After the confusion in scheduling the next Natera Prospera lab blood draw, the mobile phlebotomist showed up at my house today. The company sends out a package containing two test tubes via FedEx. I can either take them to a local lab, or they will arrange for a mobile blood draw at home. This happens every three months. I usually have them come to my house to make everything easier; some labs will not fill the tubes for another company.

For the first year and a half, the mobile phlebotomist was a Korean guy. He would show up right on time, draw blood, and leave. Recently, it has been a Latina woman. Even though we arrange a time, since I am working from home, she always shows up early and calls me to see if I am ready. Also, she did not wear a mask during the entire visit. I know some people think the pandemic is over and COVID is not a thing anymore, but she is supposed to be a medical professional visiting a patient’s home. 😷

Anyway, the appointment went fine. Mask or no mask, she was pretty good and filled the two tubes quickly. She did make a comment about me having no veins, but I was half-ignoring her at this point. I am debating if I should request someone else for the next draw in three months?

Even though I worked from home yesterday, I was still super tired by 5:00 pm. I went and took a short nap that lasted until 9:30 pm. At that point, I decided just to keep sleeping and forget about dinner. All night, I kept waking up to the sound of wind blowing outside my house. Finally, I got up just now at 4:00 am because I remembered my empty trash cans were still outside.

When I walked to the empty trash cans, I realized that CR&R did not pick up the recycling bin contents. Since most recyclable items are light, all the bins have blown over, and there is trash strewn all over the place. I had put three Styrofoam coolers that came with my insulin order, and one was missing. The coolers still have their shipping labels so I thought I should find the missing one. I ended up walking to the end of my street before finding the missing cooler, and I also picked up several large cardboard boxes too. On the way back, I was picking up toppled bins and trying to point the cover hinge away from the wind direction, but they will likely fall over again. I took my now fuller bin and rolled it into my garage. I did not want to chase trash down the street again. If the wind dies down when I have to leave for work, I will put the bin out again. If not, it can wait until next week.

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It is probably best that the only non-empty bin was the recyclable bin. The other two are for green waste and regular trash. The green waste bin is full of grass and leaves so that would make a bigger mess, though it is “natural” waste. The regular bin has the stinky trash with bags that will probably rip and spill all over the street.

I have a Blackvue DR650S-2CH in my Tesla Model S. I purchased it right after I bought the car in December 2016. This was before Telsa allowed owners to record output from the many onboard cameras. Since my car is too old, I still cannot record from any of the Tesla cameras, so my Blackvue is the only dashcam footage I have.

Several years ago, I purchased a “high endurance” 64 GB SD card from Lexar. I do not know if there is any difference compared to “regular” cards, but the dashcam does experience direct sunlight and large temperature fluctuations. It probably cost me a little bit more, but SD cards are cheap. Well, the Lexar card failed yesterday. The camera kept saying “check SD card” over and over, and I was unable to access the card from several computers. As a replacement, I purchased a 128 GB Samsung PRO Endurance SD card for $15 on Amazon. Since my Blackvue writes to the SD card every minute, it is a tougher operating environment versus using the card for data backup.

Since this particular card was on sale, I purchased three of them. I have some home security cameras that can take a SD card so I will likely replace whatever card is in there now with these Samsung ones.

Looking through my SD card stash, I found some really old stuff. The smallest capacity card I have is only 16 MB. That is megabytes, not gigabytes. It holds eight thousand times less than the 128 GB Samsung card I just bought, and it is in the large SD card format. I worked ten plus years at a fabless semiconductor company, so I know all about Moore’s Law and die shrinkage, but this still amazes me.

Next to the 16 MB card, there is a 128 MB card. A one-minute MP4 video exported from my Blackvue camera is ~64 MB so it can hold only two videos. Not too useful. Then there are 2 GB to 128 GB cards, including one branded Amazon Basics. The Lexar card at the top right is the one that failed yesterday in my Blackvue camera. There are several more 32 GB and 64 GB SD cards, primarily Sandisk, that are scattered in multiple devices. To think my first mass storage device was a $800 Seagate hard drive that only held 32 MB.

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I was a bit worried about using a 128 GB card in my Blackvue camera. I thought I read the largest compatible card was only 32 GB, even though the 64 GB Lexar card worked fine until it failed. I just inserted the 128 GB card, and the camera was able to initialize the card.

Using 64 MB file size for the front camera and 32 MB for the rear, each minute uses up 96 MB of storage space. Divide that by 128,000 MB (close enough), I can store almost an entire day of continuous recordings (actually 22.2 hours). The camera does not record if it detects that the car is parked (there is a GPS sensor in the camera), and it does is no activity in view of the camera. I used to get about two days’ worth of recordings with the 64 GB card, so I expect at least three or four days of recordings with the larger 128 GB card.

Since there some controversy about saying Chinese and Happy New Year at the same time, I will leave it at that.

I purchased an iPhone app called Tessie several months ago. In addition to all the functions available in the official free Tesla app, it tracks a lot more useful data. It does live trip tracking, and it also gives more details on charging, including battery life. Here is my Tesla S:

I purchased the Tesla in December 2016, so the car and battery are six years old. The car has about 76k miles, with most of the mile being driven during the first few years. From the data presented, I am already at 10.5% degradation already. There is another chart that shows maximum range at 100% charge.

This correlates with the 10% degredation since the maximum range when the car was new was 242 miles. I think I have mentioned before that my Tesla has never been driven outside of Los Angeles and Orange County. I thought about driving to Las Vegas since I have free Supercharging, but dialysis then COVID has kept me mostly at home.

I remember when you simply purchased a computer/video game. If it was good, there maybe was an expansion pack available later. This slowly evolved into season passes, downloadable content, and microtransactions. This exploded when mobile games became popular on smartphones. There are still many games available for purchase, but the majority are either subscription based, full or ads, or pay-to-win with microtransactions.

There is one game I am playing that is the worst offender of this trend: Last Fortress Underground. I saw an ad for the game on Instagram that looked interesting, so I downloaded and installed the game. It turned out the ad was a complete lie; the gameplay and graphics are nothing like what was shown. Many people have commented on the false advertising, but they are still showing on social media. It is another clone of the “build a base, join an alliance, and fight other players” genre. In these games, you can gain huge advantages by spending money, and the gameplay is designed to allow “whale” free reign to massacre and wipe out non-paying players.

Here is an example. One element of the gameplay is to send out expeditions to gather resources or attack zombies and other players. Initially, it was just a standard vehicle with no attributes. Later, this was expanded to four vehicle options with better options locked away. To unlock, you had to collect parts and “repair” the vehicles. You can find parts in the game, but the drop rate is incredibly low. However, like every gameplay element in the game, you can pay to skip the grind. If you want the best vehicles, it costs $500.

As you can see, it requires 500 parts to repair the last two vehicles. I have been grinding since the beginning, and I only have 91. If you want to buy the parts outright, it costs $100 for 100 parts. I read one of the higher-level players on my alliance spends $300 per week on this game. Accordingly, it is impossible to beat a higher-level player in gameplay. This is simple psychology: the developer needs to maintain this lopsided environment to encourage players to spend money. If free players can compete with big spenders, then there is no incentive to spend. This theme is pervasive throughout this genre of mobile games, though in my opinion, Last Fortress is the worst offender.

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Then why keep playing? I am gullible and this is the fourth game of this type that I have downloaded. I wrote about the first one, Age of Z Origins. I was finally able to leave the game even though I made some friends online, and uninstalled the app. These games usually lure you in with base development for the first week, and players are shielded from the real game model until later. When you finally realize how much you need to spend to keep up, you are faced with the sunk-cost fallacy with time and money already spent. Anyway, I am trying to be a casual player and not spend any money. We will see if I need to quit and uninstall this app soon as well.

Korean title: 환승연애

This is a Korean dating variety show that brings together ex-couples to see if they want to reunite or go out with new people. I have read a lot of positive reviews of the show, especially the second season that just finished, so I downloaded both seasons. Season 1 has fifteen episodes and season 2 has twenty episodes. I am familiar with several hosts, including Yura from Girl’s Day and Simon Dominic, a rapper with AOMG.

I just started watching episode one of season 1 when the exes are meeting each other. They look super awkward, but I wonder how things would go if I met my ex-wife again. Her psychology practice is really close to my house, but we have not seen each other in fifteen years. From some of the comments in the show, the break-ups are recent, and I assume no one is currently dating anyone else. The situation is different with my ex-wife as she got remarried. I am going to try just to enjoy the show and not think too much about my past.

I have four Amazon Echo devices. I was an early adopter, and I purchased the original unit back in January of 2015. I remember the list price was $199 but they were selling it to Prime members for $99. I used that unit for a long time, even after the remote failed. I notice that no Echo device since then have included a remote.

I have purchased many units since then, some were given away as gifts, and others I used to expand the number of devices in my house. Currently, I also have the following installed:

The OG Echo is in the master bathroom. It has the largest speaker and I use it to play the news when I take a shower. The Echo Show is in the office, right under the large monitor for my MacBook Pro. The Echo Dot is on my nightstand, and the Echo Flex is in the dining room in case I need to turn device on/off from downstairs.

IMHO, out of all four devices, the original Echo works the best. The Echo dot has issues with the display; it would glitch every few seconds. It appears to be random and does not affect the readability, but it is distracting to look at. The Echo Dot is often non-responsive, even if I am right next to it. My commands would be picked up by the OG Echo in the bathroom instead. Finally, the Echo Flex is low to the floor on a plug and has terrible sound quality. I am going to swap the original Echo with the Echo Dot since I use Alexa the most from the bedroom. I will also find a small Bluetooth speaker to connect to the Flex downstairs to improve the sound quality.

The various Echo devices have been quite useful in the past eight(!) years. I have connected my collection of smart lights and plugs, as well as security cameras which are viewable on the Echo Show. I have also connected my Nest thermostat and I heard there are plug-ins for controlling your Tesla vehicle to Alexa as well. Since Amazon was the first choice available, I never got interested in competing products from Google and Apple.

2022 has been an interesting year. Here are some random events:

• Had my first kidneyversary on January 27
• Got Evusheld shots in February
• Nephrologist gave me approval to go back into the office a few days per week
• Went on a two-week trip to Italy and Paris
• Got COVID in Europe, mostly likely in Paris
• My systems analyst quit so I had to figure out pages of SQL code and be an analyst until new hire showed up
• Went from two direct reports to at least five staff now
• China drops zero-COVID suddenly without warning; million sick and thousands* dying during last few weeks of the year

*No one really knows since China stopped counting when case count grew exponentially

I hope 2023 is less eventful.

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New Year’s meal. We were supposed to have hot pot with my sister’s family, but they were all sick (not COVID) from their family trip to Disney World and seeing the in-laws. So, dinner was just me and my parents this time. We will have the large family meal during Chinese New Year.

It is not just Amazon. Costco also delivered my order one day early. The only problem is that it is one of the days I go into the office. In order not to leave the box outside my door for twelve hours, I asked my sister to put the box in my garage. No big deal.

When I opened the box however, I found nuts everywhere inside. I had ordered a bag of trail mix, and the bag was ripped. I also spilled a bunch of nuts and candy all over the laundry/storage room floor. That sucked trying to pick up everything from the floor.

I pulled up the Costco app and asked for a replacement. The system was pretty quick and placed a replacement order for me right away. The shitty part is they want me to return the “defective” item, or they will charge me for the replacement. Luckily, I have thirty days to do so. I ordered online so I can avoid the Christmas madness. The bag of fruits and nuts only cost $16 but I cannot eat the contents if the bag is torn. When this happened with Amazon, they just shipped me a replacement without demanding the damaged bag. Someone should review the returns and make a decision if they want a customer to spend a hour returning something that is obviously unusable and not resellable.

KROQ is a music station in Los Angeles that plays alternative music, whatever that means. Since I moved to LA in 1985 and graduated from UCLA in 1990, I tuned in to KROQ a lot during that time.

I found a playlist on Spotify and there are songs that I have not heard since the 80’s. Here are a few songs in no particular order:

I always thought this was from Journey.

I still have the Substance 1987 CD. Blue Monday is track #4 on disc one.

I believe the last time I heard this song was 1983 in Cancun while on a high school band trip.

Now I feel bad for making some poor guy work so early.

Since Christmas is in a week, I bought some gift cards and small stuff on sale. I am also going to the office for a few days this week, so I want to be home when packages arrive. Amazon has a bad habit of delivering packages early (or late) so I asked for this shipment of gift cards as early as possible. Well, I guess early is 4:40 am.

I am certain that I was not the only person on the delivery route.

My sister’s family is visiting in-laws over Christmas, so I have been asked to dog sit again. Since they spoil their two dogs, I need to stay the night over from December 20th to 30th so the dogs will not be lonely at night. I have already told work that I am returning to working only two days in the office due to COVID and other viruses.

I am hoping my work laptop will work with my sister’s computer dock, so I do not have to bring a ton of IT equipment to her house in order to work. We will see if my HP laptop will work with her Lenovo docking station.

I have not watched any World Cup games this time. Even though I played on my junior high school team, I was terrible, and I have been a lukewarm fan ever since. In addition, the fact that the World Cup is held in Qatar and with FIFA being super corrupt, it just makes the entire spectacle less interesting. I actually thought the tournament was over, but it appears the final game is tomorrow between Argentina and France.

Out of all the teams that qualified this year, I was kind of following five of them: USA, Canada, South Korea, Japan, and Tunisia. USA is pretty obvious since I live here. I also lived in Canada, and though they would do well since they won the qualifying tournament. Instead, Canada got smoked 0-3 in the first round. Embarrassing. At least the USA team made it to the second round, barely. Japan and South Korea also make it to the next round but lost; got to support the Asian teams since there are so few. Finally, Tunisia because I visited there before. It is not a common tourist destination, so I always hope they win some World Cup games.

The final game is at 7:00 am local time tomorrow morning. I probably will not watch unless I am already up. I am not even sure I can receive the game since I do not have cable. If I had to choose sides, I would probably go with Argentina since this appears to be Lionel Messi’s last game before retirement. It feels like a lot of people are cheering for Argentina because of Messi.

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Google search results for:

FIFA corruption

Qatar slave labor

Qatar anti LGBT

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I uploaded some photos I took in Tunisia in a prior post.

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I was up early this morning but forgot about the World Cup finals game. I just saw the news that Argentina beat France on penalty kicks. The final score was 3-3 (4-2).