TWAS the Week 51 of 2024

The Rundown...

The Upgrade Cycle

This week I found myself camped out in an Apple Store waiting for my battery to be upgraded. My iPhone 14 Pro needed charging around 5pm which finally got me annoyed enough to schedule a Genius Bar appointment. I was surprised by the tech's reluctance to replace my battery even though I was ready to pay the $99 fee. He said the typical battery health for replacement is 79%, but I was already struggling when it was below 89% and at 85% it was starting to become an annoyance.

I had found myself married to the 2-year upgrade cycle which I now realize was grounded in cell phone contracts. I just could not justify paying 10x or more for the iPhone 16 for features I would not use just to get battery life back. And so... I broke the cycle. Let's see how much smaller they can make the iPhone 17 before I figure out if I am just paying for battery replacements from here on out.

Phish

The increase in crypto related spam calls on my phone has increased over the last few months. An article I read this week on a man losing nearly $5MM in bitcoins has me somewhat thankful that I am a boring investor. This was a great reminder to stay vigilant even in non-crypto related settings.

Honsan? Nisda?

My first car was a Honda Civic. At the time, my Stepmom drove an Infiniti J30. Never would I have thought we would see a Honda and Nissan merger. And what does Mitsubishi have to do with this? It's sad that the Nissan Z is a bit of a sales flop and that Honda does not seem like it will ever bring back a RWD roadster. I hope both of these brands can find their way again.

What I Watched...

  • La Palma - OK, so this was not very good. I watched it just to see what would happen. Based on the theory that an eruption in the Canary Islands would cause massive tsunamis. Good enough for mindless entertainment and to check the box on watching foreign flims.
  • Zero Dark Thirty - did not see this when it came out. Solid counter-terrorist thriller that draws parallels to other bin Laden capture flicks.
  • Midway - I love me a good pacific battle movie.
  • The Six Triple Eight - A slow start to the film, but a great story. Tells the story of an all-black Woman Army's Corp regiment tasked with fixing the backlog of undelivered mail and restoring morale with troops during WWII.
  • Captain Phillips - All the films I did not see when my daughter was an infant seem to be coming up on Netflix. The story of Captail Phillips and a 2009 Somali pirate hijacking of the Maersk Alabama. Tom Hanks is solid.
  • Oblivion - Tom Cruise post-apocalyptic film. Would watch again. And I did, because I was too tired to watch it in one sitting. (It was 2am, my bad.)

What I Read...