Iced Coffee or Cold Brewed Coffee

If you want to be scientific about it, I don't necessarily object as everything is kind of scientific.

But sometimes I just find it a little bit inconvenience when people say 3/4 of cups of coffee to 1 cup of water.  Wow, so I have to do fractions to make coffee?  Why at least say 3 cups of coffee to 4 cups of water?

Chances are when if comes to serving the cold brewed iced coffee you would add ice cubes and milk to it.  I see less of a problem if you make a stronger brew to begin with than a weak brew because you can simply add more water or ice or milk to dilute should the brew turn out to be too strong for your taste or mental health.  If you have a weak brew to begin with, then there is little you can do.

Overtime you will find your optimal coffee to water ratio.  I say 1 part of coffee to 4 parts of water is not a bad starting point.

Kitchen Knife

I own a set of Wusthof knives I bought many years ago.  I think I can substitute many with twenty, or more than twenty.  The knives are still functioning like the day I bought them with minor cosmetic degradation.  The chef knife is the one that I use the most, the black handles, over the years, seem to develop some very minor gag, like hairline gap with the full tang inside.  It's not so noticable if you don't look for it.  I haven't used any other knives in any meaningful way other than the Wusthof so I really can't comment on others.  Over the years, I always want to buy some other brands of knives just to have a change, to spice up the cutting a bit if you will.

I imagine any other knife without a full tang, both length and width wise won't be as stable as the Wusthof.  I believe it really gives the knife its stability and heft.  I tend to cut with a rocking motion, probably influenced by watching too much foodtv years ago and also the shape of the Wusthof.  It has a rounded blade, a wide enough blade so my knuckle won't touch the cutting surface.  The knife doesn't look too exciting but it's very practical for what and how I cut things.  I don't really do any chopping motion.

I feel that the steel is pretty hard but then I think I read that it's not that hard.  So I don't know.  I don't think it's too easy to sharpen but not difficult either.  I use a whetsone from JA Henkels, most likely not the best but I am OK with it.

I wonder what the carbon steel can do with sharpness.

I like to try knives from Japan or France.  But then they don't necessarily fit the way I cut, not wide or curve enough to allow rocking motion.

With limited money to dispose, I still only have one set of knives.  They are good though considering I have been using them for over twenty plus years.

VLC and Blu-ray

Despite what's said online, my experience is it doesn't work.  I am running vlc 3.0.8.  Many of those howto's are just copies from one another.  Maybe they worked at some point but not now not for me.  All of them give you very similar instructions with the database and the dynamic library.  And then towards the end it tries to sell you another software.  Well people need to make a living so I don't really blame them for that.

Google Sheets vs Excel 360

My understanding is Excel 360 still can't enter array formula.  I believe, which can be utterly wrong, many companies are still entrenched in the Excel environment.  I can enter with array formula in Google Sheets which is tremendous.  Don't know why Excel 360 can't, perhaps to make people upgrade to the desktop app.  Wouldn't know.

EDIT:  it's been too long ... what I meant was Excel for the Web.  I thought Excel 365 = Excel web version.  It isn't.
EDIT:  OK, it's called Excel 365.

MAGA and FAANG

MSFT
AMZN
GOOG
AAPL

FB
AAPL
AMZN
NFLX
GOOG

For some inexplicable reason, I invested in some weed stock, and I am having a negative return of more than 34%.  I know I know should have sold them.  Hoping NOKIA to bounce back on the rumor that the US may pick it up to fend off Huawei.

Corona Virus and Bad News

In whatever society, nobody likes bad news, or the bearer of bad news.  Some just don't broadcast bad news out of ulterior motives, like the person needs a promotion, a bonus, or just keeping his job.  Or people take it personally, bad news don't reflect well on one's ego.
I have seen little or practically no mechanism in any organization to report bad news.  OK, the suggestion or complaint box.

Google Statistics

There used to be this Add-on to sheet called something like Google Statistics.  Alas, they shut it down and the add-on is no longer available.

There's gone the box plotter.  The baked in candle stick chart is NOT a box plot chart.  Sometimes you just don't know why Google ripped that thing apart and made it unavailable.

macpro3,1 2008 hidden sata and power

it seems like i can limit 2 HDD on the HDD bays if i connected the hidden sata cables and use the ATA power.
Anyway.  I think figured out how to resolve or at least work around this problem.

Present configuration that works

Inside the 5 1/4 drive bay
1 Blu-ray drive connected to hidden sata port, with power from the original power molex to an adaptor to the drive
1 Superdrive, the stock one.  Once I connected with the ATA cable and power I was able to bootup the whole thing, even with 3 drives in the drive bays.
Drive Bays
1 the boot SSD drive
2 HDDs in drive bay 2 and 3.
Before connecting the superdrive I wasn't able to make the 3rd drive to work, I mean the system won't even bootup.

When I got this system, the superdrive was there but not connected.  Initially when I put my SSD into the 5 1/4 drive I just snaked 2 SATA cables and never bother to reconnect the Superdrive and at one point I even removed it out of the caddy.

It seems like I need to complete some circuit or something for the system power to work correctly.  Otherwise some sata won't work as previously.  I know it doesn't sound very scientific but I am not a science guy.  No excuse though.

Mac3,1 2008 Power

I am not technical enough to know for sure what goes wrong.

At some point I am able to run the following at the same time
SSD as the macOS
Blu-ray drive
The above are parked at the 51/4 drive bay with SATA connections snaked from the board and power from the original drive bay.
Originally I have the power split cable connected to the SSD and the BR drive but it won't boot up so I bought another one with no split and everything works.

The 4 HDDs bay only has 1 4TB drive running.  At some point one of the 4TB turned bad and the OS couldn't use it.  I don't know if at any point all the drives were working.

But I am sure the SSD, BR and one internal 4TB and one 2TB USB drive were working happily together.

Then came the replacement of the 4TB.  When I plugged it into one of the 4 HDD bay the Mac won't even boot up.  Nothing.  Initially I thought it's the replacement drive but I know it can't be right.  It's supposed to be a new replacement.  Not that new new but new replacement like new refurbished.  So I swapped it with the USB.  And viola it works.  So I know something is wrong with the system but not the HDD per se.

It seems like I can't have all the drive running at the same time.  Mind you I don't ever have drive bay 3 and 4 mounted.

So I took the SSD down mounted it on the HD1 bay and the 2 HDD on bay 2 and 3.  So the 5 1/4 only has the BR drive.  Still won't boot up until I unplugged the BR power.  That's very odd.

I don't know if there's anything with the Y splitter cable even I only use on end of it.  So I am ordering another one without the split.  Or the BR drive drawing too much power?  I have no idea.  It seems like if I only put 1 HDD into the drive bay then it would boot up when the SSD and BR are plugged in and powered.

This is just a bit weird to me.

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.