Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1596
Products: Caffeine free Zevia, Rain-X, discontinued Burton hoodies, Youtube, iOS 25, Tahoe. David J. Sanada Maitreya.
Good morning good morning. Just back from dropping Jane off and two grocery stores. On Tuesday when I was loading up on Caffeine Free Zevia at the Teet aka Harris Teeter, the old man who mans the self-checkout told me with remarkable assurance that not only did the new Food Lion definitely have Caffeine Free Zevia, but it was also on sale over there, also at $4.99 a six-pack (as opposed to the normal price of eight bucks). He was very confident.
Whenever the Caffeine Free Zevia is on sale, I buy them out of it, then I come back sometime during the week and buy them out of it again, thus stocking up on enough of it to get through the expensive period until they have a sale again. This saves me about $50 a month. Back when I lived in New York and owned a posh digital agency and ran the Kashi account, the Kashi people would tell me that there were people like this in the world, who cut coupons and watched for sales. It seemed extraordinary to me, an absolute waste of time.
Reader, I have become that person.
Anyway, it seemed unlikely, extraordinarily unlikely even, that the new Food Lion had Caffeine Feee Zevia. No one carries it around these parts except the Teet. It also seemed extraordinarily unlikely that they also had it on sale, same time as the Teet. I mean, I know grocery chains fuck with each other and whatnot, but come on, we’re not talking Gala Apples or Doritos here. No one buys this stuff.
So yesterday, after dropping Jane off, I thought about stopping at the Food Lion to check, but decided to play it safe and just hit the Teet again for more CFZ. Unfortunately they had not re-stocked yet, so I left empty-handed.
Decided today to give the Food Lion a whirl. I had been there yet since it opened about a year ago. We are plenty-well served by grocery stores and unless Publix is coming (it’s not, they tried and got ran out due to drainage issues and NIMBYism), I am good. Also Food Lion is a little downscale. Or was. I mean, we’re not talking Piggly Wiggly level, where the downscaleness is charming, but rather just sort of meh. Not enough organics, etc.
But I decided to give it a go nonetheless. And, reader, they did not have Caffeine Free Zevia. The old man was deceived. Fell into the all-too-common trap amongst American Consumers of being unable to discern the graphical difference in packaging between a normal, caffeinated soda and the caffeine-free variant. Alas.
(N.B. to the style guide monsters amongst us, I have elected to capitalize and non-hyphenate “Caffeine Free” when it is part of a product name but to do the opposite when I am discussing the characteristic outside the context of a product name. I am on the fence about this.)
So, then, back to the Teet, where they had finally restocked, so I bought nine more six-packs. I think we are good until the next sale, in three or four weeks’ time. Might do it one more time, though. TBD.
And then I had another conversation with the old man who told me he had just been to the Food Lion and it was still on sale. I didn’t actually look at the price when I was at the Food Lion, I was in and out. But I did take a moment to explain to this man that this was the caffeine-free variant, and they definitely didn’t have it at Food Lion, I know the packages look similar but see, this one has grey here, not light blue, see?
He had just started becoming friendly after two-plus years of being there every morning. I fear I have broken our young, delicate friendship. Alas.
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We are listening today to a recently arrived vinyl copy of David J’s 1990 album Songs From Another Season. Have had it on CD since it came out, was one of my favorite albums of the late 80’s, and now I own it on vinyl. It is one of those cheap-ass super-thin late 80’s early 90’s vinyl slabs they were still begrudgingly putting out as CDs rose to domination. Has a price tag on it for $3.99. I just used one of those inflation calculator sites and it tells me $3.99 in 1990 is worth $9.89 today. I paid $14.99. Not the worst.
My phone decided to play both “Solar Choir” by the Creatures and the orchestral version of “Sit Down” by James again today, off of the 10,000+ shuffle playlist. It has played both within the last week. I do not approve of this.
I assume this happened because I finally upgraded to iOS 26 last night. The tech nerds have stopped grumbling about it on the socials, so I figure it was safe. And it seems pretty good. There are two things I desperately want out of it — the weather widget in CarPlay, and the call screening. I have enabled the weather widget. It is okay. It maddeningly does not have precipitation by hour, the thing you would most want in your automobile. I do not understand why Apple doesn’t give me this. So weird. Neither does Accuweather.
I’m not super enamored with the liquid glass nonsense. I might turn it off at some point, but I’m trying. It really just feels like needlessly additional cognitive load to read your text on non-solid backgrounds and, man, I got enough to think about. TBD.
Did the Tahoe OSX upgrade a few weeks ago, so now I am complete on this upgrade cycle. Tahoe was pretty inoffensive. Liquid Glass is very minimal on the Mac, barely noticed it. The colored Safari bar is a bit over-the-top, and I keep meaning to turn it off. Occasionally it goes crazy and turns bright yellow or something, but it hasn’t been so bad that I have gotten around to turning it off. They did not fix the stupid thing where the Dock won’t stay on one monitor. My preview crashes seem to be fixed. Assigned key-commands do not seem to stick in Preview still. The subtle little animation when it auto-fills your password is cute. As mentioned yesterday, my Kindle Automator script still works, so that is nice.
All-in-all, not the worst batch of Apple OS updates. I suspect working on the Mac OS team there is like working in the basement or something, like red stapler guy in Office Space. They mostly leave you alone so long as you don’t fuck up the OS too bad.
I must have been predicting the future last week when I went on about the possible triumphant tour of Sanada Maitreya, fka Terence Trent D’Arby. For he has returned! Thank you to GMHHAY Slack member Patty for this information. He played London the other day. Unfortunately for his wallet, but very good for his dignity, he billed the show as a Sanada Maitreya show and not a Terence Trent D’Arby show, so it did not sell out. So, I guess I got it half right: he’s back, but not gonna use the name everyone knows. Good for him and his morals. I hope he has no grumpy heirs.
Guardian review: Sanada Maitreya: The Former Terence Trent D’Arby Returns in Astonishing Vocal Form.
My uncle Jack is a big fan of this Rain-X stuff to apply to your windshield to make them better with the rain, anyone use this stuff? He told me a pretty compelling story about when he was a pilot for American out of Guam and he was in the cockpit landing on some small atoll, and the co-pilot swore by the stuff and used it on her side of the cockpit window, and the pilot pooh-poohed it and didn’t use it, and they had to land in a big storm and the pilot couldn’t see a thing and the co-pilot could see fine. BUT THEN! He put it on his window when we were coming back from that awesome Shriner’s Hotel, and it honestly made the window look smeary? Emma and I have been discussing windshied efficacy of late, I got new wipers and they worked great for, like, two weeks, and now are less than satisfactory. I am thinking of trying this stuff, but… I dunno, man. I am torn. Anyone have any experience?
Hey you know those plastic laundry bags they have at hotels? Why do they have this perforated strip at the top that always rips off? Oh shit it’s to tie the bag shut, isn’t it? Well. That makes sense. NEVER MIND. Thank you, GMHHAY for your help in this matter.
Reader Mike told me about this amazing “flight hoodie” that Burton used to make that had a pillow in it and a eye-mask and other amazing features designed for comfortable sleep on a plane and now I want one so bad but apparently they do not make them anymore. I need to get the exact model number and set up an eBay alert. But if any readers know of a similar item currently being offered by someone, I am all ears.
Big news on the Youtube player front. The version of Youtube on the Hotel TV last week did not offer any sped-up viewing. And so when I got home on Tuesday I was very excited to get back to my Apple TV that offered sped-up Youtube viewing up to 2x. I have been dimly aware that the browser offered youtube playing up to 3x, and was jealous of it, but honestly 2x is good enough most of the time. Well, now, Youtube on the Apple TV now offers sped-up playing up to 3x. VERY EXCITING.
Also the Youtube interface on that smart TV was nominally the same as Apple TV — same menus, same location of everything. But it had zero subtle animations and it had no ability to scroll fast, remote response time was laggy AF and was just an inferior experience. The ability to consciously discern its superiority was subtle, but overall, all the little tweaks and enhancements Apple offered really added up. Kinda fascinating. I wonder if other people notice this, miss it. I wonder if anyone using a crappy smart TV Youtube interface even knows what they’re missing. Real solid reason to use an Apple TV even when your TV “offers everything.”
There are probably a ton of other products where I am using an inferior version, like a smart TV version of Youtube, and I don’t even know oh shit oh shit.
Jane did gymnastics in her halloween costume last night and it was real cute. There was a ladybug too and a Rumi from KPDH and a few other costumed gymnasts. She did this amazing jump off of a trampoline, full flip and landed on her feet, I was real impressed. And she nailed that thing where you gotta drop a ball in the bucket from your feet while on the uneven bars, and that other one where you gotta take a ball in a spoon across the balance beam while avoiding objects. All very impressive. I would not say she’s gonna become, like, an Olympic gymnast or anything, but she sure can do more than I can. Also no tantrums at bedtime. All around great Jane day A+ no complaints.
Shoegaze playlist for you today, all new trax. Lotta good new shoegaze as ever. Oh wait I lied this Loveliescrushing track is old, rest is new. Crazy there is more Drop Ninetens in 2025. Big fan of Stargazer lilies. This Highspire is a new discovery but they are promising, ditto Blankenbarge and Just Mustard, though, unfortunate name, huh?
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.