Category: Uncategorized

I make a lot of fairly serious updates on this blog. Really, though, all sorts of dumb things are bouncing around inside my head. Here are a few:

Battlestar Galactica

The third episode of the fourth season might be just about the best episode of any television series I have ever seen. BSG is as a whole, an amazing show. Because it has set viewers expectations so high, if an episode is not astonishing, it tends to disappoint (“Black Market” being the one exception that was just all around lame). The season premiere let me down a little bit, but only because I was schoolgirl giddy about it. The third episode, “The Ties That Bind,” astonishes with an extremely artistic and nuanced character-driven episode. At times I felt I was watching an art house film, the camerawork, sound design and complexities of plot were so well done.

Also, did anyone notice the designation of the weapons locker the Chief, Tigh and Tory visit? 1701D. 😉

Northwest/Delta Merger

I probably fly Northwest Airlines more than any other airline, and have always thought that Delta is sort of a piece of crap (their miles expired on me last year and I had to use 9,000 of them on a bunch of crap magazine subscriptions). So I’m a little confused about the merger between them. My friend Nate works for Northwest in their training department, and he says he should keep his job, so I am happy about that. What bothers me is that the new airline will be called Delta Air Lines. I have two problems with this. The Northwest name, logo, and fleet livery will probably go by the wayside. I like the way NWA planes look. White, red, and smooth gray in broad, clean shapes makes me feel like the plane I am getting on is somehow calmer and more well-prepared than a white or silver beast with chevrons emblazoned on it. Northwest’s SEA-NRT A330 coach service is hard to beat as well. I met a Boeing engineer in Tokyo who travels between Seattle and Niigata eight or nine times a year to supervise cockpit manufacturing for the 787, and he would only fly Northwest on that route, saying that the cabin configuration and entertainment system were much better than American or Delta.  Plus, why is Northwest Airlines becoming Delta Air Lines? Who are they employing as language consultants? Compound the damn word!

Proper Penmanship

How do you write the capital letters M and N? For M, I figure everyone either goes, from left to right, up down up down in one continuous stroke, or, from left to right, down down down down in four separate strokes. Well, the penmanship for the new first grade junior high students instructs them to write an M like this: Left vertical stroke from top to bottom, far right vertical stroke from top to bottom, then the left and right middle diagonal strokes from top to bottom in that order. What is that?

Photo Website

Pbase is starting to feel a little dated, and my subscription will run out in a few months. I have an idea to continue my punny domain name trend and create a separate website for all my photos. The Japanese word for photo is shashin (shah-sheen). Both www.seanshin.com and www.shasean.com are available. Any thoughts? I’m also looking at smugmug as a new photo service.

I’ve been watching the elections back in the states more fervently than I would like to admit. It’s ridiculous while at the same time very exciting. In 2000, I would have been extremely excited by a McCain nomination. Now, with the incredible promise of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I find myself being far more critical than I really think I deserve to be. After eight years during which many people like me would have voted for almost anyone should it mean Bush leave the White House, it’s sort of bewildering to have two intriguing, historical options.

As a young person who remembers watching Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory on television, remembers the paltry, cynical divisiveness of those years, I cannot envision a Clinton presidency as healthy. Barack Obama is right in characterizing it as more of the same. Mrs. Clinton is razor-sharp, dedicated, and she would make an excellent president. But she would perpetuate the rule of our country by two families into a third decade. 2008 is an opportunity to start fresh. A Clinton-McCain race would only offer a choice between which side of the argument you want to continue. Barack Obama represents new energy, and at 46, would be a pretty sharp contrast to McCain at 72.

So I got my modem last Wednesday, and it connected and all was well with the world.  But for some reason it has stopped connecting and I cannot contact Yahoo BB tech support in English.  As if figuring out retarded technical troubles weren’t already frustrating enough, I have to attempt to do it in Japanese.  Last Friday, I got a call from Yahoo BB (Softbank, actually) about some problem.  It took me forever to figure out what exactly the problem was.  Apparently, I have had my zipcode wrong for the last month.  For some reason, not only was the zipcode wrong in my application info, but the area of town that I live in, as well as my apartment number.  So, below is my corrected mailing address:

Sean Holland
Kasai Apartments 2-D
Ninocho 12-41
Murakami-shi, Niigata-ken
958-0835 JAPAN

I hope hope hope that I have internet by the end of the week somehow.  I have a hunch that the problem might have something to do with my address being wrong – they might have calibrated the wrong distance for the DSL link at the telecom building.  Distance is an issue for DSL from what I can remember.

Otherwise, things are pretty good here.  Today is much much cooler than it has been recently.  I have two three-day weekends in a row coming up, so I might use this one to get out of town if I still don’t have internet.  If I do, I’ll probably stay here and catch up on things and start looking more seriously for a car.

これから始まりますよ。