Blog

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

Respect the trades

I recently bought a 2019 Volkswagen Golf GTI. With it I was thinking about finally trying my hands at a vanity license plate. In my previous cars I’ve been too cheap to pay the $45 per year extra on top of the existing licensing fee for the privilege. Now that I’m as financially secure as I’ve ever been, the timing feels right.

That is, until I received the randomly assigned standard plates from the California DMV: 9VWB456. Doesn’t get more serendipitous than that, right? When the god of random chance assigned me plates with letters VW - historical short form for Volkswagen, there is no way I can get a vanity plate now. It’s too perfect.

I don’t believe in any gods, but I can see why people reaffirm their faith when stuff like this happens to them. I too would explain it with a higher power looking benevolently upon me.

Part of the process of buying a used vehicle, I took the GTI to get new tires. The existing tires cannot be trusted. The local America’s Tire has a window looking into the work bays at the waiting area. So the whole time I was watching the endless toil the grease monkeys (I use this term with all love and respect) are going through. A typical wheel plus tire is easily over 50 pounds, and these guys are heaving and huffing them onto waist-high machines. Good exercise if you’re in a gym, horrible if you have to keep doing that for an entire workday.

Never mind all the cancerous fumes from the tires and vechicular particles.

People have said that the trades are a good alternative to attending university. It can absolutely be, but one has to go in while understanding the tradeoffs. The trades are incredibly physically demanding. I don’t suppose it’s possible to be a car mechanic and coming out the other end without some sort of chronic pain. There’s good money to be made, but you’d better religiously save for a future that might not be so rosy health-wise.

As person who gets paid well to work in a sterile office cubicle, I would say a college education that parlays to a white-collar job should still be the number one option.

At the limit

It seems I am stuck at around 167 pounds. Conventional wisdom is that if you want to grow muscle and get stronger, you have to eat more. I’ve been eating more for this entire year, and yet I’ve been hovering at the 167 pounds mark for the past months. Still adding weight on the barbell, though, thankfully.

I guess that’s the problem with bulking: what got you to a certain weight level, won’t take you any further. My body has reached an equilibrium with my current food intake amount. To increase weight further, I must eat even more. And honestly, I am tapped out.

Because I don’t want to become the guy who is obsessed about eating. I have to remember this whole weightlifting thing is about health and longevity. It should not dominate my life. The goal isn’t to maximize muscle mass or step on a bodybuilding competition stage. To eat any more than I already am will become a chore. And it won’t be comfortable, too (all that digestion). Hard pass.

Getting fat - dirty bulk - is easy: I’d simply eat all the ice cream I could ever want, every single day. That’s not my goal, obviously. Clean bulking is incredibly difficult. To get enough calories by eating the right foods is not only time consuming (fiber and protein is not as caloric dense as a piece of cheesecake), but also expensive (cookies are cheap). There’s a limit, and I’ve personally reached mine.

At least until they figure out muscle protein synthesis in a pill. What Ozempic is to fat loss.

Basic table stakes

For a control-freak like me, it’s difficult to entrust tasks to somebody else. But that’s just it: we can’t avoid that in this life. It’s impossible to have all the expertise. At some point you’re going to have to pay someone to do a job. More expensive the service, higher the anxiety. It’s a leap of faith every time I task things out to a new-to-me establishment.

My requirements are not (or shouldn’t be) out of the ordinary: competence, attention to detail, and great communication. I want the job done correctly and comprehensively. I want inquiries to be answered in a timely manner, and be constantly updated during the process. Control-freaks hate to not know what’s going on. You have no idea how much I welcomed package delivery tracking in the early days of the Internet. To be able to know exactly where a box is and when it will arrive? That’s just good customer service.

Notice I did not mention price. I am willing to pay a premium for any place of business with the three requirements I mentioned. This is capitalistic America, after all.

I try to mirror the same three qualities in my line of work. Solving user computing issues is definitely a customer service job. So I take care to be the sort of support agent that I myself would want to bring problems to. Users get timely communication every step of the way. The work will be done within an appropriate timeframe. Laptops leave my hands in better shape and cleanliness than when I receive them.

We’ve all encountered bad customer service in our lives. I do not want to be a part of the problem. And when I find an establishment I can rely on, we are best friends for life. For example: I will patronize only this America’s Tire branch for as long as I live in this region.

Our civic duty

Today was the first time in a long time I actually got summoned to jury duty for San Francisco. I’m old enough to remember when there weren’t a $6 travel stipend. You can even get financial assistance if your employer doesn’t pay you for taking time off for jury service. It seems the City really wants to incentivize participation as much as possible.

Fortunate for me, I am an employee of California, so there’s absolutely zero issues with taking time off for public service. Because I’m already a public servant.

The Hall of Justice in San Francisco is a really old building. Though since it withstood the 1989 earthquake, citizens inside the building should be safe for the next “big one” that’s supposedly coming soon for the past two decades. I’m old enough to also remember when the jury reporting room had tiny CRT televisions showing a VHS copy of the narrated jury duty guide. It’s good to see it’s now large LCD units with an updated digital copy.

I wonder: the fact they make potential jurors sit through half an hour of seminar before anything fun begins, there’s no reason to show up on time, is there? The punctuality stickler like me can afford to be leisurely with the bus schedule when deciding on a departure time. A tacit accommodation for unforeseen commute issues? Again, the City really wants to maximize the number of people for jury selection.

More fortune for me: I didn’t even get selected to go into the court room. The clerk called the names of about 50 people, leaving about a dozen behind to be dismissed. I was amongst that dozen. Some of us even cheered as we heard the new that we’re done with this civic duty for at least one calendar year. I really wouldn't mind serving on a trial, though getting to the Hall of Justice, when I live on the other side of the city, is indeed a pain.

Until next year?

Shut it down!

You know what’s a surprisingly good cleaner? Baby wipes. If it’s gentle enough for sensitive baby skin, it’s gentle enough for your most prized delicate surfaces. If it’s good enough to clean poop, it’s good enough to clean whatever common messes you’ve got. Baby wipes are PH-balanced and far less harsh than the equivalent Lysol stuff. I keep a pack of them in the car for any spillage emergencies.

The United States government shut down just as my passport renewal was submitted for processing. Fortunate for me, I don’t need to travel anytime soon so the fine folks over at the State Department can take their sweet time. Even better: I received the new passport in the mail but a few days after the shutdown began. Another case of in before the lock, but in real life.

My sympathies to all people who are relying on a functional and operational federal government for their livelihood. It cannot be an easy pill to swallowing knowing the very people (read: the United States Congress) who are messing with your money are, by law, still getting paid during the shutdown. The utter lack of skin in the game should be infuriating for all Americans.

In fact, new rule: if a shutdown happens during a congressmen’s term, they should not be allowed to run for reelection. By shutting down the federal government, congress essentially caused a failed State. Unduly causing harm towards the citizenry over ego, and the inability to compromised, is inexcusable. School children have better diplomacy and discipline than our current members of Congress.

And don’t you dare jack yourself off to the American armed forces when your very action caused them to miss paychecks.

The never-ending fight

I experienced two firm reminders of our mortality today.

First was a return of a coworker from a month long absence. Turns out he’s got colon cancer. Good news for him, the doctors caught it early and the tumor was successfully removed. Bad news for him, he’s got six months of chemotherapy awaiting him. It’s going to be rough for sure. Imagine losing your appetite completely when what you really need the most is to eat.

The coworker is only in his early 50s. It’s a reminder for me as I near the 40 mark to keep consistent with yearly checkups. And of course, continue on with the healthy eating and weightlifting.

The second was assisting an elder faculty member changing the password to her Mac laptop. I’m sure we all have bad days, but bad enough to where you can’t find keys on the keyboard? Bad enough where you can’t even write down a password on a piece of paper? The lack of normal cognitive function was alarming to see, primarily in concern for the faculty member’s well-being. Those phishing scam callers are rubbing their hands in anticipation.

Self-awareness is difficult when it comes to recognizing your own decline. There will come a day when the amount of weight I put on the barbell will begin going backwards. I hope at that time I will be reasonable enough to not force the issue. In the meantime, the fight against entropy is never-ending - until it does.

That seems wasteful

As part of my daily language training, I watch plenty of Korean television. A big part of the world-popular Korean skin care routine seems to be the hydration masks. This one-time use piece of wet plastic you put over your face for about 15 minutes to add some bounce to the skin (I’m just guessing here.) Every time I see this on the tubes, however, I just think of how wasteful it is. Someone please ring up Greta Thunberg.

Think about it: if someone uses one pack per evening every single day, that’s a lot of plastic waste over the course of the year! Never mind the package the mask came in as well. Why is this okay when I have to suffer with paper straws here in San Francisco?

Wouldn’t it be quicker to simply spray the hydration onto the face directly? This is what I use. And the can is highly recyclable!

This isn’t a put-down on the whole of the Korean skin care empire. I too partake in a routine to keep my face from aging more than it already is, though I try to limit the amount of products. At some point the number of serums and toners and whatnot reach a point of diminishing returns. Besides, I don’t really want to spend 30 minutes after showering towards skincare. My showers are long enough…

My routine is simple: wash, product, then lotion. Wash is the same day and night. For daytime the product is vitamin C, then sunblock lotion. Night time the product is retinol, then regular lotion. It’s effective, and all of it can fit on one shelf in the medicine cabinet behind the sink mirror.