lee.ourand.me: Posts

📝 Post September 21, 2025

Weeknotes 51

Happy first week of Fall to all who celebrate.
Welp. My returned espresso machine arrived in the mail, and I followed through on my brilliant plan for disputing eBay’s dumb decision to refund the espresso buyer. They rejected my appeal with some bland canned reply. And I can tell they didn’t even watch the video I so painstakingly recorded, because the only web log entry is mine. So now I’ve got my fully functional espresso machine back, and I’m $150 poorer than I started.

I tried escalating through eBay’s “secret” phone support. The first rep left me on hold for about 35 minutes while she was “trying to pull up my account”. She then updated me that her supervisor had fixed the problem, but we’d need to first disconnect the call, and she’d call me right back. Shockingly, that return call never came. So I called back, got a different rep, got a supervisor on the line, and also had no luck. After explaining eBay had already made their decision, there was nothing she could do, but she then brilliantly suggested I “simply re-list the item for $150 more than I sold it for last time” to recoup my losses. So, y’know. eBay’s really running a tight ship over there.
Another week of completely predictable and horrific political nightmare fuel. It’s remarkable how few people seem to know two pretty basic things:
1. Who was president prior to January 20, 2021. And
2. The difference between the federal government quelling speech vs someone facing consequences from friends, employers, or the general public for what they say.
Been slacking on my gym routine, trying to avoid irritating my weird hand bump. Dermatologist appointment is this week. So hopefully they can do something, and I can return to my pursuit of Getting Yuge™.

📝 Post September 14, 2025

Weeknotes 50

The sewer line work on our street that started in March finally wrapped up this week. After six months of being woken up by heavy machinery at 6am, this week’s silence has felt fantastic.
I’ve been running consistently at least 4 days a week for about 6 weeks now. It doesn’t feel like I’m getting any better. But the numbers don’t lie: I’m accidentally running about 1 minute per mile faster than I was 6 weeks ago, and the VO2 max number in Apple Health has gone up monotonically after each run.
Still no espresso machine return. Either it’s lost in the mail or (and this is my dream scenario) the buyer figured out how to grind coffee correctly, and is too embarrassed to admit it.
Another Italian MotoGP weekend, which means another excuse to have a pizza party. This time I experimented with using the cliché Caputo “00” Pizzeria Flour. Once again, there’s apparently a reason this junk is as popular as it is. The pizzas came out really good. I used a 70% hydration, which made things just a tad unwieldy with this flour. Next time I’ll drop down to 65%.
Favorite silly sounding Chinese sentence I spoke this week: 我們一起吃奇異果。 (Wǒmen yīqǐ chī qíyì guǒ) I’ll spare you the translation and the reason for this utterance. Just enjoy the rapid-fire “chi” sounds.

📝 Post September 07, 2025

Weeknotes 49

Drove up to New York for the Labor Day weekend. Stayed with some buds who are about to move to Tokyo. Had a real nice time.
Started feeling a little sick this week. Not sure if I picked up something while in New York, or if it’s just ragweed allergies (tis the season). I tried a day of resting, and still felt the same. So tried a day of normal activity level, and also felt the same. So yea, allergies.
Looks like I’m losing the eBay espresso machine dispute. Buyer gets to return it, I get to pay both directions of shipping. So here’s the plan: when it arrives, I’m going to record myself unboxing it, assembling it, and pulling a flawless espresso shot. Then send the video to eBay and say, “Roll tape.” If this works, I get my $200 in shipping fees back. If it doesn’t, at least I’ll have a very passive-aggressive YouTube tutorial.
Still cruising through my new Taiwanese Mandarin textbooks. I’d gotten lazy with hanzi, leaning too much on pinyin. These books don’t really allow that. Result: my reading is improving, my writing is improving, and weirdly, that makes remembering the characters easier. Apparently, studying properly is effective. It’s like a virtuous cycle, man.

📝 Post August 31, 2025

Weeknotes 48

Welp, summer’s about over then, eh?
Birthday week for both me and the cat. One of us is considerably older, wiser, and more dignified than the other.
A lot of my Mandarin learning has been kind of annoying. The bulk of Chinese learning materials are, well, Chinese. And I’m primarily focused on talking to Taiwanese folks. Like most countries that share a language, there’s lots of similarities, but also a fair number of important differences. So last week I caved and ordered some textbooks from NTNU. This week they arrived (crazy fast). I’ve only completed Chapter 1 so far, but I’m happy as can be. The explanations are excellent, and have clarified a bunch of things that had been driving me nuts. Textbooks work. Who knew?
Sold my old Flair 58 espresso machine on eBay. The buyer now claims it’s “defective” because it “doesn’t build pressure.” For context: this is a lever machine. You pull a handle, which pushes a piston through a stainless steel tube, through a bed of coffee. That’s it. There are literally no electronics, no motor, no pump. The only way it doesn’t build pressure is if you didn’t grind the coffee finely enough. Which is a bit like filling up your Honda Civic with diesel, watching it sputter and die, then calling Honda for a refund.
I guess I’ve been gyming just too hard, and managed to develop a weird cyst on the palm of my hand. Going to take a break until I can get to a dermatologist to check it out. Of course, that’s going to be about a month’s wait time. The old trope is that in countries with socialized medicine you’ll “wait months for care.” Except here in the U.S., you also wait months… but after paying an insurance premium, a deductible, and the emotional toll of arguing with a insurance middleman who hates their job.
Headed up to NY to see some friends for Labor Day weekend. Going to try the whole EV car trip thing once more, this time with a bit more planning. Fingers crossed it goes better than our last couple extremely stressful attempts.

📝 Post August 24, 2025

Weeknotes 47

Continued the gym streak. And tacked on a bonus exercise-related streak of running at least 1 mile every day this week. Yes, a mile. The bar is low, but this bar is mine.
Listed my old espresso machine on eBay, and people are actually bidding. Which means this espresso machine swaparoo might end with me ahead financially. Rarely in life do you replace a complicated hobby with a slightly less complicated hobby and make money. Feels like I’ve figured out adulthood.
Had another farm / food pantry assistin’ day. We harvested and donated 130lbs of veggies. This haul was mostly tomatoes, but also basil, and bell peppers.
Finished reading Tiny Experiments. I loved it. I’ll be putting some of its hot tips to use. It just happens to line up nicely with where I’m at in life. Not sure I’d generally recommend it. But if you have an abundance of free time, and you’re in the right headspace to enjoy it, it’s a good read.
Cyn and I went to the Richmonder Taiwanese summer event, and ate some Baobing (刨冰)—a chaotic mound of shaved ice, fruit, beans, tofu, taro, and whatever fits in the bowl. It’s like a dessert version of a flea market. Saw some familiar faces, met some new faces, and once again, got to impress people whose exceptionally low expectations match perfectly with my very limited Mandarin skills.

📝 Post August 17, 2025

Weeknotes 46

Last week I failed my 3-times-a-week gym goal, but this week, I succeeded. To the doubters, the haters, and the so-called “friends” who doubted me: eat it.
For no particular reason, I watched Civil War. Nothing like relaxing with a fun, lighthearted dystopia about America tearing itself apart.
Finished reading Project Hail Mary. It’s like The Martian, but with aliens. Andy Weir knows how to write a fun book. I think think one will translate to film a lot better.
After manually pulling espresso shots on my Flair espresso machine(s) about every day for about the last 5 years, I’ve decided to become slightly lazier, and acquired a Gaggia Classic Pro. Going to sell all my Flair-related gadgets, and think it’ll be about a wash, financially speaking. But ridding myself of the early morning stress of managing a potential pressure cooker bomb that is my milk steamer feels like a very zen decision.
Didn’t renew Claude Code. According to ccusage, I burned through $1,041 worth of tokens, paid $100. Pretty sure Anthropic is subsidizing my lattes at this point.
Volunteered at the food pantry again. It’s a mostly Taiwanese group that runs this thing, so it’s a nice chance to practice my Mandarin. By “practice” I mean “butcher their language while they politely smile.”
Our pumpkin patch is going bananas. There are vines creeping in every direction, and a billion flowers blooming and subsequently falling off. After conducting some research trying to understand what’s happening, I learned that they’re apparently all male flowers. So right now I’ve got the pumpkin equivalent of a men’s rights rally hosted in my backyard.

🔗 Link August 15, 2025

Means of Production

Intel and the Trump administration are discussing the possibility of the U.S. government taking a financial stake in the troubled chip maker, according to people familiar with the matter, in a deal that could advance President Trump’s America-first manufacturing agenda while relieving political pressure on Intel Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan.

Thank God we stopped that socialist menace, Kamala Harris, and picked a free-market hero who will now patriotically seize Intel for the Motherland.

📝 Post August 10, 2025

Weeknotes 45

Fired up the Ooni and cranked out ten pizzas for the neighborhood block party. People seemed to love them. Got a couple requests to do it again in a few weeks, which is flattering.
Rejoined the gym. My lofty goal: three times a week. My actual performance: one for three. Why?
Because I managed to catch some kind of cold. Not bad enough to stay in bed, but just bad enough to make everything feel like I was living inside a mildly foggy NyQuil ad.
Picked up Wingspan, a board game where you attract birds to your wildlife preserve. Brilliant design, stunning artwork, and you get to roll dice by dropping them into a tiny birdhouse. I don’t know why more games don’t let you weaponize adorable architecture.
Took another father–son motorcycle ride with my dad and brother. Found some legitimately fun twisty roads, then doubled and tripled back to ride them again.

📝 Post August 03, 2025

Weeknotes 44

Happy August, everybody.
I made two pretty apps this week. Not for work. Not for profit. Not sure what my problem is, to be honest.

App 1 is a pizza dough calculator. It handles hydration percentages, lets you use poolish or biga if you’re feeling fancy, and even understands the difference between sourdough and active dry yeast. Honestly, it knows more about fermentation than I do. I’ll be using it Tuesday for our neighborhood block party, where I will be slinging pizzas

App 2 is a motorcycle route planner. I pulled some knowledge from my time at Ride with GPS and duct-taped together something that actually works. No turn-by-turn navigation, no voice prompts, just dumb GPX exports. I load the route into OsmAnd Maps and hit the road, fully aware I’ll probably ignore my own directions halfway through because “this road looks fun.”
Ran a couple super-slow 5K’s. Not proud. Not ashamed. Just aggressively average.
The green beans I planted into the end of our new pumpkin patch bed just no call no showed. So I planted a few zucchini in there instead.

📝 Post July 27, 2025

Weeknotes 43

Helped setup some solar panels at the farm. They’ll be harnessing the power of the sun to hydrate all our various plant buddies.
Went on a few exploratory motorcycle rides, trying to find some fun roads around Richmond. Haven’t exactly been successful in finding any particularly good ones, but have stumbled upon some scenic routes, at the very least. I later learned one such scenic sites was actually a prison. Lovely. The corn seemed unimpressed by my engine’s roar. Tough crowd.
I “vibe coded” this dumb little subtitle hunter app this week. Background: Cyn likes watching things with Traditional Chinese subtitles. But finding them is a multi-step ritual that takes like 5-10 minutes each. Find and download English subs. Translate them. Re-download. Upload through the Jellyfind UI that only works on your second try for reasons no one quite understands. So I built a one-click tool to do it all. It’s still dumb, but efficiently dumb.
Went to Cyn’s hot yoga class as a student for the first time since she started teaching. She teaches one mean yoga class. I don’t think I’ve ever been sweatier while technically standing still.
這週我們一直在嘗在家裡多說中文。我不能聽好。 (We’ve been trying to speak more Mandarin at home this week. My skills are somewhere between “disappointing” and “that didn’t make any sense.”)

← Previous Page 2 of 10 Next →