Entries this day: Memory_upgrade Power_of_Nightmares_vid Work k topaz

Memory upgrade

2:11pm JST Wednesday 26 March 2008 (day 13881)

Sweet. ´Ý»³¤µ¤ó just upgraded his MacBook's memory from 2 Gigs to 4 Gigs, so I upgraded my 1 Gig to his old 2 Gigs. Only 4000 yen, whereas at the Apple Store it was going to cost twice that.

Nice to know there are other outlets for memory that work in Macs.

Power of Nightmares vid

7:44am JST Wednesday 26 March 2008 (day 13881)

I recently found another documentary, this one produced and broadcast
on BBC.  The series was shown in 3 parts over three weeks under the
title The Power of Nightmares.
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

The first part details the rise of fear mongers in the US government
and in Egypt during 1970s and 1980s.  I haven't watched parts 2 and 3
yet.

8:45am JST

That was in an email to Sarah and Jennifer who I met at the Zeitgeist screening at Pink Cow. Now I've seen first 45 minutes of part 2 of Power of Nightmares.

I'm thinking of sending DVDs of the video to all the US Senators.

Work

1:25pm JST Wednesday 26 March 2008 (day 13881)

Glad to report successful completion of something useful here at work! It was an easy fix once I found the problem.. Actually the hardest part was propogating the fix to three code bases, as SVN still ain't working.

One weird thing that took me a while today (before I gave up): I still can't figure out why checking out my files from SVN is causing the old test server to use data from the live server!

The config files seem right; I dunno what's up with it.

But right now I'm going to finish watching part 2 of The Power of Nightmares.

1:47pm JST

Just finished Part II. It seems apparent in Part III they're going to say the Islamic Extremists got the WTC, but, for the record, I'm pretty secure in my current belief that the US government was at minimum complicent in letting it happen.

6:28pm JST

Hahahaha; it took me forever to find the password to this database... I figured out why I couldn't find the phpMyAdmin: it's a Postgres database. Then I was sifting through the code to find the password and finally realized the unthinkable. There is no spoon.

k

9:26pm JST Wednesday 26 March 2008 (day 13881)

Nice chat with K this evening after work. Meeting her at Hachiko, I wondered how easily I'd find her cute little self, but it all worked out. Her main goal at that point was to get off her feet, so we headd to Tea Time (thanks to Travis for showing me recently) for a snack and drink for me and drink for her while chatting about London, US, and NZ, plus PB gossip. Took us a bit to remember the (old) PM of OZ, but I eventually came up with his name, though bells of certitude did not ring in our brains. For the record, the new OZ PM is Kevin Rudd.

I had correctly guessed she would have brown nail polish today, but I didn't guess it would be brown with sparkles.

After reporting the results of the Zeitgeist movie screening(s), I told her about The Power of Nightmares, and she asked why (US) Americans are so quick to talk about politics, and I suggested it's cause our politics are so wack compared to other sane countries.

While answering my plans for staying in Japan, for a moment I talked about Ami, saying that I was being careful not to throw away the relationship unnecessarily. I noticed that on most previous discussions about my girlfriends, I must have sounded like a whiney whiner. Hopefully I'm past all that cryingly chaotic emotional madness in which I believed myself victimized by my own inability to settle.

K is good, working as a glorified teacher in Zone 1 of London. Has been there for about a year now. She described her fun-time there as not as easy as home (smaller city), but she generally just hangs out with friends.

She told me the funny story of the name K at work and how it got confused with people just saying "'kay," short for "okay."

I enjoyed listening to her super-practical travel techniques, including doing a test-packing tonight, with a scale so she will have a sense of how much more shopping she can do. Today she bought shoes for herself, bought a DVD for her nephew who's about 3 years old, and got her hair cut, Tomorrow she wants to buy a trench coat and two belts: one for her body and one for her suitcase on the way back (basically to tie her two suit cases together once she arrives in London (where no one will likely help her carry anything)).

We stopped outside the pachinko parlor on the way to the station, where we wondered why people would play that game. She mentioned her stay in the hotel as opposed to her friend's house in Shibuya and that reminded me about the chocolate shop, which I hadn't been able to find since then. K showed me where the chocolate shop was; I had misremembered, which for me seemed shocking cause my feet generally remember just how to get back wherever they've been before. But for some reason I was turning left before Bunkamura instead of going straight along it. Shocking.

She said she may be back in Japan within about 6 months or a year.

topaz

3:56am JST Thursday 27 March 2008 (day 13882)

HI Doug

I came across your photos of TSS The Topaz on smugmug (via a google search for TSS+The+Topaz).
Thank you for taking the time to post these with such exquisite descriptions!!

I had the great pleasure of sailing two world voyages on this ship with PB around 2005 (as an
English teacher for PB).  Still living in Tokyo, I've continued to stay in touch with PB staffers,
and the rumor is Topaz is on her last journey with PB.  I don't know where she'll go from here, but
I thought I should keep you abreast of the news.

If you're interested, I have a 20 minute video of when we teachers got a tour of the bridge
(unfortunately it got cut short due to my tape running out).  It's too long to put on youtube, but I
may put it on Google Video.  I have a smugmug account as well (user thunderrabbit), but I don't know
the limits on video sizes.

   Take care, and thanks again  :-)
    - Rob!