Nerdcore Archives

Already : Hatachi "Nerdcore" Archives

Using Rikaichan in Firefox 3.0 Sunday June 29

For those of you that speak Japanese, are studying Japanese, or otherwise have any need to instantaneously look up Japanese characters on web pages, I recommend Rikaichan.

I was using Firefox 2 when it notified me on June 22nd that a Rikaichan update was available. I installed it, as normal, and then a few days later updated to Firefox 3 when it came out to the general public.

At that point, Rikaichan stopped working -- or rather, the installed Japanese-English dictionary was no longer appearing as a compatible plug-in for Firefox 3.

Should anyone have the same problem and stumble upon this page, simply uninstall the dictionary (leave the plug-in itself), and then re-download and install it. This fixed my installation, and I am sure it would sort out the bugs in yours as well.

Versioning. Sigh.

There's something about old data Wednesday December 26

Last year, when home, I ran out of time to deal with the old Dell that was sitting in my Dad's basement. Inside it lay three hard drives -- full of information I could have never fit on my laptop when I went to Japan -- and I was determined, someday, to get it all back.

I bought a 300GB portable drive this year, so I simply brought it back with me to the States. The old Dell, unfortunately, won't turn on, so it hasn't been an easy procedure: I rooted the drives out of it, re-installed them on my mother's PC, and am now gleefully copying data (old CDs, MP3s of when I used to be on the radio, etc).

The most interesting part, though, is looking at the state of the data. These drives haven't been powered on since August 2005. The last pictures, the "latest" music, the projects for work: it is more-or-less a snapshot of my life 30 months ago. Somehow that's fascinating.

However, the best data, from University, is long gone after a hard drive crash. It was early in life that I have learned to back up early, and back up often. It is not a question of if a hard drive will crash, but when. At my Dad's house, Sharon labored to scan in and print a whole album of family pictures. I asked her if she had backed any of it up. That's a painful story waiting to be told.

Friendly reminder. If you have data you can't afford, or don't want to lose, buy yourself an external USB hard drive for $100. Better yet, buy two, and keep one locally, keep the other one in a safety deposit box at the bank.

And you think I'm joking.

There is one other alternative, professed by some I know: never keep any data worth so much effort. Keep your life simple. Food for thought.

I knew it Thursday April 20

I knew this wireless connection would have me screwing around on the Internet at home. I'm trying, though, to do that as productively as possible. There have been many improvements on this site I've been wanting to take care of, and tonight was just that opportunity. Considered going down to the bathhouse, but it started pouring out of nowhere, which is a clear sign you need to code instead.

The New Features

• A MoBlog. Yes, I've finally gotten on that train. I have a cell phone with a built-in camera, Internet and e-mail, so I'm surprised it took me this long to build a program to post e-mailed images. Hopefully, when I'm really busy and don't have time to update regularly, I'll at least be able to keep these images fresh and interesting. Note that since this panel is new, you may have to scroll down to the bottom right of this page and click "Reopen all panels..." to see it.
• Recent Pictures. There is a new link on the right labeled "View latest added". This will show you the most recent pictures, in chronologically descending order as I've added them. It's a lot easier than trying to navigate through all my different labyrinth-esque albums to see if I've added anything.
• New Color Schemes. Dad requested a Penn State theme, and I've added it. I thought it would only be right to do the Illini as well.

Let me know what you think!

Wireless Sunday April 16

When I first moved to my apartment, I scoured it for open wireless access points that I could use to hop online. Broadband Internet is more expensive in Japan (is anyone surprised?), and I really didn't have the $500 to fork over for a year's worth of access. I settled on using it at school, and considered my Internet-less home a santuary where I could actually get work done.

I had a party yesterday where we did some file sharing, so some people brought laptops. At one point, Tyler said to me, "You know you get wireless here, right?"

"Yeah, but they're all secured networks," I told him.

"No they're not?" he responds, showing me a working web browsing session.

Let's just say things have changed at 204 Prince Heights. Good morning.

Weekend Sundries Thursday October 27

(Ed. note: This was written six days before this post, but was not posted for lack of an Internet connection.)

I made Ma Po Tofu tonight for the first time (#42 at the China Palace in both Rockton and Roscoe, for those who are in the know); it worked out well. I received the package from home with all of my winter clothes. Said package also included two lamps and my MP3 player AC adapter. Last, but not least, were two unopened bottles of Sirracha hot sauce. I went to the store, got a light bulb, and installed my favorite lamp; it works well.

However, what has not worked out well tonight was following a classmate's recommendation and watching a particular drama on TBS (not affiliated with the American TBS) at ten o'clock.

In fact, I want the last forty-five minutes of my life back. I think I'm going to bill my time out to the person who recommended it. I should have known better when she said it was "based on a manga". And I could have been reading the cultural anthropology book I just borrowed from the IUC library... this is why televisions are bad, and I wouldn't even have one if I wasn't trying to learn a new language.

Occasionally, we are assigned to watch the news as homework; we have to report on what we learned. I cried "foul" at first because I didn't have a TV, and didn't feel like I should be required to buy one simply because I needed it for a three-minute assignment twice a week. I eventually caved when I saw the $45 used TV (with free delivery) at the shop where I bought my table.

Random: Japanese light bulbs use about one-fifth of the energy of their American counterparts. The sockets are the same, but unlike the States, where 90% of the market is dominated by "regular" bulbs, Japan only has fluorescent bulbs (or at least, the supermarket only carried fluorescent bulbs). I have learned the hard way, though, that my 8-watt "40-watt" light bulb is not strong enough for reading. Good for the ambient feel, bad for the eyes.

Tomorrow's agenda includes: another light bulb (this time we'll try the 12-watt "60-watt"), an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet birthday celebration at Shakey's Pizza (yes, the same Shakey's Pizzas that dot the southern Wisconsin landscape), making okonomiyaki for the first time, and listening to the music on my MP3 player (now that I have the AC adapter for it, at last).

Warning: the following paragraphs are all nerd, and it's pretty much for personal notation. Read at your own risk. Normal readers may stop here safely.

I also installed IIS, PHP, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin on my laptop. Now, I can do development work without an Internet connection. I've started using PHP 5.0; I'm enjoying the extended OOP functionality (er, maybe, "complete", considering that C++ had thisfunctionality a decade ago). The first thing I wrote was an application framework for new projects I design.

I've noted a few major limitations in the User Request » Function » Page Output design that I had been using (with large 'switch' statements). First of all, each execution could only execute one function, and each execution could only display one page. Nine times out of ten, you can get by with this. However, I want to stop thinking in this way: I want to take a modular approach to everything I design.

The more modules I write, the faster the next program will be developed; by abstracting the modules into basic class functions, I can essentially extend the functionality of PHP to meet my own uses. Before I had helper functions, certainly, but not to the extent I am now envisioning. Also, the new framework should help reduce debug time significantly, and it should help reduce versioning inconsistencies.

A long day of updates Thursday September 8

I called the landlord today about my apartment. Apparently, the earliest I can pick up my key is a week from today, so I'll be staying at Riho's and Mike's for the next week.

I mentioned in brief that Mike and I had spent some time together last weekend. He called today wanting to know my weekend schedule, and he had already thrown around the idea of me staying there. I might do that for a night or two just to give Riho a night off; I've been sleeping in her living room for over a week now, and even though I have my own key, and we don't see each other so much except at night, it's still just not fair to her.

I had today off; usually, I will have class on Thursdays, but due to a scheduling idiosyncrasy of the first week, I had nothing. Without an apartment to move into and furnish, there's really nothing to do.

So, what else to do but fix all those things I've been meaning to fix on this website.

• Comments are no longer pop-ups, they are now included at the bottom of each entry.
• When you post a comment, it doesn't take you to that ugly white page anymore.
• I added a security code to the comments box. If you enter the code correctly, which most anyone with halfway decent eyesight can (I know, it's an accessibility issue), your comment will be posted immediately. This is to prevent comment spam, whose robots are getting increasingly more clever.
• The scheme toolbox on the right side is 'sticky', your choice will persist even to your next visit.
• I have removed all of the table formatting from the picture script, except where appropriate.
• I updated the header graphic, and I plan on doing so continually as I take new pictures.
• I finished making the site XHTML 1.0 Transitional. It now verifies properly.

I've had a lot of requests for pictures; since the weather should be nice tomorrow, I will take a bunch of my school.

version upgrade Thursday July 21

In preparation for the Big Japan Blog Changeover ™, I have upgraded to Movable Type 3.1. One of the stronger features of this new version is improved comment spam filtering, a consistent problem I have with open commenting.

One consequence is that comments may not appear immediately after you post them. Eventually, you will be able to log in, and then you will not have to do anything differently.

adware and spyware Monday January 3

apparently the state of california, progressive as they are, decided to make spyware illegal, punishable by a $1,000 fine for each count.

i have three comments. first, i haven't checked my computer for spyware for months, and then i just ran ad-aware and found nothing. i love you firefox. second, someone on plastic had a good comment. this is a wolf in sheep's clothing: while you have banned spyware, you have also legitimized "adware" by defining the legal boundaries. third, most of the malicious spyware is run by offshore firms, so there's no use in passing laws. instead, we need to bring in the marines. don't mess with texas america.

naysayers beware Wednesday December 1

cara from high school got a free ipod, and then she was all excited. i looked into the free ipods scam, and found out it's not a scam: just something that takes good friends and a lot of time.

i began on something like october 5th, and now, december 1st:

all ye who 'ere naysayers, these be ye just desserts.

japanese movies Tuesday October 19

todd telling me about a movie he just saw:

todd (14:47:46):Her last boyfriend was a music rep of some kind. She found out he loved someone else (like, his brother or something like that) so she cut off his hands and his feet, plus his tongue and a few fingers, and keeps him in a bag as a gimp that she only feeds bowls of her own vomit.
me (14:48:00): i see
me (14:48:04): is this a japanese film?
todd (14:48:08): Very.

thunderbird, hands down Wednesday October 13

one of the things i need to pay attention to, particularly as i get older, is my stubborn nature. it keeps me doing things, for no good reason, other than it being the way i have always done them.

for example, for years i insisted that everything, ever, would be in lowercase. while that's mostly true, for many e-mails now, i realize that conformity is not necessarily required, but definitely a small price to pay in return for having your comments respected.

also, as some sort of weird collection fetish, i used to put all of my mp3s in the same directory. and i wouldn't sort. refused to. i ended up with over 3,000 songs in one directory on the old blackbox, and the net effect was that the directory took about 4 seconds to load. that's what directory trees are for. it took the corruption and subsequent massive data loss of that drive for me to finally change my ways.

luckily, i'm making strides. i've long thought that eudora was an inferior mail client. it certainly used to be superior, particularly to webmail, but it has absolutely no support for multinational character sets. for any japanese e-mail i received -- of which there are three or four commonly used character sets -- i had to copy the gibberish on my screen to a text file, save it, and view it with a web browser.

since firefox won me over so easily in the browser war, i figured that i might as well try its partner in crime, thunderbird. it is everything i wanted out of eudora, and nothing else. pure perfection.

free ipods Wednesday October 6

viral marketing at its best.

there's this company giving away free ipods if you buy into their scheme and get five of your friends to do so. of course, the first thing i did was see if couldn't find away around all the requirements, but whoever wrote the software did a fairly good job of it.

i was so impressed that i signed up. cara (from high school) did it, and she has a free ipod now. i was intrigued, and so i decided that if she could do it, so could i. so sign up for something on my behalf, and start your own thread of people so you can get your own ipod. if you play my game, though, i'll set you up with a free dinner when i get my ipod. if you do the right offer, it doesn't even cost you anything other than time.

see, i come from the "incentive" marketing school.

so help me out. free dinner comes your way.

pintsize is awesome Sunday September 19

if you haven't been reading questionable content, today's the day to start. this one has pintsize saying in free-association, "it is hard to get a lady to evaluate to true."

i'm sure that only todd, myself, and other programming-types thinks that's funny. but it is, i tell you. it is. nerd humor goes a long way.

(update)

another link you should follow is this one. a lot of the time we bloggers don't have anything to say. i love you jen.

spammers strike again Friday September 17

despite my terms of use link above, some spammer decided to post 716 comments on this site advertising an online poker outfit.

i've tracked this person's ISP down and have reported them. let's hope it works out.

when it rains... Friday July 30

it must be because sachi's in town. she leaves today, but i have literally six different websites to do something for this weekend, ranging from an entire design to an estimate for a new site.

it really doesn't help that i have to work three nights this weekend.

looks like someone won't be getting any sleep.

sooooo nuts Wednesday July 28

i'm like a little girl, i'm so happy (cue SNL reference, if you didn't already get it).

the reason i'm stoked, as i said in the previous post, is that all i've been doing is speaking japanese. but not just, "hi, how are you" so on so forth boring drivel, but actually talking about things. for example, i was explaining to sachi how i couldn't stand that don guy from two summers ago because all the mug wanted to do was pick up girls; i couldn't respect that as a reason for studying abroad.

and i even successfully explained my subsequent visits to both london and spain.

all in all, it's been a pretty successful day. damn, i'm tired, though, mentally. the rapid-fire pronounciation is starting to come to me faster, though, even after a day and a half. imagine what a year could do. thinking about that, that's why i'm happy.

crosswords ii Wednesday June 16

[please reference the previous post if you don't know what this is about]

abstract

arthur wynne developed the first crossword in 1913 for the new york world. his puzzle was shaped as a diamond with a hollowed-out center, and while the concept was the same, the format was a far cry from the standard rectangular style that most puzzle authors use today (1).

1The World's First Crossword - The History

crosswords

there was an interesting article in the sunday new york times magazine about iran's nuclear development. i turned the last page of the article to find, though, the crossword. so i began on it, remembering what naomi said about the sunday new york times crossword: it's the hardest of the week. and she wasn't kidding.

michael assisted, and we quickly resorted to certain resources (google) for answers to the lesser-known clues. lesser-known being the "river in france blah blah blah" type. c'mon, if the answer isn't "seine", should the average american care to know it? do i expect a frenchman to be able to name anything other than the mississippi?

michael and i then left for the store, and in the elevator on the way down, i had a thought: why hasn't someone created a crossword solver that in addition to using the standard methods (i.e., "i know the pattern is a--i-n, what words could this be?"), also uses google and a thesaurus to generate answers. michael initially showed excitement, but then suggested that simply crossword puzzle writers would change their style of clue writing to fool the computer program. i suggested that the software could read large datasets of puzzles to learn them...such that if the style were changed, it would only take a finite number of puzzles before the software had yet again mastered it. and so the whole conversation about "artificial intelligence" came into full swing.

i still wish i were an engineering student for this kind of thing -- i would propose this as a research project and study it for the next two or three years. certainly, there is not such a particular need for automated crossword solutions, but the more general concept of interpreting query results (i.e., the search results) in light of the question (i.e., the clue). and i think that that's amazing. since i don't have time to write this software, though, i have instead decided to outline its function, methods, and capability as if i were to write it.

i'm tired at the moment, but i'm going to do this tomorrow or the next day. it will probably be the nerdiest post i've had in awhile, and most people will probably be better off skipping it. but when google hands a $300k/year job to some young theorist for making this idea come to life on his own, i can claim say that i thought of it first. not that that does me any good or guarantees me anything.

quick, to the patent office!

that's right, because in america, it's never about the science -- it's about the money behind the science. this is one reason i left the engineering department.

new site Friday May 28

i've been working on my not-so-secret relaunch since before finals ended, and here it is. basically, it's much easier to read now, and i brought back a lot of the old style that i had before i switched designs in october 2002. at almost a year and a half, it was time to adjust my look. i was locked in by the IFRAME, and i never should have thought of it in the first place.

eh, whatever. there was a time and place for it, and that was that.

there's a lot of new stuff still yet to be added to the new site, but i really needed to get the design out the door to make use of one of the larger things: the photo albums now work inside the context of the page, and you don't have to open a new window.

there's a lot more, too. but i'll let you play around.

screw up Sunday May 9

don't fix what isn't broken.

my website software (movable type) had a glitch (caused by me and my errant database deletions, and therefore i upgraded versions in hopes of fixing it.

instead i rendered the whole system inoperable, and spent about an hour today resurrecting.

oops.

*sigh8 Sunday March 14

yes, i know i'm stealing todd's thing. first, i'll say what i need, and hopefully someone can help me:

i need a copy of windows xp pro service pack 1, or windows 2003 server. who's got me? i only need the CD for about five minutes.

now here's why. a couple christmases ago, i asked for a couple hundred dollars to purchase two IDE 30gb hard drives, and i bought an IDE RAID card to go with that. ever since, i've been running XP off of a 60gb. this fall, my computer started acting up -- and would randomly corrupt sectors. this proved not to be a big deal -- i could go into the recovery console and chkdsk and fix them.

this time, the corruption is leading to a BSOD that won't let the recovery console run.

and as a side note, i tried knoppix as a tool to fix. wasn't able to mount my corrupt ntfs partition -- but impressed me beyond all belief.

i'm THIS close from switching to linux. all i need is todd telling me to do it. but first i'd like to steal off all my data from the ntfs drive..hence why i need the CDs for this other recovery package that will work.

fake comment posters Sunday December 21

the spammers are getting desperate. apparently, they have spamming robots now that browse all the blogs and post comments in various entries using bogus e-mail addresses, names, and fake quotations. of course, the URLs are linked to various spam-esque sites, the standard stuff: websites claiming they can enlarge your penis, get rid of your debt, so on so forth.

it's more annoying than anything; i just end up deleting them, of course, and i wonder why they even waste their time with blogs...most blogs don't get a high enough traffic flow to even make it worth their while. moreover, since when is my audience interested in penis enlargement?

gah, spammers are so dumb. dumber yet, the people that buy stuff from them and propogate such a phenomenon.

virii Wednesday June 4

i realize that i've had a string of nerdcore posts recently, and i promise to do arizona real justice when i get back to chambana on sunday. while i'm in this element, though, i issue a warning to all university students:

even though the university offers free mcafee virus scan software on their website, do not download it. i just spent the last hour battling my laptop to get it to work on the internet again after installing this software. it entrenched itself so deeply that i wasn't even able to uninstall it: it crashed every time. when i tried to stop the program's system services, it also crashed. essentially, the only way to remove it was good ol' dos style:

DELTREE *.* /y

and if you don't know what that means, you need a little oldschool schoolin'.

internet interconnections Monday June 2

the one noteable obstacle in wireless networks is the issue of interference. i am sure that some programmers and engineers spent a long time on the issue of interference, but none of these intelligent scientists could account for "the lopez factor".

when i started my laptop for wireless use on jon's couch, i had much trouble staying connected to one wireless network. it seems that jon's apartment complex also hosts other wireless routers, and even though jon's signal should be the strongest (it is in the same room), i kept getting bumped by the lopez family.

apparently, the mexican lopez family is taking souping up their cars to new heights: the output gain on wireless network routers. i'm sure that if i could go upstairs, i would see a nice linksys hub, but the rubber feet would be removed such that it rides real low on the table. i think they added some aluminum foil rims, and a glow-in-the-dark sticker on the bottom that looks really cool at night.

no harm no foul, i guess.

waste not, want not

there's a guy named justin frankel, and about five years ago he started nullsoft, authors of the esteemed mp3 software "winamp". however, nullsoft was purchased by america online awhile back, and well, america online can make things that are good be lame. however, with wednesday's release of "waste", nullsoft's free private, secure peer-to-peer file sharing software, they have redeemed themselves.

thus, i have elected to mirror the site here, since it is apparent that nullsoft was forced to take it down.

http://waste.bothers.us

changing times Thursday April 10

i have a paper due tomorrow, or at least, a mental deadline exists; i have chosen to procrastinate in the best way: doing all that stuff you really meant to do but never got around to.

yep, we've got two loads of laundry done, and i have tooled around with moveable type for long enough to proudly announce that already hatachi now also exists in japanese. this is done for a couple of reasons, namely that (a) if i want to become a better japanese writer, i need to write, and (b), most of you are tired of the having windows prompt you every time you come to my page about not having Shift_JIS or whatever other character set installed. i have adjusted this by completely seperating the two blogs such that this blog will always be english-only, and will not discuss things relating to my interest in japan and japanese, unless i feel it is worth noting even to the english speakers.

to access this version, just click the j in the title bar, e to return to this blog, obviously.

wahoooo Wednesday February 19

the mobile revolution Saturday February 8

i don't have a huge need for a laptop right now. however, a financial opportunity allowing me to purchase one arose, and i would be a fool not to seize the opportunity and do so.

specifically, i ordered this ibm thinkpad. please leave your feedback in the comments.

the question is: how is this going to help me be a more productive student? clearly, there are many times when i wished to access my home computer from wherever i happen to be and was unable; often enough i leave my home computer turned on with VNC running such that i can remote-access my machine. but does this justify spending almost $2,000? given that i need this laptop for sure when i go to japan, if nothing else, i have a $400/month computing expense while there. hrmm. that sounds like a student expense. i wonder if scholarships can pay for that?

can't you just smell the capitalism?

nerd, continued Sunday December 8

well, todd and i both have papers to write and readings to do today. naturally, we worked on our webpages to procrastinate. finally, if you are too tired to browse my photo albums one by one, you now have the option to view them as a huge list of thumbnails (the way it should be). now i just need pictures y'all haven't seen.

my mom Sunday November 24

tomorrow i'm leaving to go home for thanksgiving break. to celebrate the idea of family, i posted a photo album of pictures i took over labor day weekend of my mother. mom, i hope you don't object, but they were just too funny when i looked back through them yesterday.

redesign Tuesday October 15

this is the redesign that has sucked up hours upon hours of my life the past few days; such work enabled me to not think about the midterm i will inevitably do poorly on. moreover, after my poor performance, i can come back here and look at the screen and realize that the unsettling feeling caused by the inferior design is no longer an issue. i've just moved from alpha testing to beta mode, so please bear with any errors you find; please let me know.

expanding my domain Thursday October 3

i was reading ashley's blog today, and she just registered a domain name like todd just did and i did this past summer. her new address ends in ".us", as in "within the united states". the first thing that came to mind when i saw it was something else:

"hey, it says 'dot us', that would be kind of funny if..."

so, i now own "bothers.us". "annoys.us" i didn't think of until afterward, but it was taken anyway. i didn't want to buy it for the price they offered, but then they sent me back another e-mail after i "abandoned" their online shopping cart saying i could get it much cheaper if i used their "validation code", so i was suckered. i intend to see if i can't make money back on it, however. i intend on leasing out subdomains; ideas i've already developed:

http://ignorance.bothers.us
http://your.mom.bothers.us
http://pop.music.bothers.us
http://the.smell.of.your.feet.bothers.us

as well as my personal favorite:

http://that.idiot.bush.bothers.us

and now, they're all possible. leave your own personal annoyance suggestions, please.

ebay, baby Monday September 9

i love ebay.

and for some reason, i feel like i really could use a little cash to pay off debt. what better way to do this, i ask, than to liquidate assets your parents gave to you for free? man, i am a rotten stink sometimes. anyway, so that's that. tell your friends. oh, and mom, if i happen sell it, i'll try to send you a (reasonable) cut. this auction also proves that i have way too much fun with the digital camera, even if it's only for an ebay listing.

finally Friday August 23

after an equal battle with the cable company (who was much more on the ball than the phone company, however), i have a working internet connection. it's all downhill from here, and i'll post something of substance later today.

doing my part for my country...spending money Wednesday August 14

the problem with having a nice camera is taking good pictures. because, if you have a good camera, you can't lie about your poorly-lit pictures and blame it on the machinery. it's your fault for not lugging the tripod with you, or that extra flash filter. beyond a certain point, it's all about your composition and SLR settings. but for day-to-day, who wants to worry about that? what is the real ratio of "just need a quick picture" shots to "i care about the composition" shots i take?

it's reasonable enough that my one, large, semi-expensive SLR camera was considerably cumbersome for what i shoot: so i took this picture digitally with a new canon powershot s200. phear it. no longer do i have to lug the big camera around and be that guy; no longer do i have to spend large sums of cash and time on developing, waiting for prints, and scanning them in. followed by the upload and post.

now, instead of being broke little bits at a time, i am broke all at once. i won't even disclose how much i spent, it's none of your business for one, and if she reads this, i am sure my mom would think i am dealing drugs to come up with that kind of cash. hence, the best buy credit card. nate, you know what i am talking about, and if you don't have one of these little yellow cards, never get one.

i chose jon and his new coffee maker (indicated in red) for my subject because he was there, and i needed to test it out. it's a starbucks brand coffee maker that works via vaccuum action. and like starbucks, it succeeds in its purpose by sucking really hard. why did i take and post this picture, you ask?

anyway, so here's the point of all this. now, when i see something funny (it's a shame that i did this after leaving new york city, where funny things occur daily), i can point-shoot-upload-post. in about a minute, and you get to look at it. there's a thousand reasons to have a digital camera other than that, including pictures of my house before i move in to prove just how much of a, excuse me here, shithole it has become.

the problem with expletives is that too often people use them to replace real words, thereby decreasing their communicative efficacy. however, the proper usage of these words rings true in the hearts of all with phrases like shithole. i know that you know exactly what i mean, in only eight efficient letters.

nerd part iii Tuesday July 30

the photo album script is almost finished, you may now post comments on any individual picture. check it out, if it strikes your fancy.

what am i doing Monday July 8

a brief update from 3:32am about my weekend. friday i got out of class and came to the computer building and started learning SQL. from there, i started working on a new backend for my picture script -- one that could theoretically manage hundreds of albums without a problem. my current script is a little too primitive for this.

so i left the building when the sun was up, about 12 hours later. slept until noon, and woke up for the barbeque with the "english speaking society". translation: old people from kanazawa who wanted to talk english at us. however, the was beef. good beef. and lots of it, so i enjoyed it. from there, katie and i went swimming in the pool, which lacked chlorine. however, it was amazingly refreshing.

more refreshing was walking back to nishikawa heights with my collared shirt unbuttoned. i have lost enough weight where i had no problem doing that. it was totally a confidence thing, and it felt great. i am by no means skinny now, but i notice a little difference.

katie, ken (the japanese-american guy), bj, myself, and senda-san went to this amazing italian restaurant and sat around and talked after dinner. for two and a half hours. have you ever been sitting in a restaurant and not realized that you've been having the time of your life and the conversation of your life without even reading how long you've been there? it was like that.

ken is an interesting case. i've brought him up briefly before, but his deal is that he is as american as you or i, but is a japanese citizen. came to the united states as a very small child. speaks both fluently. he's from texas. he came back to study here not only to study here but to escape the texas drug trade (not kidding), and the stories he was telling us were just out of control. and i thought that andrew (todd, tyler's friend) was into it...

and then again, today, i coded all day. man, it's bedtime. 3:43am, and a final exam in the morning. oh, i haven't studied, but i don't care-- i am taking it credit/no credit; i have already decided i don't want it if it means taking that stupid class seriously.

photo albums and php Saturday June 29

yet again php has struck, grasping my neck and not letting me sleep until i feed it code. i coded a php photo album script. i know that they are already out there, but i could not find one with descriptions...which is what i wanted it for in the first place. therefore, i spent all last night and this afternoon scanning pictures, editing code, and porting the old picture books into this new, leet script format. then, i spent all of sunday night adding the finishing touches. all japan pictures are up and have descriptions for your enjoyment.

being original Tuesday June 18

it is about time i fully detail the old name of this site. i am going to change it now, so first i will let random musings have its last day in the sun.

in high school, my senior year was spent trying to use up all of the goody-two-shoes points i had worked up over the years. i would cut school in the same way the "bad" kids did, but in a system where the attendance office folks are the five-o, judge, and jury, three years of kissing ass and seeming responsible had earned me enough figurative get-out-of-jail-free cards to do anything.

sure, i had a few detentions and an in-school suspension, but even the officials themselves admitted that they were only issuing them because the school handbook mandated those punishments specifically for the crimes. my favorite, and i am sure it is jon's as well, is our last-minute weather-inspired trip to michigan avenue that landed us in in-school detention. we would have gotten away with it, but when three guys who were all friends were missing from 5th-hour newspaper class, dave just had to call us on it. it worked out well, though. we were allowed to bring a sack lunch to the in-school, so we collaborated and brought my 40-gallon cooler, fulled stocked with cheeses, lunchmeats, veggies, and tons of tropical blend v-8 splash (yum). for icing on the cake, i brought my acoustic guitar, too. we had a blast. jon brought his videocamera. people came to visit us, and we essentially made a mockery of the whole system.

ok, enough with the tangents. so, in this aforementioned newspaper class, jen leavitt and i became two regular columnists. one of my columns, actually, won me the reward of having the air let out of my front tire in the school parking lot; i don't hold grudges though. when i read it now i realize i was being too preachy. college has chilled me out like that, you know?

i needed a name for my column, and since i was a fan of the word both random and musings, i stuck them together. internally, a new era was born. when i returned from london in the winter of early 2001, my website did not exist. since i had a thousand pictures from london i wanted to display, i decided to create a new site that would be hosted on my students account. random musings came to mind. and when i started blogging (mind you, buried deep within the site, not on the front page), the name was still there. were these scrawlings still random? would you even call them musings?

even if you would not, i did. what is done is done. however, after checking out bloghop more recently, i discovered that random and musings are not really original at all. this led to my google search on "random musings", which generated a page that was a death knoll to my site's title. i honestly do not know what pissed me off more: the lack of my site showing up among the list, or the over-abundance of other people's slightly-more random musings. with that, i decided i had had enough.

i set out on a quest for a new name. i considered hatachi, or something with it, because it is a japanese word that i like -- but that would be way too i-am-a-dorky-engineer-who-likes-anime-esque. and i don't even like anime. just cowboy bebop. after that, i thought about just adopting the site's name pitchpipe, but i would rather not blur the lines between my domain and my personal business. i could follow the formulaic name creation method via the juxtaposition of two of my favorite objects. let's go with... birkenstock sandals and the urbana hot wok's general tso's chicken: birks and chinese food. not bad, but not good. noone wants to think about eating while thinking of feet. moving on. next, i tried guster's goldfly album and japanese culture and language, but that only yields bury me with my chopsticks. i am not making this up -- these are following the favorite-objects formula. and they suck; not saying that random musings was much better.

or was it? let's take a look: random described my inability to pick one topic, and musings indicated that you were going to get a piece of my mind -- not necessarily the most intelligent or informed pieces, either. so let's play the synonym game, because the blog content has not deviated much from that description. abitrary ponderings. no.

forget this insane rambling about choosing a title, mark. just do it, nike-style. therefore, the new title of random musings shall be already hatachi, defining my site not by its writings, but by the person behind them. it means that i am already twenty years of age, the japanese age of adulthood, and i better start figuring out what i am going to do with life. this forum should help. and if i start attracting lots of anime crowds from the search engines because i have one japanese word in my title, so be it. i am reminded of high fidelity: " we're called sonic death monkey, and if laura's bourgeois lawyer friends can't handle that, well then.."

c'mon rob, we need the gig.

the best virus: stupid people Monday June 17

i received an email this morning from brian rieder, a guy i knew from high school. we were in newspaper class together senior year, and he was annoying. if you have seen can't hardly wait, brian was, and most likely still is, the will you sign my yearbook? character. hence, you'll understand why i did not just press delete to the following email:

HI ALL! I JUST GOT THIS MESSAGE AND I DID HAVE THE VIRUS. IT HAS SINCE BEEN DELETED. PLEASE CHECK YOUR COMPUTER.
SORRY, Brian

VERY IMPORTANT VIRUS
The virus called jdbgmgr.exe is not detected by Norton or McAfee Anti-virus systems. The virus sits quietly for 14 days before damaging the system. It's sent automatically by the messenger and by the Address book, whether or not you send E-mails to your contacts.

this sounded a lot like the SULFNBK.EXE hoax to me, so i took 35 seconds and went to symantec.com. instantly i located this page, identifying it as a hoax. brian, who used to boast to jon and i in newspaper class about his technical prowess, is an idiot. the only smart thing he did was BCC, if he hadn't, i was going to ream him a new one in front of everyone. also, he most likely won't re-forward to everyone, so i feel bad for all the techno-naive who will delete that file.

isr foodservice Friday February 1

To Whom It May Concern:

As an Allen resident who usually eats after regular dinner hours, I thoroughly enjoy NRG's hours and healthy food as an alternative to Pizza Services. However, last semester I became concious of all of the waste that I was producing, given that I usually used one plastic container, a soup container, a plasticware/napkin package, a drink cup and lid, and plastic bag for carrying purposes. Over semester break, I purchased two Tupperware containers -- about the sizes of the soup and plastic containers.

As soon as NRG opened, I began using my new Tupperware coupled with my Dining Services-supplied mug. However, on the 31st of January, I was stopped by the Dining Services employee who was checking out customers. She informed me that I was not allowed to use my own reusable containers, and then she proceeded to contact the woman who appeared to be in charge, who quickly agreed that this was not allowed.

When I asked why, they both employed the circular reasoning answer: "because you have to use our containers". It seemed that these employees did not know whether or not I should be allowed to do this; since they had not seen it before, they assumed it must not be allowed. Given the benefits to both myself and Dining Services, I cannot understand why such behavior is banned. First, I cannot take extra food because the containers are essentially the same size. After I exit the foodservice area, the seal-tight lids on my containers ensure I can place them directly in my bookbag, thereby eliminating the need for a plastic carry-out bag. I carry the food to my dormitory, where I eat it with my own silverware. Also, if I can't finish my meal, these air-tight containers keep food fresh in my refrigerator, which also eliminates food waste. On a cost basis, supplying me with two containers, a plastic bag, a cup with a lid, and a plasticware package is clearly not cost-effective if I choose not to use such items. Since I throw away my trash into Housing-maintained recepticles, if I throw away all that plastic in my dormitory, University Housing still pays to have it hauled. In the general sense, less trash production means less overhead, which is always economically viable for any business. If I don't need it, why must you make me take it?

Since this Dining Services option is intended for carry-out, not buffet-style (like most hall dining rooms), as long as I consume the same amount of food, what container I use should not matter, and as I pointed out above, it actually makes more dollar-sense to allow me to continue. The only concern that I can foresee is that of sanitation: with Dining Services-provided containers, there is no variable of cleanliness -- it is all new. I wash and reuse my container, and theoretically, I could become sick if I did not clean it properly. However, this is not your concern, because the same could be said for my Dining Services mug. If I used that at every meal and never washed it, then got food poisoning, this is not your liability, because you liability is limited by my negligance.

If there are any other concerns I am not addressing, I would like to hear about them, and have a forum to discuss possible solutions to those concerns.

Thank you for your time.