Blog

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

Let the ego lose

I’m somewhat of a connoisseur of dashcam videos on YouTube. Watching them helps me learn from the mistakes of others, if you will. I must say, it seems like half of the accidents caught on camera can be avoided by one simple device: the brake pedal.

Drivers hate this one trick!

Too many times, the entire collision can be avoided if the non-offending driver simply used the brakes. Slow down. Avoid the accident. I get it: braking is bruising to the ego. Why should I slow down when it’s the other person who is not following the rules or acting stupid?

Instead, the onus is put on the offending driver to course correct, to realize their mistake in split seconds, and avoid the accident. In an ideal world, sure, we all wish that’s the case. In the real world, that is giving up our agency. The only person you can control is you. Try as you might to influence the action of others, that action belongs to them ultimately.

Remember the goal is to get to the destination safely. Let’s say the ego won. But by not backing down, the other car failing to yield hits your car. Now you’ve got to deal with insurance, getting the car fixed, and wasting a lot of time. God forbid there isn’t bodily injury, too. Worth it just to satiate the ego? Absolutely not. Avoid the accident; let the other jerk win.

There’s a huge sense of justice in American culture. That rule-breakers ought to be punished properly. Often times then when we get behind the wheel, we feel like the last stand before the fall to anarchy. We want to police bad behavior on the road. Speeding in the fast lane? I’m not moving over. Cutting in line at a merge? Not on my watch! I dare you to crash into me.

Not me. I’ll take a bruised ego and chip on the shoulder to preserve a clean car. As the saying goes, the cemetery is filed with people who had the right of way.

Check your tire pressures

With gas prices back at all-time highs, what strategies are we doing to mitigate some of the hurt? Pump the tires a bit higher than the stated pressure on the door sticker? I actually did that once a long time ago driving to Los Angeles. I filled up the tires on my then Toyota Corolla to 40 PSI (I think the factory specified 30 PSI) and enjoyed fantastic gas mileage for the 300-mile drive.

Higher PSI, lower rolling resistances, better miles per gallon.

Granted, do normal people even check tire pressures regularly? Us car enthusiasts check often, because the consequence of low tire pressures is oversteering your BMW M4 over a curbed median (very inside joke). On a serious note, optimal tire pressure is important because we care about road-holding, handling, and tire wear. Tires on less (or more) than specified pressures are negative on all three points.

Even if a car’s handling doesn’t tickle your interest, it’s still important to ensure proper tire pressures because of the lost fuel economy. On my Golf GTI, 2 PSI less than the standard 39 PSI is enough to lose me about two miles per gallon. At a time when a gallon of premium 91 octane is over $7.00, that can add up rather quickly.

In my experiences, tires lose about 1 PSI per month. Therefore once a month pressure check should more than suffice. That’s what I do. Don’t wait for the TPMS warning system inside the car to notify you of low pressures. Because by that time, the tire - if not punctured - is already grossly under-inflated. Digital pressure gauges are cheap and super long-lasting. I’ve had this unit for over twenty years!

Don't be sad about it

Speaking of prices being in an unfathomable stratosphere, Porsche announced today the company is moving further upmarket. Because $130K for a poverty-spec Carrera, and effectively $300K for a GT3, isn’t enough of a barrier to entry. Aspirational? Never mind that. It’s a club you cannot join.

Back in 2019, I was able to buy a then four-year old used 911 GT3. It took a bit of stretching the finances, but it was doable. Fast-forward to 2026, and I cannot do the same with a now four-year old used 911 GT3. And my salary has increased since 2019! Because the new market for Porsches has inflated, the used market has followed right along with it. Middle-class enthusiasts like me are being priced completely out.

At least I have the good fortune to say I’ve owned a 911. Even though that chapter is forever closed, never to be repeated. Do I regret selling my GT3? I guess I do. I’m certainly sad about it from time to time looking back, but it was a necessary move. Other big changes in live necessitated parting ways with the dream car. I was not going to go into constant money worry and chronic debt just for this car hobby. Nope.

I like to look at regret like the Avengers going back in time to “borrow” the infinity stones. The me that kept the GT3 is on another timeline. A branch off this main timeline that I am currently on. The lament ends right when I recognize that the person who would have kept the 911 isn’t me. The person who should have studied abroad, isn’t me. The person who should have started weightlifting in his 20s, isn’t me.

The current me, the main timeline, is made up of the accumulation of regrets and mistakes. There’s no point in wishing for a different choice or outcome, because that Healy would be a completely different person. A Healy that picked up the piano at a young age and was studious with it is living life in another multiverse. Want as I may for this Healy to have had stuck with piano learning when I was young and my fingers lithe, it is just not me.

I have many regrets, but the Healy that didn’t make those mistakes is on a totally different path. There’s no need to be sad about it.

Unfathomable money level

Today I was reading a thread on r/sanfrancisco about a two-bedroom two-bath rental in the Sunset district costing $6,500 per month. That is both incredible and unfathomable. That amount of money is a bit more than my own monthly take-home, and I honestly do not view myself as making peasant money. A reality where people can spend that much on rent alone is difficult to conceptualize. $78,000 a year just to put a roof over your head.

But obviously there are plenty of people capable of spending those amounts. You watch enough Caleb Hammer and you begin to believe there’s lots of folks out there struggling financially and making stupid decision. On the flip side, there’s lots of folks making really good money and can spend with impunity. Look at this guy who casually spent $635K on a special edition Acura NSX, a practical museum piece because each additional mile is ruinous to its now record-setting evaluation.

Imaging spending house-level money on a vehicle you won’t drive! Meanwhile, I don’t think I’ve made that much money total in all my years of working. I might as well be on a separate planet.

I can see how someone in similar financial situation as me can easily get nihilistic about it. Cost of living is insane, housing prices are beyond the stratosphere, and then there’s social media indicating that it’s only you who is the broke one. Given those circumstances, I too would YOLO what little money I have into options markets or prediction markets. At least that gives me a puncher’s chance to attain the life that seemingly everyone else have. Because working a normal job isn’t mathematically going to get me there.

Maybe I should start lining up at Target on a weekday morning for the latest Pokemon cards release, hoping to score a card worth reselling. Or line up at Harbor Freight for the latest limited tool drop to then resell on eBay for profit. What’s the quickest way to multiple X my money so I can afford life.

I understand those that do. What are we supposed to do when the median rent price is higher than our take-home?

What do you want to tolerate?

I am tangentially aware of the big hoopla regarding Flock cameras. Surveillance cameras that capture vehicle data to track down crime-doers are either being used nefariously, or outputting false positives leading to false arrests. As with any technology or specific tool, there’s opportunities for downsides and negative consequences. Is it the guns, or the shooters firing at innocent people?

(It’s the guns.)

As with anything, there are no solutions, only trade offs. These days, what are the first thing people ask for when something bad happens to them? Where are the cameras, and did they capture the bad thing? Should you get into a car accident, no doubt your insurance will seek and subpoena camera footage, perhaps from the very Flock cameras that have been so controversial.

If the negative consequences of implementing such surveillance powers is too intolerable for Americans, then the general public will also have to accept that there’s going to less video assistance when the bad stuff happens. Entire neighborhoods might be less safe because cars can act a fool with impunity. Can we tolerate the negative consequences of non implementation?

From a culture that brings their smartphones - and the cameras - with them into the bathroom, caring about privacy whilst out on public streets seem a bit dubious. Even if Flock cameras weren’t a thing, we are absolutely surrounded by capture devices. Soon as you leave the house, you might notice that every house on the residential block has outward-facing records. You get into your car, and dashcams are as popular as ever. Thanks to videos of blatant insurance fraud like this.

We are getting caught in 4K in public all the time.

Now obviously the argument here is that we would rather a scattershot of disparate camera operators, than one monolithic system accessible by the notoriously trustworthy government. And on that I have to concede the point. Perhaps this sort of crowd-sourced surveillance is a solid compromise that already exists.

Take a walk

No matter how cushy your job is, there’s going to be moments of frustration and stress. Lucky for me, I have the balm for it right outside the office. Shoutout to the campus green team for keeping the lawns and trees thriving. A quick stroll in nature is such a good way to decrease the rising blood pressure.

Breathe in deeply the wonderful smells given off by the plants. Refocus the eyes to something a bit more distant, after many hours of staring at a screen a foot away. And on a chance day when the western side of San Francisco gets some sun, feel some of that important vitamin D softly permeate into the skin.

The stressful situation will still be there when I return to the desk, but for that brief period of time, I am in a lovely zone of bliss. Best of all, it is completely free.

Erase time, or speed up time

This video of Jenson Button driving his championship-winning Formula One car on the Goodwood circuit is utterly fantastic. For many fans - myself included - this is the era of F1 we remember most fondly. The naturally-aspirated engines that revved to the moon. The hair-raising, high-pitched wail of a scream that is still the gold-standard of engine sounds. The sort of fizzy feeling that is utterly absent in today’s turbocharged hybrid formula.

Sad as it may be to say, Formula One is never going back to that era. Things have moved on, technologies have gone in a different direction.

Which is why it’s important to be in the present and to fully appreciate what’s right in front of us. Because in a few years things can change rapidly, and you’re left wondering why the “good ole days” seem to have passed us by so quickly. I wished I had paid more attention to Formula One before this current decade-plus turbocharged era. I would have savored the screaming engines that much more. The sheer beauty that was displayed on the television screen.

It’s mechanistically perverse that we really don’t know we are in the ‘‘good times” until it has passed and we are looking backwards. It would be nice to get some signal that right now is a golden era that we should probably pay full attention to. But then again, we do love to live in the future tense. We can’t even enjoy a concert of our favorite artist without recording the proceedings for posterity. For the future us.

A good way to practice being in the present moments is to go to the movies. You are stuck there for the two hours completely engrossed in what is displayed on the giant screen in front. No phones, no distractions. We’ve all experience that feeling, right? That moment when we come out of the theatre and time seems to return to normal ticking. As if inside the theatre was a dream world. It’s a strange feeling because when we are fully in the present moment, the flow of time feels different.

But it’s only strange because our regular lives are so consumed by ruing that past or anxious about the future. We either want to erase time, or speed up time. That’s not a great way to live, especially when the human lifespan has a finite hard stop.

Maybe the reason we’re so addicted to nostalgia is because it gives us a chance for a do-over at being present for the thing to be nostalgic about. Right then, I’ll go watch more old Formula One clips on YouTube.