Blog

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

What's a smog check?

Recently, a friend asked me about the process of getting her car smogged. I sheepishly replied that I never owned a car long enough (and old enough) to require that service. In California, smog requirements only apply to cars older than six years from new. Then it’s a biennial requirement. The longest I’ve owned a new car is three. Even the one used car I bought - the dearly departed Porsche 911 GT3 - had one more year to go before needing smog check when I tearfully sold it.

Needlessly to say, cars is where all my disposable income goes. Utterly disposed.

The friend booked an appointment at the gas station down the block from where I live. Good to know such service is available within walking distance (even though I’d have to drive the car there to get it smogged). I’m currently on year three of BMW M2 ownership, so it would be another four years yet before that car has to be smog checked. Will I own it for that long? I certainly hope so, but I said the same thing about the GT3…

2023 is not the year to be extravagant with spending, right? Look at the numerous tech companies laying off workers in preparation for recession that can’t seem to arrive. The unemployment rate - 3.4% - is at its lowest level since May of 1969. It seems people are employed, but just not spending as much. Look at Dell announcing layoffs today, because people are not buying as many computers.

So I’ll be keeping the M2 through at least this year. Previously plan of adding another car to the stable has been put on hold. Sorry, San Francisco: you won’t be seeing a chunk of sales tax from me. Maybe you should cut back on throwing enormous money at the endless homeless problem.

HomePod still not for me

So Apple have reintroduced the full-size HomePod. At $299, the second-generation HomePod does the same thing the first one did, but now the cable detaches from the unit! There’s also a temperature and humidity sensor, so the thing can tell you (and keep track of) the current room temperature. I’m not sure that’s enough new to make it the sales success that the first-generation HomePod definitely was not.

A HomePod mini at $99 does everything the bigger one does. Price is the pain point, not sound quality. Most people who are perfect fine with streaming MP3 over a bluetooth connection wouldn’t care that the HomePod sounds absolutely amazing. $299 for a smart speaker is absolutely outrageous. The niche that the HomePod appeals to is very small. Who the heck have $600 to drop on two of them for a stereo pair? I’m told that’s the fullest HomePod experience you can buy.

It’s for that reason I bought a HomePod mini. Which I’ve since sold. The dealbreaker is these HomePods cannot accept a bluetooth connection. Sending sound to one uses Apple’s AirPlay technology. The problem for me isn’t that you absolutely need an Apple device - Mac or iOS - to use a HomePod. The problem is the AirPlay connection has to be renewed every single time. I wanted the HomePod mini to stay connected to my MacBook Pro constantly.

Unfortunately, that is not possible. Every time I started up the laptop, I have to toggle the sound output back to AirPlay - thereby waking the HomePod up. Having to do that day after day compounds it into a great annoyance. The new HomePod sadly still cannot accept a constant bluetooth connection. Shame, because all the intelligent room-mapping audio stuff is really neat.

So long, so slow

Boy, that was a long January. At least it was to me. Yesterday a coworker remarked that January went by in a flash, and I had to politely disagree with him. What was 31 days felt like 60 days. I mean, shouldn’t we prefer that our days go slowly? The whole life is short thing, right? What we don’t want is the sensation that time moved by in a flash. The that felt like it was only yesterday. I guess I’m doing something right: I didn’t speed-run through January.

I got an email yesterday from Amazon notifying me that in 2022, I’ve earn over $300 in cash-back from my Chase Amazon rewards credit card (the card earns a whopping 5% on purchases if you are an Amazon Prime member). That amount easily offsets the annual $139 premium for Prime membership. In fact, $300 would cover the membership fee for this year as well. It’s spending neutral, so to speak, for me to keep Amazon Prime.

My friend did some quick math, and figured out that $300 in 5% of rewards equals to about $6,000 of spending last year. Since I’m notorious for buying lots of books, the friend quipped, “How much are these books that you buy?” Honestly, I was a bit surprised at the $6,000 figure. Granted, about $2,500 of that was spent towards an LG OLED TV and a set of speakers. The rest of the $3,500 is simply the spending of daily life. The books, the supplements, the health products, etc. Since I do get 5% cash-back in return, I try to do as much shopping with Amazon as possible.

Shoutout to the delivery guys and gals.

I certainly don’t plan to buy a TV this year or anything too spendy. I’m at the stage of life where it’s all about buying high-quality things and using them for a very long time. For example, this Herman Miller Aeron chair I’m currently sitting on, I’ve had since my college days. I endeavor to have this sort of longevity with the things I own now, and the stuff I buy moving forwards.

Books on books on books

I kind of promised myself this year that I will not buy more books until I’ve read all the ones that are already on the shelves. Well, that has gone completely out the window already. I’m about a dozen new books purchased this year, and it’s only been a month! There is literally no more room on my two IKEA BILLY bookshelves. I’ve resorted to stacking the news one horizontally on top of the books already there.

In my defense, I do tend to read all of the new books that I buy. But with shelf space becoming an acute issue, I soon will have to make a decision: either buy and create more shelf space, or donate a portion of the books. Because let’s face it, I’m not going to stop buying new books. That’s just not happening.

Donating the books will be easy: I work in a campus library that takes donations. The hard part will be figuring out which books to donate. That’s when the emotions and sentimental value kick in. Marie Kondo doesn’t have a solution for this: what if everything sparked joy? A more useful standard would be to toss anything that have not been touched/used in the past 12 months. The likelihood of such a book ever being touched again is near zero.

I previously had dreams of stuffing as much books and shelf space as possible into my room. A wonderland of books, if you will. The coziness scale will certainly be off the charts. However, that would clash against a strong sensibility of mine: cleanliness. It’s a simple equation: the more stuff you have, the more difficult it is to maintain it.

This is why I’m kind of rethinking about getting a second car. Sure it’ll be fun to have a different kind of car to drive around, but it will be two times the effort (and costs!) to maintain. That’s a tremendous time investment, even for something I am deeply passionate about.

Why are you still talking to me?

Readers of the this blog may know I’m on a hunt to buy the new Honda Civic Type R. Production on this hottest Civic model is extremely scarce: as of this writing, only 826 cars have made it to the United States market since the end of October last year. You know what that means! Hefty dealership markups if you want to take one of these home.

While I don’t particularly enjoy paying over MSRP for anything, I understand the basics of supply and demand. When even ordinary cars have markups in this market, low-volume enthusiast cars will be doubly so. There’s zero incentive for a dealership to sell at MSRP, unless they either really like you, or you’ve already given them enough business previously to justify them doing you a solid. A middle-of-nowhere small town dealership will probably have less markup, but in populous California, I’m fighting with lots of willing buyers.

I have one advantage, however: time. There’s no urgency at all for me to buy right now. If it’s not this year, next year is just fine. The plan was always to wait out the initial rush of buyers and let them pay the meatier markups. I can swoop in later when the tacked-on money isn’t so insane ($60,000 for any Civic is kind of ridiculous).

However, I have been sending out some feelers to dealers that have a Civic Type R in the color I want: Championship White. It’s funny some of the replies I’ve been getting. I made a competitive offer on one car, and the dealer said their salespeople are currently working with buyers that offered $2,000 higher me - would I be able to match? I’m thinking, “Then take those offers! Why are you still talking to me?!”

It’s a negotiating tactic, of course. If the dealer truly had higher offers than mine, they wouldn’t be still texting me. Car buying is so much calmer and fun when I don’t really need to buy the car.

Inflation everywhere

I’m pretty certain my auto insurance rates are going up in the next six months renewal. Isn’t everything? Inflation is an absolute bitch, even for someone like me who have only myself to feed/take care of. Just last week I noticed the prices at Panda Express (the best go-to Chinese food in a pinch) have gone up another 30 cent. It must be the great egg shortage going on right now. Maybe don’t use eggs in the fried rice for the time being…

Rent have gone up this year as well, not because my friend/landlord hates me, but because of energy prices. Anyone in California using their central heating a lot during this winter have had a bit of a sticker shock recently. The prices of natural gas is stupendously high, so much so one friend of mine have stopped heating up her entire apartment. Price of electricity have gone up as well. Since my rent is inclusive of utilities, no surprise that it has rightfully increased this year.

At least my BMW M2 can be insured. This article on Jalopnik says in certain areas (of high crime), insurance companies are refusing to cover Hyundai and Kia vehicles. Because those cars are incredibly easy to steal. Understandable, really: insurance is simply risk management. If certain drivers with bad records can be denied insurance, so can cars that are heavy theft magnets. It’s not worth the risk for the underwriting companies.

Of course, it completely sucks for the owners of a Hyundai or Kia vehicle made before 2021. You either cannot get insured, or have to pay an abnormally high premium. Even if you want to trade the car for another brand, it’s not so easy. The great supply chain shortage is still effecting the car market. Customers are still paying over sticker for new cars, and used cars prices are still heavily inflated compared to pre-pandemic. Talk about rock and a hard place.

I’m low-key glad my parents’ 2018 Hyundai Tucson was a lease.

Sorry to hear

With many big tech companies doing layoffs recently, I didn’t think that someone I personally know would be part of the cohort getting the axe. Not until yesterday, when a friend informed me a mutual friend who works at Salesforce, no longer works at Salesforce. She’s doing relatively okay otherwise. The severance is generous, and she’s been diligent with money for a long time. The savings cushion is for precisely these unfortunate moments in life.

I guess I had the impression that people who’ve been with the company for a long time would be safe from the layoff reaper. Which is why I didn’t exactly worry for my friends who was at Salesforce and is at Google (fingers crossed for that friend). I read a tweet recently of a person who got fired from Google after being there for 20 years. These big tech layoffs aren’t simply to cull the massive headcount increase during the pandemic - it’s an opportunity to reevaluate all areas and get leaner.

I’m glad my workplace unionized, so there is some measure of last-in, first-out during times of austerity. Of course, that cuts both ways: under-performers get saved from termination on the virtue of them being with the company for a long time. It’s not a hard rule, however. During the pandemic, our campus had some layoffs, and no one in our IT support department got axed. Which make sense: you don’t get rid of people in the department that is wholly supporting your remote learning effort.

Obviously then the campus did not expand/hire massively during the pandemic - unlike the big tech companies. So I have to think we’re in better shape to handle the supposedly recession headwinds to come. During these times, everybody wishes they have the security of a government job.