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Rob is 20,117 days old today.

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Entries this day: Dream_diary State_of_My_Life_Address Work

Dream diary

9:05am JST Friday 6 April 2007 (day 13526)

Happily minding my own business, semi ignoring people around me, even though there were new friends of friends coming in; I didn't really have the energy to meet them. But then one person was like, "have you met Rob?" and brought her friend over, and I perked up and was like, "HI" and asked her some questions about her life, plans, etc. She had just moved to the area from northern London, and I was like, "is that near Brighton?" and it apparently wasn't, cause she was like, "what?" and I stumbled onward: "I thought Brighton was either in northern England or northern London, but I've never actually been there; my friend Dan is from there, but anyway, how long will you be here?"

Turns out she was just starting a 14 year adventure in Japan, and she was 14 years old. "Wow, so what is the most surprising thing you've seen here so far?" and she told me it was the honesty which spills from people's online diaries, which led me to realize she was in a prime position to start her own diary.

"How long have you been here?" I knelt down to get to a more 'serious' discussion with her.

"Two weeks."

"And you'll be here for 14 years."

"Okay, listen: You'll be twenty-eight years old in 14 years. I started my diary when I was 17. I'm 38 years old now, and my life continues to change and be filled with stories every day. I think you should consider writing down the things you see and feel now. They will change in 14 years."

Or something like that; it felt much more eloquent in the dream.

She agreed that it *might* be a good idea, and agreed to write down a summary of the last two weeks she's been here.

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State of My Life Address

9:31am JST Friday 6 April 2007 (day 13526)

State of My Life Address

I feel like I don't have enough time to write a State of My Life Address, so I hope I appreciate this one later.
I live with Michael in Sakurashinmachi, the same place I've been for a while (since breaking my shoulder and moving to Jesse's couch in late May 2006), except now there is no internet access. ETA for access is (more than) 2 weeks.
I tell people I have two jobs. I'm working 45 hours a week at English Village for cold cash, and several hours per week for a currently non-existant company for future stock options, I hope. That's the video game that Tariq is leading, Hitoshi is drawing, and I'm coding.
I've officially almost paid my credit card debt. Just a few hundred more dollars, and then I'll start sending cash to Ma and Fred ($3000 total I think). And I still owe Carla 200 bucks, but she seems to have vanished temporarily to Costa Rica.
I'm beginning to realize there's not a lot of benefit for me in my current relationship situation.
My computer is my second Mac. It's a white MacBook with OS X 10.4.9 (Tiger?) 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo, 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, 74.2 GB HD with 4.8 GB free. I've named it Louis. (haha just kidding)

As of last night, it features the new Google Desktop for Mac, which isn't so much a desktop as a search for computer, mirroring a lot of Spotlight's functionality, but including browsed web pages, and Gmail account. (awesome)
I-group is still meeting in Shibuya, though Enio is going to be moving to Shanghai 3/4 time. Not sure if he'll keep that apartment. We've met at this apartment more than once. We are expecting another man will join us starting in April or May. (he just did his training in Australia)
I've actually put some money toward my coaching with Kim. I'm paying him $300 per month for 3 months, and then $450 for the next three months, and then his full price of $600 per month after that. I realize I need to do more homework in this arena to make it worthwhile for myself.
I don't really volunteer my time, but I do have dreams featuring YRUU sometimes.
I'm not really studying Japanese. Basically I am sick of "teaching" (more like babysitting) students who don't do homework, and who have no idea what they want to study. I don't do homework in Japanese, so I can't really stand to have (and do the same thing to) a teacher. I do meet Shimpei nearly every week in Shibuya on Saturday evenings, but he is more like a friend than a teacher.
Basically every day that I work, I visit the convenience store next to our building. There's a cute girl with red hair who works there. I call her Akami, which is a merging of aka (red) and kami (hair). There's a guy name Shirosuna (I think) but I call him Tsunashima for fun. We banter about silly stuff each time they are working and I go in. お手玉, etc.
Haven't done a lot of Perl programming recently, but just two days ago picked up a book called Flash Video Games Demystified, which includes source code, using actual trigonometry and Newton's Laws of motion to calculate force and collisions, etc. It's pretty durn cool.
Recently added 1 year to thunderrabbit.com and Hitomi's website, in a moment of really missing Hitomi. She really lavished a lot of attention on me, which proved ultimately to be too much, but now with a near lack of such, I certainly feel it.
No pets. I assume Spot the old man kitty is doing well with Jennifer in Houston.
I haven't worked on Marble Track 2 in over a month, but I did recently pull it off the shelf to show one of my students, and I just now figured out how I want to solve one of the two problems that has/d been vexing me for a long time.
Recently I moved all of my iTunes music to Amazons Simple Storage Servers (S3), and had been listening to my tunes stored on their servers with 99.99% uptime guarantee, and cheap as chips. Now without internet access, ... argh.

But, last night while at McDonald's chatting online with Tariq, I had my music playing through built-in speakers. At first it was nearly drowned out by the din of customers, but as everyone headed home before the trains stopped, Beastie Boys were more and more apparent, but of course no one cared to say anything. I like the security of never losing my music again.
Recently I paid $5.01 for the Amazon S3 service of storing those 6+ Gigs.
If I lost my computer, I would lose several megs worth of photos that I still want to go through and upload as albums. Part of the slowdown there is getting iPhoto to output albums in a format that I'd use. I basically want to make a custom header in the output, and make the photo names be human-readable instead of just numbers. (both the images, and the thumbnails), and I want the big images to have a watermark on them.

I'd also lose some hours of time installing other programs. I have no systematic way of keeping track of what I have on my machine, application-wise.
Haven't really created any art recently, though in the back of my mind, I'd like to get back into painting.
Have been taking pictures of Sakurashinmachi station construction. They just recently finished the security fences, escape doors, and escalators. There was only 1 escalator for years (going up from platform 2 to platform 1), but now there are 4 (up and down from 2 to 1, and from 1 to ticket level). It seems conceivable they'll make an escalator from the ticket level to the street, but maybe not, for it wouldn't be protected from the elements at the street level.
Haven't had any awesome earthquakes in the past few months.
It's Spring in Tokyo, but recently has been cold cold cold. After the warm winter, cherry trees were expected to bloom 2 weeks early, but then it got cold again, and they bloomed sporadically during the first week of April, and now it's crazy cold again and it was rainy for a bit so a lot of the petals are gone.
I haven't really traveled recently. Would like to go to Okinawa to see Aiko, would like to do the BEE Japan ride, would like to climb Mt Fuji again.
I've been basically in touch with Fred, not so in touch with Ma or Dad.
Ultimate frisbee has been fun. It's my one escape per week. Last week I brought my bouncy yoga ball, which was fun enough that I'm considering bringing it again. But it was a bit of a pain to clean, so I'm considering buying a new one just for ultimate. I'm sure it wouldn't be *all* that popular, and it's kindof a pain to inflate and deflate (or bring on the train inflated), but it could be fun again.
I haven't really meditated recently, though I'd like to get back into that.
I recently learned all the US states in order. Let's see if I can knock them out again:
1. Alaska
2. Alabama
3. Arkansas
4. Arizona
5. California
6. Colorado
7. Connecticut
8. Delaware
9. Florida
10. Georgia
11. Hawaii
12. Iowa
13. Idaho
14. Illinois
15. Indiana
16. Kansas
17. Kentucky
18. Louisiana
19. Massachusettes
20. Maryland
21. Maine
22. Michigan
23. Minnesota
24. Missouri
25. Mississippi
26. Montana
27. Nebraska
28. North Carolina
29. North Dakota
30. New Hampshire
31. New Jersey
32. New Mexico
33. Nevada
34. New York
35. Oregon
36. Oklahoma
37. OHIO
38. Pennsylvania
39. Rhode Island
40. South Carolina
41. South Dakota
42. Tennessee
43. Texas
44. Utah
45. Virginia
46. Vermont
47. Washington
48. West Virginia
49. Wisconsin
50. Wyoming
Dang.. I forgot Ohio... though I knew there were 3 Os.

I plan to learn the prefectures of Japan soon.

My .emacs file:

(setq custom-file "~/.emacs-custom.el")
(load custom-file)

(tool-bar-mode)  
(menu-bar-mode)  

(add-hook 'perl-mode-hook 
	  (lambda ()
	    (set (make-local-variable 'compile-command)
		 (concat "perl -wc " (buffer-file-name)))))

(add-hook 'java-mode-hook 
	  (lambda ()
	    (set (make-local-variable 'compile-command)
		 (concat "javac " (buffer-file-name)))))

(set 'display-time-day-and-date "True")
(display-time)
(auto-fill-mode)
(global-font-lock-mode)
(set 'time-stamp-format "%:I:%02M%#p %Z %:a %:d %:b %:y")
(set 'time-stamp-timezone "America/Chicago")
(set 'mail-yank-prefix ">")
(set 'rmail-dont-reply-to-names "thunderrabbit")
(set 'mail-default-reply-to "rob <rob@robnugen.com>")
(set 'max-lisp-eval-depth 2000)
(put 'upcase-region 'disabled nil)
(put 'downcase-region 'disabled nil)

(prefer-coding-system 'euc-jp)

(setq image-diet "ppppm!mogrify -geometry 100%\C-munnnng")

('MAKE THIS ALL ONE LINE)
(setq journal-start "\C-xb*scratch*\C-m\M-<Time-stamp:
<>\C-m\C-[xtime-stamp\C-m\C-[<\C-k\C-k\C-y\C-y\C-[<\C-s<\C-m\C- \C-e\C-b\C-w\C-n\C-sday
\C-m0\C-s\C-m\C-b\C-b\C-b\M-d\C-x\C-f/journal/\C-y\C-xq\C-m\M-xauto-fill-mode\C-m\C-xi/journal/
journal_header.txt\C-m\C-x\C-x\C-cT\C-cJ")

(setq watermark-images "!mogrify -gravity southeast -fill white -draw 'text 10,20 \"robnugen.com\"'")
(setq p-dream "<p class=\"dream\"></p>\C-m\C-b\C-b\C-b\C-b\C-b")

(setq p-note "<p class=note></p>\C-m\C-b\C-b\C-b\C-b\C-b")
(setq p-bar "<p>- - - -</p>\C-m\C-m\C-cp")

(fset 'view-journal-directory
   "\C-xbHTML\C-i\C-mg%m[0123][0123456789].*html$\C-mM600\C-m\C-[<\C-?")



(global-set-key "\C-cm" image-diet)
(global-set-key "\C-cv" 'view-journal-directory)
(global-set-key "\C-cs" journal-start)
(global-set-key "\C-cl" 'load-file)
(global-set-key "\C-cn" p-note)
(global-set-key "\C-cb" p-bar)
(global-set-key "\C-cw" watermark-images)

(dired "/Applications/Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/textmodes/sgml*")
(rename-buffer "SGML")

(dired "/journal/*.html")
(rename-buffer "HTML-journal-files")

('MAKE THIS ALL ONE LINE)
(fset 'gimme-digits 
   [?\C-x ?b ?* ?d ?i ?g ?i ?t ?s ?* ?\C-m ?\C-x ?k ?\C-m ?\C-x ?b ?* ?d ?i ?g ?i ?t ?s ?* ?\C-m
   ?\C- ?0 ?\C-m ?1 ?\C-m ?2 ?\C-m ?3 ?\C-m ?4 ?\C-m ?5 ?\C-m ?6 ?\C-m ?7 ?\C-m ?8 ?\C-m ?9 ?\C-x ?r
   ?k ?\C-x ?\C-x ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?0 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t
   ?1 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?2 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-x
   ?r ?t ?3 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?4 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b
   ?\C-x ?r ?t ?5 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?6 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y
   ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?7 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?8 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x
   ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?9 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C- ?\C-[ ?< ?\C-x ?r ?k ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-b ?\C-x
   ?r ?t ?0 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?1 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y
   ?\C-b ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?2 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?3 ?\C-m ?\C-e
   ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?4 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r
   ?t ?5 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?6 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y
   ?\C-b ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?7 ?\C-m ?\C-e ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?8 ?\C-m ?\C-e
   ?\C-m ?\C-x ?r ?y ?\C-b ?\C-b ?\C-x ?r ?t ?9 ?\C-m])

('MAKE THIS ALL ONE LINE)
(fset 'replace-<->-with-lt-gt-codes
   [escape ?x ?r ?e ?p ?l ?a ?c ?e ?- ?s ?t ?r ?i ?n ?g return ?< return ?& ?l ?t ?\; return
   ?\C-x ?\C-x escape ?x ?r ?e ?p ?l ?a ?c ?e ?- ?s ?t ?r ?i ?n ?g return ?> return ?& ?g ?t ?\;
   return ?\C-x ?\C-x])

.emacs-custom.el

(custom-set-variables
  ;; custom-set-variables was added by Custom.
  ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
  ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
  ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 '(auto-show-mode t)
 '(fill-column 100)
 '(search-whitespace-regexp "[ \\t\\r\\n]+")
 '(sgml-basic-offset 0)
 '(sgml-xml-mode t)
 '(show-paren-style (quote mixed)))
(custom-set-faces
  ;; custom-set-faces was added by Custom.
  ;; If you edit it by hand, you could mess it up, so be careful.
  ;; Your init file should contain only one such instance.
  ;; If there is more than one, they won't work right.
 '(font-lock-comment-face ((((class color) (background light)) (:foreground "dark green"))))
 '(font-lock-string-face ((((class color) (background light)) (:foreground "saddle brown")))))

11:13am JST Friday 6 April 2007 (day 13526)

Hahahaha! I just had a Firefox extension read this SoML. Pretty funny stuff. It's called CLiCk I think.

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Work

4:10pm JST Friday 6 April 2007 (day 13526)

Lesson with Mika was cool; she had written some stuff about onsen vs sentou in Japan. She may come play ultimate with us in a couple weeks.

5:08pm JST Friday 6 April 2007 (day 13526)

Interesting. First lesson for a woman, and she stepped out of the room to talk to Reiko for a bit after my question "what do you want to study?" in an attempt to find out what's best for her.

Shhh shh; here she comes. ;-)

5:14pm JST

Holy shiz! That's never happened before. She talked to Reiko for a few minutes, came back, and was like, "I'll prepare a topic for next time," and I was all, "we can still talk about whatever, if you'd like," but she politely declined.

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