Week 45, 2024

I'm feeling completely worn out while writing these notes today, as yesterday I went to São Paulo to attend to a professional appointment, along with many company colleagues. Going to São Paulo means I have to wake up way earlier than the usual, as any assigned transportation needs to leave my employer's premises as soon as possible, so we arrive in time. Our agenda was supposed to start at 08:30 in the morning, and our destination was located downtown. For me, this meant waking up at 4AM to dress up and have breakfast before 4:45, when my ride picked me up and took me to work, where our bus was supposed to leave at 5:30 sharp.

But not only me, all of us were greeted with heavy, cold rain. In practice, this meant taking the road almost 30 minutes after the scheduled time — and arriving late, at 09:20 in the morning, thanks to the effects a rainy São Paulo usually causes in its already heavy, normal traffic. Thus, the appointment started later, and our estimated time to leave the capital — 5PM — was delayed to 7:30PM. The heavy rain followed us all day long, and if you've never tried to leave São Paulo on a Friday once rush hour comes, and with rain, you're going to be surprised it took us more than an hour to completely leave the city, followed by another hour and a half on the road. I arrived back at the company at 10:30PM, followed by around 20 minutes a ride to finally be home. Due to attending to personal matters, when I finally went to bed, it was past 1AM on Saturday — making Friday, the 8th, therefore, the day when I almost remained awake for 24 hours.

As I have not written weeknotes for the past two weeks, though, I decided to do it this time, tired or not, as to not lose the practice. So, here I am.

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We finished watching season 4 of Only Murders in the Building.

The overall story was fine, although I have to admit it this wasn't my favorite season. As usual, suspense was there until the very last moments, but I don't know... I guess this time the story was too thin for my taste, compared to the previous 3 seasons. I don't know whether season 5 will come anytime soon (haven't looked for clues on the web, either) but the season's cliffhanger was definitely there. All in all, OMITB remains one of my favorite shows.

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Due to lack of usage as of lately, I have cancelled my Netflix subscription and told more details in this post (in Portuguese). With Max cancelled before and Globoplay cancelled along Netflix, I'm now three streaming services short[er], although that doesn't mean I'm short of options to watch.

I'm an, for instance, enjoying Slow Horses on Apple TV+. That's a show I'd been meaning to watch for some time, due to a lot of people telling me about it, but also because I like thrillers... and having finished Ted Lasso with quite sometime of Apple TV+ trial period ahead, yet, I saw no reason not to pick the show up. It didn't disappoint me — I watched the first season in three days, and also picked up the book series by Mick Herron on which the TV show's based to read.

I am also watching a new anime, recommended by my son: Mashle: Magic and Muscles is a story where everyone has magic abilities, and their social status is defined by their skill level with it. Everyone but Mash, who can't use magic, a secret that can seriously put him and the ones around him at risk.

The thing about Mashle is that not only we binge watched the whole first season in 2 days (with my older son watching every episode for the second time), I also had lots of fun after discovering that in many aspects the anime looks like a Harry Potter's rip-off. I mean, not to the point where the authors would face legal trouble, or anything, but still, many coincidences there. If you like anime, you should definitely give this one a chance.

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I have switched mobile carriers this week. As my binding period to TIM came to an end, I decided to ditch it after many years — the decisive point to do it being that their 5G reception where I live was continuously deteriorating.

I then picked up Claro, a carrier my parents use (and like a lot), which also is the ones in my kids' phones. Once I requested my number's portability, it was a matter of less than 3 days to be operating in the new carrier, and I'm satisfied so far — the service is fair, the 5G reception is good, and I've found myself a better deal, paying much less for similar benefits.

The only annoyance? Having to deal with many calls and messages from TIM offering me promotions, trying to convince me not to change. This has irritated me a lot, mostly because they keep calling me, sending me SMS after SMS and leaving me computerized voice mails — before portability was concluded, which I believe it's only fair, but after it was over, too. And this is the nuisance... I do hope they give up on this insistence, eventually.

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Lastly, I was very sad to hear that Omnivore is being discontinued by the end of November. Its developers have changed jobs and are joining a new company, although not taking the project with them, which is to remain open source and open to contributions. A lot of discussion has happened as of the last days in their Discord server, with people trying to find alternative read-it-later services.

Being a Raindrop.io user for quite some time now, I've embraced it as my replacement, and I intend to publish a dedicated post about that soon™.

#english #weeknotes