> Notes...

“I awoke one night in Quito, Ecuador, this year and came up with a way to save a chip or two from the Apple II, and a trivial way to have the 2 grays of the Apple II be different (light gray and dark gray) but it’s 38 years too late. It did give me a good smile, since I know how hard it is to improve on that design.”
— Woz thinks of an Apple II improvement over 35 years later

Now, that’s truly something, eh? Just as Steve Jobs was, Steve Wozniak sure is an interesting fellow.

apple interesting tech

I want to learn Japanese enough so that I can converse with a cab driver, restaurant host, or hotel staff when I return. Yet, on the age of computing, I am failing to find a sound resource to do so. I would also like to enlist a Japanese national locally, so I can rent some lessons from.

If you know of any good resource, and/or anyone local, please let me know!

japan life

It is that time of the month in which I have to touch grass, literally. The lawn is almost knee high, so I am sure I will go through the three fully charged batteries this time. All under 91°F temperatures. Lovely.

lawn life weather

Base solely on how much I like to eat spam, I think I am Hawaiian, or Filipino. Need to go easy, though, as even the “25% less salt” is super salty.

food life

It is impossible to encapsulate Japan in just one picture. Or in thousands. So, instead, I am going the stereotypical route in just one click (which I took).

Nothing I could write can describe what I feel for that country, and it’s people. Japan is absolutely amazing in the whole sense of the word, and I can’t wait for the day we can visit again!

japan travels

I swear I want to use apps made with Rust more. Why are they such a pain to install? Why such a huge download of stuff? I thought Golang was a pain; Rust is pain time a tenthfold.

rants tech

Not only I don’t have the technical ability, I don’t have the artistic ability to come up with something like this. It is amazing what’s being accomplished within a single div!

art design tech

The worse that could ever had happened to VMWare has been to be acquired by Broadcom. Such a horrible company! Now, all VMWare support accounts are being migrated to Broadcom’s support accounts. As you can imagine, the support site for a company that blows, well, blows too. 😬

rants tech

The Tesla’s full self-driving capability trial has expired on the M3, and I didn’t use it not even once. Just more proof that I don’t need it, want it, and, thus, did great by not buying it. Woot!

me tesla

Finally I decided to order a pack of 4 AirTags. Experiencing their flawless setup, and how they automagically show up on the Find My app, is truly something. Love it when technology works so smoothly.

apple tech

Wow! This Monday has been crazy just up until now. Truly crazy! I wonder what the rest of the day will pan out to be. Oh, and the rest of the week! 😬

life work

And just like that Sunday almost ends, and, thus, this glorious weekend. Accomplished quite a bit. Dog tired.

life random

Time spent looking for a public notary capable of handling a will: 5 hours. Some money spent on clothing. Craving for chili quenched (Steak and Shake’s one ain’t bad!). Saturday sunsets.

food life

Just had a chè thái that mum made for me (because she knows I am sick, and that I like it), and I feel I had the entire month worth of sugar in just one drink. 😅

family food

It’s now my turn. The challenge now is not to pass it to kid (he is a week away from his trip), and to get well before our upcoming trip. Ugh³!

health life

Third time’s a charm. I am not buying Tropicana Orange Juice ever again. For the third time in a row, their “Lots of Pulp” has none. That’s six bottles, two at a time. No more, moving on.

food rants

From “No Country for Old Men”:

Anton Chigurh: Don’t put it in your pocket, sir. Don’t put it in your pocket. It’s your lucky quarter.
Gas Station Proprietor: Where do you want me to put it?
Anton Chigurh: Anywhere not in your pocket. Where it’ll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is.

movies quotes

Wife getting sick is the second worse thing that can happen, right after kid getting sick. Me getting sick will be the third. And the timming of it. Oof!

family health life

I welcome Mondays with love, with hope. Yet, no matter what I do, things that seemingly happen just on Mondays come to sour my mood. Why, o why?!

life work

Amazon’s driver messaging you at 05:00 to get a gate code for a delivery ain’t nice. Receiving a call for the same at 05:30, after having replied to said message, it’s totally uncool.

amazon rants

Friday has long sunsetted, but not over yet. What to do for the night? What to cook? Both important questions, for which I have nil answers. 😅

food life

The weekend begins for me now, and I have absolutely nothing to do (well, I am sure Kim could find something for me to do, but I am not going to let her know I am off. Haha!). I am leaning towards going to mum’s to pet and feed her chicken. Then just lazy around, because if that is not a great use of my free time, what is?

family life

If you want to quickly test your disk speed on Linux (might work on macOS, but not 100% sure) simply do:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=1G count=7 status=progress ; rm -f test

Decently happy with my results: 7516192768 bytes (7.5 GB, 7.0 GiB) copied, 5.10763 s, 1.5 GB/s. I figure, though, that’s expected on an NVMe M.2 SSD.

tech unix

There are days you are up, and look around and down. There are days you are down, and do your best to look up. I am having one of the second.

life thoughts

“As he rode the train back to Yokosuka, he watched his fellow passengers absorbed in their phones. ‘We completed the job’, he thought with satisfaction, ‘and they have no idea’.”

Interesting reading titled “The Cloud Under the Sea”. It was difficult to navigate on my Linux laptop (Chrome, Firefox, and Edge all struggled with it), but worth it.

interesting japan tech

An email from AT&T, with “Important Information” on the subject:

“We’re contacting you regarding the security of your data. After a thorough assessment, AT&T has determined that some of your personal information was compromised…”

No kidding, Sherlock! Some as in my name, phone number, address, and social security number (this one is key). Some?! Oh, but I must rest assured that “AT&T takes these issues very seriously”. As if! 😤

rants security tech

“This is a teenager” is an interactive webpage well worth watching. I can assure you! Take your time, go slowly. Read, and understand. Then, if you can, react.

interesting life

Thoughts whilst walking at lunch time. For someone obsessive, having chrome faucets, door handles, and a only-glass shower is a major problem. The reasons are obvious, right? Possible remedy: use car wax to slightly coat the chrome surfaces, and Rain-X—or similar—for the glass surfaces.

life thoughts

I have long struggled with the concept of ownership. I might be perceived as fastidious but, do we truly own anything? We don’t. We use things, we enjoy things through our lives calling them ours. In reality we merely borrow them for a—in the greater scale of things—very, very brief period of time.

I should aim to remove anything that denotes ownership from my thoughts. Let’s see how well I do.

philosophy thoughts

“San Junipero” (★★★★★) , series 3, episode 4 of “Black Mirror” (★★★★☆) , remains my favourite of all times. I just watched it again, for the fifth time.

netflix series

I decided to “Tonsky-rise” Notes today, because I grew a bit bored of the black and white. First “big” change in a while. Let’s see how long it lasts. 😂

design hugo

It happened again. Yes, again. Companies which we must trust to receive their services let us down, mishandling, and keeping our private information insecurely. They get breached, and criminals sell the information to anyone willing to pay.

A credit freeze has been placed for Kim and I on the three credit bureaus. Ugh!

finances rants tech

Son got a little melancholic when I told him I might not be around for the next total solar eclipse in 2045. “Come on, papá, take care of yourself, exercise, and be healthy. You can do it!” — he told me.

I live for the people I love, for the people I care about. I want to continue, I want to be around. If anything, for him, for my family, for my friends.

family life thoughts

Peter Higgs has died:

“Higgs, 94, who was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 2013 for his work in 1964 showing how the boson helped bind the universe together by giving particles their mass, died at home in Edinburgh on Monday.”

Ninety four years old! If only I could be that lucky!

interesting science

About this one, it was sensational in TX, and other areas in which it was total, so everybody says. In Florida? Just another day.

life weather

I have to be the least excited around here about the total Solar eclipse. Our moon comes between our Sun, and us. So what? 😂

life random

The Porch sells some mean (as in big), delicious hamburgers. After having one of those, with the two sides, and almost all of their humungous drink, I am ready for a nap 🤭. But… walk I shall.

food life

次の月、私は日本に行きます。日本の文化や風俗をもっと勉強し、また東京、京都、大阪の観光スポットやアクティビティの場所を調べました。とりあえず、どんな提案があっても聞いてください。

japan travels

A ★★½ for iCloud for Windows is one and a half stars too many. It truly is rubbish. Is that on purpose, Apple? 😒

apple tech

I have to say that something came between the couch and the telly last night. Bed. I started dozzing off around 21:30, by 22:00 I was sleeping. Woke up at 07:30. Super good night sleep.

Pondering whether or not to mow the backyard weeds later today. Hmm, decisions, decisions.

lawn me