Tim’s Ramblings

…yes…you read that correctly. My McDonalds order smells like a woman wearing cheap, what I can only assume to be, perfume. Goddammit….

I left work around 6:30 and, with at least 4 loads of laundry to do, I really didn’t feel like cooking at all. Typically I would stop somewhere better but I haven’t been to a McDonalds in a while so I stopped by on the way home, especially since the drive thru line was short.

My order came out to be $5.45 or something and with so many $1 bills in my wallet, when I pulled up to the first window, I gave the kid a $10 bill and a $1 bill. As expected he kinda stared at it for a second…looked at me…then proceeded to tell me that it’s only $5.45 and started to give me back the $1 bill. *sigh*….is it bad that this happens more often than not? I mean….this is not a rare thing for people to do right???

I told him that it’s ok and I just want a $5 bill back he still didn’t get it but took it anyway and then, with a continued confused look on his face, gave me my change and I moved on to wonderful window #2.

As soon as I pulled up, the window opened and before I could react I was hit with the smell. Holy shit. It’s this powdery nasty smell that vaguely reminds me of the cheap cheap perfume section of a Walgreens. This is not a good smell. It is overpowering. It is not in any way sexy or alluring. Hell…..some of the girls at a strip joint can smell like cheap perfume too but I’d rather be smelling that than this (um…or so…uh…I have been told…yeah…..*ahem*).

Then before I can look up, this dark pudgy hand with an absurd amount of bracelets and ridiculously long and gaudy painted finger nails shoved my drink into my car window and I was hit with the smell even stronger.

I grabed the drink and then it was quickly followed by my food followed by a barely audible “here you go” as the window closed….

As soon as I started to move forward I realized that the smell was still in my car. Then, to my horror, I realized that the smell transferred to my drink, then to my hand, and also onto the bag and my food as she was the one that packed my fries and my burger as well. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

The smell is especially strong on the drink lid as she must have used her full palm to close the lid…. I sniff the bag and I can smell it. I try to take a drink and the stink goes up my nose from the lid. It’s just not right…..

I ate it….but I can’t drink my drink….it’s just too nasty…… For godsakes…there should be a f&#king law against this, especially in the food industry…. Blech…..

Do you think I’m taking this overboard? I don’t think I am… If you smelled it you’d understand….. I swear…it’s just not right….

(;_;)

Yes…another thing that I love. Do I love it as much as I love Cox? Hmmm..don’t know. But I have to say, Skype saves me an assload of cash.

This is only really useful for business travellers and people with friends outside of the US (or live outside the US with friends in the US) but if you do, I strongly suggest you look into Skype. It’s basically a VoIP service like Vonage but dirt dirt cheap. Especially since you don’t have a permanent phone number.

They used to bill Skype as a way to talk to your friends for free. If you have Skype and your friends have Skype, it’s like IM but with voice. However, I can’t really see that taking off in the age of 1000+ minute cel phone plans unless you talk ALOT in which case…sure…might as well! The coolest thing about Skype for me is the long distance calling plan. No contracts and I can call Japan for only $0.023 (or something) a minute. Yup…juuuust over 2 cents a minute. I just talked to my mom for an hour and I payed less than $2!!! Even Vonage costs like $0.07/minute for Japan. Hell, I even use Skype to talk to my mom when I’m in Japan since it’s cheaper than using my Japanese cel phone or the hotel charge or even a phone card!

Back in the day, the quality sucked and the calls kept dropping and it just wasn’t all that great. But technology has improved tremendously since then and the quality is about as good as you’d expect for an international call and as long as you have a good broadband connection (and mine isn’t really that fast), it sounds great. Of course, you can’t really do some serious downloading or web surfing while on the phone but that’s a small price to pay.

Right now I use a headset to talk. You know, one of those headset/microphone thingies that net gamers use or tech support operators use. But I’m seriously considering picking up one of those Skype phones so I can use my cel phone headset and be able to move around if I want. Might be worth it.

So anyway, not to be an unpaid spokesman/fanboy of Skype but, you should check it out if you call long distance alot and it’s consting you a fortune. All you need is a PayPal account to toss $10 into your Skype account, a microphone or a headset, and a computer with broadband and let me tell you, at 2 cents a minute, $10 goes a long long way (well over 400 minutes).

Yay for Skype!

Not only do I have digital cable. I also have a DVR (which I have written many times of in adoration and love) and now…today….I have On Demand.

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Yes…Cox is a bit slow on things but man…they delivered. I have On Demand HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime. But best of all I have On Demand Free Zone. It is wonderful. It is sinfully wonderful. I have access to programs from A&E, Biography, History, Discovery, Food Network, National Geographic, G4, Comedy Central, VH1, and more! Bliss I tell you. Bliss.

Now if I miss any shows and for some reason my DVR doesn’t record it (it happens from time to time), I can just flick on On Demand and many times they will have the show I want. And it’s free. FREE! Oh yeah, and no commercials! NONE! Well, ok…like if I’m watching Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt show, they may, once in a while, show a quick commercial of Rachel Ray’s show. But I don’t complain. I can watch Rachel Ray for hours….and hours….and hours….and hours…..and….

*ahem*…sorry….

I don’t need people anymore….me, my internet, and my TV is all I need. I love you cable TV….I…*sniff*…love you…
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Ok ok…I exaggerate. But really….what one of my friends said was right….it’s wonderful. And as a man, I can never say this out loud in public….but I will say it here….”Thank you Cox!!!” Y(^_^)Y

This little thought has been rattling around in my head for quite some time. I’ve talked about this in one way or another with a few coworkers and friends…but I think it really makes an impact on me due to the fact that I’m bilingual.

Basically it comes down to this. Pronounciation of English and Japanese words bother me more than I think it does most other people…whether they are American or Japanese. I’m curious if Spanish speakers or other 100% bilingual speakers feel the same way. Let me explain.

A good example would be this show that I recorded on my DVR last night from the History International Channel. A really well made 2 hour documentary on the samurai. They give the facts without embellishment, they have lots of authentic photographs and paintings to help with the narration, and so far I am quite entertained by it. However, the pronounciation of the Japanese words and names have been grating on my nerves for the past hour.

As a Japanese living in the US, I have no problems with people pronouncing Japanese words with an American accent. If you pronounce a Japanese word in the middle of an English sentence in the true accent, it just sounds odd and unnatural. Even my last name is not pronounced correctly by anyone except the few Japanese people I work with. But when I tell other non Japanese people my name, I also pronounce my last name with an English accent.

However, the narrator and certain experts being interviewed for this documentary seems to WANT to say the words with the correct accent. Unfortunately none of them are saying it correctly. At all. Instead they just sound like someone trying to say the word in a stereotyped accent. The narrator is not really that bad…but one of the guys being interviewed….UGH!! He’s apparently an expert on Japan and even wrote a book on the samurai but whenever he says ANY Japanese it just grates on my nerves.

Imagine if you will…hmm….any Asian character from an American cartoon. They have that certain type of speech you know? I think it’s an overblown exaggeration of old kung fu films and Godzilla movies. The people dubbing those movies were…well…they weren’t so good AND they had to talk fast sometimes to fit the words to the mouth movement because the script writers sucked so it sounded unnatural.

Um..hello…we do NOT sound like that. But this guy…EVERY time he says a Japanese word, it just sounds like that’s what he’s doing. With a horrible accent that is not English and definitely NOT Japanese. But I can guarantee you, I show this show to an American or even a Japanese person who do not speak English well and they won’t get it and think I’m crazy.

Case in point, we have a guy at work with a heavy Spanish accent. He went to Japan to teach a class a few years back and all of us in the US went “Oh dear god….some people have a hard enough time understanding him here! The guys in Japan will have NO clue at all!!”. Um…nope…. I asked the guys in Japan later and they said that they understood him just as well as any other American…and when I asked them what they though about his accent the response was “…accent? What accent?”. So to them, the expert in this documentary will only sound like he is saying the Japanese word just as incorrectly as the narrator or any other American.

Oddly enough, the thing about not catching accents works to some people’s advantage too, just like the guy who went to Japan to teach that I meantioned above. Rock bands are a prime example. Everyone knows or have heard at some point, what you think is horrible and unintelligable English spewing out of the mouth of some Japanse rock band vocalist. To us it sounds grating and distracting and funny as hell sometimes. “How”, I’ve said and I know so have many of you, “can others listen to this crap??” But the reason why they can listen to it is because they don’t know it’s wrong. To them it’s just part of the music. Kind of like how I enjoy listening to some of the French songs in the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack. For all I know the French is HORRIBLE and grammatically incorrect and any French speakers would be shreaking in frustration. But to me, it just sounds cool :)

That’s also why many Japanese bands make it in Europe but never in the US. You play a big festival in Germany or Sweden or Estonia or whatever…I mean…sure they can all speak English but to them, the Japanese guys singing in accented English doesn’t bother them as much.

That’s why the only Japanese rock band I can really stand listening to is Seikima-II. They don’t sing in English often but when they do toss in an English phrase or two, the lead singer, Demon Kogure, sounds decent :) (yes…that was a quick and totally unneccessary shout out to my favorite Japanese metal band…my journal….so there..ha!)

Anyway, not much point to this long and rambling post. Just saying that it’s interesting how, depending on how we hear language, and our understanding of the language, certain things can be enjoyed while others can drive you nuts. I’m sure there’s some sort of sociology or communication science thesis in here somewhere but…eh. If you do get inspired and write a paper based on this, just make sure to credit me so I can feel cool and important (^_^)

Is that title blunt enough?

The reason I’m posting this to both of my blogs is because I just can’t believe that, to this day, people haven’t realized this. I’m hoping that none of you readers are this careless but maybe you can read this, go “yeah…that’s not right”, and then spread the word to anyone that you may know that might not have thought of the consequences.

Blogs are public. Everything I write here, unless friend locked (at least in LJ), is open to the public. With the advent of Google’s blog search feature, it’s even easier now for anyone to find anything you have ever written. The internet is public. We all know this right?

So yesterday I’m talking to a coworker of mine and she tells me she stumbled onto this blog written by what sounds like an employee at my company. She said it was funny, idiotic, and stupid. I decided to take a look. It took me literally 10 seconds on Google’s blog search to find the post. It didn’t help that he meantioned the company and a few employees by name.

I read the blog which was posted June and July of last year when he was an intern. Some were funny. Some were well written. But overall, I got a pretty negative feel. He was an intern and it was right after his freshman year in college so he was young but not young enough to be this naive. But some of his condescending remarks about the job and even something as simple as saying how dumb it was that our company calls the diner a “diner due to some false sense of nostalgia that the CEO is not old enough to have [paraphrased for ease of reading]” struck a nerve (he called it a cafeteria…I guess when you’re in college that’s not as nostaligic as it is for me…).

Openly complaining about how stupid he thinks it is that we block access to external e-mail web sites and posting screen shots of our internal banners, openly mocking some internal functionality and being simply a smartass about employees at the company and mildly insulting your coworkers is NOT a good way to make an impression. This would not be bad if he didn’t meantion the company by name but by doing so, now it’s out in the open.

The fact of the matter is, nothing he did really violates corporate policy besides possibly his post concerning our internal workings. The company can’t really do anything about it and in the end, overall, it’s just a harmless blog written by a 19 year old intern. But he should have known it was public. He should have known that this MAY be read by anyone in the company including his boss or his CEO. I have a sense that he may just say “if you don’t like it don’t read it” but I’ve already read it…as did some other people.

What he did was burn bridges unintentionally. His boss when he was an intern, who I showed these posts to, were even more annoyed than I was because he wrote for the blogger a glowing recommendation for a scholarship. Don’t go asking for favors and then write about them behind their backs. Especially if it’s so easy to find.

He probably didn’t realize what he did. He may say that he doesn’t care because he will never work for us after graduation. But how hard would it be for his future employer to look at his resume and do a quick search on the web to see what he did at my company which he will, no doubt, list in his resume? This attitude will never help him get anywhere. He may think it’s idiotic for a company to even judge him on a “personal blog”. But in the end, as a company, or as an employee of the company with a say in hiring decisions, we have to look for a good match. And if we suspect that a person may be all cooperative on the outside but personally have different feelings towards his job, that person will not be a good match for the team. Clear and simple.

It basically comes down to this, “Don’t burn bridges.” Be careful what you write. And for godsakes, don’t write the name of your company down. I’m still debating if it’s worth my time to respond to a blog post of his from last year telling him that it may be in his best interest to remove this or remove all meantion of the company and get it out of Google’s cache. I’m not sure. All I know is, his image has been tarnished amongst people at work who may have, previous to this discovery, gladly given him a nice paying internship if he asked. He may still get it but he’ll have to work hard to get rid of the negative image he so carelessly gave himself due to a handful of careless posts on a public blog.

So please be careful. And if you suspect your coworkers or friends doing something similar, it might not hurt to remind them that even if they’re not posting corporate secrets, in a business world where connections and networking is everything, they may be unintentionally hurting themselves.

Ok ok…so this is a day late… These things don’t write itself you know! Been a bit under the weather anyway…. Mild cold in August…what the hell? I’ll feel fine one second but then a few hours later I’ll start to feel achey and nasty. *sigh*….

But enough of that. Here is the final update from my previous trip to Japan. This time we will focus on the geeky part of Japan. Yes. It exists. I know you are all surprised. But you know….it’s not that different from the US…what with the Comic conventions and GenCon and Ren Faires. But yeah…it’s still fun isn’t it?

We got more images than a typical post (about 1.6MB) this time so I’ll just warn anyone with a slow connection or dialup. It’s worth it though. I think….

Anyway, onwards!!!

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Well, finally…here is the second to last update from my previous trip. I’ll get it done before my next trip….I swear….maybe…

So, this time, I’d like to give you all a tour of my parent’s apartment. It’s small. The conveniences just aren’t there…. And living here after living in a 2 story relatively large 3 bedroom townhouse for 20 years….yeah…it’s an adjustment. A big adjustment….

So click on the link and take a look :)

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Seems like the video for “How to eat sushi” has been taken off of google video.

Soooo, here it is in YouTube :)]

Aaaaah….update #2.

This time we’re going to hit up the fun stuff along with a brief stop at the odd stuff….or at least 1 odd stuff that’ll make you go “what the f$#k?????” guaranteed. Like…well…this…

Oh, and a first for this blog…we got some nudity! Oooooooooooh. Don’t worry. It’s not of me. I know you’re all dissappointed. And it’s not of you either. Of course….if any of you sends me nude pics of yourself…well….I will only post it if you give me permission. Yeah. *ahem*. Oh…and I am speaking to the ladies. Not the guys. Please. No. Really….

Anyway, on we go. Oh, and as for the nudity, it’ll be behind a link so it will still be worksafe…well…until you click on it. And even if you do, it’s just a bare butt…so depending on where you work, it could be ok.

Click on the link to move on!

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WOOO!!! And update!

Look!!! With pictures even!!

So it’s late. Sue me. I got home last night. Today I called a few people, made a lunch date (I’ll see you tomorrow L!) with someone I haven’t seen in a long long long long time, and then proceeded to watch some shows I’ve recorded on the good old DVR and passed out around 4pm for about 3 to 4 hours…. Damn jet lag…

But here is the first update. I’m going to split this into a number of posts. This one is standard sightseeing. About 11 pictures with explanations.

Click on the link below to see the rest of the post!

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