Entries this day: AM_painting A_wooden_puzzle Configure dan_at_Pink_Cow,_in_AutoBAHN_backstage

AM painting

8:25am JST Tuesday 11 March 2008 (day 13866)

Finished _Bleeding Sun_ last night. A bit of an abrupt ending, but I have a sneaking feeling that it will be continued, though that's just because he ended the other books in such a manner.

Meditated this morning; sketched out some painting ideas.. basically drawing overlapping circle, but I realize it's not trivial to overlap them all. We either end up with scales or chaos like all the shining circles trying to stay visible on a sequinned suit. I decided I might do a spiral type thing. Then when I looked at the canvas on which I planned to put this, I was like, "do'h!" cause I thought there were a lot more blue lines and a lot less white. This changes everything!

A wooden puzzle

9:29am JST Tuesday 11 March 2008 (day 13866)

Some years ago I was laughing my eyes out while Jason was pretending to not see a stick shaped like a turtle poking its head out of the lake at SWUUSI (he was holding the stick). Just today I mailed that stick to him, wrapped roughly in a cardboard triangle with his name and address in magic marker on one side and my name scrawled in Japanese on the other.

The real puzzling thing though: how the woman at the post office and I seem to clash. Or how I seem to clash and she seems clueless about everything.

First, I gave her a postcard. She weighed it.

It was approximately .1 grams or some shit. I mean it was a fuckin' postcard. How heavy is it going to be? And, don't you have a sense of these things by now?

Granted it was a tiny bit bigger than the average small Japanese postcard, but not quite as big as a souvenir postcard I might get at the airport. To send my postcard within Japan: 120 yen (too much).

I then gave her the carboard "box." She weighed the box. Fair enough. She asked if the address I had written on the box (the only writing visible on it) was the address to which I wanted to send it. Fair enough.

She asked if I wanted to write my address on the box somewhere. (at that point I hadn't.) "Yes, I do." I just didn't want to write it yet because I figured you'd want to put the box in a different package first.

Then she pointed out that the ends of the box were wide open (being a triangular cylinder, these things happen), and I suggested that if she were to have some tape, perhaps she could let me use it to, perhaps, close the ends of the cylinder with the tape. She agreed this was a good idea and got three (3) rolls of duct tape (okay, granted one was all but finished), discarded the one that was semi used, and gave me the almost finished one. I brought it closer to finished to close one end and then she gave me the brand new roll. I was like, "gimme dat" and took the one that I had been using and finished it and she pointed out that I could use the others and I should feel free to tape it securely, so I followed her sage advice which happened to be my plan and taped it and it was all great.

Gave it to her and she was like, "so, what's in the box?"

"Yeah, um, these are things you should ask when the box is what we call "still open.""

Perhaps it's better that she didn't see. It's a wooden stick and might have rabies or something and therefore not be allowed to send across national borders, despite the fact that it's

1. perfectly dry

2. already crossed national borders

3. originally from the US

I pointed to a wooden stamp thing she had behind the counter and said "it's one of these."

She seemed relieved and took the box and weighed it again, asking if I wanted to send it by air or sea. I said either is okay so she put an AIR MAIL stamp on it and gave me the total price. The stick to the US cost twice and only twice the price of the postcard sent within Japan which woulda been 50 yen if it were a bit smaller.

Paid the money and she put the stamp on the postcard and a stamp on the stick box and gave me my change and receipt, which as far as I know, means I can leave.

I was like, "um, yeah, so, when did you think I might put my address on the box?"

And she was like, "did you want to write your name and address on the box?"

And I'm like, "I'm going to fucking kill you I don't fucking care if my name and address are on the box; you are the professional here; do I need to put my name and address on the box or not? I know I do so if the stick turns out to be a bomb you can trace it back to my ass so why the fuck are asking me if I want to put my name and address on the box?"

I didn't actually say all that, but she gave me the box and explained that I should write my address in Japan on the back of the box.

I did say this:

"Oh, Japan! Oh, my Japanese address!" and then while walking away, talking out loud to myself "I live in Japan, so I should put my Japanese address on here!"

I fucking hate Japan that something I can't explain what the hell is happening here.

I put my address on the back. I wanted to write a whole rant to Jason but I know that would change everything for one mustn't write a letter when sending a package.

Configure

12:31pm JST Tuesday 11 March 2008 (day 13866)

I think I'm getting better at this mysql and php installation junk. Seems that the commands to install are consistently

configure
make
make install

It's just the option to be sent to configure, and the php.ini that are troublesome.

1:54pm JST

井上さん figured it out. For some reason the mysql config file was in a directory where it wasn't being read. He moved it to /etc/my.cnf (which is the default, but I think quite a dumb file path cause I wouldn't think "my" necessarily means mySQL.

Anyway, he moved it and it still didn't work, and after addition of several lines setting the defaults to be UTF-8, all of which didn't help, he added skip-character-set-client-handshake to the [mysqld] section. It had been down in [mysql] section, which makes no sense to me because I didn't put it there; I didn't even edit the file... I think it must have been copied over from somewhere;.. I'm going to try to figure out from where it must have come.... after lunch.

dan at Pink Cow, in AutoBAHN backstage

12:08am JST Wednesday 12 March 2008 (day 13867)

Hellsa fun time hanging out with Dan at The Pink Cow tonight. We started with current events chit chat, then future plans, and then all about the PB and the various ports and kisen limits and our respective stories of being selected for the voyages. Great great times and so much funny funny fun laughin'!!

There was a band called AutoBAHN playing live; a woman named Visi fom Vermont and a couple of Japanese guys on vocals/keyboard and bass; they were quite genki. Dan and I enjoyed being back stage during the show. Little did we know it was their first world tour! Ah damn I forgot to have Visi put the date on this CD; I think I'll slap it down.

David came by our table just to chat, and I asked him about putting up art in the bar area (I'm scheduled for July) and then I went into the bar and talked to Traci about art and her take on presenting art: it's a living extension of the artist. Though I figured I'd prefer art as a living entity separate from me, but yah. This was after I told her I wanted to put my pieces in plastic so they wouldn't get smokey and she was like, "you mean like people with clear plastic on their couches ?... I think it would be better if it were uncovered. Don't protect it so much it will be okay."

Then Dan got picked up by a girl where he was still chillin' in our little spot against the back wall where we could see all the action and moved up to the front dancing with 1, 2, 3 girls! Turns out one of the girls was David, but just in shadow so we couldn't see he was himself. Funny. Traci was like, "get out there; you don't have to talk to me about art... you can talk to me anytime."

Hahah she was right; I had a hella great time dancing and playing with the tambourine, cow bell, stool (spining it like a propellor as David would tap the bottom like a cymbal each time it came back to the bottom), and then doing some werid dance thing over the stool and spinning around not crashing, and then spinning the stool like a drunken ballerina and trying to dance over it, but much less successfully.

Finally had to go, so grabbed a CD and found Visi to have her sign it; Traci suggested she put a lipstick kiss on it, so she did that as well. Woohoo!