Tag: technology

The week of new shit

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t want to hijack my swan song for my former Kia, but I don’t think I could’ve made it more obvious that I got a new car earlier this week.  A 2019 Mazda CX-5 is what my ride will be  hopefully for the next decade or so, and I’m really hoping that me having this car from the very start will exorcise and wash away the demons of the rotten chicken lemon I had years ago that also happened to be a Mazda. 

I’m confident in my capabilities as a car owner to take good care of this car, and considering it was purchased fully knowing that it will also be a kid taxi throughout the vast majority of its life, I am hoping to be as satisfied and sad when I unload it in hopefully a decade, as I was with my previous Kia.

During the car search, it really turned out to be a two-horse race between the Mazda CX-5 and the Hyundai Tucson.  Both cars fell into the specific criteria that I was looking for, but in the end, it turned into a game of price as well as perception.  And as good of a car that I think the Tucson would’ve made, the CX-5 just felt a little more high-end and aesthetically refined, and when the day was over, Hyundai had already rolled out their 2020 vehicles, whereas Mazda was still selling 2019s, so in this instance, the Korean car was actually a little more expensive than the Japanese maker.

Either way, I am excited to have a new car again, and it’s always a fun time whenever I hop into my vehicle that still has the new car smell, and ease my way on the roads, getting used to the feel and size of a larger vehicle, and the thoughts of all the future potential it’ll be used for in the years to come.

Continue reading “The week of new shit” →

Energy Star done lost their mind

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I briefly lived in an apartment, there was once a day in which it was abundantly clear that the air conditioning went out.  When it was obvious that no cool air was coming out of the vents, I called up the main office to see if I could get someone from maintenance over to come fix it.  However, it was a Sunday, and the office hours were drastically reduced, and I was unable to actually get with a human being on the phone, and I thought that I was going to be boned until Monday.

I tried to stick it out, but didn’t last more than 30 minutes before I began looking through drawers for the information packet that was given to us when moving in, to see if there were any alternative numbers to call, or if I could get to maintenance directly or something.  I found an emergency number and figured it wouldn’t hurt to call and get a human being on the line to see if they could point me in the right direction.

When I got a person to pick up, I explained my situation, and they asked me to tell them what the thermostat read.  “83,” I told them, and they responded with “I’ll be right over.  82F is what we consider to be an emergency.”

In less than an hour, a maintenance guy showed up, turned out a freon recharge was all that was needed, and then the entire apartment began cooling down pretty quickly afterward.

The point of this little story is that I just read this article about what Energy Star recommended people keep their thermostats at, in order to save energy:

Continue reading “Energy Star done lost their mind” →

Those who do not use the Chick Fil-A app are subclass

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know how much clearer I can be than that headline. 

People who do not utilize the Chick Fil-A app are a class of people that are secondary or subordinate to those who do.  Fact.  Mic drop.  Walk off stage.

No matter what CFA does in the media, its political or religious stance or whatnot, it somehow manages to rise above all other non-food related topics, because simply, their food puts them on a class higher than that of every other fast food chain in the country.  Frankly, I challenge all people to find a CFA that doesn’t have a license to print money or really be able to recall at any point where a CFA closes down due to poor business and not renovation because their demand warrants it.

Go at the wrong time of day, and you will undoubtedly get stuck in some sort of line, be it inside the restaurant, or getting into a drive-thru line that literally wraps twice around the building.  In spite of the insane demand for CFA on a daily basis, I do give a lot of credit to the company for often times being proactive and always thinking on how to speed things up and keep customers happier, regardless of the fact that they really don’t have to, because people will go there for their food, regardless of if the perky teenagers that work the restaurants say “my pleasure” or not.

But just about every CFA in Atlanta has gone down at various points due to the need to renovate, or to add a second drive-thru lane, because they can all justify the needs for them.  They’ll stick employees outside with tablets and card readers in order to help expedite the service.  They’ll stash them in little pop-up tends before the pick-up windows in order to receive cash or give receipts just 20 seconds quicker than it would be at any other restaurant’s drive-thrus.

Most importantly though, they have pretty much the best app in the fast food industry, that’s easy to use, easy to register, and extremely efficient when it comes to saving time and effort.  Punch in your order and send it on, and then there’s zero need to spend time in line deciding on what to order, or to even pay for it, regardless of how many options the physical lines give you in order to save time.  The app saves even more time, and even more effort, and it basically makes it a no-brainer when it comes to deciding on which fast food joint to hit up.

Continue reading “Those who do not use the Chick Fil-A app are subclass” →

Shop talk

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It doesn’t happen, by design, that I talk about my job.  Frankly, most of the time it’s nothing particularly interesting, and probably not really any different from anyone else who works a fairly normal corporate job anywhere in the world.  But lately, my work has been a little bit more encompassing in my daily life than I’d really like it to, and I feel like I’m in a not-that-great position currently, and I feel like everyone I’d vent to is kind of tired of hearing the same old stories about my job, but I still have a lot of thoughts and words that I’d like to get out of my system, that writing about it, seems like the only viable option in order to accomplish that.

Imagine . . .

  • You’re an auto mechanic. You fix cars and motorized vehicles for a living.  You use tools and work with your hands in order to fix said vehicles, day in and day out.  One day, a chef walks into your shop, and gives you a bunch of forks, spoons and spatulas and tells you, these are your tools now.  Please fix my car.
  • You’re a chef. You cook food for a living that feeds all sorts of people.  You use an arsenal of knives, spoons and various utensils in order to prepare all the food that you cook.  One day, a graphic designer walks into your kitchen, plops and laptop and a mouse on your counter and tells you, these are your tools now.  Please make me lunch.
  • You’re a graphic designer. You make shit on computers, using a variety of artsy software, specifically made to make shit.  Sometimes the shit you make ends up on the internet on websites and sometimes it is manifested into something tangible.  One day, an IT guy walks onto your floor and installs this shittily-made, outsourced, glorified data entry program and tells you, this is your primary software now.  Please resume creating advertisements at a high volume and high quality.  Except there’s no please, because this IT guy is a fucking asshole

That’s my life at work, in a nutshell.

Continue reading “Shop talk” →

Sad, but understandable

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TL;DR: Canon CEO admits that they can’t really compete with the burgeoning mobile photography demographic

There’s a defiant change-resisting part of me that wants to erupt in a knee-jerk reaction and proclaim that cell phone cameras may saturate the world of photography now, but they’ll never compete with the quality of a traditional camera!  Honestly though, I don’t really feel like I can however.

Not only have cell phone cameras really closed the gap in capabilities of even the most bulky and expensive DSLR cameras out there, I also fall into the demographic that’s kind of tired of lugging around a brick with a heavy lens that’s cost me nearly $2 grand and is fragile as shit.  At the time I’m writing this, I have an embarrassingly large backlog of photos that I haven’t processed because they’re RAWs, and I typically do them one at a time, but the thing is I don’t have as much free time anymore as I used to, and I’ve got over half of my last European vacation photos to go through, as well as starting the photographs I took at Dragon*Con many months ago.

I don’t regret investing in a decent camera and investing even more in a bunch of expensive lenses; among the thousands of photos I’ve taken over the last decade, I’m sure I’ve got at least a handful of good ones that made it all worth it.  But the fact of the matter is that looking towards the future, I know that I’ve gotten more and more tired of lugging around “gear,” all for the sake of accomplishing what the modern cell phone is getting closer and closer to accomplishing.  Even during my last day in Germany a few months ago, one of the most liberating things was the fact that I had decided to not bring my camera with me, and to just go out and enjoy Munich without it.

Although I’m often behind the times when it comes to cell phones, mostly because I still don’t really consider my mobile device as my primary camera, and I don’t feel like keeping up with the Joneses and constantly updating and upgrading to the newest and latest and greatest phones because I want a better camera, I really do understand the general appeal of mobile device photography.  It’s literally going from your pocket to your hand, and you’re getting amazingly decent results from a few taps onto the screen.  There’s no wheels to turn, F-stops to adjust, no white to balance.  In the matter of seconds, a competent photo could be taken, as opposed to the vastly longer time it takes to configure a camera for the same result.

Continue reading “Sad, but understandable” →

They were never uncool, you hipster douches

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
full disclosure, this is a 2020 photo, since I left photo direction on the original word doc, which explains my quarantine hair that’s all white.

Impetus: Instagram losers start community dedicated to photos taken with older digital cameras, claiming they’re cool again; but the question is, were they ever uncool in the first place?

It’s articles like this disenchant me from photography.  Some arrogant photography snobs on the internet dictate on what’s cool and what’s not, and thousands of idiot sheep with no capability of independent thought buy in, and because perception is reality, it perpetuates this cycle where others fall in place, and suddenly things are cool, and things are uncool at the drop of a hat. 

For lack of a better term in context of the related link, I’ll go ahead and call them digicams: portable, brick-sized-or-less, point-and-shoot cameras.  Not DSLRs, the big, clunky cameras with detachable lenses that cost more than car payments, or any other cameras that act like Polaroids without actually being called Polaroids.

But anyway, there’s apparently an Instagram community dedicated to photography shot on old digicams, and how they’re declaring that they’re cool again.  Leading me to beg the question, when were they ever uncool in the first place?

Continue reading “They were never uncool, you hipster douches” →

Reason #1,728 why social media is cancer

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The other night, some friends of mine and I went out to Hooters for dinner.  Ironically, it was actually the girls in the party who suggested it.  However, it turned out to be one of the worst dining experiences in recent memory, because the particular location we went too apparently had the equivalent of TNA Wrestling management working the kitchen, because it was the slowest service I’d received in months, and when the food came out, it was not really hot and was subpar.

However, it did give me a lot of time to watch TV, and I caught the very tail end of the Braves game, where Braves pitcher Sean Newcomb came within one strike from throwing the first Braves no-hitter in 24 years.  Despite the heart-breaking near-miss, it was undoubtedly the greatest start of a very young and budding career for the once-highly touted prospect.  Newcomb should absolutely have been feeling really good after the win that prevented the Dodgers from sweeping them at home.

Nah, instead the afternoon turned sour really fast when some Twitter troll(s) dug into his Twitter history and found some tweets he made when he was high school that were yeah, racially insensitive and pretty homophobic.  So shortly after having the best start of his career, Newcomb was sitting at the media table for the post-game talking about how regretful and apologetic he was for saying stupid shit for when he was a teenager, instead of talking about his fantastic start, in the present.

From what I understand, the person who started this shit storm was supposedly a Nationals fan, so some vindictive Braves fan(s) decided to eye-for-an-eye the situation, so they took it upon themselves to go digging through the old tweets of one of the young Nationals players, and found one in rising star Trea Turner.

Continue reading “Reason #1,728 why social media is cancer” →