Blog

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

How are you all affording these?

As I walk around campus these days, I notice the various headphones people wear. As ever, Apple products are supremely popular amongst the young crowd. What is surprisingly however is the prevalence of people with the AirPods Max - a pair that costs $549. Even at its lowest Black Friday discount price, the top of the range AirPods are still $449. How the heck are college students affording these cans? Who spends that much money on headphones?

Perhaps I’m simply bitter that the AirPods Max does not fit my admittedly enormous head. The clamping force is too much, even at maximum extension of the ear cups. I bought a pair last year at a heavily discounted price of a still hefty $400, and sadly had to return them. The AirPods Max do sound amazing, but it’s probably for the best I didn’t keep them because spending that much money when I already have a set of Bose QC35 headphones is kind of ridiculous.

And I’m very much not a college student. I have disposable income!

I reckon my goals of austerity this year is going well thus far. With interest rates at relative historic highs, I’m trying to stuff as much money into savings as possible. I should be able to pay off the BMW M2 this year, thanks to earned interest in addition to the regular savings. Having that debt off my books grants me freedom to do other things, like paying extra for better seats on a plane.

The book Your Money or Your Life really shifted my perspective on new spending. Not that I was entirely profligate before, but I definitely like nice things (mainly, cars). The book frames money as life energy. After all, we have to work for money, and the prime currency (if you will) we trade for cold hard cash is our time. Therefore, anything you may want to buy should be viewed through the lens of how much of your life energy is required to afford it.

This is how I was able to avoid spending $79 on a Fitbit recently. That’s more than two hours of working, for something that is a nice to have. I’m not desperate to monitor my heart rate at all times; just continue to live healthily as I am now.

It's windy sideways!

Man is it windy out there! Starting yesterday afternoon, the San Francisco Bay Area has been experiencing an epic wind storm, with gusts well above 50 MPH. On campus, a giant tree toppled onto a building. When walking outside I literally had to hold onto my hat, head down so that debris doesn’t get into the eyes. More of the same today, with addition of rain and very cold temperatures. Bundle up and lotion up!

As a car enthusiast, the one thing I worry about during these windy weather patterns is my street-parked car. I’ve an irrational fear of a rouge trashcan getting blown by the wind right into my BMW M2. Good thing trash day was the day before yesterday’s wind storm. And good thing I actually moved my car into my work’s covered parking structure. Ah, the privilege of living so close to work: I can utilize its facilities to the full potential. The reason I don’t park the M2 there all the time is I like to look at it parked out front of the house through my window.

That’s the one downside about tree-lined streets: during wind and rain storms the plants can turn deadly. To things and humans. On the walk home yesterday through the wind I purposely avoided walking under trees. Can’t risk a branch falling off and ending it all right there. That stuff can happen during the best of times: I remember the woman who died from a fallen tree branch at Golden Gate Park. Horrible way to die, and who can you blame but the act of god?

I think it’s important to be alert and aware of the surroundings whenever you’re outside, no matter how adverse or not the weather is. Get your head out of the smartphone and look around instead. There’s lots of AAPI hate these days: walk around unawares and a Infiniti G37 sedan might pull up unnoticed and rob you. Got to be careful out there!

No hurries

One thing I was constantly reminded of last week is to have a bit of patience. Things and events are going to take the time they need. I cannot control it. I cannot make it go faster. Trying to control how quickly the future arrives is utterly futile. So is betting my happiness on that future arriving. This is how you speed-run through life, the days seemingly becoming shorter and shorter.

If something is taking longer than I would want, I should simply enjoy it for what it is, to immerse myself within that ambiguity.

Because forcing speed out of life is how mistakes are made. Last week I was working on reviving a Dell workstation at work. The going was super slow, each tactic I’ve tried not only takes a long time, but have not achieve the result I wanted. Nearing the home stretch of a process, I made a simple but critical error. This resulted in complete data lost on one of the hard-drives. There’s no anguish in our IT support profession quite like having to inform a user their precious data is gone. There is no rewind button.

Looking back now, I’m not sure why I was in such a hurry. Honestly, once I’m done with the workstation there will be other tickets to work on (as there is this week). It’s not as if I get to relax and read a book or something. I think I was just frustrated that my initial troubleshooting steps have returned very little. A punch to the ego that perhaps I’m not as competent as I think I am (which is true). Unfortunately, that frustration led to an enormous mistake.

In work and in life: remember to slow down and be patient.

Thanks but no thanks

A few days ago, I received an email from BMW of San Francisco - the dealership where I purchased my BMW M2 Competition from. The email states they’ve got an exciting offer for me! How would I like to trade in that BMW M2 Competition for, wait for it, a brand-new BMW M240i X-Drive! Why yes, I would totally love to trade in a genuine BMW M-division product for a plain, off the general assembly line car (this is sarcasm, for you non car guys).

At least have the decency to offer me the new BMW M2! My brother recently saw one of those on the street, so I know production has begun. Unlike my M2, this new one doesn’t have to make the ocean journey from Germany. The new M2 is manufactured down south in Mexico. Quite a bit easier for units to reach American dealerships. I’m actually intrigued to see one in person. BMW of SF should have offered!

Honestly though, I have no intention of switching out of the M2 for another new BMW. The current M product lineup have polarizing styling and interiors dominated by screens. (As is the current trend in automotive interiors. Thanks, Tesla!) Sure the new cars are faster, but that’s not something worth chasing. The 405 horsepower of my 2021 M2 is just fine. You really don’t need more than that for public roads.

What I cannot tolerate is the automotive industry moving towards LCD displays to replace everything inside the car. Like a crazed gun-nut, I’m clinging on to physical buttons and needle instrument dials - both of which my M2 has - until you pry it out of my dead hands. I don’t want to go through multiple menus just to adjust a seat angle!

Always good to see one of these completely stock, unmolested.

The local SPCA

I was disappointed when Amazon ended its AmazonSmile program to presumably cut costs. The program donates a tiny percentage of your spending with Amazon to a charity of your choosing. My chosen charity have been the San Francisco SPCA, the local animal shelter and care organization. No big deal, though: I also donate to the SPCA directly.

Last week a friend of mine finally put into action her plans to adopt a rescue dog. She’s been talking about it for nearly a year, and last Friday seemed as good a time as any. She found a suitable two-year old pit bull-terrier mix on the SPCA website, and wanted to adopt it before someone else does. Who wouldn’t want to spend a precious Friday evening at the animal shelter?

I’ve never been to the SF SPCA, so I happily tagged along to see exactly what my vanishingly small donation is going towards. I have to say, it is an impressive facility. Clean, and surprisingly spacious. The pets aren’t crammed into the kennels together as I had imagined. Each room is big enough for them to roam around relatively freely. There’s a tablet for you to swipe through for more information about the particular dog or cat.

What people say is true: you do want to rescue them all when you go to an animal shelter. I avoided the kitten section at the SPCA because I knew I would be hugely tempted to bring one home. It’s definitely not a place you go for a casual browse. Only those of the sternest hearts would be able to resist.

The SF SPCA does same-day adoption. An hour and about $200 dollars later, my friend is now the proud parent of a pit bull-terrier. Nothing against those who pay exorbitant sums for a specific breed, but adopting a pet in need for a home from an animal shelter is indeed the more noble pursuit. An extra responsibility and duty that you take on. I’m so incredibly happy for my friend.

Buy as much storage

These days, the standard configuration of computers we buy at work comes with 512 gigabytes of internal storage. You may think that’s plenty, but it really isn’t. After we put the standard suite of apps (such as Adobe Creative Cloud and Microsoft Office), the users have about 430 gigabytes or so to use. More than enough if you only play in the land of spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations. But nobody lives like that anymore. High quality media files dominate our life, including academia.

Those media files take up a lot of storage. A single photograph from an iPhone can be up to 10 megabyte in size. 4K video at 60 frames-per-second - the standard recording resolution of the latest smartphones - takes up a whopping 750 megabytes per minute. An instructor makes a class submit video for an assignment, downloads them all to view, and there goes countless gigabytes of storage space taken up. And as we know, not everyone is so diligent in pruning old files.

There’s another problem: users treat these work computers as their personal devices. They would sign-in to their personal iCloud or Google accounts, sync their entire digital life, and boom - there goes another chunk of storage. Exacerbating the issue on the macOS side is the nefarious category of “system files”. These are working files the operating system uses to, well, operate. However big it is is however big it is - the end user cannot prune or change it. As of this writing, the system files on my MacBook Pro is using over 60 gigabytes.

I remember a time when a MacBook only came with 80 GB of storage in total!

Back in the old days, the conventional wisdom when buying a computer is to buy more processing power and memory amount than you currently need - for supposed future proofing. These days, even the bog standard poverty-spec laptop is plenty powerful enough to last the user for years. What they should optimize for then is to spec and buy as much storage space as they can afford. I paid plenty of hundreds extra to have two terabyte of storage on my MacBook Pro. And honestly, I wished I’d bought even more: it’s already more than half full, and I’ve only owned the laptop for a little over a year!

Superb thoughts on Super Bowl

Man, that was an anti-climatic end to the Super Bowl, wasn't it? (Am I going to get fined for using the word “Super Bowl”?) An iffy holding penalty against the Philadelphia Eagles basically sealed the game for the Kansas City Chiefs. As a fan of the game, that is not how you want a match to end. The Chiefs was more than likely to score the go-ahead field goal there. What we were robbed of is a chance to see the Eagles try to fight back to tie under desperation minutes. From an objective standpoint, however, the holding call was correct, much like going 70 MPH in a 65 MPH zone is still speeding.

I was rooting for the Chiefs, and happy they won. I remain sour that the Eagles beat our hometown San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship game. That game was practically sealed the moment Brock Purdy of the 49ers injured his elbow in the early first quarter. After that, the 49ers had no viable quarterback. It just wasn’t a proper matchup, and we never got to see the full potential of two juggernauts of the conference go at it.

Is Patrick Mahomes the greatest quarterback of all time? He’s certainly on his way there. He’s already got two Super Bowl championships and he’s still only 27 years old. Mahomes beat the Eagles on one good ankle, after suffering a high ankle sprain only three weeks ago. At one point during the game before halftime, Mahomes was tackled down and it appear to have aggravated the injury. But he came back out in the second half and led the Chiefs to scores on every possession. It’s a legendary and gutsy performance.

I’m glad the greatest quarterback of this generation plays in the AFC and not the NFC. The road to the Super Bowl for the 49ers never has to go through Mahomes and Arrowhead stadium.