Travel Bucket List #1

Speaking of retirement, if I were to retire and travel more, where would I go? I just picked a website randomly for this post.

  1. Bali, Indonesia
  2. New Orleans
  3. Kerry, Ireland
  4. Marrakesh, Morocco
  5. Sydney
  6. The Maldives
  7. Paris, France: been to Paris twice; likely go somewhere else if I visit France again
  8. Cape Town, South Africa
  9. Dubai, U.A.E.
  10. Bora Bora, French Polynesia
  11. New York
  12. Dubrovnik, Croatia
  13. Edinburgh, Scotland
  14. Rome, Italy: also been to Rome twice; still need to visit Venice
  15. Paro valley, Bhutan
  16. Jaipur, India
  17. Waikato, New Zealand: Middle Earth!
  18. Havana, Cuba
  19. Tokyo, Japan: visited once, need to go back plus visit rest of Japan
  20. Antarctica: ha ha ha, no
  21. Vancouver, Canada
  22. Los Angeles: live here
  23. Kruger National Park, South Africa
  24. Santorini, Greece
  25. Moscow, Russia: not safe for Americans
  26. Singapore: meh, reminds me of Hawaii
  27. London, England
  28. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  29. Petra, Jordan
  30. Hong Kong: Hong Kong was awesome, but now dead due to CCP crackdown and subsequent National Security Law
  31. Barbados
  32. Amsterdam
  33. Santiago, Chile
  34. Cairo, Egypt
  35. Copenhagen, Denmark
  36. Seoul, Korea
  37. Laucala Island Resort, Fiji
  38. Providencia, Colombia
  39. Machu Picchu, Peru: is this still open to visitors?
  40. Virunga National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo
  41. Lisbon, Portugal
  42. Hanoi, Vietnam
  43. Hawaii: see Singapore
  44. Ibiza, Spain
  45. Beijing, China: been to Beijing about six times; not going again while CCP is still in power
  46. Budapest, Hungary
  47. Cinque Terre, Italy
  48. Buenos Aires, Argentina
  49. Las Vegas: not that interesting anymore
  50. Matterhorn, Switzerland

I bolded locations that I have visited, and it only came out to twelve. I also italicized places I would like to go, since i have no interest in some of the destinations shown. I also added some comments where appropriate.

I may go to Korea with a friend and her family next year. Looking at the items I marked, it looks like three trips: long Europe trip that can be broken up into two parts, East Asia (Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam), and Australia/New Zealand.

Google Timeline – September 2022

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Boring.

It was a dull September 2022 on my Google Timeline. The furthest red dots were my office and my parents’ house. In between, there were a few medical office visits, some restaurants, my sister’s house, and my local Albertson’s. Unfortunately, other than the month of June, when we were in Europe, this entire year has been boring.

For some reason, I thought my life would be more interesting. If you asked me right when I graduated college to describe my life at fifty-five, I would have said married with two kids, and about to retire after a successful career. More importantly, there would be a sense of contentment that the life lived had meaning. Instead, I am single, living alone, and have not done anything memorable other than not die. I do not even know how i feel about that.

I told my boss more firmly yesterday that I will likely quit and retire mid-next year. There is a release of vested stock (RSUs) every six months, so I want to receive those shares before I quit and forfeit the remainder. There are no goals or plans after retirement. I feel I should travel more, but I am ambivalent about traveling alone. I will likely end up sitting around the house watching YouTube videos. 😭

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Zero Communications

I recently switched from using test strips to a continuous glucose monitor to measure my blood sugar. The first order included a reader and seven sensors. I am on my last sensor, which is expiring in two days. The manufacturer, Abbott, is very stingy with the sensor life. You cannot read from the sensor if you are one second past the expiration time of 14 days. Knowing this, I placed a refill order two weeks ago with Edgepark, a durable medical equipment (DME) supplier. They are the worst.

I know online reviews are not that reliable but 2.2 stars!? My experience so far has been about two stars as well. When i called to sign up and get my first order filled, the CSR was rude. It is always confusing when you have two medical insurance providers, but the CSR was impatient and gave me lots of attitude. On my refill order, I entered it online, but Edgewater still wanted me to call them. The call took only a few minutes, and I did not provide any additional information that was not already in my account. I also asked twice if my order was complete and both times the CSR (different one) said it was shipping soon. So, after two weeks, I did not receive anything. I looked at my account online and my order was cancelled. Sigh. I called them again and they said that I need to see my endocrinologist again for a refill. That is all fine, but I did not receive any notification from Edgepark nor my doctor’s office. Luckily, this is just a glucose meter. What if it was my anti-rejection medication? Terrible.

I guess I need to see my endocrinologist soon. In the meantime, I am back to pricking my fingers and using the old test strips.

Nephrologist Visit – September 2022

I finally saw my nephrologist today after five months. I was supposed to see her every two months. The appointment was scheduled for early July, after our Europe trip. However, due to COVID, I had to cancel all my appointments and I am catching up now.

There was not much change. We went over my labs and talked about how after two and a half years, there is still a lot of confusion about COVID prevention and treatment. She has patients from many different transplant centers, and each has different guidelines on vaccinations and preventative antibodies treatments. In my case, we are going to wait a few months, check my antibodies levels, and get either the bivalent vaccine or Evusheld again.

Here are some important test results:

Creatinine1.46 mg/dL
EGFR57 mL/min/1.73m2
Urea Nitrogen (BUN)34
Potassium4.7 mmol/L
Phosphate3.3 mg/dL
Calcium (two different tests)10.1 mg/dL or 10.9 mg/dL
PTH207 pg/mL
Hemoglobin17.6 g/dL
Hematocrit51.4%

Bold items are out of range. Most of them have been borderline high since the transplant so my nephrologist was not worried. She is holding off on having me take Sensipar for the high calcium, but she did increase my Losartan dosage from 25 mg to 50 mg to deal with the high hemoglobin. My blood pressure is a bit higher too so more Losartan will help.

Next step is to schedule an appointment with UCLA transplant center since I have not talked to them since February. They were okay with six to twelve months between appointments so no I should be okay.

Warm Mixed Nuts

I took my niece to her soccer practice yesterday. The practice was held at Great Park in Irvine. While I was waiting, I decided to go buy some stuff at the nearby Costco. More specifically, I was going to buy a new iPad Pro, but there was no stock (need to order online), so I ended up with $100 of other things, including some mixed nuts.

It’s about 5:30 am and I am awake due to a new neuropathy attack. Since I cannot sleep, I went down to the kitchen to get a drink and some nuts. Walking by the microwave oven, I remembered the story of the Korean nut rage lady. She was the daughter of the chairman of Korean Air. On a flight from New York to Seoul, she got crazy angry at a flight attendant for serving her cold nuts, and made the pilot turn the plane around so she could kick him off the plane. Well, obviously that did not go over well with the FAA. Korean Air tried to cover up the incident, but the flight attendant told the story to the media, and the nut rage lady got a twelve-month sentence, but only served five months.

Warmed nuts are better than cold nuts.

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Back to the nut lady, I believe I kind-of met her before. Prior to the nut incident, I attended an award dinner sponsored by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation (LAEDC). They gave our company an Eddy and we sent our CFO, my boss, to receive the award. We had to “purchase” a table for guests, so I was tasked to fill a seat. The chairman of Korean Air also received an award at the same event, and his daughter was his plus one. I did not talk to her at all, which is probably best in hindsight.

Apple Planned Obsolescence

I have heard about Apple slowing down their hardware for older devices. I am specifically talking about iOS updates.

Yesterday, I updated my iPhone 12 iOS to version 16.0.2 from 15.something. Since there are already two minor updates, I am hoping that it will not brick my phone. I have lost some confidence in Apple’s hardware since my iPhone 12 is already showing 85% for battery health and it is really not that old.

I then tried to update all my iOS devices and was only successful with my work iPhone 8S. Both the iPad Air 2 and iPhone 6S Plus only upgraded to iOS 15.7 and not 16.x. The much older iPad Mini 2 is will not even load the update screen, but since it is still using iOS 12.x, I doubt it will upgrade to 16.x either.

I was planning to get a new iPad since the Air 2 was slowing down, like due to Apple’s tampering. Not that the old iPad is also locked out of iOS updates, I think it is time. I mostly want to use the iPad to read eBooks so I am considering the larger iPad Pro, even though it will be bulky to carry around.

It is $1,200 at the Apple Store. If I use my Apple Card, I get a 3% rebate. The same model is $50 less at Costco but with a 2% credit card rebate.

The “Out of Stock” is for online purchase and delivery. It may be available in the warehouse stores so I can go check after work today. I am hesitant since I have spent a lot of money on Apple hardware. This will be the third iPad Pro I purchase since I bought one each for my mom and dad before.

Car Wash

Early this morning, I had an appointment to get my blood drawn for labs. I need to see my nephrologist next week, so I needed some updated lab results. On the way home, I decided to get my car washed. I rarely wash my car since it does not rain in Southern California. However, I did drive it for a bit when the “typhoon” hit, so the car is dirty with dirt streaks.

The hand car wash location I go to gives you a free wash after nine visits. I got the card on my first visit back in April of 2017 (two stamps to start). I only get my car washed at this location so my car only had six washes in the past five plus years, and the last time I visited was before the COVID pandemic. There may have been one or two rinses at the Tesla Service Centers, but my car does not get washed often. I remember the first was about $16. Today, that basic wash is $26. I opted for one level up and paid $31. It included an air freshener scent. They asked me what scent I wanted, and I said, “Surprise me.” I do not smell anything, so they probably just skipped it.

Bivalent Booster Shot

My work is once again offering vaccine shots. This time, the shot given are bivalent boosters, and we can choose which company’s product we want. I contacted my nephrologist to see if I should get the booster, and the answer was a definite “yes, but wait.”

Similar to the reason given when I was rejected for Evusheld shots, I should have enough immunity from my COVID infection, and any antigens produced will be neutralized by my immune system. The recommendation is to wait 4-6 months before getting the booster post COVID infection.

I have a lab draw Friday morning, so I was going to drive in to work afterwards for the booster shot. Now I think I will wait a few more months instead.

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration amended the emergency use authorizations (EUAs) of the Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine and the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine to authorize bivalent formulations of the vaccines for use as a single booster dose at least two months following primary or booster vaccination. The bivalent vaccines, which we will also refer to as “updated boosters,” contain two messenger RNA (mRNA) components of SARS-CoV-2 virus, one of the original strain of SARS-CoV-2 and the other one in common between the BA.4 and BA.5 lineages of the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. 

The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent, is authorized for use as a single booster dose in individuals 18 years of age and older. The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent, is authorized for use as a single booster dose in individuals 12 years of age and older. 

The monovalent COVID-19 vaccines that are authorized or approved by the FDA and have been administered to millions of people in the United States since December 2020 contain a component from the original strain of SARS-CoV-2. 

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-moderna-pfizer-biontech-bivalent-covid-19-vaccines-use

Whose is this toothbrush?

I have a friend in Beijing who is trying to learn English. Her English is decent, but like many English learners, they do not have confidence when speaking. Anyway, she purchased a bunch of stickers (see above) with English and Chinese so you can learn the phrases. She sent me photos of each sticker sheet.

If you are selling language aids, there should be extra effort to proofread everything before shipping products. There were eight sheets overall, and I found errors on all of them. Most errors were just awkward translations, but there were several major mistakes. The worst one is “Whose is this toothbrush?” The Chinese phrase is 這只牙刷是誰的？, which is perfectly understandable. The English phrase, however, is a total mess. Even when you type in the Chinese phrase into Google Translate, it comes back with “who owns this toothbrush?”

With the current effort by the CCP to isolate and reject anything foreign, including language lessons, the level of English proficiency is going to deteriorate in China. Sad.

Fake LinkedIn Profiles

I have accounts on several social media platforms. However, since I do not like to post selfies, I am the most non-influencer person ever. I heard there are a lot of fake profiles trying to scam people on Instagram and Tinder, but now the same thing is happening on LinkedIn. I guess the idea is to befriend strangers then try to get them to invest in fake crypto or commodities trading schemes.

There was a recent article in MIT Technology Review regarding fake LinkedIn profiles.

If you were just looking at his LinkedIn page, you’d certainly think Mai Linzheng was a top-notch engineer. With a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua, China’s top university, and a master’s degree in semiconductor manufacturing from UCLA, Mai began his career at Intel and KBR, a space tech company, before ending up at SpaceX in 2013. Having spent the past eight years and nine months working in the human race to space, he’s now a senior technician.

Except all is not as it seems. 

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/09/07/1059067/chinese-spacex-engineers-linkedin-scam/

In the article, it mentions that a majority of the scam profiles are China related. This is ironic since SpaceX is subject to ITAR controls, and normally restricted from hiring non-US persons.

I am unsure how these scammers select which profiles to target. I have a lot of work experience on my LinkedIn profile, and correspondingly, I am getting many invites from scammers. LinkedIn is pretty good at detecting and deleting these fake profiles, so when I click on the View Profile button, I often get this page:

As mentioned in the MIT article, the profile picture of these fake accounts is usually a good-looking Asian/Chinese person. Since I am Chinese, I am unsure they are targeting Asian users, or if it is the scammer’s default profile. Here are a few of the fake profiles from the notification emails. Scammers are likely using stolen photos too.

These are just from the past four weeks. About 80% of LinkedIn invites are made up of these fake profiles. Are all these sent by the same scammers, or are there competing groups? Why are there so many Asian female limited partners from Sausalito?

There are a handful more invites that could be fake but have not been removed by LinkedIn. I think I will accept a few of them and see what scams are popular.

Amazon Prime Credit Card

I received a new credit card in the mail because the current one is expiring next month. I went online to authorize the card, then tried to cut the old one in half. The Amazon card is one of those thick cards made of something a lot stronger than plastic. I was unable to cut it with a pair of scissors, and I did not want to try feeding it to my shredder. Fortunately, Chase (card issuer) included a prepaid envelope for you to mail back the old card so they can destroy it.

Ironically, I only use the card for Amazon purchases and the 5% rebate. It sits at home in an old wallet that contains other cards I do not use. Since it never gets physically used, the extra sturdiness is wasted on me.

==========

I took a look at the year-end summaries for this card. Last year (2021), I spent about $2900 on Amazon purchases. So far this year (9 months), i have spent about $3000. Judging from the large number of Amazon boxes in my garage, I expected a lot more dollars.

No Evusheld For You!

So, it was not really like that. Nobody yelled at me. The nurse was actually very nice and apologetic that the hospital would not give me the shots.

This is my second time getting Evusheld. The cancer infusion center, where the antibody shots are administered, scheduled today’s appointment for me. Their logic was that since I got COVID, and received additional monoclonal antibodies at the hospital, I do not need the Evusheld shots again. I am unsure if this is just for this six-month period, or if I have immunity for a longer period.

I wasted two hours this morning driving to the infusion center, waiting to check-in, and waiting for them to reject my appointment. It also cost me $2 for parking.

Bad Day for AC Problems

I got this email from my thermostat today. I installed the Next thermostat many years ago but have never received any emails or notifications from it. Occasionally, the 50A circuit breaker would pop, shutting off power to the compressor. The furnace is on a separate circuit, so air is still blowing from the vents, but it is at ambient temperature. You do notice after a while because it gets hot in the house. Today, my office temperature rose from 78 degrees to about 82 before I noticed. The fix is to turn off the system, go outside to the circuit breaker panel, and reset the dual 50A switch. It has always reset and kept working, but I am afraid it will not reset and it will be the hottest day on record.

Amazon Prime Delivery

Even though I have had some issues with Amazon’s deliveries, having fast shipping does make online shopping more convenient. I recently had some items delivered overnight, and it was crazy convenient. However, even with something as great as fast shipping, there is a thing as being too fast.

I just placed two Amazon orders. The first was with Amazon Fresh for some groceries. When I initially placed the order, the only delivery time available was from 10:00 pm to midnight. Midnight!? Anyway, I forgot to order some milk so the second time I checked out, 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm was available. It is now 8:17 pm and I am waiting for my milk (and other stuff). I am still surprised that they will deliver as late as midnight.

I also placed an order for some protein shakes, the breakfast of champions. For that order, they can deliver overnight, or one-day shipping by end-of-day tomorrow. Since I am going to work, I selected overnight in case they get it to me super early. The protein shakes do not need to be refrigerated, but I am hesitant to leave them outside all day in 90+ degree weather. Right afterwards, I got a notification of a prescription delivery. This is for a large order of insulin, which was supposed to arrive Wednesday, when I am working from home. The insulin absolutely cannot sit outside all day, so now I am going to wait for all incoming shipments to arrive before heading into the office.

Crazy. It is about 8:30 pm and I am going to get four deliveries within the next 12-14 hours (Amazon order is coming in two overnight deliveries). I hope Amazon gets their Rivian EV vans soon.

==========

Just got an app notification that my Amazon Fresh order is three stops away. Here is part of the Amazon Prime order:

Last time the order arrived at around 6:30 am. I hope the last order is delivered before 11:00 am. Even at noon it take almost an hour to get to work.

Dairy Queen Ice Cream Cake

I turned 54 today. When I was younger and relatively healthy, my ex-wife and I joked that we only want to live until 50 since growing old sucks. Well, after a divorce, heart bypass surgery, dialysis, and a kidney transplant, I am still alive.

Several years ago, our family decided to forgo gifts for birthdays. Instead, we would just gather and have dinner and cake. For today, my parents got some dishes from a nearby Chinese restaurant, and my sister-in-law bought an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. I was quite surprised since I thought DQ went out of business years ago, and ice cream cakes come from Baskin Robbins. The last time I was inside a DQ store was probably more than 40 years ago in Mississauga.

The cake was quite good. After we ate, there was still about 40% of the cake leftover so I brought it home. I will have to cut thin slices and slowly eat it over the next week to avoid a sugar high.

American Airlines Clusterfuck

Not me but my sister. She is travelling home from Toronto (YYZ) via Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW). I was supposed to pick her up at John Wayne Airport (SNA) around 10:00 pm. Well, it is now 10:30 pm and she just got off the plane at DFW, and there are no more flights to any of the four Los Angeles area airports.

Her flight took off on time from YYZ, but was diverted to Wichita (ICT) for refueling after circling twice over Missouri. There was adverse weather at DFW and I guess the pilots thought they could not land. This is their flight path:

I was looking at FAA advisories at the time and landing delays at DFW were about thirty minutes. Do modern passenger jets (her flight was a Boeing 737–800) have such narrow fuel margins? The diversion appears to be the same distance as continuing to DFW. On the ground in ICT, her flight was fourth in line for refueling. There was a shortage of open gates, so it took about 1:15 to refuel and take-off again. AA flight 1111 finally arrived at DFW at 10:00 pm. American Airlines cancelled so many flights tonight that the only option was a flight to Ontario (ONT) but it was departing from another terminal, and she would not make it. The flight was full anyway.

I just texted my sister. She is spending the night in DFW. Airport hotels are nine miles away and she is on standby for a 7:30 am flight to SNA. American Airlines gave her a $12 voucher for food, but of course, nothing is open at this time. She said the terminal is full of people. AA should have at least brought out some snacks and water. DFW is one of their major hubs and I know they have a huge stash of food for all their Admiralty Club lounges. A long time ago I was flying to Las Vegas from Long Beach on Jet Blue. The flight was delayed an hour and the staff brought out boxes of snacks and soft drinks. This is such a trivial thing to do but demonstrates why the large US carriers are always rated near the bottom in passenger surveys.

What a beautiful place to spend the night

Speaking of surveys, American Airlines ranked ninth in Travel + Leisure’s domestic airline rankings for 2022. They are the worst of the three large carriers. United Airlines is not much better at number eight. They also have a list of the top 10 international airlines. I have been on four out of the ten.

  1. Singapore Airlines
  2. Qatar Airways
  3. Emirates
  4. Turkish Airlines
  5. Korean Air
  6. La Compagnie
  7. Air New Zealand
  8. Japan Airlines
  9. ANA
  10. Cathay Pacific Airways

Other international airlines I have flown that are not in the top 10:

  • Air Canada
  • China Airlines
  • EVA Air
  • Thai Airways
  • Air China
  • Sichuan Airlines
  • British Airways
  • Air France
  • Canadian Pacific Air Lines (eventually merged with Air Canada)

Favorite Soup

This was my second most favorite canned soup. My number one favorite is the old school Chunky Chicken Noodle soup, but they changed their manufacturing contractor years ago and I do not like the current version. The older version had flat noodles, sliced mushrooms, and a thick broth. Today’s version has twisted noodles, no mushrooms, and a very watery broth. It looks and tastes the same as several other brands of chicken noodle soup. Since it is no longer available, Beef Barley is my favorite soup by default.

I remember when Chunky canned soup was $1.99 at the market. The regular price now at Albertsons is $3.49. Sometimes you can get it cheaper when it is on sale or you find coupons, but $3.50 feels expensive for a can of soup, even if you really like it. Fortunately, I found it on Amazon. I bought a dozen a month ago for ~$23, and just reordered two dozen at ~$27/dozen. I usually pour the contents into a plastic bowl and microwave for three minutes. In fact, the can label only gives microwave heating instructions, as if no one uses a stove and pot anymore.

Oddly, Campbell’s website does not include any information on this product. It does have all the other Chunky soup varieties I see at the market. I had to get the nutritional information from the actual label:

Per ServingPer Container (2 servings)
Calories150310
Total Fat2g3.5g
Saturated Fat0.5g1.5g
Trans Fat0g0g
Cholesterol15mg30mg
Sodium790mg1710mg
Total Carb.23g50g
Dietary Fiber4g9g
Total Sugar4g9g
Added Sugars1g2g
Protein9g20g
Vitamin D0mcg0mcg
Calcium30mg60mg
Iron1.3mg2.9mg
Potassium350mg780mg

First, the math is a bit wonky. There seems to be two plus a bit servings in each can, but the ratios are not very consistent. There may be even a typo for the Total Fat line. Anyway, the most worrying item is the high sodium content of around 74% DV (but it tastes so good!) and a decent amount of potassium. The carbohydrate content is about 18% DV and 10% DV for cholesterol. I should only eat half a can and pair it with a salad.

Data Is (Not) Beautiful

I am subscribed to r/dataisbeautiful on Reddit. The purpose of the sub is to highlight examples where data is presented in a “beautiful” manner. However, like everything else on Reddit, it has devolved into using data/charts as political commentary.

For example, look at this post:

Every chart tells a story. If you look at the data presented and the use of the phrase “profited from” in the title, the obvious message is that evil oil companies are taking advantage of higher crude oil prices to gouge the rest of us for excessive profit. Instead, if you look at the entire income statement, the profit is from better utilization of fixed costs.

I pulled Q2 filings for the past six years for Exxon instead of just two. With COVID, any comparisons that do not include pre-COVID data is suspect as 2020 and 2021 are not normal years. Here is 2021/2022:

If you look at the very last line, it matches the data shown in the original chart. Let us go back a few more years:

So Exxon had profits of about $3-4 billion, the lost $2 billion, made $5 billion in 2021, then a whopping $18 billion in 2022. Bastard!

However, if you look at the line detail and calculate the gross profit margin (total revenue versus cost of oil and product purchases, it looks like this:

YearGross Margin
201748.0%
201843.8%
201943.6%
202056.9%
202144.9%
202243.3%

From this data, 2022 has the worst Q2 gross margins for the past six years. Or in other words, as raw material prices increased, Exxon raised their prices less than in prior years. It is a simplification, but many businesses try to keep a steady or increasing gross margin percentage over time. Then where did the operating profit come from? Look at the next three lines in the income statement, especially for 2022/2021. Even though raw material prices and/or unit volume increased, the actual production and SG&A costs did not. This makes sense since it takes the same amount of work to produce and sell a unit of product regardless of whether it costs $1 or $10. You can see the reverse of this in 2020 when sales dropped enormously due to COVID. Exxon still must pay for all the production facilities and employees, so they had a loss for Q2 of that year.

Since I work in finance, I have been making slides and writing commentary for almost thirty years. If we are providing unbiased internal reporting and I get this from my staff, I would be extremely disappointed. If my goal is political commentary, then this is a great chart since it has just enough truth to push a biased agenda.

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In this case, I do not know what people expect Exxon to do. Drop their gross margin targets to lower prices to the consumer? This may trigger more demand, and depending on their production capacity, may require more capital investments. These costs are hard to scale back when there is a downturn, which means greater losses during those periods. I do not know if Exxon laid off employees during 2020, but companies are made up of people. Any taxes or price controls, whether we feel is justified or not, does have a direct impact on the company’s employees and its customers.

Strange Blood Sugar Readings

These are my blood sugar readings for the past two and a half days. I have a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), although I do not know the sample interval. I worked from home on Monday and my blood sugar was consistently high. I do not remember eating anything that should have kept it high all day. There was a spike Tuesday morning, but I did not eat anything after dinner. I probably took an insulin shot to get the levels down to normal. Yesterday (Tuesday), I ate lunch around 1:00 pm. It was the last bit of leftovers consisting of some rice, tofu, and beef slices with onion. My blood sugar rose and fell but spiked at 5:00 pm when I got a cup of coffee from a machine at work. It did not taste sweet, but I guess I need to avoid it from now on. I did take a shot around 8:00 pm and ate some dinner but fell asleep soon after. I woke at around midnight feeling like crap, and my blood sugar had dropped to 78. It was very unclear why that is the case, so I took one glucose tablet and had a bowl of cereal and milk. My blood sugar stabilized but rose again at 7:00 am for no apparent reason. I slept the entire time without any food or drink intake. What the hell is going on!?

The CGM is nice since it gives me a continuous blood sugar readings. However, it is causing a lot of confusion as I cannot match the readings with food intake or activity. The readings do correspond with food most of the time, but there are many instances where the readings were really high or really low, and all I was doing was sleeping.