Posts from — October 2003

One and Two

Apple Japan is trying my patience. They took my order on the 14th and sent me an invoice, and their tracking system noted that my eMac was to be delayed and sent on the 28th with Panther. I waited, but yesterday on the phone they said they still hadn’t sent it, because of the price drop since my order, and did I want to reorder to save 36,000 yen? Sure, but when am I going to get it? About a week. What if I keep the old order? About a week. Send me the freaking computer before OS X 10.4 Bobcat comes out, will ya??!!! I’ve got a iBook with a refractory kernel panic here.

My new Mac finally shipped yesterday.

I ordered it from the Apple Store, and a few days later my iBook’s hard disk, which had never given me a bit of trouble, suddenly wouldn’t boot. Jealous rage, according to Yoshiko, because I used the G3 iBook to order the G4.

“Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas [Islamic fundamentalist schools] and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?” Rumsfeld asked.

Good question, Rummy! Keep ‘em coming!

Unfortunately, since you are helping them so much with their recruiting drive, I think the answer is that they are winning. But, that’s OK, because the President and Osama basically want the same thing: to rid the world of evil. A plan so crazy, it just might work.

(counting the days until OS X Panther and my new computer arrive)

New superdrive eMac ordered on the 14th seems to be embargoed on shipping dock until OSX 10.3 is officially released on the 25th. iBook with all my data suddenly won’t start up. Can’t find right keys on Yoshiko’s Japanese keyboard iMac.
Only International Rescue can save me now!

-nils

I don’t know what this is called: post cap? stanchion brightwork? Doodad?

When Yoshiko planted cotton seeds this spring, I was amused. When the stalks shot up out of the planter under her care, I was suprised. When cotton flowers bloomed, I was delighted. When bolls appeared, I was incredulous. When the bolls began breaking open this week to reveal their bounty, I must say I was amazed. Cotton grows in Kyoto pretty well, and isn’t perturbed by typhoons. Umm, anybody know where we can get a very small burlap sack?
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Our Central Park. Several blocks on each side. That’s right, no pictures of the palace itself here. The buildings are actually not all that impressive in comparison to many other places in town, but the palace grounds were opened as a public park after the capital moved to Tokyo in 1868, and the wide avenues give you an idea of what it must have been like to be an aristocrat. The Jidai Matsuri is coming up Oct. 22, when people will parade in period costumes starting from here. Pictures show one of the many gates ringing the park, one of the avenues inside, an inner wall surrounding the palace grounds, a pine tree.

Did you ever see the first movie Woody Allen “directed”, What’s Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). Directed is in quotes because it’s actually a cheap Japanese spy yarn that Woody Allen bought and dubbed into English, changing it into an absurd quest for a legendary egg salad recipe.

Now that the honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of my home state, I was thinking that someone should do a “Tiger Lily” on the 1987 movie Predator. Instead of trying to outsmart an invisible alien, edit and dub it into a story of Arnold and pro wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura plotting their strategies to win the gubernatorial elections in Minnesota and California. With the software available now, this is the kind of project you could do at home.