Entries this day: 3..2..1..Happy_New_Year!! Dream State_of_My_Life_Address Watching_stars

3..2..1..Happy New Year!!

1:58am ICT Sunday 01 January 2006

Though it got moved inside due to rain that stopped just as everything was moved, we had a lovely / invigorating / dancetastical celebration in Broadway Show Lounge.

I've somehow messed up my knee (I think from sitting weirdly), but that didn't keep me from dancing (it doesn't hurt if it's in use; only when it's all the way straight or all the way bent.

One kid threw down some mad phat breakdance steps, and one time when he did a wild handstand, he hit a table on the way down to the floor. The table is well fastened to the floor; I hope he wasn't injured too badly.

He danced a lot after that, so it seems not to have been too traumatic.

Dream

8:41am ICT Sunday 01 January 2006

In a rather fancy casino as part of a PB tour; there were multiple levels in this large glitzy showroom of slot machines and various green felt covered tables with lights and sounds permeating every moment and balcony levels with their own machines overlooking the scene.

There was a queue of people wanting to go into a new area, while I was on my way outside to get some free space for my brain to relax. I cut through the line and walked around outside, and when I came back in, they let me into an even fancier gaming area, where all the seats had dinner plates loaded with fine cuisines, different in each room. I walked around looking for something that piqued my interest and at one point decided to get rid of the balloon I was carrying and it popped, startling one of the waitstaff, but she quickly recovered her smile as I threw away the dead balloon.

State of My Life Address

8:59am ICT Sunday 01 January 2006

State of My Life Address

1. I intend to make this SoML quite thorough.

2. I'm a GET Teacher on P3ace B0at's 52nd Voyage.

   Last night was our sixth night onboard, and we have already gotten through a bit of a group concern (P and P), plus Petra and I have had an issue and worked through it (in a much less public way).

3. Last night was the first time I have celebrated New Year's on a cruise ship, or any other public transport.

4. Last night was the first time I have celebrated New Year's more than probably 30 miles from my self/partner-funded home, not counting the fact that last night was the first time I've celebrated New Year's while not having a permanent residence.

5. I spell P3ace B0at this way or as the simpler PB because my journal from the previous voyage contained some stuff that PB people thought could be used against them by people who don't like the organization.

6. So far on this voyage, I have

   1. successfully gone to bed every night at a decent hour

   2. gotten up every morning with a decent amount of sleep, usually waking up naturally (without an alarm)

   3. felt quite helpful as a repeating teacher

   4. really enjoyed Dan and Carl as my roommates

   5. introduced Francois to basically all the GET students (en masse) while on stage

   6. played three games of Pente one night with Rie

   7. found a Mandarin-exchange teacher (first lesson in 7 minutes)

   8. been working to remember people's names

   9. not played silent football

   10. Nearly finished Speaker for the Dead

   1:36pm ICT Sunday 01 January 2006

   11. Finished Speaker for the Dead

   12. not started Xenocide

   13. not spent any money

   14. not kissed anyone

   15. neither taught nor even planned any lessons

   16. not seen any aquatic animals

   17. started wearing sandals and shorts all the time

7. We have not yet been to any ports. Tomorrow, Vietnam will be our first. I wonder how my activities will be funded. Fortunately, it's still a pretty inexpensive country.

8. I haven't written a mass email for my Rob Update; I will likely do that today, though I don't remember there being an internet cafe available in Da Nang or Hoi An.

9. I've been wearing a bracelet on my right wrist basically continuously since Sri Lanka of the 49th voyage.

10. My computer is 3.5 or 4 years old; I'm confusing myself about the dates... I've had it since before Japan, but the warranty has run out, but I thought it was a four year warranty, but I don't think I had it a full year before I came to Japan.

    It's a Macintosh Powerbook G4 with 512Megs of memory, 30 Gig HD, and 667 MhZ processor running OS X 10.4 (Panther) (although Tiger is out, I haven't bought it, and probably won't for this machine), CD-RW/DVD player, wireless card, 2 USB ports that I use frequently; headphone, ethernet, firewire ports that I use occassionally; and modem, speaker input, video output, and monitor output that I have never used.

11. I think I can type about 50 wpm in QWERTY or 60 if I'm on a roll, and maybe 15 wpm in Dvorak layout, in which my keys are arranged physically, though right now they are in QWERTY mode. Most people that ask to use my computer seem to have not heard of Dvorak at all, and find the seeming random arrangement flumoxing. I am pretty protective of my computer, so I don't mind this deterrent.

12. I thrive on emacs as my text editor, write all my own HTML and try to keep my tags balanced and single tags /-closed. I'm not a huge proponent of WYSIWYG editors; I like to see what's really there.

13. My domain is robnugen.com (hosted by webquarry.com in California), and recently (esp. in terms of how long I've had the domain (how long have I had it???)), just a few days before 27 October 2005, I got rid of my "landing page" and robnugen.com refreshes to robnugen.com/cgi-local/journal.pl, which automatically refreshes to robnugen.com/cgi-local/journal.pl?type=all&date=2006/01/01 (in the case of today)

14. Just now was the first time I typed 2005 when I meant 2006. Got that over with pretty quickly!

15. My top-bar navigation consists of text links to journal, travel, YRUU, resume, blog, days old, then a Google search barfor the domain, and then a note that says how many days old I am.

    1. journal has a sublist of "types" of journal entries, which are identified by their filenames: all, SoML (where this entry will show up), excited (names include !), dreams, runes, YRUU, ultimate, KTRU, skate, sleepy (names include zz) and nihongo. (I haven't written any/many runes, YRUU, ultimate, KTRU, nor skate entries lately).

    2. travel has a growing sublist: perhaps costa rica, japan, PB, Palestine. I'd like to add TJ Bike to that one, but only once I really begin a multi-week journey at least.

    3. YRUU has links to Silent Football and perhaps the rallies I attended. (I am currently offline, being onboard TSS THE T0PAZ, so I can't check.)

    4. resume has a few (four or five) static pages that make up my resume.

    5. blog differs from my journal in that (generally speaking) my journal is my commentary on myself and my life, whereas my blog is commentary on external things (books, movies, etc)

    6. days old is a link to a page that lets people enter their birthdate and have it calculate the number of days old they are (according to California timezone), and then allows them to enter a number of days, so it can calculate the date they were/will be that many days old.

       I often wonder about Jason't request to put another date field on the page so it doesn't just default to today's date. The logic is easy enough, but I'm concerned about making the interface too cluttered.

    Regarding the "Rob is 13058 days old today" note (still visible in my browser from a page loaded on 25 December), I am pretty proud of the code I wrote for that. I can't recall how it works exactly, but I know the interface is pretty succinct, allowing a short line to call code that does the calculation, between two dates (with a default final date of today) or date + days to determine the new date, and then display the result.

16. Most of the navigation on my site is done with a set of perl programs that I wrote (save for the php files for wordpress that runs my blog, and the indexing routing for my journal). I conceived the interface for the journal index, but Fred designed the architecture and regexed it all together. I've expanded that to allow for different journal types, but the core code is still his.

17. Distinctly and grossly missing from my navigation is a link to images. There exists a program, images.cgi, that gives a crude view of the photos on my site, but it's so hard to use that I simply removed it. I have been severely flummoxed by the display of images for several reasons.

    1. firstly because I haven't settled on an interface I like.

    2. Secondly, I don't want to (re)move any of the existing images from the file system, which could cause a flurry of 404s.

    3. I would like to keep the existing meta information about the pics available, and use it in the new system (or overwrite it if I want).

    4. I would like to have ability to geo-locate the pictures on a map on my site, esp for travels to far away places.

    5. I want to easily have thumbnailed inline images in my journal entries.

    6. Optionally, I'd like to have some pictures require extra access, either for high resolution images or, unlikely, for porn. Otherwise, I'd like to allow all the image directories to be browsed freely by anyone who cares to dig through them.

    7. I'd like to be able to easily find pictures by date, topic, or location. I'd like an automated way to attribute pictures with that information, at least in batch mode of some sort.

18. The nearest thing I've seen is basically flickr, but I'm not willing to pay extra for it. And I want it all hosted on my domain.

    I'm basically thinking a set of perl scripts and mySQL tables will do the trick, holding meta-data and pointing to various URLs for the image data. I'm sure it's already been written, but I'd like to write it myself. Except that I've never written a project that big (and not gotten paid for it).

    If I do it, I hope I can do it well enough to have it enjoyed on cpan.com

19. I'm using thunderrabbit at gmail.com to store all my email and handle spam. anything at robnugen.com is forwarded to that address.

20. I receive a daily log of hits on my journal and my days old counter. The journal gets about 200 hits per day and the days old counter about 1 person (hitting about 3 or 5 times) every other day.

21. I get an email notification every time there is a 404 on my site with a http_referrer of my domain (implying a broken link). I should probably send those to a log file and forward them once a day.

22. I have basically released the need to keep my American English, allowing phrases from different cultures to come out as they wish.

23. I have no girlfriend, and few hot prospects. janette is the one I wonder most about...

    The others are just figments of my imagination, based on knowing very little about the person (who lives far away) and having all the blanks filled in with stuff I like.

    I've done that several times, and try to keep in the front of my mind the facts: I don't know anything.

    I'm still sorry to Sally for having done it to her, but have never taken time to apologize or otherwise make it right, though we have communicated by email since then.

    There is one more(!) who I don't really know at all, but my silly brain still wonders.

24. I'm quite curious how finances will come through tomorrow in Vietnam. I am tempted to find a sugar mama, but imagine I can work out a massage deal.

25. I'm getting tired of writing, so I'll add some topics for later: family, friends, art, pets, job, room, Francois, clothing, spiritual, food/vegetarian, repeating, physical, education, language

7:58am ICT Monday 02 January 2006

26. I've been in pretty close contact with Fred; I talked to him for 30+ minutes as we were leaving Kobe; he helped me do a Paypal transaction.

    Been in semi-close email contact with Ma, though haven't talked to her in a while.

    I got an email from Dad recently; he was like, "would love to hear from you.." and I was like, "shit!" when I realized he was not on my Rob Updates list. I'm not in super close touch with him. In a lot of ways I feel like I try, but get limited response. That may be less true now, but the feeling remains from a couple years' experience.

27. I've basically fallen out of touch with Genki Man Dan, but it could be said I'm still in touch with Jen, though we haven't volleyed an email recently. I'm really happy to be slowly volleying emails from peeps back at home (Houston), and from Nova and Gaba in Japan. Can't really say emails are volleyed with peeps I met in Jerusalem, but Sarah and I have sent a couple.

    Dude and Fred have been my most consistent email connections.

    The GET and CC team are my primary friendships now. Dunno who will likely last past the boat, save Carla, Kellie, Petra (who I knew from before).

28. I haven't painted anything in months. I think the last thing was on the 49th voyage.

29. I'm sorta getting better at singing the blues; I can often make funny rhymes that make sense in the situation.

30. I aints gots no pets, except for Spot, being cared for by Jennifer in Houston.

31. I aints gots no job, except that I'm volunteering as a GET Teacher on PB's 52nd voyage.

32. I'm living in room 3027, across the hall from 3029 (Carla, Yuki, and Rei (玲)) where I lived on 49th voyage. My cool roommates are Carl and Dan. Carl and I often speak in hip-hop/ebonics (like Dude and I). Dan does occassionally.

33. I've still got Francois, the rabbit Colleen sent me in April 2003 when I first got to Japan. He was unnamed at that time, and got his name from Ai in the back of the bus with me on the Petra tour in Jordan on 49th voyage.

    People often ask me how old he is, and I tell them he's three years old. When asked where he is from, I say Jordan.

    He understands English and French, but tends to keep comments to himself.

34. I'm still using shorts and T-shirts and slacks and suit and shoes from the US. Hitomi has bought me several items in Japan. Still have the dragon shirt Alicia gave me for Christmas (2002?) Still have the THINK Shirt Maggie made me.

35. Every night, I enjoy the quilt and pillowcase that janette made for me.

36. I claim no religion as my own, although what I've heard of Buddhism seems to match what I believe about the greater reality around us. I believe basically that we live multiple lives in physical form. I believe there is no divine punishment for "sin"; I say free will is not a gift from God if we are not allowed to choose freely. If God makes a rule, it's self enforcing. The speed of light is an example.

37. I've vegetarian if it's convenient. On PB, I have a vegetarian card, though I'll happily get food from the non-vegetarian buffet.

38. Being a repeating teacher on the 52nd voyage has been quite nice. No huge shock as to wtf is going on, and I can support other teachers in getting their bearings, and it's just really nice to be home again.

39. My right knee is a bit ouchy, but it has been getting markedly better each day. I don't remember a specific injury, but I think I knelt on it in a weird way or something and it kinda tensed up.

    Otherwise I'm healthy as a horse.

    I don't smoke, basically never drink alcohol. I do chow lots of sugar. I can tighten my stomach muscles into a "six pack" and if I count the smaller muscle on the ribs above, it's an eight pack.

    I don't work out; I find it boring, but I climb stairs a lot and stay generally active.

40. I sleep on my back with my knees supported by a pillow and no pillow for my head.

41. I have not gone back to school since I graduated from UH with my BS in CS. I have, however, taken some language courses: Spanish, ASL, French, Japanese. I'm pretty much crap in all of them, though my Japanese is enough to make plans and tell stories with simple vocabulary.

    I'm considering going back for a massage therapy / psychology / spirituality degree.

42. I'm also considering doing the 10 day Vippasana meditation course once we get back to Japan.

9:38am ICT Monday 02 January 2006

43. I changed $20 to Vietnamese Dong. That should be hella plenty for two days. But it's all the US currency I had. Except for a nickel in the bottom of my suitcase.

44. I've not gotten ready to disembark the ship, but this entry is finished, so I'll begin that now. Probably.

45. Basic plan is to meet up with GET Ts tonight in Hoi An.

Watching stars

11:42pm ICT Sunday 01 January 2006

Went outside with Yuki and Rei from my old room to see if we could join the hot tub party, but the rumor of its cancellation seemed to be true. We noticed a good deal of stars, so headed to the front deck and saw scads of them. I remember being awed on the 49th voyage, but this time was not as amazing to me.

I quite enjoyed them being quite so impressed and just general banter about how many more stars were visible here than in Tokyo (of course).

Equally impressed when Yuki was able to explain what shooting stars were, and I told them where the dust comes from (short version: Oort Cloud).

12:45am ICT Monday 02 January 2006

I am falling asleep here, but be assured today was awesome!

(7:29am ICT Monday 02 January 2006)

Last night we saw a couple shooting stars, and in each case one of us was looking a different direction. Except once, we saw a short yet bright shooting star and the girls were jump-dance-shouting with glee! So so cute!!

The front deck closes at 10pm (because there are passenger rooms right below it (and easy access to a Crew Only deck)) so we got kicked out, and headed over to Namihei for drinks and chattin'. Joined by other GET Ts and had a lovely time. They wouldn't serve us water, but they had self serve water in these Ridiculously Small Paper Cups, so Yuki and I went down to get our (and her roommates') bottles.

Back up, though weather seemed to get cold quickly (and we were drinking iced drinks), so back down after not too long. Plus, Vietnam tomorrow!