Raising Awareness of Alcohol Intolerance

At this point, my "Raising Awareness" series of blog posts is getting rather long. I'll post links to all the others at the bottom of this post.

Really, the only reason I'm writing this one is that the symptoms of alcohol intolerance can be the same as a person with a hangover (some differences I'll get into in a bit), so I think that there could be a number of people out there thinking they're just suffering from a hangover when it's actually an alcohol intolerance. 

Now, on the one hand, I know two people personally who have the kind of alcohol intolerance that comes up most when you google symptoms, which is basically a "red, flushed face", and potentially hives. That, to me, sounds like an allergic reaction and should really be classified under "alcohol allergy". They are not the same thing. An allergy is an immuno-reaction to a substance, while an "intolerance" is generally classified as a gastrointestinal reaction. It was the exact same thing with my avocado intolerance. I was getting stomach cramps, not anaphylaxis. 

There are also articles out there that tend to point out that alcohol intolerance is only genetic, which is obviously not the case. Sure, like lactose intolerance, Asians seem to get the worst of it by also genetically not having the enzymes to break down alcohol. It is definately possible to be born with it. But, like with my avocados, you can develop it over time.

The other symptoms of alcohol intolerance include headaches, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and diahrrea. Sounds a lot like a hangover, doesn't it? So the difference between the two is the amount of time it takes to develop symptoms. For someone with an intolerance, it could take less than an hour to begin to feel shitty, even when you only had a small amount of alcohol. My intolerance developed over the course of several months (because I did go many months without drinking any alcohol at all due to the fact that I didn't feel good). I would drink a glass of wine, get what's known as a "wine headache", and not even feel a buzz. That's the main difference between these two - I don't get drunk, I just get sick. 

But lately, it's gotten even more unpleasant. Now I check almost all the boxes.

People with alcohol intolerance can't process alcohol in the normal way. Generally, this is what happens when you drink alcohol:

"The enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) metabolizes the ethanol (that's the type of alcohol in alcohol) into toxic acetaldehyde. From there the liver enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) metabolizes acetaldehyde into acetate, a less toxic compound that breaks down into water and carbon dioxide."

So essentially, my liver is not making, or making enough of, ALDH because it's the toxic actaldehyde that is causing my body to feel sick. And that is certainly worrisome, as the word "toxic" is being thrown in.

I have a couple options to explore in pill or liquid form which might help my liver matabolize some of the alcohol if I wish to partake, but really the only cure is to no longer drink alcohol. Well, it only took 3+ years of not eating avocado before my body reset, so maybe I can do the same with alcohol. 

Oh boy. Wish me luck.

My Raising Awareness series:

Dyspaurunia

Gallstones

Blepharitis

PVCs

BAM

Fintech Banks

Define Fintech: Fintech refers to the integration of technology into offerings by financial services companies in order to improve their use and delivery to consumers.

I am all in in Fintech banks (aka neobanks), but they are just as bad as Uber, Grubhub and the like. If you follow financial news at all (which I don't, but I still hear about this stuff), apps like Uber, where they base their business on an app and then employ people to maintain it, bleed money out the wazoo. They stay afloat only by convincing investors to give them money, and then bleed it all away because the costs are too high to maintain. All apps are like this, and Fintech Bank apps seem to be no exception. 

I used to be a regular bank user, and even though I always maintained a good balance, never went overdraft etc, the fees they charge are nuts. If you go below a minimum balance; if you don't do direct deposit; if you overdraft etc etc. I actually left Wells Fargo in my early 20s after the scandal of their team members signing people up for accounts they never asked for in order for them to meet quotas. Plus, they were all up in the housing market crash. Banks are shady as shit.

But now I understand why. I found an online bank called Simple. It was revolutionary. It wasn't just a website that showed your balance and maybe the last few things you bought. It had features. Features I didn't even know I needed. Like Expenses and Goals. I could automate my paycheck and put $300 per paycheck into an Expense folder and my bills would come out of it instead of my spending money. I could send a % per paycheck into specific goals to save up for things. (Which, I use for just about everything. I save up all year to pay my car tabs, which can be like $400 for a new car). It gave me budgeting tools, which admittedly I never used, but it was cool that they were there. It would automatically catrogorize everything I bought, like Groceries or Gas, and then you could look them up to see how much you spent on each catagory, and set a limit if you wanted to. It also had immediate notifications; every time I bought something, within seconds I could get a notification of the transaction. It really came in handy once when I was sitting on my couch at home and got a notification that I had spent $20 at a gas station in West Virginia. Um, no?? And I was immediately able to pause/cancel my card in the app and get sent a new one. The amount of things it could do was crazy and I loved it. But not only that, fees were non-existant. They didn't charge overdraft, or low balance, or any of those things.

But then, the worst happened. Simple was bought about by BBVA.
They were shutting their doors and giving people a chance to either switch, or get integrated into BBVA. During this impending doom, you will find many articles that sprang up - if you google "what banks are like Simple?" because people wanted a good alternative since Simple was so cool. 

I decided to give BBVA a chance, since I wasn't sold on any of the alternatives that I read about. But it was a horrible transition. Not only did they have many issues with Simple customers, but they were just a traditional bank that had fees and no features. I jumped ship as soon as I could. I found a neobank called Douugh, and waited for almost a year for them to get an Android app before switching over. (Apparently there's a monthly fee now?! I had no idea; I am assuming grandfathered accounts like mine aren't being charged.)

But I am so done with them. I think they're gonna go under soon. They had features that they then took away (Like Peer2Peer instant transfers between Douugh users), features they promised to add a year ago and still haven't (like mobile deposit; anticipated December 2021) and are beginning to have issues with their app that are driving me nuts. My money is literally stuck; since I began using them I have never been able to connect with my other bank, BECU, to be able to transfer funds into it. I have never been able to use Zelle to pay Patrick, I even just signed up for Venmo but I get an error every time I try to send someone money. They still haven't added mobile deposit so if I ever get a check for something I have to deposit it into BECU, which is completely unnacceptable. If I didn't still have BECU I'd have no way to get that money into my account.

I finally decided enough was enough. Even though transfering banks is awful, I just had to find something else. But the problem was Fintech. Simple went under because they bled money, just like Douugh is bleeding money. Just like I read Varo is bleeding money. Chime had many complaints and attracted the attention of state regulators. As many as are available now, they're all pretty much in trouble. And I didn't want to sign up for another one just to have them go under like Simple did.

Click here to read the article on neobanks

I had to find something that not only had all the features I wanted, like Goals (or Jars, or Vaults, or Envelopes... every app calls them something different), but had maybe been around for a while and still had traditional bank features, such as credit cards, a line of credit, loans etc. Because then that is something else they can make money off of and not just interchange/transaction fees like traditional Fintechs.

Enter SoFi. You may have heard of them; they own a stadium in Los Angeles. They have a lot of traditional bank stuff, but the app is also feature rich. I'm really hoping I'm going to like this one because I'm getting tired of jumping ship and having to switch all my stuff around. I'll let you know how it goes!

MOVING!!!!

I didn't want to write this until after the deed was done. I moved on 11/10 from place that was nice but way too small for two people. I felt incredibly cramped after Patrick moved in, especially because his computer was set up at the dining room table when our place didn't even technically have a dining room (It was a part of the living room that I cut in half using chairs and hung a pendant light in order to make it into a seperate space). Nor did it have laundry in the unit, which I had gotten used to over the years but was still irritating when I had to wash more than just my weekly load.

[Side note: When the pandemic started, quarters became very scarce because people stopped using cash. Places where I could normally buy a roll of quarters for the laundry machines no longer had them, and my bank didn't have tellers (BECU) except for the branch all the way up in Tukwila. So every few months we would buy like $100 worth of quarters so we wouldn't have to make several trips. I had tried to cut a deal with the Landlord to buy back the quarters in the laundry machines when they went to empty them but no dice.]

The place I was at was old, but it was still decent. However, rent kept (and keeps) going up, and it quickly became more than the place was worth. I quickly became enamoured with this new place that had only been built 5-6 years ago. I thought it had been way too expensive but with Patrick's new job it was a real possibility to move to it. The issue was that they had a waiting list - 2-3 months. You would have to apply 3 months before you lease ended in hopes they would have a place come availible when you were due to move out. It was a real roll of the dice. When I applied, I guessed wrong on the lease end date. 9 months from our last sign was 11/30/22. I figured it would round to 12/1/22, but instead it rounded to 11/1, so I was a month off, and would probably end up paying months worth of $200 month-to-month fees on top of rent while waiting. I got really lucky though - I received a call from the landlord of the new place that said a unit had become available and no one ahead of me on the list could take it because their leases weren't up yet. Did we want it?

UM, HELL YES.

However, their move out was 10/31 and the unit would not be ready until 11/10. So I ended up having to pay a full month's rent at the old place, PLUS the $200 month-to-month fee (for 10 days!) and then all of their move in costs. I probably could have put a damn down payment on a house with as much as we shelled out this month. But now that we're officially moved in, it was so worth it. I still have some unpacking to do, but the majority of it is done.

I've never lived in a place this nice in my entire life. Two bed, two bath (I didn't really care to have another whole bathroom but they don't have 2-bed 1 bath units). It has quartz countertops with under-counter sinks. The doors aren't cheap and crappy like in most apartments. The laminate wood floors are great and even the carpet is very plush and soft. The washer and dryer are stackable but actually nice. I've never been in an apartment that doesn't just cheap out on all the appliances. I lived at one place that had the maintenance guy tasked with fixing all of the old appliances; I had the dryer break, the water heater bust, and the fridge die TWICE while I lived there. (They had the nerve to get angry with me when I called the "fire, flood or blood" maintenance line over the weekend for the busted fridge because all of the freezer food was spoiling and I tried to fit everything from the fridge into a chest cooler.) ANYWAY, I digress.

I've never been on the first floor before. It's so weird. I'm so used to the privacy and security of being on the top floor of apartment units. I'm a huge privacy nerd; it runs in the family. I grew up on 5 acres in the middle of nowhere where you didn't have to bother locking your car doors or leaving the windows open. Even when at the old place and I was on the top floor, where I was right on top of the main walkway through the complex so I added trelis fencing on the balcony to block people's view of my living room. Now I'm on the first floor facing the parking lot on the main walkway to the mailboxes and garbage. I'm glad neither one of us cares much about natural light because we will have the shades and curtains drawn 24/7 lol. We also have our own office for the computers, now!! Something I've always wanted.

This place really thought of everything. Not only do I now have a small workout room, a tanning bed (not as if I would use it but it's cool) and a pool, but they also have their own Amazon lockers with UPS/FedEx drop off, electric vehicle chargers, CenturyLink internet instead of Comcast (with a Fiber option and their own rep to call if you run into issues!) and a huge trash compactor. Yup, that's right, no regular dumpsters here. Even though it's only a mile from my previous place, it feels like a much safer community. My unit is in the middle section of all the units, so I'm not close to the main street or the freeway, and it's also fully gated. Hopefully I can feel safe cracking my window open at night to let in the cool air. 

I'll post another update with pics once our place is completely done and clean!

Ozempic

If you've been following this blog at all, you know that I've always strugged with my weight and have tried nearly everything that wasn't a miracle yo-yo diet in order to drop it. My PCP has been very accomodating in this regard because I think a lot of them would just tell me to get off my ass and exercise because there isn't a pill that can cure fat. I mean, although that is techically true, exercise is only about 10% of weight loss, and motivation can be a bitch, especially when you know that fact.

Here is a list of things I've done/tried so far:

Qsymia (I never published this post. Oops lol. It's basically a mix between phentermine and topiramate, which are both appetite suppresants. The problem with these kinds of pills is that they become less effective over time.)

Potato Diet (Okay, that one would be considered yo-yo I guess lol)

Bionic Gym (Problem here is that it's a pain to put on and works better if you're standing)

5:2 (intermittent fasting)

Ideal Shakes

Mindful Eating and Peptide YY (I still use Peptide YY to my advantage)

Phentermine (I still consider this the pinacle of weight loss medication. This stuff is amazing. But its effectiveness dwindles so quickly)

Whole30 (This diet was great, but way too difficult to maintain)

The Fat Diet (It's not a diet, it's a mindset. It was also hard to maintain, just not as hard as Whole30)

hCG

Belviq (Never really worked for me. It was supposed to help supress hunger cues. Instead, it was recalled for causing cancer or something. Joy)

Glucomannan (It's the fiber from the Kojac plant. It just absorbs a ton of water in your stomach to help keep you full. It's still a great thing to try between meals or with a smaller meal)

Plenity (An FDA approved version of Glucomannan, basically. It's just some kind of gel that expands in your stomach. But it was $100 a month and didn't really work any better than Glucomannan)

And through all of this, I had been eating healthy (I mean, I do a lot of research
and know what is healthy and what isn't) and had an account with the YMCA for a while where I did cardio or weights and signed up for classes.) So it's not like I was expecting this stuff to do all the work for me. But there's nothing on this list that had lasted me long term besides coffee. Coffee has always been there for me (Go Peptide YY!).

Enter Ozempic. This is the only medication that my insurance was actually willing to pay for, and I couldn't even tell you why. It's actually quite frustrating because our company always pushes being healthy and wanting us to do stuff in order to make extra money to put in our HSA accounts, but then when it comes to medications that might help keep us at a healthy weight, they refuse to pay for them. However, Ozempic is listed as a diabetic medication first, with a corrallary to weight loss, so maybe that's why. Since I have high risk of diabetes in my genes and am overweright, maybe my insurance was like "oh, ok." (It's funny, because I had tried to get a script for Wegovy a few months ago but was denied. It's basically Ozempic but FDA approved as a weight loss medication.)

Ozempic is a once-a-week shot that regulates blood sugar [spikes], which cause hunger, and slows gastric emptying. I've been slowly ramping up my dose over time in order to avoid side-effects, and so far it's working amazingly well. It feels like this might be something that will keep working in the long term. The only issues I've had are occasional bouts of diahrrea (which usually only happen the day of the shot), or bloating (only once per week if that).

It's taken a while to get the weight loss started, as the dosing starts at .25mg (which basically does nothing) and each ramp up takes 4 weeks. So I'm just now on my 2nd week of .75mg and I am seeing quick progress. I'm eating less per meal and less often. I've lost about 6 lbs so far. At $55 a month, it's a do-able amount of money in the long term as well. Wish me luck!! <3

Keyboard Rabbit Hole?

The peripherals we're given for work suck; extremely so. CHI buys everyone crap Dells, which come with crap mice and super crap membrane keyboards. Some of the keyboards have actual keycaps, while some are much closer in design to a laptop keyboard and almost completely flat.

The first thing I replaced though was the mouse. I purchased a Glorious Model I gaming mouse. I had been using Patrick's old Logitech G502, but it was so heavy despite it being wired that it was fatiguing with 8 hours of use. Bu I love the overall ergonomics of the mouse with the thumb rest (that infinite scroll wheel though? UGH). When I saw a review for the Glorious I, I figured I had to try it. Not only was it ergonomic, but it had holes in it (racing holes!! lol jk) in order to make it extremely light. Yes, this mouse would normally be used for FPS gaming but there's no rule saying I can't use it too. I actually really like the mouse; it's so easy to move around that it makes using it all day much easier.

A while ago, I had replaced their crap keyboard with a "cheap" mechanical gaming keyboard from Royal Kludge. (What a name, huh?). It needed a few important things. 

#1 - Mechanical. Membrane keyboards are just horrible to type on. I had been using a mechanical keyboard at home for years and I was much more used to it. In fact, my keyboard at home is from Mountain. It's modular with a removable numpad and hot-swappable keys.

#2 - Backlit. It didn't need to be RGB, but I needed to be able to see my keys better because I still touch type a lot.

#3 - Numpad. This is where all the money is. I could get a decently-priced 60% mechanical keyboard but I need the numpad for work so it limited my options to more expensive stuff.

As for the Royal Kludge, I mean, it fit the bill. I was able to get it with Cherry Reds, which are linear and quiet, and it came with RGB that I kept on a static blue/teal color. But I did have to modify it a bit in order to get it more usable. It has an acrylic-defused RGB ring around the edges which gave the typing a very hollow, pinging noise that was incredibly annoying so I added some foam inside to help with that. And then I added o-rings to the keys to help quiet it down. It only helped so much. Cheap is cheap. 

But I finally decided to splurge a little bit and bought myself a new keyboard for my workplace. I don't work from home, so it's kind of a "waste of money" in a way to buy myself things for work because I don't get reimbursed for them even though I only use them at work. It just makes my life a lot easier.

So, I bought something better now that I hope I will never have to replace. The funny thing is that I'd seen a review of this keyboard on Short Circuit a while back but I didn't remember it, and I only heard from the other youtuber's I watch how good Keychron products are.

I purchased the Keychron K4 96% mechanical keyboard that had hot-swappable Gateron Reds with the aluminum frame for $109. A few things sold me, here. The first one being that it had hot-swappable keys. Although I had bought the Gateron Red version, at home I had Cherry MX Silent Reds and I could easily hear the difference, so I knew I was going to end up replacing the keys. What I ended up doing is putting in my Silent Reds from my home keyboard because I needed the silence at work more than at home. So that was a free upgrade. I also added the foam that came in the packaging to the bottom of the board, and took out the o-rings from my Royal Kludge board and added them to this one. It's so dang quiet it's incredible. (I type hard and bottom out all my keys, so it's quiet even despite that. If I typed like a normal person it'd be practically silent.)

Another thing that sold me, besides the fact that it was RGB backlit, was the 96% layout. It's kind of an odd duck, but it's perfect for my needs, where I can still have a full numpad but get rid of all that empty space between so that it's basically the size of a keyboard without a numpad, saving desk space. It also has the option for bluetooth connectivity, which isn't super important to me but a nice to have if I want to get rid of the cord.

I kind of see the appeal of building my own keyboard now. I don't think I could fall as far as Random Frank P, but I certainly can see the appeal.

And now my desk is much nicer to be at, for sure. It didn't even cost me that much in the end. It's worth it when you spend 8 hours a day there, you know?

Angel Kitty

So... I did a thing. I adopted a kitty. I know, we were trying to wait until we moved into our new place in Nov/Dec/Jan, whenever we can get through their god-forsaken waiting list, but Patrick and I were feeling so lonely since Daisy left us.

[It was my full intention to write out what happened when the hospice vet came to visit and euthanize our baby girl, but I just can't make myself write it. It was March 23rd, 2022 and I still can't do it.]

I downloaded an app called Petfinder, which is pretty amazing actually, as it connects you with all the local adoption agencies and lets you read about each kitty. You can even sort by age and breed and hair length.

I wanted to rescue a senior kitty. I know a lot of seniors are bypassed for kittens and young cats as they are probably a lot more entertaining, but I really enjoy the laidback nature of seniors. Daisy was a joy to hang out with, especially when we shared the HeatDish together. I'm not really into cats with a ton of energy. We don't have a lot of space in our current place and not really a lot of high places to hang out. We're both very chill people who are homebodies and basically watch TV all day, so I wanted a kitty that was cool with that.

Angie seemed like a perfect fit. She is an 11 year old domestic medium hair, but looks like she might have some Ragdoll in her. She had lost her human back in March or April, and was taken to the Emerald City Kitty Harbor in Seattle. They're a small organization and they only have probably 6 cats, but their facility really vets potential adopters and it looks like they really love their felines.

(How can you say no to that face?!)

Patrick was hesitant about adopting another cat right now (as he was still missing Daisy pretty heavily), especially a senior, but I was pretty adamant about wanting to give a lonely senior kitty a good home and good final years. Yes, it was extremely difficult to lose Daisy. It was the hardest decision we ever had to make when to decide to finally put her down. Angie (renamed Angel) seems quite healthy for an 11 year old. The only issues she had when she came to the rescue were obesity and needed teeth extractions. It's not uncommon for older cats to experience periodontal disease if they don't get their teeth cleaned yearly by a vet. It's just unfortunately fairly expensive because the cats need to be sedated in order to do it. It also looks like we'll have to get her used to her teeth being brushed daily, something I never thought I would need to do but she apparently lost 7 teeth and we don't want her to lose any more. 

Despite being a human for 3 cats in my life, I have never adopted one before. Sammy was an actual rescue from the warehouse I worked at in Auburn. They had posted signs in the area and no one claimed him, so I took him home. And of course, Daisy was Patrick's for a solid 15 years before she came into my life. (I had a cat named Spike when I was a child, but he was an outdoor cat. Plus, he was from a litter of my aunt's, so not adopted.)

I'm not sure what the process is like for a regular Humane Society adoption, but for Angel, I had contacted the rescue through the Petfinder app and set up a survey with Patrick and I in attendance over the phone where they asked general questions about our living situation and what kind of cat we were looking for. After that, I had a set up a phone interview with them which I had done on 6/11, where they asked more personalized questions like what I would do if she scratched furniture etc. After I passed that test, we got set up for a physical meet and greet which we were able to do on 6/12 because we both happened to be off due to our ARNP's wedding that afternoon. So in the morning we drove up to Seattle to meet Angel Kitty in person. We already knew that she was shy and nervous, so she never left the cubby that she was hiding in. But we gave her treats and spoke in soft tones and she seemed okay with us. My heart grew 3 sizes that day <3. We had been told that she'd had another meet and greet with someone else who decided not to take her because they couldn't feel a bond due to her being so shy. Well I'll tell you, they missed out because she is a most lovey-dovey kitty once she opens up to you.

After the meet and greet, we decided to adopt as Patrick was in love too. We had another hurdle to jump through, though. They were going to drive her down to us and drop her off, but before doing so, I needed to do a virtual walkthrough on my phone to show them the space and make sure it was well suited for a kitty and we had to wait until 6/18 when I would be off of work. It was one of the slowest weeks of my life!!

Finally, on 6/18, Angel Kitty was home. She ran under the bed never to be seen again lol. I worked with her over the weekend to coax her out more and more, but the threshold to the hallway was her challenge line that took her a while to cross. At night, she opened up and explored the living room while we slept, used her litter box for the first time, ate a decent amount of food, and eventually snuggled with us in bed a bit. (Patrick loves this. I had never had good experiences with cats in my bed because they lay on you or move around and constantly wake me up.) She is the sweetest baby, though. She purrs with almost everything and loves to rub up against your legs.

I noticed over the weekend that as much as she would come out and say hi, at the slightest provocation she would run back under the bed as it was her safety spot. She wasn't scared, per se, as she wanted attention really badly and I could often coax her out, but she didn't feel confident in her new space. So, we decided to block off access to under the bed; most of it anyway. When she did her nightly exploration Sunday night, she remained in the living room after we both woke up. Now Patrick gets the luxury of spending quality time with her in our living space for the first time (lucky!).

11 small ways to Save the World

I wanted to write a little something of an inspiration for people, I'm hoping. I just wanted to list some of the things that I personally do in my daily life to help make the planet a somewhat more liveable space for future generations (that I also won't be contributing to. Should I add that? Probably.)

I understand some people are lazy by nature, and I am definitely in that camp. I have never volunteered to be on a clean up garbage crew or anything of that nature for example. I can certainly be lazy in other ways too. Specifically, instead of trying to sell old items I no longer need, I will give them to the Goodwill, because I am too lazy to go through all that jazz.

So, in that vein, I will give you examples of several lazy things that I do to help contribute to keeping the planet around a bit longer without going overboard.

1. Buying a hybrid vehicle. Yes I know, it still uses gas and oil. Electric would probably be better. However, I live in an apartment and my work has no charging stations, so electric really isn't an option for me atm. I also plan on keeping this car for as long as humanly possible. Bonus, my car doesn't have to look idiotic while saving the planet, either.

2. Recycle cardboard. Recyling can be hard and confusing. Besides the fact that my apartment doesn't support full-scale recycling, I have never really been in on doing all of that anyway. But, my apartment does recycle cardboard [boxes]. And that's super easy to do to break down your cardboard and throw it in a different container when you're taking out the trash.

3. Cleaning with electrolyzed water (EoW). If you don't know the miracle that is electrolyzed water, here is a primer. It's pretty amazing stuff. I had bought into Shine, which is a now defunct company who had invented a product that will clean your toilet with every flush using EoW. I absolutely hate cleaning toilets. Not only is it super annoying to have to clean them almost constantly, but then you're also flushing harsh chemicals straight into the sewer. I also bought into Force of Nature (however, I now have a Naturechlor instead so that I don't have to buy their little pods) to make EoW for surfaces. And in the same vein as using it to clean all my surfaces, I also use reusable hand towels instead of paper towels or wipes.

4. I buy most of my clothes through ThredUp (.com) or the Goodwill. This is also kind of out of laziness, because it's a lot easier for me to scroll through clothes online than it is to try to find stuff in a store. It also helps that I'm not a typical shopper that loves to go out and shop for clothes constantly.

5. Sustainable shoes. There is such a thing. Vessi is a shoe company that does ad spots on Linus Tech Tips. I trust Linus and his company to vet and review their sponsors and many of his staff wear their shoes. I actually didn't care that they use "vegan leather" etc, they're really just the most comfortable shoes I've ever worn and I want them all. They've held up very well and they're waterproof - bonus!

6. Reusable fabric grocery bags. In the state of WA, it's actually illegal to use plastic bags now, so it's been kind of a necessity for a while. Any plastic bags I get, I re-use for my bathroom trash bin, so there's that.

7. Non-meat foods. I'm not a vegetarian or vegan by any stretch. I still love meat. However, I can potentially go all veg meals easily without a problem. And I really enjoy both Beyond Meat and Impossible burgers. It's not something I eat all the time, but if I can replace meat with non-meat for any meals, it's better than nothing.

8. Rechargeable batteries. There are many things in your home that still require AA or AAA to function, and rechargeable batteries have come a long way. The only issue with your generic (or even name brand like Eneloop) batteries is that they use 1.2v. Some products require more volts to function properly. For example: my Quest 2 controllers, my salt and pepper grinders, and my milk frother actually require 1.5v which is what disposable batteries run at. However, there is a solution for this now. Tenavolts is a company that makes 1.5v rechargeable batteries. And sure, they're not cheap, but you also only need to put them in things that need 1.5v. They work great for this. 

9. Using Wool Dryer Balls and not using fabric softener. Dryer balls are not a perfect replacement for dryer sheets but they work pretty well. They just don't do a lot for stopping static, so if that's an issue for you and your clothes, then maybe stick with dryer sheets. 

10. A Bidet. Okay, hear me out. I know, in the US, bidets are weird. And it took me many years to get over this weirdness to buy an attachable one for my toilet. It took the pandemic and not being able to buy toilet paper to finally convince me. And we still use toilet paper. But not nearly as much as we would otherwise. You do feel much cleaner when using one, and I sometimes wish they had one at work too.

11. Buying bed sheets that aren't cotton. Cotton is pretty damn horrible from an enviromental standpoint. But again, I don't necessarily do this for environmental reasons, but for comfort reasons. Although Bamboo is more sustainable as a bed sheet option, the way viscose/rayon is made is not enviromentally friendly. However, making bed sheets out of eucapluptus is more friendly, and they're still satiny and soft. Here is a primer on bamboo vs eucalyptus. The other option I like is linen sheets. They're considered "luxury" for sure, and it took me a while to get used to their feel, but I do like them a lot. They're not only breathable, but they'll last a really long time.

I know what you might be thinking. These 11 things are so miniscule in the grand scheme of things. Why even bother? Well, for a couple of reasons. The first one being that yes, while these things are small, the more people that do them, the bigger the impact will be. The other reason is something called "voting with your wallet". As consumers, we have all the power to decide how companies will behave. The more people that buy into envionmentally sustainable products like Vessi or Beyond Meat, the cheaper they will become and the more prolific - and the more inpact they will make. And the more people that buy one thing over another, then those companies will begin to realize how much their consumers want environmentally sustainable practices and they may change their ways. We can only hope. If everyone does a little, it will do a lot!

Birthday trip

I wanted to drive. If you follow my blog, you know that I just bought a new 2022 Honda Insight. It is a delight to drive. It's a hybrid sedan that can get up to 55mpg. That seems like an unreal estimate to be honest, as even when I was driving this road trip, the best I could get was 47-50mpg for highway miles. But even so, it's just so much fun with all the technology it packs in. 

My commute is so short that I don't get to drive it enough for my liking so as a birthday treat I wanted to go on a road trip somewhere. I took Monday 4/25 and Tuesday 4/26 off. I had to wait until Sunday night on April 24th to see what the weather was going to be like on Monday since the forecast suggested isolated showers. My options were:

The coast (Long Beach/Cannon Beach)

Chuckanut drive by Bellingham 

Diablo Lake in the Northern Cascades

I've only been to Long Beach/Cannon Beach but none of those other places so I would have been happy doing any of them. The weather forecast suggested that the coast was going to be clear by midday so that's where we decided to go. 

We stopped at Long Beach and decided to walk the boardwalk. I hadn't been at Long Beach in so long that I had no idea the Gray Whale Skeleton was gone and they had replaced it with a Gray Whale wood sculpture. Apparently the skeleton had either been stolen or vandalized way back in the early 2000's so they had to replace it. Sad!

The weather was nearly perfect. The wind wasn't too cold and the temperature was pretty mild. The sun was out so it felt really nice. After we walked the boardwalk we went to Marsh's Museum - the prerequisite stop on every Long Beach trip. We then walked downtown until the clouds began to gather and it got too cold. We stopped at a bakery and got a number of delicious goodies to eat on the trip.

I then tried to drive on the beach. I'm not sure if my car just wasn't powerful enough or what, but it felt as if I was sinking and sliding too much. I switched it to Power mode and that helped, but I still didn't feel very confident that I wouldn't get stuck so I quickly turned around and headed back out.

After that, I decided to drive us down to Cannon Beach in Oregon. It was raining pretty heavily when we passed through Seaside and landed in Cannon Beach. We decided lunch was in order, and Patrick found a restaurant close by. Unfortunately, it was a really expensive menu so we decided to back out and find another place. I'm usually up for sandwiches so I found a deli. It was not good. And it wasn't cheap, either. Super disappointment. But, by the time we finished eating and parked at the public lot for Haystack, the weather was clearing up and the skies were parting. The weather was gorgeously perfect for beach walking and picture taking.

Once we were done taking pictures of the rock it was time to head home. We had a long drive ahead of us. It was a total of 365 miles round trip, which was technically less than a tank of gas, but I'd had to stop at Costco in Warrenton to make sure I had enough to get home because I hadn't been on a full tank when I left. (Does anyone find it disconcerting that Oregon pays people to pump your gas for you? Which isn't necessarily a bad thing but because I can't run my own card I have to tell him my PIN number?? Seems very... stealy.)

Anyway, that's my trip! A lot of fun and good pics too.

Chip Shortages Affect Cars, Too

And now... for the dramatic follow up to the first post.

I'm not super stoked to write out this story because I'm still a little upset about the whole thing, but I need this for future reference.

You know I'm the research queen. When I considered replacing my Sonic, I started reading up on all the ways that dealerships can scam you out of your money. What things to watch out for, and what they will attempt to tell you or the excuses they will give to charge you things.

I came in with a folder. I thought I was ready. I had gotten an approval for a car loan from BECU. I had my credit numbers printed out. I had the average price of the car, what the MSRP was, and an entire print out of all the bogus fees dealerships might try to tack on. And of course I had Patrick with me in order to keep me in check.

When we first walked in, they tried to charge over $35k for a $27,775 MRSP car. They said they were tacking on a markup for the shortage situation. Look, I get it - it's a tough market, but you also have to realize that the longer a car sits on the lot unsold, the more it costs the dealership because they're basically charged a fee for every day it sits. So in the case of selling a car before it even hits the lot? Come on.

When we questioned this, she relented and said that was supposed to have been $31,775 and got it changed. Rule number one that I read is "Dealers don't make mistakes". She'd been doing this job for 3 years, and that would have been a very obvious error. It's not a mistake, they just get caught in a lie.

Then we also got the GAP insurance coverage removed, the oil maitenence package removed, and a reduction in the "PERMAPLATE" stuff that apparently "gets installed at the factory" and helps protect the car from dings and scratches. This is another thing dealerships try to tell you - they will "blame" the factory and say that they're charging it because they have to, as they didn't add it on, but all you have to say is "I didn't request _____, so I want the charge removed." You can do that for other things too, like VIN Etching.

They also do something I read about called "filling buckets" - it's just a visual aid to describe that they shuffle money around from one spot to another to make it look like you're saving more. They did that with my trade in. They first offered $10,500, but then reduced it to $10k after me asking for other stuff to be removed or something, I can't remember exactly. I was looking at the total at the end, and instead of charging $1200 for the PERMAPLATE, they were charging $999, and I figured if I could get that taken off entirely, it would work out. She basically asked me, "If we remove this charge completely, then you will sign?" Due to the $4k markup, the monthly for the vehicle was going to be much higher than I had anticipated. Although I had read that taxes for a vehicle in WA state would only be 6.8%, that doesn't include county tax, so it was more. And also the vehicle licencing charges were almost $800, which seemed outrageous and I was not expecting that either. On the plus side, they didn't try to tack on any "Dealer Prep Fees" or any other bogus charges, so it was just the straight taxes and licensing. 

It was way more than I had originally mathed out. But then the manager said "what if you went from 72 months to 84?" I said I had gotten approved from BECU, and I'm not sure if this was intentional or if there was miscommunication, but he asked "for 84 months?" and I said yes, because I figured if I was approved for 72, why not 84? But we had agreed on a price that worked for me, which I think was $240 a month after down at 84 months. So as long as they took off the PERMAPLATE charge, I would sign.

It's when we got to Finance that things changed and I probably should have backed out. She told us that you can't finance anything less than 20k at 84 months, which is true for a lot of banks, and because we couldn't put as much down as we were anticipating (as it would bring the total cost below 20k), then the monthy would go up to $255. They had tacked on the extended warranty and couldn't remove it or it would drop the loan amount to below 20k. I mean, after raising my concerns, she did take $500 off the extended to bring it down to $2500, and somehow reduced the cost of the licensing fees to somehwere around $450 and it still kept the loan above $20k. Plus, she told us that if we wanted to remove the extended warranty all we had to do was call them, and a check would be cut directly to the bank and it would take $2500 off the total, but it obviously wouldn't reduce our monthly.

[Side note: The reason I focus on the monthly payment is not make it low enough to afford, I know that is a mistake. I want it the lowest I can possibly make it so that I have the ability to overpay every month. I had paid off my Sonic loan in 3 years. I knew I wasn't going to still be paying off this car in 7 years, and not even in 6.]

My mistake was signing anyway. It was after 9pm, we were all tired. She told me "lets just secure this paperwork and get you home" (including putting down a $500 deposit to secure the new car).

That night, after I got home, I was phisically ill. I couldn't sleep. I kept telling Patrick how much I regretted this, and he was saying that everything was fine, everything would be fine, we could afford it. But I didn't like it. I felt like we were taken advantage of, that it was a type of bait and switch, that we had agreed on one price but then Finance told us different, and the whole thing didn't sit well with me and I wanted to back out. He said that was fine, that we didn't "sign anything" and I could still back out. 

The car would be arriving that Saturday. I texted the rep that I wanted to back out. She had originally told me that the $500 deposit was contingent on me liking the car, since it wasn't available for me to test drive. And I figured that if she refused to return the deposit then I could issue a chargeback on my credit card since I had no intention of picking up the car.

She said that I had signed over the Sonic and it was now their car. I said I still had the title...? She sent me a picture of the affidavit I signed the other night in Finance. That basically meant that I had no recourse to back out of this. You see, even though I held the original title to my Sonic, they had me sign a Affidavit to Release Interest in the Sonic. It was now their car, and if I didn't give it to them, they could repo it. I was stuck. Although I had gotten advice saying that it wasn't legal and they couldn't do anything if I didn't drive the car off the lot, it didn't make sense to me that they never needed MY title of the Sonic. That affidavit had to be a legally binding document. 

I spoke to the manager, and he got me another $250 off the price, which lowered my monthy to $251 (oh joy), but that was all he could do. I mean, I was more upset with myself than them. I did sign all the documents. The only part I can't prove was whether or not they had intentionally made it seem like I could do 84 months at a lower payment then was actually possible. 

I told Patrick that we were going to go pick up the car. He was upset that I was upset, and to him it seemed like I was folding under pressure. But I just had to chalk it up to experience, and an expensive mistake, and it's not like I still didn't want the car. It was just right now was bad timing. We were planning on moving out in May, and I had to take some money out of the Savings for moving in order to meet the down payment. And due to Patrick owing taxes and such, it just meant that we were going to have to sign another lease at our current place for another 6 months. But that might work out for the best in the end, since the new apartment was going to be a bit more expensive than this one anyway.

I can't say I got a bad deal. The only thing they ended up getting away with was the $4k markup. And they weren't the only dealership charging $31,775 for the car. But I can't wait to take the Honda of Burien plates off my car, that's for sure.

New Car

 As the title suggests, I got a new car. I was already planning on replacing my 2015 Chevy Sonic LTZ for 2 main reasons... #1 is that it has had a number of mechanical and electrical issues since I've owned it in the last 6 years, and I felt like there was another one coming due to rough idling (it only had 70k miles on it). #2 is that right now, the used market for cars is nuts, and Kelley Blue Book said my car was worth $10,200, when I had paid $12-something for it 6 years ago.

So the only real issue with a high rate of return on trade-ins is that many new vehciles right now have a mark up because dealerships are getting very few sent from the factory and therefore need to make up for the loss in revenue due to this. That was the case for the car I wanted to replace this with, which was a 2022 Honda Insight hybrid. 

Right now, gas prices are also nuts, and while you would think the tiny body and engine (the LTZ model had a turbo as well) of the Sonic had to have had some great gas milage, it just didn't. With a 12 gal tank, it averaged about 280-300 miles, and roughly 27mpg, with a HP of 138. The Insight on the other hand, is a mid-sized sedan with a hp of 151, a 10.6 gal tank, and gets about 500 miles to a tank; roughly 50-55 mpg. It's basically the best in its class and on par with the Prius. 

Thanks to youtube reviews, I knew basically everything about the car inside and out before even going to the dealership (obviously this isn't the end all-be all of information, but no dealerships had any cars on the lot for me to look at personally, so it's all I had). And compared to the Prius, Honda did them one better. The EX trim, which is their base model, had all the high tech saftey sensors that the base model Prius lacked.

• Safety features:
  
  • Collision Mitigation Braking System™ (CMBS™)8
  • Forward Collision Warning (FCW)9
  • Road Departure Mitigation System (RDM)4
  • Lane Departure Warning (LDW)10
• Driver-assistive features:
  
• Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) with Low-Speed Follow13
• Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS)11
• Traffic Sign Recognition System (TSR)58

And let me tell you, the driver-assistive features are so bomb. I'm in love with them already. The ACC is amazing for highway traffic as the car basically drives itself. You set your speed to whatever, like 65, and if traffic slows in front of you then so does the car. Once traffic picks up, then your car will as well, without you having to do a thing. Lane Keep Assist is also great for the highway, as the car follows the lines of the road and basically keeps straight or curves with the road for you. The only issue with this that I've found so far (besides the fact that some reviews state it doesn't always work) is when there's a exit the car wants to follow that line and you have to correct for it. But overall, it's much less work to drive, especially in heavy traffic, then it would otherwise be. The traffic sign recognition is also pretty neat as there are times I'm driving around in unfamiliar territory and have no idea what the speed is.

It also has Android Auto (which I missed the boat on with my 2015 Sonic) that I've wanted forever. Going from the LTZ Sonic to the EX Insight, I lost out on a few nice-to-haves, like leather seats, heated seats, fog lights (trust me, they come in handy even without fog), and premium speakers. But the cool thing about Hondas is that they do their upgrades at the dealership, so I can always add the heated seats or the fog lamps later.

In my next post, I'll explain what the buying process was like for me (thanks to the shortages), which didn't go as smoothly as I would have liked.

OnePlus 9 Pro Update

I loved this phone when I bought it, even with its quirks in the software. I hadn't owned a OnePlus device since the OnePlus One, which had a ton of software flaws and turned me off of OP phones until now. When OP announced their cameras were in collaboration with Hasselblad, I was intrigued. I wanted a phone with a good camera.

Everything was going great until it was finally time to upgrade to Android 12. Unfortunately, this did not go smoothly. OP and Oppo merged, which meant that OxygenOS was becoming ColorOS. Along with the A12 update, it turned into a disaster. 

3 months after updating to A12, the issues I was having still weren't being addressed and I was running very low on patience.

1. No more 5G/VoLTE/VoWifi. This one is huge. How can they let an update go for 3 months without a phone having access to the stuff it did in A11?

2. Always on Display doesn't stay on. (It's literally in the name, dudes.) I use my phone as a clock/alarm, and having to tap the screen to find out the time was irritating. But also, if my alarm went off and the screen wasn't on, I'd have to hunt for the alarm under notifications and turn it off manually. And then my Google Routines wouldn't run.

3. No more Visual Voicemail. T-Mobile has a nice service that will give you voice-to-text voicemails and access to look and save them and re-read them, if you pay $4 a month. It's pretty sweet and super handy. But after the update not only did voice-to-text stop working, but voicemails stopped showing up in the app completely. I messaged the developer about it but got nothing back from them. I wasn't going to pay $4 a month for a app that doesn't work.

There were other more weird, random annoyances like the fact that after a couple of days, the ability to log into my phone with the fingerprint would competely go away unless I rebooted my phone. And when I rebooted, I would have to re-inable auto-rotate every time. And other times when my screen waking just wouldn't respond at all.

Oh I'm settling. So hard.

I posted these 3 main issues in OP Feedback, but they wanted me to do a screenshot video of the issue and some other weird stuff, and it just irritated me more, because 2 of the 3 issues I would not be able to do this. How do you expect me to video record my phone turning off its Always on Display after a random 4 hours in the middle of the night and then what - screenshot the off screen?? Like, are you serious? They were sending me canned responses without even reading about my issue first. So instead of trying to go through that trouble, I said screw it, and reinstalled Android 11.

I finally have a fully functioning phone again. It's unfortunate that I lose out on critical security updates. I'll try Android 12 again maybe in a few months. In fact, I think they've stopped pushing it out to phones due to all the issues, so maybe it'll be a few months before I get the update again. 

I had to factory reset my phone in order to downgrade it, which is a hassle in itself. But fair warning - if you have a 2-factor authentecator app - MAKE SURE YOU EXPORT EVERYTHING BEFORE WIPING YOUR PHONE.

Google Authentecator has an option to export/import your stuff, which I had no idea even existed, and I didn't even think that I needed to backup this stuff, but of course you do. There is literally no way to get all your old 2-factors back, and I had a whole page of stuff - some of it for work even. I was even locked out of the Bitwarden (my password manager!!) webpage without it. I was still able to access the browser application, which was crucial for work passwords, but basically the only way to "fix" the website problem was to delete my account and start over. Luckily, using the browser app, I was able to export all the passwords to my desktop and reload them to the new account. But without recovery passwords I have no access to any of my 2-factor unless it has a backup text option. And I don't even remember who all I had them set up for so I will be discovering them for a while, I'm sure.

Don't make the same mistake I did. >_<