Blog

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

I should have drove

Yesterday evening I got invited to attend a Giants game at Oracle Park. For once, I decided to take public transport instead of driving. I live two blocks from a light-rail stop, on a line - with a brief transfer at a later station - that takes me directly to the ballpark. It doesn’t get any more door-to-door service than this. It sure beats getting stuck in rush hour traffic driving, only to park many blocks away from Oracle Park (because free parking), necessitating a lengthy walk.

That is, if the light-rail is actually functioning normally. I got on the first train yesterday, only to encounter a completely shut tunnel system. No trains of any line were able to go underground towards downtown. We had to instead get off at West Portal - just before the tunnel - and take a surface shuttle bus. It doesn’t take a genius to realize a street bus is far slower than an underground metro train that’s unimpeded by car traffic. Worse, the bus shuttle got me only to downtown - it didn’t extended beyond towards the ballpark. So I walked the rest of the way.

A trip that at most should have taken about an hour, instead took two. And you wonder why public transportation ridership hasn’t recovered fully from the pandemic. It’s a really bad look to have a major section of the light-rail system closed off during evening rush hour. Folks have already suffered the nine hours at work already! Adding to their already lengthy commute time is kind of unconscionable. It’s a bad deal for the people with responsibilities waiting at home. I at least had the luxury of not being in a hurry (I’ve been to enough baseball games to not care about missing the opening few innings).

Silver lining to everything: it was an enjoyable walk along the Embarcadero towards Oracle Park. The summer evening sun provided a great ambiance. Crisp air and excellent views will make anyone forget about the unscheduled delay.

Let's get after it

I am definitely not a spring chicken anymore. Three nights ago - due to assisting a friend with Taylor Swift concert logistics - I got only about four hours of not-so-great sleep. Three days later, I am still feeling the effects, even though on subsequent nights I got the proper eight hours of slumber. Imagine had I pulled an all-nighter: I would be a wreck the entire week following.

It doesn’t help that I am returning to work today, after taking the prior week off. It was a rather eventful vacation. Barbenheimer happened: I saw both Barbie and Oppenheimer in theatres. Later on in the week I also saw the latest Mission Impossible movie (the seventh(?) film in the franchise). That is also a film I recommend seeing. Tom Cruise is still at the height of his powers; Dead Reckoning Part 1 is the perfect, prototypical action movie for the summer.

I’d plan to finally do a write-up of my trip to Angel Island a few months back, but my MacBook Pro took a complete dump midway through the week. $850 dollars lighter wallet later, as of this writing the MacBook Pro is restored and back to as it were before it died unceremoniously. This is a friendly reminder to make sure you keep solid, up-to-date backups of your computers. Other than the financial hit, it was otherwise not stressful at all that my laptop went down: I knew I have everything backed-up safely.

The aforementioned excursion to pickup my friend from the Taylor Swift concert at 2:00AM was part of a weekend dog-sit for that same friend. She had a party to attend to down in San Diego. I stayed at her place for two days to watch our dog. I particularly enjoyed the morning walks. Nothing will force you out of bed quite like being responsible for a pet. As an early-riser anyways, it was lovely and peaceful taking our dog out for a walk before anyone else have even woken up.

I for sure miss doing that this morning.

Took the midnight train

San Francisco Bay Area folks: did you attend the Taylor Swift concert at Levi’s Stadium? I sure didn’t, because who can afford the thousand dollar get-in price on the secondary market? You’d have a better chance of hitting the billion dollar Mega Millions jackpot than acquiring tickets through official channels.

Nevertheless, a friend of my friend did manage to score Taylor Swift tickets, and my friend got invited to join. The logistics of getting down to Santa Clara from San Francisco is, in a word, challenging. Nobody in their right mind would drive, unless you plan to get there super early. So public transport it is. My friend rode the BART train to Milpitas, then took the local VTA light rail to the stadium. So far, so straight forward.

Leaving the stadium, however, was apparently quite the nightmare. The concert did not end until 11:40 PM (Taylor really gives your money’s worth: a three hour plus jam-packed show). VTA trains were running after hour to ferry folks to either the Milpitas BART station, or the Mountain View Caltrain station. BART was not an option for my friend, as the special late-night train did not go all the way to San Francisco. So Caltrain it is.

Unfortunately, there’s but one special train heading northbound to San Francisco. It was scheduled to depart 75 minutes after the concert ends. That proved to be hugely optimistic. Due to the sheer number of people, my friend didn’t even get to Mountain View station until 1:45 AM - two hours after the show ended. At that point, the lone train was still there, looking less than half full, awaiting more passengers before departed. Our guess is it wouldn’t depart until after 3:00 PM at the earliest.

Lucky for my friend, I was there at the station to pick her up. What the heck did people do before the invention of cellphones? The peace of mind afforded by modern communication is really appreciated in situations like this.

Emergency cash

It was an unceremoniously start to this week of vacation. The latest macOS update - 13.5 - released on Tuesday, and it utterly broke my M1 MacBook Pro. You know the part where an update asks you to restart the device? Well, my Mac laptop did not restart, could not be restarted, and generally become unresponsive. The sucky thing about modern Macs is that there aren’t much buttons to press, no secret reset handshakes. Just about the only thing to do is hold down the power button for 10 seconds, and then press it again. That’s all an end user can do if their MacBook Pro is dead.

Well, not exactly all. If you happen to have another Mac lying around (few seldom do, I would reckon), you can connect that to the “dead” Mac via the included USB-C charging cable. Download and fire up Apple Configurator, press a sequence of buttons on the dead Mac to put it in DFU mode, then maybe there’s a chance the unresponsive computer can be revived.

Fortunately for me, I do have another MacBook Air lying around. Unfortunately for me, reviving the MacBook Pro using Apple Configurator did not work. The macOS 13.5 release so completely broke the machine it necessitated a visit to the local Apple Store. Good thing I live two blocks from one.

Bad thing my nearly two-years old MacBook Pro is out of warranty. When a Mac laptop is dead like it is, it usually means a logic board (otherwise known as the motherboard on PCs) replacement. For a 16-inch MacBook Pro, that means a flat charge of $850. Not an insignificant sum, though for a laptop that costs $3,600 new (I had opted for some upgrades), it’s not really that bad. What sucks is that I am now out the $850, all because of a faulty OS update. Negotiation with the head Genius Bar person did not net me any monetary sympathies, just some personal ones.

Funny enough, the same person asked me if I needed a moment to think about the $850 charge. While I recognize it’s a hefty sum for some people, ultimately I need a working computer! Unceremoniously forking over that money hurts, sure, but it’s not going to wreck my finances one bit. I mean, you’re able to come up with $850 easily in an emergency, right?

Barbenheimer Part 2

Let’s begin by saying how lucky we are here in San Francisco to have a proper IMAX theatre. One of about 40 in the whole world capable of showing Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer in the way it was shot: IMAX 70mm film. The image quality is beyond anything digital is currently capable of, and the vastness of the multi-story screen utterly fills the peripheral vision. It is indeed motion picture film at its qualitative zenith. Kudos to Nolan for being just about the only director to fully use this fantastic medium.

This is why whenever there’s a new Nolan release, I make it a point to go see it in IMAX. Sadly, didn’t do that for Tenet, because of the bloody pandemic.

You’re going to be disappointed if you’re coming into Oppenheimer looking for a Michael Bay-style romp about the atomic bomb explosion. This movie is a pure character piece on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer vis a vis the invention of nuclear weaponry. And as a character piece, Oppenheimer is superbly done. The audience is with the titular character practically the entire time. The story structure can be a bit Nolan-esque (read: it jumps around), but the whole story gathers itself nicely once the picture is complete.

Of course, a character piece can only be done with brilliant acting. There’s superb acting talent in Oppenheimer, and superb acting all around. The highlights are, expectedly, Cillian Murphy (J. Robert Oppenheimer), Robert Downey Jr (Lewis Strauss). and Emily Blunt (Kitty Oppenheimer).

I really like this movie, and will definitely see it again - but with captions. There's so much detail in the dialogue, but somehow Nolan refuses to mix the speaking parts louder. It's been an ongoing thing since The Dark Knight Rises. Other than that, the sound design/score is magnificent. Particularly during the trinity test sequence: as the atomic bomb explodes, all manner of sound was cut. After a bit, the loudest bang you can think of pops shockingly in. This perfectly mimicks how physics work: you see before you hear, because light travels faster than sound.

For a film that’s three hours long, there needs to be an intermission in the middle for people to take a breather and a bathroom break. For Oppenheimer, the perfect place to break is exactly where you think it is.

Barbenheimer Part 1

Alright, it’s the movie double-feature of the summer: Barbie and Oppenheimer. I am seeing the latter in proper IMAX 70MM film this coming Monday. Barbie I saw yesterday evening, and here are my thoughts. (Spoilers, obviously.)

I think it’s a brilliant move to have an auteur filmmaker like Greta Gerwig to helm this film. Barbie is refreshingly layered in its expected commentary on the legendary doll brand. We did not get a cookie-cutter hero’s journey, which is a surprise given how safe studios play it these days with franchises. Bold move by Mattel to hand the reins over completely to a director’s singular vision. It’s partly why Barbie has such a buzz around it (and Oppenheimer, as well): audiences know they are in for something different, something unique.

Historically, was Ken always such a needy nice guy? The Barbie movie played on the theme that Ken is completely dependent on Barbie. His happiness is totally hinged on her whims and approval. Who knew the blonde-haired buff guy on the beach is such a clingy nice guy? Whose every action to seek approval from Barbie only erects the barrier further higher.

So then Ken fully embraced the “men’s right movement”, the pendulum swinging completely the other way. The patriarchy looks super attractive when it seems to solve all the resentment Ken has towards Barbie. No need to seek approval when the world view is women are the enemy, and only the docile, placate-able ones should be let in. What a pleasant surprise to see this particular commentary on masculinity in Barbie. And we thought it was going to be just about feminism vis a vis the titular doll.

Ultimately, Ken arrives at a happy medium between being a doormat and Andrew Tate. Barbie needs him to be his own person, to have his own life and dreams. That is what will make him attractive and trustworthy. She also admits her part in their relationship, how she took him for granted.

Barbie gets a recommendation from me. Onwards to Barbenheimer Part 2!

Taking night class again

You guys remember taking night classes back in college? Those three hour slogs that starts at 7:00 PM. You’re fighting the urge to fall asleep the entire time. Did we really learn/retain anything pertinent from those courses? It was mostly just for the credit, and the privilege of only having one class per week.

It would seem I want to relive that experience as an adult in his mid 30s. I signed up for a six week foundational improv class at BATS School of Improv. Right here in San Francisco at the Fort Mason Center. During the six week we meet every Tuesday from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Indeed, it is just like the night classes back in university. Except this time, I voluntarily signed up for it, paying a not unsubstantial $350 for the 30 hours of training.

Why an improv class? Because peer pressure. My good friend took an introductory sampler class - at the same company - and was hooked enough to continue on to the proper stuff. Drawing from a sense of duty, I decided to accompany my friend on this new adventure. On the other hand, I think improv will greatly help me to be more social and getting out of my head. The whole point of improv is no preparation: it’s whatever coming out of your mind at that exact moment. You have to be flexible, intuitive, and most important: not give a crap about what other people think.

The moment you think you have something, the situation can change on a dime. It’s easy to then get caught thinking for something suitably appropriate, instead of simply going with the first thing that pops into mind. Improv is really useful for the self-conscious of us to get out of our heads. The remaining five class periods are going to be fun.