Blog

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

I'm not a drug dealer

It always feels weird making a large cash deposit at the bank. First of all, it’s nerve-wracking these days just to carry large amounts of cash with you. We’ve seen the news videos of people being robbed of their money whilst on their way to make a deposit. Granted, they’re typically small business owners, and the perps tailed them from their respective establishments. I on the other hand do not have a symbolic loudspeaker advertising how flushed with cash I am.

Seems like a proverbial rock and hard place for those business owners. Pay the 5% to credit card companies for the security of digital banking, or keep that profit margin and risk the (albeit small) chance of getting robbed on the way to the bank.

Anyways, once I get pass the nervousness of getting to the bank, then comes the awkwardness of working with the bank teller. Here is a large stack of 100 dollar bills, and no I am not drug dealer. (Honestly, what drug dealer actually uses establishment banks?) Another bout of nervousness comes when the teller feeds the bills through the counting machine. Sure hope there aren’t any fake bills in that stack!

After that comes the standard questions anytime a person is depositing over $10,000: am I currently employed, where, and what is my job title. By law, the bank have to report this information to the feds, though it’s more procedural than anything ominous. If you ever write a check larger than $10,000 to buy a car, the dealership also have to report that transaction. I’m told this is to catch money laundering. Obviously, you only have worry if your money comes from illicit activities…

As a person who almost never cary cash, I definitely rest easier knowing most of my money is deposited in banks (got to have some spare cash on hand for emergencies). It’s a sense of security, you know? That’s why I’m nervous anytime I have to make a deposit, fearing something can go wrong before that money is safely in an FDIC insured account.

Saturday morning cup

That first sip of coffee on a Saturday morning is the absolute best. It’s the weekend, and I have no concrete plans to be anywhere (certainly not work). That alone makes the coffee taste extra sweet. The rest of the day can wait; let me finish my cup of coffee first.

Mind you this coffee isn’t some fancy pour-over stuff that I’ve painstakingly measured-out to make. I don’t want to invest the time to grind fresh beans, and boil water to an exact temperature. The coffee I drink is simply K-Cup pods from San Francisco Bay Coffee (Costco has them in boxes). That’s right: it’s made on a Keurig machine, nice and easy. The coffee coming out of it tastes just fine.

Not to say I’m unable to savor a well-made “artisanal” cup. I simply don’t want to do it myself. If a gourmet cafe wants to open up at the nearby mall, that would be lovely (currently, there’s only a Peet’s and Starbucks). I definitely would walk the five minutes to have a freshly-made cup of coffee (of the non-franchise variety). Maybe sit down to read a book while I’m carefully sipping it down.

But no! Instead of a nice coffee shop, a bowling alley is coming to the mall. That does nothing to improve my Saturday mornings! Granted, we will for sure patronize that establishment on certain evenings. I haven’t gone bowling since Serra Bowl was still in business.

Alright, cup of coffee is finished. Time to get onto weekend business.

Does it still overheat?

Yesterday, I saw GoPro announcing the 12th version of their venerable action camera. The first thing that pops to my mind: “Do they still overheat and malfunction easily?” I’ve a friend who uses a GoPro for his video blogs, and that thing is effectively useless when he takes it to the heat of Southeast Asia. It’s hilarious and sad to see when he says in his videos that his GoPro died, necessitating a switch to the bigger Sony camera to finish filming.

As an owner of a GoPro HERO 7 myself (five years old, if you’re counting), I can sympathize with my friend’s predicament. Even on just warm days (read: not hot at all) the unit cannot last more than half an hour of continuous shooting. GoPros have been overheat-prone since they’ve combined the waterproofing-function into the same housing. In the early days, the GoPro unit and the waterproof housing was separate. Simple laws of physics: water not getting in also means air not getting in. No airflow means the processor runs hotter. Ergo, overheating.

The GoPro HERO 12 promises double the recording runtime of the 11, which sounds good on paper. I will need to see reviews that really put it under stress testing in hot environments. Otherwise, I am completely fine to continuing using my HERO 7.

Not that I would call myself a videographer - far from it. I’m first and only a photographer. Making videos is a whole other art in it of itself. The storage and processing horsepower needed for videography is exponentially more than just pictures. One minute of 4K60 video off an iPhone - not even that high a bit-rate compared to dedicated cameras - is about 400 megabytes. If you’re still counting, that space requirement adds up very quickly. Not to mention the hours of work just to make a video in the minutes. At this point, that’s not something I want to invest in.

Big spending season

It’s September already, and that means big spending days are coming ahead. The $250 annual fee to host this very website on Squarespace is coming due. So is the $1,100 six-months insurance premium on my BMW M2 Competition (I’m just glad it didn’t increase). On top of that, the $600 California license fee is due on the BMW. A surprise to nobody: it’s expensive to own a high-dollar sports car. At least maintenance is still free this year (also this month), the final one of three.

Traditionally, September is new iPhone month as well. As a person who’ve bought a new iPhone ever year since the iPhone 7, I’m staring at yet another thousand dollar outlay (spread over 24 months, whatever, all the same) on top of the aforementioned. But perhaps not? I’m kind of considering not making the upgrade this year.

The reason I’ve been buying new iPhones annually is because of the camera improvements on every new model. I’m sure the forthcoming iPhone 15 will be no different. However, this year I bought a Fujifilm X-T5 camera, and I’ve simply fallen in love with using that wonderful device. I’ve fallen back in love with photography, too. Now that I’ve unencumbered myself of any arduous editing, my desire to go out and shoot photos have increased dramatically.

What does this have to do with the iPhone? Well, I’ve come to dislike the photos taken with my iPhone 14 Pro. The iPhone’s over-sharpened, high-dynamic range look compares poorly to the warm and sultry tones of the Fujifilm. It’s a throwback to the early days of smartphone cameras: for the serious stuff, you want to take the photos with your “real” camera. Nowadays, I want to take photos with the X-T5 as much as possible.

It’s not the iPhone’s fault: computing power can only do some much against the laws of physics (much larger sensor in the X-T5, obviously). Apple will have to wow me plenty come next Tuesday to entice me enough to upgrade this year.

This is embarrassing

Today is one of the days I am glad my car has an automatic transmission. The day after running a 10K is not the time to be operating a car using both feet (as one must do in a vehicle with a manual gearbox). Not only did I run the 6.2 miles in the morning (freedom units!), but I also then walked another 13,000 steps in the afternoon, doing the usual photowalk in San Francisco’s Chinatown. My legs are a bit tired today, to say the least. Single-foot driving is definitely a luxury worth having. Long live the manual transmission, but these tired old legs prefer a car that can shift gears itself.

The day before the 10K run, I went to the Oakland Coliseum to watch baseball. The Los Angeles Angels was in town to face the Oakland Athletics, and that means the phenomenal Shohei Ohtani is also in town. While it’s sad he’s injured his elbow, and therefore won’t be pitching for (at least) the rest of the season, the two-way star is still serving duty with the bat as the Designated Hitter. Never one to pass up watching greatness in-person, we made the trip across the bay to Oakland.

And it was immediately clear that Ohtani is blockbuster in drawing a crowd. I’m fairly certain that half the people at the Coliseum was there to see him play. A sizable of number that continent was Japanese - some from here locally, some from Japan on travel. We were lined up at security behind a few Japanese travelers, and it was somewhat embarrassing to see them go through bag searches and metal detectors. Embarrassing for us Americans, and for America. Because back in their home country, security checks before entering a stadium is not a thing.

Crime is so low in Japan, and communal trust is so high, that people can freely go into sporting venues as if it’s a grocery store. I know this for a fact, because I’ve been to the Tokyo Dome to watch the Yomiuri Giants play. Meanwhile, here in the land of freedoms, we can’t even bring backpacks into venues now, because god forbid some maniac might sneak in something explosive. For a country that’s all about freedoms, the United States sure have a lot of movement restrictions. We ought to be embarrassed, honestly.

How often to wash?

I am thinking of a few weeks back when I was hanging out with a few classmates from improv class. The ice-breaking question (of which there were many) of “How often do you wash your bed sheets?” came to the table. I guess it’s a measure of how disgusting or clean a person is, depending on the answer.

My answer was once a month. That is caveated by the fact I shower before I go to sleep. That’s how I was raised. So much so that I cannot fathom going to bed without first showering before. How do you people do it? Those of you who showers in the morning, go through a whole day of work and grime, then climb into bed at night with only a change to pajamas. I would love to see a Venn diagram of people who shower in the morning, and people who wear shoes indoors.

It is because I always go to bed freshly cleaned that I can delay washing the bed sheets to once a month. If I were the type to not bathe before bed, I probably would switch the sheets out every few days. You know, just like they do in hotels. I always thought it was weird that hotels in America have a habit of changing out the bed sheets daily (Las Vegas sexy time notwithstanding). Then I realize it’s because of American culture of shower in the morning, not at night. Of course you have to change sheets more often if people go to bed all dirty and stuff from the day.

Other answers from my classmates: once a week, once every two weeks, and once every six months?! Granted, the last answer was from a guy who also showers before bed like I do. Still, six months of unchanging bed sheet is kind of… not that sanitary. We’re don’t live in college dorms anymore, you guys.

A side of smokiness

Looks like we (read: San Francisco) are finally getting a whiff of that smoke from the wildfires up in northern California and Oregon. The air quality this afternoon was surprisingly bad. A blanket of smokiness seemingly wafted over us unannounced. It was the hottest day of the week, too. Those of us without air-conditioning at the home have a difficult choice tonight: open the windows to cool down rooms, or keep them close because air quality is not great. Which one would you prefer? A warm room, or a cool one with bad air?

Here’s what I am doing: keep the window open, and let the Coway air purifier do its thing. The machine is definitely more active than usual this evening.

Selfishly, I hope the air quality will improve by the time this Sunday arrives. That is when I will be running a 10K in the annual Giants Race. I can safely speak for all runners that we would prefer to run in good clean air. This reminds me of two years ago when a coworker was training for the Santa Rosa Marathon. It was all going well until wildfires erupted locally, creating challenging air conditions. While the race was not canceled, the coworker decided to skip the event. There’s no glory in it: who knows what sort of harm could materialize in the long term.

Obviously, my situation is not as drastic. Perhaps a bit of smokiness will add to the pleasant ambiance at the Embarcadero on a Sunday morning. I greatly enjoy running down that route and back to Oracle Park to compete the 10K distance. This year, due to enough people signing up for the event, they’ve re-extended the route all the way to Pier 39. Last year they made us loop back at the Ferry Building instead, necessitating two laps (instead of the single one when the turn is at Pier 39). That really threw me off my game last year, so no excuses this time.