Blog

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

Motor oil madness

I drove by a gas station last evening and saw that a gallon of premium 91 octane was over the $7 mark. A gallon of diesel was nearly $9! That is quite high, even for California. No wonder my coworker has stopped driving to work and instead is taking public transit. That extra half hour of commute time is worth the trade-off at the gas pump.

Meanwhile, my 10 minute walk of a commute remains unchanged.

Nevertheless, petroleum isn’t just purely at gas stations. It permeates and affects many things we buy and consume. The ongoing war with Iran is putting a self-inflicted squeeze on the petrol supply chain, and we haven’t yet seen the full brunt of it. Gas prices finally cresting $7 per gallon here in California might be the proverbial canary.

Word on the street is motor oil is suffering through a shortage, and consequently pricers are increasing. I’ve got two cars, both of which are gas burners. Every calendar year, they will need a flush and replenishment of oil. Much like the great toilet paper stock-up of early 2020 pandemic, the supposed smart wisdom amongst the car enthusiasts discussion is to stock up on engine oil before the prices inflate any higher.

Sadly for me, I don’t have the space to store copious amounts of oil containers. The inflation hammer will just have to hit me whenever it may fall. My Golf GTI is due for an oil change next month, so I bought six liters of the good German stuff at a little over $13 per liter. According to what I can find, that price has remained stable from the start of the year. In before the lock? Seems like it.

My Miata isn’t due for a change until next July. Out of curiosity, I checked the pricing for five quarts of Castrol on Amazon. A jug is $32, which honestly seems reasonable given the surround news. According to records, the last time I bought the same oil back in 2018, it was $31! That is super surprising. Either Castrol has done the consumer a favor and kept the pricing friendly throughout, or the company has cut corners to the same product. Shrinkflation is a heck of a drug.

It seems, at least for the two particular cars that I own, the great motor oil inflation has yet to reach the shore. Of course I am fully expecting things to change sooner or later, given the lack of end in sight for the Iran war. I’ll simply enjoy the mulligan that I’ve got this time round. Happy motoring!

Man maths

I was perfectly content with my iPhone 16 Pro Max… until I saw reviews of the new iPhone 18 Pro series. New to the latest iPhone are updates to the photographic styles - essentially fancy filters for photos taken with the phone. I’ve been a fan of photographic styles since this very iPhone 16 Pro Max was launched with the ability to customize the default tone mapping. I can (finally) toggle the color and dial back the crunchiness that iPhone photos have sort of become notorious for.

New to the iPhone 18 Pro line is more tone options, one of which is film. Right along with the prevailing photography zeigeist, I adore the look of film. My primary shooter is a Fujifilm XT-5. Nostalgia Neg is my preferred film simulation, and I am fully happy with the JPEG files that are straight out of the camera. These days, Adobe Lightroom for me is more of a collation app than heavy editing.

I always thought it would be nice for the iPhone to have such a film simulation out of the box using the native camera app. I didn’t think it would happen, but by god Apple did it! I wasn’t at all planning to spend $1,200 for a new phone this year, yet the mighty corporation from Cupertino has done it again.

This is where a bit of girl man maths comes in. Firstly, thanks to the chronic memory chip shortage caused by the AI boom, both models of the iPhone 18 Pro series has increased in price by $100. I skirted that extra cost by downsizing from the Max model of my iPhone 16 Pro to the regular sized iPhone 18 Pro. Same price as the old phone, just smaller screen real estate. A necessary sacrifice.

Secondly, my existing iPhone 16 Pro Max is fully functional and unblemished, so a perfect trade-in candidate. That knocks the price down by $610. Third, I opted out of buying AppleCare for the new phone, which I bought and carried on the old one. As someone who takes care of his stuff really well, the extra insurance is a needless financial outlay. So, save some additional money there.

Lastly, for the first time in my iPhone owning life, I bought a third-party case. $50 (plus tax) for Apple’s first-party case is ludicrously expensive, given there are so many Chinese-made options on Amazon that are just as nice, for about $15. Even if the third-party case doesn’t last as long, there’s enough money difference to buy two more before equaling the price of one Apple case.

That’s how I do man maths: make a big purchase, then find small ways to alleviate the total expenditure.

We're all going to feel it

This morning I woke up from a dream that I'd bought a Mercedes G Wagon, the preferred wealthy housewife car of choice. I knew it was a dream even when I was in the dream because there’s no way I would drop six-figures on a singular automobile. Did that once, enjoyed it, not YOLO-ing like that again. To comfortably afford a car priced in the six-figures, you really should be earning well past the quarter-million mark. Unfortunately, my salary is closer to zero than it is closer to $250,000.

I am happy and grateful for what I already have: the perfect two car solution. A MK7 Volkswagen Golf GTI for the utility factor, and a Mazda MX-5 Miata for pure driving fun. Both combined cost less than what I paid for a brand new BMW M2 back in 2019, which is saying something given the abject inflation that’s gone on since then. Is this German and Japanese duo the ones to ride into the proverbial sunset? Difficult to predict, the future is (Yoda). I’m just really satisfied right now.

And thank god neither of my cars run on diesel. Thanks to the ongoing war with Iran that was supposedly going to end quickly, the oil shock stemming from the Strait of Hormuz closure is finally materializing fully. Here in California, it’s over $8 for a gallon of diesel! Even if you don’t have a personal diesel vehicle (thanks, Volkswagen diesel-gate), the repercussions of such high pump pricing will directly affect your wallet. Commercial transportation is hugely reliant on diesel. Cost of goods sold will continue to trend higher because the cost of shipping is increasing.

Never mind that petroleum is an ingredient in so many products that you wouldn’t think of. As if the AI build-out inflation isn’t already bad enough…

So you EV owners can’t sit there too smugly about your cars not using gas. Though they can be slightly smug at the news of Costco rationing the sale of motor oil and raising prices due to shortages. (The upcoming annual oil change on the GTI is going to cost nearly $100 in materials alone!) But, the downstream negatives of the oil shock will affect us all. This collective hurt is quite the revenge on the individualistic streak so prevalent in American culture.

Klarna pay-in-four at the gas pump, when?

Here we have the GTI in its natural habitat.

Too easy

Another day, another special edition sports car costing a thick chunk of a million dollars. A collective yawn by the motoring peanut gallery. Because when 60 grand can buy you a used electric vehicle - like a Tesla Model S - that can go toe-to-toe with any car for speed on public roads, manufacturers of the expensive stuff really need to look elsewhere for the differentiation.

When speed is democratized and relatively cheaply available, it no longer matters that the new Lamborghini model can go 0-60 miles-an-hour in under 2.5 seconds. Who cares? Going fast is mere table stakes at this point. What else are you offering that pleasures the other senses? How does a car make the driver feel?

Give Porsche credit: the reason 911 GT3s are the wealthy car enthusiasts’ version of Pokemon cards is because they are offering more than just pure speed. A naturally-aspirated flat-six engine that sings a heavenly tune. The best feeling manual transmission on planet earth. Delightfully calibrated and feelsome steering. These are sensations that tingles and fizzes without the need to go outrageous velocities.

Other makers of mass-produced fast cars need to recognize that chasing after ever diminishing speed returns has reached a dead end. Fast EVs have put a death note to that arms race. Now it’s probably true that there’s enough wealth out there that Mercedes-AMG’s half million 30-unit limited edition thing has no problem selling out. But even Affalterbach recognizes that ultimate quickness is no longer the meal ticket. The CLE 646 is real-wheel drive only, and carries not a single cell of hybrid battery onboard.

Perhaps there’s hope! I would certainly like to see more manufactures bring out cars that tug at the enthusiast heart strings, at the sacrifice of fast lap times. Something like the GMA T.50, just, you know, magnitudes cheaper. The Porsche 911 cannot be and remain the only answer, because it’s truly getting boring. When it’s the automatic solution for every car guy tech bro that struck it rich, it’s too easy to the point of uninteresting.

Speed is easy. The 911 is easy. Francis Bourgeois’s - host of The Grand Tour - $70,000 Honda Fit? Now that’s an infinitely interesting way to spend your car enthusiast money. Kudos.

When it was fast

There’s a new release of macOS version 27, and I have to say it’s the first time my M1 Max MacBook Pro is starting to feel sluggish. (The latest Apple chip is the M6.) Adobe Lightroom importing doesn’t feel as snappy as before. More than one Google Chrome tab? Forget about it.

And that’s the problem with computer chips chasing after better performance year after year. The software running on those chips expand to fill the provided bandwidth. Hardware and software progresses symbiotically. With more power, comes more code to use that extra power.

Older hardware gets forsaken and disregarded. My M1 laptop fully supports macOS 27, but let’s be honest, macOS 27 is written for a newer and faster platform. Why wouldn’t Apple optimize their newest operating system to run maximally with their latest hardware? They then throttle down the performance to fit the smaller performance envelopes of the older stuff. Game developers aren’t using the less powerful XBOX Series S as the benchmark; they code for the Series X, then scale it back for the poverty XBOX.

Just as Series S does not run games as well as Series X, my M1 MacBook Pro isn’t running macOS 27 as smoothly as an M5 MacBook Pro. By design.

It didn’t feel this way at first, of course. Any current model year Mac computer feels completely speedy and snappy when first purchased. Even Intel-powered Macs, horrendously slow by today’s standards, was fully adequate when launched. It’s after the first year of ownership, and subsequent years later, when the OS upgrades accumulate, that the sluggishness creeps in. Until about five years later and you feel compelled to upgrade because it all just feels a bit slow.

I will not be buying a new computer this year. The ongoing war in Iran and the latent inflation to come (we haven’t yet seen the full results of the oil shock), it’s important to have reserves for the truly necessary. Because those necessities will and are costing more.

Hate hate hate

If the item you are selling is in any way limited or “collector’s edition”, I absolutely do not want it.

I think it’s anti human to purposely restrict any thing you are selling. Artificial scarcity is the worst manifestation of young children unwilling to share. False status awarded to those who have the special thing, to the exclusion of many others. It’s also anti capitalism. Isn’t the whole point to sell as much of an item as possible? Imagine if the Louvre refuses to sell prints of the Mona Lisa. Because only the original painting is deemed worthy.

Oh, this awesome t-shirt design is restricted to 50 copies - get it why I still can? Nope - it’s not for me. This perfect wheel design is available only to the first 100 orders? Sorry, I will actively boycott your wheel company on principle. When I want something and you won’t sell it to me because of non-technical reasons, the curse is on you. You’re the bad guy.

I derisively laugh at the Pokemon cards craze. Fully grown adults without proper employment waiting in line for hours at Target on a weekday morning. All in the hopes of scoring that special card. I don’t hate the player, though; I hate the game. The incentives are created by The Pokemon Company. Again, it’s anti human to purposely restrict production of the most popular cards. Nothing technical about this at all. It’s all just fancy ink on cardstock.

If there’s a specific card I want, I should be able to go online and buy that precise card directly from the producer. Making your customers jump through hoops for the opportunity to get the card they want is downright hateful. The Pokemon Company actively detest their customers.

Another heat wave done

San Francisco Bay Area just finished its annual heat wave around Labor Day. As I type we are basking in the foggy coolness once more. Thank the heavens for our natural air conditioning.

You know when hot weather rolls around, the official puts out a spare the air alert? That’s purely symbolic, right? Someone isn’t going to see the alert and then go, “You know what? I don’t need to drive today. In fact, I don’t need to go to work!” Especially not in our American individualistic culture. Especially not in the current climate of: “I got mine, fuck you!”

Besides, in this region, a significant percentage of cars are electric. No emissions to begin with. But I’ll have you know I personally decided to not drive my car during yesterday’s 90 degree deluge, even though I needed to move my car back to its typical parking spot post street cleaning. Because I am a citizen of the world. Where is my Eagle Scout badge?

The problem with heatwaves in this region is that it is completely sun. Soon as you go outside, you are beaten down by the ceaseless rays. There’s not a cloud to be found. No momentary shade to salve the heat. I’ve been less miserable in hotter and more humid climates in Asia, because there were plenty of cloud cover to be found. An enclosed oven is more bearable than one with an open flame right above your head.

Good news is there’s only but about two weeks’ worth of days out of the entire year where it is truly uncomfortably hot. No wonder San Francisco’s homeless population is so high. If I were to shack up somewhere out on the streets, the mildly cool year-round climate here is the most logical option.