Blog

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

Respect the Thanksgiving

It’s November, and you know that means: it’s officially Christmas season. Well, not in my house! In this rented studio of mine, we have respect for the major holiday before Christmas. That’s right, I am talking about Thanksgiving. The Christmas tree (and decorations) goes up after the fourth Thursday of November, not before. There won’t be any Mariah Carey on the music rotation. And if I see Santa at the mall available for pictures - before Thanksgiving, I am punching him in the throat (tongue fully in cheek).

I get it: the Christmas atmosphere is pretty awesome. To get two months of it - from the beginning of November to end of the year - stretches out that specialness. I certainly like Christmas more than Thanksgiving. The latter doesn’t have songs to compete with the many famous tunes related to Christmas (shoutout the woman being horny for Santa). Aren’t Thanksgiving decorations simply autumnal-themed? Pumpkin spice latte can never compete with the evocative Starbucks holiday cups. (Or for the folks on the American political right: Christmas cups.)

You know what does respect Thanksgiving? Capitalism. The local Walmart may already have Christmas decorations up, but it hasn’t forgotten that it’s (day after) Thanksgiving that brings in the biggest revenue of the year. It seems like Black Friday has morphed from Friday after Thanksgiving to an entire month of sales and consumerism. These big box stores all have Black Friday sales way before the actual day. Take the Walmart example: if you join their membership program, you get first access to “Black Friday” sales on the second Wednesday of November (that’s tomorrow).

Black Friday is the best time to do your Christmas shopping. If you’re the frugal, non-procrastinating type.

Increasing feedback loop

A new bill in California going into effect next year will see fast food workers - in chains with at least 60 locations throughout the United States - earn at least a $20 minimum wage. That is great news for the workers, but bad news for patrons. McDonald’s and Chipotle already signaled plans to increase menu prices in response. In a time when eating a full meal at McDonald’s is already upwards of $10, prices getting even more expensive is kind of grating.

And it won’t be just McDonald’s and Chipotle, that’s for damn sure.

Because corporations aren’t going to cut into (often times fat) profits to pay its workers more. Shareholders simply wouldn’t have it: “What do you mean there’s less profits this quarter due to labor cost?!” That burden gets passed onto the customers. The UAW strike against the American big three automakers? The concessions made by the automakers will no doubt increase vehicle prices. Kaiser Permanente staff successfully bargaining for a raise? Insurance plans pricing is going up!

Isn’t it all kind of creating its own feedback loop? Labor costs go up, so prices increase in response. Then that makes people feel like their money doesn’t buy as much anymore. So they ask for wage increase at their place of employment (collectively bargained or otherwise). Of course, whatever that employer sells will have to go up in price (remember: got to protect the profits). Back and forth in symbiosis: workers get paid more, things get more expensive. An inflation arms race.

I am all for labor getting more money. I am a proud union member, super fortunate to enjoy collectively-bargained wage increases on a regular basis. That said, sometimes I wonder: what good is more pay, if everything else gets more expensive? It all cancels out! I’m not kidding: last year’s wage increase all went to paying for food, which has price inflated tremendously in recent years.

Can't touch me

Word on the street is that YouTube is cracking down heavily on ad blockers. Videos absolutely will not play if you don’t disable/whitelist. I intensely abhor watching YouTube with ads, especially when videos are less than five minutes. If I had to watch a 30-second commercial before a three-minute music video, I would just skip both entirely. More than any other streaming service, YouTube is where I spend most of my viewing time. A smooth experience with zero ad interruptions is kind of important (first world problems).

Over the years, browser ad-blocking extensions have done well to keep the YouTube ad machine in check. However, even before this latest crackdown, YouTube has been doing whack-a-mole on the extensions for a long time. It would work fine one day, then the next you’re suddenly seeing ads on videos, wondering why your ad blocker isn’t doing its magic. The solution is to switch to another one, and if that also gets whacked, then to another. Perhaps you’ll end up back to the ad blocker you started with, because it's received an update to combat the YouTube shenanigans.

Frustrated by this, I picked the obvious solution to the problem: pay for YouTube Premium. I bet that’s what YouTube hopes to achieve with its latest crusade against ad blockers: get more folks to pay up. At a not cheap $14 per month, I get the full YouTube experience completely ad-free. Best of all, I can watch videos on my Apple TV’s built-in YouTube app, also without ads. It’s not possible to run an ad-blocker on TV apps, so prior to subscribing, I avoided watching YouTube on my much larger (than a laptop screen) LG TV. These days, a majority of my YouTube time is on the TV.

Crack down on ad blockers all you want, Google. I am chilling over here. The people complaining about it are sitting in the cheap(skate) seats.

Acne finally

During my annual checkup last week, I finally asked my doctor to prescribe a remedy for my acne. I am right smack in the middle of my 30s, and I am still breaking out like a pubescent teenager. It’s been this way since I actually was a pubescent teenager. It’s never been serious enough (no pepperoni pizza here, though still quite oily) for me to consider asking for the big guns. It’s just been a steady regiment of salicylic acid-infused face wash and benzoyl peroxide cream, hoping it will all go away as I age.

Obviously that has not happened. Constant mask use during the pandemic exacerbated the problem. The mask material interacted horribly with my oily face. Changing one out every few hours did not do much to stem the tide (my apologies, landfills). Even with the pandemic over, and far less frequent mask use, the acne did not recede at all. Which is why I finally talked with my doctor about an oral medication. Decades of topical remedy has accomplished very little.

I think most people are familiar with Accutane: the hammer against acne. It’s the final boss, for when everything else has failed. My doctor did not think Accutane is necessary. Apparently there’s a similar drug to take before exercising the Accutane trump card. It makes sense, because the side effects of Accutane is kind of notorious: constantly dry skin, and potential depression.

The doctor and I are hoping to avoid that by having me take doxycycline, a twice daily oral tablet for three months. It’ll be some time before I can say for sure whether this medicine is effective or not. What I can say is that it’s certainly working on something. One of the warnings on the bottle is users may become hugely sensitive to sunlight. I can directly confirm that is correct. Good thing I am starting this regiment during the autumn/winter months!

Continuous glucose monitoring

Last week I wrote that I scored a 5.7 on the HbA1c test during my annual checkup. That number is just into the range of pre-diabetic, which is rather alarming. With no other levers to pull - my sleep and exercise regiment is on point, the only lifestyle choice I am making is to limit carbohydrates. More so than I’ve already been doing for over a decade. It’s kind of difficult to cut carbs when I hardly eat any sugary products to begin with. I would be cutting into the staple carbs I eat with meals: rice, bread, noodles, fruits, et cetera.

Ideally, I want to be able to see which of those carbs are spiking my blood glucose level. It’s not prudent to cut out carbs completely, because I need some of it for sustenance, especially after workouts. Therefore it would be helpful to see if white rice spikes blood glucose, but a slices of wheat bread does not (or vice versa, I don’t really care). I will then only eat the carbs that do not elevate blood glucose.

Turns out there are devices called continuous glucose monitors (CGM). Exactly as the name suggests, it constantly measures a person’s blood glucose level (every five minutes). An app on a smartphone collates the data, and users can see in real time if it’s normal, elevated, or too low. Originally developed for type one diabetics - they need to check their blood glucose constantly, CGM devices are now broadly used by people (diabetic or otherwise) wanting a clear picture of their glucose profile.

I asked my doctor to prescribe one to me, and she agreed. But there’s a problem: because I am not a type one diabetic - or any form of diabetic, Kaiser Permanente insurance does not cover the CGM. I will have to pay out of pocket (in the American healthcare system, there is no money in prevention). The primary cost driver are the patches that sticks to the skin (for measuring). Those need to be replaced every 10 - 14 days (depending on the brand).

It’s a necessary expense. I need to see if my blood glucose level is indeed higher than what is considered normal. No better method than measuring (kind of) at the source. Sometimes HbA1c results can skew higher by other factors, so I want to check if that 5.7 might be a false positive (if you will). More to come!

It's nap time

You know things are slow at work when a coworker falls sleep while watching a YouTube video. Granted, the snoozing is probably not due to boredom. Rather it’s likely insufficient sleep. Sure we tend to yawn when we’re bored, but then we’d go find something to un-bore ourselves. Nobody goes, “You know what, I am bored. Let me go take a nap!”

Indeed, the workday does go by quicker when there is more stuff to do. This workload ebb and flow comes with the territory of one, working at a university, and two, being on the service side. People call us when shit goes bad, so if we’re busy all the time, then something is horribly wrong. We are smack dab in the middle of the Fall semester, so not a lot of things are going wrong at the moment (knock on wood).

The weather in San Francisco has finally turned cooler, a real autumnal feeling. That coziness probably adds to the drowsiness factor (I definitely sleep better during the winter months). The coworker did just return from a heavy lunch, too, so all the pressures of wanting-to-take-a-nap were working against him staying awake. Sadly, a public university is not the Google campus: there aren’t any nap pods around here.

As a purveyor of consistent, quality sleep, you won’t find me doing the head-nod into slumber whilst doing a sedentary activity. I haven’t done something like that since my college days of falling asleep in class. For obvious reasons, my sleep schedule was all over the place back then. No, professor, your lecture isn’t boring! I’m simply running on fumes.

These days, I no longer sacrifice sleep to the altar of continue playing a video game, or keep watching a TV series. I purposely leave social gatherings early in order to preserve the amount of sleep I get. It is too important for brain health to forsake.

Sugar how you get so high

Yesterday was the first time in my life I got the flu vaccine. And let me tell you, I am feeling like crap today. Make sense, right? The vaccine is effectively introducing a small strain of the influenza into my body. Of course it is going to react as if I actually got flu. At least the symptoms aren’t truly on the levels of a real one. The last time I got it - more than a decade ago - I was bed-ridden for two days.

It was a smart decision to not get the latest COVID vaccine at the same time. Despite what the Travis Kelce commercial says, asking your body to fight two invading viruses concurrently might not be the best idea. My coworker got both the flu and COVID vaccine at the same time, and he was down in the energy dumps for two days. I’ve a history of symptomatic reaction to the COVID vaccine (the second Pfizer shot was killer), so I am delaying what would be the fifth shot to a later date.

I also got the annual blood test yesterday: the usual cholesterol and glucose measurements. Turns out I am pre-diabetic? My HbA1c is 5.7, which is barely into the pre-diabetic range. I am kind of dumbfounded at this. I’m rather religious with proper diet, sleep, and exercise - and have been since my early 20s. I don’t drink or smoke, and I avoid added sugar whenever possible. My weight is completely normal for my height. How the French am I pre-diabetic?

Since I already get eight hours of sleep per night consistently, and exercise multiple times per week, any adjustments to be made will not be in those two areas. It will have to be diet. Moving forward I will cut back on carbs as much as possible, and eat more vegetables and fibrous foods. Let’s check back in six months when I get the next blood test.