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I’ve been to Japan a few times, and I return with interesting stories consisting of a silly mix of exploration and confusion. Jonah, after hearing these stories, really wanted to go to Japan someday (and I think his love of Ramen noodles and Samurai stuff helped too). Well, Janet suggested that I take Jonah to Tokyo for spring break, and so we went! Janet and Sterling stayed home (neither of us was masochistic or sadistic enough to take an 18 month old on a 13 hour flight).

We spent a week in Tokyo, with side trips to Yokohama and Kyoto.  We took the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) from Tokyo to Kyoto, and then back again. We also went to the Yokohama Science Center where Jonah played with nearly every exhibit there - until they closed the place down and kicked us out.

Part of Janet’s requirement for letting Jonah go to Japan was that he had to keep a travel journal and write at least one page a day. He kept to his word and wrote some interesting entries into his journal.  It’s interesting to read his perspective of the same events that I saw.  For example, we used to have Krispy Kreme’s here in Albuquerque, but they closed down a couple years ago. They were one of his favorite foods. Just our luck, the hotel we stayed at (Sunroute Plaza Shinjuku - I Highly recommmend BTW) had a Krispy Kreme less than a block away.  He wrote in his journal about the last day and trip home: “It was the best vacation of my life, and I got Krispy Kremes”.  Nothing like priorities!

We have a ton of pictures, but they’re in a protected location on another site. If you would like to access and see the pictures, send me an email, and I’ll send you the URL.

Some helpful hints about traveling to Tokyo:

• Take the train from the airport to the station nearest your hotel (Narita Express). It’s TONS better than the bus or Taxi.
• If you’re going to be going all around Tokyo and Japan via the railroad (I highly recommend), stay at a “hub” station - such as Shinagawa or Tokyo Stations. We spend a lot of time traveling from Shinjuku to those stations. Shinjuku is great, as was our hotel, but if you’re going all over, you’ll be going through those stations a lot.  It wasn’t bad - but it would save 20 minutes each direction if you’re travelling.
• The lines at Tokyo Disney are CRAZY long.  Fast Pass is the only way to go there.  Plus, they don’t have as many “snack” and ”eateries” as the California Disney.  AND, the strange thing is, most items don’t say “Tokyo Disneyland”, they just say “Disneyland” - which makes buying something a little trickier
• Be adventurous - but think ahead. We found a couple neat shrines and parks by just turning down alleys and parks. In Kyoto, we wandered around and found many shrines and temples. Near the end of the day we stopped at the Kyoto Tower to look around. If we had gone to the tower first, we could have mapped out what we wanted to see (you can see pretty much all of Kyoto from the tower). 

A few weeks ago I got a call from a great journalist at the Albuquerque Journal, Todd Lovato. My old friend Dan Mayfield pointed him in my direction for an article he was writing about geeks and nerds, and how they were either Alpha Male or Beta Males. The interview went well, and they also took some photos of me and my car. The article was in this Sunday’s Journal, and here’s a mediocre scan of the front page of the “Living” section:

There was more on the inside, including a nice black and white photo of me driving. Did any of you see the article?

I made a quick parody of the Mercedes McLaren Formula One car with more appropriate advertisers. (click on image for full size):

New Sponsors include:

• Ferrari - for all technical data that turned them from a second rate team to Ferrari speed. Nice turn around -cheaters.
• CheatCodes.com - using all the cheating they can, they’ve enlisted the help of the best cheat site online!
• SCHUMI Developed - The technology was optimized by Schumacher - need we say more
• Cliff Notes - Why do all you own work, when you can read somebody else’s?

Well, it took years in the making, but it’s finally available! The Ferrari 308 Buyer’s and Owner’s Guide! It’s available on Amazon.com! Pick up a copy and let me know what you think!

Finally finished the major coding sections for GameRadar.com’s Blog section. You can check it out at: GameRadar.com News.  Here’s a short article: GameRadar Opens!

I just finished reading and listening (mostly listening) to Ender’s Game for the fourth time. I listen to it while riding or while I’m running on the treadmill at the gym. Man, that’s a great friggin’ book.

And even through I’ve read/listened to it so many times, I still haven’t read Speaker for the Dead. And that, despite having listened to the epilogue by Orson Scott Card himself describing that the main reason he wrote Ender’s Game was for an introduction to Speaker for the Dead. So, for this month’s audible selection, I got Speaker, unabridged for 14+ hours worth.

Been working quite a bit these last few weeks on some major BidNip technical changes - hopefully fixing a lot of the load we’re seeing on Sunday evenings - Due to Sunday evenings being the most popular ending time, and the ability for sellers to pick ending times, at some points during Sunday nights (6:00:00, 7:00:00 etc,) we’re submitting thousands of bids per second… Causing some major slow downs. We’ve got the solution worked out, now we’re beta testing

CheatCodes and GameRadar are also coming along. We’ve added some intern pages and  admin pages to match. We’re also getting close with the news section (mostly story admin - I used TinyMC)

While I was waiting for the new season of Dr. Who to start (which it did this weekend, and it STILL ROCKS), I’ve been checking out some other shows on DVD (and from other sources *wink*). They’ve been really good so far.

• Hustle (aka HU$TLE) : A collection of con-artists doing various cons. Each episode is a different scam. The characters are funny and entertaining. I’ve watched the first two seasons on DVD, and the third season is over in the U.K. A&E (or BBC|America) was showing them, but I haven’t seen it on there yet.
• Life On Mars : This one sounds really strange, but I’m halfway into the first seasons, and it’s a really well written and acted crime drama with a twist. The twist? It’s about a cop in 2006 that gets hit by a car and wakes up in 1973. He keeps getting “flashbacks” and hearing things from his hospital room in 2006, while solving crimes in 1973. It’s interesting to see the HUGE difference in police work between 2006 and 1973. I hope they make a U.S. version of this show - it’d also be interesting to see the U.S. differences.
• Torchwood : This season is over, and it won’t have season 2 until next year, but it had a great season ending episode.

Anyway, if you get the chance, I highly recommend checking out these shows.

Thanks to a temporary order from congress, the Daylight Savings dates this year are totally different. This basically screwed up everything that takes care of DST automatically - cell phones, laptops, my TiVo, etc.  The other thing it did was really mess with some of our Linux servers. Luckily, it’s an easy fix _if_ you know what to do and where to look.

TechRepublic has a great article on how to fix the daylight savings time issue that helped a lot.

Basically, you need to do the following:

  # wget ‘ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzdata2007b.tar.gz’
# tar -xzvf tzdata2007b.tar.gz
# zic -d zoneinfo northamerica
# cd zoneinfo
# cp -r * /usr/share/zoneinfo/

  # zdump -v /usr/share/zoneinfo/CST6CDT | grep 2007
(making sure that the two Mar 11 and Nov 4 entries are there).

  # ln -fs /usr/share/zoneinfo/CST6CDT /etc/localtime

And that’s it.  Not too dificult and keeps your linux box running with the correct internal UTC time.

For the first few days of this week, I went to the Bondurant Grand Prix Road Racing school at Bondurant Racing School. It was a lot of fun! I took a few courses several years ago, but with the businesses and getting my MBA, I haven’t actually raced competitively in a couple years.

Going to this school was the brainchild of Steve J. It was his birthday, and his present was to have friends and (most importantly) his new wife join him at racing school. Steve’s birthday was the 21st, so Steve, Erin, Brian R., and Rolex-Brian (It’s actually Brian K. but Rolex-Brian sounds cooler) met up in Phoenix. On Sunday evening, the day before class, we went to Brian R.’s beautiful vacation house just outside Phoenix and watched Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. “Shake and Bake!” That JUST HAPPENED!

Class went very well, with only one track “incident”, involving one of the people we didn’t know. He got lost on the track, went off course, and into the tire-wall, causing about $2500 in damage. He didn’t come back after that, so didn’t learn as much from his mistake as he might have. Racing really does take full concentration - if you lose focus, it can cost you BIG TIME. Racing also takes a lot out of you physically - after 7 hours at the track, you’re pretty much exhausted. We ended up not doing too much in Phoenix, other than going out to dinner, then going back and working a bit.

The cars we raced were C5 Corvettes (2003 models), that worked pretty well. They’re front-engined, so had very different characteristics when compared to all our Ferraris (we all had Ferrari’s except Rolex-Brian, who has a Porsche, which is even less like the corvettes!). So, we did more trail braking than you would in a mid-engine Ferrari.

We all got a chance to meet Bob Bondurant. He’s really cool. Here’s me and Bob next to the track - he’s on his Segway. He would take the Segway out to the center of the track and make sure we were all heel-toe downshifting correctly through the 8-9-10 turn complex.

We all had fun, and we’re planning on doing a Vegas or Laguna Seca sometime later this year. And, HAPPY BIRTHDAY STEVE J!

I’ve been using a great online YouTube video converter for a while, and after several people asking how to get video off YouTube, I figured it’d be best to just put the link here:

FLV Online Converter - YouTube Video Conversion

You just cut and paste the URL of the video, and it will converter and give you a download link.

There’s also another one out there that I haven’t tried yet at:

 KeepVid.com

That name probably isn’t familiar to you, but you know what he invented. On August 25th, 1958 he invented the wonder “Chikin Ramen” - yes, Ramen noodles.

I started eating the 10 for a dollar cheap ramen back in high-school and through college, and have since graduated to the “high quality” ramen for 1.29 per package (seriously, the seasoning is soooo much better than the 10 cent versions).  And for the past year or so, Jonah’s been loving chicken and beef flavor, with an occasional oriental flavor.  In fact, it’s one of his favorite foods.

Thanks Momofuku Ando!

(more info on Kuro5hin).

What a long, strange trip it’s been…

Since 1997 I’ve worked with a group that has, for the most part, been great. For example, Mitch and I in this picture from a company picnic in 2000 at Essential Communications:

 

On the back of the phote, Ed Fikani wrote: “Steve, I gave copies to the group. You make us proud… EdF“. That was a while ago (nearly 7 years!) and I have to note that my finger wasn’t really in my nose.

Now that I won’t be doing any work at GE, I’ll miss the guys a lot. Mitch, Ron, Rick, Ed, Colin, and everyone else!  I’m hoping they’ll still invite me to lunch a few times each week.

Okay, due to popular requests, here’s a few very recent pictures of Sterling.

     

So, I was reading through a blog (linked through Ajaxian is how I found it), about how Apple, Steve Jobs, and the iPhone prefer to have the phone “closed” to small developers and home hackers. I’ve actually made a couple small apps for my Moto Q (using Visual C++), and downloaded a few free ones off the net. The result: I have had to reinstall due to one of the apps crashing the phone. So, if they want stability, that’s what they should do.

Luckily, I don’t see a down side to a closed iPhone, for one MAJOR reason - it’s a broadband phone with internet connectivity! You want an app for you phone? Do what I did and write a web page. So simple! Sheesh. I’ve got several apps that I host that I can get to using EVDO (cellular broadband on verizon) and because the Q supports JavaScript and has a legible screen, I can do pretty much anything I need to!

Now, I’m wondering if the iPhone will have Web 2.0/AJAX support, which would make it the shiznit. I won’t be the first in line to get one, but after a few months, and most of the reviews are out, I’ll seriously consider it.