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Ode to Yoshi-Gyu
I have been depressed since this weekend when Nam and I walked past a Yoshinoya (ex-purveyor of gyudon, or “beef bowls”) and saw: A. A notice on the door informing people that gyudon was no longer being served B. A gaudy yellow banner proclaiming their new product: Karedon (curry bowl) C. Not a single goddamn customer sitting at the counters, even though it was lunchtime This particular branch was in Nara but I saw three more on the way and in Osaka later, that were suffering the same fate. I wonder if Yoshinoya will get on the butadon (pork bowl) bandwagon or not. Then again, who cares? I miss my…
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Random Yoshida Links
The links that can be found by ego-Googling are sometimes surprising. I hunted down the site of another Justin Yoshida last month! I left a message in his guestbook, but haven’t gotten word back yet. What do you know? He plays CS, just like me. Heh. This guy must actually be me, from an alternate universe or something. Maybe the metaphysic membrane between our realities was temporarily ripped and he somehow fell through. It should be interesting if we hook up sometime – he apparently lives in Hawaii so it’s conceivable I might make the effort someday. If he’s not hiding from me, that is. I can be weird sometimes,…
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Mac Adept
The manager for the packaging design department came to me with a blank procurement form last year and said, “Fill these out. We need a new Mac; you have 1,000,000 yen to spend on it.” My mind was instantly filled with images of a dual processor G5, Apple Cinema display, striped and mirrored SCSI backup system, Firewire-powered cappuccino maker, etc., you know, The Perfect System. I almost cried. (I say “almost” because this would have been a dream in my Mac maven phase, say five or six years ago.) Well, I came even closer to crying today when I saw how this new girl, the Designated Mac Operator in the…
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Ouch.
If you’re gonna do it, do it right: Big delays as bullet trains hit same man The headline is misleading because it wasn’t just bullet trains (going in opposite directions no less), homebiscuit managed to get hit by THREE trains. Damn!
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Salaryman Wept
Found an article from last month that hit close to home: Competition stiffens to work oneself to death Let Salaryman tell you something about dedication: Too much can kill, and blind dedication is either for the young, or for well-paid upper management. Even in these two cases, there is only so much you can accomplish before you break down. With that in mind, keep it real and work your ass off. By playing your cards right, your investment of time and life energy will eventually be returned in the form of work experience and maybe a nice watch (standard-issue salaryman bling-bling). Ulcers. Yes, it seems everybody has them around here.…
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Of Lohms and Mindslaves
Lying on my desk is a document entitled: Lohms vs. Orifice Size I don’t know who put it there, but apparently I get to make a presentation on it later this morning. in Japanese! Yay! Welcome to the modern state of technical translation, where a total ignoramus like myself can hop on the Al Gore Expressway and become an expert on any specialized subject matter in a matter of seconds – and before you ask, no, a Lohm is not a penis (but an orifice is, well, an orifice). A Lohm is a Liquid ohm – get it? Ohms are units used to express electrical resistance, so morphazenilinguistically speaking, Lohms…
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ISO 14001 Compliant
This is a warning that I will be archiving posts that I liked on my old blog on this one because I want that tingling feeling on my scalp from feeding the monster that is RSS. Don’t worry, I will recycle in a responsible manner so as not to disturb the natural surroundings. I’ll just filter out all the hate and venom from the posts, and then maybe I’ll screw a tree just to show you that I really do care about baby seals.
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Oh Yeah
My site was down for a week due to a corrupted table in the MySQL database that holds the data for my MT installation. But if this entry posts, all is good.
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Brimful of Asha
I once drank a pinchful of vibhuti, sacred ash, dissolved in a cup of water at the insistence of a crazy white guy I met in Japan who was a follower of Sai Baba. He told me great things about Sai Baba and how he conjured this ash from nothingness. Now, I am fascinated with India and always have been – it’s high on my “to experience” list – but this one point regarding the ash always gnawed at me. I mean, really, why ash? Why not something useful like powdered milk to feed the hungry masses or graphite powder for lubricating squeaky rickshaw axels? The guy didn’t offer an…
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Free Blog Comparison Link (Japanese)
Found this link for a site that compares free Japanese-language blogging services: Muryo Blog Hikaku (Free Blog Comparison) My moblog on yapeus is still getting a lot of traffic and links from other Japanese sites, as is the old version of this blog. I never archived the contents of the old blog here like I wanted to and I’ve been thinking of moving some of the posts I liked here one by one… we’ll see. I often find myself wanting to do stuff I never actually get around to doing.
