Take 5, D.

Weekly Update 2025-12-14: Man, It's A Cold One Edition

What happened during the week of December 8th - December 14th:

🇨🇽 First up, all dispatches from Christmas Island (the fake one in my head, not the real one with the crabs) are complete. All 61 holiday cards have been mailed out as of Friday 12-12. I have three extra cards for any last-minute mailings, but I now consider this task to be "well, done." I found writing the holiday letter to be a tedious affair this year, as there were some parts of it that even bored me, the author. I should investigate some sort of photo collage for next year, as I may prefer to have the pictures do more of the talking.

🐺 I promised a report about my brother and sister-in-law's brief St. Louis visit on Sunday 12-07, which occurred after last week's update was published. Turns out the "brief" part wasn't adequate enough to describe the timeframe, as a snowstorm in Chicago delayed their departure by 6 hours. The plan to go on a tour of STL followed by dinner got reduced to just dining with them at their hotel restaurant. Dinner was delicious, albeit rather rich at times, and cocktails were excellent. In spite of being exhausted from their travels, my brother and his wife were in great spirits throughout the meal, but by 9 PM they had understandably hit the proverbial wall. We went our separate ways then, as they finally checked into their hotel room and we ambled on back home.

🏖️ On the subject of travel, well, we are back at it again. L. and I were both given $400 each in flight credit by Southwest when we canceled our New Mexico trip last month. Ideally, we would have applied these credits for our planned return trip in May 2026, but because we bought Southwest's cheapest tickets, the credits are only valid for six months after initial purchase. We had to use the credits by March 2026 or else they'd expire, so we used them for flights to San Diego in mid-February. Back in September 2016, L. and I accompanied her parents on their vacation in Newport Beach, which included a quick day trip to La Jolla. We never made it further south during that visit, but we'll take care of that in a couple months.

🏥 The departure of my work team's senior member is starting to feel more real. His last day will be on Friday 12-19, and I already know I'll be picking up one of his tasks: BCA (Business Continuity Access) maintenance. BCA is a big responsibility in the Epic world, so I know I will have some expectations and some eyes on me as I move into this role.

💸 Saving money in an FSA or HSA (Flexible Spending Account or Health Spending Account) sounds like a good idea on paper. In reality, I find it to be a headache and an inducer of wasteful spending. I cannot fully predict my health needs for the coming year, so when the opportunity came to set aside funds for my FSA, I vastly overestimated my expenses for 2025. My FSA/HSA balance was over $1500 as of Friday 12-12, but I'm only allowed to carry $660 into the next year. As a result, I spent nearly $550 on health items that could find use in this household, which felt like a dumb way to waste money. Next year's FSA deductions will be much smaller, as I don't want to find myself in this situation again.

A Couple Two Tree Items To Note From Last Week:

External Actions

Internal Labor

Media

Obligations:

More Info About The Media Selections From This Week:

My Christmas card duties kept my media consumption lighter than usual this week. The Upgrade podcast is one of a handful of Apple-related shows I listen to, with the latest episode talking about the high-level departures from Apple over the last couple months. There isn't much panic amongst the hosts about the people leaving, as a few of them were at the age where retirement is a good option. At the same time, there's an undercurrent of recognition that the culture at Apple will be changing soon. The uncertainty towards Apple's new direction and leadership adds an edge to the undercurrent, and until such a path is made public, the undercurrent will only become more cutting in the meantime.

Apple's main product is, of course, the iPhone. Its camera has improved by leaps and bounds with seemingly each generation, and I can say from my experience that these improvements are the main reason why I change phones every couple of years. The sensors, lenses, and computational power (which you could call AI) combine to make photos that appear to be on par with bigger digital cameras...or so the claim goes. Oliur puts that claim to the test, comparing a new iPhone 17 Pro with a Fuji X100VI fixed-lens digital camera. As a tease to entice you to read further, I'll quote Oliur: "Some of the results genuinely surprised me."

Timor-Leste (or as some older folks still call it, East Timor) is now a member of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and unfortunately it is also the poorest member nation. The NHK video discusses how Timor-Leste wishes to promote tourism in the region, with emphasis on both coffee and bird tourism. Its infrastructure, still suffering from its decades-long battle for independence from Indonesia, will need significant upgrades to meet this goal. There are no railroads in Timor-Leste, unlike say, in Japan, where the railroad is a vital part of transportation. Maibaru and her partner Yuu take full advantage of the regional and national railways to visit the famous Himeji Castle, the onsen town of Kinosaki, and to various restaurants in the Hyogo Prefecture to eat their weight in snow crab. While there are no native crabs in Switzerland, there's plenty of snow to go around in the wintertime. Kuga had previously rode one of the main sightseeing trains in Switzerland a couple summers ago, but this time he returned in winter to experience the mountains while they were blanketed with thick snow.

Winter is also a popular season for heavier, boozier beers. Revolution Brewing from Chicago has established itself as one of the preeminent producers of barrel-aged beers, with yearly releases in their ongoing Deep Wood series. Ryan and Craig review some of the more recent releases, with a rum-barrel aged barleywine wowing both of them. They both talk at length about the techniques for using only barrels to impart various flavors to Revolution's stouts and barleywines. Meanwhile, if you want to read at length about techniques of a vastly different sort, you could dive into the Japan Times article about Ukrainian sumo wrestler Aonishiki, whose mastery of Western wrestling and sumo moves have factored into his record-breaking speedy promotion to ōzeki, the second-highest ranking in Japanese sumo.

If you had ever wondered what "nabob" meant, it's an English corruption of the Urdu/Hindu "nawab," a term given to the governor of India during the Mughal period. In this case, nabob was not necessarily meant as a compliment, as it was specifically referring to British folks in the service of the East India Company who made their fortunes overseas, then returned to England to purchase seats in Parliament and use their wealth to break into upper levels of society. In other words, these were the new-money folks of their era, and in the TPM article, a comparison is made between the 19th Century nabobs and our modern nabobs of the tech/AI era. It's a somewhat depressing read, because if you were to draw the parallels out, there's not much that can be done about the modern-era nabobs, as their older predecessors were eventually successful in landing themselves amongst the rich and powerful classes in England. The article is still worth a read, though.

Finally, the low light mixes podcast is highly recommended for background/foreground relaxation. It's not all gamelan music, but it is rather...well, twinkly. It sounds best at night, particularly if you have snow on the ground.

#Documentation #Jobs #Life #WeeklyNotes