Blog

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

Again!?

It’s not very nice to wake up to an email from Squarespace saying the price of a website subscription has, once again, gone up. This, after the company has already raised the pricing only last year. Inflation may have slowed to “normal”, but Squarespace certainly doesn’t think so! It might not be right now, but at some point I have to rethink whether or not it is worth the $200 per year just for the ability to say: I’ve got a website!

Is Tumblr still free? (Who owns it now anyways?) Maybe I should go back to blogging on that. It wouldn’t look as nice, but that extra $200 per year can easily cover a single trip to Costco. Hashtag browsing.

You ever look at your W2 during tax time, and wonder out loud where the heck did all your money go? You’ve made a certain amount of money this past calendar year, and yet your checking account can barely cover a month’s worth of bills.

All of these subscriptions we enjoy can add up to a large number, given a long enough timeline. $15 per month here and there may seem eminently affordable, but I would say those are the phantoms leeching away your monthly paycheck. For me, my subscriptions combined is easily $160 per month. While that can barely cover a single trip to Costco, imaging saving that amount every month. Do it for a long enough timeline…

That said, asceticism does not interest me. You got to spend your money on something, right? Though I think it’s important to periodically reevaluate whether or not something is worth the time and money. This website of mine remains worthy. But if prices keep going the way of these past two annual renewals, I’m going to have to think about it.

No soup for you

Word on the street is that Costco will begin scanning membership cards at warehouse entrances. As if the problem at Costco is they don’t check for your membership enough? Not only do they already visually check for a card at the entrance, but then they scan your card again at checkout. One time I was at self-checkout, and a team member asked to see my card, even though I already scanned it at the machine?! Nowadays you even need to show proof of membership before buying at the food court.

Of course, I get it: Costco has to protect its 4.5 billion dollars per year cash cow in the form of membership dues. Inflationary headwinds has made it difficult for Costco to keep its famously bargain prices. Much like how Netflix cracked down on account sharing, the prevailing standard operating procedure is clear: no more freeloading. A hot dog and soda for $1.50 - a menu item that Costco most certainly loses money on - is for paying members only.

I wonder if non-members have solicited members to buy food for them. Like teenagers asking an adult to go inside a gas station to buy liquor. With fast food prices in the 10s of dollars for a meal, $1.50 for a hot dog and soda just might be the closest thing to a free lunch.

I guess Costco membership “sharing” is not statistically insignificant? I mean, otherwise the company wouldn’t bother implementing account scanning at the front entrance. They want to make doubly sure the membership is active, and the cardholder is the actual person there. No more taking screenshots of the membership QR code in Costco app and sending it to your friends or relatives. (Does that even work?)

Hey, if that means less people inside of Costco during busy times, I welcome the new membership enforcement mechanism!

Afford to maintain

My BMW M2 is due for its annual service in September. Good news for me, I already prepaid for this last year. $800 for two annual services seems like a fantastic deal to me, especially so with all the inflation going on.

It would be naive to think the inflation hammer missed the automotive maintenance and repair industry. Apparently, there’s a shortage of skilled mechanics. You know what that means: labor cost is higher to keep the few good ones. Even if parts and material costs remains flat (I see the five quart jug of motor oil I bought back in 2022 is only $3 dearer), the price for an oil change would have certainly increased due to the higher shop rate. Can Jiffy Lube even do $20 oil changes anymore?

It feels like $100 is the new $20.

The average transaction price of a new car is $48,000. Auto insurance premiums have increased about 20% for everybody. Gasoline prices (for 91 octane) have stayed consistently above the five dollar mark this entire year (San Francisco Bay Area). The math of car ownership is quickly becoming a painful one. It’s no wonder people skimp out on vehicle maintenance. A car only needs periodic oils changes, and nothing else, am I right?

Japanese cars have a reliable reputation because they can survive on oil changes alone. German cars have an unreliable reputation because they absolutely cannot. For example: the M2 calls for spark plug changes every three years. Go see how long the engine will last if an owner ignores the book and just changes the oil every year.

I think German cars can be equally reliable as the Japanese, so long as you follow the maintenance manual to the letter. Obviously, that’s going to cost a hearty chunk of money annually. This is why I would hesitate to buy a used German car that doesn’t have a full stack of maintenance invoices matching the book. The only used car I ever bought - the 911 GT3 - had full dealership service records.

I am definitely saving up for future maintenance spend for the M2. It most certainly is going to get more and more expensive.

It's too damn big

It’s pretty obvious that cars are getting bigger and bigger. What has not gotten larger in commensurate are the width of roads, and the size of home garages. The former is easy enough to fix: just tear up the current lane markings, and replace with ones wider apart. Obviously, certain streets are going to be impossible to do. For those situations, I think you simply have to ban cars of a certain size. Much like how some residential neighborhoods prohibit 18-wheeler trucks from entering.

Parking lots are similar to roads. The lot at my workplace have already gone through a widening of the berths. Previously, it had gotten so bad that you cannot open your own driver door if the car to your immediate left did not park exactly in the middle of two lines. You know who’s got the best parking lot? IKEA. The berths there are so wide - to accommodate furniture loading - that even the largest of SUVs has no issues fitting in comfortably.

Logic would say that if cars continues to get bigger, it’s only a matter of time before the parking structure at work will need to have its lines repainted again.

Cars becoming too wide to fit home garages is a far more difficult fix. Some of the older homes I see in San Francisco, ones built way back in the previous century, have garage openings that appears incapable of allowing a modern SUV to pass through. No wonder people would rather park on the street and use their garage space as storage! Widening a garage aperture is going to cost many thousands of dollars, and applying for a few permits. As we know, permits in San Francisco are super easy to get, so long as you know who to bribe.

One of the items to check off when buying a house should absolutely be: can your car fit in the garage with room to spare? Or maybe this is only a San Francisco problem. Everything is bigger in Texas, am I right?

There's no China in team

I love the Olympics. It’s a great reminder that there are no shortcuts in life. Because shortcuts, also known as cheating, is explicitly not allowed in Olympic competition. To reach a goal, there’s only the consistent grind. People love to see the end results of a triumphant victory, but behind that are countless sweaty sessions in a training gym. Successes are overnight only because on the television is the first time you’ve seen of some of these athletes.

The running joke regarding my mother country of China is that they perform superbly at individual events, but fail completely when it comes to team sports. If an event involves more than two people at once, it’s not going to go well for China. Doubles ping pong and synchronized diving? Not a problem. Football and basketball? A country of 1.4 billion souls can’t even qualify.

I have a theory on why this is so. In a way, Chinese culture is kind of selfish. For very good reasons, to be sure. The devastation wrought by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution created an ingrained atmosphere of not enough to go around. The zero-sum pie is very small. Therefore, for the common Chinese citizen, whatever you can get for yourself, you hang onto it for dear life. There’s no honor is sharing, because that means you yourself won’t have enough to survive.

There was a time when public bathrooms in China did not have toilet paper. Any stock would be stolen very quickly. You’d have to bring your own.

The saying goes: there’s no ‘I’ in team. A team of selfish athletes isn’t going to go very far. When the glory of personal accomplishment (and the financial rewards) overshadow pride for country, it’s obvious to see how China continues to fail at team sports on the world stage.

Vote local

Who I vote for to be the President of these United States really doesn’t matter. Not because the California delegates will vote Democrat regardless (all those tech bros voting for Trump is kind of just pissing in the wind), but because whoever is the President doesn’t really affect me much materially. Now, who is going to be the mayor of San Francisco - that’s the most crucial race as it pertains to my life.

Because the citizenry might elect the wrong person, one who turns out to be super tolerant towards homeless camping on sidewalks, and petty theft done by teenagers. It was only a few years ago when we recalled a district attorney who didn’t want to persecute criminals. Imagine that! That’s like firefighters coming to the front of your burning home and just standing there. The fire has rights too, am I right?

The current San Francisco mayor - London Breed - knows it’s an election year so she is stepping up efforts to clear homeless encampments. The Supreme Court of the United States did our city a solid by allowing municipalities to ban people from sleeping in public spaces. Where will the homeless go, you ask? How about your house? If you’re so concerned about their wellbeing, why don’t you give up your resources?

See: it’s easy to virtue signal when you don’t experience any of the downsides. I bet the residents of the Tenderloin district is happy to finally see some enforcement action towards the homeless problem.

The local elections matter tremendously. Act accordingly!

Not for a snack

A friend was introducing a Korean restaurant to me. The first thing I wanted to know was: how much? Readers of this blog would know I am price-sensitive like that. But then again, it’s difficult to pay $14 for a roll of kimbap (Korean-style sushi roll) when I know for a fact that same roll sold in Korea is around $2. It just seems wrong.

Moreover, kimbap is more like a snack food, something filling you take to-go. Think of as the Korean equivalent of a home-packed American sandwich. Would you pay $14 for a peanut-butter and jelly sandy? Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?

With the recent high inflation, you really can’t take numbers at face-value. Deadpool and Wolverine had an $211 million opening weekend at the box office. That’s a properly large number. However, I paid $19 for a Saturday morning matinee showing. Yes, just like everything else, the price of a movie ticket has gone up. It’s easier to get to $210 million when the cost of each ticket sold is higher than ever.

As for the movie itself, the third Deadpool film is fantastically fun. The story is super basic, but the ceaseless action and comedy more than make up for it. I’m not saying you should definitely see it at a theatre for the visuals. More like you would want to see it as soon as possible to avoid spoilers. There are a ton of surprises jammed into Deadpool and Wolverine. To have them spoiled by a random YouTube commenter for a video that has nothing to do with the movie whatsoever would be unfortunate.

At least movie tickets are tax inclusive. So are gas stations: the prices on the big board is what you pay. I like that a lot. The aforementioned $14 roll of kimbap still has to factor in tax and tip, adding at least 25% to the cost.