Blog

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

Fine, I'll do it myself

At the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron, the post-credit scene shows the villain Thanos putting on the Infinity Gauntlet, exclaiming, “Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

Thanos understands that if you want something done correctly, you indeed do it yourself. I would also add that it’s the same if you want something done timely. Those of us on the control-freak side of the spectrum can’t bear the uncertainty of waiting for someone else to perform what you want done.

It’s no big deal of course if the stakes are low. The horse I’m on isn’t high enough for me to look down upon the Starbucks barista making me a cappuccino. There’s no worry whatsoever the job won’t be done quickly and correctly. Unless I’ve pissed off said barista during the initial interaction. Then I should expect something unsavory added to the mix.

When the stakes are higher, so is anxiety that stems from the uncertainty. I recently purchased a used car. It comes with a limited 100 day warranty, so of course I took it to the dealership service to check things over. The inspection report returned some items that need addressing. No big deal, right? Surely the dealership can coordinate with the warranty company to get it all sorted.

Except it’s been an entire work week, and there’s yet to be any movement since the inspection. I’m not placing blame on either party here. It’s taking a long time, nothing I can do about it. Except - to do the work myself. The warranty items were cheap enough and easy enough to DIY that I went ahead and ordered the replacement parts. Over this very weekend I swapped them in. Now I can rest easy knowing the problem is fixed, and I can move on to the next.

Endless anxiety

Back in the olden days when I used to build by own PCs, I can kiss my sleep goodbye if anything inevitably goes wrong. I simply cannot soundly sleep until a problem is fixed. The graphic card is giving out errors? It’s got to be remedied, even though it’s currently 2:00 AM in the morning, and the end is still not in sight. This is why I exclusively use Apple Macintosh computers now: reliable, with a warranty.

Imagine me owning a home, and the washer goes out. It’s too bad there isn’t a 24-hours Home Depot!

This inability to calm down until a problem is solved can’t just be idiosyncratic to me, right? I don’t know how to explain it. Impatience is the wrong word for it. It’s definitely anxiety, but for what purpose? Life is but an endless stream of problems - good or bad - for us to solve. The fallacy is that I seem to think there is a some happy equilibrium to reach, that once reached, everything will be okay forevermore. That’s of course not how it works.

It’s the wrecking my sleep that I find alarming. No amount of Buddhist breathing methods can calm my mind down for slumber. (Medical options, perhaps?) It doesn’t like open-ended questions. I recently sold my BMW for another car - a very simple and easy transaction. Even that, I had difficultly sleeping over the two days when the transaction was ongoing. I cannot relax until the thing is finished.

The new-to-me car arrived with some minor things to be fixed. (That’s typical when you buy a used car.) Cue up another bout of anxiety and sleeplessness! I fully understand that parts and shop time literally cannot happen overnight, and yet the anxiety over an “unfinished” car remains ever present. I just want to get it done and move on - but to what? Like I said earlier, life will only keep throwing problems at you to fix.

Am I then destined to suffer from anxiety continuously? On the flip side, isn’t it good to have things that make you want to get out of bed to solve? Tricky one, this.

This is the Waymo 2

Yesterday I gushed about how autonomous Waymo cars is the way to go for ride-hailing. The only downside at the moment is the cost, and that the service is only available in limited cities. But time alone will solve those problems. Waymo - and other autonomous taxis - will continue to get better and cheaper. Once it reaches service and cost parity with UBER and Lyft, it’s game over.

The existential crisis of A.I. eliminating jobs in a massively hurtful scale remains to be seen. However, the example of robots replacing ride-share drivers is not an exaggeration. There’s zero reason to pay a live person to drive the car if the robots can do it for the same price, if not cheaper. In the near future I can see the taxi driver profession - whether it’s a classic yellow cab or a private car - get completely eliminated.

And if a car can drive itself, then it’s just a matter of scaling (says the guy who simply types and don’t hold any engineering degree) up towards larger vehicles. Bus drivers: your days are numbered as well! (Tongue somewhat in cheek.)

I think it can be a legit concern if A.I. obviates entire categories of jobs in rapid fashion. A bunch of people losing their jobs overnight is not a good thing. Pivoting towards another profession takes time and effort. In the meantime you’re going to have downstream consequences such as credit defaults and decreased tax revenue.

If autonomous taxi is destined to replace the driver, the current slow rollout of the technology will provide ample warning and time for people to adjust. UBER drivers operating in cities with Waymo might start to see a decreasing revenue trend-line as Waymo grab an increasing market share. At some point the math will no longer math, and they will have to go do something else. That’s a heck of a more palatable option than an abrupt termination.

This is the Waymo

Last week I took a Waymo - an autonomous taxi - for the very first time. And I have to say: goodbye, Uber and Lyft. If a driverless taxi is available, I am picking that over the other options.

Of course, the elephant in the room is costs. But that’s only going to get cheaper as the technology matures and the autonomous cars proliferate. There aren’t drivers operating the cars who are going to (rightly) demand periodic incoming increases. I quite like that I did not have to tip the robot. The price shown on the app is truly the price to be paid. It’s magical.

The only minor flaw I’ve seen riding a Waymo is that the car follows the speed limit right to the signage number. You and I both know that human drivers go above the speed limit all the time, in a very safe manner of course. At least there isn’t road rage towards the Waymo going the speed limit: what’s the point in getting mad at a robot? Unless you’re truly in a hurry, Waymo obeying the speed limits religiously is not a problem.

Other than that, the autonomous taxi behaves much like the human driver. It will speed through a yellow turning into a red. It will inch forward into the intersection on a left turn, even though I’m pretty sure the rule says you’re not suppose to. It will make that left turn right after the walking pedestrians have left behind a big enough space, even though the rules states you’re suppose to wait until pedestrians have finished crossing.

The best feature of a Waymo is of course the lack of anybody else in the car. No smells, no conversations, no stranger danger. Other than cost (for now), why would anyone choose a human taxi over the robot? I am team Waymo all the way from now on, where applicable.

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.