7 Kab’an 0 Muwan

A bit of time has been invested in changing the e-mail sign-in for a few of the personal on-line accounts. First, a personal Duck e-mail address (DuckDuckGo e-mail protection) was established. Then, the new e-mail address replaced the iCloud equivalent (the one that was implicated in the NPD breach and forwards e-mail to the Proton Mail account). Of course, the primary purpose was to deprecate the iCloud e-mail address for sign-ins. Unfortunately, the sign-ins for some of the more important on-line accounts have not been changed yet (but are currently protected with one-time authenticator codes).

A preliminary accounting of 2024 dividends from the taxable investment account along with the retirement stipend were used to determine the tax liability for the year in question. Long story short, there will be major tax refunds coming because of the foolishly overpaid estimated taxes.

The dividends from all investment accounts and the retirement stipend covered all expenses for the year. The aggregate amount in the latter accounts increased slightly. In other words, the entire year was financed for “free.” That will all change when ZIRP is fully implemented by the central bank of empire sometime this year.

So far, ProtonVPV has proven to be reliable when using the associated “app.” The only drawback is that VPN servers cannot be selected by users of the free account. Thus, undesired connections to Japan, Netherlands, Romania, and Poland are routine. Obviously, some Web sites will then display in the language of the server location. The only mitigation is to revert to the Wireguard “app” wherein specific VPN server configurations can be installed.

The novelty of the vast hurdy-gurdy video library (HGVL) has worn off. An audit of the latter (on the LaCie® SSD) was conducted and many of the selections were deleted. Searching for new choice videos has become tiresome since they serve absolutely no purpose. And, the availability of choice videos has dropped down to near zero.

The daily late afternoon outings to the International Marketplace have been brief. There’s no reason to loiter in the mall unless there is a need to use the free wireless network (e.g., downloading choice hurdy-gurdy videos). So, the daily shopping at Target® is the only agenda. In addition, the “mob mentality” of this latest generation of assholic tourists is intolerable.

The Watch Series 9 continues to monitor heart rate data only. There have been no SVT cardiac events since last reported a while back. HRV is the only criterion that is scrutinized, although the data seems to make no sense (i.e., no correlation to anything except any huge spike occurs after midnight). The device also erroneously reports the base sleeping heart rate as resting heart rate (with sleep monitoring disabled). Resting heart rate is about 10pm higher.

The local weather has been exceptional, quite moderate for Winter. Ambient temperatures are cooler, but not cold. No heavy rain or even mild precipitation. Trade winds have been mild as well. Days are sunny or partly cloudy. Much gratitude can be expressed for the good weather. It offsets all of the other bullshit.

Addendum: Notifications from Google® and Proton Mail were received recently about personal data appearing on the “Dark Web” from the Virgin Impulse data breach. How is that possible? Identity theft, you think?

Miscellany: Subsequent to the first OTA firmware update, the Beats® Pill seems to sound better. The midrange is not as muffled (especially with bass-heavy House Music). The internal equalization must have been tweaked, although the latter supposition cannot be verified.