely opaque to adults outside the field, much less actual children. Like, maybe when you’re talking to a bunch of kids, don’t use a lot of acronyms? I’m a grown-ass man with two Master’s degrees and I don’t know what the hell a BMA could possibly be, and the context isn’t helping me at all because I don’t know shit about manufacturing or boats. I could follow along with the IT guy’s spiel, on account of being a big nerd, but I’m pretty sure I was the only one in the room, and he’d probably have gotten a lot more engagement out of the kids if he’d talked about the giant gutted server blade that was sitting on the desk in front of him. Instead, he just kept talking about blades, and my kids were looking around for swords.

Here’s everything I know about boats, in fact:

Sigh.

I mean, whatever; the trip ended with my group getting to climb all over a couple of very expensive looking boats, and they enjoyed that, and at least we didn’t go to the box factory? One group got two hours about boxes. Boats are better than boxes.

In other news, and I don’t think this is me being mean or inappropriate but if you disagree let me know and maybe I’ll delete it, but I encountered this man on my way home yesterday and he is the angriest … banjo? Ukulele? Mandolin? Let’s go with mandolin, it looks like it’s got eight strings– player I’ve ever seen. Like, prior to observing him for a minute or two at a red light, I would not have believed that you could play a mandolin at someone, much less at passing cars, but holy hell. I don’t know what he was upset about, but every ounce of it was getting poured into that instrument. I kinda wish I could have heard him.

In which today got away from me

On October 4, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn life, ParentingLeave a comment

Three or four Saturdays in a row now have involved a lengthy afternoon nap; my body has been doing this thing to me where I’m waking up at 6:30 on Saturday mornings whether I want to or not (spoiler alert: I don’t want to) and have been completely unable to get back to sleep. This has led to hours-long naps on each of those Saturdays, eating my entire afternoon.

Well, tonight the boy had a birthday party to go to that was a good 45 minutes from our house, so after driving him out there my wife and I had dinner at Das Dutchman Essenhaus and spent some time attempting to shop in Amish country; it turns out Amish country shuts down entirely at 6:00 PM on Saturdays other than that one restaurant so we didn’t really get to do any actual shopping, instead driving around and alternately dodging horses that were supposed to be in the road and chickens and deer that weren’t. We just got home; it’s 9:00 and I still feel like we dragged the boy away from his party too early.

(The family of this friend of his is richer than God; the building we originally thought was their house, because it was house-shaped and considerably bigger than our own house, was actually their gym, an entirely separate building from their actual house. When he got in the car at the end of the night he said that they had spent a fair amount of time at the party digging a tunnel in their foam pit, which means they have a foam pit. We do not have foam pit money in the Siler household.)

Anyway, I’ve spent all day writing a review of Keith Ammann’s new book in my head; I got an early copy of it and it releases this week, so absent any world-shaking events that absolutely must be written about, expect a book review tomorrow.

On motorcycle-type things

On August 21, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

I have had the idea for several years now that in the unlikely event that I were to decide to become a Motorcycle Person, I would quite likely become a boring Motorcycle Person. I’d end up in one of those oversized, three-wheeled jobs with an oversized windshield and lots of places for storage– I think the technical term for them is “baggers.” The type, frankly, that if I spot on the road are likely to be driven by someone with a decade or two on me even considering my advanced age. The excitement/danger factor of riding a motorcycle doesn’t really impress me; in fact, it’s quite the opposite; I think I’d spend most of my time terrified of being run off the road by a car and part of the reason I’m more attracted to a larger, more stable vehicle is they just feel safer. I can’t ride a bicycle, remember; the notion of one that goes 70 miles an hour is not inherently attractive.

Anyway, I was driving home from work today and I noticed the person in front of me was driving … probably not that exact vehicle, but close enough for our purposes. He was, in accordance with prophecy, grey-bearded, somewhat portly, and wearing a full helmet, and while obviously I couldn’t get a good look at his face, he vibed as a guy in his late fifties or maybe early sixties.

As I was following him, I was musing about more or less exactly the same things I’ve been talking about in the last couple of paragraphs. I’ve not seen many of these things with the two wheels in front, which was kind of interesting, but I think I prefer the traditional style.

After a mile or so, a guy pulled up beside us. This guy was younger, helmetless, and riding a stripped-down crotch-rockety sort of thing that was more or less the exact opposite of the first guy’s bike, and in fact the type of thing that I’m absolutely certain I will never ride, because I will die.

The second guy said something to the first guy. I obviously couldn’t hear it or seem him well enough to read his lips, but his body language seemed more or less friendly and positive? The first guy, perfectly reasonably I thought, pointed to his helmet (which looked like the kind with headphones built in, so he was probably listening to music, too) and made a sort of sorry, dude, I can’t hear you gesture.

Bro went nuts.

Traffic is reasonably heavy on my evening drive, and so my guy on the trike managed to stay in front of the motorcycle guy mostly by just staying in his lane, and to be completely honest I’m not even convinced he was aware of the guy, since again, he had his helmet on and the guy was behind him. He was right to my right, though, so I got to witness a bunch of unhinged screaming and yelling and occasional attempts to get ahead of him. Eventually he found an opening, drove between two cars, and pulled in front of the guy, nearly clipping him in the process, then found a hole and got far enough away that I lost track of him. And other than the part where the dude nearly hit him, I really don’t know how much of probably two solid minutes of spittle-flecked raving the trike driver even realized was happening. Good thing the stupid bastard didn’t have a gun, I suppose.

Anyway, I’m keeping my car.

View from my Hotel Window: Indianapolis, Weird Al edition

On July 3, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn Music, PhotographyLeave a comment

Kinda meh! But we’re here.

GUESS WHAT HAPPENS TOMORROW

On July 2, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy, Music, Politics1 Comment

I have been a huge fan of “Weird Al” Yankovic for my entire Goddamned life, and I will be seeing him in concert in Indianapolis tomorrow night, at the same venue I saw the Counting Crows at a couple of weeks ago. I would really appreciate it if the world would stop getting worse until the show is over. If the asteroid is coming, that’s fine, but don’t hit us until, like, 11:00 PM. The show should be over by then.

In other news, I’m really glad I’m going to be out of town tomorrow, because I keep getting into deeply stupid little spats online with deeply stupid people, and I need a fucking cleanse badly. I’m driving to Indy and back– my wife has the newer, nicer car at the moment, and so she has inherited long-distance driving responsibilities along with it– but I need to not be on my phone in the car, so I’m going to do the driving.

I was about to explain one of the spats, but Christ, you don’t need it. I was hoping to share some of the stupid with you so you could appreciate it from afar, but instead, I’m not going to make your world dumber. I’m a Goddamned saint.

In other other news, IU just cut my major, because the governor told them to, and I’ve spent a significant amount of my non-online time in the last 48 hours trying to decide how I’m going to handle it when they announce they’re building an ICE concentration camp in Elkhart. There was talk of one going in during the last time this pigfucker was in office, and it ended up not happening, but I’m pretty sure it’s inevitable now. This is gonna be the start of my supervillain arc, or at least my “tries to sabotage something, fails, and is arrested immediately” arc.

Mental note: delete that paragraph before doing anything.

So yeah. I hate it here. How are you?

Public Service Announcement

On June 20, 2025 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

Just in case you haven’t heard, even by 2025’s standards there was a pretty massive fuck-up by somebody this week, with billions-with-a-b of passwords leaked.(*) And it’s looking like a lot of them were from Apple and Google and Facebook, and places like that where you really want to make sure your password is secure. I changed about twenty passwords today– all of my email addresses except for work, anything connected with money, and this site– and while it was a pretty big pain in the ass, it really needed to be done.

You’re using a password manager, by the way, right? You should be using a password manager. Make your password for that a four-or five-word phrase that you’ll remember, substituting a couple of numbers for letters or maybe doing some strategic misspelling, and let the app worry about everything else.

Anyway, point is, go do that.

Dammit, I had something else for this. Uh … shit, getting old sucks; I’m watching a video on another monitor while I’m writing this and I’ve lost the ability to pay attention to more than one thing at once. Expect a quick post tomorrow; we’re going to my brother’s to celebrate both of his kids’ birthdays; we’ve had to reschedule this a couple of times now because one or both of them keep getting sick, so hopefully nothing other than the heat will be getting in our way tomorrow.

Gaaaah. If I remember the other thing I’ll either throw up another post or just edit this. There was definitely something but it’s gone right now. Sigh.

(*) I’m not actually certain of any of the details of the leak, which looks like it had to have been multiple simultaneous leaks, somehow? I just know I pay attention whenever Apple or Google gets hit by one of these things because those are the accounts I really don’t need compromised.

EDIT: Oh! I remembered! I woke up this morning to discover that I had a couple hundred page views already, which is not normal– usually there will be no more than a couple dozen overnight. The other weird thing? They were all from Hong Kong, and the specific posts that were seeing a bunch of views were all older posts with no clear relationship to one another. We’ll see if it happens tonight. Those couple hundred page views were also spread out over a hundred or so individual visitors, so it’s not like one person went through a big chunk of the site or something. So … yeah, Hong Kong folks, if you come back, can you tell me why? 🙂