Two years ago I bought my first Mac. It was the mid-2013 13” MacBook Air with 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD hard drive, and a 1.7 GHz Intel Core i7. It was the most powerful computer I’ve ever owned, and it’s still going strong, even with its 3rd major OS update. After two years, I have not once had to reinstall the OS because everything is simply reliable. I have not had to tweak any setting to make it run “faster,” I haven’t downloaded any utility to maintain my computer, and I’ve stuck with the Mac’s stock apps for most of the time I’ve had it. That means no Chrome or Firefox, no alternative Mail client, no alternative Calendar client, no alternative Messages client, no alternative Music client, etc. My machine has been running great right out of the box, and the fact that I have not had to worry about finding the best app in whatever client I wanted because the Mac had a great one built-in or having to worry about maintaining my computer in any way has meant that I’ve had more time to simply enjoy the benefits a computer brings to modern life, stuff like writing a damn novel in 9 months in the best damn writing program known to man (Scrivener) or using Time Machine for stress-free and worry-free backups. It’s all there and it’s all amazing.

But I’m just scratching the surface. Here are a few other things I love about it.

Keyboard Shortcuts. This one feels weird to include at the top because I remember struggling with it in the beginning, but now I can’t go back to Windows. I learned the benefits of keyboard shortcuts while using Windows, so muscle memory became a huge part of my computing experience, but when I converted to my Mac, I had to retrain my muscles. In Windows, the Control key is the main instigator of keyboard shortcuts. Control+X, Control+C, Control+V being the major ones in Cut, Copy, Paste. The Alt key would be the main modifier, as in Control+Alt+Delete, for example. Then the Shift key would be thrown in to add that tertiary layer of keyboard shortcut modifiers. Control+Shift+Esc for the Task Manager. On the Mac, the Command key is the main key for shortcuts. If you look at a Mac keyboard versus a Windows keyboard, you’ll notice the discrepancy right away. On Windows, the Control key is in the bottom left and right corners of the keyboard. So if you wanted to Cut some text, you would move one hand over to the corner and use the other hand to press down the X key. If you had bigger hands or a bit more dexterity you could use one hand to do it, which I did. But on a Mac, the Command key is right next to the Space bar. You know what else is right next to the Space bar? Your thumbs. Your thumbs are almost always hovering over that long horizontal bar in charge of emptiness, and with a slight movement of one thumb to the edge of it, you can manipulate the keyboard faster and more efficiently. The corners of the keyboard are keys that aren’t used very often or aren’t used in combination with many other keys. This has sped up my quickness and efficiency on my Mac exponentially. Shortcuts like Command+Shift+Right (selecting a whole line of text) is much more comfortable and quick than the Windows equivalent (Control+Shift+Page Down). Try that on a Windows keyboard. It’s unpleasant.

Trackpad Gestures. This one’s almost unfair to include since Microsoft has not been in charge of the quality of the trackpads used in machines running Windows, but holy shit this is such a big deal. Apple is Apple because of how much of their attention is focused on details. They’re in charge of everything when it comes to their products, and that’s what makes them so incredible. Gestures provide another layer of interactivity that keyboard shortcuts can’t bring, or can but not as pleasantly. Where do I even begin with gestures? The one app I probably use the most on my Mac is Safari, and Safari has built-in support for so many gestures. I can pinch to zoom in on a page, like some text or a picture. I can use two fingers and double tap my cursor over a block of text to zoom in on just that text. I can do a two finger swipe from the left to the right to go back a page, from the right to the left to go forward a page, two finger swipe up or down to scroll the page like a boss, a three finger tap over a word to look it up on the dictionary, etc. It’s amazing. In the Photos app, I can pinch to zoom on a picture and I can twist two fingers around to rotate a picture in whatever direction I want. With four fingers, I can swipe up to activate Mission Control, which gives me a visual representation of all my active windows and desktops, swipe left or right to switch been full-screen apps, and a five finger pinch to bring up Launchpad, which shows me all my installed apps, like an iOS screen. The amount of gestures and the versatility this provides for my computing experience is mind-boggling and awe-inspiring.

In fact, there’s so much more to praise about the Mac that I’m going to have to continue this series tomorrow, in Part 3 of To tweak or not to tweak.

I spend a lot of time in front of technological devices. I’m always on my MacBook Air and iPhone 6 and iPad Air, and when I’m at work, I’m using Windows 8.1 Pro on a variety of different devices. It’s safe to assume I’ve formed an opinion on what I like and don’t like about these devices. For the most part, I love all of Apple’s devices and dislike most devices running Windows 8, but I don’t dislike Windows 8 in general. It’s actually a pretty good OS. There are things the Mac simply does better than Windows, and it’s these things that have forever converted me to the Mac.

I used to be a Windows user. My first exposure to Windows was Windows 95 sometime in the mid to late 90s. I was in awe of it. I remember opening WordPad (or whatever the equivalent was back then), and typing (typing!!) into it and changing the font and making it big and pretty and different and then printing it out on our dot matrix printer and simply being like, cool! Then Windows 98 came out, gave us some access to the web — 56k modem, anyone? — and that’s when I began to learn more of the details about how Windows worked. I mastered the Control Panel, keyboard shortcuts, how to hack the registry, stuff like that, so by the time Windows XP came out, I was proficient enough in it that I taught teachers at my school how to use it. I remember spending so much of my time trying to figure out how to tweak the system to squeeze out as much performance as I could. I remember wanting to play Tony Hawk on the highest settings but failing because it wouldn’t run at a high FPS smoothly enough. That frustrated me, but I grew used to it.

Then I bought my own computer when I was in college, and it came with Windows Vista. This was my own computer, a Dell Dimension 5100. It was awesome. I could play semi-modern games at pretty high settings, and I remember pirating as much software as I could, stuff like Final Draft 7 for my screenwriting, Office for my school assignments, Adobe’s Creative Suite for my never fulfilled aspirations of creating digital art, and countless other programs, like AV software, video games, and computer utilities. God, how I spent so much of my time researching software that could take care and optimize my machine. Disk Defragmenters and disk cleanup utilities and software to increase Wifi speed and software that tried to hide all my illicit downloading. I spent more time on my computer than doing homework. When Windows 7 came out, I was knee deep in shit’s creek, and I hated it.

I hated maintaining my computer. I hated downloading software because it did something cool and provided an illusion of productivity. I hated filling up my hard drive with music and movies and comics that I would never consume (even though I spent one full year systematically consuming everything I downloaded in the previous 5-7 years). I was a slave to my computer and I knew it but I couldn’t do anything about it. I was dependent on it. My life revolved around it. During college, I discovered RSS feeds, and for the next 8 or so years, I would spend most of my time on the computer consuming these feeds. I would try to quit them every 8-12 months, but I would always come back to them. I would cut them back and just have a few feeds in the hopes that the extra free time would make me do something more productive, but it never stuck. I’m in the middle of that right now. I quit RSS feeds a few months ago now, but I think it’s going to stick this time, and a big reason why is Apple’s ecosystem of devices.

Here’s a first for this blog: stay tuned tomorrow for Part 2 of this weirdly geeky post, where I talk about my first (and only) Mac, and why I think it’s the better device.

I’ve been trying Apple Music since it came out a few weeks ago, and in the beginning, I added about half a dozen albums into my collection that I’ve since listened to many times. Just now I added two more albums into my collection, and I’m listening to one of these albums now. It’s amazing how easy it is to add something into my collection and immediately start listening to it. It’s a lot like Netflix or Hulu or any other video streaming site. You pay a monthly fee for access to a vast collection of media. But unlike movies and TV shows, the idea of renting music doesn’t gel with me that much.

The Apple Music trial ends in September, so I have a few more months to think about this and see if paying $9.99 a month (or $119.88 a year) is worth it. That’s 12 albums I could have bought versus the possibility of listening to something exponentially higher than that. I could listen to albums I used to “possess” before the great hard drive crash of 2012 or I could buy an album or two a month, and simply listen to them over and over and over again until I start craving them. That’s how I like to listen to music, and that’s something that I don’t think Apple Music can provide in a worthwhile way.

I don’t have this urge to buy all the movies and TV shows I watch from Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime, but I’m spending close to $300 a year on all these services¹, yet I don’t feel like I’m wasting that money. Back in the old days, we could go to Blockbuster, chose a few movies to rent for $3.99 each or something, go home and watch them with the family, and then return them a couple of days later. We’ve been conditioned to treat video this way, and that’s a good way to experience this. Hell, we can only watch movies on the big screen for a limited time, and that’s how we’ve been experiencing movies since their invention over 100 years ago. But we’ve always bought music. Music is something you possess, whereas movies and TV shows are something you experience.

I know it’s not as binary as that (listening to a great album for the first time is a magnificent and irreplaceable experience, for example), but music is something that strikes a chord deeper within us, causing us to form this relationship with it that runs deeper than simply listening to something once and never listening to it again, like you might with a movie. The Godfather is a great movie, but I’ve only seen it once. If I ever get the chance to watch it again, I will, but I’m not craving it in any way. Whereas with music, I’ve listened to Miguel’s Wildheart album eighteen times, but I don’t own it, and I know I would be extremely sad once I don’t renew my Apple Music subscription and sadly see that album removed from my library.

So I’m in this struggle with opening up the floodgates and having this opportunity to listen to albums I’ve never would have thought to listen to, but then there’s that risk of being overloaded with music that I’m listening for quantity rather than quality. I won’t listen to an album 18 times anymore, but simply once or twice just to say that I have, like I can say I’ve seen the Godfather. I don’t know if I like that. I would rather own my music and proudly listen to it over and over and over again than dipping my toe into the vast stream of Apple Music’s catalog.

Week 2 of Insanity Max: 30 didn’t go very well. I was winded really quickly, and I dripped more sweat than I’ve ever done before. It was a ridiculous sight. But I finished my Cardio Challenge, took a shower, and went right back into my kitchen and made a very tasty and healthy dinner. I used my food processor (again!) to make cauliflower rice. I seasoned it with salt and pepper and mixed it in with diced onions that were browned in butter. The “rice” was amazing. I mixed in chopped pork chops in a bowl and made a very simple stir-fry type of dish, and it was delicious. I loved it.

I love that my recipes are increasing. I was getting tired of making the same old shit day after day after day. A little variety is the spice of life, or whatever.

I talked to a co-worker about my culinary pursuits during the weekend, and she was very interested in everything I had to say. I found that funny because before that, she was talking to me about something that happened to her over the weekend and I completely found her conversation uninteresting. I noticed that whenever this happens, I try to gesture or motion or something that it’s time for me to go, but they continue talking and brought right back into their conversation. They won’t let me go. After I was done talking about my culinary aptitude, the superintendent walked in and started talking about something. I honestly don’t even remember. I just remember not caring, so I simply walked away and left.

This would’ve been unimaginable before a few months ago, I think. At least in the last few weeks. Now, I really don’t care. Life’s too short to be around uninteresting conversations, and I know exactly how much this makes me sound like a dick. I. Don’t. Care. Not really. If I’m a dick, then I’m a dick. So what. Right? So what. If you’re interesting, or if I find you interesting, then that dick side of me won’t come out. We will have a very interesting conversation, and things will be right with the world. But if you’re droning on about something that I simply don’t give a shit about, then I’m sorry, I’m going to leave.

And I totally expect people to do that to my blog, if it hasn’t already happened. Shit, I’ve wanted to walk away from this thing for months now, but blah blah promise to myself blah blah. I’m on day 316, which means I have a little under 50 days left. I’m in the homestretch now. I’m a few pounds away from getting back into regular shape, and I think I can get there next week or the week after, if I’m not called out on a fire. By that point, I’m sure I’ll be over 180 by the time I get back. I think by the end of this blog, I’ll be back to rewriting my book. What a way to bookend this thing, huh?

I had more fun in the kitchen today. That right there is Sweet Potato Has topped with a Pork Chop seasoned with Paprika and Cayenne Pepper. It was delicious. The spices were perfect and tasty and I didn’t have to top it with any condiment. That’s huge for me.

And this right here was my dessert: Summer Berry Soup. It has red grapes, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, some honey and some lemon juice. I blended it in my food processor and it turned out summer tasty and super refreshing.

I’m having a lot of fun doing this. I doubt I’m going to do much of anything new this week considering the amount of time I have during the weekend to devote to this compared during the weekdays, but I have at least one more dish to make, and that’s some Cauliflower Rice. I’m also considering making Paleo Banana Bread, but that’s something I’ll go more by feel than anything else.

It’s also really late because I’ve spent the last 3 hours or so watching the finals of Evo 2015. It was more entertaining than I imagined it would be. I thought I would just pop in and watch a match or two, but I quickly got sucked into the drama and the amazing talent these players from the around world had. I sat in awe as I watched Gamerbee fight to the very very end, only to lose in the last round of the last match to a much better player. It was a lot of fun.

And now I’m tired, and I’m halfway toward my 500 word goal, but I’m not going to make it. Have a good night, everyone!

That right there is my first attempt at making Paleo-approved banana strawberry ice cream, and it was delicious. The only ingredients were organic bananas, strawberries, coconut milk, and vanilla extract. I added them all into my food processor (!!), blended them for a few minutes, and presto blamo, ice cream. It was, I have to say, really really good. It tasted nothing like ice cream, but it was still really good. It was more like a thick smoothie, a bit sweeter, and with a fluffy texture that was really interesting and attractive. It made more than I wanted to eat in one sitting, so I have more chilling in the freezer for tomorrow. That’s so awesome.

I also made some paleo salsa, but it didn’t turn out as good as I would have hoped. The recipe only asked for two jalapeños, and I don’t know if it was because I chose two very mild tasting jalapeños or that two jalapeños just aren’t enough heat for me, but the salsa wasn’t spicy at all. It smells great, and it tastes good and I can’t wait to try it on my eggs tomorrow, but I know I’m going to have to modify the recipe next time I make it. I love my salsa’s hot and spicy, and this wasn’t it. I did use scallions and whole garlic cloves for the first time in my life, though, so that’s some great experience I’m going to cherish for a while.

I had fun making this stuff today, and using and learning my food processor, and I really can’t wait to do more. I think I’m going to give in and buy a few more tools that I want, like a grater and a julienne peeler. I want to make gluten-free spaghetti out of squash or cucumbers. I really want to cook every recipe from one of my cookbooks just to see what that’s like and to improve my culinary abilities. Just seeing that picture of ice cream I made from scratch is inspiring and motivating enough for me to do more. This is fun.

Day 6 of Insanity Max: 30 went well. It was only the 20 minute Pulse workout, which is a slower yet still sweat-inducing workout. The calendar says this workout is optional every Saturday, but I’m glad I did it because it made me sweat, and sweat makes me feel good. And the fact that my fridge is full of fresh food and every time I open the door and smell that mixture of delicious aromas makes me want to take care of myself more. Mind, body, spirit: that’s the goal.

Tomorrow I’m going to try to make cauliflower rice and sweet potato hash. I bought the ingredients today, and I hope to make something completely new. I might also make more ice cream because it’s delicious and I love my desserts after dinner, especially after a hard workout. I fee like I deserve it, and after this week, I think I deserve to do more.

I spent close to $700 at the mechanics for my fourth — FOURTH!! — power steering pump in less than a year: the original, the one from California that crapped out on me in Idaho, the one replacing the California one from my super shady and crappy auto dealer, and this new one from a more reliable business. I think this one will last until my entire car dies out. And $700 isn’t that much money, when it’s all said and done. The guys in California charged me a few bucks short of a grand, so I’m okay with it. Besides, I need my car. There’s no way in hell I’m not paying to get it repaired, regardless of the costs. I need a car to go to work and to go to the Division of Fire for when another fire breaks loose. Speaking of which, IT’S RAINING AND IT HAS BEEN FOR THE PAST FEW DAYS AND IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE THERE’S GOING TO BE A FIRE ANYTIME SOON. What the shit?

Even though I spent that much money, a huge weight is off my shoulders. I was worried I wasn’t going to be able to go grocery shopping this weekend, but now that my car is fixed and I trust it again, I feel better. I’ve been perusing through my Paleo cookbooks I received earlier this week, and it’s exciting me. There’s this super easy and amazing looking ICE CREAM recipe in one of them that looks delicious. I want to make that. I might have to slow down on buying any new kitchen tools, until I catch up with my finances, but that’s okay. I’ll make due with what I’ve got. I did just buy a food processor, after all.

Day 5 of Insanity Max: 30 went well. It was Friday Fight: Round 1, and boy was it a fight. I was exhausted six minutes into it, and I had 24 minutes to go. By the end, I was just dripping in sweat, and I felt amazing. I had steak for dinner, for the first time in over a month, and both my belly and my soul are satisfied. I’m still weighing in the high 170s, but I’m okay with that because it’s not going up. I’ve got some fat to lose, and once I do, I’ll be back to normal, and I hope by then I will have momentum with my newish routine. I’m reading more, which is making me happy, and working out, which is making me happy, and I’m going to start cooking more soon, which I know will make me happy.

I’m excited to start this last leg of my journey that I started ten months (!!) ago. I swung from one extreme to the other, and I’m ready to find some balance, and so far, I think I can do it. I have to fill a good chunk of my day with downtime, like watching TV, or fun, like playing video games, but I also have to fill it in with reading and working out and writing. And I have to be less strict on doing things daily. If I find that balance, I think I’ll do fine for the next 365 days come September. Lets hope, right?

ARPANET came into my life from two different sources of media: from the Americans TV show and Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon. Strange.

Day 4 of Insanity Max: 30 was a success, and I feel better. I still feel heavy, which sucks, but I’ll slowly lose this weight. It’s an inevitability at this point. The one thing that’s worrying me is that I won’t be able to lose it all before I go out on another fire, and since they feed us shit, I’m bound to gain it all back. It’s not helping that I’m refusing to go 100% Paleo this week. I need snacks in between my meals, and since I don’t bring a lunch to work, I go hours and hours without food, so when I come home, I buy crap and eat crap and I feel like crap afterwards. Time to start cooking some Paleo food!

I have to take my car into the shop tomorrow morning. Something is up with my power steering pump again (yes, for the third time this year!), so I’m hoping these mechanics will be able to fix it once and for all. I’m worried they won’t because I want to go to Safeway this weekend and buy my Paleo-friendly foods so I can start cooking. My food processor is amazing and I want to use it to its full advantage. God, I hope my car’s okay.

I honestly don’t know what else to write about. I was sitting here for about 10 minutes trying to come up with something to write about, and I couldn’t come up with anything satisfying. I have a few more months of this, and honestly, you guys, I can’t wait till it’s over. I don’t know if I like writing a blog, at least a daily one like this one. I’m a better writer when I have something to say, and I take my time trying to say it. That’s been one common theme throughout this whole journey: my dissatisfaction with so many of my entries. Many of the ideas weren’t fleshed out, and many of them eventually sortakinda got there across multiple entries across days, even weeks apart, but I know they could’ve been better if fleshed out into one, definitive entry. But since I pigeonholed myself into doing an entry a day for a full year, I’ve written a lot of shit. Maybe if you’re really really interested in me, these entries seemed entertaining and informative. But to anybody coming off a Google search or something, there’s nothing in here of value enough to keep them interested and engaged. I don’t know… it’s just something I have to get off my chest every now and then to make me feel better since I always have this gnawing dissatisfaction with all that I’m writing. It’s different when I’m writing in my journal since that’s just for me, and I know I’m just writing down the facts of the day to keep me entertained when I read them again in the future. Like, “oh yeah, I remember when I did that,” or “man, I’m glad I don’t think like that anymore,” or even “I’ve grown up so much since then.” That last one’s the best. I know I’ll feel like that a few years from now when or if I read these entries again.

For now, here we go, world. This is what you get. For now.

I wish I could dance like Samuel T. Herring.

Day 3 of Insanity Max: 30 is in the bag, and I started feeling it today. I did not want to work out today, but I just did. It was Sweat Intervals, which had me sweating 7-8 minutes into the 30 minute workout. I could hear my rug squish underneath my feet by the end. After the workout and before stepping into my shower, I decided to weigh myself for the first time in over a month. I was in the high 170s, which isn’t that bad, considering I hovered around the mid 170s for so long, so I only have to lose 3-4 pounds before I’m back to where I would like to be. But that’s still kind of amazing to me, the fact that I gain weight so quickly and easily. Well, it doesn’t help that I didn’t workout and didn’t eat that well during my sabbatical. I’ve lost 3 pounds before, sometimes in one week, so I’m not that worried about it. But still. Jeeze.

It might help that I received my food processor today along with two Paleo cookbooks. After trying to figure out how the food processor worked, I tried it out and was amazed by how awesome it is. I ca do so freakin’ much with this machine that the possibilities are exciting me so much. I can make banana bread easier than ever! I can make sauces! and purees! and paste! and soups! and whatever else! This is going to be fun. I still want to buy more tools, like some tongs, a better skillet, and some other tools, but for now this will keep me occupied. I can’t wait to get started beyond what I did today. I signed my time for the Sunny Camp fire I was on last week, and it was only 27 hours, which isn’t that bad of a fire, but still. I can use that money to invest in my culinary pursuits. Yeah.

I started Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon and holy shit. Holy. Shit. What a wild ride the first two chapters were. I love it. I love love love it. I’m doing something somewhat new and somewhat anal: I’m setting a timer for 1 hour when I read. I want to read for at least one hour every night, and that timer will keep me in check. I will like to read more than that per day, but I’ve been catching up on my New Yorker magazines, but I finished the most recent one today, except that I will get the new one tomorrow, so that will take up my morning. The more I read, and the more I workout, the more happy I am. That’s a simple fact. I wasn’t happy during most of June and the first week or so of July. I was drowning in distractions, not doing anything but eating and watching TV. But now, now I’m reading, now I’m working out, and I’m still writing, which I love, so I feel happy.

Happiness in my life doesn’t come easy. Sometimes I don’t let it, sometimes I can’t help it. It just comes at me like a tsunami and I’m drowning in it until I come up for air, and that struggle for it takes a lot out of me. Sometimes I simply give up and let it drown me; but when I fight, I feel better, exhilarated, and alive. Feeling alive makes me happy.

Day 2 of my rebooted Insanity Max: 30 workout regiment is in the bag, and I feel good. I forgot how confident I feel after working out. I guess I only noticed it when I felt bad about myself these past few weeks, and I was able to compare that with how I’ve felt the past few days. It all starts with fitness for me. A good workout makes me happy and motivated enough to do more. I want to start writing again, even though I want to wait until late August at the soonest. I will be done with fire season by then, and I’ll be able to ensure a long streak of uninterrupted productivity for a good ten months or so. That should be enough time to rewrite my novel and hopefully apply to grad school. Shit… I need to work on my writing samples.

I’m having trouble with my car again. The damn power steering pump is acting up again, the same god damn issue that caused problems on my trip to and from California last December/January. I’m going to have to take it in this weekend to get it checked out. It doesn’t feel as bad as before, but I know the more I drive, the more it’s going to worsen. That’s more money I’m going to have to spend on my car. Jeesh. AND, to top that off, my packages didn’t come today because FedEx needed a signature from me, so they left me a note on my door, which I signed and will ensure my packages get delivered tomorrow. I was really expecting them today.

This also marks the second day since I’ve deactivated Facebook. I’m still finding myself compulsively checking my phone but quickly realizing I don’t have that outlet to waste time on, so I shut my phone off and get on with my day. This happened at least a dozen times today, but I’m quickly getting used to the fact that I don’t want Facebook in my life anymore. I just don’t. It’s a waste of time, and it causes more harm than good. I still have Twitter and Instagram, and that’s enough for me. Also, as I wrote about who knows when, I quit reading RSS feeds, and that habit to check my feeds on my phone has gone away, so I know it’s possible. Speaking of that, I replaced some of my sources to email newsletters, and their newsletters are better than the RSS feeds. Most of the sites send a newsletter once a week, while others send them a couple of times a week to daily. I feel like I’m learning more and reading more by doing this, and it feels like I have more time to devote to reading than before. So I know quitting RSS feeds has been super beneficial to me, so I know quitting Facebook will be, too. I’ve also bookmarked and visit those other sites that don’t have newsletters on a regular basis, so I guess I’m not entirely shutting down my compulsivelycheckingtoseewhatsnew tick. I did rediscover the pleasure of visiting websites and noticing their design and style more so than a generic and uniform style from whatever RSS app I used. So another win. Yay.

I don’t know what the point of this entry was other than to prove to my readers that I’m still alive. Still here, you guys.