Tim’s Ramblings

Sounds like a punchline to a really bad joke…

But in fact it’s the entire premise of a new manga (Japanese comic) that has gotten pretty popular the last few months. Volume one is already out with volume 2 supposed to come out sometime this month. I was out with mom buying her a new stereo with my points and stopped by a bookstore to pick up the last 5 volumes of Berserk (I’m caught up now…woo) and picked this up too.

The name of the comic is “Saint Oniisan” which literally translates to “Saint Young Guy” (or “Saint Young Men” as it says on the cover…). “Oniichan” has a few meanings including “big brother” and “a young male” (most of the time in your 20’s and it’s a sad sad sad day when someone calls you an “ojisan” which is a middle aged guy…and yes…I have been called it already…but in my defence it was by a very young child so…I guess to him I’m old…dammit…).

Anyway, the comic follows Jesus and Buddha who decided to take a few months off and come down to earth on vacation. They get a small cramped apartment in Tachikawa (a town on the outskirts of Tokyo) where they have to save up money to pay the rent and is surprised by various things in on earth, mainly in Tokyo. Jesus gets crammed into a rush hour train only to get yelled at by a drunk guy when his crown of thorns pokes other people in the head… Buddha finds out the hard way that the dot on his head really hurts when people push it… Jesus gets really happy when he goes to a convenience store and a few HS girls think he looks like Johnny Depp. So on and so forth.

It’s not laugh out loud funny but it’s still imaginative and at time kind of endearing. The two of them are portrayed as very good friends with Jesus being the more brash and outgoing of the two while Buddha is more quiet and naive. The author admits he really didn’t know much about either religion or the actual characters other than what you hear and learn just in general but it’s still nice without being insulting (well…to most people).

So I made it safely to Japan despite the plane from Cleveland to Newark being turned around due to “an emergency light in the landing gear but nothing to worry about”…and we had to switch planes and go back to Newark only to find out the plane from Newark to Narita had to also be swapped out to do a mechanical “issue”… Eeesh…

Rained all day today. It’s humid…not too hot but sticky…blah. Tomorrow work starts. Gonna be a long week. Packed. Blah….

But the important thing is, mom got a stereo, a new tiny iRiver MP3 player, and a charger for my old Canon camera that she got fixed. I also handed over the paperwork to renew my passport. Tonight I plan on watching some dumb TV, getting with J later to talk about work, and then go to bed early. Yahoo.

So, back to TV :)

It’s been a while since I’ve seen live standup comedy and so, when D from work told me that the show was on Wednesday and why did I tell her I couldn’t go, I quickly said “why yes, I would LOVE to go!”

See, he was supposed to come here like a month or so ago but had to cancel and it got rescheduled. Back then I thought I was going to be in Japan this week but I’m not and now I don’t leave ’till Friday so I got to go! It was great!

It was at Pickwick and Frolick downtown and, with the baseball game on tonight too, the traffic and the parking was a bitch…soooo valet parking it was. Took forever to get the car back in the rain after the show but it was actually cheaper than parking across the street so…eh.

Anyway, for any of you that have not heard of him, he’s one of the newer guys that are making it pretty big recently. His CD sold really well and his blog or, as he calls it, his “Secret Public Journal” is always fun to read. You can see that here: http://www.birbigs.com/spj/

D from work is a huuuuuuuuge fan his and she somehow managed to get amazing seats. We had 4 tables, 2 right up against the stage and 2 right behind that one. It was cool. Oh, and since he’s not the “audience participation” type comedian, I was able to fully enjoy the show without the “don’t pick me don’t pick me don’t pick me” panic.

He has a way of going off on a tangent but still coming back to the main story line and really does a great job with the delivery. Much of it is self depreciating but he does it in a really funny way. If you don’t see him on Comedy Central or something, you should at least check him out on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL59mauFEsc&feature=related)

Anyway, that’s it. It was a fun night out though. And must thank D for the great seats. Other than that? The drive home was a bit scary since it was raining pretty hard and on 90, by downtown, they just repaved the road so they didn’t have the reflector thingies to mark the lanes and I couldn’t see shit… No idea where the lanes were or anything. Scary… They should fix that…like soon…

But yeah, 2 great comics in a month! Eddie Izzard and Mike Birbiglia! I should go to see these shows more often since I really like watching standup on TV as it is. Oh, and I wonder if Mike will see this post since he gets gmail alerts on his name as we found out tonight (^_^)

I love cable. Especially when programs line up juuuuust right.

AAAA. Do I watch a show on slimming down?? Or a show on all you can eat paradise??

I mean…it’s…paradise. PARADISE!!!!

Is it a ultimate slimdown paradise? No. It is not.

I watched neither since Kari Byron up there distracted me on the Discovery Channel… But I thought it was funny enough to snap a pic.

(^_^)

Uh…only 2 of them are truly related to eachother…

New computer continues to work well though I will admit…Vista is a bit of a change. I can do the Window Button + Tab thing and go “oooooooooooh” at the 3D flippy thing but other than that? Eh. It’s ok I guess. I still use it the same as I always used windows. I know you’re supposed to be able to do the whole searching for the program whithout knowing where it is thing but…yeah…

Slowly becoming my own. I hooked up the HP scanner / printer / photoprinter thing and it works great. Even though it’s an ink jet the color is imperssive. I printed the HDR shot of the Buddha that I took that I really liked and the color reproduction is really really impressive (this one - oh…it’s about 3MB so just a warning if you click: http://www.timarai.com/images/tokyo_1107/HDR/asakusa03.jpg). Since I have a 10% off coupon to Best Buy, maybe I’ll go buy replacement ink (the sample ones run out so quick) and some paper. Might as well since it’s 2:20 and I haven’t even showered yet… Ahh Sundays…

Meanwhile, last night I decided to try out GIMP, that free open source image editor. It’s nice. It’s come a long long way since I last checked it out a few years ago. Still no RAW support but I think there is a plugin for it so I’ll check it out. I think I still might go back and reinstall the old Paint Shop Pro 8 and get rid of the trial version of the new PSP though. GIMP I will keep using and it works great for portraits and real down and dirty photo work. But for the run of the mill quick edits, PSP is still so handy. Lots of little features that lets me tweak the contrast and hue and such without resorting to phyically manipulating the color curves. There is so much you can do though but I think Photoshop still wins. I want Photoshop to play with. I’ve seen people do some amazing things like it’s no big deal in Photoshop. Like J at work. TEACH MEEEEEEE.

Anyway, it’s going to suck when I go away next Friday for 2 weeks :( I’m going to miss my new baby.

Meanwhile, yesterday evening, I went out to run some errands in that damn storm and I picked up some toilet bowl cleaning tablet things. You know…the ones that look like hockey pucks. I picked up the one by Clorox and holy hell…that thing is POTENT. I know it’s bleach. I know it says it kills germs with every flush and all. But WOW does it smell strong. My bathroom smells like bleach… I suppose it’s better than smelling like…you know…but yeah, I didn’t think it was going to be THAT strong.

Anyway, might as well do something with myself today, even if it’s to go back to Best Buy to buy more stuff for my toy.

Finally got myself a new desktop.

My Dell which I bought back in 2003 has been slowly…agonizingly slowly dying. Every 2 days or so when I come down in the morning it’ll just be dead. Locked up with memory all used up for no reason. Poor thing. But it survived the big move to the townhouse and it has served me very well. I still have it connected next to me on my desk and over the course of the next few months I will do the standard data transfer.

But my new baby is nice too. It’s gotten so…cheap! And good quality too! I went to Best Buy and plunked down about $1k to walk out with an HP Pavilion with an AMD 2.1 GHz triple core processor with 3 GB of RAM and some ridiculous amount of HD space. Yeah yeah yeah, it’s running Vista. Whatever. I’ll eventually make it into a classic view and it’ll be fine. It’s not like I’m going to be doing some hardcore programming or anything. Got a nice widescreen monitor which I will eventually replace with a nice 22″ like a Samsung. Bells and whistles and it also came with a printer / scanner thing that I will get to tomorrow.

Now I get the joy of slowly convertuing my new machine to the way I like it with all the programs and bookmarks and everything that I typically use. Blah. But at the same time kinda fun in a sick masochistic nerdy way…

The big issue right now though is this damn keyboard. Anyone know of a good one? I like the contoured ones but the new MS one sucks. The keys are incredibly heavy and it just doesn’t feel good for me. Though this one is way too…cramped. I type on a Japanese laptop keyboard all day long…would rather have a nice one when I come back. Blah. Maybe I’ll go find one this weekend. At least my ever faithful Logitech wireless trackball is still working. I love this thing. It’s awesome. LOVE IT.

I also should look at upgrading some software. I downloaded the latest version of Paint Shop Pro that is geared towards photography but…it’s…kinda clunky. And one thing bothered me. Back in the old PSP program, when I was changing the size of the image so I can upload it to my blog and such, it TOLD me what the final size was. That way I can tweak the resizing percentage and all was well. But this new program? Nope. Tells me the ratio of pixel to inches and such but no final size. How dumb.

Sooo either I go back to the old PSP though that thing can’t deal with RAW files. Or I finally break down and buy Photoshop. Blah. Oh, and while I’m at it, learn how to use it. How much is it these days??

Well anyway, I leave for Japan next Friday so I can only use it for so long before I’m going to have to say goodbye to my sweet new machine for a while. But at least I’ll get to use it for a week! Oh, and Warcraft runs nice on it too :) Other than that? Oh, that little thing up on the shelf is a USB wireless adaptor. This townhouse was build during the DSL days so there are 2 phone lines in the office but no cable jack or anything. So I have to run wireless. No biggie. However, this damn thing lost connection all of a sudden and I had to physically pop the thing off and pop it back in. Man…I hope that was just some weird glitch or something…otherwise it’ll suck if it happend during Warcraft…

Anyway, now, to go play some more. Oh, and Firefox 3 is niiiiiiiice. Yes…this was my Friday. Though I DID play social by going out to buy this thing with J and even did some shopping and had dinner with her too so ha. Not TOO pathetic on a Friday (^_^) …not that I would think it was even if that didn’t happen.

So, today I went back to the Art Fest that was going on at Crocker Park to decide once and for all if I was going to buy a piece of artwork for my townhouse. It’s a pretty big investment so I wanted to mull it over for a day. I mean, it’s not 4 figures…but still…

So, ultimately after walking around a bit with S (who I haven’t seen in a long time so that was cool), I decided to pick up a nice vertical style water based painting. I was partially hesitant because it is distinctly Asian and even more specific, Japanese. And some of you may know…I have this…allergy to faux-Asian design… It’s so…tacky. For me at least.

But this artist, though he lives in Michigan, is native Japanese and I think that helps offset my allergy. Right? :)

Unfortunately he doesn’t have a web site but his name is Shinichi Sato and his artwork is gorgeous. He takes hints from real Japanese scenery and then adds his own touch. The one I ended up picking up is based off of a waterfall in Nikko and then he modified it himself. I also love the frame and the matting is suede so it adds juuust a hint of texture which, though not apparently right away, does help giving more depth to the work. I think at least.

It’s currently hanging on the wall right off of the stairs on the second floor. It’s nice. A nice start to getting some good artwork for my townhouse. I’m not looking at getting investments. I just know what I like :)

So overall, a nice weekend!

Now to have some leftover curry that I kept frozen for just this type of night were I’m just lazy after a long day of lunch and Art Fest and hanging out with S and a shopping run to Costco, Giant Eagle, and Trader Joes :)

Hope you all had a good weekend!

Edit: I should probably point out…especially since I know a few people who have this type of design and decorations. I don’t think all Asian motif and designs are tacky in general. I just feel like it would be tacky for ME to have it. I guess it’s the whole “he’s Japanese so he must have swords and a buddha somewhere in his house” thing that I grew up with… So yeah. I meant for me. Not for anyone else. …maybe I’m thinking too much…

…wow…

I went to google news looking for something totally different when I just saw that Tim Russert from Meet the Press passed away suddently at 58 due to a heart attack.

Most of you probably will be like “who?” or “huh…”. But being basically from Buffalo (moved there in 1985), he was kind of our hometown hero. Sure, the Goo Goo Dolls are more popular but he was the pride of Buffalo. Big Bills fan and a big supporter of Buffalo. When he came to town, it was a pretty big deal. Hell, he even went to Canisius High School, a very prestigious private HS over there (I took the enterance exam and got in but decided to go with a public education…who knows what the hell I was thinking…).

I don’t know…it just seems odd. Especially since I remember seeing him on some news show just like a day or two ago live. I guess this is how some people felt when they heard Heath Ledger died…

I’m not necessarily sad. Just kind of shocked and surprised. I liked him. A good newsman that’s not ridiculously biased or going for sensationalism like some of the ones out there now…

Yes. I wear many hats. I am referring to my job…not a physical hat.

But first. I would just like to say, I love Maria Sharapova. Well…ok. I don’t know her so thus I do not truly love her. But from a pure visual sense, she is one hot woman. All 6′ 2″ of her. My god… I am not ashamed to say that I have stopped fast forwarding on my DVR when I see her Powershot commercial. What I would do to be her pet dog like in that commercial… (^_^)

I mean…sure, back in the day Anna Kournikova was attractive but she has got NOTHING on Sharapova. She’s hot on TV. She’s hot on interviews. She’s hot with no makeup on and sweaty while totally concentrating on the tennis court. Am I obsessed? No. Or at least I don’t think so. But…yeah…yum…

How can you NOT say she’s a hottie? Hm? HMMM???? (Oh, and for anyone in the market for a camera, the Powershot is a really nice one!)

…ok ok. Back to what I was going to write about. I apologize for going off on a tangent.

So yes…hats. I assume you’ve all heard the expression “wearing many hats”. Basically, my job has me doing many things and dealing with many responsibilities. Why am I bringing this up? Because today was one of those days when I must have worn at least 6 hats. Also because the phrase “…so…what DO you do??” has been asked a few times again to me from various people. That question seems to come up in waves of about every 5 months.

You see…my “official” title is “Director of International Product Development”. This was given to me so I have a title when I started to do the work that I do now opening up the Japanese and later the Asian market. It also made sense back then since I really was working closely with Development to make our software international. These days though, I am still officially in the Development department though I no longer code. That is mainly because I am more of a technical resource for the company. I am a freelancer. I do what needs to be done and when and if something has to be done outside of the standard procedure, I also get to be one of the ones picked only because my time is not charged to the customer or partner and I am not in the typical departments like technical services that has to account for their member’s time and work. There are a few other people like me. It’s an interesting job…

But for me, since I focus on mainly the Japanese market and I tend to be the driving force behind it that is directly dedicated to it (as opposed to, say, our CTO who is all for it, gives me 100% support, but has millions of other things to deal with too) there are days, like today, where I need to deal with multiple departments and make decisions or steer decisions or at least help come to a decision on various aspects…thus the multiple hats.

So for anyone curious, come with me to a fun review of my hectic day…and for all of you who know me from work…why most of the time I am nowhere near my desk…

Hat #1: Project Manager - We are doing a custom integration project with a partner. There are various aspects of it that makes it very very very tricky to not just program it but also to test it and, when problems arise, debug it. And since this partner is in Japan, the e-mail is in Japanese, and the sentiment and the procedures and the information needed is…well…very Japanese. So, I get to translate the e-mail. Understand the e-mail. Help the tech guys who are working on this understand why I am asking so many detailed questions that they really don’t want me to ask (”…so why did we mess this up?” “So, can you say for certain that this is indeed the problem?” “…why?? Why can’t it be this?” “You’re sure?” etc…). Unlike many times in the US, the Japanese customer wants details. Ridiculous details. And they are very direct in terms of what they want to know. And as usual, they want it yesterday. So I get to oversee it all respond diplomatically and with tact in Japanese via e-mail and, if I need to, jump departments to get resources, I do. Which brings me to #2…

Hat #2: Quality Assurance - In today’s case, I look at the issue and listen to the programmer and realize that there is something more to this. I can’t test it since I don’t have the code or the environment but by looking at the logs, I can ask the right questions to get things rolling. Having a background in this helps as well since I can look at the logs and the various information handed to me and start to think about how it can be replicated or what has to happen for this to be replicated here. I also know just the right question and wording to use when talking to Development (coming up next) to get the answer that I need or to get them to understand what I’m looking for.

Hat #3: Development - Then, due to the fact that I have been here for 11 years (well, 11 years next Monday) and I have a more direct relationship with the VP’s and managers, I can speed things up like I did today by directly going to the person responsible for the portion of the product that I have a question on and ask him directly. The other programmers may not have a direct line or it will be difficult for them to escalate the question to this point. Most of the time I don’t do this. In this case, the issue was hot and time was short, and so I acted alone and decided to get the ball rolling a bit faster. Of course, they will respond to me at a very detailed level so having 8.5 years of experience writing this product helps.

Hat #4: Sales - Meanwhile, while all of this is happening, I am getting frequent phone calls from the first floor where our sales people are. We have 2 great Japanese women downstairs in sales doing all the stuff necessary for us to succeed selling our software in this sometimes incredibly difficult country. Whenever they want an opinion on what to do or what course of action to take, they will involve me. Not because they have to but because I have been involved in this from the beginning and I can at least bring some insight into this. Also as I am outside of their department, I can then say things or ask for things from other departments such as technical resources that may be difficult for them. Throughout the day, I am also dealing with actual sales decisions and reading and filling out RFP’s and finding out what solutions work best and if we should pursue certain opportunities. But all from a technical bent. Ask me about contracts or our P.O. procedure and you will get a sad blank look from me…

Hat #5: Marketing - Of course, in the end, to sell, we need to advertise and make collateral. Everything from a 20 page main product catalog all the way down to a 2 page slick with a whitepaper thrown in there for fun. Not only do we need to come up with the content in Japanese but we need to work on presentation too. It has to LOOK Japanese after all and this is not easy. At all. Where do I fit in? I work to make sure that various aspects of marketing and sales are communicating and making sure that things are moving along smoothly. Making sure that the whitepaper is being designed with the correct thought in mind and even going so far as approving design choices…which to be honest…is the hardest thing for me to do as I don’t have a degree in marketing or design work. But I can at least say what looks good or what doesn’t and ultimately (and thankfully) the marketing guys realize that no matter what they think, me and a few others are the ones that has to personally hand out these marketing materials so, if we don’t like it, it has to be changed. But yeah…marketing.

Hat #5.5: Marketing pt. 2 - Of course it’s not just pamphlets and catalogs. We have events coming up that we need to decide what to do. I am not directly involved in this myself but I do make myself available to give comments and suggestions and also to help in making sure that, if we have speakers, they know what they are going to say and are ready since, 9 times out of 10, I get to be the interpretor on stange with them…

Hat #6: Translator / Interpretor - This is self explanatory but I do also deal on a slight basis with our translator to make sure that we are getting what we really need translated first and that the information on our web page and such are correct. I used to be more involved in this back in the day when we were deciding for example, how in the hell to say “Rendition” in Japanese. These days though, I tend to be more involved from a “stay on top of the development’s effort to get the things ready for Arabic (right to left)” type situation. I also do field questions from translators doing new languages like Chinese on how we translated certain words in Japanese and such and also how to decide how to say certain words when those words do not exist in their native tongue. Fun stuff…

Hat #7: Travel Agent - Yup. For example…today I get a panicked phone call from downstairs because a key person for our next trip to Japan just informed us that she is coming in not on Sunday but on Monday at 7am since she has to make a brief stop at a different country. But we have a meeting at 10am in Tokyo Monday morning that is very difficult for us to reschedule. But Narita Airport is pretty far away from Tokyo. And it’s rush hour. And we have no idea how long it will take her in immigration or customs. AAAAA. So I had to pull out my train schedules and such (all online thankfully) and figure out if she gets in at this time then what train she needs to take and to where to transfer to what so as long as she is in business attire when she lands in Narita, we can do a luggage transfer to someone else at this station and she goes on to her meeting just in the nick of time at 10am and so on with other contingency plans in case that train is full or she comes out late or there is a delay in the trains and so forth. …yeah… Fun stuff….

So this was just today. Other days I am also doing voice overs for our online demonstrations or doing web demos from home at the wee hours of the morning. At times at a trade show, I’m the chump outside of our booth bowing to everyone walking buy and sticking out our marketin slick in front of them hoping they will take one and maybe read it later. Or I’m doing an interview to see if someone is a good candidate for a position with us. Or I’m talking directly with a VP to tell them that I found someone for a different international market and that we need to give the person a chance. Or sometimes my past catches up with me as I get a phone call about an old program I last touched 4 years ago that a customer has a question on. Then I’m in a different meeting trying to coordinate communication among multiple departments since we don’t have that one true overseer (which I also don’t want). And then I’m in Japan or elsewhere in the world doing techincal training with their tech guys and sometimes even sales training. Then I’m the complaint department while I’m in Japan and also a mediator. I try to explain to the Japanese in a way that they will understand and vice versa for the US since business practices can be so different it’s scary.

Back when we were a small company and I was 1 programmer out of just 10 or 11 or us, the term “this is not my job” never came up. We did what we had to do to succeed. And not always programming either. If it had to be done, there was no question. It was done. And now, as a company of over 700 with close to (or maybe we’ve gone over already) 90 programmers, once again, I do what needs to be done. I can’t say “this is not my job” since…well…my job is to do what needs to be done…

And throughout it all, I try…oh I try….to remain as positive and as upbeat as possible. If I freak out or if I get negative or if I get emotional, then it’s over. I have to keep my cool just so things go smooth. Just so everone involved in this effort can also keep moving forward and keep driving this towards eventual success.

And through all of this, not one grey hair.

COME ON!!!

I want that cool grey hair man. Just to PROVE that I am doing something. Just so people can go “wow…Tim must be pretty stressed out.”

…instead I get the occasional, “…you’re kind of like a rougue employee….what do you really do?”

I do lots of things kid. Lots of things……….

Fun times…fun times…

(^_^)

This incident hasn’t gotten much press here in the US so if you want to catch up, feel free to go to Google News and search for “Akihabara Death”.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i9oAEFG0GtBtRDDKEyJ_0JJtsG7AD9179N8O0

But I will give you a brief rundown.

In Japan where the crime rate is almost ridiculously low, one guy decided to hog the spotlight by going on a killing spree in Akihabara. Akihabara, as some of you faithful readers may recognize, is THE mecca of all things electronic and nerdy. Gadgets along with comic book along with video games and everything else, disturbing or otherwise, in between.

This 25 year old factory worker decided, this past weekend, to buy some knives, rent a truck, and then drive to Akihabara, plow through people on the main street (they close off the street to traffic on Sunday) then jump out and stab the ones he hit then stab the shocked on lookers. And anyone who has ever been there can tell you, it is PACKED on Sunday. Absolutely packed.

In the end, he ended up killing 7 people. Something almost unheard of in Japan.

To me, this has a double impact since, well…I know this place. I know this place very very well. When I saw the picture of the blood stained street, I knew EXACTLY where this incident took place. I’ve been there almost every trip I’ve taken to Japan that was over a week long.　It’s sort of unnerving… If I was in Japan this past weekend, there is a ridiculously high probability I would have been there myself…

This guys in clearly insane (I mean…really…). He posted on a message board about how he hated the world and how ugly he is and so forth. Things about not having hope and how he was going to monopolize TV. And apparently this whole thing started because when he went into work on Friday his uniform was missing…

He was arrested on the spot. I do hope he gets the death penalty. I’m on the fence about capital punishment but…when it’s as clear cut as this…it’s hard for me to say no (and no…please don’t make this a discussion about the ethics of this…some other time eh?).

If nothing else, Japan knows how to do the death penalty well… It is far far far more…cruel I guess…than the US. I think they still do hangings but that’s not the worst part. First off, you don’t get the death penalty unless it’s pretty clear cut. And then once you’re in, you have no idea when you are going to die. At all. Until that morning. The whole “not knowing when” is part of the punishment. Then, the family is notifed after the deed is done but they do not tell the media who was executed unless the family gives permission which they never do. So all the public knows is “3 people were executed today” and that’s it.

Also, this crime just adds to the whole feeling that when Japanese people snap they snap in a bad way. You just don’t get the almost daily “someone shot someone” thing in Japan like you do in the US. In a country where a murder takes up time in the national news (try that in the US…the national news would be 2 hours long…) man…there are some crazy things…

Everything from a kid who killed his older sister on New Years Eve in 2006 and then not only cut her up by carefully scooped up her insides and put it separetly into a different plastic container only to keep it in the house for a few days while his parents were wondering about her whereabouts. Or the guy who killed a British English teacher and then tore out his bathtub, put it on the balcony, put her in it, filled it with sand, only to have the cops track her down to his place…he escaped though and the last info we have is he has been seen dressing up as a woman and going to gay bars to have anonymous sex…what the hell?

In the end, I don’t have much of a point to this other than to just report the insanity… I think it’s hit me personally only because I know this place so well. And that it’s such a typically safe place and this is so incredibly random. Also I guess in a way it shows the cultural differences. No guns in Japan after all. Kinda like most parts of the world. I suppose that could be a good thing in a way too…would be scared to think what he could have done with a semi auto…. Oh, and finally, by the way…no…he does not seem to know about Grand Theft Auto…. (-_-)

So, Time Warner, besides coming out and saying they are sensoring my internet (granted, it’s for child porn and such so I can’t really say “bad” but…still…) has added some channels to their HD lineup. One of them being HGTV.

Does it need to be in HD? No. But since it is, I’ll watch it now and again. And as a new first time home owner (ok…townhouse owner), I’m curious to see what other people do. And after watching a few shows I’m realzing that either there are far far far more well off people out there or living here in Cleveland is like an amazing bargain.

Granted some of these places they are showing are in Chicago or Boston and other major cities but, even in like Tenessee and such where they say that property is cheap, they are showing houses that are $500K, $600K…crazy! And the houses aren’t that big and they need a lot of work sometimes too. But the worst part is, the people looking at these places are not what you would call rich… Most of them are DINKs (double income no kids) but you hear their jobs and I can’t imagine either of them making 6 figures or even close.

Yet they are looking at a $550K house going “hmm…this is a good deal”. Really? REALLY??

My place cost $219K (if you know how to get to the auditor page you can get all the info you want about my place anyway). Knowing how much I put down and how much I pay a month, I can’t imagine paying for a $500K+!! Now…Chicago is insane…and I know San Francisco is too. But still…how do these people pay for this??? In the time of bad loans and foreclosures and such…I just don’t understand. Though now I know why some people would take out a $500K loan to live above their means only to get kicked out of their house when they can’t make their payment….

Is it just me? Or is my sense of “expensive” screwed up? Is this normal???????