Entries this day: Cool_earthquake Dream_Francois,_Fries,_Rob List_of_Things_To_Do_Today State_of_My_Life_address doug's_housewarming_party

Cool earthquake

4am JST Saturday 6 October 2007 (day 13709)

Was woken from the edge of slumber by a pretty good earthquake. I felt shaking along east-west axis (i.e. I was moving east-west) for about 15 seconds. No damage, and slept again immediately.

(this is being written the next morning with pre-dated date)

11:47am JST Saturday 6 October 2007 (day 13709)

I found two maps, but I don't know how long they will remain intact.

In Tokyo area, there was a Shindo 3 earthquake at 3:50am, and another Shindo 3 earthquake at 3:56am.

However, in what appears to be my local area, as per the "Station Name" (not train stations, but plain stations, as in "the plains were shaken by the earthquake"), KAWASAKINAKAHARA only got Shindo 1 at both 3:50am and 3:56am.

I don't care what their seismometers felt. I definitely felt it and woke up as a result.

From the map URLs, I bet they will be valid for only a month at most.

I wgot (*) the pics:

The Shindo scale (Wikipedia) used by the Japan Meteorological Agency is "stronger" than the Modified Mercalli scale used in the US

(*) wgot is the past tense of wget, the verb used when using wget.

Dream Francois, Fries, Rob

10:12am JST Saturday 6 October 2007 (day 13709)

During a train ride, I was debugging a window that seemed to act differently with different parameters, but not in the way I expected the parameters to affect it. I was right on the verge of solving it (I was pretty sure), but then we reached the last station for the train, so we couldn't test it.

I got off the train and was like, "aw, man!" in a not-so-serious tone; all was not lost, just delayed. I still had the code safely stored, but would just have to test it on the next train.

I found my dad had been on the same train, and he *still* had the ice cream cone he had had at the beginning of the trip. I was shocked it had lasted so long, but when I took a bite (without permission) I discovered it had become dry instead of melty.

Watching a video put on by some peeps from PB, including Phil (who's onboard now) and all of his GET teachers. I had put Francois on Phil's shoulder, where he stayed during most of the video, but seemed like he might fall off. I was a bit worried that he'd be lost, but soon thereafter, Phil took Francois and personified him as acting out the lyrics of the song, like swimming across the sea or whatever were the lyrics. The video was totally focused on Francois, and had some neat video effects to make it look like a dream.

After the successful video shoot, we were in a bar with ultimate frisbee peeps, including tall Rob. I had ordered some french fries (along with a bunch of other people), and the order came up and the cooks were checking off the checklist to make sure the plate had all the proper ingredients. French Fries: check. Ketchup: check. Salt: check. Tartar Sauce: "oh no we forgot the tartar sauce, well, shhh shh maybe he won't notice..." and they called the name, "Joe Blahblahblah, your fries are ready."

Same thing for the next plate of fries, but for one detail. They couldn't read the name on the slip.

I offered, "I ordered some fries. And I underlined my name in all caps with exclamation point like, ROB!" And they were like, "you mean Rob?" and held up tall Rob's red cap.

"No, that's noisy Rob. I'm patient Rob."

And someone said, "how's that working out for you?"

I quickly thought of a smartalec answer to his piercing question, "it's already finished thank you!" ohhh burn!

Hey wait that reply makes no sense!

Oh, snap!

and then I woke up.

List of Things To Do Today

10:43am JST Saturday 6 October 2007 (day 13709)

1. * meditate 20 minutes

2. * write a State of My Life Address

3. * paint

4. clean my room

5. * laundry

6. work a bit on m.robnugen.com my photo thumbnailer

State of My Life address

2:01pm JST Saturday 6 October 2007 (day 13709)

State of My Life address

1. I think I haven't been writing these as often because I wrote a template to make writing them easier, but filling in all the parts just seemed to make writing them more tedious. This entry will be written as it comes from my brain with no template-prompts

2. I've just spent a huge amount of time fuckin' around on my site, trying to get the links to the earthquake I felt done just right, including making an edit to Wikipedia's entry, fixing an outdated link to one that's been stable for several years, according to archive.org

3. Then I got caught up in trying to get my page to validate as XHTML Strict; I had done it before on some previous journal entry, but now I can't find the problem they say is causing an error. Blargh.

4. I'm working for a small IT company in Shibuya. I'm enjoying being employed in a Japanese work environment, so I can use and improve my Japanese brain cells, but realistically speaking, I've not been *talking* as much as I had hoped. I guess that goes with the territory of being focused on coding webpages all day.

5. For the past two days, "all day" has equalled 12 hours, which I'm *not* proud to be doing, but I do enjoy imagining that I'm getting a grasp on how to solve the current issue: basically make a clickthrough counter from random bloggers' sites to our clients. I'm designing the DB tables, and the process by which the new links will be given to the random bloggers.

   2:14 PM The code I'm writing lets the user paste that code into a textarea, click a button and it
       will smurf out all the URLs, then let you decide which ones to change (probably all of them, but I
       figured it would be good to give an option)
   2:15 PM Dude: cool
    me: if a URL is duplicated, my code will notice and not generate two link codes for it.
    Dude: nice
    me: thanks
   2:16 PM So now the next step is to hit the DB and say "hey man, what's the next code supposed to
       be?" and write our new URLs with those codes into the same field where the user pasted.
   2:17 PM Just before I was about to start writing that code, I met with a guy (who comes only for a
       few hours a week; this is not his normal job, but he's the non-resident IT whiz(?) here, and
       definitely knows the current setup of our system)
       and he suggested some terrible table designs
   2:18 PM Dude: hahahahaha
    me: and some terrible ideas for how to implement this
    me: Turns out about 1/3 of it was Japanese/English miscommunication
     but
    Dude: nice!!
    me: I was like, "jack, you gots to get some Third Normal up in this shit"
        and I quickly cleaned up the tables (he had look-up tables, but he still copied columns and data all over the place)
    Dude: lol
    me: and was like, "see?" and he agreed and changed the suggested specs
    me: so now I've got 3 tables with 4, 5, and 3 columns, respectively
   

6. At work there are apparently a few different companies (including a fruit/vegetable distributor) all under the same umbrella, and all squished into one mid-sized room with various squashes in boxes on one end of the room, with adjacent video recording studio. I can watch the guys watching the monitors and talking to the hosts and guests each day. One of the consistent hosts is a cute girl who seems not to work (unless she's hosting), but just sortof occupy herself with email and surfing to while away the day.

7. In my little company, there are five consistent workers: me, Yumiko, Yuji, Shinobu, and Nakatani.

8. Recently I saw a guy with a FREE HUGS sign in Hachiko Square. He had extra signs, so I joined him, and then came back two days later. I went last night, but had the times mixed up, and now I'm thinking I should get my own signs and just spend an hour there on my way home from work each day. I certainly feel happy after giving away all those hugs.

9. Ami is my girlfriend. I've liked her ever since I saw her a year ago as my student at EV. We've been dating for some months. I say since May (when I sent her textual kisses via email); she says since June (when we actually kissed).

10. My cellphone is thin, blue, Softbank, 707SC (I think), and covered with pictures of me and Ami.

11. I've taken several pictures with my phone and emailed them to flickr. I'm super hesitant to start using flickr bigtime, because I don't want to pay more for web services. I've got tons of space on Dreamhost, and I'd like to keep all my pictures there. But flickr's infrastructure sure makes tagging and editing easy.

12. Francois has been coming to work with me most days, and helped me hug people a couple nights ago. Actually I don't know if he helped, but I enjoying imagining he gained publicity.

13. At the Emotional Mastery day-course I attended with Ami (after my weekend Magician Training), we got a single itty bitty sprout thing from a plant. (I just took a photo and sent it to flickr, so it will appear in the link above,) (and in the picture to the left).

14. I also snagged a photo of a poster I snagged from a train of a cute girl on a Popteen magazine poster. It was the first time I actually *took* a posted poster that I found attractive (there was a different time I took a non-posted poster, that seemed to have been forgotten/lost). Anyway, this one was on the train, and I was hesitant to take it, but I figured that no one would say anything (grossly speaking, no one speaks up when things are wrong in Japan; they just ignore the wrong), and no one said anything; I can't even tell that anyone even noticed.

15. Ami noticed the poster in my room and was like, "how'd you get that?" and just laughed. That's one reason I like Ami. Not jealous when I scope a poster / video / hottie.

16. I started m.robnugen.com/j some days ago, in an attempt to make a mobile web version of my journal. Haven't yet finished it enough for public consumption, but feel free to cut-n-paste the link. As I write this, the navigation links don't work at all.

17. I don't have any pets.

18. I recently started my own religion. It's my own, as in you can't join. The main reason is because it's called R.O.B.O.T., or Rob's Own Brand Of Teachings. But you can form your own religion, if the idea suits you. Right now, my religious writings are all available online at /etcetera/R.O.B.O.T., but again, not ready for public consumption, so I'm not linking the link. If in a few years, this non-linked URL doesn't work, try removing /etcetera.

19. One of the precepts of my religion is learning something new every year. Dan asked me what I really meant by that, and the answer is basically "I don't know, but it basically means don't *not* start to learn something because you think you're too old."

    One of the things I decided to learn this year is SVN. As a result, I've got the R.O.B.O.T. writings all stored in SVN at http://svn.robnugen.com/robnugen.com/etcetera/R.O.B.O.T./, currently at Revision 1920 (see below).

20. The weather is beautiful this weekend, so I plan to go to ultimate tomorrow. Last week was crappy rainy and the week before that was the Emotional Training thing, so I chose not to go to ultimate on those Sundays.

21. As a strict follower of R.O.B.O.T., I've been meditating every morning. The current rule is at least ten minutes, but there is a prophecy that the requirement will be increased, ultimately to an hour each morning and an hour each night.

    Hahahaha "prophecy!" I'm going to add that right now.

22. Ami is coming over (3:47pm now); I'm going to go take a shower and be done with my computer for a bit.

doug's housewarming party

2:32am JST Sunday 7 October 2007 (day 13710)

Doug is halfway through his two year lease, so he figured he should have a housewarming party (before it was more natural to have a going away party?) which featured peeps from ultimate and two members' girlfriends I hadn't previously met.

Hitomi (not my ex) accidentally came before the party was scheduled. Ami and I were next to arrive. David, then Koji and Eli, and then Yasuko, I think, and a good stream of people until about 20 were crowded in his living/dining area.

The living room features a widescreen TV which told which song was streaming from iTunes in his bedroom to the receiver under the TV. The dining room featured a table covered in chips, cheese, and snacky fruit.

I chatted with Jeremy, who told me about SubEthaEdit, which he enjoys (though he specifically uses the free version 2.2 instead of paying 35 dollars version 2.6. I *just* checked out SubEthaEdit briefly, and I can't say I'm sold away from emacs. Perhaps with the collaboration part, but when I opened that window, there were no collaborators easily visible, and no indication on how to find them.

Also chatted with Carl and Keiko, who called herself a music nerd. I tried to impress her with some unusual Japanese artist names. I came up with Michelle Gun Elephant and Takako Minekawa. Perhaps I should have mentioned Philip Gayle.

Within the same topic, I rapped from memory the first stanza of My Dad's Gone Crazy, and Carl tried unsuccessfully to find some jungle music for me on his old school Discman.

Three pizzas were delivered, costing 500 yen per consumer.

Doug busted out with four wireless game controllers so some of the boys could virtually kill each other in Halo 3.

"Back in my day, our video game character was a white square!"

3:12am JST Sunday 7 October 2007 (day 13710)

9:50am JST Sunday 7 October 2007 (day 13710)

We walked back to Shibuya starting around 11:45pm, and made it to the station where we found Testuya with three (3) FREE HUGS helpers! I joined them for a bit until we had to leave for our last train. I asked where/how he made his posters, and he said he had a laminating machine. I asked for how much I could reimburse him for a poster, and he simply gave me the one I liked.

So now I can offer FREE HUGS on my own schedule.