Tim Cook told the Wall Street Journal that Apple will have to raise its prices due to the skyrocketing demand for RAM and storage.
“Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” he said. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”
I’m feeling pretty good about pulling the trigger on this new MacBook Air. It’s made editing videos much quicker, and I know it’ll be a solid workhorse for the next four or five years. Meanwhile, the M2 Air I got back from the estimator is now my walk-around machine, something I’m not afraid to bring out into the garage to look things up or follow a video tutorial on.
I spent the entire Juneteenth weekend at hard labor, taking advantage of unseasonably mild mid-June weather. The temperatures were in the mid-80’s but with little to no humidity, which made being outside pleasant, even if I was swinging Dad’s mattock into our rock-hard topsoil. We inherited a bunch of poorly-poured concrete sidewalks with this house, which I’ve slowly been removing over time, and this weekend I broke up and hauled out a section sitting right in front of the basement stairwell, itself a poured concrete structure set into the side of the house. During heavy rainstorms, water would over the top of the saturated grass and down the slab, which had settled backwards towards the house, up and over the edge of the stairwell and down into the basement. This was a primary cause of flooding during both of the 100-year storm events we shared with Ellicott City, requiring Jen and I to man the bilge pumps and shop-vac to bail out the house.
After knocking the slab into sections (it was only 2″ thick at its deepest) I hauled it over to the driveway and stacked it for future disposal. Then I trenched out a 8″ area around the stairwell about 14″ deep, built some plywood forms, and mixed 8 cubic yards of concrete to pour, bringing the next step up another 5″. I had to go out twice for more ready-mix, because the both internet and the instructions on the bag were completely incorrect for estimating how much I’d need. I also used the mattock to break up a section of topsoil where another area of sidewalk had been, mixed in some new lawn soil, and laid out a piece of sad-looking sod in the hopes that it will root and take. by 6PM I was beat, and after a shower I took it easy for the rest of the evening.
Saturday we were back at it, beginning the day by filling the back of the Scout full of garbage for a dump run. The County is getting squirrelly about everything, so I had to take the time to cut all of the wood down to 18″ sections, which took time. Jen and I went over to the church to break down the steel rack she’d bought to store donated food, and we continued working on the rest of the sidewalk, as well as excavating a section of lawn next to the garage for a new planter. I drank about five gallons of water and might have peed a thimbleful all day.
Sunday we got back at it, employing Finn with the mattock to finish up the sidewalk planting while Jen and I scoped out the garage planter. By about 4:00 we had the trench dug, lined with landscaping cloth, and filled with eight bags of river stones. All of this excavation yielded about six wheelbarrows full of extra dirt, so we spread it on the far side of the garage, cleaned up our tools, and went inside. Jen heated up our dinner and the girls went out to bring me back a shake for dessert, which I sipped on while laying on the couch on the front porch, a nervous dog snoozing under my feet.
This morning I’m moving slowly. My brain is foggy, and my joints are stiff. It feels good to have a lot of long-gestating projects closer to done, but that took a lot out of me.
I posted a trip log on the Scout site recapping the weekend, as well as a video. This year I didn’t shoot as many videos or photos as in years past, which was strange, but I like to think I spent more of my time enjoying myself, talking with friends, and just generally being in the moment. That’s a nice change.
→ This is a syndicated post from my Scout weblog. More info here.
This is a recording of Underworld’s full set from EDC Las Vegas in May. Everything, Everything got me through a rough patch when I’d been laid off for the first time back in 2000, and their back catalog was the soundtrack to my later coding career. Great repetitive, melodic song structure, perfect for doing a bunch of molly and dancing until sunrise, or shutting off one side of the brain to deep focus for six hours straight.
(via)
I got word from the second-party evaluator that the MacBook Air I sent in as a trade, which was initially quoted as being worth $485, was, according to them, only worth $85. They claimed there was damage to the screen (there is nothing wrong with the screen) and that there was damage to the case larger than 2 inches (there is one ding on the front edge of the case less than 1/4″ tall). I told them to send me my perfectly good machine back.
I’m not quite sure what to do with it, honestly; I originally figured I’d list it myself on Marketplace for $500 to see if I could recoup some money, but now I’m wondering if I should hang on to it as a secondary unit.
Jen has been quietly doing A Thing for the last four years, and it has been growing steadily in size and scope. She got involved collecting food donations for local elementary schools so that kids would have meals over the summer break; a little-known fact is that here in the US roughly 15% of school-age kids experience food insecurity. She started putting the word out and collecting donations at the church across the street, and last year we wound up with a half a ton of food stored on our front porch. She and another friend then divided our dining room in half to split the food out equally, and they dropped it off a few weeks before the end of the school year.
This year, she was able to double the amount of food collected; carefully organizing, weighing and storing the donations by category, she wound up with a literal ton of food. Realizing she couldn’t split it all out by herself, she organized a volunteer effort on Saturday morning to divide, repackage, and move it into vehicles for delivery Monday morning.
One of the deliveries filled every available inch of the Scout. The other delivery was split between three normal cars, because a quarter-ton of food made the springs in the CR-V sag to the bump stops.
We are all exhausted from the logistics, planning, execution, and delivery, but I couldn’t be prouder of Jen and the work she put into this. And please, donate to a food pantry near you if at all possible; kids can’t learn or study when they’re hungry.
Listening to a podcast this weekend, I heard a mention of Wire by U2 featured in a first-season episode of Miami Vice scoring a nighttime car chase, and the host said that it was the most 1985 thing he’d ever heard or seen. I would agree. I have long loved this song, my favorite off an album full of fantastic tracks, and it appears on every driving playlist I’ve ever assembled—at the risk of inspiring a speeding ticket. Now I’m binging the first season of the series (available on Tubi) and it is totally taking me back to middle school.
Apparently they don’t play it much live, which is a crime; this is a clip from a 1985 performance during the Unforgettable Fire tour.
“Broadcast is an ice cube that is melting, OK?” Mr. Bilton said, saying the show had to adapt. “Bari loves this institution,” he added. “She loves ’60 Minutes.’”
At that, Mr. Pelley interrupted.
“She is murdering ‘60 Minutes,’” the correspondent said. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it, and she’s been doing exactly that.”
Bari Weiss, the controversial new head of CBS News, who was hired with no previous broadcast journalism experience, hired a controversial new producer for 60 Minutes: Nick Bilton, a writer with no previous broadcast journalism experience. In an all-hands meeting with 60 Minutes staff (directly after firing the previous executive producer and two longtime correspondents) he was challenged by Scott Pelley, longtime senior correspondent, who challenged him to explain why these changes were made. Thankfully, he didn’t pull any punches. For 6 years, senior officials facing challenges by MAGA or DOGE have quietly resigned in “protest” without doing or saying anything else, as if just leaving is going to make a difference. Bullies do not like when there is pushback. It’s about time someone actually pushed the fuck back.
Bravo, Mr. Pelley. Thank you for showing us the way.
Update: Predictably, the stooges fired him.
Update to the Update: Dan Rather weighs in:
Going forward, every interview, every story, every shot should come with an asterisk superimposed on the screen right next to the CBS eye: *“This story was approved by Donald Trump.”
In the scathing post, there is also a brief glimmer of hope:
The “60 Minutes” formula is replicable, with the right people, enough money, and a platform willing to air it. We have heard from a former “60 Minutes” insider that such discussions are in the works. Fingers crossed. Until then, we are left with a sanitized “60” that will play well for an audience of one.
Inferno was released on Friday, and I really like it. It’s definitely an evolution of the BoC sound, but still works within the soundscape they pioneered 2+ decades ago. This album features drums on select tracks in a way their previous albums didn’t—tracks like Blood in the Labyrinth, All Reason Departs, and Arena Americanada put them much further forward than I remember. The sound of this album is much more….upbeat? than Tomorrow’s Harvest, their last album. I’ve currently been streaming it, but once I’m past the first-of-the-month bills, an out-of-network cancer checkup bill, and prep for IH Nationals, I’m going to buy the CD (remember those?)
The weather here has been absolutely perfect since the rain broke last week, and I spent as much time as possible outside not sweating and not freezing. I can see why people visited California and never left. The tomatoes in the greenhouse continue to thrive, which makes me stupidly happy. I took advantage of the weather to rent a tow dolly and swap the Scout 800 for the CR-V at Brian’s garage, and I’m happy I didn’t have to sweat my ass off to get it done.
I’ve got a brand-new MacBook Air on my desk after some delays in shipping from Vietnam, and overall I’m very happy with it. I sprung for the larger 15″ model, and it’s taking some time to get used to the new form factor in relation to my old 13″ model (and even my work 14″ MacBook Pro). I used it to finish up and export a video this weekend and I was happy with the smoother previews and speed. It didn’t take long to set up and install my various accounts and software suites—I don’t migrate settings, but prefer to do clean installs—and with only a few short hiccups where I couldn’t immediately lay hands on a serial number, it only took a few hours. Then I carefully wiped the drive on my old machine and cleaned it carefully with cotton swabs before packaging it up for trade-in. I added both of these to the technology list along with the Chromebook.
Along with that, I dropped another, heavier package off at the post office: I was contacted on the Binder Planet about some of my spare soft top hardware, and made a deal to ship a bunch of duplicate steel to a nice guy in South Carolina so that he can make one good top out of a bunch of parts. With that, I’m headed to Nats with $600 in my pocket for any shiny parts I might need.