The Tale of Gaijin

Name Conflict: Print_Area

2009-06-04T14:15:00.005+09:00

While upgrading our Windows XP PCs from Microsoft Office 2000 to Microsoft Office 2003 I encountered a strange bug in the way Excel stores the print area settings.

A user with Office 2003 could not open an XLS file created with Office 2000. An error dialog box would appear titled "Name Conflict" and containing the message "Name cannot be the same as a built-in name. Old name: Print_Area".

After some online research using the very helpful Name Manager I realized that there seemed to be a bug in the way the newer Excel interpreted the way the older version stored the print area that a user had set via the File->Print Area->Set Print Area option.

Opening the file with another copy of Office and clearing all the set print areas (using File->Print Area->Clear Print Area) allowed the user with Office 2003 to successfully open the file. This problem is also solved in this forum post although I didn't find it until I had a good idea of what was going on.

More detail: a different install of Office 2003 had no problems opening the file from the beginning. The problem file had originally been created and last modified using Office 2000 on a Windows 2000 PC.

Japanese Keyboard Undetected

2008-10-20T15:19:00.005+09:00

After installing a Japanese edition of Windows XP onto an HP desktop with a Japanese keyboard I was surprised to discover that it thought it was connected to a keyboard with a US "international" layout. When I installed the OS it had been attached to a US keyboard, but Windows hadn't updated when I swapped the proper keyboard in.

In the "Regional and Language Options" control panel "Text Services and Input Languages" was set to "Japanese." I couldn't find anywhere else to change the setting until I found this helpful entry. Windows needs to be forced to use the Japanese driver.

Windows Updates Fail: Register wups2.dll

2008-09-19T16:27:00.004+09:00

Working on restoring a bunch of desktops to their pristine state I discovered that one of them could no longer install Windows updates.

It's an HP Compaq d530 SFF, although I'm not sure that the hardware had much to do with this problem. After restoring the HDD to the factory state using the original Windows XP SP2 CDs, and installing SP3, I discovered that every Windows update attempt failed.

Apparently there is a dll that needs to be registered and installing SP3 right after restoring the system can cause this.

It's a Jungle in Here

2008-08-14T13:01:00.004+09:00

Earlier this week the company that checks our school's safety equipment came in to do some more testing. The refrigerator-sized rack of equipment is two meters from my desk, so I'm able to peek over their shoulders while they work. During part of this testing they plugged in a portable CD player and broadcast that over the speakers that cover the school grounds. Presumably the constant audio from the CD let them test that announcements could be heard everywhere.

They could easily have used a CD with some elevator music or some sort of digital tone, but we were all pleasantly surprised to hear the chatter of birdsong fill our office for the afternoon. Occasionally this was interrupted by a woman announcing ongoing tests of the emergency public address system, but it was generally very peaceful. It actually made me want to pick up a set of those nature sounds CDs.

The next day I was doing some network maintenance in our ground floor main office and had to wheel some desk drawers out of the way. As I did so I exposed a tiny, light gray lizard no bigger than my pinkie finger for about half a second before it disappeared under a different desk. I succeeded in flushing it from cover a second time but really had no chance of catching it. I couldn't even locate it after that. We're not far from the garden beds and forests that surround the school, but there are no doors that communicate directly with the outside from the office where I spotted it. What's next, a raid on our snack stash by wild monkeys?

Glowing Sky

2008-07-28T12:23:00.004+09:00

Another relaxed weekend. I logged a 9.6km jog on Friday night, my longest so far, the disembodied voice of Paula Radcliffe informed me. Saturday was spent relaxing, cleaning, and scouting for wedding supplies. Sunday was spent looking at some more invitations at Itoya's headquarters in Ginza, enjoying some choice an-pan, and then heading to Futago-shinchi for pickup. The IKU ladies' team has been practicing in a serious way already- they had been out there for three hours in the AM. Our men's squad has yet to begin drilling, which has me a little worried. The next tournament is the first weekend in September, men's nationals.

It has been hot and humid for the past couple weeks, and the cicadas are out screeching away in the cherry trees on our street. A cloudy sky and a little bit of rain helped cool things down during pickup on Sunday, and then led to a spectacular sunset. People were stopping in the street to gawk. Myself included. The sky in the east was a dark blue, changing to mauve overhead, and bright, glowing orange in the west. Some lightning was doing its thing to the north for good measure.

Earthquake in Iwate

2008-07-24T09:12:00.002+09:00

Despite the high heat and humidity (currently 29C/74%) we had a good pickup ultimate game in Hiroo last night. Many of the normal handlers on our team were not there so I got a chance to pretend I was handler.

Afterward I made a quick dinner with miso soup, grilled aji (horse mackerel), rice, green salad, corn on the cob (JPY300 for two ears), and leftover okonomiyaki.

Just as I was getting ready to shower before bed last night the building began to shake, and continued to do so for about 30 seconds. Nothing fell over. The earthquake was centered in Iwate prefecture and although it struck when most people were already at home, some 90 people were taken to the hospital with injuries. NHK coverage showed lots of broken window glass, fallen brick, and cracked ceilings. As a result of watching the coverage I didn't get to bed until 2am.

These events are always good motivation to inspect the contents of my "evacuation" backpack. Time to restock as it turned out.

Too Many People In the Subway

2008-07-23T08:57:00.004+09:00

The first line I ride in my morning commute is the Marunouchi line, one of the oldest subway lines in the city. Somehow they haven't yet lengthened the platform to handle more subway cars. In addition it travels to some of the places where office buildings are most highly concentrated here, such as Otemachi, Tokyo, and Shinjuku stations. As a result it's jam packed during morning rush hour. As I got on this morning carrying my gear for this evening's ultimate pickup, I couldn't squeeze into the car fully and my cleat bag got squished in the closing doors. The nice lady next to me helped me to pull it out when they briefly opened them again.

A few stations down the line some poor woman's sweater was hooked by the fastener on some guy's satchel. He dragged her out of the train car before he realized what had happened.

Now that the G8 Summit has concluded, the police presence is back to normal, the trash cans in the stations are back in use, and the vending machines are once again accessible. I can't say I understood the security risks posed by machines selling fizzy drinks in plastic bottles and canned coffee to start with.

I noticed a guy standing outside the small bookstore by Myogadani station this morning with a banner, making some sales pitch. When someone is doing this at 8am here in Tokyo, it usually means they are running for a political office, but then I noticed he was wearing a vivid, pointed turquoise cap and the banner informed passersby that the Japanese edition of the last Harry Potter book was now on sale. That's almost exactly one year later than the English language edition, by my estimate.

In other news, butter seems to be slowly returning to the stores. My local supermarket now has it taking up a tiny corner of the refrigerated case that is full of 30 different types of margarine. The cheapest price looked to be JPY480 for 200g (that's about USD4.50 for 7oz.).

Made hiyashi-chuuka again last night, leaving out the ham as usual. A simple, satisfying summer dish.

Kawasaki Frontare 3, Urawa Reds 1

2008-07-22T15:40:00.006+09:00

It was a relatively quiet weekend, doing wedding planning and such. Got my hands on a demo iPhone for the first time, and later saw two teammates with their own. It seems demand has remained strong. My friend Doug had to wait in line from 7am until 10am (when the store opened) and then another hour+ inside the store to get his. I saw a sign on the door to a minor Softbank shop in Ikebukuro giving notice that they would receive a shipment of 20 more units the following day, but that no one would be allowed to line up before midnight. Furthermore they weren't taking reservations as they didn't know when the next shipment would arrive. So far Softbank is the only Japanese carrier offering the phones.

I also made a brief visit to Akihabara which was great as always. I went to buy some specific cables for our KVM setup at work, cables that I couldn't find at either of the huge mainstream shops I checked. After getting that taken care of and wishing I had some project in which I could utilize the myriad plastic gears, pulleys, and assorted bits and bobs, I happened upon the new Asus Eee 900 PC. I had been eagerly awaiting its release, and it met my expectations. Weighing less than 1kg it still showed decent speed and the keyboard wasn't unusably small. I also located a kit for replacing the battery in my old iPod, another project in the works. On my way out I also passed by the temporary memorial where people had left offerings to the victims of the deadly attack last month.

On Monday, a holiday (Marine Day) I went with seven teammates to watch the J-League soccer match between the Urawa Reds (top ranked in their division) and the Kawasaki Frontare (ranked 6th). This was the first time I had attended a professional soccer game and definitely enjoyed the experience. Our seats were JPY2,500 each and were located way in the back of the home side. The view still seemed fine. The Reds, who are known for their rowdy (by Japanese standards) fans, dominated the first 15 minutes of the game, capitalizing on a defensive slip by Frontare to score the first goal after a near miss off the crossbar. Frontare stepped up their offense after that and traded possession evenly with the Reds until tying the score at the end of the first half. The second half opened with Frontare dominating the field and scoring two more goals to crush their opponents.

It was good to watch soccer again, something I hadn't done since the last world cup. The temperature was lovely in the open air, half roofed stadium as the game began at 6pm. The highlight for me though was that they let you bring in your own food and drink! I've never heard of a venue like this in the US. The only wrinkle was that beer in cans had to be emptied into paper cups they provided. The also conducted a cursory search of our bags on the way in. I packed in freshly boiled edamame, home popped popcorn, and frozen grapes which were all consumed with gusto by my companions (and me).

After I returned home I discovered Minako freaking out over a large cockroach in our apartment. It has been brutally hot and humid here for the past two weeks, apparently bringing out the bugs. This was the first one I'd seen since moving in a couple months ago. I eradicated it, but managed to sprain the thumb on my throwing hand in the process. Hopefully it'll be less sore by the time pickup rolls around on Wednesday.

Increased Security For the Hokkaido Summit

2008-07-01T10:44:00.006+09:00

The upcoming G8 summit meeting in Hokkaido has been on my radar for some time now. Large posters in Japanese and English are all over the subway system explaining the presence of the safety-orange vest wearing security guards on patrol. Starting this past week these have also been reinforced with uniformed police who are highly visible, batons drawn and ready, outside the ticket gates at every station I've used recently. Minako suggested that this could be explained because the diplomats might be flying in to Tokyo and then catching connecting flights to the summit venue in the far north.

When I went shopping yesterday near my workplace, I noticed three officers standing at attention next to three separate telescoping metal gates, ready to block off their respective roads. I had certainly seen these gates around town before, as they're a permanent fixture on the roads anywhere near the US embassy, but this was the first time I'd seen them on the way to the market. It turns out, according to Google Maps, that the German Embassy is directly behind National Azabu. There is a building marked as "Chinese People's Japanese Cooperation Building, Embassy Annex" close by, and the French, Norwegian, and Finnish embassies are each just a block away, in different directions. I knew this was a big embassy area, but I didn't realize how dense they really are on the ground here. I have to say all this security makes me uncomfortable. Maybe it's time to start seriously considering the move to someplace quiet, like Hokkaido. Oh, wait...where was that summit going on again?

Butter Shortages

2008-07-01T09:40:00.004+09:00

The first time I heard about this issue was in a brief mention in the blog of another foreigner living quite nearby me. Then I made a (delicious) quiche that exhausted all the butter in our fridge. When Minako went to get some more she found that our local supermarket Santoku, normally a veritable cornucopia of comestible delights from around Japan and overseas, had almost no butter on the shelves. Single stick packages of pre-sliced pats was all they had in stock.

I had some time to check out the situation yesterday and found that margarine has almost entirely replaced butter on the shelves of two high-end supermarkets near my office: National Azabu and Meidi-ya. What they did have was predominantly imported and they both had signs describing their policy of one package of butter per customer. Naturally the prices were higher than usual as well.

After being used to American and Japanese abundances, this was pretty shocking. Apparently increased costs for dairy food stocks as well as higher demand for dairy products is to blame.

Weekend Cleaning

2008-06-24T10:12:00.004+09:00

This past weekend saw some appropriately rainy weather for the season. I spent Saturday trimming, repotting, and trying to control the infestation of tiny black flies in the black mint in our balcony garden. We had dinner with Minako's father down the street at a Japanese seafood place with pretty good food. It was hard to enjoy the meal though because he was in a mood to talk, not so much to listen.

On Sunday Minako went to the Moriyama Daido exhibition (600kb PDF) at the Museum of Photography in Ebisu with a friend. Since my regular Sunday ultimate frisbee practice/pick-up was canceled due to rain this left me with time to pick up our apartment a bit. Our bedroom feels much more spacious this way, but there is still a long way to go before I can feel we have really finished unpacking. Minako has a lot of stuff. To be fair, I also would have a lot if I was living just a short walk from my childhood home.

Minako cooked some tasty minestrone soup and grilled a whole aji (鰺, horse mackerel) for dinner. I sautéed some cubes from the last of my whole wheat bread from last weekend in olive oil for croutons and made a green salad to round out the meal. The rain is keeping the temperature down nicely.

Friday Quiche

2008-06-24T08:43:00.007+09:00

On Friday I made a version of quiche lorraine from the Ultimate Recipe Book that Minako bought me last year. It's an interesting volume of what are apparently classic recipes in Britain. Each begins with a synopsis of the author's attempts to refine these recipes and which well known chefs she consulted along the way. The second half of each recipe describes the perfected process with accompanying photos of the steps. The ingredients are printed in bold in a sidebar so you can choose to skip right to the chase if you've already read the introduction.

I particularly enjoyed this approach because it gave me some small windows into the way other cultures approach food. Several of the recipes included were not previously familiar to me, such as the British version of flapjacks which are more like cookies than pancakes. Last year I also made the French onion soup from this book which turned out quite a lot stronger than expected— even on the second attempt.

In making the quiche I substituted some chopped spinach and cheddar cheese I had on hand for the bacon and gruyere the recipe called for. The crust came out far better than I had expected, although I did use the food processor to mix the dough as called for in the book. The final result was quite rich indeed, improving from something like an egg custard to a more substantial quiche with chilling.

Thursday Malaysian

2008-06-13T09:37:00.003+09:00

Had the extra-large version of the standard breakfast. Half a grapefruit, one slice of homemade toast with no sugar added peanut butter, and muesli with a banana over yogurt.

Work was relatively busy. One task was to convert a DVD of a school musical production to a size and format that would fit on the website. Not knowing anything about video formats, I'm still fiddling with settings in Handbrake to get a reasonable result. The other main task was to assist a teacher from the Japanese department in embedding some pages of text and images she had laid out on paper and had scanned in. Some training is definitely in order.

Thursday was supposed to be weeknight pickup but the fields we use are inside a middle school and they are very protective of them. Thus the morning rain canceled our ultimate for the week.

The silver lining was that when out of the blue Tia invited me to dinner in Ikebukuro I was free. She took me to a Malaysian place which had pretty tasty food with a homey atmosphere. Satoshi joined us a bit later after he got out of work.

Wednesday Japanese

2008-06-12T09:03:00.008+09:00

Didn't have time for breakfast at home, packed leftovers from Wednesday night dinner (gnocchi in tomato sauce) and homemade white bread for lunch (via Joy of Cooking). Ate some of the bread with peanut butter and two bananas at my desk for breakfast instead. Work was quiet. Graduation day for the students- with the ceremony starting at 6pm.

Had a drink at Agary across the street with Wai Yee after work as she was over to do some banking at the HSBC branch. I tried the nashi (pear) infused "wine" while she had the matatabi infused "wine." The pear was alright but had that stale taste of being over-infused. The matatabi (text and pictures), a distant relative of the kiwi, was new to me and intensely medicinal, although not quite up to Unicum standards. This place has about 15 types of fruit liqueurs aging on the shelves, but I think I've tasted enough now. I'll be giving more though to the several plum wine recipes I had looked at which said to remove the fruit after one year of infusing.

I headed back home but had just fed Gin-chan when Minako's father showed up to deliver some of her mail and chat over green tea. After he left I made a meal of Japanese food:
miso soup from homemade dashi with naga negi and thinly sliced daikon, grilled hokke (a type of mackerel or greeling), plus a couple of Western dishes I made up on the spot. One was a sort of stew of potatoes, tomatoes, green beans, and mizuna flavored with dill weed, fresh dill, and cumin. I also randomly mixed up a side dish from cucumber, diced ginger, avocado, and sliced dried tomatoes. This seems like it would go well in maki-zushi. Bowls of 50/50 white and brown rice, a package of natto and a small plate of pickles from the pickle crock rounded out a satisfying dinner.

Firefox image strangeness

2008-06-11T15:07:00.007+09:00

After setting up my new Windows XP work laptop with Firefox (2.0.0.14) and all the other customizations I normally apply, I noticed that Firefox was no longer as robust as I used to remember. Freezing when opening PDFs, endless looping on some pages, and when opening images on their own, frequent messages to the effect of "[image name] cannot be displayed due to errors." After finally getting fed up with that last issue I went looking and found the solution- disable the Skype Firefox plugin. Apparently this plugin might be responsible for the other strangeness as well. This would go some distance towards restoring my faith in the stability of the application I use the most.

Back to Blog

2008-06-11T14:33:00.003+09:00

Thanks to the laid back hours at my new job as a network/systems administrator at the International School of the Sacred Heart I've got time to blog again. More importantly things have settled down in several parts of my life, letting me relax a bit and try and rebuild my connections as well as my online presence. Stay tuned!

Moving The Office

2007-04-18T23:13:00.001+09:00

My office is moving. A couple kilometers away. But all the staff in the building, along with all their computers, large-screen televisions, and whatnot, are all going. All at once.

I won't be sorry to leave the dilapidated, cramped structure where I've been working for Pioneer during the past year and a half, but I don't have high hopes for the next place being much more spacious. At least I won't have to worry about it falling down if a significant earthquake struck. I'm not sure I've ever been in a building in such a state of poor maintenance, let alone worked in one. I was shocked when I first started working there.

In preparation for the move, decades of old equipment, furniture, and everything else are piling up in the trash collection area. This morning when I arrived, the trash bay was so full of rubbish they had barricaded it off with the ubiquitous black and yellow striped safety poles so that people wouldn't add even more and obstruct the driveway. The bins for styrofoam, cardboard, and assorted circuit boards were full literally to overflowing. I only wish I lived closer to the office so I could cart more of the good stuff home. Unfortunate to see all those great pieces of electronics and office furniture going to the recycling center where they will probably not be reused.

Hopefully there will be more activity around the new building. We are currently a 15 minute walk from the nearest train station, and Kamata Station is nothing big to start with. On the other hand, it has been nice to get out into some of the less packed parts of Tokyo City. It's never crowded there (unlike near my apartment in Shinjuku) and people are friendlier. Once I got harro'ed at from a couple of high school kids as they rode past on their bikes.

Another time, when I was walking back to the office after a trip to the convenience store two blocks away, I passed two elementary school girls who were chatting on the side of the street. One was facing away from me as I walked by and I saw the one who was facing me tap the other on the shoulder. Their giggles reddened my ears as I walked out of range. Apparently they don't see too many balding, bearded & mustachioed white guys in those parts.

Minty Fresh Bird Breath

2007-04-18T22:19:00.001+09:00

On my balconies I'm growing two types of mint. I've got a spearmint plant in a good sized planter that I received —along with my plum tree— from David when he was forced by his landlady to close his rooftop garden. That has always done well, although the mint leaves are not super tasty. Last summer I bought a small black mint at a farmers' market in Yoyogi Park, and coaxed it along through the rest of the hot months when it became infested with some sort of aphid-like pest. During the early spring the black mint took off and was doing quite well indeed.

When I stepped out onto the balcony to water my plants this morning I noticed that many of the branches had partially bitten off leaves! Even some main stems were truncated. Nothing other than a bird could have gotten up here to the 6th floor and done that kind of damage. I've since moved it to the back of the balcony, out of reach of the railing, and will hope that will keep the herbivores away. At least they didn't attack my baby zucchini plants. (knock on wood)

More Classical

2007-04-16T22:52:00.000+09:00

Had a pretty good weekend. Saw a different friend play violin in an orchestra up in Saitama. Totenfeier (Mahler), Prelude & Good Friday Spell from Parsifal (Wagner), Requiem in D-minor K. 626 (Mozart), Requiem (Faure). Quite enjoyable, especially with the chorus joining in for the two requiems. The Mozart actually sounded familiar- I wonder if that was one of the pieces we sang at Bowdoin?

This also reminded me that I wanted to mention this movie which I saw with Minako the better part of a year ago. It was dark and moody, but quite interesting. I'm not sure if I've ever seen any other Armenian films.

I also did some minor gardening on my balcony, moving zucchini seedlings, putting parsley seed in the sprouting trays, and moving permanently potted plants to bigger digs. Hopefully my first attempts at reviving potting soil will work out. My main fertilizer is some bagged worm castings. I still need to locate some actual manure worms to raise on my balcony. I'll give the bait shops one more try before I am forced to go looking online.

The last notable event of the weekend was a trip we took to Popeye (warning: animation heavy page). Definitely the best beer bar I've been to in Japan. It doesn't come close to the Sunset Grill, naturally, but their selection is far bigger than your typical bar in the US, let alone the one or two light lagers most places here stock. My favorites were from Baird. They make good beer. I plan to go back soon. If only they weren't halfway across the city center.

Closed Stores

2007-03-08T23:51:00.000+09:00

Tokyo sees a lot of turnover in shops and buildings, but even so this past couple of weeks has seen more closings than usual. My favorite cafe, Pow Wow, that has been in Kagurazaka, in the same spot, since the 70's has closed. They warned us it might happen, and mentioned they might try and move around the corner. There was no helpful sign on their closed shutter though.

Normally when Japanese stores close, they put up a message to their customers. There are (were) three shops on the ground floor of my apartment building, a cheap ramen shop, a take-out sushi place, and a mom & pop (just pop actually) udon shop. The ramen place is still open, but the other two had notices up on their doors last week indicating they were both closing on the same day. Very suspicious. Further more, this morning the noise of jackhammers from both storefronts was filling the building, reaching into our apartment even, as I was going to work.

I'm waiting for my favorite bar over in Shimokitazawa to close as the city executes their plan for urban-renewal on that area. I protested against that, to no avail.

In other, more upbeat news, I'm really enjoying using Linux on my work computer. I wasn't given a choice of distributions, and have to use the pariah Novell's SuSE, but it's so much more enjoyable working with than that damned Windows XP. The important development tools are all right at my finger tips — I don't need to install any ported cygwin packages or anything. I have to admit I failed to get it running at a normal speed on the latest Intel Core Duo they bought for me, but the speed is fine on the older P4 they found in the backroom.

Actually I got "harassed" by the IT department today when they mentioned, by email, that maybe I had my Windows firewall on my new workstation still up as they couldn't see my computer. All the Windows machines have an app named QND that spies on you while you work, and since I just use Linux all the day, they couldn't detect my machine's presence for several days. Following this my boss told me to boot into Windows while I have my first cup of coffee in the morning, then after the IT department has had a chance to notice my machine, reboot into to Linux. I thought he told them I was using Linux in the first place, but I guess not.

Mmm, coffee.

Musical Week

2007-03-03T10:13:00.000+09:00

Last week was a fun one. Saw my Japanese friend Ken for the first time in months and attended two very different concerts. The first was Yo La Tengo, my favorite band still playing together. I missed their show three years ago on my first week back in Japan, so I was determined to make it to this show. It was totally rockin', actually more than I had expected. I had only seen them once before, at some place in Boston. The Orpheum Theater perhaps?

This time Ira was in noise rock mode. On several songs he was actually swinging his guitar around as he extracted shrieks and wails from it. The tech was re-tuning a guitar for him after nearly every song. Georgia (usually the drummer, although the three of them switch instruments from time to time) didn't look happy for most of the their set, but she smiled a couple times, mainly when she was just doing the vocals at the front of the stage. Last time I saw them I was too far from the stage to see any facial expressions. James was even less of a presence than I had remembered from Boston.

Some of the highlights of the show for me: Let's Save Tony Orlando's House, Stockholm Syndrome, Sugarcube, Cherry Chapstick, even Cast a Shadow. That last was a request. I didn't realize it was originally a Beat Happening track. Shows what I know about indie rock. Nothing from Painful this time either, but I can't really complain too much.

Before they played Mr. Tough they mentioned dancing on stage last time they were in Tokyo, then explained they weren't going to do it this time but asked for volunteers. Since the audience was about 99% Japanese though, no one in the front row reacted to what they were saying at first. Limited English comprehension or not wanting to have anything to with public exposure? Eventually they got three kids jumping around on stage. Ira told them "try not to break anything."

The last surprise for me was that they came back for three encores. Great stuff. I'll be seeing them again next chance I get.

Later in the week I was invited to a free, amateur classical string performance in which a friend, Satoshi, played violin. He's quite experienced, and plays in another group too. They played three pieces by Mozart and one by Tschaikovski. I'm not going to try and translate the Mozart titles from Japanese, but the Tschaikovski was something like "Serenade for Strings." I liked that piece the best, and Satoshi later mentioned that he though the group was too passionate for Mozart. I know nothing about classical so it's a little hard for me to appreciate the concert fully, but it was cool.

Looking forward to a full orchestra performance, with choir, on 4/15 that I got invited too as well. That one will be Mozart's Requiem as well as some Mahler and Wagner, according to what I can easily read of the bill.

Almost Lost My Ticket

2007-01-27T02:44:00.000+09:00

After work today I entered Waseda Station on the Tozai subway line, coming back from having fed and talked at the rabbit, listening to a Boing Boing podcast. I fumbled my 11-trip (for the price of 10!) ticket out of my wallet as I heard the train pull up to the platform one level down. These trains don't stop for more than about 20 seconds so I rushed down the stairs, as you do, ticket in one gloved hand, wallet in the other. Fortunately the conductor glanced up the stairs and waited for me to jump aboard before he closed the doors. Less fortunately I discovered that my ticket had magically vanished after I got on the train.

I checked my pants pockets, my jacket pockets, and even rummaged through my wallet, in the hope that I had absentmindedly put it back in there. I found the spare ticket I had mistakenly bought on New Year's Day but not the one I was seeking. I mentally shrugged and began cuing up the speech routines to explain to the station employee about my lost ticket when a nice young lady came up to me and handed me back my ticket! I managed the typical words of thanks that weren't nearly effusive enough.

Does it say something negative about me when this is the most exciting thing that happened all week? Nah...

Code & A New (12:10!) Monitor

2007-01-27T02:19:00.000+09:00

Greetings friends. I haven't written much lately, I know. This time though it hasn't been because I've been lazy but because there hasn't been much going on. This week I was coding long hours at the keyboard, coming home late, cooking dinner with Jeff, finishing dinner much later, then getting up exhausted the next day. I was also bunny-sitting. Next week I promise I will keep a better sleep schedule.

At least I'm getting some slack to re-code a part of my project that badly needed it. My boss asked me to change the way the errors in my application are reported, and in order to do that I absolutely have to look through gross and hoary old code I wrote almost exactly a year ago. That stuff is really horrible and as a result, really satisfying to reimplement.

Also, in preparation for my new workstation/development server I got a new LCD monitor for my existing workstation- a 20 inch Mitsubishi with the wacky dimensions of 12:10. This works out to 1680X1050. It's huge! It did bad things for my productivity today (Linux mumble xorg.conf modelines mumble mumble), but I have high hopes for next week.

Food and Politics

2007-01-05T19:25:00.000+09:00

Here's are two links which came to my attention recently. Ok, so they're both quite old, but I hadn't heard of either one before. It was somehow refreshing to learn that the US hasn't been the only country to rename food for political reasons. Try searching in the text of the first article for "amerikaner".

Boycott of American Goods Over Iraq War Gains (2003/3)
Iranians rename Danish pastries (2006/2)

On a completely different topic, until recently I was using gtkpod as the application to connect to my iPod from my Gentoo Linux box (as Apple has never bothered to port iTunes, even though OS X is based on BSD). It works, but the user interface is abysmal. I finally found the time to try a few alternatives and settled on amarok. This is a great piece of software. It's slick, it supports podcasts, and most importantly it just works. I wholeheartedly recommend it to any Linux readers.

New Year's Post

2007-01-05T19:18:00.000+09:00

At this time of year Japan is full of signs suggesting you take your first this, that, or the other thing of the year with their store, restaurant, or company. I figured it would be as good a time as any for another post here. ;)

Happy 2007 everyone!

I've been relaxing at home for the past week, enjoying the time off from work, playing Dragon Quest VIII on Jeff's PS2, studying Japanese kanji, jogging, reading about programming, playing with my iPod, making things with planks of wood/nails/wine corks, and generally being lazy. Oh yeah, and getting in touch with people who live on the other side of the planet. I installed Skype (username: jarsyll) so call me up! Just don't expect me to get out of bed when my computer rings.