Entries this day: State_of_My_Life_Address

State of My Life Address

7:36am JST Monday 15 May 2006 (day 13200)

State of My Life Address

1. I have just gotten up from my first night crashed over at Kazzah's new apartment in Nishin (in Aichi, Japan (home of the 2006 World Expo))

2. I have ridden about 900km on my TJ Bike trip from Tokyo, through Odawara, Shizuoka, Nagoya, Ise (down in Mie-ken), Kobe, west of Kyoto, Amanohashidate, northwest shore of Lake Biwa, and now back as far as Nagoya.

3. Kaz said yesterday I could stay as long as I wanted.

   "Well, not years, but you know what I mean."

4. She doesn't have internet access available in her apartment, so I probably won't stay too long.

5. She's basically vegan (but sometimes eats cheese), and we had the most delicious meal last night: basically all vegetables, with some beans and yeast and it was great! I could be vegetarian with meals like that!

6. TJ Bike sustained his 5th puncture (all on the back tire; I wonder if that's because I have so much weight back there slash no back suspension..) yesterday which I fixed with my last patch. Was fortunately able to buy more before another blowout.

7. I have finished the 10 day Vipassana meditation course. That was the stated main reason for riding TJ Bike to Kyoto, so I guess from here, it's mission accomplished.

8. Since the course, I have found myself generally to be more mindful, and more often relaxed about things, though I still have had issues. But waiting a day for rain wasn't a big deal, and the flat tire wasn't a big deal, and the backtracking required to get to Kazzah's wasn't a big deal

9. Also, I have felt little or no need to have a girlfriend recently. Not sure what part the meditation played, PB52 played, etc, but I'm pretty happy with having no girlfriend right now.

   Not just no girlfriend, but no intimate kissing type connections of any sort.

10. TJ Bike and I rode past the site of the 2006 World Expo.

11. During the meditation thing, I had a little switcharoo around making money. I'd like to follow the suggestion of giving 10% of my income to others. Giving / working selflessly for others was a significant part of the teaching.

12. At the same time, I felt a great need to spend a year+ working (possibly starting my own Amway distributorship (again)) and generating money to get out of debt and have a way to support further adventures.

13. I have felt a great desire to have a GPS during my adventure, so I can display on a map at minimum different points of my journey, and hopefully a complete track.

14. Still would like a helmet mounted video camera for some of my downhill thrills.

15. Have semi-released the idea of having the next supa-newest Mac. The new Intel machines seem supa-phat, but..... this one does what I want to do (see previous SoML for specs).

16. Only change of note: I now have 3.26 Gigs free HD space.

17. During the meditation, I really pondered why I wanted to write; what is the dealio with my website, yo?

    Came up with an answer: my website is like an ongoing art project. I can keep adding to it and sculpting it and making tweaks and changes, and it's just my little place to be textually creative. Languages of HTML, English, Perl, Japanese, mixed with a bit of mySQL and Javascript, all morphing together into a thing I can call my own.

    or some shit like that.

18. Have decided all code should be free, and plan to make all my futurely written code be free. My journal code is still not free because it's not as secure as I'd like. I don't want anyone figuring out how to view private journal entries. If I can lock those down, then I'll release that source code as well.

19. Some forward progress has been made toward making pictures visible on my site. Starting with my iPhoto_2_legible code, and now recently finding the FPV (?) Free Picture Viewer I think is the name.. it's pretty close to what I was planning to write, and the Full Version sounds pretty much exactly like what I want to write, so when it is released, we may be rockin'.

20. I have until 28 June to get a work visa or escape Japan or become illegal. The last option is basically not an option, but I'm not sure yet which of the first two will happen. I'd rather not get a job at a language school again, but I may have to.