Blog

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

Goodbye, Apple TV+

Yesterday Apple announced a price increase on its services. Primary to my concern is the $2.00 increase to Apple TV+, now costing $6.99. That impelled me to cancel my subscription. At least the company makes it easy to cancel! I did it right on my iPhone via the Apple ID settings. Shame on companies like The New York Times forcing you to make a phone call. Just so the minimum wage agent on the other side of the line can try their best to convince you to stay. No, thanks. My decision is absolute.

Apple TV+ at $4.99 is apparently low enough of a price for me to keep my subscription long after I finished watching the show that made me sign up in the first place: Pachinko. Since then, I did not launch the app even once to watch another thing. Great shows like Succession and Ted Lasso that everyone rave about? I could not care less. I simply do not watch TV shows. The latest Marvel and Star Wars stuff on Disney+ I’ve yet to start. The impetus is not immediately there.

The price for these subscription services only ever goes upward. Apple did me a favor by reminding me I’m still paying for Apple+. $6.99 for something I don’t use is too much. I don’t even share that account with my friends, which I absolutely do with Disney+. Accounting sharing is how I am able to watch stuff on all the major streaming platforms for the price of one or two. Though to be perfectly fair, Verizon wireless pays for my Disney+ subscription (and Hulu, and ESPN+). The friend who is paying nearly 20 bucks a month for HBO Max is the real MVP.

Not that I watch a lot of stuff on HBO (not a single hour of Game of Thrones). If I were on my own, I’m not sure I would subscribe to even one of the streaming services. If anything, I would pay for Youtube Premium, a platform I watch videos on every single day.

Always be backing up

My housemates have gone on vacation, so I am the only person currently occupying the home. Typically when I leave the house for work or whatever, I don’t take my keys. The entry door uses a keypad for locking - the key serves as a backup. I figured if there’s ever the slight chance the keypad stops working, I can always contact my housemates to come to the rescue.

Can’t do that anymore when they’re both on vacation! Therefore I’ve been taking the door keys with me, just in case. Technology is only as great as the backup plan for when it (inevitably?) fails. I simply cannot trust it completely to do its job every single time, without failure. The only time the good ole key and tumbler setup have stranded me is when I’ve misplaced the key. Batteries never run out on analog.

Obviously there’s a huge convenience factor to a keypad lock. And on most days I enjoy that convenience immensely. Just like the ATM at a bank branch: it’s great to be able to get stuff done without having to talk to a live person. However, I would never trust the ATM for a depositing a huge amount of cash. One misstep with the inner mechanicals - that I have zero control over - and that money is gone forever. This is especially true for ATMs that are not inside a bank building: who are you going to call while your cash is stuck in limbo?

Technology makes life fantastically convenient, but I think the point here is you have to be smart and cover your ass. My work in I.T. exposes me to catastrophic failure often enough. You can turn on your computer one day to find it utterly unresponsive. I sure hope you’ve had a consistent backup plan in place for your data!

Pour some sugar on me

Sometimes you know you’re going to suffer for it, but you do the thing anyways.

This past Sunday I drove my housemates to the airport for their long-delayed honeymoon to Thailand. It was around 9:00 PM when we set off from the house. First stop was the local In-N-Out burger for what was their dinner. I already had my supper, so rather than just sit there and look at them eat (I’m not a fan of the mukbang video genre), I ordered a milkshake. In the only flavor acceptable: Neapolitan.

This decision would prove detrimental as the rush of sugar and fat absolutely wired me up. There was no way I was going to sleep at my usual time of 10:30 PM. It’s just not going to happen. So I did the only thing possible: stay up until the sugar rush passes and I feel tired enough to go to bed. Plenty of chores were done before I finally hit the sack at 1:00 AM the next day.

Yesterday was a unusually warm day in San Francisco. A friend asked to go get ice cream after dinner. This meant, once again, ingesting something sugary and fat late into the evening. Knowing full well my normal sleeping schedule will be ruined, I went ahead and got that rocky road scoop on a waffle cone regardless. Totally worth it! Being social and hanging out with friends is decidedly more important than slumber.

Up to a certain point, obviously. You won’t see me going on a bar-hopping binge well pass midnight. Not that my friends and I are the sort of people to do that. Not in our currently advanced, mid thirties age anyways.

Thoughts on the new M2

So there’s a new generation BMW M2. And it’s rather ugly! The front end looks decent enough - it’s very boxy - though I’m not convinced about horizontal slats on the iconic BMW kidney grilles. The side profile is the best looking aspect of the new car. The classic three-box coupe shape is still there. The bulging fenders to accommodate the wider track from the M3/M4 looks delicious.

It’s the rear of the new M2 where the styling fails completely. What the heck is going on with the rear bumper treatment? It looks like there’s warts growing out of the body. The taillamps also bulges out for no apparent functional reason. In a text to a friend I said the new M2 looks like a fake copy of the old M2 done for a Grand Theft Auto game. It is definitely not a looker.

It gets worse on the inside: the new M2 has BMW’s iDrive 8. There’s a giant horizontal slab of LCD screen for both the instrument cluster and the infotainment system. I much prefer analog gauges and physical buttons. Curse on Tesla for jump-starting this trend of having touchscreens to do and show everything in car interiors. I’ve had newer BMW cars as service loaners, and the digital instrument cluster is utterly useless in terms of getting information at a glance. I’m not a fan.

What else is bad in the new M2? The weight. It’s some 200 pounds heavier (at about 3,800) than the old M2, which wasn’t the lightest thing to begin with. Despite the weight and overall size increase, the interior space isn’t that much larger in the new car! The braking system have changed to by wire: there’s no physical connection from the brake pedal to the master cylinder. That just reads artificial to me. There’s no reason for brakes to have different modes! It either stops brilliantly or it doesn’t.

One last thing: the new M2 will be built in Mexico. Call me a snob - because I am - but I want my high-dollar performance German car to be built in the fatherland. This also means prospective buyers won’t have the option to do European delivery. It’s something I wanted to do when I bought my (previous generation) M2. But the COVID pandemic put a halt to all of that. Shame!

You get three stars!

Sometimes you’re simply compelled to leave a negative Yelp review. It’s not that I had a genuinely horrible experience, but in the saga of trying to get the windshield replaced on my BMW M2, it was not so pleasant dealing with certain vendors. What it boils down to is this: communication. Any store has the right to refuse service to anyone, obviously. However, they should let the customer know this! Instead of stopping all communication without warning.

The first bodyshop I contacted to inquire about the windshield was such an establishment. While they did return my initial call saying they can help me, they never contacted me again with a repair estimate, after promising to do so. I emailed multiple times and never got a response. I realize most of these bodyshops completely ignore their emails, but I think that’s a mistake. Millennials and Gen Z people grew up on emails as a communications tool, and are deafly afraid of making a phone call.

A place of business would be wise to pay attention to incoming emails.

After I successfully got the windshield replaced (hat tip to Weatherford BMW in Berkeley), it was time to post lukewarm Yelp reviews for the shops that ignored my requests. A modicum of revenge for making me wait three weeks to get a simple piece of glass replaced on my car. And honestly, it’s such a relatively simple job! I know it doesn’t bring in the big money like a proper collision repair, but a small-bill customer is still a customer.

So I gave those shops three out of five stars, and wrote a little bit about the utter lack of communication. It would not be fair to give them any less stars because ultimately I did not do business with those places. Three stars is just enough to have my say forcefully, without looking like I’m being a dick about it. Even though I guess I’m trying to be a bit of a dick about it.

Most wonderful time of the year

The weather in San Francisco is finally turning the cool and crispy autumnal that I absolutely love. Bring on the gloomy fog and early darkness! The morning chill that makes me wants to stay in bed forever. In fact I was going to write about this yesterday, but willpower lost to the warmth of my new mattress. Indeed, even those of us who like to “get after it” have days when we falter.

Autumn in San Francisco is definitely not productivity weather. This is cuddle up with a hot cup of drink kind of weather. The watch TV just for the heck of it kind of weather. There’s only three months left to this year! I deserve some respite for the work I put in the previous nine months (half joking). Which is why I am off to Austin, Texas and Las Vegas, Nevada at the end of this month. I am finally going somewhere for vacation, instead of staying home.

Not that I would have minded being at home for an entire week. The abode feels positively cozy this time of the year. I get to watch the sky turn from dark to light in the mornings now, because the days are growing short. Heck, why I did I commit to flying off somewhere with my friends? That’s my introversion wondering out loud. Those brief pangs of regret that I had said yes to social events.

Like last Friday when I went to see To Kill a Mockingbird at the Golden Gate Theatre. I had a great time, of course. The play was fantastically written and superbly acted. It’s just that would have been equally as happy staying in on a Friday evening, reading a Gray Man novel. However, I understand that ultimately it’s better for me to hang out with friends. We are social animals, after all. it’s needed even for the most introverted of us. There’s a difference between solitude and loneliness!

How hard can it be?

How difficult is it to replace a broken windshield on a BMW M2? Apparently, quite.

I’m sure the actual work is the same as any windshield on a car, but getting to the process has been a challenge. It’s been two weeks since I broke the windshield, and as of this writing the impact crater is still there. At least it is still water tight! No need for a trash bag of shame taped over it. The M2 remains drivable, though I hesitate to ferry people in the passenger seat - never know if the cracks would disintegrate further suddenly!

Because it is a BMW, I can’t just take the car to SafeLite and call it a day. The service manual calls for more than the windshield piece alone for the replacement procedure. You also have to use a specific kind of adhesive. I’m not sure how true it is, but word on the street is the windshield in the M2 is somewhat structural. Screw it up, and the rigidity is ruined forever. All of these things considered, I want the procedure done only at a BMW certified shop, with BMW genuine parts.

My insurance company would certainly want me to go to cheap SafeLite route instead. In fact, Progressive’s dedicated glass claim number takes you to a portal administered by SafeLite. Thankfully in California, we have the right to choose our own shop.

There’s only two BMW certified collision repair centers in San Francisco. The first one I called absolutely ghosted me. The second one I called say they don’t do windshield replacements, which is weird because invariably, if other parts of the car is wrecked along with the windshield, they'd repair it. My guess is those shops do not want the hassle of dealing with insurance. Turns out, most major auto insurance companies have contracted out their glass claims to SafeLite. And SafeLite completely lowballs.

It wasn’t until I contacted dealerships - BMW of SF and Weatherford BMW - that I got positive responses. Because the understanding there is I would pay up front for the repair, and I would deal with Progressive afterwards. Hopefully this means the windshield will get fixed relatively soon.