Author: Justin

Sulu?

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Hey, I just realized that George Takei’s face really reminds me of my uncle Tosh… But in a way I can’t really put my finger on. Maybe it’s the bone structure or something, but I’m telling you, if George put on that “Kimchee Power” t-shirt that my uncle used to wear on our trips to Lake Powell, it just might fool you.
It seems my uncle and Mr. Takei shared similar experiences growing up, as well.
(article via)

The Swap

When I visit home I always make it a point to hit the swap meet, if not for actual shopping, then for the cultural appeal. Swap meets and flea markets have always held a special charm for me, in every country I’ve ever visited. I’ve made some of my most prized acquisitions at these venues, as well.
Has anybody else noticed that indoor swap meets usually suck? There’s definitely more allure to an outdoor market, in my mind.
Via monkeyfilter: Photos of an Unknown Family Who PROBABLY Owned a Liquor Store

Hi!


I poke your eye out!
So this is it. Right about now, the sweet memories of my vacation to Thailand are almost completely pushed out of my day-to-day consciousness, so I decided to post my best photo in an effort to fight off the effects of the grind.
I got to close to this silly bird at an ostrich farm located only 15 minutes from Nam’s house, adjacent to a riverside restaurant where we were invited to lunch. I leaned over a rail while looking through my camera’s viewfinder and got a bit too close, and realized I had entered within striking distance just before I hit the shutter release… I hastily stepped backwards and accidentally took this shot as I raised my arm in self defense.
Of course, the ostrich never actually took a nip at me, he just psyched me out and then did this weird victory dance… I still have to look over the video we took to see if that came out or not, and if it did, I’ll post it later.
There’s nothing like an overgrown bird mocking you with a victory dance.

Concentration Time Redux

In today’s interoffice memo, the official English language nomenclature was revealed: CONCENTRETION TIME.
This filled me with great joy for some truly inexplicable reason, and I was immediately tempted to stab my eyes out with a sharp pencil.
//
In other news, the supposed 60-year holdouts of the Japanese Imperial Army in the mountains of Mindanao are proving to be more elusive than Yamashita’s gold. (There’s a Leon Uris novel in there somewhere, I know it.)
And now, back to concentretion.

Amagasaki Train Wreck Followup

By now, everyone is probably familiar with the theory of the rookie driver derailing the train by attempting to speed through the curve, as well as the story of several JR employees going bowling on the night of the accident, but get a load of this:

An obsession with being on time was also seen in the behavior of two JR West drivers who were aboard the derailed train. The drivers, neither of whom was hurt in the accident, left the scene without helping to rescue passengers and headed straight to work.
According to JR West officials, one of the two called his supervisor by cell phone to say he had been on the derailed train. But the supervisor did not instruct him to rescue any of the injured and instead said, “Make sure you’re not late.”
The 27-year-old driver later confessed in writing that he was sorry for doing nothing to help.
“When I think back calmly now, I was irresponsible not only as a JR employee but as a human being,” he said.

But the whole point is that he wasn’t irresponsible as a JR employee, right?
It’s a fairly interesting article, even if it does lay it on a bit thick with the “overpunctual society” line. Yes, “Japanese people should adopt a more relaxed way of living,” but even if they manage to pull this off with some mystical wand of compassion and understanding, it probably won’t magically prevent train derailments for the foreseeable future. Just to be contrary, I offer this: As long as it’s safe, there’s nothing wrong with the trains being on time, guys. Not a goddamn thing. Ah, but the poor drivers get stressed out! They have to pick weeds and greet incoming trains like common peasants! I hear you. Life’s a bitch, ain’t it? It seems that the problem is with the drivers training programs, and to allow JR to ultimately place the blame on society instead of improving their training programs is just plain wrong.
Here’s the link to the full article: Train crash reveals fatal flaw of obsession with punctuality

Adventures in Software Licensing

The girl’s PC died a couple weeks ago so I decided to piece together a new one from a mix of old parts and new, which was both fun and worrying, as always. I was mostly worried about having to buy another copy of Win XP (Professional, because I have bad luck with Home), since I kind of assumed authentication would be denied since the new PC had a new motherboard, chipset, and CPU (went from old SiS chipset/Athlon XP 1800 to Intel 865PE/Celeron 2.4). Hoping for the best, however, I built up the box with as many of the previous components as possible:
2 PC2100 DIMMS
Optical drive
GF Ti300 graphics card
Firewire PCI card
HD with WinXP still installed
I intended to switch out the memory and HD for more recent and appropriate offerings after trying authentication once just for the hell of it. Well, I slapped it all together and fired her up and…. I’ll be damned! My first surprise was that XP started right up and auto-installed a crapload of new drivers, but hasn’t experienced any trouble like I expected – it went straight from one chipset to another without a hitch, adapting to its new nervous system like some cybernetic super-being, whereas I thought it would surely cry foul and curl up like a sniveling little bitch in a corner somewhere.
The second surprise is that authentication worked! It accepted the serial I used on the previous machine and brought an OK back from Microsoft Japan – excellent! So basically, to summarize, Bill Gates made a product that worked much better than I expected -AND- I got to fuck him out of a couple hundred bucks for doing so! (because one IS obligated to purchase a new version of Win XP for every computer they install it on – when your PC dies, so does the license for the OS.)
So. The moral of this story is: The parameters of the much-vaunted “hardware hash” used for Windows XP verification are not all that hard to fool. You can switch mobo, chipset, and CPU without having to make Microsoft richer (I specifically wrote this entry because I couldn’t find one like it a couple weeks ago).
THE END