Blog

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

All in perspective

A good friend of mine had his bachelor party at the local go-karting place. To see who can go the fastest in one lap: a great way to get the competitive spirits out. It’s been a long time since I’ve last sat in a go-kart. Back then the cars were powered by gasoline lawn-mower style engines. Nowadays the karts are all electric. It’s for the better, honestly: petrol fumes are some of the worst things to breathe in.

Other than the change to electric motivation, the karts are largely the same as I remembered. No adjustments possible to the seat and wheel (I wish for a closer wheel), and purely manual steering. My arms definitely got a workout from thrashing the car through the bends. There were eight of us in the group, and I ended up placing second fastest. Even though I had a weight penalty! The smaller of the guys have a weight advantage, I would say. The person in first place is lighter than me, I am sure of it!

Jokes of a sore loser aside, it was a fun morning at the track. I did notice however that there weren’t that many people staffing the place. There were only two guys manning the whole of the track area. And from the first race onwards, I did not see them stop for one second. Federally-mandated breaks every four hours? That’s hilarious. There would be lots of impatient customers if the workers paused just to use the restroom. Would they even eat lunch at all?

It’s a hard life our there for people in the service industry. We have a duty to be kind to them, especially during this period of great staffing shortage.

It puts into perspective how grateful I am to have a job where for most part I simply sit in a front of a computer. Tapping on the keyboard is the extent of any hard labor. I can use the restroom whenever I want, and I can leisurely eat lunch with not much of a time limit. As much as it would be nice to get paid more, it’s important to keep in mind how lucky I already have it.

So fucking sad

There's an implicit contract to living in America: we have to tolerate a decent amount of violent crime. In cities there are neighborhoods you know not to venture into. We have to pass through security just to attend concerts and ballgames, because the chance of someone bringing in a weapon is non trivial. The bad guys have easy access to lots of guns, so our police force is armed like a branch of the military.

A latent sense that some shit can go down at anytime when we're out in public is the mental price we pay to live in this great country. And indeed the United States is a wonderful country, full of opportunity and creativity. There's no better place to elevate your station in life, so long as you're willing to put in the work. I am forever grateful to my parents for bringing us over here from China back in 1996.

But even back then, the young me was warned about the violence and guns that permeate American society. Walking around the neighborhood is not the same here in the States as it was back in China. I didn't really think much of it back then. Because I was only a kid.

It wasn't until my travel to Asian countries in recent years that opened my eyes. It's entirely possible to live in place without the latent backdrop of violent crime potential. You can go absolutely anywhere in a city at any time without fear of something bad happening. I would then fly back to America and get depressed, as the subconscious cloud of danger returns.

It doesn't have to be this way, but those in the seats of federal power keep refusing to do anything. Literal babies getting massacred by bullets in Sandy Hook didn't move the needle towards gun control. I don't expect yet another one to either. That's an incredibly sad and defeatist thing to say, but a freedom - right to bear arms - once granted is supremely difficult to take back. And this is a country that loves its freedoms, for better and worse.

If we could just stop being so individualistic for one moment, and think more of our fellow men, women, and children. Be less selfish, and more selfless. I try hard to not be numb to these mass shootings, but there's so many of them. To care deeply about each one just hurts too much. I can only have immense empathy for the grieving parents that soon will have to bury their young children. It’s so fucking sad.

Ocular health

Now that we're largely out of the COVID pandemic, I'm trying to get caught up with my health checkups. A few weeks back I went to Kaiser for a physical. This past Friday I got an eye exam - the first time since 2018. It is well overdue to update my contact lens prescription. No more buying sets from Canada, which is what I've been doing for the past few years.

Why? Because there's a stupid rule here in the States that prevents people from buying contact lens without a valid prescription. Typically, prescriptions are good for one calendar year. Past that point and you'll have to go see your optometrist again to renew. Seems more like racketeering to me, rather than protecting consumers from sticking the wrong thing into their eyeballs.

In addition to renewing my contact lens prescription (my eyes have only worsen slightly in the past four years), I also fitted new glasses. By my recollection it's been over eight years since I got my current pair of frames. Somehow it has lasted me until now. Obviously because I only use them for the few hours at home when I'm not wearing contacts. Never outside.

However, due to the severely outdated prescription, I can no longer see the TV clearly whilst wearing glasses. Sometimes during weekend mornings I prefer to watch TV or play videos games without first putting on contact lenses. With the old glasses I would have to sit closer that I would prefer. This new pair will be an absolute revelation. I'll finally experience (corrected) 20/20 vision again, something not even my contacts correct to.

Too damn high!

Just when we thought gas prices can't get any higher, they have! I am so glad I don't have to drive hardly ever. This past Sunday I put in $75 dollars' worth of petrol in my BMW M2. Not since owning the 911 GT3 have I spent that much on a tank of gas. Only problem is: the GT3 had an extended range 23 gallon tank. The M2's tank is 10 gallons shallower.

I'm paying the same for less gas!

Those of you with a hardy commute in a car: how do you do it? Your fuel cost have basically doubled. I bet your paycheck hasn't moved any higher. I feel bad for my coworker who has a drive from San Jose to San Francisco (and back). At least she has a Honda Fit that sips regular 87 octane at a conservative rate.

Totally unlike my BMW M2 that gets 19 miles to the (91 octane) gallon on a good day. Needless to say I've completely eliminated all extraneous car travel since the high gas prices have started. No more driving on the mountains simply for the sake of pleasure. Doing so I was able to extend my refueling intervals up to once every three weeks. I guess $75 isn't too bad once I extrapolate outwards, but man the sticker shock at the pump is there nonetheless!

If I didn't love cars, I probably wouldn't even own the M2 right now. Not only are gas prices high, and so are insurance costs (premium German automobile, after all). I'm definitely spending way more money in return for not a whole lot of utility. Sometimes I do wonder if I should sell, but then I'd take a look at the car parked outside my window, and promptly decide to keep. For a long time.

The very first MacBook Pro

I am typing this on a 2006 MacBook Pro, the very first pro Apple laptop with an Intel processing chip. The college me could only wish to afford such a beast of a machine. And here I am using it now to blog, some 16 years later. Because the keyboard is phenomenal to type on. This era of Apple keyboard is as good as it gets: excellent travel with superb stability.

The reason I have this old-as-heck MacBook Pro is because one of the campus labs (finally) retired a bunch from service. Of course, any time tech gets recycled, the vultures start to circle. I normally don't go for any of the Apple stuff, because I already have the latest laptop and professional display. But this particular MacBook Pro caught me eye, primarily because it was something I pined for way back when.

It's not unlike car guys buying their childhood hero cars after they've earned some money as an adult. Except I was able to get this MacBook Pro for absolutely free.

The laptop runs arguably the best macOS (or OS X, as it was back in the day) ever: 10.6 Snow Leopard. This was back in a time when major updates for macOS happens every few years, unlike the annual cadence of today. I'm surprised to find a copy of Snow Leopard is available for download at the Internet archive. Though how legit and legal that method is, I cannot say for sure.

What I can say is that it works, because I used that link to make a bootable USB stick to then do a clean macOS install. This vintage of MacBook Pro predates any Internet recovery methods, so the royal you must use an installation media to wipe the system.

I have to say it's pretty neat to touch this old tech again, and to see that it still works, for the most part. Modern websites no longer work because the browser/operating system is too out of date. But I don't need this for that. I'm only using this for the fantastic keyboard to type out stuff like this.

Smartwatch FOMO

I went on a hike last weekend with a some friends. Before we began the trail, everybody but me raised up their smartwatch to push the button for starting an exercise. Two things: one, I wouldn’t classify San Francisco’s Lands End trail as “exercise”. Secondly, I totally felt left out! I’m reminded of a time when everybody had a smartphone except me. I was waiting for the iPhone to come out on Verizon. Remember a time when the iPhone was exclusive to AT&T? Pepperidge Farm does.

Is this the year I finally get a smartwatch? Maybe, maybe not. It would be a nice item to have, and I’m fairly into the whole fitness tracking thing. Alerts when there’s a sudden spike in heart-rate seem pretty useful. Eventually, I’ll get both my parents an Apple Watch because fall detection is so critical for elders. But for me, I still struggling to justify the few hundred dollars for yet another tech gadget. I’m not a watch wearing person to begin with: my iPhone tells time just fine.

Besides, exercise is exercise, whether it’s being tracked by a smart device or not. An Apple Watch isn’t really going to help push my health to the next level (as Tim Cook like to say in the keynotes). What matters are the actual workouts and being active overall. I don’t need a gadget to keep me on track and focused. If you do, that’s great! I genuinely hope the smartwatches my friends have are concretely pushing them to move more.

Get your steps in!

No pandemic 15!

A few weeks back I went to Kaiser to get an annual physical. The first time in over four years! My last checkup was way back in 2018. Then I got lazy, and then the pandemic happened. Now that things have largely gone back to normal, it was time to check that I myself am normal.

I no longer have any pandemic weight gain! Last September I went to a wedding, and my suit definitely felt a bit tight in certain places (neck, waist, and thighs). Fast forward to this month, and I measure out at within five pounds of my 2018 weight. Walking to and from work five days a week seems to have helped a lot, because I didn’t really change my exercise regiment. As a result, at the wedding I went to last week, the suit that I got tailored eight years ago fit just fine again.

The last book I read is The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. In it, the author mentions a great way to exercise is to simply carry heavy things. That walk you go on can be made more difficult and challenging with a backpack and some weights. Apparently, carrying a significant load over long distances is a staple of our armed forces. It make sense: we’ve all seen soldiers overseas with those impossibly enormous packs.

Reading that inspired me to put weights in the backpack I wear to work. It’s a cheap and effective way to add a training dimension to something I have to do every day. If that twenty minutes of walking can count as exercise, then I can avoid having to schedule in additional workout time for the week. Because I plan to do a half-marathon later this summer, so I have to get back into running shape.