akibare

時間がタツのも早いなぁ〜

2012-01-01T06:01:41Z

あけおめで〜す！

2011-01-01T05:52:10Z

Akibare in Yooperland!

2010-10-16T04:27:13Z

I haven't bathed or used a flush toilet in a week, but... it's happytime.

Go to the end of the land and it's Lake Superior, at Point Abbaye north of L'Anse. 実際のところはもっと鮮やかだけどどうしても写真にはうまく収められません ><;

秋の西日に映える葉っぱ。広く紅葉といってもほとんどのカエデは美しい真っ黄色になっていた。

birfday

2010-09-05T05:31:17Z

アラフォーの「アラ」（粗？）が取れて意外にも満足している私…

I got some sculpey clay of making erasers. :)

子供の時よく集めたもんだな、いろんな形をした消しゴム。　超流行ってたし…それが自分で作れるようになるとは思いもしなかったけどit did!

やっぱ嬉しいなぁ。

最近やけにムシムシしているな

2010-08-11T05:15:19Z

窓になんかぶつかってきたと思ったら何と、

デッかい蝉が蜘蛛の巣にかかってバタバタしていた。

机のランプが窓のすぐ側で、そのランプをめがけて飛んでくる虫を捕まえようと蜘蛛がよく窓枠に巣を張っているもんだから、虫が引っかかること自体はそれほど珍しくないけどこんな大きな虫はやっぱり初めてかな？

結局ほうきでつついて逃がしてやった…

糸にくるまれて食べられていくとこぞぇ〜ったいに見たくないからね。

考えるだけでも悍ましいもん　><;

I really need a better debugger

2010-08-02T22:29:08Z

どういうわけかここ数日「窓なき独房」にはコオロギ（！！）が氾濫している。生きたヤツもいれば死骸もありで…

This post has been brought to you by the letter J and the number 10

2010-03-24T03:31:55Z

(1) Juxtaposition: I like making collage. One of my favorite things is size out of scale collage, the juxtaposition of two things out of scale so that one looks strangely large. Ah, if I only had the Photoshop skillz, but scissors and glue are pretty good too.

(2) Jenga: The tower game! I actually got this in our office's White Elephant gift exchange, but I love it like a regular gift. We play it now from time to time at work.

(3) Java! I drink lots of java, and produce lots of Java. Happily I get paid to do it (well, the producing part anyway). I will admit my coffee consumption habits are insane. I prefer it black, no sugar, no milk, usually with ice. No pop for me, coffee all the way.

(4) Jaga Jazzist: Some music I like to study and work by.

(5) Jyagaimo: Yeah I'm going to cheat. I don't know so many words that start with J. Whether they be mashed, boiled, roasted, crisps, chips, fries, or latkes, I am a fan of the potato. Mmmm. I like them enough to pretend they start with J.

(6) Jeans: Wear 'em every day. Yet another benefit of being a cube farmer...

(7) Jabber: Sweet chat protocol.

(8) Jet: Lets me go to the other side of the planet on a somewhat regular basis. A jet-ski would take WAY too long. Bonus - now I can fly on a jet immediately from my local airport. Not only propeller planes anymore!

(9) Jericho: Yeah, it started out cheesy, but I got drawn in and it was actually pretty good. For once, a show on American TV that seemed planned out from the beginning. Plus, it's got the end of the world with melodrama, plus nukes. Nukes! We watched this the summer the house burnt down.

(10) Japanese: My other language. Lets me cheat and squeeze potatoes onto a "J" list. Easy to read in.

刷ったモンだ

2010-03-05T03:03:43Z

"Quality"という割りにはインキが古くなってるか、ちょっと粘りすぎて濃いとことそうでないとこが縞模様になってしまったけど…

Region BS spreads

2010-02-15T21:09:09Z

...yeah. Bite me.

Luckily all the .wmv stuff still works fine, so not only can I watch this same video in higher quality, I can download the damn thing with quicktime and put it on my phone.

Still, it's appearing more and more likely that subscribing to some proxy service might be in my future.

訛っているヤツは訛っている

2010-02-07T02:49:46Z

So does the guy playing "Roberto" on the morning drama show always have a crazy accent like that or does he exaggerate it for the show?

Still he speaks Italian so from my view he's cool either way :D

/able to order an espresso
//barely
///heaven forbid they ask about change

watching the morning drama in the evening as always

2010-01-31T04:20:39Z

I must admit I like watching TV shows set in the countryside with trains as it has old style trains that I remember from small kid time in the city that are now long gone from there. All the trains had the whole thing painted one color (not silver with a stripe) and there wasn't any sort of air conditioning.

You open the window, your hair gets sucked out flapping, and it kinda feels weird but nice too...

There was a time I thought it'd be awesome to be the guy who punched tickets at the ticket wicket, bouncing the puncher along with the precise rhythm, that job is long since expired.

...along with the nixie tube ticket vending machines.

Elevator girl, also, was short-lived.

やっぱ子供のあたしにとってはカッコよかったけどなぁ…

/beer status: > 1

Dammit taxes are everywhere anymore

2010-01-14T01:22:25Z

I went to a cow orker's computer and made the same file open error, apparently the English version says "clean up" so I presume someone made a typo going for 整理、otherwise, well... lolwut?

新年あけましておめでとうございます！

2009-12-31T22:20:30Z

Rawr!

下を向いて歩こう…　お尻が、もぞも〜ぞしてもさぁ…

2009-12-29T23:47:32Z

The lizard brain had what to say about this.

White X'mas

2009-12-26T01:30:07Z

まだ一インチ積もっていないから正式には White X'mas にはならないかも知れないけど全体が白く見える程度に降ったから一応満足かな？　まだ少しは降っているし…

秋葉原、秋葉原です。

2009-09-16T23:57:20Z

こんな動画見ているとさすがに酔うな…

時代もどんどん変わる

2009-08-05T04:17:24Z

NHK, you can bite my lily white ass

2009-07-23T23:48:38Z

...yet another reason I feel not the slightest twinge of guilt ripping off their stuff from the usual free places. Problem is, people don't tend to rip the news.

They've changed out the usual radio news from 7, too, used to be audio of the regular TV program, but now it's all slow, shorter program, and "NHK国際放送です" where we can be sure to receive the appropriate daily dose of propaganda about North Korea and the 拉致被害者. While doing that though, they make sure that you can just click download the news in .mp3 format, UNLESS of course you want it in Japanese, then you have to stream. (Happily it's trivial to record to .mp3, making whatever paranoia they have completely pointless.)

I understand their "ZOMG you didn't pay 受信料 issues" but since you have to set up an ACCOUNT to watch the damn video stuff anyway, it's not like they couldn't make me PAY. Other websites are more than happy to let me do that and charge to my "ISP," where I maintain an expat account for charging purposes only.

I'm thinking I need to look into getting a proxy from somewhere.

At least it's looking like the international iStore issue might be solved for me soon...

Yarrrrr, mateys. That is all.

/still 篤姫 was a good show
//if you get my drift

ETA: Looks like Uncle Google might be coming through...

back to the states

2009-05-23T04:50:56Z

フロントガラス越しに撮ったんで空のとこに見える汚れはつぶれた虫です ><;

this afternoon

2009-05-20T03:30:53Z

...crossing the Montreal River, mile marker[1] 92 on the Algoma Central Railroad (on our way south from Hearst, ON to Sault Ste. Marie, ON). 130 feet up, w00t.

12 hours of traaaaaaaiiiiiiiiins. :D

[1]. Yes. It's miles.

いよいよケコーン！

2009-05-02T03:08:49Z

So I'm getting married (!!) next Friday, a week from today, in the park down the street from my house, to my best friend, after work, after WHICH, there will be a par-tay.

SRSLY.

I will be busting out The Dress. The same The Dress, that gets dragged out for job interviews, other people's weddings, speeches before Various and Sundry August Bodies. 1987 Ito Yokado special, flowered, cotton, A-line, by this point I suppose it's legitimately Vintage. It's not so often I do the Drag Thing, so it's a big deal. I will also wear the matching shoes, namely the brown suede All Stars.

Yes, I am gonna wear trainers to my own wedding. People always told me I could never do that, eventually I would conform and such, but, well, didn't happen. C'est la vie.

It's gonna be good :D

We will be ML^2 :D

it's not meant for you to read

2009-04-26T01:23:57Z

Lately I saw two instances of characters that made me laugh.

First was some Asian-looking university student was wearing a shirt that was black with white writing saying 「白人看不懂」on. It's "white people don't understand (looking at this)" in Chinese, I dimly recall maybe it's a reference to a (funny!) online skit made at the Fifth College international apartments that I saw online once ages ago, but anyway... made me think of saying "hey nice shirt!" but we were passing so quick, so, no chance.

Second is, at Cafe Kopi where I spend lots of time, by the bathroom they have a shelf with the extra fruits on it for restocking, in the shipping boxes. It's cardboard boxes with "Florida Lemons" or whatever and some art, but lots of the boxes say 「日本向け特選」prominently on the side. It means "Chosen specially for (export to) Japan" in Japanese. I suspect that of course they just print that on all the boxes for the same reason your boxes of mass-processed cookies say "REG PENNA DEPT AGR" on but I can't help but chuckling. It's all the saaaaame, guys!

まるで地球のてっぺんに立っているようで

2009-04-13T15:46:18Z

Standing on top of Etna, we are above the clouds. Nothing but lava and snow and steam coming out. Some of this landscape used to have pizza stands and ski lifts on it until 2003 when it was all wiped flat in an explosion.

If you dig even a little hole in the lava shards, the rocks are so hot you can't hold them for long. The field where it erupted in 2007, we can't go, because it's too hot to even travel on.

How did I get up there? Just as always,
I took the bus:

If you look closely you will notice that
the bus is a Unimog:

The passenger part of the bus is hooked to the business end by a flexible rubber gasket type thing, so the parts can bump around rather independently on the road. The bus also has huge chains on the wheels.

The roads are pretty much like off-roading up the passes of the Rockies in Colorado, except that instead of regular dirt, it's all lava shards. Currently toward the top, the snow is higher than the bus on both sides of the road for a lot of the way.

Coming back, half of the journey was by that same bus and the final part by
funicular:

That's another car coming up, taken from our car.

I have read a lot about volcanoes recently and so it was quite an enjoyable time to see it.

Public Transit!

2009-04-05T22:38:22Z

The city bus I took this morning.

it's so retrograde, baby

2009-03-30T20:57:54Z