Tim’s Ramblings

….hm. So I just got info that tonight’s late night session with our Japanese partners just got cancelled.

Other problems came up that takes precedence and so it got moved to tomorrow night… Which is fiiiine….but at the same time…hmmm. Now the question is, do I go into work at my usual time and then go with a potential 18-20 hour day? Or go in later and then stay with a more reasonable 12 hour day?

There are pros and cons to both of course. I’m not hourly so it doesn’t matter how many hours I work, I get paid the same. It all depends on how early I get up I guess… But already they are going to be sending me test result data anyway that we probably want to look at before we start work with them at night…. Bah. And here I was so mentally prepared for working tonight too.

I shouldn’t complain. I’m not really complaining. Just…wondering what to do.

Oh well, at least I’m free for tonight! Now I can watch some more of those DVD’s I got or try to keep going with Heavenly Sword. Can’t beat that damn boss!!! My reflexes just aren’t what they used to be with these video game thingies…. (-_-)

…yes…I realize it is almost 2:50am. But I had to finish this and get it working…it wasn’t hard. Just I’m an idiot when it comes to web programming…

Anyway, I present to you the biggest time suck ever. Oh, and an added bonus if you even have a slight hint of voyeurism in you (and really…who doesn’t??).

This might get you hooked.

This might also bring out the voyeur in you. It’s ok. We all are to a certain degree.

Apparently I am late to the party for this one. I noticed that there’s been hits to my web page from certain sites that has no link to me whatsoever whenever I upload an image (I have a tracker on my web page). Looking further into this, I realized that there is a feed made available from LiveJournal that allows you to write a program that will display the last 50 images posted into public posts.

Yup. It’s like the “view latest posts” feed they used to have on their homepage (don’t see it anymore) but with pictures!!!

Mostly of random crap. Some pr0n. Some weird stuff. Some blatant copyright violations. Either way, it’s a peek into the human psyche. And with LiveJournal, you not only get the US view but the international view.

But enough chatter. Here is the link!! Enjoy!! Hit refresh once every 30 secs or so. Oh, and if you click on the image, it will take you to the post that the image came from.

Oh…one last thing. Though this should be common sense but…THIS IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!!!!

http://www.timarai.com/lj.php

(^_^)

Oh yeah. For you LiveJournal users. Keep in mind that this is ONLY for public posts. But to opt-out entirely, go to the command console and type “set latest_optout yes” (without the quotes) and hit execute. You must be logged into LiveJournal to do this.

Oh, and so you don’t lose this, this is also available from the “pages” section along the left side of the page (^_^)

…now…time for bed….

I’m still around. Really. I’m just really tired and burned out. 3 weeks in Japan, 1 hectic week back in the office, then 1 week in Nashville. This week, all I wanted to do was do nothing and then sleep when I get home. Alas…I think I was too stressed to sleep much when I got home and I ended up not getting as much sleep. Bah. Oh, and to add to it all, guess what? I get to go INTO work at 8pm on Sunday night so that me and the guy doing custom programming work for our Japanese partner and their customer can be on the phone doing real time debugging with them. So far it’s just been e-mails back and forth but that’s taking too long and besides, due to security reasons we can’t connect to them directly. Soooooooooo we are coming in at night (it’ll be their morning..) so we can be at the office and be able to do real time feedback and development to try to fix some issues.

The idea is great. Frankly this is necessary to get the project finished and successful. But goddamn…… *sigh*….

Hmmm…Clueless is on TV. Holy crap…I had no idea that was 1995. Eeeesh. And I don’t remember the drug use either. Huh. And the whole “making out with the step brother” thing is weird too… Yes yes…women all say it’s Paul Rudd. And if it was Alicia Silverstone (at least back then before she went crazy vegan…) I’d get it on with her too…but still…weird and “ew” in the same way. But wait…isn’t she underage in this movie? …cute but…ew…

Oh, and one last random thing. I have a message for all mothers who think that they are hot. You may be hot. You may be a big time MILF. Or it may all be in your head. BUT, if you are at Panera Bread with your daughter and you have a darker complexion (Italian maybe?) and your daughter is around 12 or 13, proper dress does not include a tight thin white T-shirt that is utterly see through that not only shows your breasts perfectly but also shows off the nipple piercings…. Seriously. I mean…come on. I feel sorry for the daughter… Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee….

…not much more to say. I bought an assload of stuff at Best Buy yesterday to make up for not buying anything for like 2 months… Heavenly Sword for the PS3 (fun yet repetitive), Crazy Taxy for the PSP for my next trip to Japan (the controls cramp my hand and it actually hurts to play…I miss playing the Dreamcast version), Drawn Together Season 2 box set (so…so…wrong…and funny in an utterly offensive way), Family Guy volume 5 (same), and Dr. Strange the animated movie (impulse buy). Yay.

Finally…and this is about as random as this post has been so far but I figured I should spice it up with some pics.

If I ever become successful. Or I should say if I ever help make our company successful enough. Some day, I want to have a view like this from a lowly conference room and treat it like it’s nothing when guests come in. I mean…if this is the view from a tiny conference room, what does the view look like from the exec’s office???

This is the shot from the 20-something floor of a major Japanese company smack in the middle of Tokyo. Can’t say the name of the company. It starts with F. Ends with U. Anyway, it’s just amazing. Hard to keep my eyes away from the view during the meetings (^_^)

Ok. That’s it. Today I went to the West Side Market for the first time in like a month. It was great. Went with J. It was fun :) Tomorrow is dim sum. WOOOOOOOOOOO. I am excited (as indicated by the “woo”). It’ll be a bright point in an otherwise long day. But hey, at least there is that bright point. Right?

Yup. Back from Nashville. The conference was a big success. No big issues really. Some small ones but the guys that ran the conference did a fantastic job of handling it all in stride. I’m always impressed at what our marketing team does every year. Every year it gets bigger and every year they do a fantastic job.

Not much to report really. Was up at 6:30am every morning. The hours were long. On my feet a lot. Tired. But of course, you had to put on the “welcome to the conference!” face on and make sure that everyone was having a good time and be helpful. Not that that was a chore really. The attendees were all generally very happy with the conference and it made our jobs easier.

Highlights…hm… I got to meet some new employees and made some new friends (hello L and J). That was nice. We were mistaken for a temp agency by people attending a Raymond James conference next door to us…that was…annoying. Got a really nice fleece jacket working registration. That was nice. Registration was FREEZING due to an AC vent blowing right on us giving us all a cold/sore throat…that sucked.

Outside of the conference…well…not much. I only left the hotel a few times. On the last day I took the 2 remaining Japanese guys outside to the Grand Ole Opry where they hit up the gift shop and also to the mall right there to have dinner at a place called the Aquarium (had an actual very large and impressive tank in the middle of the restaurant with sharks and rays and other stuff). The best part was when the Japanese guys went “You know…here in the US people go ‘oooh…look at the fishies’ at dinner. In Japan, people would be going ‘oooh…yeah…I want that one for dinner!’” :)

Also, we stopped by Dave & Busters so I could show them what an American game center was like. There, we saw that gigantic crane game where the prizes were those huuuge stuffed animals and D&B basketballs and such. They were amused by this and they had their picture taken next to it. Nothing like that in Japan :) Then, to show them the thing in motion, I bought a D&B card and gave it a try. That’s when I realized I have spent WAAAAAAAAY too much time at the Japanese game centers playing those crane games. I got a D&B basketball on the very fist try….for godsakes. I didn’t want anything. Now I got stuck with a basketball that I definitely DEFINITELY didn’t want, let alone lug it home. So we walked around the place a bit, saw a kid with his older brother coming in to redeem their tickets, and asked if he wanted the ball. He said yes, so he got himself a free D&B basketball :) Did the same thing with tickets too to a different group of kids (I got well over 200 just showing the Japanese guys the games we have here in about 10 minutes…).

Now, for some pictures :D

I DID tell you all that the Gaylord Opryland Hotel was like a biodome right? Well, as proof, here is the shot of the complex from Google Earth.

It’s HUUUUUUUGE. Our hotel rooms were all under the first “dome” on the upper left. The big one on the lower right was where we had one of our dinners on Monday night (we rented out the entire dome). The conference itself was in the buildings along the right side. We were near the top. So my morning commute was pretty far…

Inside the compound, most of the hotel rooms looked into the dome so you never got a view of the outdoors. Just the fake outdoors of the bio dome.

Each room had a balcony that you can go out on and such. It was nice to get some humidity as the rooms were dry and cold.

In the gardens there were little places like this. This little area was setup for a wedding on the last day I was there.

Oh yeah…in the picture up there, it’s hard to tell how big the section is. That picture is the bio dome in the upper middle shaped like an arrow on the Google Earth pic. On the first night there, I went to walk around a bit and didn’t know that there was a walkway above the canopy and I ended up on the ground floor. And let me tell you…it’s like a jungle… It’s dark (very little light), there’s waterfalls, and I’m surrounded by foliage. And I’m lost. For a second I thought to myself, “wonderful…I’m lost in a f%$king jungle inside of a biodome…any minute now Pauly Shore is going to jump out of the trees….heaven help me..” (-_-)

Finally. One last picture. This has nothing to do with Nashville really. This could be in any city. I just found it funny. This was taken across the street from the Wild Horse Saloon in Nashville.

Maybe hard to see but it’s The Pita Pit know for healthy ingredients and healthy eating (and it IS very very tasty) right next to The CheeseSteak Factory which…I can only assume…is NOT known for healthy eating and healthy living (^_^)

Mmmmm…yum. And honestly…if I were drinking…I don’t know if I’d go for the Pita Pit…..

Anyway, it’s great to be back. Very very happy. The one single week home from Japan that had a few pretty late nights at work combined with the long week at the conference definitely took a toll on me. Going to be pretty sedentary today I think.

…ok…so apparently it’s the nose that made me a chick… Wonderful… Read my other posts to see just what the heck I’m talking about :)

….what the hell?

SHARON STONE??? More women? Do I really look like a chick?? But it’s pretty cool how they know I’m asian…though Kris Kristofferson huh? At least this time I got Jackie Chang. Maybe we do all look alike…at least from the facial recognition standpoint…

*sigh*

I should be in bed but I saw this after writing some work e-mails and I couldn’t resist. I don’t have too many pictures of myself but I grabbed one that I had from the florida trip this past May. I’m a bit…squinty…but let’s see what happens!

I am very disturbed by this list… A few Asian guys I have never heard of…but I suppose we all look alike… Heh heh heh. I don’t mind being told I look like Matsui. That’s cool. But…Burt Renolds?? Come on….I guess the facial hair….

But Cuba? And AJ McLean? GIVE ME A BREAK!! NOOOOOOOOOOOO. I don’t wanna be a Backstreet Boy! Dear god NO!!!!

…and I know all Asians look like but…do I really really look like a chick? I mean, they picked a cute one for me but still….come on…

Entertaining though. I’m going to have to do this again with a better picture. I will post it again when I do. You should all do it! (^_^) Oh, and mine is in Japanese because I am using a Japanese computer. Yours should all be in English…unless you are like me…in which case…well…it won’t be….

Fun times…fun times…

Here I am at the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. The place is HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE. It’s like a gigantic biodome inside with a full on garden, huuuge skylights and the place is, I swear, bigger than some Las Vegas casinos. There’s even a music show going on outside of my window (which is actually a bit annoying). Something that looks like rejects from Cirque du Soleil playing music in the Cascades garden. My room looks out into the garden…which is all indoors. Actually, other than the front lobby, I don’t know if there really is a way out of this place.

Either way, it’s a big place. I felt like I walked at least a good 10 minutes to get to the registration area from my hotel room. I am definitely NOT going to lose this map…

So anyway, I got the room to myself tonight. Tomorrow I have a roomie. But I’m kinda glad I got this one night to myself since I got some work I gotta do. I have a presentation on Wednesday and I am in no way prepared for it…at all. I got the damn presentation in English on Thursday afternoon for godsakes. And now I have to tear it apart, understand it, translate it, and make it into a 2 hour presentation. But starting tomorrow morning I have to work the registration desk and I have meetings and such and even after all the sessions are over, we have other events going on too that I will have to attend since we have about 10 guests from Japan attending. Oh, and these aren’t engineers and such either. We got people up in the director level here… Eeeeeeeesh.

So yeah, tonight as soon as I post this I’m going to work on my presentation. I ate one of those little personal pan pizzas before the flight and I stopped by the Sundries here to get some water and pop and I have a little pack of sunflower seeds. I’m all set (^_^)

Honestly? I don’t really want to be here… I’m still tired from my trip to Japan and I already miss my apartment :( But eh…what can you do? Work is work and this is the one big big BIIIIG (over 1,500 attendees) event that the company does every year. We’re talking huuuuuge here. Last year our CEO rose up from the stage surrounded by ring of fire for godsakes (^_^) So I might as well buckle up and get ready to put on my “I am SO happy to SEE you!” smile starting from 7:30am!

Ok. Time to work on the presentation. Not sure how much pictures I’ll take but I’ll try to take some of the hotel to show you guys just how big this place really is.

Ok. The last post made me feeling a bit unsatistfied. It was…too boring.

So, here’s a quiz. But don’t worry, the answer is after the cut.

Here are 2 pictures.

Personally? I think they are both quite attracive. Especially the second one. I’ll admit…I like white girls more than Japanese girls but still, I know what’s pretty. She’s pretty. Right?

So, the question is…why can’t the 2nd girl get a date? Apparently she can’t get a boy friend. She’s cute. Doesn’t even have much makeup on. Maybe some work on her hair but if she looks like this without pounds of makeup…

Assuming you can’t read Japanese…the answer is after the link below!!

Continue Reading »

First the “Other Things”.

Let’s see…the biggest news by far is something I found out for myself on Saturday night about 15 seconds after I got into my sister’s car when she picked me up at the airport. She got engaged (^_^)

Many of you know that she’s been dating a coworker of mine. It’s been 4 years now and I guess they decided it was time. Nice big ring too. Really big. Anyway, I’m very happy for her. Though then she tells me they want to get married like in the next few months. Yow. Guess I gotta get my work travel schedule worked out soon. Anyway, for you guys that know my sister but you didn’t know about this yet, make sure to tell her congrats (^_^)!

Now…let’s see. Got chilly today. That was nice. Still jetlagged as hell though. Real sleepy at all the wrong times. Monday I had a conference call and then I quickly passed out. Tuesday I made the mistake of lying down on the couch and I passed out only to get up around 11 and then not be able to sleep again for hours. Today? Hopefully doing this post will keep me awake long enough so when I DO go to bed it will be at a good time. I need the rest since I’m off to Nashville on Saturday. Fun times…fun times…

Oh, and for any of you living in Cleveland or have ties to Cleveland (which is most of you readers…), Tony Bourdain came to Cleveland over this past winter to film an episode of No Reservations. I just saw it the other day. It was entertaining. He hung out with Harvey Pekar and also Marky Ramone. Hit up the West Side Market but was even at the Westwood in Rocky River to go to the Skyline Chilli. As episodes go, it was so so. But he seemed to enjoy himself here and the segments were entertaining. I’ve been trying to…uh…find a good…um…”backup” of the show but the one I got the audio starts to get out of synch. As soon as I find one, if you haven’t seen it, I will let you all know where to get it.

Ok, on to the “educational” or at least a “…hm…interesting” part of the post.

–

A few times in the past, I’ve mentioned that the Japanese have a different way of presenting things. This goes for the evening news all the way to corporate power point presentations. Let me explain.

In the US, we are generally taught to keep the power point slides neat and clean. A few key bullet points that the speaker will then expand upon. If doing animations, keep that simple too and for diagrams? For godsakes, make it easy to follow. Right?

Not in Japan. They LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE the complex. I’ve seen powerpoints where it’s just a gigantic mess of colors and arrows and ellipses and drawings. Just one big big mess. And if they do have text it’s many times quite dense and it’s like you’re just seeing a script of the speaker up on the wall.

Now obviously there are exceptions. There are exceptions to the US style “keep it simple stupid” (kiss) method here in the US too. But overall, in general, they are polar opposites.

Also, how they present stuff, even if it’s the nightly news, is quite different. The studio is typically very well lit. Lots of blue screen action. Even dioramas and other props. Most of you have seen the “hurricane simulated by a sticky ball” thing that I posted last week (http://www.timarai.com/blog/2007/09/06/typhoon-coverage-japan-style/). It’s just much more visual than just a talking head with a static graphic in the upper left or right hand side like the US news shows.

The best example of this though is the nightly News Zero on Nippon TV. This is on at 11pm for 30 minutes and is basically the late night news. Just like the other stations the set is brightly lit and mostly white with modern architecture but this show is unique in that they use a huuuuuge screen to deliver the news. I mean…it’s huge!!

That one was about the reactor incident last month after that big earthquake.

Here are some other shots.

Yup, even our now ex-prime minister (he resigned a few days ago) Abe gets the big screen treatment. Oh and you can also get a better look at the studio that they film it in. Classy eh?

But it’s not just super high tech like this. All of a sudden, every once in a while, the anchor will reach down and bring up a poster board and such to do a more intimate presentation.

Why didn’t they just do this with some animation on the big screen? I have no idea. And the best part is, if you look carefully, the box on the lower right seems to have the text written on tape. And guess what? It IS!

It’s basically on like a sticky note that the announcer will then peel off to reveal more information underneath. It’s like a power point animation…in real life!

Seriously…I have no idea why they do this. But they do this quite often. One second you will see them sitting at the table, then it will switch to the super gigantic screen, then to an actual report, then back to the people sitting in front of the desk, only to have, a few minutes later, the cameraman zoom in real tight as the anchor brings up a poster board presentation.

It’s extremely multimedia, very hands on at the same time, and utterly nothing like US tv or US news.

Why am I showing you this? Because this is part of my ongoing headache. …doing presentations in Japan is hard. Not JUST because of language, but if you take a really good US power point presentation and just translate the text into Japanese it will fail miserably. No one will pay attention, you will get people sleeping, and the general impression would be that you sucked…. But I mean…come on. The time it takes to make something like this? Crazy! I wish I could show you all some of the power point presentations from Japan…

So yeah. It’s not just the language difficulties or even the differences in business culture (and those are big issues) but it even comes down to presentation style. Yet we’re going there and we’re selling and we’re succeeding. It’s nothing short of a miracle I tell you…a miracle!

(-_-)