Blog

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

Farewell for now, CSR

The hefty $550 annual fee on my Chase Sapphire Reserve card comes due this month, so of course I had to make the call to downgrade to the regular Sapphire Preferred card, with a far more manageable $95 yearly fee. In these times of COVID that’s still showing no signs of abatement anytime soon, there is absolutely zero chance for me to do enough traveling in the next calendar year to justify the high cost of the Reserve card.

Remember back a few years ago when the card was all the rage? A premium travel card with a 100,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 within the first three months of sign-up (I spent a majority of it on books, believe it or not). I use the bonus points to score first-class seating on the return leg of the trip to South Korea, a thing I wouldn’t have otherwise ever pay for. The Reserve card also paid the application fee for Global Entry, allowing me to breeze pass through TSA heading out, and immigration coming back in like a special VIP.

The then $450 annual fee was quite a lot for someone used to paying nothing fo credit cards, but in combination with the $300 travel credit, the affective fee was only $150. Chase have since raised the fee by a hundred dollars, which in a normal year I still would have been able to “break-even” with the amount of travel I typically do. As we are well aware, the global pandemic effectively shutdown all of our plans to get on an airplane, so the economical move is to downgrade to a lesser tier card and wait until the world returns to normal to upgrade back to the Reserve.

Another sad reminder of what is the wildest and strangest year. I’m optimistic though; soon as big Pharma figures out a proper vaccine, I’ll be back in the skies off somewhere alongside the rest of you.

Okay, I get it now

My job brings me opportunity to sample many a different computing hardware from over the generations, which can be a good thing or bad thing. Whenever the latest newness arrives in our offices, I’m obviously tempted to buy one for myself. Indeed that is in part how I’ve come to be typing on this 16-inch MacBook Pro: I noticed what a leap it was over the old 15-inch version, and how it’s truly the best large MacBook Pro since the beloved “retina” - the one with all the IO ports. So I end up spending money I wouldn’t have otherwise, all because of exposure at the workplace.

Yesterday I happened to be working on a 2018-vintage MacBook Pro, which is largely similar to the one I previously had. Immediately I noticed what a horrible experience it is to go back to typing on the “butterfly” keyboard. It felt like typing on a bed of rocks: stiff, unreassuring, and super awkward. The “magic” keyboard in the 16-inch MacBook Pro (and every Mac laptop in the current lineup) is vastly superior on typing feel alone, never mind the supposed reliability improvements. Positive feedback from the keys is so important, and the old butterfly keyboard is utterly lacking.

Granted, I didn’t hate the typing experience when I had my 15-inch MacBook Pro - with the butterfly keyboard. The shortcomings of the keys, in terms of feel, can be overlooked once you get used to it. Besides, I didn't really have anything better to compare it to until this year when the new 16-inch laptops started arriving at work, and I got to experience what an improved alternative is like. People say comparison robs you of joy; I would say it also robs you of your hard-earned cash. In an alternative universe where I don’t work in tech support, I’m sure I’d still be happily using my 15-inch MacBook Pro, and my wallet wouldn’t be out of a two grand.

I just hope the cycle doesn’t continue: what if the forthcoming Apple silicon Macs prove to be equally irresistible? Perhaps I should make a declaration…

Last week of September

It is the last week of September, and yet it still feels as if the autumnal season has yet to sink in. If you’d ask me back in March - when this whole coronavirus saga began - that we’d still be in amongst the chaos come the Fall, I probably would’ve laughed in your face. Remember a time when we all thought life would go back to normal come the Summer months? Well, that has come and gone, and the horrible situation of nearly a thousand deaths a day in this country remains ever present. If it hasn’t sunk in already for you: this is going to take a very long time.

Indeed, my place of employment - San Francisco State University - have already declared Spring classes to remain remote. Some would say this is a bit overcautious, but I think in time the decision would prove to be correct and appropriate. It goes to show that the arbitrary end of this calendar year is not some magical boundary line between the mess of 2020 and the world returning to normal with the ushering of a new year. It’s rather easy to imagine and believe there’s only three more months of COVID to go, the same sort of thinking that motivates people to make New Year's resolution. If the past six month is any indication, the beginning of 2021 will be much of the same.

I reckon this quagmire we are in won’t be completely solved until there is a vaccine. In the meantime we’ll continue to be stuck in this sort of half-open, half-shut limbo.

That’s not to say we should lose hope or be pessimistic. Going through life with an optimistic mindset that things will improve is an immensely better way to live than the opposite. However, blind optimism is not the solution: you will only find disappointment if you hold onto the idea that this coronavirus situation will be over soon. That optimism will turn into cynicism and despair, because eventually you’ll get tired of waking up disappointed the world hasn’t yet return to normal.

This a reminder very much for me, by the way.

We'll see

I have to say this past weekend my mental health took a step backwards: anxiety levels were hugely elevated throughout, weighting me down with a sense of constant dread. The hot weather certainly didn’t help, piling on to the oppressive feelings, of being trapped with nowhere to escape. These COVID times are indeed tough for everyone, a massive psychological burden that affects you no matter how lucky you’ve been relatively to other that’s got it much worse.

You can’t expect to be completely okay through these decidedly abnormal times.

And I certainly expect to have bad days when it comes to my chronic anxiety issues. The journey of solid mental health is one of always a work-in-progress, and as such there will be days of improvement and calm, but mix in there are days of dread and despair. Only with consistent work can you hope to eke out slightly more good days than bad, and on those not so good days, the negative feelings are blunted, rather than being super acute.

But the rough moments are what we study and train for. It’s superbly easy to be calm and steady when things are going well and there’s nothing annoying you - you don’t need to study Zen Buddhism to handle those situations. Practicing the stoic arts comes into play when life isn’t particularly going your way, or your’e stuck in a intractable problem. You think you’ve got a lid things until life punches you right in the face; that’s when the training of going with the flow and remembering to focus on only what you can control is needed, that’s when you’ll be tested.

This past weekend was not the best, and for sure there will be many more days like it in the future. I just have to prepared for that eventuality, and utilize the coping mechanisms that’s being continuously cultivated with my philosophical studies.

I hope we all have a great week ahead.

Adventures at the DMV

No one enjoys going to the DMV ever, but sometimes you must do so in order to keep your motor vehicle on the road legally. Yesterday morning was such an occasion, as I went with my dad to the local office to get replacement license plates. Someone saw the shiny new 2021 registration sticker on his Hyundai Tucson and thought it would be nice to steal the rear plate that it’s stuck to. Not wanting to drive for very long without a rear license plate on the car, a trip to the DMV was begrudgingly called for.

This may be the times of COVID, but some things don’t ever change, such as the long queue for the DMV in the morning, well before the doors open. Of course, the line is socially-distanced, so it stretched well onto the adjacent sidewalk and out into the residential area. We arrived half an hour before the office opens at 8:00AM, and the wait time ultimately came to about two hours, which is not all that different from “normal times”, if you’re so unprepared as to not have an appointment.

Appointments aren’t possible at the moment except for driving tests.

In these not so normal times, you get your temperature taken and answer a few questions as to the condition of your health vis a vis the coronavirus. Once the building reaches a capacity deemed safe, they take down your phone number and asks you to wait inside your vehicle - you’ll get a text when your number is called and ready to be served. Other than the unusual waiting and screening situation, the procedure at the DMV is not all that different: you’ll spend most of the time waiting, while the thing you’ve come to the office for takes less than five minutes (driving tests notwithstanding).

Excluding the wait, we were in and out of the premises in no time with newly issued metal plates. Fingers crossed these survive long enough to last a calendar year!

I am not getting the Playstation 5

The next generation of gaming consoles is upon us, and I can’t believe people are so willing to drop $500 left and right for both the forthcoming Playstation 5 and the XBOX Series X. Of course, I am the same guy that just dropped well over $3,000 on a custom-order 16-inch MacBook Pro, so who am I to criticize others on how they should spend their dollars frivolously. With this new generation of consoles, I can finally admit and resign to the fact that I’m just not that big of a gamer anymore. Spending $500 on a Playstation 5 just for it to sit underneath my television gathering dust is exactly the same fate as my Playstation 4.

In grand total, the number of games I bought for the Playstation 4 over its lifetime is under 10, which is indicative of how little I game. While the COVID-19 quarantines have turned many into more gaming, I never really participated, preferring instead to read a few more books (nerd!). I don’t think I’ve even finished playing a single PS4-era game through to the end - not even Grand Theft Auto 5 - which absolutely screams out that I am not a gamer anymore. Therefore there’s really no incentive for me to get the Playstation 5; besides, I don’t have the requisite 4K television set to utilize it fully.

And if I were to get a 4K TV, it would have to be an LG OLED unit, which is massively more expensive than a typical LED unit from other brands. Not an expense I want to do right now. Again, says the guy that just spent more than $3,000 on a MacBook Pro. I’m the type of miser that saves to only then spend money on expensive things - no saving for saving’s sake here.

Anyways, will my history with the Playstation brand - I’ve owned ever iteration of the console thus far - end with the Playstation 4? Chances are good, though the proverbial never say never applies here. One can never predict how effective future releases of my perennial favorites like Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto will compel me to buy the Playstation 5 (and the OLED TV). But as of right now, I am not joining the preorder frenzy that’s currently going on. No worries here whether or not I can get a unit on release day!

One laptop to rule

So I recently purchased a 16-inch MacBook Pro as a “one laptop to rule them all” replacement for both my 2017-vintage iMac and 2019-vintage 15-inch MacBook Pro. Admittedly this is a bit of a frivolous expense because I could have simply sold the iMac and kept the still relatively new 15-inch laptop as the main workhorse. But, who doesn’t like the latest and greatest things, am I right? Buying the 16-inch MacBook Pro allowed me to do something I’ve wanted to do for the longest time: custom spec a laptop to what I need, rather than anchoring to a certain purchase price (read: being cheap). If this is indeed one laptop to rule them for a long time, then might as well go for it fully.

The primary extra cost is the two terabyte SSD upgrade over the paltry 512 gigabyte standard issue. I want to fit my extensive collection of music and the back-catalog of digital photos - some 800 gigabytes worth - right onto the same MacBook Pro, rather than storing them on an external drive like I have done since the Mac mini I bought back in 2014. With this new laptop I no longer have to plug in a drive anytime I want to listen to music or edit pictures, and I have to say it’s well worth the extra cost for this convenience. This 16-inch MacBook Pro now quite literally holds my entire digital life.

Don’t worry, it’s very well backed up.

Some of you may ask why would I buy current 16-inch MacBook Pro when the entire computing world knows Apple will soon be releasing laptops running their own silicon chips, rather than the current Intel products. There’s much expectation the future Macs with Apple silicon will run rings around the Intel chips both in terms of speed and efficiency, so why I didn’t I simply wait a bit? Why buy what is surely the last of a dying breed of laptops?

Because I am of the mindset that you should buy what you need right now, instead of constantly waiting for that’s next. You’ll never be disappointed if you get what you need right this moment, and use fully that particular thing’s potential. You wouldn’t have time to think about whether or not something new is on the immediate horizon, and that you’ll be missing out on something better, if only you had waited. One constant in the tech world is that improvement is always coming up next, so if the fear-of-missing-out emotion is strong in you, then you’ll never be satisfied no matter how long you wait.

I bought what I wanted right now and am enjoying the new machine immensely. For sure the Apple silicon Macs will be brilliant, but future potential is not something for the present me to fret over.