Mar 18, 2026

Jerry Bergonzi Quintet livestream from earlier today 🎷 www.youtube.com/watch

Mar 18, 2026

A minor annoying visual bug on the iPhone lock screen in 26.3.1 (a). Should I be filing a Radar?

Mar 18, 2026

Do you think that someday through some combination of AirPlay and other magic, those overpowered Apple displays that have A-series processors in them might one day be able to let you walk up to any random display and keyboard setup and just magically run macOS wherever you go right off your phone?

Mar 18, 2026

I continue to wonder when the hell Spotify is going to ship a basic yet somehow novel accessibility feature called light mode. 🤔

Mar 18, 2026

I was already into computers, so I got tapped to make a webpage to promote the CD. The obscenely long URL for which is printed on the back of the jewel case. One notable 90s quirk is that URLs often would often end in htm instead of html. I think this was because I made it on Windows 3.1!

Mar 18, 2026

When I was a kid, our 6th grade class recorded an album. My dad worked for Muzak, and was able to pull in some favors to assist with its production. The result aired nationally in every McDonald’s for a period of time. Someone’s selling a copy on eBay right now: www.ebay.com/itm/32665…

Mar 17, 2026

I’m just getting around to watching the Apple at 50 event with David Pogue at the Computer History Museum. It’s super entertaining! www.youtube.com/watch

Mar 16, 2026

The OOBE and Windows Update experience is patently awful. I’m really not exaggerating. See for yourself: www.youtube.com/watch

Mar 14, 2026

A lower entry point to the Mac will increase its market share and push Apple to focus on polish. Meanwhile, the MacBook Neo has rebooted the PC war at a time where Apple has footholds everywhere: www.theverge.com/report/89…

Mar 14, 2026

The end of Intel support on macOS draws nearer: eclecticlight.co/2026/03/1…

Mar 14, 2026

Been trying to reduce my reliance on centralized social media for news gathering. Recently, I switched away from Reeder over to NetNewsWire, an RSS reader that’s quickly become one of my favorite apps. Has a very clean interface and is FAST to update and sync between devices.

netnewswire.com

Mar 10, 2026

Cancer’s a real bastard. RIP Greg.

Mar 8, 2026

Hey @wsdot I’d love it if you guys could please get a grip on all the super dangerous potholes in Seattle! Second time in the last few months. 😡

Mar 8, 2026

Lil Finder Guy is adorable! I’d like to see him in a webcomic with Discord’s Wumpus. 😆 basicappleguy.com/basicappl…

It’s Self-Check or Get Out

Mar 7, 2026

Towards the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader tells a surprised and frustrated Lando Calrissian, “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.” Over the last decade, amidst the rise of automation, an increasingly normal part of the retail experience is self-checkout at the grocery store. Introduced simply as a time-saving supplemental convenience for customers, its use has shifted into a means of aggressive cost-cutting. This has both severely diminished the customer experience and revealed a more nefarious long-term goal pursued by the operators of large retail chains: The elimination of virtually all cashier roles.

Consider that it’s late on Friday evening, about eight-thirty, and you decide to get a jump on the weekend by getting some shopping out of the way. You drive over to your local supermarket and fill up your cart full of items for the next week. Then you head up to the front, and what you find is distressing: An array of regular cashier stations, which, although spacious and plentiful, are closed, and one poor attendant who is tasked with oversight of 8-12 cramped self-checkout stations.

Given that going through self-checkout with a packed cart is a nontrivial task, you don’t find this to be convenient at all, and although you would prefer not to be a bother, you ask politely if there’s anyone around who can do normal checkout. Eventually, a manager arrives who is curt and dismissive of your request, and before you’ve even had a chance to verbally express a word, she’s already issued an ultimatum to you, “You’re just going to have to use self-checkout.”

I left.

Automation has played a vital role in the advancement of human civilization, but it doesn’t require one to be a Luddite to recognize that something different and new is happening here: Management views providing a basic customer experience as a chore, rather than a vital part of their business strategy.

This situation isn’t going to get better. It was recently announced that Kroger (a conglomerate including QFC and Fred Meyer) and Albertsons (a conglomerate including Safeway and Haggen) are going to merge, pending regulatory approval. This will leave us with fewer choices and less competition, consequently resulting in increased grocery prices.

In our own backyard, Amazon (owner of Whole Foods) has been brazen about its pursuit of a cashierless future. In 2018, the very first Amazon Go location opened up to the public right here in Seattle. Although Amazon has since closed a number of these stores, they have been offering this technology to other retailers, as BBC News reported in March 2020. While their “Just Walk Out” implementation is significantly more convenient than what’s currently on offer at most local supermarket chains, the future of the role of cashier is clearly in jeopardy.

An added dystopian dimension to the story of retail automation has been the narrative of increasing retail theft and the addition of highly prominent teams of onsite armed security personnel appearing in place of folks tasked with augmenting the shopping experience. It would seem to be an unintended consequence of removing humans from the transaction as a cost-cutting measure. At a time of price hikes we should be asking ourselves what these changes mean for the future. What’s next?

For what it’s worth, I reached out to Safeway’s corporate office regarding my own experience at the E Madison St store and specifically asked about their policy regarding self-checkout. A spokesperson for the company stated that their policy is to ensure that at least one regular checkout stand is available at any given time; clearly, there’s a misalignment of expectations from corporate and the reality in the field.

This story originally appeared in the April 2024 issue of Leschi News on page six.

Mar 5, 2026

Can’t get Michael Brecker’s lines in Arc of the Pendulum out of my mind: youtu.be/awwj-W7BR… 🎵

Mar 4, 2026

THR: The Orville might get another season www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-new…

Mar 3, 2026

Was gifted a great coffee recently called Amantolli cafe con vanilla. Very tasty – finished that up way too fast!

I’ll be brewing Kitty Town Coffee vanilla buttercream today. ☕️

Feb 25, 2026

If you’re trying to export a document from Pages on macOS, try not using the built-in PDF exporter. Instead, use File… > Print > PDF… > Save as Adobe PDF and check Smallest File Size. This may only work if you have Acrobat installed. Went from 2.6MB -> 23KB. Hell of a reduction!

Feb 24, 2026

Kayla and I visited the Lombardi Trophy when it was at Bellevue Square. ✨