Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Sick sucks, I know

Hello. I’ve returned to these pages after a month of involuntary off. The sickness got me good - for the third time this year! A lingering cold and cough that I truly did not fully recover from until just this past week. Mix in with two cold sore outbreaks, and a prolonged battle with invading mosquitos, August was a month to forget.

Never take normal for granted, folks. I try hard not to.

Today I was wondering why on the barbell bench I was failing at rep six, when two days I ago I was maxing out at nine reps with the same weight. Turns out my big galaxy brain used the incorrect plates. The barbell was 10 pound heavier than last time. That’s a jump I tend to avoid due to wanting to preserve my elbow tendons. I’m surprised I even got five reps out of it, and no lingering elbow discomfort afterwards.

I guess sometimes you just have to load up the bar and try to move it.

The aforementioned mosquitos: it took some trail and error - with the bites to prove it, but I’ve found the entry point for the invasion. It turns out the bug screen of my bathroom window isn't fine enough to stop mosquitos. Like Thanos’ army fighting through the Wakandan shield, these winged menaces have no qualms about squeezing though the blockade at the risk of their appendages.

One night I was woken up by four of those invaders. Naturally I did not go back to sleep until they were all dead. Moving forwards, my bathroom window will be shut at all times during mosquitos season. Thankfully there are other fresh air entry ways into this studio space. Chinese Feng Shui is all about fresh air!

Expensive socks

I’m the type of human that sweats easily. Get me into a sauna, and within five minutes I’d be creating lakes underneath me. It is what it is, nothing I can do about genetics. At least I don’t stink when I sweat, at least not intensely enough that I notices it. Isn’t it something like if you can smell your own dankness, you must really stink?

Anyways, a problem my sweaty self creates is stinky socks. Not the feet, just the socks. There must be something in the material that causes my socks to soak up the sweat and incubate something horrible. Worse, I don't even know or remember on the packaging what my socks are made of. Some blend of cotton and polyester, most likely.

I’m the type of human who doesn’t think a lot about socks. I buy the bulk package from Costco, and when the socks wear out, it gets tosses and I buy another package. Easy, cheap, and utterly forgettable.

But not when those socks are stinking up the place! There are antiperspirant sprays and powders for the foot, though I would prefer a more natural solution before throwing chemicals at the problem. Turns out there is a sock material that’s natural, moisture-wicking, and controls odor: wool. The only downside to wool? It’s bloody expensive.

Instead of paying $20 for dozen pairs of socks, I can’t believe I paid $20 for a single pair. That’s how much it costs to buy from Darn Tough Vermont. The company’s socks was what got recommended to me by ChatGPT when I asked “what’s the best wool sock to buy that’s available on Amazon, as recommended by Reddit?” $20 is indeed very expensive for socks, but Darn Tough has an unconditional lifetime guarantee. Customers can send any damaged socks to the company in exchange for a new pair. No questions asked.

It’s entirely possible I just bought my last pairs of socks ever. Solvency of Darn Tough Vermont withstanding, of course.

As advertised, the wool material absolutely stops any foul odors. My feet are still sweating into them - again, nothing I can do about that, but I will gladly take the lack of stink. The Darn Tough socks smelled neutral even after a heavy eight hour day, right off the feet. If you share my unfortunate sweat problem, I can now provenly recommend paying a lot more for wool socks.

How to avoid the sun

Word on the street is we’re on a tsunami alert!? There’s been a huge earthquake off the western coast of Russia (big wide country, let’s remember), and we’ve got a potential for destructive waves. 8.8 magnitude is quite a massive one, isn’t it? Those of us living on the coastal side of San Francisco are right in the crosshairs.

Thankfully there’s an entire width of the Pacific Ocean to dissipate that energy before it reaches us. Reads like there’s only a potential for waves in the single digits of feet in height for us. That’s nothing to evacuate over. Those are rookies numbers in this racket.

As an avid daily user of sunscreen (for the face), sometimes I wonder jokingly how on earth did people survive before sunscreen was invented back in the 1930s. Obviously, those who are outside a lot developed darker skin. The tanning effect is the body’s natural defense against the harmful UV rays. The most natural of sunscreen, if you will.

Surely people before the 1930s understood to avoid long term sun exposure, or to cover up as much as possible if the long term isn’t avoidable. Long sleeves, hats, face coverings: clothing items we all should still wear in our modern times when we have to be outside during the day. Sunblock or no sunblock.

Ever since I added the UV index reading to my Apple Watch, I’ve been surprised at how high it can get even on a cool and cloudy afternoon (San Francisco in the summer). I guess the bad UV stuff is still doing damage, even if it’s not necessarily strong enough - compared to a blazing cloud-less day - to sunburn the skin.

Lather up, people. Be happy we live on this side of the sunscreen invention. The technology is so good these days that it can feel just like putting on regular lotion: super lightweight, and non-greasy.

Eat the rich

Someone on Bring a Trailer just paid a hair over $200,000 for an Acura Integra Type R with 4,800 miles. Plus buyer’s premium to BaT, and the relevant taxes and registration. Though surely someone with this much coin to drop on essentially a toy would no doubt have a Montana LLC to register it under. No taxes, baby!

Needless to say, that is a metric ton of money for that car. Even the most shortest of wheel-base early model Porsche 911s do not transact for this much. Caveats, of course: this looks to be the most pristine sample of the Integra Type R outside of the one tucked away in the Honda museum. The high price is also due to a bidding war between two rich guys desperate to own this legendary piece of Japanese automotive history.

Bottom line, an item is worth whatever someone is willing to pay. The only way to measure whether or not $200K for an Integra Type R is “worth it” is to have another auction with an almost exact copy of this car. Except you can’t. Honda did not make that many Integra Type Rs to begin with. I bet there isn’t another one of these with this immaculate of provenance.

So we will never know. Us peasants can only dream of dropping $200,000 on a static toy like it’s nothing. You can cut three zeros to that figure and I’d still agonize over whether or not $200 for a pair shoes is worth it. Heck, I’m still teeter-tottering on spending $40,000+ on a second car. $200,000 on something with only artistic value! The new owner won’t ever put miles on this Type R: each additional mile is a hatchet to the car’s value.

(Tongue firmly in cheek) I can understand why a subset of folks want to “eat the rich.” When you see such figures spent on cars like it’s nothing, or paying $100,000 markup on a 992 GT3 that already starts at $250,000, you realize there’s a whole entire separate world of car enthusiasm that you have no access to. Let envy get the best of you, and yeah, you’d want to “eat the rich”, too.

I prayed for this

For the longest time I’ve wished for Costco to offer salmon poke. They’ve only ever done tuna, but not anymore! On a recent trip to Costco I was ecstatic to find a Sriracha flavored salmon poke. Even better, it costs less per pound than the equivalent tuna. I get my preferred fish and I save money. Cannot be beat! Pairing the poke with rice is absolutely fantastic.

It seems I am stuck at 166 pounds body weight for past month. (I weight myself every morning soon as I leave the bed.) Looks like I’ve reached a wall on this slow bulking plan. The math is simple: just eat more. But in exercise it’s slightly more complicated. I’m already eating as much as I comfortably want to eat. Adding more calories would mean having the act of eating be something I actually have to stress about. And I definitely do not want that.

The amount of calories that got me to this current weight isn’t sufficient to keep the number on the scale increasing. Makes sense: I need more calories to sustain this new weight. Therefore the more I gain, the more I have to eat to simply maintain. What got me here won’t get me to the next level up.

Obviously when I say bulking, I mean gaining lean mass. It would be enjoyably easy if it were just a matter of straight poundage. All I’d have to do is mash down a few crumbl cookies every day. Before long I’d be heavier and flabbier at the same time. Conversely, gaining muscle whilst limited fat gain is way tougher to execute. I really don’t want to add another protein shake into the daily rotation.

I think a solid end goal for me, at 5 foot 10 inches tall, is about 175 pounds. That’s a sizable amount of muscle mass, but not overly high to make it difficult to maintain in terms of food intake. Nine pounds is a significant amount of weight to gain when you want it to be as much lean tissue as possible.

Bottom line: got to eat more. Pass the salmon.

Must protect number one

I’ve noticed amongst people I know from out of town that when they visit San Francisco, they are eager to take a Waymo autonomous taxis. It’s almost a tourist attraction in it of itself. That is, until it proliferates into other cities and regions. I myself have yet to hail a Waymo ride, just like I’ve yet to take a ferry to visit Alcatraz island.

As a person of introverted proclivity, I am on paper a big fan of autonomous taxis. To not have another stranger (the driver) there at all - never mind interacting with them - is serene music to my ears. But as with everything in life, there are tradeoffs.

Robots may be predictable, but humans are definitely not. On public roads there are multitudes of negative potentialities you must account for. And I don’t see how a driver-less taxi is capable of handling those situations. For example: what if a gang of dudes walks over to your stopped Waymo in a menacing fashion? If I were driving, the law gives me protection to mash the gas and get the hell out of there by harmful means.

Would a robot do the same? Has Waymo put into code calculations of when it is appropriate to run people over? There’s got to be a hierarchy of which life is more valuable, right? Perhaps the person paying for the autonomous ride should be supreme. If the outside world is threatening the occupant(s) inside a Waymo car, stopping and locking the doors cannot be the only option!

You can bet that I too would run over a gang of bikers in my Range Rover, if so provoked. Would an autonomous car do the same? I would like to know the answer before getting into one.

It's not enough that I win

One of my recent YouTube rabbit holes is the Delivrd channel. It’s videos of a guy named Tomi negotiating car deals for his clients. His company charges a simple $1,000 to do the thing most people loathe about the car buying process: everything before signing on the dotted line. Customers save time and headaches, whilst getting a great price on the car they want.

American car dealerships truly make vehicle purchasing a horrible experience. Say what you want about the current CEO, but Tesla’s direct sales method is the absolute best. Customer can do the entire transaction in 15 minutes right on their smartphone. No longer do we have to beg some asshole salesperson to please take our money.

To be fair, the dealership system wouldn’t have its sour reputation if cars strictly sold at MSRP - no markups, no discounts. That fact that everybody practically pays a different price creates a competitive game, with opposing sides fighting to keep as much money as possible. The game then creates hurt feelings, because there are winners and losers.

Services like Delivrd have a finite ceiling it can scale to, at least with the current dealership system. Franchises can afford to give Tomi’s clients a great deal only because there exist other customers who are getting the opposite. People that pay above MSRP, plus all the add-ons, are effectively subsidizing those who are coming under invoice. For there to be winners, there has to be losers.

Credit card companies would close up shop tomorrow if every single account holder pays off their monthly balance promptly. In reality, it’s the profits from the minimum balance interest payers that allow the companies to give people like me 5% cash back. Someone loses so that I can win.

Is it fair?