Blog

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

Punk the game

It looks like a ton of people are taking advantage of buying a new electric car before the $7,500 Federal tax rebate expires at the end of September. I’ve seen plenty of brand new Tesla Model Ys running around. I would absolutely buy one too, if I didn’t already have a car that I seldomly drive. (I am never selling the M2.) Don’t need another one, that’s for sure.

But if I were in the market for a car, Tesla is the only choice from someone like me who despises hassle. Tesla’s direct sale model, with no haggle pricing and ease of purchasing (do the entire transaction on your phone) is such a gamer changer. Who the heck wants to ever step foot inside a dealership to beg some asshole to please take your money? In a capitalist world where lots of middlemen exist simply to grab a piece of the cake and add zero value, car salesmen are right at the top.

Though I don’t blame them for their ill reputation. It’s the game that’s the problem. The auto dealership sales method creates an adversarial relationship between the buyer and salesperson. Buyer wants to pay as little as possible, and the salesperson wants to sell as pricey as possible (the sales commission alone certainly incentivizes it). Add to that mixture auto manufacturers playing inventory games (looking at you, Toyota), and it’s an instant recipe for bruised egos and hurt feelings.

For those of us outside of 1% earners, car buying through dealerships is just not an enjoyable task. That in it of itself is enough for me to keep the M2 forever. I don’t want to go through the hassle of selling that and buying another car. If the game sucks, we don’t have to play it.

Freeze that meat!

I can confirm that chicken meat absolutely keeps when frozen. No problem at all. Go to your local Costco and buy it in bulk.

Of course you probably didn't need me to confirm this. There’s nothing wrong with frozen meat! Did you know that fresh tuna comes into the docks frozen? I saw frozen blocks of bluefin tuna ready for sale at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo.

Today I thawed chicken thighs that were bought 10 months ago out of the freezer. Eight minutes on each side in a fry pan, and the chicken did not taste any different from the day I bought it. (From a Costco, of course.) Good thing chicken is produced here in the States, because you know damn well if it were imported, our current President will find a way to put a tariff on it.

And if he were going to, I’d be first in line at Costco to buy a whole bulk for freezing. And if I were to ever afford a house with a garage, there will for sure be a chest freezer unit in there for long term meat storage. Maybe a few guns and bullet boxes too (in the garage, not the freezer), if I were to dive deep into the doomsday prepping rabbit hole.

In these inflationary times, I’m afraid it’s chicken and pork only as the source of meat protein. We are priced out of beef and fish. Bluefin tuna sushi is delicious, no doubt, but having money in the wallet is also delicious.

Pork is not a consolation! You can never go wrong with pan-fried pork belly, Korean BBQ style. My only problem is that it creates a bloody mess with all the smoke and splatter. When you live in a tiny studio apartment like I do, that stuff lingers for quite bit afterwards. A guy can only dream of a properly separated kitchen.

Back it up

This is your periodic reminder to please have an up-to-date backup of your data!

The worst part of my job is informing users there’s total data loss. The user can be working on a manuscript on their laptop. An inadvertent hand suddenly knocks over an uncovered drinks bottle. The entirety of the fluids splash onto the keyboard deck. The screen goes blank. The laptop is unresponsive.

The user brings the laptop to us in desperation. Further bad news: it’s a Mac. Apple locks down their computers so securely that if it doesn’t turn on, there’s practically no way to retrieve the data. At least with a typical Windows PC, you can crack it open and pull the hard-drive. Not so with the mighty Macintosh: the drive is soldered on, and locked behind an encryption chip.

There’s nothing to do but wait for the Mac laptop to dry, and pray that it just might spring back to life. Anything short of that, the data is gone. Because of the Mac’s locked-down nature, data recovery services can’t crack it. (Besides, how secure is it if they can?)

But what about the Apple Store? They simply don’t care about user data. Before they perform any repair - under warranty or otherwise - users have to sign an acknowledgment the hard-drive might be wiped. Even if the repair has nothing to do with the internals!

Folks: have a back up, and keep it up to date. The despair of losing the manuscript you’ve worked many months (or years) on is inconceivable.

It's good enough

It is new iPhone season, and this year I am not upgrading. Even though I can easily afford to, my days of getting the latest iPhone model every year is over. The proper adult thing to do is to check if it serves a purpose beyond the glow of a shiny new toy (it’s a lovely glow for sure). Is there a critical fault with my current phone that warrants a change?

It helps the answer quite a bit when the current phone is a still relatively new iPhone 16 Pro. It’s barely one year old at this point, and the internal systems remain zippy and responsive. Battery life is stellar, and it’s got AppleCare+ warranty for another year. Again, no particular reason to switch.

However, Apple knows how to tug at this hobbyist photographer’s heart. The new iPhone 17 Pro has an upgraded telephoto lens. My style of shooting leans towards the longer focal lengths. The typical 24mm to 35mm range (what the wide lens would be on most smartphones) creates incredibly boring photos. The compression and separation you get from telephoto can tell much better story.

I must resist! As much as I would love the new 48 megapixel telephoto lens on the iPhone 17, I have to be content with the lowly 12 megapixel shooter on my iPhone 16. There’s got to be a “good enough” at some point, right? Innovation is great and all, but certain things can simply be allowed to withstand the test of time.

There’s been newer monitors that are better, brighter, more colorful than the Pro Display XDR I bought back in 2020. However, I’ve no desire to replace it because the mini LED technology in the XDR is good enough. Partly also because I paid $5,000 for it…

I like fries

I remember the first time I had French fries as kid. It was of course at a McDonald’s. I was hooked to that crunchy and salty goodness ever since . If I’m ever heinous enough to be on death row, or unlucky enough to catch a rapidly deteriorating terminal illness, my last meal would definitely be French fries, with a side of fried chicken.

For heath reasons I seldom indulge in the French delicacy. A few times per years is the maximum. Nowadays also for price reasons, I am skipping the fries when I buy burgers. $5 for a scoop of fries is downright robbery when it’s just a bunch of potatoes and saturated fat. The margins on that has got to be up there with soft drinks.

Good news is, modern technology has made making fries at home easy and almost as good as the outside stuff. An air fryer is all you need, plus the requisite multi-pound bag of frozen pre-cut fries from Costco. Entirely self-contained, no oil splatters. Admittedly this still cannot beat the absolute freshest batch right out of a proper oil vat, but it’s pretty damn close. For the price difference, it’s unbeatable.

The trick then is to buy only the burger from McDonald’s, or the chicken tenders from Wingstop, as takeout. Have the air fryer at home set on a timer, and you’ve now got fresh fries to go along with soon as you arrive. Even better: I can have fries anytime I want without leaving the house. The kid me would have fainted at the thought of such joyous reality.

Healthy can be cheap

The greatest-of-all-time (GOAT) in terms of comfort food for me has got to be fried eggs. Pair it with some rice and roaster seaweed, and you’ve got the perfect poverty peasant meal. I am lucky to have income above the poverty line, and that combination still remains a constant meal choice for me. Love it.

Whoever said it is expensive to eat healthy is a lie. Rice, beans, and lentils are exceedingly cheap per pound. And it’s got your main three macros covered: carbohydrates, protein, and fiber. Beg at a street corner for a few hours, and you might be able to add an egg or two to that mix.

What does get expensive is variety. No one wants to eat rice, beans, and lentils for three meals a day, every single day, three sixty five days a year. A variety of healthy foods can get pricey. Especially if you’re like me and prefer the nicer kinds of fish (raw salmon is the GOAT), and the most prime USDA cuts of beef. Sweet potatoes are definitely pricer than lentils.

If I were indeed poorest of poor, I’d have no issues eating the same cheap thing for all the meals. Blaming poor health outcomes on the high cost of groceries completely forsakes the agency of a person. Even peasants have choices they can make. Of course it’s tough to eat without variety. I hate it too! But that’s the sacrifice one has to make for the sake of health.

The discipline to eat monotonously also comes in handy whenever I need to enact some austerity into my spending. That’s why eggs, rice, and seaweed will never go out of style for me.

Path of least insanity

San Francisco is experiencing its typical Summer weather, right as we are heading into the beginning of autumn. It’s been warm and humid for the past two weeks, and the next two weeks look to be much of the same. So far, so tropical. (Our family immigrated from southeast China to move away from this sort of weather!)

I now greatly regret weightlifting and getting buff because in this muggy weather, there’s too much chafing going on. The inner thighs rubbing on each other. The latissimus dorsi interacting constantly with the triceps. (Very not humble bragging.) The perfect body shape for this weather is an emaciated 130 pounds soaking wet.

BART - our area’s subway system - having a complete system shutdown last Friday morning is a fond reminder how fortunate I am to not have a commute. It remains a superpower to live within a 10 minute walk to work. That is, until they need someone in an emergency. My proximity at that time is not an advantage if I want to skip out of assisting.

To be at the whims of public transportation operating normally - can’t be me! This isn’t Japan where trains and buses are frequent and always on time. And if any one is ever late by one second, the driver has to commute seppuku as penance (very much joking, if you cannot tell.) Here in America, schedules are merely suggestions. There’s no telling when the next train will come, should you just missed one.

No wonder people will chose commuting by personal vehicle if the option exists. Even if you were stuck in traffic, at least you are in the private airspace of your own car. No bad smells, no rowdy passengers. It’s the path of least insanity.