That was amazingly quick. My sister ordered a four-pack of the Apple AirTags for me last Sunday with customized engraving, and they just arrived this morning. They had to be engraved near Shanghai, then shipped halfway around the world in about five days. Since Apple shipped via FedEx, the package was sent to the FedEx Memphis hub, then shipped back to the West Coast.
Since I already bought some non-Apple AirTag leather key fobs, I put all four in the holders and activated them. Like most Apple products, the packaging was clean and cool looking, and setup was very easy. I soon had three tags set up for my car key, my mom’s purse, and my dad’s keys. I did a few quick tests and they seemed to work quite well. The Precise Finding feature does not work on my dad’s older iPhone 6S+ since it requires an iPhone 11 or 12. The fourth and final AirTag will probably go on one of my sister’s dogs this weekend.
It is not perfect though. There is a glaring functionality missing in not allowing multiple devices to link to a specific AirTag. For example, if I misplaced my keys with an attached AirTag, and I could not find my phone or the battery is dead, I cannot use another iOS device to locate my keys. I guess the process is to first locate my phone with the existing phone, then use the AirTag connected phone to find the tag. But what if another device is unavailable, broken, or the battery is fully discharged? Hopefully there is a good reason for this omission.
Since I took the entire day off for the UCLA Transplant Center appointment, I had the afternoon off. I went with my parents to Costco to do some shopping. The plan was also to get a famous Costco hot dog/soft drink combo for $1.50, now that phosphorus is not a worry. However, I felt strangely guilty standing in the food line so I skipped on the hot dog.
Costco was surprisingly crowded at 1:00 pm on a Wednesday. When I went last month, everyone I saw had a mask on. Today, only about 1/3 of the customers were wearing masks, which was higher than I expected, with the Costco located in Tustin/Irvine. All the employees were still fully masked. My parents and I still had our masks on, and no one cared.
The cart was full at checkout. This is what $300 of Costco groceries look like:
The items in the plastic bags were not that expensive. Hugh bag of popcorn were ~$4/each, and two bags of croutons were $7/each. What was expensive was $50 package of flank steak and $15 box of Splenda.
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We almost got into a head-on accident driving to Costco. My dad was driving straight through an intersection with a green light. A minivan (old Toyota Sienna) coming in the opposite direction made a left turn on a red arrow. Luckily my dad was able to swerve to the unoccupied right lane. Since the lap portion of the seatbelt goes right over my kidney transplant site, a head-on collision at any speed would be really bad. We captured the incident on the carcam in my dad’s car, but WordPress does not allow video uploads on a free account so here is a screencap. You can see the Costco at The District on the right.
The wide angle lens in the carcam distorts distances. The minivan looked a lot closer in real life.
Well, kind of. I had an in-clinic appointment this morning to discuss my transplant at UCLA, and they did agree to turn me over to my regular nephrologist. They tried to do this several times, but there was always a test outside of normal range. I guess all the test results looked good enough for them to finally release me, but I do have a follow-up appointment with UCLA in four months.
I was a long morning. My appointment was at 9:30 am, which meant I had to be there by 7:30 am to draw labs. Both Waze and Tesla navigation said about 90 minutes, so I left the house at 5:30 am, did not arrive until 7:20 am. The clinic was pretty deserted so I was called almost immediately by the phlebotomist, but that left me with a full two hour wait until the clinic appointment. I ended up at the main hospital cafeteria, ate some breakfast, and basically sat around for 90 minutes. Back at the clinic, the appointment was pretty quick. The lab results turned out fine: my creatinine levels dropped down back to 1.30, or within normal range. My calcium levels were a bit too low this time, so the doctor told me to stop taking Sensipar*. Of course, I just placed a refilled with my online pharmacy for a three-month supply, arriving in two days. They are keeping me on the Lokelma since it appears to help with my high potassium. The hemoglobin levels have fallen to normal range so we did not go over any of the issues I posted about here.
UCLA nephrologist unsure what happened to cause the sudden rise. He said sometimes a test result will come back all weird so they will test a few more times to verify.
I asked the doctor about the kidney ultrasounds again. He repeated that the findings were pretty normal. My old kidneys have atrophied slightly, which was typical, and there are some benign cysts but nothing to worry about. For the new kidney, the arterial flow is a bit high, which usually indicates some blockage (renal artery stenosis). However, since the kidney is working well, they there is no concern.
I got back to my car at around 10:00 am, and the drive home took about an hour and was pretty uneventful. Traffic northbound on the 405 was still very bad, even at 10:30 am. On the way to UCLA, an American Airlines Boeing 777 flew over the freeway right in front of me near LAX. It looked really huge in real life, but the fisheye lens on my carcam made it look small.
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*The Sensipar prescription refill cost me a $10 copay, but my work insurance (or my company since we are self-funded) had to pay ~$2,000. If you divide that out assuming a 40 hour work week, it is about $4/hour for the medication. For minimum wage workers, that is >50% of their gross salary. I am all for free markets, but some of these drug prices are ridiculous.
This is a five year old song by a Korean girl group called Laboum. I am not sure of the English title. I see “Journey to Atlantis” a lot, but the official music video says “Fresh Adventure.” Regardless, this was one of my favorite K-Pop songs when it came out. Laboum has a decent discography with lots of great songs, but they were hugely underrated and never super popular.
The K-Pop industry is very competitive, with new artists debuting all the time. Song promotion cycles are really short, usually just weeks or months, and public attention will jump to the next new song. That is why when an older song becomes popular again, it is a big deal. The best example is probably 위아래 (Up & Down) by EXID, and more recently, 롤린 (Rollin’) by Brave Girls. Both songs did just okay when they first came out, but years later became super popular and hit #1 song in sales and music shows.
For EXID, if was a fancam of a performance that went viral. It was fortunate this happened as it help EXID gain lots of popularity. They went on to release several more great songs. Likewise, Brave Girls were on the verge of disbanding when a video of their performance at a military base went viral and Rollin’ shot up to #1. EXID has since disbanded, but Brave Girls are still riding the popularity wave, and just released a mini-album.
For Laboum, I think their sudden popularity was that their song was featured on a popular variety program called Hangout with Yoo. The show revolves around Yoo Jae-suk, probably the most popular MC in Korea. The show started with just filming random stuff he did on his “day off” but became super popular, and have done several music projects. The latest project is forming a boy band, and they sang 상상더하기 on the show (see below). I just started watching past episodes of the show, so I have not watched the most recent project/episodes yet.
I am really happy that these groups get another chance at success. Laboum is back on music shows performing their old song. All three groups mentioned should have had more success initially, but a lot of talented artists never make it as K-Pop idols. I am actually a big fan of Laboum overall, not just the song 상상더하기. I even bought a signed copy of another album from South Korea a few years ago.
Here is a recent performance from about two weeks ago on MBC. The girl in the preview picture is Solbin; her signature is in the upper right on the above album cover. I believe she has been doing more acting than singing but that may change for a little while.
I am a sucker for technology gadgets. When the Tile first came out, I bought a couple of them to keep track of stuff. It works fine when the tag is within range of your phone. If you lose the attached item out in the real world, then finding stuff depends on other people’s phones. The Tile user base was too small to be effective. Also, the original Tile tags ran out of battery pretty quickly and they were not user replaceable. Did they expect people to buy another Tile tag each time the battery ran out?
So I was excited to see Apple’s solution to this problem. Since you would not want to use cellular or WiFi connection for locator tags, we are limited to using Bluetooth. It was pretty smart to utilize Apple’s locate my stuff app since all iOS users are familiar with it. Hopefully there are enough iPhones out there for good coverage, and lost AitTags can be located quickly.
I ended up buying the four pack and got them engraved with some emojis. Because of the personalization, the AirTags will take 2-3 weeks to arrive. They are likely still made in China so they need to be engraved in the factory, packaged, and shipped overseas. This used to take only days, but with COVID still a risk worldwide, the number of airfreight flights is very limited.
One of my sister’s dogs sometimes runs out of the house when you open the door. I may put one on her to see if the tracker works outside the house.
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Updated: 6/22/2021 6:00 pm
I got a text message from FedEx saying a package for me has shipped. I thought it was a prescription or the monthly Natera Prospera blood test, but the package is coming from Kunshan, China, so it is probably the Apple AirTags. Kunshan is right outside of Shanghai. I could not find the address on Google Maps, but it is likely located in one of the high tech industrial parks found in every Chinese city. I also got an email from Apple just now with estimated delivery date of June 29th. That is next Tuesday. I thought shipping would take longer, but FedEx has their own planes and do not depend on commercial passenger flights for cargo shipments.
In general, my experience with Amazon Prime shipping has been pretty good. I was an early Prime member; I think I signed up as soon as it was offered. I know I was one of the first Amazon Echo buyers. I got the original model for $99 back in January of 2015.
Anyway, back to shipping. Our house front door is kind of at an angle so it is hidden from the street. Amazon, and other delivery services like UPS and FedEx, would usually drop off packages at the door, and in the 11 years I’ve lived here, I have never had a package stolen. Since the neighborhood is full of single family houses, there is always an Amazon truck making deliveries each day.
The only problem I have had is with Amazon’s one-day shipping. I do not think I have ever needed something delivered the next day. There is an Albertsons about a mile away so I can always go there if it is something urgent. However, if Amazon offers free one-day shipping on an item, of course I am going to select it. In fact, Amazon’s website usually selects the one-day shipping by default if available. I just said I had no issues with two-day shipping, but have had multiple failures with one-day shipping. Just yesterday, I ordered some grape flavored mints and glucose tablets. One-day shipping was offered so I selected the option, with a delivery deadline by 10:00 pm today. Welly, it is ~11:30 pm now, and no package. When I checked the Amazon app at 11:00 pm, it said that there was a problem, and I should wait until the 23rd before doing anything. So instead of one-day shipping, it is now two-to-four-day shipping.
This actually happens quite often. I do not get stuff shipped next-day normally, and this is the third time in the past few months that the package has not arrived. The frustrating part is that even at 8:00 pm, the tracking page still said package was arriving by 10:00 pm. The logistics of one-day shipping for thousands of products is hard. Likely, my insignificant items did not even make it on the truck, if to the distribution center at all. The computer knows this, but Amazon still let’s me believe I am getting my mints until after the delivery deadline. Why? I am perfectly fine with two-day shipping, which has been very reliable for me. Instead, Amazon inflated my expectations just to fail. What if it was something important, like toilet paper during a pandemic?
Oh well, I was expecting some grape mint tonight, but I will have to wait another 1-3 days.
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Speaking of the Amazon Echo, I have four of these devices; only two are currently activated however. I have the OG Echo in my bedroom, and a 5″ Echo Show on my office desk. I also bought two Echo Flex, mainly as gifts, but I still have them on my bookshelf.
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Today and tomorrow is Amazon Prime Day. I got a coupon for my last order for $10 off during Prime Day. I saw the 4th generation Echo Dot for $25 and almost bought it. After adding a few low carb/low sugar snacks, I deleted the Echo Dot since I have too many Echos already. I was able to order $35 of snacks so the items are coming today since it is 1:30 am already. I am not confident that all the products will get here. Even if they are delivered tomorrow, the products will likely be all melty from sitting in the delivery truck all day. I will post about the snacks after I get them.
I just saw a “preview” of my bill for next month, and it is about $900. However, since I have solar panels installed, Socal Edison (SCE) effectively bills me once a year. Each month, I only get billed for basic charge, whatever that is, and it is only $0.031/day. That usually comes out to about $1/month. However, SCE is tracking my actual usage, calculating the cost, but deferring the actual billing. Since SCE screwed me on the original system install (limited system size), I never generate enough power to cover usage. If I look at my Tesla app, my solar system generates a maximum of ~22 kW each day. I am also unsure what that is measuring: is it the panel output, inverter output, AC or DC power? In any case, SCE adds my power usage and solar generation to get a net usage number, and that is applied to the tiered rates. Currently, tier 1 is $0.23/kWh, tier 2, is $0.29/kWh, and tier 3 is $0.39/kWh.
Earlier, I said SCE screwed me on the installation. Part of the reason I installed solar panels on my house is my Tesla EV. For some reason, SCE placed an upper limit on system size based on last 12 month’s usage. I believe we were using about 500+ kWh per month, or a rough average of 20 kWh/day. Well, my Tesla has a 72 kWh battery and gets about 3.3 miles/kWh. If I drive 100 miles round trip to work, that is about 30 kWh, which is greater than our base electricity usage without the EV. If I did not get solar panels and charged daily at home, that would put me at tier 3 every month, and it would cost me marginally $0.39/kWh to charge the car. Luckily, I ended up charging mostly at work and occasionally use a Supercharger.
So fast forward to this year. Since I paid about $800 last year, $900 this year sounds reasonable. There were some very hot days last Fall, and due to the pandemic, our family just hung out at home most of the time. What I am still confused about is reconciling power generation numbers. Last month’s bill from SCE says generation was 304 kWh. I went to the Tesla app and downloaded data for the same dates and got 516 kWh generated. Again, I do not know what each company is measuring. Hopefully, SCE’s number is measured at the meter so power in = power out. Unfortunately, solar panels generate DC so each system requires an inverter to convert DC to AC. I cannot remember what the conversion factor is. I know there is a √2 somewhere… pretty sad for someone with two electrical engineering degrees. 🥵
I just saw it today on the Tesla app. When you click on charging, the app shows you the nearest charging spots. Evidently, the new supercharger site in Irvine is the closest to my house now. It is located in Heritage Plaza, near Culver and Walnut. The chargers are literally right in front of Daiso and Mitsuwa; man, it is going to be super crowded all the time. Right now it is 7:00 am Friday morning, and the app says there are 10/16 stalls free. I read on Google Maps that these are 250 kW chargers. I have never had success with getting more than 50 kW of power from a supercharger. It may be higher right when I plug in, but always seem to drop down to 50 kW or lower, even though the v1.0 chargers are supposed to support up to 130 kW. I am finding that Tesla’s specs on their cars are a bit flexible when it comes to charging and range.
There are a lot of local chargers now. When I purchased the Model S in late 2016, there was only two supercharger sites on this map: Fountain Valley (lower left) and Main Place Mall in Santa Ana (not marked due to weird zoom). All the chargers were full 24/7 because there were only Model S/X available, and most included free lifetime supercharging. Now that Model 3/Y have to pay for supercharging, hopefully the new chargers will not be too full since most people should charge at home.
Since I need to drive down that way to get labs done for UCLA, I think I will leave 30 minutes early and stop by the new supercharger and see if my old Model S can charge faster than 50 kW. I have not driven the car outside of Los Angeles and Orange counties since charging is a bit slow. If I can charge fast on the new v2.0 chargers, I will feel better with longer road trips.
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My friend sent me this photo of the Harris Ranch supercharger along the I-5 freeway. This site gets a lot of traffic since it is about midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area. Tesla is going to build out the largest supercharger site with over 100 chargers. Assuming they are all v2.0, that means a maximum power draw of 100 x 250 kW or 25 MW. That is crazy! He also said they were putting in solar panels. That probably will not be enough to power even one charger.
Harris Ranch Supercharger under construction
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Well, these are not 250 kW chargers. Usually they have a small tag on the top of the charger that says 250 kW. These do not. I am getting about 35 kW which is terrible.
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I mentioned above that any new Tesla Supercharger site in Irvine will be packed since it seems every household has one. This is especially true in a shopping plaza with Asian stores. Well, here is the map from Bestla (a new Tesla app I purchased for $10). As you can see, the Heritage Plaza Supercharger I went to this morning is completely full, and the next closest site only has two stalls free; I believe this is the one by Honda Center/Anaheim Stadium. Tesla made an error offering unlimited free Supercharging for the old Model S/X. You never give Asians free shit because it will come back and bite you in the ass.
Google sent me a notification today that my May 2021 timeline is available, whatever that means. So I went to Google Maps and selected Timeline to see how Google tracks my movement 24/7 (or my iPhone anyway). I then compared last month to May 2020. Not surprisingly, there are a lot more dots on the 2021 map.
This is May 2020:
The dots are: home, work (probably when I “stole” my 30″ monitor), St. Joseph hospital/dialysis center, my sister’s house, and a local Tesla Supercharger. There is also a dot in a in a nearby park, but I do not remember that. This was early in the lockdown so I am almost certain the parking lot gate was locked.
Here is May 2021:
Same dots as May 2020, but a lot more, including UCLA (post-transplant), dentist, other medical appointments, markets, and outdoor food courts for church cell group. The dot in the upper right is the Big Bear trip from last weekend. That is the furthest I have been from my house in about two years. Pretty sad. It is only four days into June and the timeline map already has more dots than May 2020. Another sign that maybe life is slowly returning to normal.
So I went to the main UCLA campus for a couple of kidney ultrasounds today. The appointment was at 2:00 pm. Since it is Friday, I knew traffic would be bad. Still, I spent a total of 4 hours driving today. I left my house at noon-ish, and arrived at UCLA at 1:20 pm. Since I needed to pick up a prescription, that worked out well. The radiology lab was super busy today. With half the seats blocked off due to COVID measures, the waiting room was almost fully occupied. Surprisingly, I did get called at the appointed time, and the ultrasounds took about an hour. The tech was very nice and talkative, so much so that I thought about telling him to pay attention to the procedure. 😀
I paid for parking ($14!) and left UCLA at around 3:00 pm. At first both Tesla navigation and Waze showed a two hour drive back home. As I drove, that slowly grew to two and a half hours. While the Tesla onboard navigation told me to stay on I-405, even though it was basically a parking lot, Waze kept trying to route me off the freeway and onto surface streets, all to save a few minutes. I ignore Waze. With Autopilot in heavy traffic, the Tesla can really drive itself. There are no intersections or pedestrians on the freeway, and it is trivial for the navigation computer to hold the lane and keep distance. IMHO, it is much more work to drive on local streets. I did cheat a bit in Long Beach by driving in a few off-ramps that merged back onto the freeway, along with probably thousands of other drivers. That saved about three minutes according to the nav computer.
One think I did notice though is there are a lot of terrible drivers. Either they are incompetent, or being intentionally dangerous. When Autopilot is engaged in my Tesla, I usually relax more, and get to “spectate” a bit. You really notice how aggressive or entitled some drivers are. I would bet that a lot of the actual traffic slowdowns are caused by inconsiderate drivers forcing others to brake so they can save a few seconds, or jump one space in line. I also saw several cars driving on the shoulders at fairly high speeds while the regular lanes are stopped. Super dangerous.
I guess I am spoiled from not driving to work for the past 15 months. One silver lining of unknown vaccine efficiency for transplant recipients is still having a (good) excuse for avoiding crowds. I will likely not have to go into work until we start having COVID vaccine booster shots.
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Almost forgot. Since the ultrasound took about an hour, the tech turned the computer screen towards me so I could see the actual images and videos. He also explained a few things to me. It was pretty interesting to see the actual kidney and blood/urine flow in/out of it. Too bad I did not take a photo; my phone was stashed on a chair along with the other stuff in my pockets. I also did not realize how big a kidney was. A few people were posting pics of their “new” kidney. Maybe these were deceased donor kidneys? UCLA certainly did not show me my sister’s kidney before they transplanted it in me.
Not sure if that is a real kidney or just a model for a stock photo, but it is pretty large. I have three of them now. Doctors said bad kidneys will atrophy so maybe my two old kidneys are taking up less room.
My sister just purchased a new camera. It is a Sony A7iii and it is pretty nice. It is also pretty expensive. Just the camera body was $1900, and her first lens was about $800. She has an old Nikon SLR with a few lenses that she will likely pass on to my niece. I also have a few cameras at home, none of them are recent however. The “newest” camera I have is a Sony a55 SLT. I also have a Sony a100, which can share lenses with the a55. I even have a Sony QX30, which probably no one else has:
It is a decent camera with no screen or viewfinder. It connects to your smartphone via wifi and is controlled through an app. I bought it used thankfully, and have never taken a real photo with it yet.
Anyway, even with a real SLR and a bunch of lenses, my favorite camera is an old Sony RX100. This is the first version of the camera; they are up to version VII (7) now. I bought the camera new many years ago for ~$600. Used models are still going for ~$300. The new RX100 VII is $1300 on Amazon.
For a tiny point-and-shoot camera, the RX100 has some pretty good specs. The image sensor is 20.2 MP; my Sony a55 is only 14.something. It also has full control over shutter speed and aperture, much like a full SLR camera. The lens is pretty bright at f/1.8 when zoomed out so I can take indoor photos without a flash. And it is light. When I travelled to Tunisia and Asia, I usually leave the SLR at home and carry this camera. The only issue I have is that the max optical zoom in only 3.6x. Sometimes you want to zoom in more, and there are point-and-shoot cameras out there with 10x optical zoom.
I found a website call MapChart that allows you to pull up various maps and color map subdivision individually to represent data. The most obvious and easy one to do is travel. I mapped which countries I have been to, and also one of US states and Canadian provinces. I tried to do a California map using counties, but could not figure out which county is which.
For the maps, I use blue for my home country/state, and colored the data using yellow.
The world map is pretty sad. Most of the countries are gray since I have only been to a handful of countries. Not that I can travel again, once the pandemic subsides, I am looking forward to turning more countries yellow.
Truthfully, some of these states and provinces marked yellow are kinda fake. Like Switzerland in the world map, I only transited or drove through some of these states/provinces. These are the iffy ones: Texas, Florida, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Alberta, and Yukon. For the rest, I have spent at least one night in each country/state/province.
For the future, I have mapped out countries that I really want to visit, and those that are second priority (repeat visit included).
If I had to narrow it down to three countries on the future list, it would be South Korea, Germany, and Australia since I have not been there before. I still have a lot of relatives in Canada so that is likely 100% certain. I also have Taiwan citizenship and there is a non-zero chance that I may buy an apartment in Taipei and live there part-time. My sister’s family is also planning a middle-Europe trip, probably Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Czechia, and Hungary (maybe not all in one trip).
C’mon everyone, get vaccinated so I can travel again!
This is post #1111 for my blog. I was going to shut down the blog on this post since I thought I was going to be “released” by the UCLA transplant center. That was as good as a milestone as any. However, as I mentioned in the previous post, I have to go back again in two weeks for my final final final final appointment. So for now, I will keep posting here.
In reality, I have not decided what to do with my two blogs. My old blog has over 10 years of posts, though it has basically gone dormant after I started this blog. It is on an older platform (Blogger). I like WordPress more, and actually thinking about paying for a premium subscription so I can make it look more professional. Maybe I will just link the two existing blogs to the new one for continuity. I tried to keep this one semi-anonymous since there is a lot of medical data, but I think I would like to post as my real self in the future.
I got a notification for an Instagram Live video from Bibi, one of my new favorite K-Pop/K-R&B artists. I actually purchased her latest album from Choice Music LA, but have not received it yet. The live video is still on right now, and there are about 2,000 viewers. She speaks pretty good English for someone that did not live outside of Korea. I think in an interview she said she had a long-distance relationship with someone from China. I guess they had to speak English.
Here is her latest music video:
My favorite Bibi song so far:
I have not gone to any concerts lately. If she decides to tour LA, I would definitely go see her sing.
A few photos of Bibi. The left is a modeling shot. The right is a screenshot of the Instagram Live video. She looks much younger without makeup. She is also very down-to-earth on these live videos. Since Bibi has gotten more popular, there are more photoshoots and commercials featuring her. Search for “bibi” on YouTube and there are hundreds of videos.
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Bibi was “discovered” on a SBS show called The Fan. Established artists would bring new artists to perform and compete on the show. This was her performance on episode 1. Bibi has later said she would rather choose “death” before going on another singing competition show.
This is the second time that the Apple Music application has lost my music library. The actual files are still there, but nothing shows up when you open the app. I found that the app would randomly resets the file storage folder to a new location, thus “losing” the library file. It appears this happened when Apple switched the app name from iTunes to just Music. That is fine and all, but why mess with the default folder setting when people have thousands of music files already organized? Again, who codes this crap? Does Apple do any software QA or just let app go out the door with tons of bugs?
Old file location: …/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music
New location: …/Music/Music/Media
Why? Is this some kind of vanity bullshit to just rename the folder path so the new app cannot find previous music files? I could not remember how I fixed the problem last time so I Googled again. Almost every article is about iPhone/iPad, even if I specifically type “Mac OS” in the search terms. In the end, I had to use Time Machine to restore the library file from a week ago. After churning for 10 minutes, I get an error message that says some of the music cannot be restored because the app cannot find them. Sigh… all the files are in ONE folder. It ended up restoring about 6,000 songs but I have no idea how many are missing.
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I just found out that the restore process inserted another folder in the file path. Now most of the songs are in …/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music/Music, while a bunch of files/folders are left in the old file location. WTF Apple? I have no idea how to fix this. Additionally, the songs that are “missing” in the restored library are in the newly created Music subfolder. I guess I will try to restore the music library XML file again to see if that fixes things.
Seriously, I need to fine a replacement for Apple Music since each time I restore the library file, the app loses track of when songs are added so everything shows up in the “Recently Added” playlist. I guess you get what you paid (free) for.
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Ugh, even worse, Apple Music managed to split some artist’s songs into the old Music folder and the new additional Music folder. I was going to copy all the files from one folder to another, but with duplicate folder names and songs spread across both of them, I cannot do a simple drag and drop but have to reconcile all the folders first. Seriously, this is totally f*ucked up.
I think Apple is messing up the Music app on purpose so we will all subscribe to Apple Music and forget about downloading MP3 files. I got Spotify Premium instead since it seems to have more K-Pop and C-Pop music.
On my way to UCLA Sunday night, I met my friend at work to sign some paperwork. I am still his company’s unpaid acting-CFO, so there were a few documents for me to sign. I had to walk a bit down the street to meet him, and he said he could not recognize me until I was really close due to all the weight I lost. I have not met met many people outside of family and medical staff since March of last year so I will probably get the same reaction if I ever return to work onsite.
My weight has not changed much since the kidney transplant. I am still around 175-180 lbs.
My sister texted me about game night for tomorrow night. She bought some games from Jackbox Games, the maker of You Don’t Know Jack. I used to have a few of those games on my PC, but nowadays, the games are multiplayer and each person uses their mobile devices. Since I need to travel to UCLA tomorrow evening, we decided to move it to tonight.
For dinner, they ordered a bunch of food from Urban Plates, and since they are at a soccer game until late, I am food delivery boy tonight. I also placed an order for the same time for myself. Since I am still trying to count/cut carbs, I pulled up their nutritional information sheet, and tried to order wisely.
Initially, I wanted to get the Chimichurri Chicken, but for some reason, it has 60 grams of carbs, while the Grilled Chicken has none. It is often tricky to try and guess the carb content just by looking at photos or reading descriptions. For sides, I really wanted the mashed potatoes with grave (and the Canadian in me wanted fries for the gravy), but opted for Asparagus and Brussel Sprouts.
All this to try and control my blood sugar.
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Just got home. The food was okay. Brussel sprouts were really good, but the asparagus stems were a bit tough to chew.
I downloaded the USPS app yesterday and signed up for their Informed Delivery service. It is free, and once you sign up, USPS will send you images of your letter-sized mail, and allow you to manage your incoming packages. Even though I mostly get junk mail, the service is pretty cool. For example, now I know that Citibank sent me some junk today:
I think if you are waiting for an urgent piece of mail and delivery is late in the day, at least you know in advance if it is arriving today. Since USPS will be sending me emails with images daily, I will need to make sure to delete them once in awhile, or I will run out of email storage space online again.
It is no surprise that politicians lie, and they seem to lie most of the time.Trump is basically a narcissist and a compulsive liar. He lies about the most insignificant things, and those lies are often easily disproven. In response, the Democrats (not all of them) have come up with the most blatant and cynical bullshit that I have ever heard*.
Currently, Democrats are trying to pass a law that would expand the Supreme Court by four to a total of 13 justices. Why four? That is because the court is split 6-3 by political party. There are six supposedly right-wing justices and three left-wing justices. When asked, the typical “reason” for the expansion (or court packing) is that nine people should not be able to overturn the will of millions of voters. Hmm, then why is 13 better? Why not 11, 15, 21, or 500,000 judges? The only reason is that with control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency, Democrats think they can make the court split 7-6 in their favor. That’s all. All other reasons given are total lies. Not only were most Democrat legislators against court packing before they were for it, why the sudden increase now? Why not increase it slowly over time? Finally, since there is absolutely no reason to choose 13 over nine, what is to prevent future administrations and Congress to just add two, four, six, or n x 2 more justices each time there is a new election? You know if this happens and the results are what the Democrats are hoping for, if Republicans win the next election, they will definitely add more justices to the Supreme Court. Of course, the Democrats then will complain and whine about abuse of power and other nonsense at that time, they will absolutely not take responsibility for starting this mess.
People are different, and often disagree with each other. I think America has been successful because we believe in rule of law instead of rule by law. If Democrats pass this, then the US is no better than communist China, passing laws that are enforced only when it is beneficial to the ruling party. Of course Republicans are guilty of this too but the court packing proposal is the most disgusting example that I have seen, and threatens the delicate balance of power that is crucial to America’s stability and future success.
I am more upset about this than the $millions of taxes I paid in the last 20 years.
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*My comment excludes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). When it comes to hypocrisy and outright lies, they have no equals, except maybe from Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis.
I spoke to one of my college roommates from senior year today. We talked for about an hour. Normally not that newsworthy, but I think it has been 27 years since we were in contact last. He was our neighbor in our apartment complex freshman year (1986), and all of us living in both apartments became good friends. I think we lost track of each other when I started business school in 1993.
For some reason, his name popped up in my head yesterday, so I did a quick Google search. One of the hits was an online people search site, and one record looked familiar. I then sent an email introducing myself, and he replied. He ended up calling me today, and we talked about what happened in our lives since the mid 90’s.
The reason I am posting was because the conversation was a bit depressing in hindsight. The call was fine, and it was good to talk to an old friend. However, trying to summarize my life for the past three decades, it was 1) divorce, 2) CABG surgery, and 3) ESRD and kidney transplant. I did survive all that but it feels the most recent half of my life has been driven more by tragedy than joy. A bit dramatic perhaps, but my current situation is not how I imagined life when I was younger.
Being a Christian, I know I am supposed to be glad that I am still alive, have a good job, mostly financially secure, and all my immediate family are close. There is just some dissonance between expectations and reality of God’s mercy and grace.
Life with chronic diseases 