Blog

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

Gas prices, batman!

Holy hell have gasoline prices shot up seemingly overnight. I filled up the M2 the weekend prior at $5.25 a gallon premium (thanks, California), and this past Friday it’s already changed to $5.75. At 10 gallons on a typical fill up, that’s a ~$5.00 increase for me. Not too terrible in the grand scheme of things, because I don’t commute. I get gas at most about every two weeks. But for those who do: this sudden increase has got to hurt.

As evident of the long lines at Costco - known for the cheapest petrol in town - of drivers queuing for gas. Delaying the rest of us from getting to our parkings spots and on with our shopping. Even if you’re entirely supportive of the Ukrainian fight against the Russian regime, you can equally hate the second-order effects at the same time.

Hey, it doesn’t cost gas money to drive virtually on Gran Turismo 7! The latest version of the famed racing game - celebrating its 25th anniversary - came out last week. And I won’t be getting it, at least for a while (super sad face). It’s just physically impossible for me to position my steering wheel controller setup in front of the TV (there’s a whole bed in the way). I don’t want to use the regular controller to play. Hopefully when PlayStation VR 2 comes out, GT7 will be a supported title.

At least reviews for the game are looking good. Seemingly a return to form of GT4, arguably the best title in the series, and the last Gran Turismo I played through seriously. It’s a true celebration of the automobile, at a time when electrification threatens the existence of our beloved internal-combustion engines. Disappointingly, my BMW M2 Competition is not featured in the game. Neither is my previous car, the 991-generation Porsche 911 GT3.

I guess I’ll just have to buy a Toyota GR86 to be able to play a virtual copy of my actual real-life car.

The good stuff

With a Whole Foods recently opened up near my home, I’ve been going there from time to time for groceries. The Target at the same mall closes way too early at 6:00 PM - due to rampant retail theft in San Francisco - so it’s nice to have an option all the way up until 10:00 PM. Though as a pro tip, the shelves aren’t as stocked during the evening hours, at least the few times I’ve been there. The stuff I buy is always available, however: milk and eggs.

That’s because I buy the expensive stuff. Only the best organic milk from grass-fed cows. Only the best eggs from free-range chickens, fed organically. Sometimes the cheaper non-organic alternative would run out, but never the organic stuff. That’s how I come to buy organic: one time I was forced to because the Target was sold-out of cheap milk. After that I never went back.

I live by myself so the premium of few dollars is insignificant. If I had to feed a family of four, I too would buy the 60 eggs for five dollars at Costco. Instead, I use that same five dollars to buy a just dozen of the goof stuff at Whole Foods.

And I can definitely taste the difference in the free-range organic stuff, especially the eggs. I break two eggs into plain oatmeal for breakfast most mornings, so the flavor of the eggs is immediately apparent. The cheap stuff have an almost gamey taste that is absent in the eggs from humanely-treated chickens. The latter has a natural sweetness, and a more satisfying texture as well. It’s definitely worth the price premium.

Life in peace

Man did I pick a good year to delete the twitter app off my phone. I could have easily spent hours death-scrolling through the timeline when Russian invaded Ukraine last week. Not to say I don’t care about the well-being of Ukrainians. But checking up on the the minute-to-minute news is just not a productive use of time. What the heck can I do anyways? The happenings of the other side of the globe is something I have zero control over.

"Imagine all the people living life in peace."

It is interesting to see NATO refusing to intervene militarily on Ukraine’s behalf. Simply because Russia is a nuclear power. No one wants to risk an escalation towards nuclear war - for very good reason (San Francisco is often a nuclear target in movies). But that means if you’re a nation with nukes, you can invade another country with somewhat impunity. The United States knows this well, of course. We went into Iraq with nobody’s permission. Seal Team Six went into Pakistan to kill Osama Bin-Ladin clandestinely.

What NATO and rest of the world can do in response is to levy huge economic and social sanctions. Innocent Russian citizens - yes, even the rich oligarchs - will have to suffer the consequences of the actions by their President Putin. In this interconnected, globalized world we have today, I think sanctions should work in theory. Russia ultimately won’t risk a turn towards the situation of North Korea - utterly isolated from the world. You’d think at some point, Putin will capitulate and strike a deal.

The problem is: Ukraine and its citizens will have to suffer through a war to get there. Sad and tragic.

Ya'll nasty

Working in IT tech support, I’ve seen my fair share of absolutely filthy computers coming in for service. As someone who keeps my own stuff pristinely clean, I can’t fathom how others live with the grime that’s on their laptops. Dust and food particles all over the keyboard deck; fingerprints and oil on the screen surface. Needless to say, I wear gloves before I handle the laptops. Even before these COVID times.

I think there’s a spectrum of bothersome in relation to how dirty something is to people. Everybody can objectively attest to what clean is. No one would accept a brand new out of the box computer that’s full of dust. However, filthiness level is entirely subjective. A single smudge would bother the heck out of me, while others can live with a display full of fingerprints.

On that note, I always wondered why people feel the need to touch their screens (hence the fingerprints left over). Then I realized most are not. The dirt on the screen is actually caused by the keyboard deck. You type out an email with your grubby fingers whilst in the middle of eating a sandwich. That oily imprint then gets transferred to the screen when the laptop is closed. Mystery solved. The rest of you are filthy and dirty.

Every laptop that comes into my hands at work, I clean them up nicely before commencing service. Not because I’m doing the users a solid. It’s more for me because I don’t like working on a dirty laptop. Indeed, many of them remark on how clean their computer is upon returning to them. Like I said, we can all objectively agree to what absolute clean is. It’s the level of unclean that’s seemingly in dispute!

All about games

This past weekend I spent a cumulative 10 hours playing Ghost of Tsushima. Not since beating Gran Theft Auto 4 on the PlayStation 3 have I spent this much time playing video games. For those familiar, that is a very long time ago. I forgot how addictive all of this is! The royal you would delay going to the bathroom or making dinner just to keep going. No wonder it was easier back when we were kids: mother cooked the food!

As interesting as Ghost of Tsushima is, I am not playing it on weekdays. That’s the difference of being an adult: we can exercise self control. Sacrificing sleep for video games? No freaking way.

Anyways, the major gaming news over the weekend is that the review embargo for the highly anticipated Steam Deck expired. All the major players put out reviews for the new portable gaming device from Valve. From what I’ve read, the verdict so far that the Steam Deck is an incredible piece of hardware for the price, but the thing still need more time in the oven to be truly great. Electing to run the operating system based on Linux - rather than Windows - seems to be a major hurdle yet to overcome.

But it’s incredible to see PlayStation 4 level performance in a handheld device. Computing power vis a vis packaging size have reach a point where that is possible. It made me ponder: perhaps the moment is right for Sony to make another PlayStation Portable. I had a second-generation PSP and I absolutely adored playing MLB The Show on it. Seeing such demand for the Steam Deck - and the utter popularity of the Nintendo Switch, I think the market is there for Sony.

I’d certainly buy one to pair alongside my PlayStation 5.

No power here

We were having a team meeting at work yesterday morning and then the power went out. To the entire campus. We’re in the basement of the library building, so it was absolutely pitch dark for about 10 seconds. The backup generators then kicked in, turning back on about 20 percent of the lights. Our colleague living in nearby Daly City also reported an outage, so this blackout didn’t seem like the quick fix type.

I immediately sent a text to my housemate to check on the power status at our house. I live incredibly close to campus so it wouldn’t surprise me if we lost electricity as well. Fortunately, our side of 19th Avenue was unscathed. After hanging around campus for about 30 minutes just to see if power will come back soon, I walked home to wait out the rest of the blackout. That’s the flex of living so close to work.

Turns out they sent almost everyone home in my department. It took about three hours for power to return to campus. I of course volunteered to come back. In fact, the three people that live closest to campus came back, which is kind of funny in a way.

The intermission caused by the power interruption was very nice. I got to move my car back to its usual parking spot after the street cleaning from earlier in the morning (no need to do it after work). I ate a proper lunch at home, and I read for about an hour. A sort of Spanish siesta in the middle of the work day. Had the power outage gone on longer, I would have done some grocery shopping at Whole Foods.

A welcomed deviation from the normal everyday work routine.

That's not sushi

Jesus Christ is it cold. The weather app on my iPhone says it’s currently 40 degrees outside, though I bet it is actually colder still. Looks like for the rest of today the mercury won’t rise above 50 degrees. Just last week I was talking about a string of unseasonably warm weather here in San Francisco. Well, guess what: winter is back, baby! It even hailed last evening. My poor BMW M2 that’s parked outside…

I would like to switch gears completely and talk about sushi. Ever since I came back from Japan back in 2019, I’ve seldom had sushi here in the States. After I’ve tasted the real quality stuff in Japan, the sushi we get here is just depressing. There are some good spots here in the city, but man do you have to pay a lot for it. In Tokyo, any old neighborhood sushi place is better than most of the Japanese restaurants here.

Hopefully Japan - and rest of Asia - opens back up soon without quarantine restrictions.

When I say sushi, I am speaking of the type where it’s just a slice of raw fish on top of a piece of rice. Sometimes it’s wrapped in a piece of fried seaweed. That’s it. I would not classify the fancy rolls we get here in the States as sushi. Too many ingredients, too complicated to make. The California roll and its similar brethren are more of a fusion-style burrito with ingredients from Japanese cuisine. Not to say those rolls aren’t delicious, but it’s not what I’m getting when I’m craving sushi.

Obviously today would not be a good day for cold pieces of fish. Tonight’s dinner call for fresh rice, piping hot soup, and Chinese barbecue pork. Now to get through the work day to get there…