Blogger Boggles My Brain With Its Bungles & Blunders

 Well, I have absolutely no idea why the images in the last entry are no longer showing. You can see them if you click, hold, and open in another tab, but it's no go on the main event. I've scoured a few articles, most of which only apply if the images are externally hosted (which these are not), and attempted the ol' cache clearing and reboot. While my Mac is rebooting, I checked the site on my iPad and found the exact same problem. I'm now writing this entry from my iPad Haven't even bothered digging out my Bluetooth keyboard for it, that's how fed up I am. 

This is my overarching complaint about Blogger, that on the rare occasion something goes wrong, support is basically nonexistent. It's a rat's nest of forum posts from years ago that don't address my specific issue and actually getting someone somewhere to take a look under the bonnet is an utter pipe dream. 

The worst part is the images had issues when composing the entry in the first place. I had to paste them in again after having to take a break from writing for a day. This may well be a chronic issue (old entries don't have this issue) or I simply need to post the images through some other means. 

Can you see this image?

UPDATE: Problem solved via tedium. The image above was copy+pasted directly into the entry. The fix was to use the "add from Google photos" option (which is where the images were hosted in the first place). This did present a small problem as most of the images are from 2013, which meant a lot of scrolling. I ended up creating an album, which had its own headache of not showing the images since they were only recently uploaded. I had to go by file name. 

Maybe I should forgive WordPress.... 

First World Regrets: Videogame Hoarding

Final Fantasy VII changed my life in the most first world of ways. I had been impressed by the Sega Saturn and even though it was proving to be one of the less successful consoles on the market, I was initially undeterred, setting a plan in motion. I made a list of games whose contents are sadly lost to time beyond maybe the first two or three titles. The mindset was that if the Saturn market collapsed shortly the moment I walked out of the game store with it, I would have been set for life, or at least one or two subsequent console generations. Instead of shelling out for the latest and greatest of games, I could stick to the tried and true. You can keep your Crash Bandicoot and Mario Kart; I'll still be living it up with Panzer Dragoon Saga and Enemy Zero. 

How viable this plan would have actually been in practice is debatable at best. Sticking exclusively to a given piece of hardware is a pretty good way to give yourself buyer's remorse. I think of the PS2/XBOX/GCN generation, how each of these very powerful consoles ended up sculpting unique markets unto themselves. If you loved Role-Playing or Strategy Games, PS2 was the way to go given Square Enix's success with the Final Fantasy series. If you loved First Person Shooters, then you went with XBox and got chummy with all the other Halo fans. If you were a lifelong Nintendo fan, you obviously went with Gamecube and its first party IP's including Mario and Pokemon. When I think back to the Saturn and the games I was going to tough out the next few years with, I think my gaming tastes and habits would have changed drastically. I certainly would have favored quality over quantity, instead of the serious problem I came to have when I got my PS2. 

The PS2 had a massive library of games, a catalog befitting its position as the biggest seller of its generation. Ironically, the majority of PS2's I remember selling people on while I worked at Target had more to do with the console's capabilities as a DVD player than a gaming console. Obviously, it was cheaper to buy a standalone player, but offering the PS2 as a complete package seemed like a no-brainer for gamers and families alike. The XBox could play DVD's as well, but it required the purchase of a separate remote control to the tune of about 30USD. Adding to the irony, that's only a little more expensive than a PS2 memory card, while the XBox had a built-in hard drive for game saves. By comparison, the Gamecube basically sold itself since fans of Nintendo properties such as Metroid and Legend of Zelda didn't care about DVD's or any other multimedia capabilities. 

I went with the PS2 because I had the PS1. I went with the PS1 over the Saturn because I saw a commercial for Final Fantasy VII. I became obsessed with all things Playstation (apart from the occasional outings with the N64). I didn't simply love the Playstation. I loved Sony itself. I researched the company for an economics class and that leaned heavily on the potential of the PS2 becoming not only a games console and home media player, but also a small desktop PC thanks to its promised add-on of a hard drive. That would never technically come to pass; the Linux Kit was never meant to offer up a desktop experience on the level of a PC or Mac, and the hard drive would find more use with online games like Final Fantasy XI anyway. Nonetheless, and just like with the Saturn, I was undeterred. I held on to my PS2 for years, and  there was no favoring quality over quantity. At my worst, I owned something like 200 games. My justification was that I had relatively obscure taste and it wasn't always possible to rent certain titles. Moreover, a lot of the games I wanted had been on the market for some time, their prices typically dropping by half before I became aware of them. I very rarely paid full price for games, but also rarely bought used. In fact, the only used PS2 game I remember buying was Gran Turismo 3, purely because it was literally cheaper than renting it. 

Youtuber Caddicarus made a video detailing his unpopular gaming opinions, including such notable takes as, "ET for the 2600 is not the worst game ever made," and "mobile gaming is pretty cool actually." The one that struck a chord with me was his unexpected admission that the Gamecube was better than the PS2. Seemed like blasphemy given he's known on the internet as a Playstation fanboy to the Nth degree. I've only played the Gamecube within the last few years thanks to my roommate having one, checking out games that I missed because I was in camp Playstation. While the Gamecube had a smaller library than the PS2, it seemed like I had to go further and further out of my way to find something especially bad. That's true of any console, but with the PS2, it attracted shovelware in a way that would only be surpassed by the Nintendo Wii. Actually, the reason I was so hesitant to get a Gamecube back in the day was precisely because of its emphasis on quality over quantity. That is, I knew the Gamecube had really good games on it, but it was the fact that everyone was playing them all at once that kept me away. Everyone was playing Mario Kart. Everyone was playing Metroid Prime. Meanwhile, I don't know many people who were playing Warhammer 40,000: Fire Warrior or Stretch Panic or Kagero II: Dark Illusion on PS2. I generally stayed away from mainstream titles except maybe for some RPG's. Square Enix had left PS2 owners spoiled for choice, to say nothing of other publishers who recognized the console as the place to be for fans of the genre. 

Much like my Saturn plan, I banked on a number of RPG's for PS2 because I had it in my head that someday I'd have nothing but time on my hands and would need something that could fill that void. RPG's generally take a lot of time, what with being more story-driven and all, so it was the perfect solution to this problem I was convinced was coming sooner rather than later. Had the pandemic happened about 15-20 years earlier and I had a non-essential job to leave me waiting at home, I would have been fully prepared, if only in staving off boredom. 

I've now sold off the majority of my PS2 games (hence the eBay photos I dug up, which aren't all of them). There's maybe a few stragglers I didn't get around to, but they're not taking up an entire foot locker and then some like they once had. The same goes for my Sega Dreamcast, which also had a substantial library at the time. The only games whose prices dropped lower and faster than PS2's were the Dreamcast's, and I was all in. In a way, I did with the Dreamcast what I'd wanted to do with the Saturn. The console wasn't performing well, so it was best to get it while the getting was good. 

My PS3/PS4 collection is substantial, though that's thanks mostly to Sony's Jelly of the Month Club, Playstation Plus. For the price of about a game per year, I can download a game or two a month. They're typically smaller, independent games or older titles past their prime. I allowed my membership to lapse back in January, which left over half the collection inaccessible. It didn't bother me as I was getting more out of my PS4 as a streaming device than a games console. I turned the service back on this month to start playing through some games I meant to finish.  

11 years, 12 months per year, 2-3 games per month...

I guess I never learn. It only makes me sad that you can't really sell digital versions of games. With my old games I can trust that they've all gone to good homes, to gamers like myself who can appreciate and enjoy them as much as I should have. Nowadays, my rule is that I don't buy a new game unless I've beaten one. That's the compromise I made with myself a few years into owning my PS3, and I've mostly stuck to it ever since.

Motivation

I've been having a lot of motivation problems of late. It's obviously shown itself in how neglected this weblog has become. I've got a number of unfinished drafts that I've attempted to tackle over the past several months, but I've given up on trying to finish them. January saw a change in my medications to coincide with a new diagnosis of Mania instead of Moderate Depression. My current mood stabilizer is doing a good job of helping me sleep, which was important. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be helping to stabilize my mood, so I'm going to have to try something different. I'm irritable, impatient, stressed, and my down spells are becoming longer and more frequent. When I try to be productive (especially at work), I get overwhelmed and mentally exhausted. If I'm not productive, I get anxious. While my visits to my counselor have also helped tremendously, it's not a full solution unto itself. Because of the time taken off of work, I made the mistake of setting my next appointment further out than I normally do. 

    Work has been a particularly large source of stress as there's been a change in our hierarchy and how things get done. It's put a lot of things in uncertain positions, and that's unsettling. It also doesn't help that I'm not at work right now and there's a lot I want to get done. I'm not at work because I'm at home, and I'm at home because just yesterday I tested positive for COVID-19. Over 2 years of hide-and-seek with this bastard strand of RNA and I finally lost. I suppose it was inevitable, and I'm beyond glad it's happened after I've been fully vaccinated and even boosted. My symptoms are persistent, but overall mild. Company policy requires me to isolate for 5 days, which means I'm off until Monday. 

    Discovery of my COVID status after a follow-up appointment over a small medical emergency I had at the start of the month. In the late evening, I began to experience unbearable lower back pain that did not go away. There was no position that alleviated the discomfort and eventually I realized I was going to have to go to the hospital. I was shaking so much I couldn't drive. Whether said shakes were from the pain or the fear that this may have been a sign of something worse, it was very hard to tell. A CT scan revealed a kidney stone measuring 2mm x 8mm had formed in my left kidney and was about 75% of the way down to my bladder. I was given painkillers and a medication meant to relax the ureter where the stone was lodged. This follow-up appointment was an attempt to see if I had passed the stone or not. Once a stone is in the bladder, there's not a lot that can be done for it. If one is still lodged in the ureter, this requires surgery. Fortunately, my X-Ray was clear. 

    This is the part where I say my medical scare was the kick in the pants I needed and started being more productive outside of work because my clean bill of health was a new lease on life and... No. There is nothing of the sort here. My vain hope is that by posting this, it will actually motivate me to write more so I can effectively bury this entry and I won't have to think about it anymore. It reminds of something YouTuber Wheezywaiter said about when he feels as if a video he's made is not up to snuff. His solution, he says, is to make more content, not less. I guess if you're worried about quality, shift your focus to quantity and see what happens. 

Goodnight, and good luck. 

Kayaks and Counselors: An Ad Review

Here's some free advice to anyone who wants to use mental health for comedy: don't. At least, don't do it when the service you're offering is alleging to help people with mental heath issues. 

I understand completely what BetterHelp is trying to do. A similar ad from some years ago used those Nigerian Prince scams as its focus. A woman is sitting by herself on a bus when an elderly man sits down next to her to tell her he's going to give her part of his fortune if she cashes a check for him, all using slightly broken English befitting an email put through a bad translator. Naturally, the woman shakes her head and gets off at the next stop. The narrator chimes in, "You wouldn't take this offer in person, so why would you go along with it in an e-mail chain?" 

It's a rather on-the-nose way of saying, "This is how you sound when talking about X" or "This is how X looks to everyone else." A series of comedy skits on YouTube take a similar approach: 

As of this writing, BetterHelp has 3 ads using this formula. I'll try to link them where I can, but as far as I can tell, BetterHelp doesn't have a YouTube channel where they would keep all of these videos to be used in pre-roll ads. The one with the weightlifter is actually the most subtle. Two men are working out in a gym. One struggles with a bench press, unable to lift the bar off his chest. Another man offers a spot. He is blown off at first, to which he counters, "There's nothing wrong with asking for help." He is dismissed again with what sounds like a non sequitur, "You don't know my family." There's no hyperbole or absurdism here, at least not to the extent of the other ads in this campaign. In fact, if it weren't for the other ads, I'd call this a very effective public service announcement. 

The next ad in the campaign is more comical, though I have to admit it's a bit of a guilty pleasure. A woman sits on her couch in a living room. The lights go out, then flicker back on a moment later. The woman's roommate calls out how long this has been going on. Like with the weightlifter, she is dismissed. The lights go out again. When they flicker back on a moment later, the roommate is now standing in the living room door and asking again about getting the problem fixed. The dismissal this time is much like the one the weightlifter gave, a call to simply cope with the situation. The ad is essentially playing off horror movie tropes, of people disappearing and reappearing with lights going on and off. I hate to admit it got a chuckle out of me. Much like the weightlifter ad, it's subtle enough to serve as a public service announcement on how to identify a person going through mental health problems. That is, the shorter version of the ad is almost effective. There's a longer version of the ad involving a book case getting toppled during a blackout. 

The third ad goes off the rails completely into slapstick comedy. A cowboy with a bandaged foot limps along to his horse. Another cowboy offers help, noting how deadly rattlesnake bites can get. The first cowboy starts giving some speech about "how his daddy and his daddy before him" did something or other. There's no message or theme here that isn't buried under the formulaic comedy trope of walking through pain. When King Arthur's duel with the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is more subtle than you, you have failed in whatever it was you were trying to convey. 

You haven't highlighted the weight of the problem. You've put it on stage and made a spectacle of it. 

Kayak went from making fun of cryptomnesia (unconscious appropriation) to labeling people who speak out against their business model as "Kayak Deniers." The political overtones of this should be obvious. The targets are chiefly climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, and a few other conspiracy theories while it's at it. The ads focus on small family gatherings in which the "issue" of Kayak is brought up, at which point a verbal battle of words ensues, escalating to a shouting match before someone storms off, leaving everyone else rolling their eyes at the whole debacle. 

So, how can I defend one set of ads while another gets admonished for the same technique? Simply put, the melody is the same, but the instrumentation is different. Kayak is a travel planning service using socio-political tensions as a punchline. BetterHelp is an online/virtual counseling service using mental health as... well, it's not trying to make it sound like a punchline, but it definitely feels as though it's mocking it, or at least minimizing it. It makes me wonder who the ad is for exactly. If it's someone with mental health problems, it comes across as diminishing, painting them as a burden when that's precisely why they keep their issues bottled up in the first place. If it's someone else (i.e. the roommate, the spotter, etc.), it doesn't offer much insight into the problem, and certainly doesn't equip them on how to handle the situation. 

The Great Equalizer

Disclaimer: This entry discusses mental health, including medication and some clinical jargon I'm likely to get wrong because I am not a doctor nor do I play one on TV. This is not meant to be taken as medical advice nor given any more weight and credence than any other personal anecdote. Everyone is different. 

The lack of data on Friday is human error. I forgot to wear the watch.

To put this image in perspective, some context. At the start of the new year, my doctor suggested that I may not have depression (at least not anymore, or exclusively...?), but instead a manic disorder. I won't go into the semantics over what a manic disorder is in relation to bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, generalized anxiety disorder, depression, or any other (dis)similar conditions. Suffice to say, as a rule, you don't treat it with antidepressants (alone). What's offered instead (or in tandem) is what's broadly called a mood stabilizer. I'll spare you the details of the first one I tried, if only because I don't remember it at all and it was thusly written off as ineffective. I'll also spare you the details of the second one except that it made me sick to my stomach, and not in the principled sense. It was written off as intolerable.

The Charming Third stands in stark contrast to the first two in that those medications are typically used to treat epilepsy, their use as mood stabilizers being somewhat serendipitous. Charming Third is what's known as an antipsychotic. I have no idea what it would do for epilepsy, but let's leave the happy accidents for another time. 5mg of Charming Third was taken Sunday before bedtime, a time bumped up in case the drowsiness listed as the most common side effect made getting ready in the morning a bother. On a side note: due to the tummy troubles from Terrible Two, as of this writing, I haven't touched coffee in over two weeks. 

As the song goes if you slur your speech in the right places, waking up is hard to do. 

Not only was it a struggle to get up and get ready for the day, but I spent the entire day at work on the edge of nodding off. I worried constantly about either shutting my eyes for too long or leaning too far back in my chair and dozing off right then and there. A solid 8.5 hours of sleep but with nothing to show for it. Fortunately, nobody seemed to notice, so I guess my anxiety filled me with enough nervous energy to counteract the sleepiness. After getting home, I immediately fell asleep on my bed. I slept for 3.5 hours, got up to change clothes and get into bed properly, and then slept until 5:30 the next morning, with the drowsiness finally wearing off around 7:00. 

Did I mention this was a single dose? 

Having literally slept through the window during which I would have taken my second dose, I naturally informed my doctor of what happened, full timeline of events included. By the way, special thanks to Fossil for making an alarmingly accurate fitness tracker despite being fairly low tech as trackers tend to go. Being me, when my doctor called, I apologized for missing the second dose. To her credit, she was extremely understanding, but wasn't ready to give up on Charming Third just yet. After all, as side effects go, drowsiness isn't the worst thing ever, unless you operate heavy machinery, which I don't. Problem the first was there didn't seem to be a lower dosage available. Problem the second was the makers of Charming Third not making their tablets breakable in any reasonable way. There's typically a good reason for this, Big Pharma skulduggery notwithstanding: Put simply, any lower and the medicine isn't effective at all at what it's supposed to do, much less what it does as a side hustle. A little more digging did turn up a 2.5mg dosage available, in small tablets obviously not meant for splitting, but far more inviting to the notion if we grade on a curve. Nevertheless, it was recommended I wait until Friday to take this new dosage, lest the sleepiness did not degrade along a curve. It was somewhat academic because I took the day off to get my car fixed, but I didn't want to tempt fate and reschedule a second time. 

It was suggested that, like any medication, there may well be an adjustment period, a time when the body has to recalibrate its various chemical processes to adapt to the new material in the carbon-rich macromolecular soup. The track record thus far was that Terrible Two got worse each time and Charming Third hadn't made the best first impression. Put simply, if 20/48 hours asleep was A New Hope, what will happen when The Empire Strikes Back? As of this writing, I've taken two doses of the 2.5mg. The first stuck to the statistics and resulted in 10/24 hours of sleep to awake, with only the most minimal of drowsiness to shake off afterward. The second took a little off the top with a more typical 8/24 proportion, though the drowsiness has been a bit of a slow burn throughout the day. That said, this is all completely ignoring the mood stabilizer portion of the meds, which I can't make any meaningful assessment of because it hasn't been long enough. Terrible Two's collected anecdotes mentioned the medicine's turnaround time of noticeable results being in the "months" range, to which I channeled all the Will Smith I could muster to utter an emphatic, "AW HAIL NAW!" Charming Third doesn't make any real note of when it begins to take effect, but I'll take a lack of detail as a sign it rarely tries anyone's patience. 

Time for Return of the Jedi.

Goodnight, and good luck. 

Mac's McCheese, Part 2

 

It was okay. 

The nutritional yeast is still the weak link, but it's only sprinkled on top like Parmesan cheese. The main cheese sauce uses a vegan cheddar I've gotten before. To my knowledge, it's made from cashews. Quite a few of the vegan ingredients from Purple Carrot are like this, so if you notice many of their dishes have a nutty flavor, that's why. 

... As long as we're here, and especially since I mentioned parmesan cheese, I learned something interesting from British TV presenter James May. He has a cooking show on Amazon Prime Video called Oh, Cook!. It's rather low-key compared to the other productions he's been involved with, and as he tells it, it's primarily meant to accompany/promote a cookbook he's recently published. It's almost like the show was an afterthought, especially with its off-the-cuff, cinema verite style of presentation. That's not knocking it; I rather enjoyed every second of it. Admittedly, it may have lost a bit of steam around episode 5, but that could well be a result of me simply not being built for binge-watching. 

In a later episode, he offered a correction regarding a dish he'd made in a previous one. The correction came from one of the crew, along with much of the show's banter, though May is clearly in top form since he doesn't have Hammond or Clarkson to fight fire with fire. The dish in question was said to be vegetarian. However, as the aforementioned crew pointed out, parmesan cheese is not considered vegetarian. At first, I thought he was simply mixing up vegetarian and vegan. It turns out there's a step in the making of parmesan cheese that's not too animal friendly. Without getting into the whole science of cheese and how it gets made, parmesan's process involves something called rennet. 

Rennet is a broad term for a collection of enzymes in a cow's digestive system. In the case of parmesan, the rennet is sourced from unweaned calfs as part of veal production. For me, this is not a problem. Much like the lard in refried beans or the fats on a grill that are used to cook veggie patties, this is incidental, and also part of a much larger process. That is, the calfs aren't being slaughtered exclusively for their gut stuff. Moreover, not all parmesan cheese uses rennet in its production. There are alternatives out there, though how widespread they are is hard to gauge. Given all the parmesan cheese I see in grocery stores and the notable lack of veal when I pass by the meat counters, either a little goes a long way, or the use of rennet has become the exception to the rule. 

While it doesn't bother me, I know some vegetarians are more strict than me, so it's only right they be informed if they don't know already. 

To your health. 

Mac's McCheese, Part 1

 I've been vegetarian for over a year now, and it was a complete accident. My roommate had been recommended trying a vegan diet to help bring down her cholesterol. I went along for moral support and to challenge myself. Sometimes when I'm grocery shopping, I'll play the Vegan Game, and maybe some of you have as well. When you're waiting in the checkout lines, look down on your cart and look at what you'd have to put back if you decided, right then and there, to become vegan. There's no shaming, mind, only an exercise in introspection, thinking for once about the stuff you don't think about. 

I learned in that first week that I am not cut out to be a full vegan. The long and short of it is I love cheese and ice cream too much. The other problem was a poor choice of dishes. I love Mexican and Italian the most, which lend themselves very well to non-meat options. I also like a lot of Asian dishes, which lend themselves equally well, if not more. When it comes to Indian dishes, though, I see a lot of problems. I mentioned loving Mexican food, but too many people think that means piling on the spices. Since leaving New Mexico especially I've noticed too many people don't understand spice. I can respect those thrill-seekers out there with their ghost peppers and whatnot, but that's not spice to me. That's heat. That's all heat and no flavor. I love green chili to death, and while that can be especially hot, it more than makes up for it in the flavor it provides. The heat has a character, is my point. Carne adovada is simply an embarrassment. I ordered it out of curiosity, expecting some kind of Mexican analogue to General Tso's, as the dishes look fairly similar. Three bites, enough tears to refill my water, and a fully drained set of sinuses later, I couldn't carry on. Call me weak if you like, but I don't look at my food the way a skier looks at black diamonds. The food serves me, not the other way around. Man v. Food is a false dichotomy. 

A common complaint about vegan dishes is they can be a little bland. This is perfectly understandable, and eye-opening when you learn how much sugar is in the foods you normally eat, hence the addiction and the less-processed stuff tasting a little off. It's like that scene in the first Matrix movie when they're discussing what we know as "chicken" in terms of flavor. Look up why carrots are orange if you really want the rug pulled out from under you when it comes to what qualifies as a GMO. Anyway, I don't personally mind bland food; it's why God gave us candy and soda. The problem with these Indian dishes I was trying out was they tried to make up for their blandness by piling on spices, the kinds of spices that don't offer any real flavor of their own and instead simply make you feel like you're trying to swallow a hot coal. Don't get me wrong, there are some Indian dishes I like very much. These simply weren't ticking any of those boxes. 

The main event came second-to-last if memory serves: Vegan Mac & Cheese. The original comfort food, now minus the dairy. Another common complaint about vegan dishes or other such alternatives to meat and animal products is they try too hard sometimes to be like the thing they're trying to make you do without. What I mean by that is rather than giving you a new experience, they try and pass for something else and act like everything's normal when you know damn well it isn't. A bean burrito is every bit as appetizing and satisfying to me as one with shredded steak, the difference simply being which one I would be in the mood for. If I'm in the mood for a burger with a proper meat patty and instead I bite into a fish fillet, that's grounds for disappointment. A for effort, but when it doubt, just be yourself, is my point. 

Besides, most of the "flavor" people talk about when referring to meat has nothing to do with the meat itself, but the preparation. Have you ever had plain, skinless chicken? I'm talking going straight from the package and onto the baking sheet with no steps in between. Yes, there's a texture, but texture is not a flavor. That taco seasoning will do all the same wonders for your chickpeas and black beans as it will for your chicken and beef. There's certainly no shortage of cheese-flavored snacks, so I was willing to give this the benefit of the doubt. Then, I read what the main ingredient was:

Nutritional yeast. 

That was probably a mistake, but I figured as long as I'm exploring what goes into my food, I'm not going to make an exception for the... exception. I want to know what's standing in for my cheese, by dammit. Actually, nutritional yeast isn't the end of the story, it's just the primary component chosen above all the others to be what graces the branding on the package. It hardly mattered, though. 

This particular style of nutritional yeast, to its credit, looked and smelled like cheese. The trouble is it didn't smell like especially good cheese. It didn't help that it looked like shredded cheese that was not long for this world, like when you get down to the land half-handful of the bag and you're not sure if it's cheese dust on the strands or something that tends to grow on things that are not long for this world. The taste did not redeem it. 

Like I said, when something is bland, I can deal with that. There's a difference between bland and bad. Bad doesn't even have to be vile or gut-wrenching or nauseating. Bad is simply bad, the kind of taste that makes you feel like you're being punished for something, like whatever you're eating doesn't want to be eaten and wants nothing more in the world it may or may not be long for to let you know it and will make you suffer for it every step of the way. You know you shouldn't be eating something when it makes you feel like a failure. This is not hyperbole, and it's certainly not me being a picky eater. 

This happened in November of 2019, and I'd almost forgotten that I'd written about it, so I apologize for being repetitious if you also remembered it from back then. I'm bringing all this up again because we've recently moved away from Hello Fresh as their options have gotten a touch repetitive, and they're not offering nearly as many meat-alternatives in their veggie options as I'd prefer. In the year-plus we've been subscribed, I've seen their "plant-based ground" a total of twice, perhaps thrice. 3 meals a week for over 70-odd weeks, you'd think they'd offer it up more. That was when my roommate discovered Purple Carrot. They're a fairly new enterprise (they don't even have an app, just their main site and a few social media accounts), and while they're slightly more expensive than Hello Fresh, their main claim to fame is their menu is entirely vegan-friendly, right down to the butter, cheese, and mayo. There have still been some bad dishes, but others have been pleasant surprises, many downright awesome. Tempeh is a decent meat alternative, depending on how you prepare it. Tofu can go either way. Seitan, also known as wheat meat or gluten meat, is the standout. For something dating back a few centuries, it holds its own against the Impossible and Beyond options. Like those, it wouldn't fool you, but it doesn't taste like an alternative. 

Moreover, many of their cheese options have been perfectly palatable. The biggest issue is they typically don't give you much of them, which is likely why they work. That is, if they gave you more of them, you'd probably start to notice the shortcomings. This is when I'll typically "cheat" and put in some proper cheese or butter or mayo, but credit where credit is due. 

Tonight, though...

Dun... dun... DUUUUUN!

Wish me luck. 

For the record, while I have my cruelty-free beefs with Purple Carrot, and there's definitely been some duds, I'd still recommend them if you're vegan and looking for a meal kit service. I'd certainly recommend giving them a try if you're not vegan so you'll at least have a leg to stand on when you claim that the lifestyle is not for you. 

2021: A Bricked Cube's Odyssey

Since about last week when the weather was getting especially cold, my car's been struggling a little. You'd practically floor it and it would hobble forward a bit, just a smidge above idling.

Seemed simple enough a solution: let it warm up a little. After all, a few minutes or miles would go by and everything would be good. Yes, warming a car for 20-30 minutes is a bit excessive (and the more I look into it, unnecessary), but an unprecedented cold snap sounds like the right kind of desperate time for a desperate measure. 

A few days ago, my car kicked back a trouble code, one I'd seen before. It's for the transmission. Last time it kicked on, all I had to do was change my transmission fluid and the light went off. That was a few months ago, nowhere near the 30,000 miles when you're supposed to change it out anyway. The trouble code in question (P0744) mentioned the torque converter, a rather fascinating fluid coupling seems to either be a reasonably priced part or so inordinately expensive it literally costs more than the car did when it was new.

Fast forward to this morning when the problem seemed to take on a new form (or possibly revealed its true form), despite letting the car warm up, acceleration was simply non-existent. I could maybe get a quick burst before momentum ran out. It was odd because if I put the car in neutral and then pushed the pedal, there was obvious revving. However, after letting it sit for a few more minutes, even the revs stopped. The engine is clearly on and going, but it's as if the gas pedal has completely disconnected from the rest of the car. So, a possible transmission problem (which may or may not be weather-affected) has now expanded to anything and everything from a bad fuel pump to a bum throttle sensor to a gunky fuel filter to injection issues. 

It's sitting in front of my neighbor's house because that's as close to the driveway as I could get it (it's not in their way or anything, so no problem, though I'll be keeping them appraised of the situation) before the pedal stopped responding altogether. As we approach midday, I could well give it a try and see about getting it back into the driveway, which could be easy enough as I could go in reverse the entire way, and that gear's been surprisingly reliable throughout this whole affair. 

The shop I took it to a few weeks ago to fix a rattle in the exhaust is not open on weekends. My roommate's brother may come by to take a look, but I'm likely going to have to try and work out some other way to get to work for at least the next few days. I have a fair number of days off to use up, but that's not the whole problem. I hate taking time off work because the longer someone spends not working, the more time a company has to work out ways to do without them. However unfounded this fear may be (as I've been told by some of my superiors), I can't help it. I also hate taking time off work because I genuinely enjoy my job. I've been at it for over 10 years. Before that, I was pretty damn miserable, and what most certainly didn't help that misery was a previous car's fuel pump giving out while on my way back from out of town one weekend. This was a bad set of circumstances that set up many, many chains of dominoes, and my car suddenly dying out of the blue, steering and all, was the push. At the risk of sounding like a first world problem, this little incident from at least 12-13 years ago practically ruined my life. While I didn't miss that much work, the debt I accrued from simply trying to get back to where I was before the mechanical breakdown drove me to debt consolidation, which is no fun for anybody. 

Car troubles are also no fun for anybody, even the mechanics who literally profit from them. They not only have to deal with the car but with the driver too, and that can go either way. Sometimes I'll see the same handful of cars outside of shops each time I pass by for months on end and wonder how many of those are there because of some heated exchange ending with something along the lines of, "It's your problem now." The same goes for when I see an abandoned vehicle along the highway, like some kind of people-watching by proxy, if that makes sense. You can't help but wonder what went through someone's mind on that fateful day, if they were just having the worst day ever and this was one more damn thing or if this was the upset to an otherwise totally tolerable time. 

(Un)Lucky Number 7: Putting It All On Green

I couldn't find a good way to transition to this from my earlier part about finding out one of my cables went bad, so I decided to make it a separate entry. 

A handful of my coworkers had mentioned recently "going green" as in trading their apples for androids. I can certainly understand the frustrations people have with their iPhones, be it the dreaded "Apple tax" or the toy-like interface. Seriously, when I had to send in my Xperia Z Ultra to get fixed, and I got a 5C to use in the potentially 6-8 week meanwhile, I laughed when I first swiped through the menu. For starters, the screen was absurdly small compared to my Sony Phablet, which was as much a digital sketchbook as it was a phone. Then there was the notable lack of widgets. Apple has finally fixed this, though I almost hesitate to call it a fix as they weren't anywhere near as useful as they could have been on my Android. Maybe I simply didn't have the kind of workflow that benefitted from some of them, but nonetheless the "icons-only" screen that rolled out in front of me felt like a step down and backwards. On the whole, the sole saving grace of the 5C was the camera. I could certainly take photos and shoot video with my Android, but somehow it always felt more than a little bit unpolished, like it was an afterthought in the design. This was especially annoying because this was a Sony product. I'd used Sony camcorders back in high school and college, to say nothing of all the other Sony products I'd owned like various TV's or my minidisc or certainly all of my Playstation stuff. 

In fact, when the Z came back from getting its battery fixed, I kept the 5C around to use as a camera, though mostly for around the house whenever the cats did something cute or I wanted to shoot a video for my YouTube channel. A few months of that arrangement later, and I inadvertently warmed up to the idea of the iPhone being a permanent fixture. I was about to go on a trip to see family, and I didn't want to bother with bringing two cables/chargers, so I "temporarily" activated the 5C again and left the Xperia at home. As the saying goes, I went Mac and never looked back. Given my favorite feature about the Ultra was its screen, it only made sense to phase it out. I'd migrated all of my drawing workflows to my iPad, so a phone with a big screen was rather unnecessary. The 5C was so lightweight in the same bag as the iPad compared to the Z I moved it to my pocket because it was possible I'd forget to pack it in the morning. 

The 5C eventually got traded in for the SE, and that's still one of my favorite iPhones. That got traded for the 7 I currently have now, and that's been an unremarkable upgrade despite my initial hype when the 7 was first announced. Of course, it's been a few years since then, and I'm far more impressed with the newest version of the SE, as I previously wrote about.

Here's my perspective, apart from them being easily by far the best cameras I've ever owned (that don't have interchangeable lenses or true optical zooms), what I like best about my iPhones is how they play nice with my iPad. They also play nice with my Mac mini. Airdrop alone has been a legitimate lifesaver. Forget those Apple stickers you get with every purchase, where's my Airdrop sticker? 

(Un)Lucky Number 7

 I woke up this morning to find my iPhone 7 had not actually charged in the night like it was supposed to. Thinking the cable and become dislodged from the outlet, I checked both ends and found everything was where it should be. Upon unplugging the lightning connector from my phone and plugging it back in, I got greeted with the dreaded "accessory may not be supported" message, that lightning bolt icon flashing over the battery ever so fleetingly. Restarting the phone did nothing for it. I thought maybe I'd tripped over the cable at some point in the night and finally caused some internal fault in its braided beauty. That didn't seem to be the problem, however as I plugged in my iPad and didn't even get the "not charging" message I used to get when I plugged it into anything less than 2 amps. To further add to the confusion, I took the iPhone into my office where my iPad's charger is and plugged it in. Charged like it should. 

Here's the results of my ensuing mix-and-match experiment. There's probably a better way to organize these data, but I can't think of one right now, especially since there turned out to be a time factor involved (that is, what would once work suddenly wouldn't). 

Not noted here is the turnover. One of my favorite features about the lightning connector is being reversible. However, when I plugged Cable 1 into the iPhone charger, it first showed as working with the iPad. Then, I turned it around and that got me the "not supported" message. Turning it back around to the "working" side now suddenly didn't work at all, "not supported" message and all. So, I guess it's just an intermittent cable that finally bit it. 

For further background, both Cable 1 and Cable 2 are third party. Cable 2 is a shorter cable that was provided by my cell carrier. Cable 1 came in a 3-pack from Amazon. Both are also braided, which isn't always a mark of higher quality, but certainly helps on the durability front, which often leads to cables failing.