Entries this day: AM_ready,_I_think! Airport_so_far_so_good And_on_the_plane Cash_for_apartment DAys_old DFW Suzanne! almost_blew_my_cover dad!! phone!

AM ready, I think!

2:35am JST Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13629)

I think I'm ready. 4.5 hours to spare before the train. Gotta catch some Zzzs, like Ami.

6:28am JST Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13629)

Zzzzs have been caught. Everything is packed except my computer.

Oh, and my world map! It's staying in Japan, but not staying in this room!

Airport so far so good

10:52am JST Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13629)

Hahaha. I was regaling Ami with the story of mucking up janette's travel *to* the airport, though she (barely) made the flight, just as I announced "Northwest" when the Northwest check-in bouncer asked me what airline. He looked kinda confused when I said "Dallas", then Houston" and he was like, "American Airlines" when he looked at my docs.

Hafta go to the other terminal. Ah crap.

Free bus to Terminal 1, and then "well, at least we got to see both terminals!"

Long-ass time in line while it appears the computers were down for a while as the woman in front of the line didn't move for several minutes; I called Ami (haha: she just emailed me and I'm calling her) while waiting in line, and now waiting in line again (actually sitting while the line goes down) after having just gone through immigration (is it emmigration in this case?).

On Maggie's Marble Track's box's box, there is one FRAGILE sticker with "No Liability" written under that, and handwritten FRAGILE a couple times, plus dad's phone number and address.

Oh dammit; I wrote *my* old phone number. I *knew* it didn't sound right, but I couldn't think of his.

Oh, wait. No I didn't. Nevamind. I'm pretty sure I wrote the right number (but I was confused at the time of writing).

- - - -

I'm wondering when I'll release these entries for publication on my journal.

And on the plane

7:27pm JST Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13629)

On this inflight map, we are in sight of California. Flying at 37,000 feet (though we had started at the planned 35,000 feet (except for starting at closer to 0 feet) where there was a lot of turbulence for a bit, so I imagine that's why we headed 1/2 a mile higher), we are 3 hours and 35 minutes from Dallas. Next time I think I'll fly to Los Angeles instead of Dallas, see Sally and then head to Houston on Southwest. That would probably be cheaper overall, plus I'd get to see Sally! *Plus*, the first leg of the flight would be nearly over.

7:32pm JST Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13629)

Right now it's 5:32am in Dallas. I'm gonna switch my computer clock now. I've been working sleeping on fixing my internal clock for most of the flight.

5:35am CDT Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13630)

Cool.

Wait, what??? How did I get to be a day older, though the date still says 18th?

Okay, I just checked, and it should be 13629. Hmmm.

Cash for apartment

9:05am JST Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13629)

Just gave Ami 70,000 yen so she can pay for my apartment, after exchanging enough yen to get $400 US currency.

The bills are colorful and pretty now. I rather like them. Haven't taken time to look carefully, but I'm *pretty* sure these 10s are different than tens when I was last here. Yeah; definitely. I sure don't remember seeing "We the People" on them.

DAys old

5:38am CDT Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13630)

Okay, I'm going to switch my timezone back and see what happens.

5:41am CDT Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13630)

7:41pm JST Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13629)

Okay, I think I've found the problem, but I have no idea how I came to write the code this way.

  (concat " (day " (number-to-string (- (time-to-days (current-time)) (time-to-days '(109 0 0)))) ")")

I'm sure the problem is with the value '(109 0 0) given to the function time-to-days.

Emacs' documentation says:

time-to-days is a compiled Lisp function in `time-date.el'.
(time-to-days time)

The number of days between the Gregorian date 0001-12-31bce and time.
time should be a time value.
The Gregorian date Sunday, December 31, 1bce is imaginary.

I checked time-date.el and I think we're getting somewhere.

;;;###autoload
(defun time-to-days (time)
  "The number of days between the Gregorian date 0001-12-31bce and TIME.
TIME should be a time value.
The Gregorian date Sunday, December 31, 1bce is imaginary."
  (let* ((tim (decode-time time))
	 (day (nth 3 tim))
	 (year (nth 5 tim)))
    (+ (time-to-day-in-year time)	; 	Days this year
       (* 365 (1- year))		;	+ Days in prior years
       (/ (1- year) 4)			;	+ Julian leap years
       (- (/ (1- year) 100))		;	- century years
       (/ (1- year) 400))))		;	+ Gregorian leap years

decode-time should give the answer.

Holy crap. How is the function working at all?

decode-time is a built-in function in `C source code'.
(decode-time &optional specified-time)

Decode a time value as (SEC MINUTE HOUR DAY MONTH YEAR DOW DST ZONE).
The optional specified-time should be a list of (HIGH LOW . IGNORED),
as from `current-time' and `file-attributes', or nil to use the
current time.  The obsolete form (HIGH . LOW) is also still accepted.
The list has the following nine members: SEC is an integer between 0
and 60; SEC is 60 for a leap second, which only some operating systems
support.  MINUTE is an integer between 0 and 59.  HOUR is an integer
between 0 and 23.  DAY is an integer between 1 and 31.  MONTH is an
integer between 1 and 12.  YEAR is an integer indicating the
four-digit year.  DOW is the day of week, an integer between 0 and 6,
where 0 is Sunday.  DST is t if daylight saving time is in effect,
otherwise nil.  ZONE is an integer indicating the number of seconds
east of Greenwich.  (Note that Common Lisp has different meanings for
DOW and ZONE.)

I've only given it 3 parameters but it wants nine!

Oh......

current-time is a built-in function in `C source code'.
(current-time)

Return the current time, as the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00.
The time is returned as a list of three integers.  The first has the
most significant 16 bits of the seconds, while the second has the
least significant 16 bits.  The third integer gives the microsecond
count.

The microsecond count is zero on systems that do not provide
resolution finer than a second.

I imagine 109 is the number of days from 1970-01-01 to my um.. ahem.

Nope. Not even close. Hmmmmm!

Okay, I'm just going to ignore the 109 for now and put in the values I think should be there.

OOOOhhhhhhh wait wait wait wait

Decode a time value as (SEC MINUTE HOUR DAY MONTH YEAR DOW DST ZONE).

This means the *output* is as above. What is a 'time value' of (109 0 0) ???

But first, check the usage of the output of the function above.

Well, I'm not even using the output; just feeding two such outputs to the function -.

Okay, *now* we're getting somewhere:

;; Time values come in three formats.  The oldest format is a cons
;; cell of the form (HIGH . LOW).  This format is obsolete, but still
;; supported.  The two other formats are the lists (HIGH LOW) and
;; (HIGH LOW MICRO).  The first two formats specify HIGH * 2^16 + LOW
;; seconds; the third format specifies HIGH * 2^16 + LOW + MICRO /
;; 1000000 seconds.  We should have 0 <= MICRO < 1000000 and 0 <= LOW
;; < 2^16.  If the time value represents a point in time, then HIGH is
;; nonnegative.  If the time value is a time difference, then HIGH can
;; be negative as well.  The macro `with-decoded-time-value' and the
;; function `encode-time-value' make it easier to deal with these
;; three formats.  See `time-subtract' for an example of how to use
;; them.

8:09pm JST Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13629)

Hmmm.

Okay, 109 appears to be the number of multiples of 2^16 seconds from 1970 Jan 1 to my birthday, +/- 1 day, which in this case is significant.

- - - -

bah; fuck; I'm tired of this.

I'm gonna watch the latter 2/3rds of Bourne Identity again.

11:29am CDT Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13630)

I tried working on it for another hour, but still didn't make any headway.

DFW

10:21am CDT Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13629) (edited by hand)

Well, howdy. I'm in Texas.

I'm eatin' a burrito, drinkin' a Coors (*), and watchin' the football game on the TV (**).

(*) Coors = Dole orange juice

(**) not watching

But I *did* take a picture of Francois on a wrought iron rack with Texas shaped boxes and TEXAS written at the top.

*AND* I'm quite intrigued with the concept of being able to understand what people are saying around me.

But I'm not really listening to them.

- - - -

I've noticed how much people don't do for me here. I had to get my own tray thing when going through security. We all had to get our own luggage from our flight and re-check it to our corresponding next flight.

(( During this process, I noticed a bit of crushing on the corners of Maggie's Marble Track's box's box, but just took it gently to the next location and let it go. ))

I'm very happy that I've not come across a single smoking area since I've arrived. But perhaps that's true even in Narita airport.

Dang; this mild sauce is hot.

...and tipping. Wow. I sure have not missed having to tip.

Suzanne!

9:29pm CDT Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13630)

So great to see Suzanne; she picked me up at IAH and drove me to my dad's house. No one was home, so we sat in the back yard and chatted about her spiritual training, which includes some cool outdoor camps and stuff, then I snoozed while she played with a persian cat until she woke me up, "someone's home."

It was Karen, looking lovely and smiling me home with a hug. She showed us inside and showed me the new version of my old room (huge bed), and then they chatted a bit on the couch until we made a plan for Suzanne to drive me to see my dad at his work.

Headed out the way we had come, but then I realized we could have gone a faster way. We went that way, but it was a little out of the way.

almost blew my cover

9:26pm CDT Wednesday 18 July 2007 (day 13630)

Suzanne brought me to the university where my dad teaches, and I've located his class, though it was a close call because the woman who led me there was like, "you have a visitor," and I was like, NO!!! in my head because I had told her it's a SECRET, and I don't want to interrupt his class. Thank you for listening.

Anyway, I politely (?) declined through clenched teeth, "it's a secret," and she shrugged/winced a bit and then walked away, and I waited until he had resumed talking and then scurried past the door, though I don't think he could have seen me anyway.

dad!!

12:28am CDT Thursday 19 July 2007 (day 13631)

As the class was ending, I stood lurkingly outside in the hall until all (four) students filed out.

I didn't make an effort to sneak up on him nor anything like that. Just, "HI Dad!"

Big great smile; so great to hug and reconnect.

Listened to him and his fellow professor talk about the students they've got. Basically it sounds like they have a lot of students who don't want to work. Hmmm; that's the same problem I complain about at EV.

Anyway, random chatter about stuff and things on the way home, with some detailed questions about Ami and my compatibility, until I was like, "we've just been dating 2 months; it just happens that she's coming to visit during my visit." Then a stop at the new huge Kroger in Tomball. It was the biggest in Kroger history until one with a few extra square feet took over in Dallas.

Briefly showed him Maggie's Marble Track, which I was happy to see has survived almost perfectly intact, and then hit the internet a bit as he had to head to bed. He's gotta be up at 4:30am, basically to take care of all the animals.

phone!

12:48am CDT Thursday 19 July 2007 (day 13631)

Ami called my phone and the call reached me here in Texas! Whoohoo! My phone is as cool as Shimpei's!

Good to talk to her for a bit. Not sure how much it will cost.

Also, I called my dad's number and it reached him here, no problem. Also unsure about the cost.