Entries this day: AM_late AM_lawsons AM_not_late Today

AM late

10:57am JST Monday 22 September 2008 (day 14061)

Was up late last night reading news about the US economy and sent a BCC email to several of my peeps (mom, dad, bro, maggie, molly, marcel, wende, sara) asking how they're faring regarding the US economy. So far, the answers have been fine-ish, though Molly-n-Will's house hasn't had power for 9 days. Yikes stripes! I hadn't asked about Ike, which I considered asking right after I sent the message.

Oh, so I was reading news until like 2:30am from my favorite portal sites these days: slashdot, Project Camelot, OpEd News, wsj.com (not sure what they're root URL is; does it always include "online" as the machine name?), and maybe others.

Collapsed into bed and ignored my alarm this morning. Woke up, but was like, "bah," instead of getting up. It's not like I expect anyone to be there as early as me anyway. Although it would be good to get this billing project through its next phase of development. I've got some functions designed on paper, but haven't had the SQL tables in front of me to make sure I've easily got all the right info at the right time, but I think it should be pretty much easy to do.

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I think, actually, the biggest issue in my mind is regarding the angelic presence seminar on Tuesday. Its price is basically all my savings for this month (actually I don't really know how much I've got available), but also, I've committed to going hiking with Travis, at least in my mind, though I've prepared for that as much as a walk around Yoyogi Park (I've done nothing), but it's a 20 km hike. I'm in pretty good shape, so I think I'll be fine. I hiked Fuji with no prep, but I *did* have some extra gear lined up. Well, I still have those hiking boots (good investment, thank you Tomoko and Sumidasan (where are you???)) so I prolly just need some bug spray and a water bottle and I'll be fine. Maybe a sandwich.

Anywayyyyyyyyyyyy (arriving in Shibuya momentarily), I asked for guidance on what I should be doing, and the answer I seem to have gotten back was twofold: meditation and painting.

The vision was of having canvases all around my room so I could just colorfully engage whichever one I wanted at the moment.

But the best news is the answer was not just meditation, as the answer has been for years. I think I'm on the right track.

'cept that I'm headed to work, where there's no paint.

AM lawsons

11:39am JST Monday 22 September 2008 (day 14061)

Stopped by Lawson's in Shibuya to see Tsunashimasan and the gang. There was only one other customer in the whole place, so I got to goof around with the employees a bit more than usual. In this case tossing greetings back and forth in different languages. Japanese, Mandarin, French, Spanish, English and Korean were involved.

Unfortunately, my two favorite girls don't work there anymore. Akami cause she was so genki and crazy, and Ai, cause she was so easy and fun to tease.

AM not late

11:43am JST Monday 22 September 2008 (day 14061)

Arrived at work; no one else is here (from 77hz).

Today

10:05pm JST Monday 22 September 2008 (day 14061)

I'm in Shibuya on a train that will go until Musashikosugi.

Significant today:

1. I cancelled with Travis tomorrow (*)

2. so I can join Tamara and the Angelic Awakening workshop

3. I switched my IN for OUT in regards to whether I'd be attending I-group tonight

4. We started moving our office (****)

Didn't get much work done, though did move a bit forward. Now I've got it calling a series of functions that will look for unpaid amounts, apply late fees, apply monthly charges, and apply tax. Next is to apply total due and previous balance.

The first function isn't working quite correctly, because it depends on the initial state. I need to figure a way to make the initial NULL state be a valid state. Where NULL could be default vals in the DB when records or made, or make sure the records are made correctly in the first place, but what should be the "prev_invoice_date" for a new client? What about "current_invoice_date" for a client who's never received an invoice?

Anyway, I'm thinking of just making those old dates.. perhaps Calder's birthday in 1986. Hers is the only post 1983 birth year I know for sure, cause of her old tagline, "wreaking havoc since 1986." I would make it my birthday, but phpMyAdmin only allows back to 1983 I think. Not sure if it's a DB issue or PHP or what.

Tomorrow is a holiday in Japan. Not sure why, but I sure am looking forward to the workshop. I described to Travis basically, "the workshop claims it will answer a question I've been asking for years: why the hell am I here?" Not sure why the hell I used "the hell" in that case, but yeah.

(*) While walking with him toward Shakey's I learned details: Travis is organizing a 30km hike in Odawara. I'd definitely like to go, but as he pointed out, there will be other times to hike, including perhaps this weekend. Sounds good to me.

(****) Moving to Malek's apartment, basically to save shload on rent, and hopefully get my pay up to a more appropriate amount. It's a bit further away from Shibuya station, but not too bad. I think it might be closer to Michael's apartment on Denentoshi Line, but I might have my directions all upside down. It's interesting, I have a footmap of Shibuya in my head, and I can see Shibuya on a map of Tokyo in my head, but moving between those zoom levels hasn't been my forte.

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In other news, I had a lesson with Komatsu today. They've been slightly more tolerable than before, but he still shocks me at times with how his mind seems to (not) work.

For example, most of this questions are effectively True/False questions (they're multiple choice with only 2 choices). They come in sets of four, and when I check them, I check the four at a time and tell him how many he got wrong. Then he immediately asks, "which one?" if there was only one wrong, or, "really?" "yes." "really?" "yes." if there was more than one.

I think a core issue is that he's somewhat more interested in having the correct answers written in his workbook than for his brain to understand why the answers are correct.