There is no way in hell—figuratively speaking, of course—that I would find myself installing Microsoft Edge on my Mac. I’ll die with Safari. I am a vanillist—that is, I prefer and use default apps.
Similarly, if you ever see me using Google Chrome—or any other browser, but Safari—on my Mac, kindly ask me to give you $1,000 (USD). You have my word.
“You are imperfect, I am imperfect, and that’s perfect.” — Unknown. Enter Kintsugi, and how it can help with stressful situations..
“Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold—built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art. Every break is unique and instead of repairing an item like new, the 400-year-old technique actually highlights the “scars” as a part of the design.”
Finished watching volume 4 of “Love Death + Robots” (★★★½), and the day is still young. I would call this a good start of a weekend.
It only gets three and a half stars from me because not all episodes are good. Yet, it was entertaining, as previous seasons have been, nonetheless. My favourite episode was V4E7, “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur”.
No long ago I noted purchasing a fob key for wife’s car. Today she goes to pick it up, and the dealership (AutoNation Acura in Sanford) wants $265 to “program” it. Nobody told us about that extra cost when we ordered it! Not even the slight mention of it!
Imagine going to the hospital to have a pacemaker implanted, and receiving it in nicely wrapped box to take home. WTH?! What good is car key that doesn’t do anything?
Update: 24 Jun 2025 @ 17:14:13
I found someone we trust that will program it for $100. I think I am going to be sending my complain, and feedback, via certified mail (with a copy via email).
The Ring doorbell application for iOS—I have no reason to doubt this applies to Android too but I can’t attest it, as I don’t have an Android device—is horrible. The so called “Ring - Always Home” unintuitive interface, unreliability, and their push to be “social”, makes it an experience from hell.
I spent close to an hour configuring and fine-tuning Mum’s and Dad’s phones so that they are not constantly awakened during the night or bothered during the day with notifications and dings. In the process, I had to delete and reinstall the app, wrestle with their insistence on having MFA, and a bunch of other rubbish. Ugh!
The air we breathe is composed, amongst many other things of course, “of the previous breaths of everyone who ever lived”.
“How many molecules from Caesar’s last breath do we inhale with each breath we take? Shockingly, the answer is about one molecule—we actually do share breaths with Caesar! And, by extension, every breath we take is composed of the previous breaths of everyone who ever lived—Socrates, Lincoln, Einstein, etc. Isn’t that crazy?”
➝ Via Hacker News.
I know it is a complex relationship—just like any other big company CEO—that of Tim Cook and Trump. Yet, Tim should have never donated money to Trump’s inauguration, nor attended to it. If favours were what he was after, he failed. He should have known better.
“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s [sic] that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” he said. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the U.S.”
Since when does a US president have the rights to interfere with free commerce, without congressional oversight?
I need to start my own “blogroll” page, so that I can write down the blogs I come across and like, to later re-visit. That’s something which search engines can’t help me, and it bothers me to no end trying finding that blog once again, and fail.
“We came here because of what America stands for: freedom of speech, academic freedom, a vibrant intellectual community,” Mr Gerdén said of his international classmates. “And now Trump is threatening all those values.”
This cannot be allowed to continue. It is a personal grudge against Harvard, and goes against everything American stands for—which is sadly, and slowly, being no more.
Tonight we will finish watching “Solo Leveling” (unless the kid, who has a cold, goes to bed early). I’ve got to tell you, between “Attack on Titan” (★★★★½) and “Solo Leveling”, I prefer the second 50 times.
Update: 24 Jun 2025 @ 17:14:13
This has been completed. It was a truly good manga series! Thus now the wait has commenced for the arrival of the next season. Can’t come soon enough!
This Obsidian’s upcoming core plugin will be a game changer. Right now you can do similarly with Dataview, but Bases seems simpler, while remaining powerful, and future proof. I might even become a Catalyst member!
“Bases is a core plugin that lets you turn any set of notes into a powerful database. With bases you can organize everything from projects to travel plans, reading lists, and more.”
“I went to a show in November of last year (it’s May right now) and ever since, I have tinnitus. I don’t recommend it.”
I do, too. And I, too, do not recommend it. I don’t know what it feels to be in silence. I have gotten used to my “new” silence, and learned how to enjoy it, but it is nothing like the silence I experienced before tinnitus started.
Talking about price tags, $77,000 for one fibre channel switch, with zero return policy, and a minimum of six weeks lead time is a first timer to me. Tariffs anyone?
I can’t help but fearing these kind of acquisitions. My concern is that it will translate to price increases, with the price tag they are paying for it.
“AT&T has clinched a deal to acquire Lumen Technologies’ consumer fiber operations for $5.75 billion in cash, the companies said on Wednesday, as the wireless provider adds further scale to its national fiber footprint.”
I know it happens, of course, but still stumping to me: how in the world someone manages to bankrupt a casino? Furthermore, who trusts a “businessman” with a history of bankrupcies? What to do? Ah, yes, you elect him president of the country, of course. 🤦🏻♂️
I played a little bit of Diablo IV yesterday. This season 8 is rather unfun, mostly for a few reasons: bosses one-hit kill attacks, only one boss having a 3% mythic gear drop, and the summoning materials for it “discovered” randomly, and runes extremely low drop rate. Runes are used to create targetted mythic gear.
The US House of Representatives (controlled by the GOP) approved Trump’s “one, big beautiful bill”, which “will add about $3.8 trillion to the federal government’s $36.2 trillion in debt over the next decade”. In case it wasn’t noticed, that’s trillions.
“The bill also slashes spending in other areas, including hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while rescinding a series of clean energy tax credits passed by Democrats in 2022. And it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.”
— NBC News
Chetan—whose blog I have read since, well, its very beginning—provides an elegant solution on his Text enclosures post that I wish it was built-in everywhere. VS Code, Obsidian, and Logseq, to mention a few, has it. It is so useful! What is it? Select, and add single, double quotes, brackets, parenthesis, asterisks, etc. to both sides of the selection.
Update: 24 Jun 2025 @ 17:14:13
The post I referred about on this note has since been removed. I will need to start using the Wayback Machine to save, and refer to posts from Chetan, as they seem ephemeral quite often. 😅
OpenAI is buying Jony Ive’s AI device startup (I have no idea what Ive’s company does, haven’t been able to find its website, but search engines agree on it being a “hardware” company), and Apple’s stock goes down a bit. What is wrong with you people? Really?!
You will notice that this note’s font is different. Not only is a little bit bigger, it is Ubuntu Sans (not Open Sans, like that rest). Which is more legible? Well, let’s see.
“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Hmm, I need more. I, in capitals, and i. L, in capitals, and l. 1, and l. O and 0. I am growing to like it.
Update: 24 Jun 2025 @ 17:14:13
Well, I liked it so much that I have changed to it, for now. I think that getting tired of fonts, colour themes, cars, etc., is just part of being human. I really like Open Sans, I just feel like using Ubuntu Sans for a while. I think seeing it each day while working (running Ubuntu Linux on work machine, and that’s the default font) has something to do with it.
Well, well, well. This just keeps getting “better”, eh? But “criticism of Waltz”, according to Trump, was “unfair”. 🙄
“A hacker who breached the communications service used by former Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz earlier this month intercepted messages from a broader swathe of American officials than has previously been reported, according to a Reuters review, potentially raising the stakes of a breach that has already drawn questions about data security in the Trump administration.”
I just paid $283.71 for a key fob for wife’s 16 years old car. This is a need; it is either paying for it, or having a 2 tons vehicle sitting on the driveway. Of course that’s not an option, she also needs it for work. Because, unlike on other cities, public transportation here doesn’t truly exists.
I am, suddenly, feeling the desire to watch the “Shogun” series once more.
“Leave the problems of God to God and karma to karma. Today you’re here and nothing you can do will change that. Today you’re alive and here and honored, and blessed with good fortune. Look at this sunset, it’s beautiful, neh? This sunset exists. Tomorrow does not exist. There is only now. Please look. It is so beautiful and it will never happen ever again, never, not this sunset, never in all infinity. Lose yourself in it, make yourself one with nature and do not worry about karma, yours, mine, or that of the village.”
Oh boy! Half a trillion dollars for a “Golden Dome” aimed to do precisely what, and why?
“The Golden Dome, however, would be many times larger [than Isreal’s Iron Dome] and designed to combat a wider range of threats, including hypersonic weapons able to move faster than the speed of sound and fractional orbital bombardment systems—also called Fobs—that could deliver warheads from space.”
I was under the impression that Xi Jinping, together with Vladimir Putin were Trump’s “friends”. With the countries those two represent out of worry—they are “friends”, right?—who has the threat capability this upcoming “golden” dome is mean to protect us from?
Nothing announced today at Google I/O dazzles me. I was watching the live stream, and when they demoed the glasses with Gemini, and I saw the stutter, I had to quit, because I felt ashamed. The Verge has “the 15 biggest announcements” at Google I/O 2025, if you dare to be bored.
I think they should instead focus on fixing the mess that’s their Play Store (Google Play?), and the many crappy, missleading, full of malware, applications within it.
HarmonyOS with its microkernel architecture, on the other hand, looks pretty interesting.
“Solo Leveling” has taken us by storm. We are now on season 2, episode 17, and tonight we stopped because kid has to do homework, and study a bit. I, of course, work tomorrow. I’ve got to tell you, though, I am going to miss these anime series…
Now more than ever I want to play a necromancer class that’s truly minion centric, and powerful. A gamer can dream.
Looks like our honeymoon phase with AT&T is reaching an end. Within the last two weeks I had had to power cycle the gateway (model BGW320-500) three times. Twice, just today. In the six years we have been with AT&T, this is the first time I have been forced to power cycle the equipment. Certainly something’s up.
With—and I will use the locally used Fahrenheit scale—96°F, with “feels like” 109°F, and a Sun so strong it can crack stones (theoretically), you will agree that walking outside an air conditioned building is almost suicide. I just clocked 2.24 miles during my 30 minutes lunch. Outside. Yes.
Update: 24 Jun 2025 @ 17:14:13
I am, mentally and physically, finding it very hard to keep this promise. I am here, about to return to work, having doubts on whether or not I will go outside again this afternoon. “Listen to your body”, Martin told me. Ugh, my body speaks so convincinly!
Read more...If someone asks “what’s the meaning of life?”, they will find cliché answers, well reasoned ones answers, etc. But nothing explains it better than what this guy did.
“I discovered that no one had ever gone to every country in the world completely without flying [in one unbroken trip].”
Now, if doing what you want, and makes you happy (without harming others) isn’t what life it all about, I don’t know what is.
Grand Master Carlsen, the world’s top ranked chess player, was forced into a draw by “the world”.
“Overall, ’the world’ has played very, very sound chess from the start. Maybe not going for most enterprising options, but kind of keeping it more in vein with normal chess — which isn’t always the best strategy, but it worked out well this time…”
Imagine that! One against 143,000, and it ends in a draw. I would take that as a win!
I am sure all republican Venezuelans, specially those American citizens with family amongst the 350,000, are ecstatic at this news. As I told George, “Those in the cult feel no regrets. They will justify and excuse, as they burn down.”
I have been considering keeping track of everything anti-constitutional President Donald J. Trump does, similar to the Trump Tracker, but for anti-constitutional issues. The only thing that’s holding me back is the extraordinarily huge amount of time it will require. It seems to me it would be a full time job.
I look forward to coming to office—I can’t believe I am writing this!—to have a “lunch walk” with Errol. It is not just the walk; that I can do on my own, and I do. It is the wide range of topics we touch while walking. I am going to miss that.
And just like that our treasured weekend is gone. Other than some grocery shopping, and visiting mum for an early birthday phở, we didn’t do much. Well, there was Eurovision, and a few “Solo Levelling” episodes, yes. But other than that, not much else.
I have done badly to a promise I made to myself to walk 10,000 steps daily, no matter what. I could point out that the heat is extreme around here, but I can’t use that as an excuse. “None may atone for my actions but me, and only in me shall their stain live on”, so, “all I can be is sorry, and that is all that I am.”
Having not watched it for a few years, I had forgotten how awesome Eurovision is. So refreshing, so many talented people! If you can, and haven’t, I strongly recommend you watch it. This year’s is on Peacock, at least in the US.
Statistics on “Notes…” since I started them, including this one:
002 2022
400 2023
153 2024
052 2025
That 2023 sure was a prolific year, wasn’t it?
An oldie. Ah, memories…
“In the States, looking different and/or having an accent will get you asked “Where are you from?” It doesn’t fail, it happens all the time.”
“What business is it of yours where I’m from, friendo?”
Had luch at the Korean House restaurant with George. The food was really good, and I had a good time catching up with him. The waitress was very nice, and now I feel bad for having left that 15% tip. She sure deserved a 20%. Wife and I go there often, so I shall look for her in the future, and pay back what I believe I owe.