Blog

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

The never-ending fight

I experienced two firm reminders of our mortality today.

First was a return of a coworker from a month long absence. Turns out he’s got colon cancer. Good news for him, the doctors caught it early and the tumor was successfully removed. Bad news for him, he’s got six months of chemotherapy awaiting him. It’s going to be rough for sure. Imagine losing your appetite completely when what you really need the most is to eat.

The coworker is only in his early 50s. It’s a reminder for me as I near the 40 mark to keep consistent with yearly checkups. And of course, continue on with the healthy eating and weightlifting.

The second was assisting an elder faculty member changing the password to her Mac laptop. I’m sure we all have bad days, but bad enough to where you can’t find keys on the keyboard? Bad enough where you can’t even write down a password on a piece of paper? The lack of normal cognitive function was alarming to see, primarily in concern for the faculty member’s well-being. Those phishing scam callers are rubbing their hands in anticipation.

Self-awareness is difficult when it comes to recognizing your own decline. There will come a day when the amount of weight I put on the barbell will begin going backwards. I hope at that time I will be reasonable enough to not force the issue. In the meantime, the fight against entropy is never-ending - until it does.

That seems wasteful

As part of my daily language training, I watch plenty of Korean television. A big part of the world-popular Korean skin care routine seems to be the hydration masks. This one-time use piece of wet plastic you put over your face for about 15 minutes to add some bounce to the skin (I’m just guessing here.) Every time I see this on the tubes, however, I just think of how wasteful it is. Someone please ring up Greta Thunberg.

Think about it: if someone uses one pack per evening every single day, that’s a lot of plastic waste over the course of the year! Never mind the package the mask came in as well. Why is this okay when I have to suffer with paper straws here in San Francisco?

Wouldn’t it be quicker to simply spray the hydration onto the face directly? This is what I use. And the can is highly recyclable!

This isn’t a put-down on the whole of the Korean skin care empire. I too partake in a routine to keep my face from aging more than it already is, though I try to limit the amount of products. At some point the number of serums and toners and whatnot reach a point of diminishing returns. Besides, I don’t really want to spend 30 minutes after showering towards skincare. My showers are long enough…

My routine is simple: wash, product, then lotion. Wash is the same day and night. For daytime the product is vitamin C, then sunblock lotion. Night time the product is retinol, then regular lotion. It’s effective, and all of it can fit on one shelf in the medicine cabinet behind the sink mirror.

Once again I'm asking for some critical thinking

While the supposed incoming A.I. revolution into every aspect of our lives remain to be seen and written, I can firmly say at this moment that if you act like a robot, you will be replaced by one.

In any service support role, part of problem solving is to critically think. That’s where the money is. If all you can do is follow set directions and nothing else, then a robot can be programmed to take your place. Best of all, that robot doesn’t incur healthcare costs or ask for raises every few years.

It’s frustrating for me to see colleagues who cannot critically think. None of this is the proverbial rocket science. Half of this I.T. support job is Googling for answers. It’s impossible for a single support person to have seen every possible problem out there. Every new year brings new software and hardware, and along with it new potential issues. None of it is written down, you have to go find it yourself.

I’m nobody special. If I can do it, then the royal you can absolutely do it too. The point of support ticket assignment is for the assignee to figure some stuff out. The first little roadblock isn’t enough a reason to ask for assistance. Not when there’s a wealth of information out on the Internet. That’s how I learned: researching, applying, making some mistakes along the way, then arriving at the particular answer to a particular question.

Part of it I think is some people are afraid to make any mistake at all. They want to be certain of a move before making it. That’s unfortunately not going to cut it at a job where you’re paid to think. If I have to give you the answers, then I rather use a robot because its execution I can trust 100% - no change of human error!

Fine, I'll do it myself

At the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the post-credit scene shows the villain Thanos putting on the Infinity Gauntlet, exclaiming, “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

Thanos understands that if you want something done correctly, you indeed do it yourself. I would also add that it’s the same if you want something done timely. Those of us on the control-freak side of the spectrum can’t bear the uncertainty of waiting for someone else to perform what you want done.

It’s no big deal of course if the stakes are low. The horse I’m on isn’t high enough for me to look down upon the Starbucks barista making me a cappuccino. There’s no worry whatsoever the job won’t be done quickly and correctly. Unless I’ve pissed off said barista during the initial interaction. Then I should expect something unsavory added to the mix.

When the stakes are higher, so is anxiety that stems from the uncertainty. I recently purchased a used car. It comes with a limited 100 day warranty, so of course I took it to the dealership service to check things over. The inspection report returned some items that need addressing. No big deal, right? Surely the dealership can coordinate with the warranty company to get it all sorted.

Except it’s been an entire work week, and there’s yet to be any movement since the inspection. I’m not placing blame on either party here. It’s taking a long time, nothing I can do about it. Except - to do the work myself. The warranty items were cheap enough and easy enough to DIY that I went ahead and ordered the replacement parts. Over this very weekend I swapped them in. Now I can rest easy knowing the problem is fixed, and I can move on to the next.

Endless anxiety

Back in the olden days when I used to build by own PCs, I can kiss my sleep goodbye if anything inevitably goes wrong. I simply cannot soundly sleep until a problem is fixed. The graphic card is giving out errors? It’s got to be remedied, even though it’s currently 2:00 AM in the morning, and the end is still not in sight. This is why I exclusively use Apple Macintosh computers now: reliable, with a warranty.

Imagine me owning a home, and the washer goes out. It’s too bad there isn’t a 24-hours Home Depot!

This inability to calm down until a problem is solved can’t just be idiosyncratic to me, right? I don’t know how to explain it. Impatience is the wrong word for it. It’s definitely anxiety, but for what purpose? Life is but an endless stream of problems - good or bad - for us to solve. The fallacy is that I seem to think there is a some happy equilibrium to reach, that once reached, everything will be okay forevermore. That’s of course not how it works.

It’s the wrecking my sleep that I find alarming. No amount of Buddhist breathing methods can calm my mind down for slumber. (Medical options, perhaps?) It doesn’t like open-ended questions. I recently sold my BMW for another car - a very simple and easy transaction. Even that, I had difficultly sleeping over the two days when the transaction was ongoing. I cannot relax until the thing is finished.

The new-to-me car arrived with some minor things to be fixed. (That’s typical when you buy a used car.) Cue up another bout of anxiety and sleeplessness! I fully understand that parts and shop time literally cannot happen overnight, and yet the anxiety over an “unfinished” car remains ever present. I just want to get it done and move on - but to what? Like I said earlier, life will only keep throwing problems at you to fix.

Am I then destined to suffer from anxiety continuously? On the flip side, isn’t it good to have things that make you want to get out of bed to solve? Tricky one, this.

This is the Waymo 2

Yesterday I gushed about how autonomous Waymo cars is the way to go for ride-hailing. The only downside at the moment is the cost, and that the service is only available in limited cities. But time alone will solve those problems. Waymo - and other autonomous taxis - will continue to get better and cheaper. Once it reaches service and cost parity with UBER and Lyft, it’s game over.

The existential crisis of A.I. eliminating jobs in a massively hurtful scale remains to be seen. However, the example of robots replacing ride-share drivers is not an exaggeration. There’s zero reason to pay a live person to drive the car if the robots can do it for the same price, if not cheaper. In the near future I can see the taxi driver profession - whether it’s a classic yellow cab or a private car - get completely eliminated.

And if a car can drive itself, then it’s just a matter of scaling (says the guy who simply types and don’t hold any engineering degree) up towards larger vehicles. Bus drivers: your days are numbered as well! (Tongue somewhat in cheek.)

I think it can be a legit concern if A.I. obviates entire categories of jobs in rapid fashion. A bunch of people losing their jobs overnight is not a good thing. Pivoting towards another profession takes time and effort. In the meantime you’re going to have downstream consequences such as credit defaults and decreased tax revenue.

If autonomous taxi is destined to replace the driver, the current slow rollout of the technology will provide ample warning and time for people to adjust. UBER drivers operating in cities with Waymo might start to see a decreasing revenue trend-line as Waymo grab an increasing market share. At some point the math will no longer math, and they will have to go do something else. That’s a heck of a more palatable option than an abrupt termination.

This is the Waymo

Last week I took a Waymo - an autonomous taxi - for the very first time. And I have to say: goodbye, Uber and Lyft. If a driverless taxi is available, I am picking that over the other options.

Of course, the elephant in the room is costs. But that’s only going to get cheaper as the technology matures and the autonomous cars proliferate. There aren’t drivers operating the cars who are going to (rightly) demand periodic incoming increases. I quite like that I did not have to tip the robot. The price shown on the app is truly the price to be paid. It’s magical.

The only minor flaw I’ve seen riding a Waymo is that the car follows the speed limit right to the signage number. You and I both know that human drivers go above the speed limit all the time, in a very safe manner of course. At least there isn’t road rage towards the Waymo going the speed limit: what’s the point in getting mad at a robot? Unless you’re truly in a hurry, Waymo obeying the speed limits religiously is not a problem.

Other than that, the autonomous taxi behaves much like the human driver. It will speed through a yellow turning into a red. It will inch forward into the intersection on a left turn, even though I’m pretty sure the rule says you’re not suppose to. It will make that left turn right after the walking pedestrians have left behind a big enough space, even though the rules states you’re suppose to wait until pedestrians have finished crossing.

The best feature of a Waymo is of course the lack of anybody else in the car. No smells, no conversations, no stranger danger. Other than cost (for now), why would anyone choose a human taxi over the robot? I am team Waymo all the way from now on, where applicable.