I finally pulled the trigger and paid for Spotify Premium. I partially got it for my dad, so I got the Duo subscription. He listens to Pandora all day, with ads. I think Spotify has a bigger song library so maybe he can find some new music. It also has more Asian music so he can search for his Chinese songs.

Another factor was that Tesla added Spotify as an option on the multi-media system. It only works with Spotify Premium but I can stop updating a USB stick with MP3 files, or sync my iPhone and connect via Bluetooth. This way, my custom play lists should appear in the car automatically. Now that I’m on medical leave, there’s lots of time to sit and listen to music. Only downside so far is that there are no lyrics in Spotify. I downloaded MusicMatch but the interface is clunky.

Dang. Barely two months and I have to send my Apple Watch in for inspection. This is the busted EKG problem that started about a month ago. I think that is when I updated WatchOS to 7.3. One day the EKG app was working fine, the next day, nothing.

I was Googling the problem again, and somehow reached an Apple Support page. It gave me the option of speaking with someone now, with only a 2 minute wait so clicked. The CSR called me right away, but he could not troubleshoot it over the phone. I’m massively disappointed since now I’ve integrated my life with the Watch. He was very helpful in setting up a RMA ticket, but the phone is going to be gone fo 5-7 days. I’m using it to track all my appointments and medication schedule so it’s going to suck.

To set up the RMA, he had me unpair the watch which wiped it, but the Watch made a backup on my iPhone. I’m pairing it again so I can at least use it until the RMA box comes. I hope the restore works well; I spent a lot of time custom configuring the Watch.

Still syncing…

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It’s done. Unpairing the Watch from the iPhone is like wiping it clean. After syncing and restoring from backup, it has to reinstall all the additional software. I have a Tesla app installed on my iPhone, which is connected to the Watch, and allow me to see the charge state and estimated range on a watch face. That’s seems to be gone. Let’s see how much stuff I have to manually restore post-syncing.

For my mandated walk today, I decided to walk to UCLA. My dad came along with me in case I collapse or the abdominal pain flares up while I’m walking. None of that happened. We were out for about 50 minutes.

We first walked to UCLA Medical Plaza 200. This is where my clinics will be, starting tomorrow at 6:00 am. It was only about a 10 minute walk, much much closer than my 90 minute drive from home in Orange County. My dad still wants to drop me off; it probably will take 10 minutes to get to the car in the underground parking, and to drive the three blocks to the Medical Plaza. Oh well.

Since it was Sunday afternoon, the campus was deserted. Except for administration and the medical center, it appears the campus is closed. Not sure why so there are still so many students living here in Westwood. Maybe they’re hoping school will open soon?

We then walked to the middle of campus and turned around near Engineering IV. That was my “home” 35 years ago, except that building was not there. Engineering school was in Boelter Hall which is a bit to the back and up a large hill. I’ve been back a few times but mostly at night to attend an event. I haven’t walked around campus since I graduated in 1990. Maybe I’ll spend the next two weeks walking it more.

Sorry, this post is not really related to dialysis or heart surgery. Since the pandemic lockdown began, Epic, a game company, has been giving away free games on their website. Sure, it’s mainly older titles that probably no one is buying, but it’s still a nice gesture. However, you have to install an application on your PC in order to access their online store and “buy” these free games. Also, Epic sells games from other publishers and some of those were given away too. So far so good.

Well, this week, the free game is Star Wars Battlefront II. It’s published by Electronic Arts but it’s originally from Origins. I think EA purchased Origins awhile ago. The game is okay but it caused a huge controversy about microtransactions when it was published. You can search Reddit to see the threads with official EA comments with record number of downvotes. Anyway, in order to play the game, the game installs an application from Origins that needs an account with Electronic Arts to continue, which also kicks off the Epic application that has a different userid and password. Fine. But sometimes the PC application forgets or wipes out the stored credentials so I have to find the userid/password combo to two accounts. Sometimes I get lazy and use Chrome’s suggested strong password suggestion; there’s no way I can remember that. It’s just a hassle so that game publishers can keep track of their users and create always connected games.

I finally gave in and purchased a subscription to Microsoft Office 365. Up to this point, I have been using really old versions of Office. On my PC, I have an installer for Office 2007 from University of Indiana that does not need an activation code. I bought a home license for Office Professional 2010 for Windows but the activation code doesn’t seem to work anymore. On the Mac, I was using a really old version from Microsoft’s home use program, probably Office 2004 for Mac. That was working fine until I upgraded to OS 10.15, and that version of Office stopped working.

At work, we’ve upgraded to Office 2016 so I’m used to all the new features. I do have a work computer at home but sometimes I have to use my personal computer and I’m limited to Office 2007 on the PC and nothing on my Mac. I found out that because my work has an enterprise agreement with Microsoft, I can get a 30% discount on home use licenses. Originally I was going to get the family license since I have multiple computers and my parents also use Office occasionally, but since you can log into 5 devices on one account, any my parents can keep using Office 2007, I opted for the personal license. With discount, it’s about $50/year. I’ve installed it on my PC already. On my Mac, I’m out of hard drive space so I’ll have to clear some files out. Since I’m planning to get a M1 based Mac soon, I’ll be prepared when I do upgrade my Mac hardware.

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The subscription also comes with 1TB of cloud storage. That seems like an overkill. 1TB is a lot of data. I already subscribe to 100GB on Google and 200GB on Apple iCloud. I also have a 4TB NAS at home. The amount are ridiculous compared to my first “real” computer: Mac Plus with 1MB of RAM and 32MB HDD.

I get a lot of request for surveys via email and regular snail mail. Usually after a procedure, the hospital or medical group wants feedback. I’m fine with filling out the surveys if it leads to better patient service.

However, I received an email request for a survey a few days ago and I can’t figure out what it is for. The email is from Mission Heritage Medical Group, which is part of the St. Joseph Health network, but I do not remember visiting any of the sites listed on their website. If I click the link for the survey, it only asks for your birthday and then the survey questions begin. There is no indication of what services or dates they are asking about. The only possibility is the COVID-19 test I had to do prior to my colonoscopy but that was a drive-thru nose swab that took a few seconds, and I don’t really have any feedback since it was so minor.

I’m embarrassed to say that I ordered one of these:

It was selling for $40 on Amazon and had a 5★ rating. I have a JBL Flip 3 and liked the way it looks and sounds. I was taking a long shower in the morning and thought that I could multitask by listening to the news or something while showering. It’s a bit of a waste since who really needs a Bluetooth speaker in the shower; I’m not even sure I can hear it over the spray sound.

The product description says it’s waterproof but I’m going to hang it on the towel rack first. It gets pretty humid in the bathroom so being waterproof will be good. Not sure if I’m willing to put it under the shower head yet.

I wanted my first post of 2021 to be a serious dissertation on dialysis or kidney transplant, but it’s going to be a complaint about how Apple does it’s billing. Oh well…

So, I purchased an Apple TV 4k during Black Friday weekend. The price was $199 for the 64GB version, but you get a $50 Apple gift card. When I placed the order, the sales tax was $11.55 so the total was $210.55. The order summary I saw online looked like this:

Very unclear what amount was going to be charged to my Apple credit card. $210.55 or $160.55? Then I get a notification on my phone that Apple charged $160.55. “Oh,” I thought, “Apple applied the reward gift card to the purchase. Cool.” I then forgot about this whole transaction.

Today, I get a notification that my billing statement is ready, and I took a look; usually I don’t look and let autopay take care of it. I saw the $160.55 charge, but a few days later, I see a $50 charge. I did not buy anything for $50 from Apple since then, and the Wallet app on my iPhone has no details. It took some digging but it turns out Apple billed me twice for the Apple TV order: $160.55 + $50.00 = $210.55. So they billed me for the discounted price, then charged me for a $50 gift card that was then sent to me, at a different email address (my fault). Why?! As a finance person in real life, I kind of know why. If they just deduct $50 from the price, Apple’s revenue decreases by $50. If they use this circuitous give card route, a portion of their customers won’t redeem or use up all the gift card balance, and Apple get to recoup some of the lost revenue. Kind of lame, but it’s standard gift card business practice.

Furthermore, I could not find an online statement of my Apple account. The best I could see is a list of purchases but no payment information. After digging through all sorts of links and pages, I found my account balance through the iTunes/Music app on my MacBook. Even then, it was hard to find. All it said was balance = $37.06. I had to guess that it was the $50 less an app I bought for $1.99, some in-game purchases for $7.96, and my monthly iCloud storage plan for $2.99. Ugh, very confusing and frustrating to track down transaction data from several places online. Did some engineer design their credit card user interface?

It’s 11:45 pm Pacific Time so 15 minutes until 2021 locally. In many ways, 2020 has been a terrible year. For me personally, it started with recovery from open heart surgery, followed by COVID-19 and 10 months of isolation, atrial fibrillation, then pleural effusion. Somewhere in there I stepped on a plastic stool and almost severe one of my toes. Plus several surgeries and procedures to make dialysis work better. The only bright point was having my sister approved as a kidney donor and me almost fully approved. Hope that momentum carries to 2021, and have some normalcy return to life.

I started this blog 18 months ago as a place to vent my peritoneal dialysis frustrations and ended up being my main blog. I did have another blog with >2000 posts that’s been mainly ignored. I only gave this URL to a few people so I don’t even know who is reading this. Whoever you are, I hope you survived 2020 relatively unscathed, and that you will haver a wonderful and safe 2021!

The steel watch band I ordered for my Apple Watch 6 arrived today. Apple store wanted $450 for their Space Black Link Bracelet. That’s more expensive than the actual watch ($429). So I went on Amazon and found something for ~$18. Of course it won’t be the same quality but 25x is a huge premium.

The band is pretty heavy and I had to remove four links from the band to have it fit my “skinny” wrist. The fit and finish is not great: some of the “paint” or whatever already rubbed off on the packaging, and it was very hard to get the anchors into the Watch band slots. Still, 25x price difference. I’m pretty sure the Apple one will be super shiny and fit perfectly in the Watch slots.

Ultimately, this is what bothers me about manufacturing in China. Chinese factories also assemble the actual Apple products like iPhones and iPads and they do an excellent job. Why can’t they produce more quality goods on their own? Amazon is flooded with cheap Chinese products, often from the same factory, with ridiculous Engrish brand names. It’s either exorbitantly priced name brands or super cheap knock-offs. I want something in between: decent quality for a decent price. Maybe this is normal in the evolution of manufacturing. In the past, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were seen as only capable of producing cheap inferior products. Today, they are seen as comparable or better than US/Europe manufactured goods. Perhaps China will get there one day but I’m not holding my breath.

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It’s only been a few hours and I’ve experienced the cheapness effect already. I guess I was trying on the watch band after adjustment so I didn’t lock in the second pin, and it slopped out just now. There were spares so I put one back in, but pin was faulty so the included tool wasn’t able to push it back in. The tool is also very cheap and didn’t fit the band very well. It’s basically a screw with a long thin tip mounted in a plastic holder. The thin tip does all the work pushing the band pins and it’s bent already. Finally, one side of the watch band doesn’t fit the Watch perfectly so you can feel the edges protrude out. On the same side, the locking mechanism is already weak so the band wiggle. Sigh… why can’t they charge a bit more and make a better product? I don’t have a preconceived on how much a stainless steel watch band should cost. If everyone sells the same cheap product for $15-20, then that’s the expected price. If there was a better made $40 option, I would go for that, but not the $450 Apple option.

With the pandemic in full swing, I’m doing all my shopping online, which means Amazon.com. I’ve placed a lot of orders with them and sometimes it feels like I’m getting a package everyday. I’m even ordering small stuff like bath puffs and antibacterial hand soap. Well, one of the orders wasn’t received on time, and the Amazon website said the orders were lost. I had the choice of getting a refund or a replacement order. I tried doing the replacement online but wasn’t able to, so I ended up chatting with some guy in India and getting a refund. Of course, the packages showed up yesterday, about five days late. Amazon Prime it’s not.

I’m on a live chat right now with another guy from India, asking him what I should do next. The easiest option is to charge my card again and reverse the refunds and I’m okay with that. They probably wouldn’t do anything if I didn’t contact them since it was only ~$15 but I thought it was the right thing to do to let Amazon know.

Now I’m thinking I should have ordered a new Macbook or something. 😀

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Just as I though. For $15, they’re just going to let me keep the products and the refund. Probably since it was their shipper that lost track of the package for a few days. Interestingly, the my first chat message was either lost or ignored and a different Indian guy helped me after I sent a “Hello?” message.

Pretty sure if the shipment was a Macbook, they would have tracked me down.

A long long time ago, when I first started shaving, I just used regular soap. Later, I started using Gillette shaving gel. It would come out of the can as a greenish gel, and would foam up as you mixed it with water. I’m not sure what was in there but it burned my skin a bit, kind of like aftershave.

When I got married, my ex-wife asked me to switch to Gillette Foamy shaving cream, specifically the sensitive skin version, because she liked the scent. While taking a shower this morning, I noticed that I was still using the same shaving cream brand, even though I’ve been divorced for over 14 years. I guess if you don’t have a strong preference for a product, you get into a habit of using the same thing. The product is not really listed on the Gillette website; it’s not in the current drop-down list of products. I’m not sure what I’d use if Gillette discontinued Foamy.

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Another thing that became “normal” after marriage was buying new cars with cash. It probably coincided with getting better paying jobs that made cash purchases feasible. Previously, all the new cars in our family were financed by auto loans. We never had enough money to pay cash. My ex-wife’s family however, were better off and bought all their cars with cash. After marriage, we also started buying cars with cash. First was a 1999 Toyota 4Runner that was mostly a wedding gift. Then I bought a 2000 Hyundai Elantra, a 2004 Nissan 350Z, a 2011 Nissan Maxima, and a 2016 Tesla Model S (consecutively), all with cash.

Too bad you can’t select an arbitrary period in Google Timeline. I wanted to see where I’ve been since the initial lockdown in March. The best you can do is select by entire year or month. Since I was still going to work in February and early March, I started looking at monthly data starting April. It’s pretty sad. Excluding home, dialysis, and sister’s house, there are not many other red dots on the map. Even those are mainly medical related (pharmacy, dentist) or take-out restaurants.

Here is the map for October 2020. I’ve only been at six places during the entire month.

The list is: home, dialysis center, sister’s house, Raising Cane’s (Tustin), Jersey Mike’s (Orange), and Panini Kabob Grill (Santa Ana). There are probably some Santa Ana Tesla Supercharger visits but they are typically right after dialysis and in the same mall as Panini Kabob Grill. The other months are not much better. November showed five locations while December has seven so far. The data is not 100% perfect; December is missing my colonoscopy procedure in Irvine. However, it’s only noticeable if you’ve only visited that location once. If you go repeatedly, most of the trips will get picked up.

What if the vaccines only have limited effectiveness and cases counts do not decrease? What if this is the new normal?

I’m such a procrastinator. Every year I plan on donating to kidney/dialysis causes and organizations but always end up putting it off until the end of the year. I probably would donate anyway but it’s an extra bonus to have the federal/California government “pay” a portion of that. I also support my church and a few missionary organizations but have increased donations to kidney/dialysis since it’s become very personal.

This is my list for this year so far:

It’s not very much but I’d like to pick one in the future and become a larger donor if I can. I mentioned The Kidney Project in several posts before. It seems to be the largest artificial kidney research project but they need private donations to support development. Of course I have selfish reasons but I can’t understand why there’s isn’t more government funding since it spends billions on dialysis each year.