Tim’s Ramblings

…so…it’s 1:16am. Flipping through channels before going to bed and, hey look, on Cinemax (or should I say Skinimax), they are showing softcore pr0n in HD. Such a creative title too…”Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade”. Dear god…

Anyway, you know it’s time to leave this particular industry when you have visible pregnancy stretch marks and a pretty significant C-section scar… I mean…I have nothing against it. It’s natural. It happens. And at least she’s working to feed her baby (I assume). But really…for a movie like this, thaaaaaaaat’s probably not the “look” most viewers are looking for. And if I caught it after only a few seconds? That’s pretty significant.

Right. Anyway…yeah. That’s it. Just an observation….

Off to bed.

(^_^)

Hello!

I’m taking a break from packing and cleaning and throwing stuff away. Actually it’s almost 1am so I’m going to go pass out soon. Moving sucks. Especially after 10 years. I have so much stuff…sooooooooooooooooooooooooo much stuff. I have thrown away almost 20 garbage bags full of stuff and I have not made a DENT. I have magazines from 7 years ago…just stuff that I never use. I threw away 28.8 modems from 1997. Video game boxes from 1999… Did I mention I’m a pack rat?

I will not do this to myself at my new place. I swear. After a month, magazines will be tossed. Junk mail will be thrown away the DAY I get it. I swear. Ugh…

But…but I DO love my knick knacks. Little figures. Little gadgets. It’s an addiction I tell you….

Oh, and my books…eeesh. Currently I am at 5 moving boxes each, I swear, weighing like 100lbs. and I still have more. Bah….

Tomorrow…bedroom. Or at least my dresser and stuff. Gonna be a loooong day… At this rate, I will be moving out of my apartment for a while I think.

Anyway, enough of this. For this post I’m going to share some of my wallpapers. Of course, all of the photographs I have posted on my blog is available for you guys to use as long as you don’t sell them or treat them as if they are your own. And of course, if you want originals of them to use for your backgrounds and such, just let me know. Especially some of the HDR stuff from Japan and the Rockies.

However, for some of you that have seen my work laptop, I have a few wallpapers that I like that I cycle through. So I figured I’d share :)

Most of these have been either cropped or resized to be close to 1600×1200 resolution. Some are a bit off…sorry. But feel free to resize them if you want. Though if you choose the option to stretch to fit, it will work for most displays unless you have one of those widescreen ones. The cherry blossom one (the one with the Japanese style roof in the background and the first one you see below) is my favorite but that is only at 1024×768.

These are thumbnails but are linked to the full sized one. Feel free to download them and use them if you want! Hope you like ‘em :)

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Hope you all had a nice one, whether you celebrate it or not.

I’m currently at my new totally empty townhouse doing laundry and stealing wireless off of some very nice neighbor…. *ahem*…

Today is a full day of (after laundry of course) buying boxes, cleaning supplies, then start to dismantle my apartment so we can move the big stuff out on Friday since that’s the day I rented the Penske truck. Supposed to rain though. Goddammit… But at least it won’t be snowing. I really don’t know where to start with the apartment. It’s such a mess…such a big big mess….

Yesterday I spent the day at my sister and her fiancees place. Exchanged gifts. Gave them 2 bottles of wine, a wine chiller, gift certificate to World Market, flat panel TV cleaning kit (they just got a new 46″ LCD), and another pretty big gift certificate for Petsmart since they have a new dog.

They got me some nice stuff too including 4 pilzner glasses, a digital photo frame, and some clothes along with a new cologne. Very nice :)

The rest of the day was spent getting my ass kicked on Dennis’ new Xbox 360.

Anyway, not much else to report. Ooop….almos tlost the wireless signal. It’s very very weak… Gonna post this before I lose it again.

Oh, and yes. I took the rest of the week off of work. Will go back into work on the 31st. Fun times…fun times…

…wasted too much time watching TV and playing Gran Turismo 5 Prologue on the PS3 (and it is awe inspiring…the graphics are incredible and the controls are TIGHT). Still need to pack and such… *sigh*… And I still have a nagging cough that’s annoying…very very annoying.

Anyway, rather than go on and on about my vacation, I figure I’d post some pictures!

Here are about a dozen photographs taken in Asakusa Temple, Narita-san Temple, and Yasukuni Shrine. All in HDR (High Dynamic Range). You’ll find that a few have been tweaked for contrast. Especially the red temple in Asakusa and some of the fall color shots. But a few from Narita for example, have been more muted and HDR was used to bring out the details as opposed to the color.

Either way, I hope you like them! Each picture is linked to the original JPG as well. Just keep in mind that the originals are HUGE. Most are over 2MB and are around 3400 x 2500 in size. But if you want to make windows background out of them or anything along those lines, feel free to grab them! Use them as you will or share with others. Just…if you do, make sure you give me credit or link back to this blog post. Oh, and no making money from them either please.

Also, if you look at them at 100%, you may start to see some noise and some distorted parts. It’s inevitable since I didn’t have a tripod with me… However, for most resolutions you can’t really tell that anything is off.

But enough talk. Enjoy! Oh, and let me know what you think too! Criticism is always welcome positive or negative :D

Here’s the first shot from Asakusa Temple. For the rest, click on the link!

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Ugh.

Still alive.

Really.

Just have lots going on. A proof of concept project came up at the last minute last week and I already had things schedule this week so working around that and now translating and working on project and so on is wearing me out BIG TIME.

But I am surviving. I survived giving 6 presentations in one day on Wednesday. 1 big presentation today. Meetings all over the place. Yeah…it’s a long week.

Right now I’m writing from our partner’s office. Still here at 8:15pm. Gotta get this done you know? But unlike in the US there are still a decent number of people here. Is that a good thing? Maybe. Maybe not. But I remember the “good old days” when 8pm was still early for us developers (look at me…I still think I’m a developer!!). Ah well…nowadays at work I’m there at 8 and I’m all alone. Damn slackers….

But I digress.

Vacation starts next week. Supposed to start Saturday but the guy who’s here is here until Tuesday and we are all abandoning him so I feel kinda bad since this is the first time he’s ever been out of the US and he’s in a totally foreign land. So on Saturday I plan on showing him around and doing my “Tim’s patented Tokyo Tour”. It’ll be ok. Afterwards I will crash at my parent’s place…especially since I will still have a 2 hour trip there with all my luggage once I say good bye to him in the afternoon.

But it’s ok. He’s going great work here and it’s the least I can do.

No plans for vacation yet. Will see how mom feels and then decide if I will do things with her or on my own. Either way I will still be online in one form or another. But we will see. I leave the following Saturday and since dad wants ME to go buy a laptop for them my Sunday is shot so now I only have 5 real days of vacation. Booo. Ah well.

Anyway, back to work. Just wanted to drop in and say I’m alive. :)

I know I haven’t updated much…this trip is taking a good chunk out of me. Maybe it’s because it’s the last trip of this year. Maybe it’s because I was so busy in the US up to this trip. Maybe it’s the stress from buying a townhouse and trying to make sure everything is going well while being on the road at the same time. Or maybe it’s the whole “translating for hours” and also making sure everything is going according to plan and such while at the same time desperately trying to save my vacation next week so I don’t have to come into work or anything and have it ruined…which has come close a few times already… Or maybe it’s all of it.

Bah. Anyway, been tired….

So I realized that unless I post pictures most of you won’t read my ramblings (or maybe I’m wrong…but anyway, pictures make it better right?) here are a few with a funny observation at the end of the post :)

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First off…just something yummy.

Mmmmmmmm….creampuff…. This is a homemade creampuff from the bakery 2 doors down from the hotel. If you get there at 9am it’s too late. I’ve seen it gone as early as 8am. And it seems like they only make it once a day in the morning. The few coworkers that have come here has sworn by this and many eat this for breakfast. Especially since, our breakfast coupons at the hotel works for the bakery too so you can get it for free. All this time I didn’t get it…until this weekend.

I have to tell you. It’s the best cream puff I have had in a long long time. First off it’s big. Very big for a cream puff. And being sold in Japan, it is made for our tastes so it’s not as sweet. Really good whipped cream with a nice silky smooth pastry cream inside. Mmmmmmmm… I have to say…it was a really good breakfast :)

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Ooooooh…Gemera is on TV. I have the DVD but still it’s fun to watch. And in HD even. Nice.

Oh…and Steven Segal’s daugher is in it too. She has better acting skills than her dad, that’s for sure. She has his squint though :)

…anyway…moving on…

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Meanwhile, even the chips and such are a bit different here.

This is a bag of consomme flavored chips. Mmmmmmm. You won’t find cheddar and bacon or sour cream and onion here. Or you will but they won’t have the top spots on the shelves. Instead you’ll have everything from consomme, sea weed, soy sauce, even okonomiyaki flavor as well as gratin and others like that. Gotta match the region’s tastes right?

This is actually consomme but with an asian twist so there’s also a bit of soy sauce flavor added. Personally? I like it. Much more than I like the sea weed flavor but my sister loves that one instead.

Anyway, it’s yummy though if you eat too much you’ll get heartburn…or at least I do.

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Finally my new toy. I haven’t taken a pic of it myself so here is the promotional picture.

It’s the new Sony Walkman NW-A900 series. I got a black 16GB one. It’s pretty slick. It’s quite small despite that picture there but the screen is nice and the design is well done. There is ONE annoying thing where you have to use their proprietary software to transfer any files, music or otherwise, but the features outweigh the annoyance.

Of course there is the standard music player functionality. Store the album cover and all that stuff. And a picture viewer too. Along with a movie viewer. But the best functionality of this little device is not any of those but something that I can only use in Japan. This little baby has a 1seg TV tuner with recording functionality.

Brief explanation.

In Japan, terrestrial digital broadcast is set so each channel is broken up into 13 segments. They only use 12 for standard HD TV broadcast so they made it so the 13th segment can be picked up by mobile devices.

That’s how the cool Sharp Aquos cel phones were made and how this one works as well. I flip up the antenna and I get pretty clear HDTV signal. Not just the old TV bands like the portable TV’s that’s been out for years and years. This is in wide screen HD. Pretty frickin’ cool.

The best part though is it can record the shows and can be programmed like old VCR’s. So, what I plan on doing is setting this baby up to record TV shows in Japan while I’m here during the night and also during the day while I’m at work, and then watch them on the plane :) On a full charge you can watch up to 10 hours of video, listen to 32 hours of music, and if I don’t put any music or anything in, it can record up to 100 hours of TV because the HD signal is compressed and the resolution is only for mobile devices.

It’s cool though. Even today, on the way to my parent’s place to do laundry and such, I was watching TV on the train and the reception was pretty good though here and there it got choppy. Here in the hotel room, as long as I don’t move it, I get good reception so I’m recording some show right now even as I type this. Of course, while recording I can’t do anything and it can only record one show at a time. But really…it works for me. Some people gripe about that but for them, they just need a normal Walkman then.

My new toy :D

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Finally I saw a funny thing on the way to my parents. I wish I had my camera!

Right now in Japan, as the end of the year draws near, 2 things start happening. 1 is the charity organizations go into overdrive and you will find tons of people outside with boxes and such asking for donations for various good causes.

The other is the national lottery. They do one big one at the beginning of the year. Around $10million in prizes with the big prize being $1M. Small compared to the US but over here it’s a big big deal. Big enough that, there is one particular lottery stand in Ginza that has sold a few winning tickets and that has made it so popular people actually spent the night in line for the damn place to open so they can buy hundreds of lottery tickets. Insane…absolutely insane.

Anyway, today these 2 worlds came to a clash…

There is a bridge over the street that connects to a building that leads you to the local train station from the JR line. So almost anyone that has to transfer trains (like I did) takes this walkway. So, I wasn’t too surprised when, as I turned the corner and started to cross the bridge, I was bombarded from either side of the bridge for donations to charity. But then, at the end of the bridge, there was a guy with a big sign trying to shout over the charity workers that they are selling lottery tickets and we should get them now.

I want to know how many people tell the charity people to go away and then blow money on lottery tickets that will almost certainly lose. I don’t know…it was a weird juxtoposition and would have made a cool picture I think :)

Ok. Back to avoiding work…I should work on the presentation but I was up early today too and I’ll be up early tomorrow as well…maybe I’ll just go to bed. Ooooooooh, Niagara Falls is on TV here for a travel show! It’s weird to me to think that NF is this cool place that people here in Japan will watch and go “ooooh, I want to go!”. Living in Buffalo since I was 10, I have been to the Falls so often that the charm is lost to me…. But I suppose to everyone else in the world it’s a cool destination. And I have to admit…I was there with J a few years back (in the middle of a snow storm….) and after not seeing it for a few years, I had a better time than I thought I would. We should go back :) Do the Maid of the Mist and then hit up Niagara on the Lake for shopping and wine. Mmmm.

Right. Anyway, hope you all had a good weekend!