I’ve been driving a ton these past few days—almost caught up to two months’ worth of mileage since buying the car. But a few days ago I noticed the car felt bumpy even on flat ground…

I don’t drive much, but yeah, it was definitely bumpy on flat ground. Then during the late-September service, the 4S shop mechanic told me it was a tire pressure issue. They checked the tires themselves and found nothing wrong, just that the pressures were a bit uneven. After adjusting them, the bumpiness disappeared. The mechanic said I was lucky to catch it early, otherwise it would’ve caused a whole chain of damage to the tires.

I asked the mechanic a bunch of questions during the service, tire stuff included. He explained the consequences of uneven tire pressure and blowouts, and then casually added…

“Tires aren’t covered under warranty. If you blow one, you’ll be paying out of pocket whether you come to the 4S shop or some street tire place.”

Bruh…

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The Boogie Board Jot is an electronic blackboard.

Well, a small blackboard — it’s only 8.5 inches. Still, it’s got some use. At minimum you can use it instead of sticky notes, and there’s a magnet on the back so you can stick it to the fridge, or the side of your PC case, or wherever.

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Some artsy type once said: “Life should include a trip you take on a whim—pack your bags, hit the road, escape the city noise, and find inner peace.”

Honestly, that’s not wrong. Half the time we go traveling we kill all the fun with planning and second-guessing, so one carefree trip really can melt the stress away.

Unfortunately, I hate traveling…

Or rather, I hate traveling in China.

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One reason I like using the Unity desktop is its indicators and global menu. But sometimes the damn thing fails to start and stuff just doesn’t show up — the clock, the volume speaker icon, that kind of thing. Logging out and back in fixes it, but I was in the middle of a Dota 2 update and didn’t want to do that, so I went looking for another way.

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My China Merchants Bank credit card has points, and the points can be exchanged for gifts, except the damn gift redemption has literally never had anything in stock. Every year around the end of the year I find I can’t even redeem a Zhang Xiaoquan kitchen knife. Depressing.

Then this month I got a WeChat message from China Merchants Bank saying it was my birthday month and I could get priority on redeeming some gifts.

Sitting on 6000+ points with nothing to do with them, so I went to look. After poking around, the only interesting thing was this bear egg cup. I’d seen one on eBay before, but the eBay ones were all no-name brands, so I never bought one. Since I could redeem a proper legit one, might as well.

It arrived pretty fast, though I got zero reminders or notifications the whole time.

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Someone else bought these — I mooched two off them.

Once they were in hand, it was pretty clear they’re probably not legit. Whatever. Fakes are fine for the office anyway, no need to baby them.

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Let me start with the verdict: this whole series of fiddling is basically pointless. If you’re a masochist, go ahead and try it.

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For a long time I’ve wanted something with some personality sitting on my desk. Beyond figures, what I really wanted was something that represents Linux — like that very fat penguin.

I figured this stuff would be easy to find. Surprise: Taobao doesn’t have it.

So I looked further afield, and it turns out it’s hard to find anywhere in the world selling toys of this thing, let alone figures. There was a point where I seriously considered buying a Tencent penguin just to convince myself it was Linux’s Tux. Then I found a toy shop on Amazon US selling Tux plushies. Not big, but small enough to actually sit on a desk — they had a hanging ornament, a desktop decoration, and a keychain, three in total.

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“So… you like music?”

When I told yet another matchmaker-date woman — I’ve lost count which number — about the only hobby I can actually bring up, one of them finally gave me a slightly positive response instead of the usual “oh.”

“Yeah. Love it.”

Saying that, my head was full of the stock eroge line: “はい、大好きです。”

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A while back I went to a local Oracle “high-end summit” — yes, the scare quotes are deliberate.

“High-end summit” just meant an ad for Oracle’s current push into healthcare IT. The engineer giving the talk was working hard, trying to explain to a room full of pot-bellied “decision makers” who know nothing about databases what “cloud services” are, what “IaaS” is, what “PaaS” is, what “SaaS” is, and so on. He kept insisting that the future is cloud services, that storing your data in the cloud and buying cloud services would be such a great deal, way more convenient than maintaining your own data while constantly shitting bricks.

No fucking use, of course.

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