Tralfaz

Blog

  • White trash neighbors

    White trash neighbors

    Living in South San Jose is pretty great, for the most part. Great house, mostly great neighbors, and amazing weather are all positives.

    But the negatives come out twice a year. There are several rental properties in our neighborhood, and they are often rented by giant wads of fuck.

    Case in point: Last night, New Year’s Eve, we knew there would be fireworks. There are always fireworks here, even though they are banned, especially on NYE and the Fourth of July.

    It sucks for our dogs. They freak out, and no amount of sedation or other home remedies help. And that is with “normal” fireworks.

    But last night, at 10:30, there was a very loud explosion. Apparently, our dirtbag neighbors have a source for professional fireworks. You know, the ones that are used by professional pyrotechnicians to put on the larger displays.

    We often have fireworks, including the smaller mortars (the ones that lead to star bursts) that you can buy if you go to states that have loose fireworks policies.

    The one last night was not one of these. It was the real deal. Its lifter charge (typically a black powder charge to boost it out of the launch tube until the main charge explodes and the visible star burst happens. This one was so powerful that it caused every car alarm on the block go off.

    Joy, two freaked out dogs (Cerberus is usually unflappable, but even he came to hide with me in the dark.) What a great way to ring in the new year…

    I have to admit that I was saying a prayer that the morons would blow their hands off.

    I hope these assholes move out soon.

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  • Looking back on 2019

    Looking back on 2019

    As this year winds down, I take this moment to glance in the rearview mirror to see what transpired in this year.

    I did look at my posts from the start of 2019, and alas, I failed to live up to many of my goals. I did exercise more, and even bought a new bicycle that helped motivate me. But the big drag was my role as trustee/executor of my stepfather’s estate. That consumed hundreds of hours of my time, and amped up my stress into the stratosphere.

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  • Ditching the Gas – Going to Charcoal

    Ditching the Gas – Going to Charcoal

    Ever since I bought my first “place,” a condo in south San José, I have been using a gas fired Webber for my grilling needs. First a small Spirit I bought in 1999, and later a Genesis Series (model 310) that I bought in 2009. Both served me well, and made multiple moves.

    However, even after several attempts, they have one major shortcoming. They suck for smoking food. I tries all the tricks, mostly in the era of the Spirit, but all the attempts were sorry failures.

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  • Tivo – getting to the end of the line

    Tivo – getting to the end of the line

    I first bought a Tivo when we moved to Tucson 16 years ago. Prior to that, I used a Dish network DVR that was OK, but nothing spectacular. I knew the Tivo was a better user experience, as I had a friend who did UI/UX work for the company way back when they were in their infancy.

    That original Tivo graduated to a Series 3 HD when we brought home a plasma TV, and a few years ago, when Comcast (correction: Xfinity) stopped supporting the MPEG2 format for broadcast, it was time to upgrade. Fortunately, Tivo had an offer for an all in subscription to a refurbished Tivo Romio for a reasonable price.

    That had been working well for a number of years, but had become flakey recently. Sporadic, spontaneous reboots were driving me nuts. Finally, last Saturday, it died. Caught in a reboot cycle, it seemed dead.

    Fortunately, some internet sleuthing identified that the problem was most likely caused by a bad disk, so off to Weaknees, and to order up a replacement HD.

    But…

    The reality is that I do not watch much live TV anymore. Sure, I enjoy recording Full Frontal, new episodes of Rick and Morty, and the occasional The Daily Show featuring Trevor Noah, but since Comcast stopped carrying BEin Sports, I can’t tune in to MotoGP races anymore.

    Almost all my viewing is streaming. Netflix (decreasing), Amazon Prime (cautiously, as it sucks bandwidth), and Hulu are my go to’s with my Plex server for my home library of movies, I am pretty much good.

    If it were up to me, I would cut the cord, buy an Apple TV to stream, and be done with it.

    However, my wife is a sports nut. She needs her college football fix. She craves women’s collegiate volleyball. And when the olympics are on, well, I don’t get to watch TV for 2 weeks solid.

    Summary

    The Tivo lives on, probably for a few more years, but the reality is that we are not too far from being able to cut the cord. Sling and Hulu both have live sports, and if I can convince the boss of that, then perhaps we can go from an Xfinity triple play for a stupid amount of money each month to just their fattest internet connection will be sufficient, and save money to boot!

  • Shingles Vaccine

    A couple of months ago, we lined up for our annual flu shot, and this year decided to get the shingles vaccine. Since both of us were from an era before the chicken pox vaccine, we both had it as children.

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  • Website (and host) migration time

    Website (and host) migration time

    I have many (5) sites running on a smallish Digital Ocean droplet, using Serverpilot to manage the instances. I originally set this up over 4 years ago. At the time, ubuntu 14.04 lts was the bomb.

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  • Fucking hell – Redirects

    Fucking hell – Redirects

    Following on from the website migration, there is another tale to tell.

    A tale shrouded in the mythos of the early internet. It was the late 1990’s and I had an ISP that provided me my ISDN service, as part of their monthly charge for this “business” class service (at the time it was truly stupendous speed and bandwidth) was a free domain and email hosting.

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  • John Wick

    John Wick

    I am going to admit that I had known about the John Wick movies, but haven’t seen them until Thanksgiving day, 2019. Mostly because they aren’t on any of the streaming platforms I subscribe to. But I was visiting my brother in San Diego for the holiday, and he has all three.

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  • Kamado Kapers: Brined Turkey Breast

    Kamado Kapers: Brined Turkey Breast

    A couple weeks ago, on a lark, I bought one of those Jennie-O frozen turkey breasts, with the intent to cook it on the Kamado. I freely admit that I am not really a fan of the big bird. This is largely due to a confluence of a few factors. The first being that my mother – may her soul rest in peace – cooked a turkey drier than a Monument Valley August afternoon. Bone dry would have been a juicier bird.

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  • Two Months, and 2,400 miles on the 2020 Acura RDX

    Two Months, and 2,400 miles on the 2020 Acura RDX

    Rapidly approaching 2 months with the RDX, and it is time for an update. Naturally, the 2 months, nearly 2,400 miles, and plenty of smiles are to be expected with a new car. If you read the forums, this car is the devil, and the infotainment system is a disaster (n.b. – I rented a shitbox Ford focus one with their Sync “system” and truly that was a homeless abortion).

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