Blog

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

Another new iPhone

It is well into September, so you know what that means: it is new iPhone season! Like clockwork, Apple announced last week the latest iPhone 14 lineup. And of course I am trading in my iPhone 13 Pro for the 14 Pro. Just like I’ve done since the iPhone 7: a new phone every year. For something that is our most often used device, I feel like it’s well worth the expense. As the cliche goes, life is too short to use a smartphone for more than one year. Treat yourself!

So I woke up last Friday super early at 5:00 AM to preorder the new iPhone. Thankfully, Apple makes it somewhat painless. Customers are able to fill out their order information ahead of time. On that Friday morning, all I had to do is click a few buttons to confirm whether I want shipping or in-store pickup. 10 minutes later and I was back asleep in slumber. Not sure it was worth interrupting my all important sleep to preorder. The last few years I was able to grab an in-stock unit at an Apple Store on release weekend with no fuss.

Perhaps I’m just excited about the innovation I always most look forward to in the newest iPhones: the camera. There’s a massive improvement to the iPhone 14 Pro’s main camera. The sensor is physically larger, and the megapixel count jumps - for the first time in a decade of iPhones - from 12 megapixels to 42 megapixels. As someone’s whose photography hobby have completely migrated from the traditional camera to the iPhone, it’s good to see Apple continue to innovate in this area at a rapid rate.

This is why I upgrade to the new iPhone every year.

What’s not so exciting about the iPhone 14 lineup is the elimination of the physical SIM card slot in the U.S. models. The 14 will be eSIM only. This means users are forced to pay the ridiculous upgrade fee to Verizon when they buy a new iPhone. Past years I simply take the SIM card out of the old one and stick into the new. Can’t do that anymore! For the iPhone 14 Pro, I will have to go log in on the Verizon website to register it. Which means there’s no avoiding the $30 charge of pure and extortionate profit.

It will also make travel slightly difficult as I can no longer buy a local SIM card. I have to count on carriers in a particular country to offer eSIM support. That’s going to be a pain, I reckon.

Booster round two

I read on the news an update to the Pfizer COVID vaccine that targets the latest omicron variant is now approved and available. I never did get my second booster shot: the first booster was way back in November of last year. Seems like a good time now to get what would be my fourth shot. And because it’s flu season, might as well get the flu vaccine at the same time.

Sadly, the local CVS pharmacy at Target is not offering the COVID vaccine any longer? It’s where I got my booster last time, but I wasn’t able to book any appointments. That’s a shame because I now have to get in a car. A friend informed me that Walgreens pharmacy is offering the updated booster - plus the flu vaccine. So I mimetically went to the Walgreens website to make an appointment. There were plenty to be had at locations around my zip code.

Next Friday evening will be the day. It should offer enough leeway over the weekend should I experience heavy symptoms. The two primary Pfizer shots only resulted in a sore arm, but the booster shot absolutely wrecked me hard. I’m definitely tempting fate here by getting the COVID and flu vaccine concurrently. Perhaps I can bro-science my way out of this: if I expect symptoms to be mild, then my body will react accordingly.

This is going to be the yearly dance, isn’t it? COVID vaccine boosters every fall. It’s truly become just like the flu. Hopefully as the years go by, as herd immunity grows ever stronger, further COVID boosters would only be something necessary for the immune compromised and the elderly.

Historic heatwave

Man, that was some heatwave, wasn’t it? Even the west side of San Francisco got up to the 90s. That’s still not as bad as the rest of California: soon as you leave sight of the ocean, you are in the 100s. I feel most bad and concern for my father who works in construction. It cannot be fun at all yesterday at the work site. God bless the men and women who have to work outside under these scorching conditions. The construction workers, the firefighters, and the guy with a food cart selling hotdogs to the neighborhood.

Yesterday afternoon we got an email from campus saying PG&E is instituting rolling blackouts from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM. The funny part is the email cautioned us to avoid using the elevators - if possible - during that time. Make sense: last thing any of us want is to be stuck inside an elevator that’s only going to get hotter because no electricity means no circulation, either. Folks in the downtown campus simply left and went home. I guess there’s less oversight over there!

Turns out much of California was under potential blackout conditions during peak hours yesterday, our house included. Thankfully it never came to pass. It seems enough household heeded the warnings and reduced their energy consumption enough to mitigate the need to cut off power. It’s a good reminder for me to be prepared. I really should get one of those fancy multi-hundreds of watt battery generators. The type that people take to go camping or hashtag van life.

Just like air conditioning, you’ll be glad you have it when you need it. Speaking of which, I’m lucky my studio is somewhat subterranean so it stays cool even when outside temperatures are in the 90s. If that weren’t the case, I would be running a portable air conditioning unit for sure. As a friend said: “Comfort [at the home] is paramount.”

Another six months

Last night I got an email from Progressive notifying me of my upcoming insurance renewal. Good news: premiums on my BMW M2 Competition did not go up. Bad news: the premiums did not go down either. As my friend commented: it’s truly a glass half full situation. I look at it slightly differently: it’s always better to gain nothing than to lose something. So I’m okay with premiums staying put for another six months.

I guess Bay Area BMW owners haven’t got into more mayhem than usual these days. Unfortunately, our cars must still be massively expensive to repair. If my father’s Toyota Corolla costs nearly $20K to fix for a simple front-end fender bender, a BMW with all its fancy aluminum bits has got to be worse. That’s why I am paying just above $1,000 dollars every six months on a plan with a $2,500 collision deductible.

And Progressive is already cheapest amongst its peers. Premiums would be double with State Farm or Geico. It’s madness.

All for a car that I seldom drive. It’s an expensive hobby, this car enthusiast thing. Being a single male in his mid 30s doesn’t help things either. And I’m suppose to be getting a second car in a few year’s time? (Hello there, Honda Civic Type R.) Though apparently it doesn’t cost that much more to insure additional vehicles. Insurance companies know you the lone person can only ever drive one car at a time. So you would only be be insuring the opportunity risk of driving the second vehicle, which at the same time decreases the risk of the primary vehicle.

Got to spend money to save money, I guess?

10K in the M2

Recently I noticed my BMW M2 Competition’s odometer ticked over 10,000 miles. It’s taken about two years of ownership to get there, which is to say: a rather long period. A non-insignificant chunk of those miles isn’t even of my doing. The three longest drive taken in my M2 was by other drivers who borrowed the car. The longest I’ve done was two trips to West Sacramento IKEA (from San Francisco) because it was the lone store in the region in stock with the pieces of furniture I wanted.

10,000 miles in two years is easily the least amount of mileage of any car I’ve owned. Even my previous Porsche 911 GT3 - a complete leisure vehicle - would have done the equivalent of 12,000 miles. Living within walking distance of everything - work, play, errands - utterly kills any need of driving. The absolutely bonkers gas prices of 2022 - thanks to the war in Ukraine, I guess? - have limited even the joyful cruises in the local mountains and coastal roads.

Despite the relatively limited seat time, I remain utterly in love with the M2 Competition. It’s such a spritely little coupe with some big power to back it up. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the BMW is more fun to drive than the GT3, albeit in my super amateurish hands. The Porsche is the more eventful car, however: each drive is an absolute occasion. I will always miss the GT3.

The M2 does the everyday life stuff better, too. The trunk is comparatively enormous, and any items bigger than it can be stowed by flipping down the rear seats. The aforementioned IKEA run was easily accomplished. Driving friends to the airport? No problems at all. Anything larger than a carry-on suitcase wouldn’t fit in the 911’s trunk. The BMW is an entirely friendlier car, both to me and my friends. There’s no place I wouldn’t take the M2 to and park it, which is not something I dared to do with the GT3.

All that is to say it was the correct decision to sell the Porsche for the M2 - even if I could afford to keep the Porsche. The M2 fits my lifestyle far better. The fact that it’s more fun to drive as well? I’m incredibly pleased with this BMW. Cheers to more many miles to come.

Where's the protein?

I came home today to find that I forgot to defrost the char siu (Chinese BBQ pork). So now as I am writing this I’ve no idea what I am doing for dinner. Typically I would just make rice and that’s about it. The char siu heats up in the microwave, and the all important vegetables is in the form of kimchi. I am a simple man with simple tastes, and I can eat the same thing day after day.

Not that I wouldn’t mind variety. But variety costs time and money. My meager public servant salary definitely does not allow for nightly food orders from DoorDash.

Good news is I live a few blocks from a full-size mall with a proper food court. I’ll probably head over there soon as I finish typing the amount of words here I feel appropriate. Besides, today is the last mild day before a heat wave is suppose to hit all of California throughout the Labor Day weekend. Going to enjoy the mildness while it lasts before my friends with air-conditioning in their homes get to be smug about things.

It is indeed already September. This far into 2022 and I’ve yet to do anything special, really. The only vacations I’ve taken were all of the stay at home type. I am heading to Austin, Texas in two months, so there will be some excitement for that. Other than that it’s just going to continue to be the same old same old. And that’s perfectly fine: life’s treating me quite well these past months. Nothing to complain about, everything is going smoothly and flowingly.

Of course I probably just jinxed myself. Perhaps the forgotten-to-defrost char siu is the harbinger of a downturn!

Supply chain comes for us all

I do laundry about every two weeks. Sometimes however, for various logistical reasons, I have to extend out the interval. Either the machines are in use, or I’m physically not home over the weekend. Whenever that happens, I often come close to running out of basic clothes. The socks, underwear, and t-shirts that get changed out often. I only have so much of those in my admittedly spartan closet. Plus, my laundry basket is only so big.

Anyways, to avoid the clothing crunch when I need to skip an extra week of laundry, I stock up on the basics. There’s always new and unworn socks and underwear at the ready. If I truly run out of anything, I’m lucky to live within walking distance to a Target store where I can buy practically anything I would need.

Except there’s a problem: the great pandemic supply chain crunch means sometimes there isn’t any stock, even on the most basic of clothing items. Just this past week I went to two different Target and both were out of the model of Hanes sock I buy. Half the shelves were absolutely barren of product. Granted, it is fall semester season so I’m sure lots of students stocked up on the essentials. But to visit two Target stores miles away from each other and see the same situation, it’s a supply chain issue.

In the end I had to buy a different brand of socks. Not an ideal situation because now I have to sort out two different sets whenever I do laundry. At least these Fruit of the Loom items are the same color as the Hanes I have: black.