Power outage on campus

I work as tech-support at a college campus and last evening the power to the entire campus went out. Due to this I got to go home early from work which is nice, but for the students and teachers that had classes it probably wasn't a good thing. 

The month of May is the tail end of the semester therefore missing a single class period can be detrimental to things like presentations and tests - especially for classes that only meet once a week (which classes in the evening tend to be). For sure students in lower level courses likely couldn't care less (I'd be happy as a fox), but I'd be pissed if I were a graduate student and it was my day to present thesis.

Today a professor shared with me that a student of his was due to perform for his final masters last night but the blackout torpedoed that plan. What made it worse was his parents flew all the way here from Russia for the occasion. Dreadful.  

The University needs to be responsible for the lost instruction time. Students pay good money for tuition and to have power outages cancel class without recompense of say adding an extra day is unjust. Last evening's incident wasn't even the first one this calendar year!

Though I guess we can't rule out the possibility that last night someone really didn't want to take a final and did some grade A sabotaging to the power-grid to avoid it. 

That time I missed my flight from Korea

It's once again the month of May, and it had me thinking about a year ago when I traveled to Korea. It was a wonderful trip of a lifetime and you should definitely check out the photos here.

While reminiscing about the trip I was reminded of the hilarious incident we had in catching the flight back to America. There were three of us on the trip and yet somehow we all managed to misinterpret the flight time. It was definitely not a good showing for the male section of the species. 

For whatever reason, the flight time were shown using military time. Our flight was printed at 20:00 hours which simple math equates to 8:00pm in the evening. We like to think of ourselves as persons of intelligence but we completely miscalculated and thought the flight was 10:00pm. 

With that in mind we naturally got to the airport a bit before 8pm. Upon looking at the giant departure board and not finding our flight I double-checked the reservation and realize to horror the huge mistake. We made a dash for Korean Air counter but it was too late: not enough time remained to get us through customs and security. 

Even under such misfortune due to self stupidity we lucked out: we got to the check-in counter before the airplane left the ground, which meant we were able to rebook to the next available flight at no extra cost. Had the flight already taken off we would've squandered the plane ticket and had to then pay again for the next one. 

So apart from a slightly wounded pride and the costs of an extra night of hotel (and a very angry girlfriend for my friend), it was a good learning episode and I doubt any of us will ever misread a departure time ever again. 

Farewell, Instagram

While Mark Zuckerberg is being raked over the coals by Senators who don't understand the Internet (one Senator said the Facebook user agreement sucks as if he or anybody else actually reads the damn thing), I on the other hand have finally gotten rid of the last vestige of Facebook in my life: Instagram. It joins my Facebook account into the big bin of social media platforms I no longer use (rest in peace, Xanga).  

Indeed Zuckerberg's monolithic company won't profit from me any more (we are the product, not the customer), that is assuming they've kept their word and actually delete my information. Judging from Facebook's track record I'm certainly not counting on that happening. A good few years of my digital life will forever be locked in a data-farm somewhere.  

Another reason for deleting Instagram is I no longer see the point of it. On the base level Instagram is like a photo-centric Facebook, and since I've no use for a Facebook account (couldn't possibly care less what my elementary classmates are up to), keeping an Instagram account doesn't make much sense either. 

As a hobbyist photographer I used Instagram to follow other creatives for inspiration and whatnot (i.e. steal ideas) but I can easily do that elsewhere and be way more productive because I won't be bombarded with images from non-photographers I follow. 

And of course I used Instagram to do what every other red-blooded male does: to follow and thirst after Instagram models. Alas, push comes to shove we can do that without Instagram, can't we? (Shoutout to Tumblr in its early days)

Instagram have turned into a massive time-sink and not worth the value I get out of it. Posting my own photos have become more chore than fun. Having to input metadata like using the appropriate hash-tags and composing a funny caption or compelling short story to tell - for each and every photo - is tiring and not the best place to focus creative energy on; it'd be better spent on this website instead. Pictures on this website have permanence, while on Instagram it's gone and forgotten as soon as the next one is posted. 

Having done the deed and leaving me with Twitter as the sole social media platform I'm on, I feel lightweight and refreshed. More focus on doing the good work. 

Apple will make its own chips for the Mac

Bloomberg dropped a news bomb yesterday saying Apple will soon transition away from Intel chips in its line of computers and will instead manufacture its own processors. Intel stockholders were not amused as the chipmaker's stock dropped 7% immediately after rumor surfaced. 

It's been over a decade since Apple switched from PowerPC to Intel. At the time Motorolla was unable to produce PowerPC processors suitable to Apple's demands of ever increasing power and efficiency. The lineup has stagnated; the dreams of a G5 in a notebook never materialized. 

It somewhat parallels Apple's current relationship with Intel. Fans like to harp at Apple for being infamously slow to update the internal hardware in its Mac line (the guts in the Mac Mini dates back to 2014), but a big contributing factor is Intel's horribly delayed release schedules. Team blue seems to have hit a wall: the 'Core' processors have been stuck on the 14nm process for years. The significant step-increases between each generation early in the Core era are no more: Intel has abandoned the "tick-tock" cadence. 

Meanwhile Apple have reached performance breakthrough after breakthrough with its mobile A-series chips. In benchmarks the latest A11 Bionic chip is shown to outclass even a base Macbook Pro. Vertical integration of chip, hardware, and operating system have allowed Apple to produce mobile products unrivaled in computing power and efficiency. The iPhone is often criticized for having less RAM than its competition but in truth the iPhone can do the same/more with less memory than any Android unit. 

With Intel in a stagnant position and itself having great success at making mobile chips, Apple's obvious next step is to migrate that expertise to the Macintosh. A Macbook running a bespoke integrated A-series style chip would have performance and battery efficiency not possible with the Intel partnership. 

Not to mention MacOS itself: iOS have rightly gotten the bulk of engineering time ever since the first iPhone. Because of that MacOS is in sort of a limbo mode. It has converted to a yearly release cadence to match its mobile sibling, but the attention to detail in the recent releases have been sorely lacking. MacOS, while still immensely powerful, doesn't have a truly "next-gen" feel like iOS does. Perhaps syncing the processing architecture between desktop and mobile would then allow Apple to reimagine MacOS into a proper desktop facsimile of iOS.   

While the initial stock price shock may suggest otherwise, I wouldn't worry too much about Intel just yet. Even if Apple quit cold-turkey on Team Blue's processors, Intel would only be out 5% of its chip revenue. However, I don't think Intel will take this news lightly because while 5% is small, actions have subsequent reactions, and no one can predict what kind of change Apple ditching Intel can affect in the market. What if Google follows suit with its popular Chromebooks? Microsoft is already working with Qualcomm to have Windows run on ARM. 

For the near future I think Intel will still carry the mid to upper tier market for the Mac because Apple hasn't yet shown it can (though I'm sure it ultimately can) produce a chip capable of professional desktop-class work (or games). What we can expect real soon are entry-level Mac computers running Apple-made chips, and that's an exciting prospect indeed.  

How to get me to buy more cars

As someone who isn't made of money nor does the living situation allow me to fit more than one car at a time, in order for me to sample around the varying types of automobiles out in the world, I've got to keep swapping them out i.e. sell and replace. Listen, no need to lecture me on depreciation curves because I simply take that as the cost of doing business when it comes to this car enthusiast hobby.

There is however one rub I do have a problem with: sales tax. It's the one expenditure I cannot recover when I sell a car, on top of which I have to pay taxes on the new car as well. Living in a high-tax county like San Francisco exacerbates the pain. Combining the last two cars I bought, I've paid over 7,000 dollars in taxes. While most people lumps taxes into the sale price of the car and treat it as a singular sum (less pain that way, I guess), I consider taxes separate because it doesn't pay for anything innate to the car.

I'm somewhat due car change now that I'm homing in on three years of owning the MX-5. However the thought of having to outlay yet another significant chunk towards taxes in purchasing the next car is giving me more pause that it would five years ago. I guess it's true that we turn Republican as we gradually grow older and attain more assets: we'd like the government to take less of our hard-earned stuff.  

In some States buyers can deduct the price of the trade-in in calculating the new car's tax. Tax-heavy California obviously isn't so bold to have such a program. The State's got tons of incentives for electric vehicles though sadly normal combustion-engined cars don't deserve such special treatment. 

I can't be the only person that wants to switch cars but the prospective tax bill is stopping the fun. Why doesn't automobile dealership associations lobby California for some sort of exemption? I for one would buy cars more often - brand new at that - if the tax burden wasn't so heavy. At the very least we should be able to deduct the sale price of the trade-in like other States. 

Some people no doubt would ask "why don't you lease?" because in doing so I'd only be paying taxes on the portion of the payments over the specific loan period. While true in theory, lease deals are horrendous on anything that isn't a basic German luxury car (BMW 3 Series) or mass-market grocery getter (Toyota Camry). The cars I'm into it makes better financial sense to purchase outright.

Besides, spending time to research the appropriate leasing terms and performing calculations isn't exactly my idea of a good afternoon. I'd rather negotiate the price of the car alone and be done with it. 

Auto manufacturers and dealerships: if you want people like me to buy more new cars, lobby the government to lessen our tax burden. We not of the 0.1% can't afford to form LLCs in the State of Montana. 

I'm not fond of April Fools Day

Alternative title: I'm still waiting for that bacon in an In n Out burger. 

It is Easter Sunday today and coincidently the first of April, so the appropriate joke here is Jesus rose from the grave and was like "Surprise! Not dead! April fools!"

As I've aged into my 30s I've grown to dislike April Fools day because honestly I'm easily suckered and tend to take things on their face value. I still cannot get over whichever media outlet it was few years ago that claimed In n Out burger was introducing bacon. For my money - which I would've gladly handed over to In n Out for a bacon cheeseburger - it remains the cruelest April Fools joke of all time. Donald Trump can resign from the presidency today and it still wouldn't top it. 

Now that I think about it Trump really should've fake quit today to play us the fool: can't be any worst that all the other crap that's happened thus far during his presidency. An opportunity lost for good humor. 

April Fools Day isn't entirely horrible: to avoid all the fakery and false hope, today's a good day for me to step off the Internet for a bit and enjoy the more tangible things in life. The wide web will still be there come tomorrow and we can go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Hope your day is marvelous, and not too upset at the thing(s) that you wished were true. 

#Adulting stops the fun

If you’d have told me as a child that as an adult, I could eat ice cream whenever I want, play with matches whenever I want, and play video games whenever I want, I would not have believed that I’d almost never do so.

— Anil Dash (@anildash) March 28, 2018

This particular tweet hits right in the feels.

Surely we've all done this during our youth: when we grow up we're going to do all sorts of things that by being kids we're restricted from doing. But as the tweet points out, once we've  become adults we actually end up not doing those things. For example, fried chicken is my favorite food, and when I was little an intention of mine was when I grew up (and have money) I'd walk into a KFC, buy a bucket of chicken, and eat it entirely by myself. 

I'm 30 this year and I've yet to do that. 

What is it about being an adult that, let's face it, stops the fun? Why don't I play video games all day now that I can now afford all the games and have more time to spare (having to do homework really put a damper on things back then)? Why not eat junk food whenever I feel like? What about staying up late until the wee hours of the morning? 

I think as adults our event horizon widens exponentially beyond the present (dull things like saving for retirement): I don't spend a day playing video games because it's a waste of time and unproductive (we can't all be those millionaire Twitch streamers). I pass on the junk food marathon because it'd be much nicer to not have diabetes and heart disease. Burn the midnight oil just for fun? We adults know that sleep is the absolute best thing in the world.  

It was indeed true wisdom back when our parents prevent us from executing our fantastical inclinations. In their adult mind they know it to be not good for us. My father never ate a bucket of fried chicken by himself either. 

But perhaps it'd be good for us current adults to bring back some of that child-like innocence and narrow focus. Adult life can easily entrap us into always thinking and planning for the future, sacrificing the present (not to say this is bad). Why not periodically think like a child would and say eat ice cream whenever the urge comes to mind? That sliver of joy and escape might do well for our constitution; freshen up our internal batteries for the daily grind. 

As an adult, self restriction comes naturally: if 15 year old me made the same money as I do now, it would be completely squandered as soon as the paycheck hits the account (or worse - max out the credit cards). At 30 I'd never entertain the thought. But as with anything, those restrictions can go overboard: it's important to find the balance between living in the now and preparing for a future. A big component to adults getting burned out is when our minds are too frequently into the what-ifs of tomorrow. 

So sometimes think like we once did: as a kid. Go overboard! Indulge in those tendencies and wants. Be present.   

I'm going to play some videos games for a lot of hours.