THE KARATE KID AND THE WATER HEATER

 Some years ago I saw a rebooted version of "The Karate Kid", starring Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan and Will Smith's son Jaden.  The movie took place in China, which is kinda odd considering karate is a Japanese thing and Chinese in general hates Japanese, but I digress.

Call me odd but the one thing I remember the most about the movie is the scene where Chan's character informed Smith's character that in China turning on the faucet for hot water requires waiting a little bit for the water to get boiled.  There is an additional switch to tell the water tank to heat the water.  It's a good way to save water, at the cost of some amount of time.  When I recently replaced my water tank, I was excited to finally get one like that.  Alas, it turned out to be too expensive for the budget, so I ended up with the same old system.  I would waste some water by spraying the initial cold water down the drain while waiting for the water to get hot.  At some other time, my bathroom sink got worked on and the strainer was replaced by a screwable piece.  Instead of having to dismantle the pipes below the sink, each weekend I would unscrew the piece and clean it with paper tissues.  Recently, it dawned on me that I can put to work the water that would otherwise be completely wasted.  I would unscrew the piece from the sink, hold it under the shower head, then spray it with the cold water while waiting for the water to warm.  I have a bow to collect water for use as brown water, to flush the toilet.  The nasty stuff would come off the sink piece after being hit by the shower head.  I feel a little better with the lesser waste of water.

SHARE FAIR AT KING'S BAY LIBRARY

Back in January 2020, my local Buy Nothing's co-administrator came up with the idea of asking the local library to host a swap meet, except everything is free because, Buy Nothing...  The librarian approved the request and the rest was history.  Well, sort of.  Recall that by March 2020, the whole world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic.  No library, no swap meet.  Eventually things got back to normal, hard to believe but it happened.  We continued to have monthly event, lots of stuff changed hands, all free, the leftover went to a nearby soup kitchen the next morning.  The event got so popular that these days we need two cars to take the stuff to the soup kitchen.  With the more recent events, I had to drop some stuff by the side of my house and advertise them as Curb Alert.  I live near a train station so there is much traffic, sometimes everything would be gone by the next morning.

Today, I attended a similar event, organized by the Buy Nothing group in the King's Bay area.  The local library is on Nostrand Avenue, between Avenue X and Avenue W.  It was nice to look at the stuff without worrying about people grabbing too many or helping others separate the donations.  I was just an attendee, not running the show.  I did chat a bit with the organizer.  I only visited King's Bay Library once before and didn't know that it has a sort of an art gallery just to the left of the lobby as you enter the building.  It is a spacious room.  The stuff was spread out on tables and clothes racks along the walls of the room and there was a little island in the middle with shelves and more tables.  They plan to drop off the leftover at the Salvation Army on the same block, near the corner of Avenue W and Nostrand Avenue.  I told myself not to take anything but in the end I took a music CD and two books, the books are for my own faux Little Free Library.  It's good to see the Buy Nothing movement going strong and build the community through events like this Share Fair.  Photos in the following Google Album:

Share Fair 2025 March 22 at King's Bay Library

LOW SEE INTO TOE

"Lo siento", sorry not sorry LOL... For someone like me with a little extra girth, it's a pain to cut my own toenails.  I couldn't bend over far enough to use the nail-clipper to do its work.  I had to wear my near-sight eyeglasses so I can see what I am doing, lest I snip some meat off the little pigs.  How nice it would be to have a servant to do the work for me, but I digress.  Recently, I was able to do it all by myself.  No glasses, bending was sufficient to get the work done.  I wonder if the weekly yoga I do with Wii Fit Plus finally paid off.  Or the more frequent walks I did in past weeks.  Not long ago, I discovered that at CityStrides.com I am no longer at the #1 spot in Staten Island.  Some guy at some point put in lots of work and now I am over 100 streets behind him.  Right away I started to re-focus my walks in Staten Island.  No more Elizabeth, NJ or Bayonne, NJ, all Staten Island.  I usually walk as a form of exercise after work, but some mornings I even got up early to head out early enough to put in a walk.  I am narrowing the gap.  Still, at yesterday's doctor visit, the doctor told me I need to lose some weight, so weight-wise I still have work to do, but maybe I improved a bit.  Small victory.

2:30

 2:30, or two-thirty... tooth hurty.  Tooth extraction sounds painful and it is.  That's what I had a few weeks ago.  I don't remember the last time I had one pulled but this one was complicated.  First, a parabolic X-ray was done to show that the target tooth was in the way of another that needed work.  Next, a 3D X-ray was needed to make sure some nerve is not in the way, otherwise the pain after the tooth is pulled will be permanent.  Ouch!  During the experience, something flew out of my mouth and landed on the floor.  I suspect it was the tooth.  Even with Novocaine, it was still quite an experience.  It helped that the dentist gave me verbal update of what was going on.  I breathed a sign of relief when he said the tooth came out, he just needed to sew the wound close.  Whew!

I was in pain for a few days.  I decided to adopt the new habit of flossing more often and brushing after as many meals as possible.  Hopefully if I can keep up with the new habit, no more bad teeth in the future.  I wish I can be like my father with regards to dentists.  He didn't need to visit any dentists for most of his life.  He did mention about having a string tied to a loose tooth and slamming the door that the other end of the string was attached to.  That was the old days in Vietnam, I am sure it really happened.  But that was a for loose tooth, what if the tooth wasn't loose?  Months before his death, my father had a dentist appointment for something.  His condition got worse and oral hygiene was put in the back burner.  He joked about not having to pay any dentists his entire life.  I suppose my having a sweet tooth is part of the blame for my teeth troubles.

SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

Planning for my high school reunion is proceeding well.  Initially, the Reunion Committee worried that not enough people will pay up front, that we may not have enough money to pay a deposit to the hotel where we rent the banquet hall and have dinner provided etc.  We did get enough people coughing up the dough, but there was another challenge.  In this day and age (the year 2025), you would think any bill-paying platform would automatically have online payment already included.  And you would be wrong.  The bill-paying platform that we use, which I choose not to remember, at the moment, has no such feature.  Or at least, it's not there until I asked for it.  We used the same platform in 2010, I probably was not a Treasurer for the Reunion Committee, or maybe my memory is really that bad, maybe we paid everything by paper checks?  Based on some old email communications, it seemed money was regularly transferred to a bank account, then somebody wrote checks to cover all the expenses - DJ deposit, photographer deposit, catering hall deposit, etc.  Back to the year 2025, or at least late 2024, when the Reunion Committee decided not to have a bank account.  How would payment be made then?  I can add a Vendor, but there seems to be no way to do online payment.  I had to open a ticket with tech support and somebody turned on some switches and voila I was able to send an email to request the hotel's bank info.  Earlier I went through my Committee contact with the hotel and got some info but none of that matched the form in the payment platform.  By going through the payment platform process, I can see that they had the same bank as me, but their account number is masked, I only see the last few digits, which is how it should be.  The due date arrived, I arranged for electronic payment, and money is scheduled to change hand, sort of.  Whew, a hurdle cleared, but it would be so much easier if it's a standard thing to start with.

 

ADAPT OR DIE

 I like technology but I hate to see perfectly-useable wares get discarded.  Like when Apple dropped most ports on its laptops, users are left with only a few USB ports and some USB-C ports.  Or when laptops in general no longer have VGA or other legacy ports, it's HDMI or use some dock.  As a result, in my computer hardware collection I have various adapters.  USB-to-Ethernet, SCSI1-to-SCSI2, USBC-to-USB3, DVI-to-miniDP, so on and so on.  Yes, I still use a Mac computer and once used an Amiga computer, maybe weekly, which explains the SCSI connection.

My current computer is a Lenovo Flex 5 laptop.  When I got it some years ago, it was running Windows 10.  Recently, I finally gave in to Microsoft's push and upgraded to Windows 11.  The laptop has a touch screen and something with a recent Windows update seems to cause the screen flicker every now and then.  If I use an external monitor, there is no flickering.  I have a few external monitors that worked with the laptop before, nothing fancy, as a matter of fact they are somewhat defective, in a minor way, free stuff from my local Buy Nothing group.  Strangely, now none of the monitors work with the laptop.  I used the built-in HDMI port, tried a dock with DP port and HDMI port, nothing worked.  Last-ditch effort, I used an adapter to convert the outgoing HDMI signal to VGA and it worked!  It would be nice if I can go directly from HDMI to HDMI, so I can listen to music on the monitor's built-in speaker, but at least with the adapter I can use an external monitor again.  Adapt or die!  Ok, it's not that serious, I just like to say that.

I YEARN FOR YEARBOOKS

 I run an active Facebook group for my high school alumni.  One feature of the group that makes it lively is the yearbook collection in the group.  After so many years out of school, people lost their yearbooks.  Maybe it was lost during a move, maybe it got flood damaged, whatever the reason, people love to see the pages of the yearbooks.  By some luck, when I got involved with the alumni, my yearbook was sitting right there on the shelf behind my office desk.  I was able to scan the pages and share the content with my class.  But it was just one book, 1985, and the alumni group that I run have people from all over, as far back as 1956 and as recent as 2007.  A few people lent me book from their own year, like 1971 and 1956.  A few other people helped by doing the work themselves, by scanning and uploading the pages.  But for a school that existed over 125 years, there are many yearbooks totally missing.  Enters eBay, mostly.  I set an alert in eBay to notify when the school name, "Newtown High School", is part of an offer.  Newtown yearbooks are hot items on eBay, a few times I had to enter a bidding war, sometimes I lost, other times I won.  But at $70 or so a pop, buying yearbooks from eBay is expensive.  From my point of view, the best case scenario is when someone offer the book(s) to me for free.  It actually happened twice, in bulk.  The first time was when dear Mr. Weinstein passed away and Mrs. W didn't want to keep his yearbook collection.  The school was offered first but they didn't want it.  Other people in the alumni group want pieces of the collection, some may have mentioned willing to re-distribute.  Luckily, many recommended that I be given the collection, because I had the track record of scanning the pages and sharing the work for the group to enjoy.  Another occasion, a teacher decided to give me a collection that cover a few 1990s books.  Over the years, I got a few more, usually it started with someone offering a parent's book and the group would in unison recommended that I be the benefactor.  Thank you, alumni!  With great power comes great responsibility, I won't let you down.

The latest, possible donation I just learned a few days ago is from a 1969 alumnus whose mother attended the same school in 1946.  The donor knows someone in the alumni group, I provided my contact info to the group member and now I just have to wait.  One of these days, I will make the drive to Bayside, Queens NY to pick up the items.  Yearbooks are valuable to me, I prefer to personally pick them up instead of having the items sent through the mail.

DEPOSIT GOAL MET

 Some months ago, against better judgement, I joined the Reunion Committee for Newtown High School (Elmhurst, Queens NY) Class of 1985's 40th Reunion.  I was on the committee back when we had the Silver Reunion (25 years).  I cannot remember why it was painful, but it was.  Lots of work, monthly (?) meetings, hunting people down in many social media platforms, including Plaxo and Friendster - who remember those!?  Facebook was somewhat new for me at the time.  This time around, we already have a good base of interested people, but what I found out recently is fifteen years after the other reunion, many people are no longer active on Facebook, or left the platform altogether.  I cannot blame them.

Proceeded we did, admission price was set and a deadline for collecting x dollars to hand over to the hotel to secure the event space.  I was somewhat worried.  We live in interesting times, a bizarro world with events making writers at the satirical website The Onion scratch their heads.  Inflation, bird flu, uncertain economic future, will people plunk down x dollars to see a bunch of people from high school?  But plunk they did and we now have enough money to cover the deposit.  Whew!  I was worried for a while we won't make it and have to refund the money and lose some more money because the billing service we use charge x percent for every transaction.  Maybe we'll hemorrhage our fund because of the service charges and have to use our own money to cover the refund.  I know of at least one horror story of someone trying to do a reunion and lost $1000s.  OK, not this time for Newtown Class of 1985, whew!

REMOTELY POSSIBLE

 Remotely controlling another computer in the same office, or across the continent, or in some other part of the world, that's one of the wonders of computing.  It is nothing new of course.  My first experience doing remote control was with some MS-DOS version of pcAnywhere, when I was at a small software development firm in the Wall Street area.  The company supported some law offices, one as far as California.  Whatever wide area network they had back then, it was somewhat painful.  It probably helped that it was all character-based, it was MS-DOS after all, years before bloated Windows OS came along.  In more recent years, one remote control software I use is some flavor of VNC.  It is pretty basic, just remote control, being able to see another computer's screen, move mouse cursor, enter keystrokes.  Some major change came along not long ago, now most of the time when I type on the remote computer, the characters would get repeated many times.  Even with today's graphical user interface, it's still quick to type a few characters of a program to bring it up.  For example, click Windows then type Fil to bring up File Explorer, as opposed to scrolling down the alphabetical list to find F and so on.  But with the quirk I described, one F would become many FFFFF and so on.  Trying to connect to \\server1\share2 is impossible, as it can become \\\\\\\ssssseeeerrrrvvvveeeerrrrr11111\\\\\\ssshhhh , you get the gist.  Arrrggghhhh!  I thought using the on-screen keyboard would help but that's not the case.  This week it dawned on me that perhaps there is some settings I can adjust.  The remote systems emulate Windows, the operating system of the terminal itself is some Linux flavor.  Some Dell ThinOS.  It has its own settings.  Let's see... System / Peripherals / Keyboard... Repeat Rate... It was on some setting, I chose the last option, "No Repeat".  Who thought it would be a good idea to have anything else other than "No Repeat"?  That was it!  I was able to type normally again, while on these remote computers.  Poke around and ye shall find!

THE IMPORTANT OF BEING APPRECIATED

 I run an active Facebook for the alumni of my high school, Newtown High School in Elmhurst, Queens NY.  It still makes me chuckle that in the early days of my time on Facebook, I joined an alumni group for my year, 1985, and quickly made a post asking if anyone was playing whatever word game I was addicted to at the time.  In those early days, I play games tied to the Facebook ecosystem.  I think it took some effort to play non-friends, or maybe it wasn't even possible.  I already had some friends but they were not playing the word game I was interested in.  So I was looking for new players in an alumni group.  Nowaday, in groups I run that's an automatic decline.  Keep the topic relevant to the group.  Occasionally, I let things slide, perhaps on a Friday evening, but most of the time I run a tight ship.  No spam, no politics, everyone needs to play nice, etc.  We should just reminisce about the good old days, pay homage to some teachers who helped you, better thank them now before they die.  Many people appreciate my work and told me so, but this week two nice things happened.

I am helping to bring about the 40th Reunion of my Class of 1985.  One person, not even from my year, asked me if I would go.  I have to go, I am an organizer.  He went ahead and paid for my admission ticket!  It's over $100!!!  A day later, I made a car trip from Brooklyn to Elmhurst to pick up a bulk order of gym shirts.  The Internet is full of spammers and scammers offering school shirts for purchase.  I keep in touch with the Principal at my high school and according to him only Target is the official sellers of the school's ware.  Or by some stretch, Funky Otter or something.  I know that it's not these fake accounts that lament nobody like their shirts so they come to the alumni group to show the shirt and conveniently list a link.  They usually like their own posts too, maybe to fake activity.  I wish my high school would have an online store for alumni to buy merch but right now the only way to do so is via my volunteer effort.  I would setup a Google form to collect info like what shirt sizes, what colors, where to send the shirts.  When there are enough requests, I send the order to the school and they get it ready in a week or so.  I would then make the trip to pick up the shirts, laboriously pack them for mailing via USPS.  I only charge the school price plus USPS fee.  It's a slow process but the alumni get the real thing, good quality for a low price.  The school subsidizes the cost of the gym shirts and we alumni also reap the benefit.  During this most recent trip (yesterday or Feb 25, 2025), I was given a zippered hoodie by the school as a token of appreciation.  I suppose it has a value of $30 or so.  It is a very nice gesture, thank you very much, Newtown!

MINORITY REPORT - NEW TRASH RULES 2025, I'M LOVIN' IT!

In New York City, the relatively new year of 2025 comes with a few new laws, regulations, etc.  One that affects almost everyone is the requirement of trash bin that has a secure lid.  The idea is to keep trash inaccessible to rats and other undesirable creatures.  Technically, the law went into effect in late 2024 but enforcement starts in 2025.  I was already using a bin with no lid.  I have the separately smallish bags of garbage for each day of the week kept in said bin.  I had some makeshift cover that wasn't rat-resistant.  Being the reliable citizen that I am, I already used the new bin as soon as I received them.  I also started using large trash bags to hold the smallish bags.  Now, here is why I consider the new trash rule worthwhile to add to my "Happy Jar" of 2025:

Much as I like seeing the discontinued use of single-use plastic shopping bags, the law created a problem for me in the kitchen.  Some wasteful people may actually throw away the plastic bags after lugging home grocery.  Not in my household.  We use them to hold trash in the kitchen and for the longest time we didn't need to buy trash bags.  Sure, some days we need two shopping bags to hold the waste generated, but most of the time one bag did the job.  No more single-use shopping bags means I have to find new ways to hold the trash in the kitchen before it goes outside.  I ended up buying kitchen trash bags and also have a limited supply of single-use shopping bags.  The ban of single-use shopping bags does have some exception so a trickle of such bags still finds its way into my kitchen.  To make the limited supply lasts longer, or at least so that I don't have to buy kitchen trash bags too frequently, what I can do now it dump the bags' content into the large trash bags inside new bin.  Coupled with another new, favorite law of mine, Organic Materials Recycling, my trash now is not as plentiful as before.  Each kitchen trash bag or single-use shopping bag now can be used at least three times.  I must be in the minority, as the typical person I talk to about these new laws is angry about having to spend more time with trash etc.  It seems most people don't care enough about their surrounding and just want to do whatever is most convenient for them.

MY OWN FAUX LITTLE FREE LIBRARY

For a long time now, I want to host a Little Free Library.  Usually it's a wooden box in the shape of a house with a clear door.  Inside one would put books, free for the taking.  Ideally, others would add books to it.  "Take a book, share a book."  Of course, some people would just take and not give, but it's the hope that in the long run things balance out.  An official Little Free Library would be registered with the organization, be assigned a charter number, and be included in the organization's web site, so that people can find you.  I admire people who are good at carpentry and build one.  Or people who buy a kit and register them.  I am not sure if I can sustain the supply of books.  In the end, around November 2024, I took the plunge and built a ghetto version of the LFL box.  It's just a milk crate of sort attached to an I.V. pole.  At one time, in my house someone needed a daily I.V. drip, for plasma perhaps, with a visiting nurse.  When the treatment was over the I.V. pole was used to hang wet clothes on.  Now it is the base of my LFL, which I call "faux LFL" because I don't plan to register it.  I already volunteer much time with my local Buy Nothing group, as well as regularly checking the Buy Nothing app and Next Door app about people giving away books.  I have some success with getting books from neighbors but something even better happened today.  I happened to notice that there was a book for the movie Thelma and Louise.  It was a screenplay about the movie.  That definitely wasn't there before.  I went inside the house to do something else, when I came back out there were three books by James Patterson.  You know, that policeman in the Washington D.C. area.  Wait, maybe Patterson writes about other characters, too, but that's the first thing I thought about.  My faux LFL is getting participation from the locals!  That's the best case scenario.  I add some books, people take some, hopefully to read or to put in other LFLs, people add some, things get moved around and hopefully enjoyed.  Yes, one minor, but good, problem I have lately is I do find books I think I will enjoy so I took them, now my To-Be-Read pile is getting higher and higher.  I was reading Book 1 of Isaac Asimov Foundation series, but then I found the book Dad Jokes Too (Two, get it?).  I don't know where the Jokes book went so I probably will go back to Foundation.  Among the pile is Motherless Brooklyn, The Hurt You Give, and The Time Traveler's Wife.  Anyway, hope the flow of books keep going, no books get trashed, and people enjoy books.  Should you want to visit my fLFL, it's on Bay 40th Street in Brooklyn, NY near 86th Street, look for the huge tree.  Remember, take a book, share a book.

HAPPY JAR 2025

 For the New Year (2025), I am going to try the idea of collecting happy weekly notes in a jar.  Failures and disappointments affect me more than they should, I think having happy notes will balance things out.

I consider Sunday January 5 to be the end of the first week of 2025.  The happy note will be about the re-discovery of my iPod Classic music player.  I love listening to music but haven't done much of it lately.  Sure, I have a sizeable collection of music files on my cell phone, but with all its notifications the listening experience can be interrupted.  My first music player was actually one of those iPod with FireWire connection.  It served me well but one day a leftover dish of spaghetti meatballs spilled and killed it.  It was not that healthy at that point anyway, the battery didn't hold well.  Plus, I think I already had an iPod touch.  The iPod touch was basically an iPhone without the phone functions.  It too eventually wouldn't boot up any more, I still have it somewhere around the house.  One holiday season, I decided to treat myself to an iPod Classic, bought it in person at the late TekServe on 23rd Street near Sixth Avenue.  Used it for a while then somehow I decided to just use my phone instead.  Many years later, the current phone's Lightnight connection is finicky and I can no longer easily sync with a computer.  I think it may be possible to sync wirelessly but I don't remember what needs to be done for that to happen.  It doesn't help that my Mac is old, too.  What got me really interested in the iPod Classic is that through my work with running a local Buy Nothing group that has a regular in-person meeting, I end up with an expanded collection of music CDs.  I also have some music CDs from my sister and brother.

The first thing I tried to do was to connect the iPod Classic to my Windows 11 Lenovo laptop.  It has plenty of room and is newer than the poor Mac.  Installed iTune sometime ago, now is the time to put it to work.  Nope, it didn't happen.  Either the iPod Classic need to be updated, something or other, it seemed to be too much work.  Back to the Mac, luckily it recognized the iPod easily.  Hooked up an external disc drive and away I went.  I already imported a few CDs via iTune on the Mac and enjoy them on the go.  One minor issue is the iPod has no built-in speaker so I need to have a headphone handy, or an auxiliary cable to connect to the car stereo or external speaker.

I shall title the first Happy Jar 2025 note "Re-acquainting iPod Classic".  Happy New Year!