* My shoulder hurts like hell. I strongly suspect there’s a pinched nerve causing it, and I need another MRI (ideally claustrophobia free) before I know for sure if the bulging disc is back, but it’s bad enough that I had an emergency visit to the chiro and got my shoulder taped eight ways from Sunday. On a side note, add cyclobenzaprine to the list of drugs that stop working for me after 48 hours, alongside Advil, Aleve, diclofenac, Mobic, Celebrex and hydrocodone.
* My phone’s battery has gone to hell in the last couple of weeks. I don’t know if using the external battery pack managed to mess something up, but even after wiping it (twice), conditioning the battery (twice) and setting it up as new, with no backup restore, it still won’t get through an 8 hour day of normal use unless it’s in low power mode. Meanwhile, a top tip for everyone: if at all possible, change your 2 factor authentication to an SMS text rather than a code from an app, because it’s taken me three days to get into all my formerly 2FA services and there’s one I still can’t (the Chorus system at Vox Media, which appears to have no backup solution, so if I can’t restore data to my old phone I’m good and cooked).
* I probably would have bought an iPhone SE by now, except the backorder is still three weeks on every model. That may be enough to keep me on this sinking 6 right now, or at least force me to go through extensive troubleshooting to make sure it’s not the Apple Watch or the Bluetooth headset that’s causing the power loss. But oddly, the experience is making me ever more cognizant of how big this phone really is – when I switched to a borrowed 5S for a couple of days, it felt compact without being too small, and when I went back to the 6, it felt huge and ungainly. Tougher time with the keyboard on the 5S, obviously, but at the same time it seems like the keyboard in iOS 9 was a step backward generally.
* Speaking of mobile technology, it looks like we might be about to take the plunge on that Malibu Hybrid. We test-drove it, it handles well, plenty of pickup, sufficient room inside (barely, in back, but the legroom was better than the headroom), and the bells and whistles in 2016 are off the chart from where they were ten years ago. We’ll see if it comes together. While I’m not looking forward to a car payment again, it’d sure be nice to have something reliable that would go 500 miles on a tank of gas (and this will, believe it or not).
* I have made my commute a little longer in the morning, but in exchange I get a straight shot on the train, less crowding, none of the Palo Alto dickishness to deal with, and a good half hour to drink coffee and get my head together before getting into the office, and I can tell a difference between days when I do that and days when I have to just take the train straight in. Some forms of commuting are just more aggravating than others, and things go a lot better if I don’t have to kick against the bricks first thing on a Monday morning before even getting into the office.
* I’m hesitant to say this for fear of jinxing it…but things seem to be mostly going OK. Disney was great, Yosemite was great (a certain half hour or so in the morning notwithstanding), the long driving road trip portions were just fine, work is under control, politics is shitty but manageable now that we more or less know the score, my breathing is much improved, and maybe just maybe we’ve licked the allergy thing…it’s a lot easier to deal with life when all you have is a couple of obstacles rather than what looks like a straight path but a dozen pebbles in your shoe. It drives home the point: if there are things you do that make your life worse, stop doing them.
* Did I have the first and second place horses in the Derby? Why yes I did. Did I have them in some sort of parlay? Well…nope. Which is why I made a profit of $2 instead of something serious. Siiiiigh.