Some thoughts while on vacation.
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YouTube is mostly a time suck
In an effort to deal with my unfortunate issue with Google 2FA I installed YouTube on my phone since it was once installed and running there and I wondered if it would activate without a 2FA code and allow me to accept the YouTube 2FA prompt on my phone. Out of the box, no dice. It was a first install and required a 2FA prompt on the iPad back in British Columbia.
A few days later I tapped the icon again and it was authorized on my account and was now able to accept 2FA prompts. Yes I’m happy I can get into that other Google account again but that does seem like a security hole to me.
The important part is that I had YouTube on my phone signed into my account though and it was by far the best device I had on hand to watch Tour de France updates on (see the slow internet thing next). My issue comes with, what do I do with my time after I’ve caught up on the TdF updates that come in between 1 PM and 3 PM? Or what about later in the day when we’re sitting around and I have my phone in my pocket?
Good Curtis would not have his phone in his pocket, but Curtis in the real world scrolls dumb stuff because he’s a normal human and thus falls prey to the videos YouTube serves to him.
Once my daughter is authorized on YouTube again so she can watch kids content on her new device I’ll delete the YouTube app from my phone and set up proper 2FA with rolling codes. Then my phone has no app that’s a temptation and I’m much less likely to put it in my pocket unless I need it.
Slow Internet isn’t that bad
At home I’m spoiled with symmetrical fiber internet. My real world speed wireless is around 300mb each way and wired around 700mb. My in-laws live in a neighbourhood built in the 1980’s though in a rural town called Meaford Ontario and while Bell was putting fiber in to the city they’re not putting it here because they have to share the lines with smaller carriers and they don’t feel that’s fair since they have to put the lines in1.
This leaves the house I spent most time at with 4mb down and .5mb up with 7 people trying to use the internet at times. Needless to say it’s slow and I can’t even get my own website to load reliably from my preferred working/thinking space on the outdoor deck.
Still with this slow internet the only things I couldn’t do here that I do back in my office is video calls and YouTube2. I can still write code and send it to Github and to our build server. Text is small and doesn’t need a lot of bandwidth to go online.
I could still earn my full wage from my current job on the internet above. The biggest thing I’m giving up is watching a lot of videos, which really doesn’t hurt me that much. I’d be better served reading books anyway.
I’m not downgrading my internet, but the lack of limitation does have me thinking about the things I don’t need to be doing with my time because I don’t miss them.
Reaffirming book notes in a notebook
For reasons that I won’t get into I’ve been taking my notes on Saving Time by Jenny Odell directly into Obsidian and the book has been taking quite a while to get through. While on vacation I have read 2 other books and taken notes in my notebook. I know I’m on vacation and less likely to reach for my computing device, but I think that one of the reasons that Saving Time has been read so slow is that I need to get out a device to continue with the notes.
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So, once this is done I’ll pull my notebook out and finish the book while taking notes in my notebook. Once I’m back in BC I’ll sit down for a few days and process those notes from all the books I’ve read which will get them into Obsidian.
It’s easy to resist the time it takes to process notes and feel like you’re not making progress because you’re not reading the next book. If you’re not reading the next book then the yearly books read number isn’t going up, and we do like the numbers to go up.
My goal in reading isn’t to simply read the maximum number of books though. I want to extract good ideas so I can make more sense of the world around me and share my thoughts here. That doesn’t require more books, it requires good thinking.
I need to start maximizing for good thinking and notes instead of simply more books read.
- Politics is what it comes down to. Bell is what paid for my in-laws house since my wife’s father worked there for his entire career and has a great pension from them. ↩︎
- If I had multiple kids needing video calls to participate in school, which they do here on snow days, my internet would be entirely inadequate though. This is one reason I think Bell should be mandated to put fiber into homes as the incumbent career in the area. ↩︎