December 17th, 2004 (9:47am Pacific Time)

I have been in the US for about 10 days now, but it actually feels a lot longer. I think the concept of time for people is generally associated with the amount of different things one experienced rather than the actual amount of time passed. Isn't this why adults always feel that their life slips by their fingers at a tremendous speed compared to childhood? I suppose that for a child, everything is new. I cannot imagie how horribly would a life in a cube-farm do to the chronological perception of even the best of minds.

For that, the last 10 days felt like a month or more. After arriving in CA, I took a weekend and went to NY and went through about what felt like a week of activities in just one day - after that I am in Folsom, CA this week as a precursor to some onsite support project that will begin soon. Prior to coming here, of course, I had my Japanese Language Skills Exam the day before my flight to the US.

I was hoping to jot down some details of the test before the memory thereof totally fade into oblivion.

The way I studied for the test was a little more than unorthodox. I _planned_ to sit down the night before and read some grammar notes (my weak point), in the hope that i would remember at least a few of them the day after, but instead the "oh just one more" mentality set in after popping in the Fullmetal Alchemist DVD and i watched that nonstop for maybe 8 hours - from 10pm Saturday (this would be the 4th of december) to 6am Sunday - i.e. right up to the morning of the test.

The test was scheduled to begin at 9:45am (i think), and it was located in Saitama University in Urawa. The plan was to start scooting over at about 8:00am, get there around 8:30 under the naive assumption that there are not so much sunday morning traffic, and start taking the test without sparing a single minute in the whole "studying" thing. But as fate would have it, the assumption about sunday morning traffic is an incredibly naive one after all.

Skipping the details of anxiously stuck in traffic, I get there around 9:30 but notices that there are still legions of students flooding into the school much like a typical weekday morning. (On that point if everyone was wearing uniforms it would look a lot like Sanyo on a typical morning) I was very surprised by the lack of punctuality of all the students - The thought did pass through my mind that since the majority of the test takers are chinese + koreans, that maybe the test administrators planned to start the test late intentionally.

I got to my classroom with about 2.8 minutes to spare, and the room was at most quarter full. It turns out that due to strong winds, one of the JR trains from utsunomiya (i think) was delayed, and a decision had been made to push back the test start time by an hour.

I suppose part of the problem was that this location handled students from a huge area, encompassing all of northern Saitama and at least extending into Gunma prefecture - unsurprising if it was responsible for the foreigner population in Tochigi prefecture to the east as well. I do not think it went so far as Ota, as there were very few people of Brazillian descent there, but then again, maybe they simply don't bother with taking such tests.

I was not too sure if I should feel that there are many or few foreigners taking the test - while numerically speaking (about 3000) it is an incredible sight as buses come packed to the brim and leave empty one by one, but this is just one test location responsible for a huge area. As I was made to understand, within Tokyo several such test stations must be secured to accomodate the test praticipants in just the city itself. It is no wonder that it seems that in Shinjyuku everywhere I turn I would bump into some foreigners.

The classrooms had many rows of tables, the last 1/3 or so was on a weak incline. there were four columns and each seat two people, added with around 30 rows of tables, the entire classroom, no bigger than two of your typical US elementary school classrooms, have the theoretical capacity fit some 300 plus students. The hallways is way too thin for such a number of people, and we pushed and shoved around to get to our classroom to which we are assigned. Each seat is numbered with a serial number that corresponds with the examinee's number on the little test voucher he received. After you find your seat, you can sit and wait for the test to begin.

A curiosity, or certainly a warning to any test taker, is that the bathroom line, especially the female one, becomes very long during any kind of breaks. In fact, I don't quite believe "very" describes it well because it would conjure up the imagination of a line maybe 20-30 people in length. In reality it's more like a wait for a popular ride in an amusement park, where the line folds back onto itself several times to accomodate the sheer amount of people. Just about everybody in the line has a terribly grumpy face - that of a person longing for immediate gratification but is denied almost indefinitely. The guys' side sometimes got a little line going too, but nothing like the monstrosity for the fairer sex. The best advice is probably to go before you come to the test and drink as little as you can. While mild dehydration may not be beneficial for the test score, I somehow feels that bloated and waiting for a prolonged period of time would do much worse.

The test itself, when started, was kept on schedule. The broadcasts were a played tape insntead of by individual and to ensure nothing goes wrong there were multiple audio tests beforehand. A person per column distributes the answer sheet and the test booklet for each student and collects them similarly. You cannot open your test booklet, but it was so thin that if you flip it over you can read the last few questions. Not that it helps or anything (especially since you have to figure out blurry gana+kanji written backwards.

The test was broken into three parts. The first was Vocabulary, Second is Listening Comprehension, and third Reading and Grammar. At the beginning I thought grammar would be combined with vocabulary; I didn't think the section was too bad, and the Listening comprehension was just a tad easier than I expected (though not as easy as I had hoped), but in any case by lunch I actually got quite a good feeling that I might actually pass this test because I know I don't usually do too terribly in reading.

Just then, I get the last test and over half of it was grammar.

It was so difficult for me that I did not even have time to finish it and penciled in half a dozen questions in a simple mechanical fashion. To be honest I did not know how to properly answer a single one of the 36 questions, with only two that I was somewhat partially sure of. The only thing I could have hoped for was to eliminate as much of each question as possible so the random choice left behind would be higher than 25%. It was a sad state of affairs, and no matter what happens, it would be impossible for my other scores to be high enough to compensate for the terrible mess that is in this last section.

Depressed, I finished the test and with "this exam is now over" message left the room, into the crowded halls outside and flowed in the great river of people, over 50% chatting on cellphones in chinese complaining about the test, out to the open grounds where the sun almost set. A bit sad, actually - the last day in Japan for quite a while was passed by doing something and with so little results. But to be truthful, I don't think it would be fair for those who put in so much effort for their exams if I was lucky enough to pass.

Just one mention - all the announcements during the test were in Japanese, I suppose that for level 1, they sort of expect that you already have the basic ability to understand test directions. Maybe you can even think of it as an unplanned listening test of sorts.

The last great spectical for the day was the ultimate line of students waiting for the bus to go home. Buses simply do not come enough for the huge outflux of students and the line stretched several hundred meters long. I think the most unfortunate are the level 1 test takers - as our test was the longest, we are stuck at the end of the line. I rounded up two of my friends who were also taking the test on the same day, and we went to Red Lobster for a quick bite (the food was sold out completely during lunch, and I did not even have breakfast), and by the time we got back about an hour and half later, there was still the same line left, about two buses worth of students waiting, some shivering in the chilly evening wind.

The results are out Feburary. I guess that's also a kind of "welcome back" thing I should look forward to when I return to Japan.

December 3rd, 2004 (4:35pm)

This is the last day I will work here until middle of Feburary next year. I cleaned up my cubicle and even took the time to wipe tea stains off the table surface, all the while feeling irony dripping from every pore of my body: why is it human nature to clean something when it's _not_ going to be used?

To my own disbelief, I have surprisingly little I really feel like worth saying despite this being like the last day before I go to work my ass off all the way through Christmas and New Years. The good news is that apparently a shiny new IBM T42 is being prepared for me with a humongous 1.5GB RAM - which in a few years will probably become standard, but currently, that's about as much as I ever dreamed of having on a laptop computer. Bye bye swap file.

I should probably also mention that the coming Sunday is the japanese language proficiency test for this year; I am signed up to take Level 1, but I have zero confidence in passing; All the mock tests place me at about 50% for grammar and vocabulary. Passing is 70% and no way my listening comprehension is good enough that I can make up the difference.

It seems that everyone from this entire area is congregating at the Saitama University in Urawa for this test. It's kind of nostalgic: Urawa was the first excursion I made in japan in my search for recycle shops on my first weekend here. I am sure walking down that road will reawaken some interesting memories. It's amazing how much changed in the past two years and half as well, while two years ago I walked down that road with anxiety and trepidation, I expect that I would be right at home this time, and I am even at peace with the unfortunate fact that I will be failing the test this time, as I honestly had no time to formally prepare for it.

I read somewhere that on Eienstein's last visit to Princeton, he was looking around, eyes dashing from place to place, as if to capture and store all that he could for his memory; I find myself inadvertantly doing the same, gazing from the small china tea-pot (kyusu) to the workstation wrapped in bubble wrap to damp some high frequency noise the motherboard generates (seems like an electrolytic capacitor is about to burst but has been teetering). What's this power with familiarity? When did I fall pray to it?

My cousin in London seem to love that city, and to be honest, I really did not find the city particularly charming. I mean, I do appreciate London in my own way - that it is a city where history and culture seeps from every corner and every umbrella and every teacup, but it simply wasn't my cup of tea; I didn't feel that people there were distant and cold, most seemingly hiding behind some veil of politeness and contempt. I attributed the city's attraction to her as that it is a place that she can call home - after all what is a home but a place where you are a part of? Like when you have lived in a neighborhood for so long that you recognize some crack on a wall formed in some trivial storm many a years ago, or notice that the favorite passtime of a neighborhood old uncle's is to sit at the corner on weekday mornings to watch the school children go off to school, these familiarity ties you to a place that becomes home, to a point where you appreciate its beauty and drawback together. I admit I felt that ever tiny bit of contempt - that she had committed herself to London like so; yet it's ironic that this cubicle that I rediculed so much when I first moved here would draw my eyes as it is right now.

Maybe similarly, "love" is just a similar feeling that extends to a person; and that emotions can indeed be cultivated with time. Who knows.

Some ass is trying to get my Slashdot password for this account. Screw you mother fucker. Why don't you go get fucked? Maybe eat a dick?

Just a warning to my friends, make sure you use a secure password. However, I don't think that's all that's going on here. I think someone might have found an exploit in the Slashcode that allows them to intercept mail. Maybe...

Whoever the fucktard is, go play in traffic.

I'm still around folks. Maybe some of you have figured out who the "new me" is aleady, maybe you haven't. :) I wouldn't have logged in as T4D if it hadn't been for that ass trying to 0wn my account.

Oh yeah... and FUCK BUSH!

P.S. - The "Ghost of T4D" posts as AC have been me so far. Also, I'm glad to see that Twink of the Mists has deleted his JEs. No one wanted to hear what he had to say anyway. Maybe he took the hint. OK... we can dream can't we?

Out.

November 30th, 2004 (4:16pm)

In a few days I will embark on a very long business trip to the US to support one of our larger (erm, largest) customers. I will be there from the beginning of December all the way till the beginning of Feburary, living out of a suitcase and eating things that are probably not the healthiest for me.

In any case, it's always change that brings understanding of what's around. I was made aware of an aspect of Japanese business life that I have never touched upon before, the beauracracy of the whole thing.

An international business trip seems to be a big deal. I mean, with a fairly large company of several thousand people and many overseas offices and customers, international trips would be quite frequent. However, every single one must be reported to the president himself directly, and without his approval, the trip will not take place. This is not just our company, apparently, but pretty much everybody - the only difference is whereby our company only have one president overseeing a few thousand people, companies like SONY would have fleets of presidents for this purpose on a much grander scale.

For this purpose, there is a weekly or sometimes bi-weekly (depending on the number of trips that needs to be approved) meeting of high-level managers including the president that hears about all the planned international business trips and approves or denies them. This makes an interesting schedule for the person doing the trip: For me, I must submit all the documentation (trip purpose, estimated expenses, export control documentation, etc) for approval well in advance so that they can be stamped by seveal levels of managers, and then approved by the regional director (who will attend the high-level manager meeting mentioned above), at least before the last high-level manager's meeting before my scheduled trip takes place. It's a shocking amount of paperwork. Plus, besides all the expense reporting and daily activity reporting, upon return the traveller must submit a detailed trip report along with the expense related reports, etc.

People always kind of wonder why Japanese companies move so slowly - I think this is one of the main reasons. There is a tremendously strong mindset of beauracracy within the company, and the rules are always followed, all the time. Well, I have to say, inasmuch as the beauracracy exists, i cannot deny that they are at least quite efficient about it, unlike some devil-incarnate organizations usually known by letters D, M, and V in most states, especially NY and Illinois, I think.

Another thing.

Recently there was a big commotion about the pension system. The short of it is that the government pension is in trouble, and while the company is trying to cover the slack, it is unable to keep doing so. The company asks everyone for approval to reduce the pension payment, which is a permanent change: the pension received by those retirned now will be reduced, and those currently employed will also look forward to a smaller pension when they retire.

Nonetheless, everybody was eager to agree to the proposal because it helps the company. Even though it does not even affect me, I was asked to vote so that we can pass the resolution. It's one of those times that you can almost reach out and touch that huge culture gap that hangs between Japan and... as far as I can tell pretty much everywhere else. I know for a fact that the US isn't like that, and China has not been like that for a few decades now. The whole world operates on the "dog-eat-dog" principle, and I can understand why people here take solace in their ability to depend on eachother to make sacrifices for the common good. The company depends on the employees to be selfless, and the employees depends on the company to take care of them through the rough times. This even extends to the society as a whole. Of course there are always exceptions to this rule of conduct - after all the lure of greed and power has great abitily to corrupt - however, I do think that it gets quite tiring after a while when you have to watch your back for your whole life. Maybe that's why longevity is renouned on these islands; you are always part of something greater and it takes a great chunk of stress out of one's life.

On a smaller note, I turned 25 a few weeks ago; wondering where are the cheaper insurance rates, cuz I sure don't seem them here.

November 4th, 2004 (4:47pm)

Today is my first day at work after coming back from a combination NY / London trip. It took a very long time overall, but the most heartbreaking is the time flying between continents apparently consume. I lost about 4 days from a 12 day vacation to simply "getting there," i.e. 1/3 of my time I should have been spent relaxing is instead spent stressing out on a tiny seat tens of thousands of feet above ground. If anybody could make faster travel at similar prices, or even twice the price to today, I would be the first one to jump on board.

I had some back pain on my flight from Tokyo to NY two weeks ago. As such, I requested to get maybe a better seat to the gate agent, hoping that I get to try one of northwest's new fancy business class seats with there big 10-inch personal TVs. The agent looked at me, and said, well, alright, row 28 is empty and the flight is pretty empty too so why don't you take 28D (isle seat on a four-seat row) and you can lie down.

Well, it's not an upgrade but I have no quarrels about getting to lie down on a four-seat row, from experience the said row fits me perfect. I was a little disappointed, but it was alright.

A few minutes before the flight departed, some woman from the back apparently decided that the row looked awfully tempting, and planted her ass on the other end of the row. We did some evil staring at eachother for a couple hours, and some space hogging the next few, when I went to the bathroom and came back, she took a whole three seats from the row that was supposed to be all mine, sleeping on her side like a swine feeding her little piglets who chew on her mud-stained nipples with their brown, grotesque teeth, yelping whatever discordant sound that muddy swine tends to yelp.

I was quite fed up, so I notified a flight attendant of the situation - after all, she wasn't sitting in a seat where she was ticketed to. The flight attendant woke her up and asked her to move, actually in not-the-friendliest tones. She nodded in shame when asked to confirm that she wasn't ticketed for this seat, and moved to another seat giving me this evil look. To be truthful, I kind of felt bad about it - I didn't really mean for it to turn out that way; the best thing that could have happened was probably that they upgraded one of us, so both of us can live in peace, but oh well.

A bit after dinner, I was doing something on my laptop before going for the awaited long nap. The woman came over and fumbled with one of the seats and left, looking like she was looking for something. I glanced at her and didn't say anything. After that, I stretched out and slept.

A couple hours later, I touched my pants and something the texture of dried mud was flaking off it. I took it off without opening my eyes, but soon my hands landed to another patch. I became curious and sat up. Apparently, the woman took a browny (that was one of the more unappetizing part of the dinner) and placed it on a seat near me, so that when I slept, I would rub myself all over it. It worked pretty well, with all due respect to her espionage skills, I did get it on my pants and my socks - Luckily the browny was kind of dry, so most of it became powdery and I promptly placed them in a vomit bag and tossed them away.

It's incredible how childish some people can be! I didn't really know if I should have been laughing or angry, because it was like a little revenge that a kindergardener would do. I thought that a proper revenge for her would probably be stealing her passport and writing VOID over her visa to the states, or even better something like "suspected terrorist" which would really get her into trouble; but it's really not worth it - especially since she provided me with such entertainment with such a child-like act.

On the way back, it was no less interesting. Inasmuch as I slept almost the whole way on the flight back from NY, it did not prevent me from hearing one of the many annoucements the captain made. It seems that day by day the flight cabin crew gets more loquatious - are they just so lonely up there? Are we some kind of forced audience for them? Anyway, in one of the long annoucements whereby the captain relayed all the information that we could have easily have obtained on the flight-map video screen, in my astonishment he broke into japanese and tried to repeat the 10-minute monologue. I say tried because while there are many foreigners who speaks very good japanese, with all due respect to the said captain, he wasn't one of them. I mean, he kept getting even the the numbers wrong, and let's not talk about the pronounciation. So the guy went something akeen to "welcome to... erm... Northwest, we depart three erm four thirrrrrrty two oh yeah two. [long pause] we arrive, erm, erm, japan, four, erm, forty three erm four okthankyou [click]" The last part was him saying "arigatou" in the fastest possible way and hung up immediately after that. Laughter echoed in the cabin.

The flight attendants, on the other hand, didn't dismiss his attempt as just an attempt, and because either they did not want to upset / embarass the captain, did not make their annoucements as they always do, and just kind of hung out minding their own business. While I really appreciate the fact that upon perusal the information is still available, I can just imagine what kind of state I would be left in if I was just a japanese person who didn't understand the english annoucement beforehand and was looking forward to a proper japanese translation.

It all started about two years ago around this time of the year. Almost exactly. I had been using one of my regular accounts to interact with sush inflexible thinkers as Neocon, Twirlip of the Mists and their friends. There was alot of heated political discussion that was essentially ruining my Slashdot reading. As I've said before, I FUCKING HATE politics and the people who love them. I got pissed off at reading all the bullshit that was circulating in the comments that was passed off as "informed political views" from the neocon losers. Since my wife was off to Washington to protest the saber rattling of our simian Unpresident and I was stuck at home tending to a work related problem I figured, I should be the voice of dissent here on Slashdot. Not "liberal" dissent, mind you. But the voice of anti-corporate dissent. You CAN be a liberal and a capitalist at the same time no matter what the neocons are spinning this week.

So I took my first stab and boy did I hit the jackpot with a nicely crafted troll that got tons of up and down mods and a nice amount of responses. It was carefully written and included links that discredited a lot of what Bush and his peanut gallery were saying at the time. The thing is that I didn't "research" it at all. I just linked a few relevant Google results and made sure that it went on and on for quite a few paragraphs. Enough that it had to force people to click on the "Read the rest of this comment" link. When they DID do that, then I had a nice multiple line "meta-troll". I take credit for being the inventor of the meta-troll as NO ONE did it before I did. It paid homage to the best trolls of days gone by and made light of the dumber trolls plus it threw in a few new ones of it's own. It was exquisite even if I do say so myself. Getting people to read my comment so earnestly only to find it punctuated with nothing but crap at the end was pretty satisfying. This was the perfect way to illustrate to the politically minded people of Slashdot that I DON'T GIVE A FUCK WHAT YOU THINK.

After a while... my style settled down a bit and I found that people started friending and foeing me. This was new and interesting. It was also interesting to see the interactions with other people. I was quite happy to see that many of my "fans" came from OUTSIDE of the US. I've always felt like a stranger here anyway. Maybe it's because I was raised by a hispanic mother who conluded that Americans can get REALLY silly sometimes. Who knows?

From the beginning, when I chose my Slashdot ID I was trying to think of something that really symbolized what I thought of the neocons. Then I hit upon Trolling4Dollars. It's a semi-regional bit of humor. Where I live there used to be television program in the 60s and 70s called "Bowling for Dollars". This program was undoubtedly duplicated in many other markets in the US. When I read the pap that guys like Neocon and Twirlip of the Mists spat out on a daily basis, I realized that whether they see it or not, they are trolling on behalf of the dollar. They live for money and profit and the corrupt form of capitalism that rules the land today. Their "trolls" are driven by their greed. So my Slashdot ID was me thumbing my nose at them.

What I found endlessly entertaining was that they assumed I was "just a troll" and would probably eventually go away because of their "shining intellect". However, the grandest days for the T4D account were when Twirlip of the Mists and Neocon foed me. Especially Twirlip because he paid lipservice to not caring much about making foes because he's so "open minded". He made a big deal about how humble and gratified that he was that he had so many fans. Just "little old him". But he was an arrogant prick if you weren't on his side. One day he foed me. It seemed to be counter to what he claimed and boy did I enjoy that. When Pudge foed me it wasn't nearly as satisfying. Now, I will be the first to admit that Twirlip is not an idiot. He's a smart person, but he's not on the side of the person who makes less than $50,000 a year let me tell you. To me, that is the most dispicable kind of person. It doesn't matter how smart they are, but if they can't see the value in trying to help others, then I have no respect for them. Oddly, there are things that Twirlip and I did agree about, but he'd pretty much dismissed me even when I pointed them out. Twirlip... it's all in the implementation dude. Your implementation sucks.

Getting back to Slashdot as a whole. It's pretty much ruined. What I used to love about it was that it was like a much nicer version of Usenet news groups. I used to be able to discuss real important stuff like Bash shell tips, getting IP Masquerade and NAT to work under Linux or getting a Quake server up and running. I learned some and I think I also taught people a little too. That's what this place was supposed to be about. The news stories were supposed to be the fodder for the discussion. But once Slashdot got invaded by mouth breathing AOHell users and people started talking about their politics, and then CmdrTaco encouraged all of this, it just went south. (If anyone of my friends has a relationship with Taco, pass this JE along to him I think he needs to read at least this part) Slashdot was a great opportunity to link a bunch of like-minded computer geeks together, throw some interesting tech news at them and then get the discussions going for better or worse. People would trade tips about hardware or software. They would relate horror stories about one OS or another. But in general it was all kept pretty friendly. That's all gone now. To actually survive on Slashdot you need to be a bully otherwise no one notices you. It's truly sad. Truly sad indeed.

My only political statement I'm going to make here is this. If you're an American, I don't care who you plan to vote for in November. I plan to vote for Kerry and my neighbor (who I think is a pretty nice guy) plans top vote for Bush as the sign on his lawn professes. Will I go over and pants him until he changes his mind? No. It's not my place to change his mind as he believes in his candidate for his own reasons as firmly as I do mine. Sure, I'll be vocal about my support of Kerry. I'll be interested in persuading those open to persuasion. But I'm not going to really expect to walk up to a Bush supporter and get him to change his mind. And in the end, regardless of who wins, we're going to have to live with the consequences and the "I told you sos" from either side. In the long run, it's just going to be more of the same. More moved in one direction, then back the other as the population has mass amnesia and forgets how "bad" things were the "other" way. The only thing I want is to make sure that every vote really does count. No dirty tricks. That's the best I can hope for.

I've noticed that some of my fans have dropped away. I imagine that one or another comments I've made regarding religion, OS choice or political views may have been the cause. It could also be something as simple as them wanting to add a different person they like better and I was on the short list. That's fine. There are still people I like regardless of what their reasons for dropping me. (bethanie ;P) I've also noticed some people just dropping out altogether because I think they, like me, are just sick of what Slashdot has become. It's kind of sad because some of them kept EXCELLENT journals. (the_mad_poster ;) ) Then there are the groups of really genuinely nice people who still seem to somehow rise above all the sludge and slime and keep their little group a nice place to be. Thanks for being a fan of T4D (DaytonCIM, Ethelred Unraed, tuxette, Zontar the Mindless, cyranoVR, JeremiahCornelius, SamTheButcher, SolemnDragon, danill, tomhudson, Zeriel, insanecarbonbasedlif, GigsVT). Then the folks who just write damn interesting things regardless of whether they are fans or freaks or friends or foes or neutral or even whether or not I agree with them. (Chacham, BlackHat, PerfessorMultigeek, js7a) There are a ton of other folks that have made my stay as T4D fun and enlightening but I'm running out of time to go through the list... take it as read that I am really glad to have known you all.

I might pop back in and out from time to time with T4D, but my other accounts will likely become more active. I want to pull out of the political discussions and the OS religion wars and see if there is some bit of Slashdot that still does what it used to. Vain hope I know.

Goodbye for now and [insert deity] bless.

P.S. - Please pass this on to anyone who you may be friends with who I mentioned but who may not be friends with me. Thanks. Over and out.

October 22nd, 2004 (7:34pm)

Well, i am about 15 minutes from going home, and about 20 hours away from a plane carrying me to NY for a few days, and I really havn't finished all the work that I should have finished before getting on the said plane, but the last 15 minutes is not going to save my life.

Typhoon 23 finally passed over japan with a lot of casualties - while typhoons here doesn't have the whole "off-goes-the-roof" effect that Florida keeps experiencing, possibly due to, at least in part, that there ar way too many do-it-yourself roofers in Florida, there are always some associated floods and landslides and ocean waves going over banks (or, in 23's case, ripped off a piece of old bank that was build too long ago), and subways flooding etc. Even Tokyo was not spared, as a deserted Shibuya was under several inches of water.

Not too sure what I can say - except that global warming has got to stop or this planet is turning into Venus in a handbasket.

The romantics within the office hung up Halloween decorations - to liven up an otherwise somewhat boring office space with dashes of orange here and a plastic pumpkin there and a paper skeleton in the middle. The effort was not concerted by the entire floor, of course, and it ends up to be just about the wrong amount of it - there was too many to stash into for the "Halloween accent," but too little for an all-out display, so the few pumpkins and skeleton and bats just kind of hang from the ceiling without much corrolation to eachother, more like a sign of "beware! this is what happens to skelectons and bats that tresspass into this area." Not that anybody here except me would even have an opinion on this, anyway.

Hmm... seems like my 15 minutes are up (Wow I type slow). Tomorrow there is a 14 hour plane ride for me in economy class - and yesterday something weird happened to my back so I am not the happiest camper, faced with the necessity of sitting for 14 hours with an only partially functional back.

Many of my friends/fans will notice a new person popping up as a fan in the next few days. I'll also start posting in your JEs. So hopefully you'll recognize the snetiments and style. This account will probably be used strictly for toying with the retarded Scott Lockwood trollbots and finally go dormant for a while. Maybe I'll pop up again like Twirlip of the Mists! ;P It's been fun folks. See you on the other side.

To the trollbots. Get a sense of style guys. Even I can troll better than you can and I'M NOT A TROLL!

A challenge: Anyone care to try and analyze my posts content and see if they can track me down? I will give you a few clues. I have five accounts on Slashdot. You'd be surprised at one of them if you have any familiarity with my T4D posts. ;P Finally... *time is of the essence* Let's see if the trollbot slashtards can figure any of this out.

In fact... I think I will.

I have to do a little research, but my wife read last week that in a poll (for what they're worth) that asked what religion Americans identify with across the country, the answer was 41% evangelical/fundamentalist christianity. Sorry, but that just frightens me. When nearly half of the population of the U.S. believes in such a damaging and destructive faith, we are in SERIOUS trouble. It also goes far in explaining why this country is so fucked up. These people need to be educated and shown why their beliefs are extremist and in many cases flawed. It's one thing to believe in god and be nice to people. It's something entirely different to think that your chosen faith is the only game in town and everyone else is destined for hell and damnation. I'm going to see if I can find this poll to link here. Honestly. I thought that in 2004 we'd have less of that thing rather than more.

Update: The closest I could find was this link at ABC.com. Even though it's not quite 40% it's still a little alarming. The numbers break it down a bit more across various demographics. And if I'm being completely and unabashedly honest, it's the WHITE evangelicals that frighten me more than the non-white. Either way, it's still unnerving.

October 17th, 2004 (3.53am)

I have just finished watching many episodes of the Simpsons, and there was an earthquake about 3 seconds ago and the apartment is still shaking as i am typing this... It's kind of eerie to be up at the middle of the night and then everything start to shake all of the sudden, mostly in a quiet manner as the sofa sways under you. For a moment you pause and wonder if this is "The Big One" as the swaying increases in strength but then let out a nervous sigh as it seem to not grow in magnitude, and eventually settles and slowly fades, until you are not sure if it's really shaking or just your residual imagination. Besides the obvious fear for death involved, it's actually comforting in a way to know that the earth is relieving the tension buildups in small doses instead of pending it up for a big one. It was a long time (maybe almost a year) before we had a significant earthquake in Kanto, and while life went on as normal, people did have in on their mind and wondered if something big was going to happen (it kind of did) - kind of like that familiar face you see on the subway is missing for an extended period of time.

--- continuing on the hiking trip last weekend ---

The starting point for the hike was officially at Tateyama station. The road past that is off limits to private vehicles, and you can either walk or take the bus / cable car. Since it's an elevation of some 2,000 meters and several kilometers from the train station to the start of the hike at Murodo station several kilometers away, walking is just an illusion of an option and you have to shell out for bus tickets. As we have all should know now, monopoly means that the tickets are incrediblly expensive: one way trip was some 2,500 yen and roundtrip would cost a hefty 4,410 or so. Considering that a trip from here to the airport (some 120km) is only 2,000 yen ("only" in a relative sense), the price is extortion even by japanese standards. Worse yet, once you try to board the bus a guy comes over and asks to weight your bag - over 10kg means another 300 yen for the bag-fare.

The bus departs and enters the checkpoint where all private cars must turn back, and pays a toll. Since no normal cars can go through the toll did not reflect how much it would have cost, but for a bus it was certainly expensive at over 25,000 yen. Not that the bus didn't make money from all of us at ~50 seats filled to the rim at a fat chunk of change each, but nonetheless I did feel somewhat better (for reasons I cannot, at least at such an early hour, explain) knowing that i would have no way of affording the toll if they did allow cars up there.

The ride up to Murodo was uneventful though quite beautiful. Most of the way we were climbing and in only a few minutes we could look out the window and the road from where we came from would be on the other side of a valley and many meters down. Autumn already begun to paint the mountainside with a palette of yellow and red, and as the bus drives by suddently a patch of wonderfully shaded red colours would flash past the window, against a blue sky dotted with clouds - picturesque like a painting in a way that can only be after the passage of a storm.

On the way, we passed a long waterfall on a distant mountainside. The bus driver stopped to let us look at it temporrarily. It was far away and long - while it did not have the sheer raw power of Niagara falls or the sheer length of drop of the Nikko fall, it incited quite some excitement among the passengers. A few minutes later, we passed another fall, aptly named "sou-men taki" as "noodle fall," as the water hits a sloped mountainside and takes many routes down, very much like a a bundle of noodles drying on a bare surface.

-- continuing some other time --

October 14th, 2004 (8:33pm)

Today is my 2 year anniversary of coming to Japan. I am not so sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Originally the plan was for me to get back to the US around now, and that I can have my driver's license (expiring in a month) renewed, get my low insurance rate as I hit 25, and go forward with whatever the road of life takes me. Spending the 2 year anniversary here in Japan, though, means that a lot of plans made back in the days are no longer meeting my needs: I have no idea what to do about my license, my warrenty on my car is expiring soon, and I would definitely be spending my 25th birthday here - and japanese car insurance rates drop at 28... I need a lesson in planning contingencies, I think.

I wish there was something insightful I can say on this occasion, though - something about the passage of time, the integration of a alien body into a unfamiliar culture, or the loneliness and fulfillment that comes from not having a traditional concept of home - but really, today is just like another day, and unfortunately one of those very un-insightful days for me.

The past weekend was a three-day weekend. Japan have all these awsome holidays for all sorts of interesting reasons. October 10 is a day that usually have good weather and the Tokyo Olympics was held and since they it was "excercise day" and a national holiday. The next holiday will be Nov 3rd - "culture day." It's one of the things I like about Japan - the days are celebrating human endeavours common to the human race instead of some policital, national, or religious cause. Unlike most countries, Japanese currency do not have past political figures but contributors of science and culture for the heads. Maybe I am just being idealist but it's a good system that should be adopted in other places as well.

The point I was trying to make, though, is that I went hiking during the three day weekend. My motivation was not related to the exercising day - but rather that this would have been my last chance to hike Tateyama and Tsurugi-dake. The hike requires that I stay in a hut and the past sunday was the last day of operation for the hut. Besides, the mountains would become covered with snow any day now and it would not be a good ideal to attempt the "hardest hike in japan" under such deteriorated conditions.

One of the problems was that though October 10th and thereabouts is supposed to be the best weathered days in Japan, on this particular weekend Typhoon #22 - the biggest typhoon in 10 years - was heading straight toward us at an alarming speed. The original plan was to go to Toyama on friday night, hike saturday and sunday, and then take a slow day on monday visiting some local attractions and getting back. Unfortunately, around mid-day friday the typhoon probably had a revalation or something and headed directly toward Tokyo, increasing its pace from a leisurely 10km/h to some 60km/h.

I didn't mind the speed so much - if meant that it was possible that the typhoon would pass over this area on saturday and sunday should be beautiful blue skys with white puffy clouds. I ended up glued to the television for the entire day on friday checking the typhoon's progress. NHK has this tendency of cancelling *all* of its regular programming on the occurence of some natural disaster and provide round the clock coverage thereof. For the entire day saturaday, NHK was "The Typhoon Channel." Luckily the typhoon veered right and passed Toyama prefecture relatively untouched, and the trip officially started at 9pm saturday night.

The destination prefecture is Toyama, stuck between Ishikawa and Niigata prefecture on the Japan sea coast. The mountain ranges, Tateyama, is in its eastern side and very famous for various things - most of which I don't remember. One of the more interesting is that the mountain range gets a lot of snowfall during winter, and to keep the roads open massive plowing operations proceed through winter and the resulting road is flanked by walls of snow twenty meters high, the opening of which every april is a highly anticipated event many tourists. Another is that under the mountain is a fairly famous dam called Kurobe dam. It's an arch dam much like the hoover dam, though not quite as big. It's another attraction that draws many people every year.

The hike was to start at Murodo, on the west side of the mountains. There are two ways to reach the start of the hike, one is from the west, and another from the east that's very expensive, as it involves many segments of bus ride in specialized tunnels inside the mountain, and seveal segments of cable car. The bus also passes across the kurobe dam as well - which is one of the reason that even though the route is quite expensive, it's still fantastically popular. The other way is more conventional - the only problem is that since there are no other ways across the mountain range, one have to swing around above it on the ocean side - making the trip near 400km each way, even though linear distance is at most some 70% of that.

-- added Oct 17, 2004 (about 4am) --

Ok, continuing in another file.

Before anyone jumps to any conclusions about this being a right vs. left thing, I'll say that it's not. I'm specifically asking about personal opinion. If you want to bring up BJs in the oval office vs. coke snorting political marionettes, that's your own look out. The other thing I'll say is that there seems to be a lot of difficulty discussing anything related to sex on /. I haven't figured out why, since contrary to popular belief, many of us "geeks" get some on a regular basis. But it does seem that "geeks" have a problem with actually openly discussing sexuality with people they don't know closely. Odd.

My personal feeling is that drugs are a worse vice than sex because of the damage they do to the most important part of your body: the brain. Sure, you COULD get an STD (possibly life threatening) from casual sex, but if your brain is in good working order, there are plenty of ways to prevent that. I've had a good number of sex partners and was smart enough to know how to avoid STDs, so I know it can be done. On the other hand, every person I know who has fallen victim to drug use has either had a tragic end to their lives, or is miserable now. I've had drug using friends go to jail for committing crimes that were the result of impaired judgement. I've had friends who are currently struggling to get out of poverty but are finding it difficult because they never made it through college due to their drug habits. Being in their mid 30s and having police records doesn't help either. The friends who indulged in very extreme sexual behavior have come out of it just fine. No STDs. No criminal record. And in every case, just a normal life (at worst) where they are now married and have some kids. However, here is the most telling fact in my opinion: the sex focused people can still indulge in their "vice" with no negative impact on their lives whereas the drug focused people seem to fall lower and lower the more they indulge. The only solution for the drug focused people is to completely stop using (a few of my friends fall into this category) otherwise they continue to decline.

What do you think?

DISCLAIMER: If you find profanity offensive, move along.

This is kind of a fill in poll. This morning when I was headed into work, some asshole cut me off and I went into one of my Tube Bar text strings:

"Why you motherfucker cock sucker! Ya yellow rat bastard! You'd fuck your own mother for a nickle you sonuvabitch"!

That always has the effect of putting a smile on my face.

Anyway I started thinking about me and some of my friends and how we actually all have personal curses that we use when we get REALLY pissed off. Back in high school one of my friends had a few choice ones:

1. Geezus CHEEESEBURGERS!!!
2. Ohhh..... COCK!!! (Usually said in a rage with a fairly lengthy pause between both words)
3. What a ball jockey!

Recently another friend of mine came up with one he was particularly happy with:

1. Why that god-cocking mother... (Again said in a rage)

He also has this one:

1. God Mutha.... (Said with a strained voice. Interestingly it's not really a curse per se...)

Still another friend has:

1. What a bunch of asscocks!

Myself, I've got:

1. Mudra Fakah! (Must roll the R)
2. That's just nadtacular! (Said in a mild rage)
3. You sack! (Said with derision. Imagine applied to Metzler.)

My wife uses:

1. Aahhhh... EAT ME! (When someone is bullshitting here and she wants them to know)

So what about you? Do you have any favorite personal curses?

Read this and tell me what you think. I think it's cool AND stupid. Oh... and don't tell me it grosses you out. I'm not going to stand for that sort of thing. We are Devo.