Tim’s Ramblings

Took a day off on Monday and went to the Zoo with a friend of mine for the first time in probably 10 years! It was a really beautiful day outside and we had a great time. And of course I brought my camera along so I took lots and lots of pics.

Unfortunately many of the shots didn’t come out so well… Anima photography is hard!! Like I told a coworker today, no matter how well you take shots of animals, 99.9% of the time, any shot that turns out well will either look not much different from a photo in a children’s animal book or at the very very best National Geographic. But ultimately, most will have children in them, something like a car or something in the background, or some part that’s blurry because they moved, or any other sort of flaw…

But whatever. I still had fun and a few DID turn out well so here you go! Each one is linked to one slightly larger (something close to 1024×768). Click on the like below to see the rest!

First we’ll start off with the one that turned out really nice.

Continue Reading »

How’s THAT for a title?

Can’t believe it’s Sunday evening already. What happened to the weekend?

Oh yeah. Wedding on Saturday and today? Sleeping in and being lazy. Ha.

A friend from college is here until Wednesday so I took Monday off to spend time with her. Been too long! And I also really really needed the break. Seriously… It’s been a pretty rough and stressful (from a work perspective) month so, though it was nice not being in Japan this month, it was still managed to beat me up. So I was going to go to the West Side Market on Monday and then her and I were going to go to the Art Musuem but then, just now, I realized that they are closed on Mondays!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Damn.

I was looking forward to it too :( Guess we’ll find something else to do. But man…Art Museum then lunch at Tommy’s sounded so so so so good. Now I’m bummed out :(

A funny story to end this though.

On Friday I was at the rib cookoff at work when my a coworker came up to tell me that another coworker of mine, S, wanted me to call her back. I was then asked to do a pretty unique thing. She forgot 2 bottles of breast milk in a cooler in the company fridge. I was going to see her Saturday evening at the wedding reception so she wanted me to get it, keep it in my fridge, freeze the ice pack, and then bring it with me to the reception.

I asked her why should I if she can make more… But I was told that it’s just not how it works. Ok. Of course the obligatory “I’ll try not to put it in my coffee!!” joke was made. Then that joke was struck down with the response “…well…you can if you want. I tried it. It’s kind of sweet.” Right. No. At least not unless you’re my wife because otherwise that’s just weird even for me….

But this isn’t the main point I’m trying to make. A few people found out about this because either I told them or the friend who gave me the message to call S told them. And I was sort of intrigued by the reaction. When I was asked, it did feel a bit weird but I never thought “ew”. But it seemed the common reaction amongst my friends and acquaintances was “ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww”.

Really?

Why??

I mean…yeah, it came out of her but it’s not like it’s a urine sample for godsakes. It’s milk. Yes…she produced it. But her baby drinks it! You probably drank your mom’s too! Yeah yeah, some of you may drank formula. But that wasn’t YOUR choice. It was your mom’s. It even looks like milk. There’s nothing “gross” about it. It’s perfectly fine.

Yet it was a consistant “ew” response.

Weird.

Is it really yucky for me to transport 2 bottles of milk? Or am I just weird?

Though I have to wonder what my sister thought when she saw the two bottles in my fridge when she went to get a drink :)

Anyway, back to TV. For some reason I’m not really excited about the closing ceremonies… Oh well.

…so…I’m on Facebook playing Sramble or Scrabble or any of the other word games out there that I’m getting my butt kicked in when I see one of their ads along the side.

They’ve always been about dating and such. Once they had a dating thing for me about finding other hot guys. Um. No please…

But anyway, this particular one caught my eye.

Ok. First off….how can a test tell you any of this? Fine fine. It’s just an ad. Sure. Ok. I can let that pass.

But more importantly…what the HELL kind of a kiss is this?? I mean…goddamn!!

It asks if you ever screwed up a CHANCE to kiss a woman. Not if you ever screwed up a KISS with a woman. Not to mention the dude looks old enough to be the woman’s father but…yow.

Let’s take a closer look shall we?

Dear god…

She’s holding his head like she’s going to give him CPR. Even looks like she’s ALMOST squeezing his jaws open. Meanwhile he looks like he’s either about to take a big big breath or he wants to desperately tell someone a piece of food is lodged in his throat.

Come on…of all the pictures to pic for an ad about a stupid “30 Second Kiss Test”…eeeeeeeeeeeesh.

And that concludes Tim’s overthinking of stupid stuff for tonight…

Had a good time tonight at the Winking Lizard with 2 other Japanese people. One is a coworker and the other is a partner here to do a 3 month stint. Just shooting the shit. Stupid stuff while eating wings. Of course, I have a voice that carries and so does he and the coworker is not very quiet either (the coworker is a she). And of course we were talking in Japanese. I bet a few people at the bar were looking at us like “what the hell??” Ha. Good times though. I needed a night like this after such a long week already…

Conference call at 8:30 tomorrow night though. Wooooooo….. Bed or Olympics? Hmmmm….

Ahhh the Olympics. I enjoy watching swimming. Especially since I used to swim. Yes for those of you that didn’t know, I did! Really! I was in shape back then. Some day I will post a pic of myself from HS. I was a breaststroker (yes yes, laugh it up). 100 yards in 1:04:1 baby. Wooo!

Anyway, while I’m in my office chatting or, like now, blogging or anything else, unfortunately I can’t see the TV in the living room. And though I could use the laptop, the laptop gets really really hot and the couch is juuuust not at the right height for me to put the laptop on the coffee table and work comfortably…and the couch is too low or the TV tray is too high to use that too. So I’m in my office.

But no matter!! I have the slingbox!! Wooo! So here’s what my desktop looks like tonight while I do a bit of facebook-ing, chatting with a friend, and downloading some stuff and so forth. That in the corner there is my slingbox, and though it’s not the HD slingbox, it’s ok. It looks decent even on the HD channel. And the picture is smooth. There’s about a 1.5 second lag from the actual feed but no biggie there since I can’t see the original broadcast anyway.

So yup. With this combined with my little laptop and my TV upstairs in the bedroom, I got Olympics eveyrwhere!

Wooo!

….and no…this is NOT sad dammit! This is cool!!!

Right??

Ahh…Sunday coming to a close… Last week was what I like to call “hell week”. Bad. Bad bad bad.

This upcoming week? …probably just as. But at least this weekend was quiet and nice. Was able to sleep a good 14 hours on Friday night to Saturday…well…afternoon and that was nice.

But yes. Olympics!! Started without too much issues and is going along swimmingly! And with the combination of my living room widescreen TV, my bedroom TV, and slingbox on my desktop computer (can’t see TV from the office) and also on my tiny Fujitsu laptop, I can be doing whatever and still keep up with the olympics. Like right now. I’m cooking (pasta is cooking so thus the post) so I have the olympics on my laptop going. I will cheer on the US team…except for men’s gymnastics and the dude from Japan swimming the 100 breast. Go Japan!

Anyway, why did it scare me? Not due to the atheletes. But more from the country itself. So I should say China scares me. 19,000 participants in the opening ceremonies. For godsakes. Perfect precision making things look computer controlled. If you didn’t see it, just take my word for it. It was both impressive and also kind of scary at what a country of 1.3 billion can do. Yow.

I would rather just take a vacation for the next two weeks and stay at home watching the games but…ah well. Gotta make a living right?

…on a TOTALLY different note…went to Costco and bought a 24 pack of Propel and they replaced my lemon flavor with grape. Arg. I liked lemon!! I don’t like kiwi/strawberry! Don’t replace my lemon! Damn you Costco!!!!

…boo.

Anyway, back to cooking and the olympics!

I’m alive. I swear.

Not much has been going on lately. Been nice being home for a while for a change that’s for sure. And catching up with a bunch of friends from HS on Facebook too. Who would have thought that FB would be a mini HS reunion!

Anyway, to make up for it, here are some totally random pictures that I have taken with my camera over the past month. Why did I take them? Some are obvious…some? I was bored? Maybe? Anyway, no matter.

First off! New gum flavor from Japan!

The others are just chololates. Yup. Cola and Lime. I like them. Guys around me were not big fans though. It doesn’t TRULY taste like Cola but kinda what Cola gummis taste like.

Moving on.

Alas, now that my desk is smaller (since I’m not at the office as often) I had to take a lot of my action figures home… But a few remains! Including the 2 Ingrams from Patlabor and 2 Tachikoma figures from Ghost in the Shell. The Ingrams are Revoltechs so they have these cool joints that make them ultra poseable.

Yes. I’m almost 33. And I play with robots. So?? Hmmmm????

Moving on.

The best popcorn ever. EVER.

This is Dichotomy Popcorn from the West Side Market. Caramel popcorn with cheese. Dear god is it good. I can eat that whole bag if I wanted to in one sitting. Seriously.

Moving on.

The absolutely cutest puppy in the world.

That’s it. Just cute. CUTE.

Moving on.

Finally. For the last picture. Japan’s favorite condiment…though most of you have probably never ever heard of it before.

Kewpie Mayonnaise. Awesome. Every Japanese house probably has one. It’s the greatest. I swear it’s like a big national secret. Everyone thinks soy sauce…but seroiusly. This stuff is awesome.

It’s much smoother than the US variety and it uses apple cider vinegar and MSG so it’s sweeter too. But you can use by mixing it with soy sauce to make a paste. You can even just dip cucumber sticks in it and it’s awesome. Me? I just like it on toast. Just toast and Kewpie Mayo. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Oh, and yes…it’s just as loaded with fat as the US version. Just creamier. And tastier.

Anyway there you go.

More regular posts will start to come soon again…maybe… :)

…when the “International Concierge” at Narita Airport has seen you so many times over the past year that she would come out of her way to assist me in checking in at the counter and then find me at the gate to do a formal business card exchange.

Ha.

Not that she could give me an upgrade… But maybe I can use her to get my Continental frequen flyer status to bump up to plantinum (my miles are on NW) so I won’t lose my premium boarding and seating perks.

Made it to Newark. Flight back to Clevelad is delayed. Something about awaiting inbound aircraft. The good thing is the delay is not getting any worse…the bad thing is, due to this, I probably won’t get back home until 11pm… Feel kind of bad having my sister pick me up… Going to feel even worse when I have to drag my sorry ass to work… Even more worse when I have to wear a suit to work (president of one of our partners in Japan will be in the office…yes, I realize I was just IN Japan…but he was coming so…what can I do?).

Blaaaaaaaaah.

In the meantime I am wasting time in one of the cublicles in the lounge since the lounge itself is too crowded and there’s nowhere to sit. But still better than the standard terminal. :)

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.