ACHN

I bought this at $6.21 and admittedly I didn't do enough research or follow up.  The company was acquired by another for $6.30 and was supposed to close in early 2020.  There hadn't been lots of movement except on the downside.  I held on to it and set a limit at $6.30 to sell.  Then on 1/27 the stock shot up on the open bell.  It was so up that I got it sold at 6.96, not the highest but way higher than my limit.  I lucked out.  Then I think it just got stuck at $6.76 or there about until the company no longer trade as it's acquired by another company.

2019 was a good year for equity market for the most part.  2020 is going to be crazy.

Sunk Cost

Once upon a time, I learned this concept of sunk cost which supposedly shouldn't be something that influence your decision.  This is hard for me to grasp still.

I have all my in use gears in Nikon I would be hard pressed to switch to another brand.  Though in reality my go to camera and lenses are quite limited, 2 bodies and 2 lenses for 99% of my shoots.  The rest are just for fun pretty much.

After shooting with a motor drive for years I find it hard not to.  The balance without the grip is just not right.  The motor drive works just fine provided I don't need to hike up and down for a long time.  Except for the F5 I still don't own any camera with integrated grip.  Whenever I see a camera with integrated grip I am interested.  I instantly recognize it as a high quality build camera.  So naturally I am fascinated by the Olympus flagship whatever OM-D blah blah is and the soon to be released rumored Fuji for the 2020 Olympics.

Clear Duplicates

I haven't worked on a spreadsheet in a commercial setting for a long time.  Now people just call it data analytics or some variations thereof.  I just call it spreadsheet or quantitative analysis.  My understanding of the field is limited.  Back I had to deal with data and invariably the data were crap, and dealing with duplicates were inevitable and common.  I would just basically sort the data, then compare rows by doing a boolean if they return T then I just deleted one of them.  I was careful to keep the original order of the dataset all in all.  Now I just found out there is an add-on in Google Sheet to do just that Remove Duplicates.  Ha ha.  There is also I found out a fascination of graphics.  I think it's not exactly new but with new software like Tableau I think and that's just my opinion, probably biased and uninformed, the graphics just go a bit overboard and crazy.  When I did spreadsheet I never bothered with graphics for my purpose, I just did the numbers.  For one thing I didn't need to present anything to anybody who needed to see the big picture or trends.  It seems to me nowadays people are just obsessed with charts.

Leather Jacket

Google bot knows I'm searching leather jacket when I am online.  I got feeds from advertisers all over.  One of the retail brands carries a few brands like Schott, Ralph Lauren RRL and some Japanese brand.  The point I am trying to make is that who in the right mind would buy a RRL moto jacket.  For an imposer like myself I am looking for quality, realist garment RRL is not the right choice.  And more importantly, the quality looks sub par.  There is no football pits; the back panel is by 2 pieces of leather, the quality is questionable compared to Schott and the Japanese brand.  The manufacture origin is not so proudly only listed as Imported.  Come on, have some pride in where you source your material or manufacturing.  And yet the garment is selling for $1900 when a Schott is $900.  The Japanese branded is north of the $1000 as well but it looks like it gives more thought and quality than the RRL one.  The front closure has zip that goes both ways so when you sit down or actually ride, you can open the jacket from below and prevent the jacket from bulging out like as if you are pregnant without making the jacket short.  There are similar gussets on both sides of the jacket for that similar purpose as well.  Who in their right mind would buy a RRL moto jacket for $1900?  It looks sub par all around compared to others.

CVS pharmacy

CVS pharmacy wins in giving out the longest receipt ever.  You bought a Hallmark card, and you got a four feet long receipt.  You thought you're going to use the coupons there, but you never did.

CVS offers on site digital print service I have no doubt their machines are very capable.  What I don't have faith or empirically speaking is the staff manning the machine.  Not enough training or simply don't care.  I have yet to have any satisfactory prints from the shop close by.  There is ghosting to the image so something is not aligned right or something something.  So after maybe two trials I gave up on them.

MacPro3,1 can't split power from the 4-pin molex

I got one of those splitter but it won't work.  There are two 2 4-pin molex power plug in the drive bay of the MacPro3,1.  But you need 2 power adapters to convert the 4-pin molex to SATA power.  No luck with the Y splitter for that.  My boot drive, no ask me why, resides on that drive bay, using the power from the Y splitter when both are attached won't even boot up the MacPro3,1.  I mean using the Y splitter is totally fine as long as you only use one of the Y splitter but that defeats the purpose totally, doesn't it?  Got another adapter cable and now the BR drive and the SSD draws power separately and they work at the same time.  Hooray.

2.5" SSD on MacPro3,1

I have been running a 250GB SSD inside a MacPro3,1 for more than a year.  It's not an elegant solution like as if I know what elegant is.  I chucked the card into the empty drive space where the 5 1/4" drives are.  I ran a couple of SATA cables and power adapters in there to provide power to the SSD.

So, there comes a time I want to put it where it belongs, sort of.  But since it's 2.5" as compared to the drive bay for 3.5" so some sort of adapter is in order.  I ordered a couple and I thought it was a slam dunk,  Unfortunately, that is not the case.  Oh well, I just waster some $20.  Maybe I'll try again one day.

My HGST 4TB died on me after just 6 months but miraculously, the warranty still works.  But I would believe it when I actually get a replacement or a fixed drive back in hopefully less than a few weeks time.

The LG BR drive works as in it reads BR all right.  To play BR disc you need the right SW.  It's complicated.  VLC lacks AACS as BR disc are protected from all kinds of whatever.  MakeMKV comes with all kinds of goodies to decrypt.  So perhaps vlc can use them AACS from MakeMKV.  That was indeed the case but unfortunately comes the latest version of vlc, the library of AACS need to be authorized and so the old way of symbolic linking the library no longer works.  So to play a BR disc directly from vlc seems somewhat impossible now, at least for me.  But some MakeMKV can rip whatever apart so the solution is obvious . . .

The picture quality is very nice at 1920x1080, and I am not even talking about ultra high def as in 3840x2160.  MY monitor only display 2560x1080 anyway.

I rewatch Wong Kar Wai's The Grandmaster.  I think it's the bomb in many if not all aspects of filmmaking.  It stands up for repeat viewing.

IT Chapter Two sucks balls.  So glad I didn't go to see it on big screen like I did with the first one.  The first one is pleasant, not great.  The second one is just like walking dead, run of the mill terror flick.  Very empty and soulless.

Blu-Ray on MacPro3,1 2008

There is no straight answer as life is kind of messy.
Can you install a BR drive on a 2008 MacPro3,1?  Absolutely.
Can you make it play a BR disc?  Maybe or maybe not.  If you have older version of VLC and a copy of MakeMKV, probably.  Not if you are on the latest version of VLC with "hardening" which I take it it means it needs authorized or signed library.  BR's encryption is a roadblock to many who would love to play BR on 1080P or even UHD.  You can still play the movie, such as by ripping it first then play the file accordingly.  One can just decrypt the disc into a mkv file and then you can play the mkv using vlc or have the mkv transcoded to some other file format you like.

MacPro3,1 and Catalina macOS10.15.2

Everytime there is an update pushed out by Apple I tend to apply it and update my system.
My system being a MacPro3,1 early 2008 with a half ass supported or not quite supported graphic card is really a pain in the rear end when it comes to upgrade.  Mainly, I can't get in all those necessary reboot modes without the EFI or boot rom for the graphics.  So I have to pull the card and plug back in the original card which is mildly painful.  Everything adds up.  And in the end, what seems like a rather straight operation invariably ends up like life or death, at least for the system, operation.  Usually it spans for hours to get it done.

Again, it's a dosdude1.com patch.
download the patch
download the full Catalina install from Apple via the patch
create a Catalina bootable USB finger using the patch
reboot from the USB
And good luck.

Somewhere along those steps something will happen I guarantee you that.

I am not on macOS 10.15.2 after hours of patching ...

USPS and UPS

I don't know which is worse.  I guess your experience may vary.

The USPS just finished a postal audit in northern Brooklyn where an office is found guilty I guess.  Maybe it's fun to work there pre-audit.  Now the operation is blown, the good old days are over.

Before USPS has tracking, I think people pay extra for UPS for features like tracking.  Not anymore.  I think the UPS service can be extremely slow, I am not impressed.

Clint Eastwood and Brad Pitt

Growing up, I was exposed to American cinema and that is Eastwood's westerns.  For me, he is the archetype of American rugged good look.  Dude is now in his late 80s and is still cranking out movies one after another like clockwork before and behind the camera.

Few days ago I watched the Golden Globe, Pitt won Best Supporting Actor in Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood, Tarantino's tribute to Hollywood.  It's a very mellow take on that period and Pitt and LDC nailed it.  I went back to the time machine that's Youtube and saw some old clips of Pitt from interviews to paparazzi video clips; dude seems like an easy going guy without some major temper to the gutter press and all.  Anyway who knows the real Pitt.  I saw him in True Romance, Thelma and Louis, Se7en, Fight Club . . .  Dude doesn't make tons of movies but he sure has some good ones like Se7en and Fight Club above.

Need to check out Fight Club again in some bullshit UHD if only my cable and shit arrives one day.

Random thought on suit and tailoring . . .

Now that I am giving some thought on this topic, I actually had suits tailor made.  It was such a long time ago.  Of course that came with being part of the job in the old days.  If I were to spend thousands of dollars on a suit I'd opt for tailor made from beginning to end.  And yet, I saw on Youtube people are just happy to buy a suit from say Tom Ford or other designer brands, that's like a $6,000 dollars suit with free champagne included.  But then the suit is not even well fitted or tailor made for your body and you have to get it altered either in-house or let your own tailor fix it.  I mean come on now?  For me it doesn't make sense at all.  I mean even after the alteration the jacket still pulls in the front; doesn't drape well.  And then the dude opts to narrow the legs more.  I mean OK if you have the body and money by all means.  He sure has the money.

It's generally agreed that it's a faux pas to fasten the bottom button of a jacket.  It just ruins the drape and the movement of the jacket.  And yet, you see it quite often that some dude actually fastens all the buttons.  I mean I saw it in some avant-garde Japanese designer who has her model wear the jacket like so on the runway or for photoshoot.  So rules are made to be broken.  That being said I think it's a good reasoned rule.  I personally wouldn't button up the the bottom button it just looks restrained and constipated.

And then there are questions about the belt.  I mean if you have your shit tailor made do you actually need a belt?  Or you just want it for the look?  Any serious looking pants or suit are sans belt like tuxedo.  But then I don't have any money to have my pants or suits tailor made so some sort of belt is in order . . . .

MacPro 2008 Blu-ray

Got myself a LG Blu-ray player blah blah blah.

Chuck the thing inside the MacPro3,1.  Unfortunately the machine doesn't want to boot.  After some mildly painful troubleshooting, I think it's the power.  I ran a power splitter from one of the 2 4-pin power cable for the EIDE drive.  It is running OKAY as long as only one of the splitter is in use.  Once I plugged the other end to the Blu-ray SATA, the SSD won't boot.  I guess there is no power going there.  I vaguely remember reading somewhere a year or 2 ago something to that effect.  The traditional or old Blu-ray standard is only 1920x1080, but the newer one can go up to double that, i.e. 3840x2160 or called UHD.  Though my monitor only goes up to 2560x1080.

So I ordered a 4pin molex to 12 pin Sata cable.  Let's see if it works.

When I plug the splitter to both the SSD which is my boot and the BR drive, the BR seems to get the power OK as I was able to see the light and open the tray.

Before I proceeded to install the drive, I needed to remove the front plate from the drive which is a bit of a pain as people mentioned it but there was no clear shot as to exactly how it's to be done.  Well I am guilty of that as well.  All I can say is you need to be careful and do not force it.

Since I can't get the machine to boot if the drive is power plugged in so I can't really test it yet.  Judging from what I read, this model with the 1.02 firmware may just even read the UHD BR disc as well.

UPDATE 1/11/2020:
I am happy to report that, what I thought was right.  The 4-pin molex won't split power.  With separate adapter to the SATA to the SSD and the BR drive, both of them work now.

Genuine Leather

Genuine Leather as a specific designation is rather misleading in my mind.  You think it's a good thing but it's not.  In the world of leather, it's in the lower echelon if quality is the major concern.  Full grain is the preferred type.

Then there is the fake leather that marketed as high end alternative for those who like the look of leather but despise the animal component of the leather.  It doesn't necessarily mean they are cheap as marketing can turn this into a positive.

IBM and T

I know one shouldn't trade based on emotions.  But then again "should" is a word I despise.