Category Archives: Random

The Perils of Golden Week and Fifth Seasons

Leave a reply

Except for our oldest, we all enjoyed a lazy first day of the Golden Week holiday.

I finished my Babylon 5 revisit and came away remembering why I found the fifth season annoying. Tracy Scoggins was better as Captain Lochley than I remember and the season had a few interesting moments, but it suffered from being tacked on to fourth season that resolved all the main conflicts and plot lines. Season five didn’t have a unifying story, just a lot of stand-alone scripts that felt a lot like spec submissions from new writers.

The makeup still looks impressive, especially on G’Kar and the other Narn, but the computer special effects look a lot like 90’s computer games. In a bad way.

The main problem though: Singing Hippy Telepaths. I’m being serious. Singing Hippy Telepaths.

I also managed to get some printing done and start work on the revision of book two.

Book three, which is partly written, continues to taunt me.

 

 

Pack and Repack

Leave a reply

Things like this happen in my life now: We get a box full of rice and vegetables from our in-laws and my first reaction is “That box is mine”.

It says a lot that She Who Must Be Obeyed understood why I wanted the box, although she wasn’t real keen on me just tossing the rice and vegetables aside. (My reaction was: the floor looks clean, but just in case, make sure you cook the rice and vegetables thoroughly.)

Then I had the task of cutting open the box I’d already packed perfectly and feel kind of sad as I both undid and admired my handy work.

That said, I did a pretty good job of repacking, and even managed to get all the new ink (which prompted the repacking) in with room to spare.

Now I get to deal with the post office which in any part of the world, isn’t always fun, especially as I’ll be carrying three different packages all being sent different ways. That always makes for an interesting time.

Traveling and Waiting for Traveler’s

Leave a reply

What I would have done would have been rather different. What I did was act cranky and that may have earned me 20 minutes. It didn’t win any friends though.

An acquaintance asked me to run down to Tokyo and buy a special edition of a notebook cover that was released as part of the grand opening of a shopping center.

Although I’m not a big fan of the notebook cover, I agreed to head down to Tokyo.

After locating the shop, I tried to implement my usual “play dumb” tactic to get in past the ropes but failed. (Yes, the notebook shop, in anticipation of big crowd, had ropes to keep the public out. (They are visible at the very bottom of this photo:)

However, the staff, many of whom spoke English, informed me I’d have to wait and gave me a reservation time for three hours later. This surprised me as I expected that getting there late would mean I’d miss out on the notebook covers. Instead, the shop had apparently not actually opened yet (although some people seemed to be shopping) and I’d missed out on a convenient shopping time.

I said a few choice words in two languages and went in search of a snack and some bourbon. (There’s a liquor store near Tokyo station that lets you pay for two small samples of even expensive booze.) I also found a surprisingly good coffee shop that served coffee in cups larger than samples. I stayed there for a while and read a fairly average book.

In the end, I returned to the shop about 20 minutes before my time, and someone who recognized me from before managed to get me inside early. I asked if they had a package deal and got more apologies as I selected the notebooks and assorted paraphernalia individually. I was surprised they hadn’t considered a package. As it was a grand opening, I’d have assembled a number of bags of samples of the new goods and given out numbers to interested parties until I ran out bags. It would be a bit like Fukubukuro Fighting in April but with less violence.

Instead, all I got was a complimentary box of coffee flavored candy. (Famous conundrum: Coffee is delicious. Candy is delicious. Coffee candy is not delicious. #whatevilisthis)

Now I send it all on with a bunch of ink.

Hopefully Approaching the Probable End

Leave a reply

If I tried to run a restaurant, it’s the dishes and daily cleaning that would do me in. If I ran a restaurant it would have to be a questionable dive in the middle of nowhere. Never look in the kitchen and don’t ask what that is staining the table top.

In my current low volume, low margin side hobby/business, it’s boxes, packing and forms that get to me.

What I hope is the last batch of ink a client has ordered arrived today and I now have the job of once again performing packing magic. I’m not looking forward to this.

To get the box to its currently packed state I performed advanced Tetris level packing that I now have to undo.  I also will probably have to find a new box as the current one is at its volume limit. Luckily, I won’t be able to ship anything out until Monday so I’ll have a lot of time to work things out.

At that point, when I go to the post office, I’m looking forward to seeing the looks on the faces of the post office staff when I hand over boxes of different shapes and sizes and envelopes of different shapes and sizes all going to different countries and all with different shipping methods.

They, however, will get to enjoy the look on my face as I fill out several different types of forms, some of which I’ll never have seen before and at least one I’ll have to fill out twice.

This kind of minutiae is why I suspect that many young business fail. Owners like handling the stuff, and some like selling, but very few like keeping track of inventory, boxes, packing materials and money. Similarly, it’s probably more fun to be a cook at at restaurant than to be the restaurant’s owner. At least as long as dishes aren’t involved.

 

 

 

Packed and Then Unpacked

Leave a reply

Spent part of the day organizing ink and stuff and packing a box for a customer. I was pleased that one of his many orders fell through as I wouldn’t have had space for it in the box.

I packed and weighed the box and even figured out the shipping costs. I sent him a note about the costs and his reply was to tell me that more ink was on the way.

I backed away from my desk and into the boat’s cabin and said to the rest of the crew “You’re going to need a bigger box.”

Note: that all made sense at the time it happened. Even the boat’s crew understood. 

Now I’ll have to undo my excellent packing job and try to recreate it in a bigger box. I’m also going to have to redo the money with a little extra thrown in for my effort.

There will also be a caveat about sending stuff without notifying me in advance.

Premature Demonetization

1 Reply

I haven’t been making any money and now it appears I probably never will.

A few years back, for no reason whatsoever, before I started this bit of blather, in fact, I started posting knife related videos on YouTube. The most popular two are summaries of Japan’s complicated knife laws and are at least as accurate as the predictions of the so-called main stream media in the last US presidential election.

Because I don’t put out regular content, the channel never got any traction. Just in case, I chose to monetize the videos.

However, after recent changes in YouTube’s advertisement policies, none of the knife related videos are eligible for monetization. Granted, one of the videos has clips of knife related crimes and a couple of them have bad language, but they’re not particularly political. (Well, one of them has its moments.)

I’ll appeal to YouTube and see if I can reinstate things on the Japan knife law videos but I’m not optimistic. Again, I’m not losing any money, just potential.

Of course, I could learn to play computer games or learn to put on make up and must make videos about those. Those don’t seem to have any monetization troubles.

More Old and Dusty But Not Quite as Much so

Leave a reply

For the record, I survived eating all that old survival kit food. Now I’m going to eat more.

In my defense, it’s not as old as the other stuff was.

Today I cleaned out a drawer and my survival kit box. There were a couple revelations.

First, the cheapish ferro rods I had in the three “damn, the lighter’s dead and I forgot the matches” tins corroded and left a disturbing gray dust all over everything. I cleaned them off and even though they all still worked, I researched how much it would cost to replace them. I also warned She Who Must Be Obeyed that the only way to preserve them was to start a fire every month.

The key thing was the expired survival food. Since I survived the old jerky and Spam, I’m now set to eat food that expired a couple years ago and, in a couple cases, this month. Some of it is rice, but one item is expired Spam-like substance. That will be lunch tomorrow.

This all inspired SWMBO to clean below the stove. (Note: that is a cabinet, not an oven.) Whilst cleaning she found some perhaps decade old brandy.

So far, so good.

 

Revisiting Old Television

Leave a reply

Because I have lots of free time right now, even with house arrest, to be doing lots of things, I’ve primarily been watching old tv shows.

One show I didn’t like then liked was Babylon 5, which is the show I’m now watching again.

However, what I do on a rewatch is stick with an episode until I remember the basics of it and then either keep watching or skip ahead past the annoying bits. Sometimes I do both by skipping the comic relief section to get to the main story line mostly to see how the writers handle the story over time.

I also tend to have an episode summary available to help me decide if an episode’s worth watching. For example, with Babylon 5 I’ve skipped two episodes entirely and skipped the entire PSI Cop story line in episode six.

The trouble with Babylon 5 is you’ve got a lot of story line and lots of good performances. Andreas Katsulas is terrific as G’Kar and it’s amazing to see how well he can act despite the prosthetics he’s forced to wear. The make up itself still looks quite good.

I also tend to jump off and read and watch things related to the show. For example, I somehow missed several of the actors dying and also missed that J. Michael Straczynski had revealed in 2013 why Michael O’Hare, who played Captain Sinclair, left the show after only one season. (Note: all the videos, especially the second Arizona ComiCon video are worth your time if you like the show.)

I’m tempted to watch the fifth season, which I’ve only skimmed because, technically, the story line had already ended at that point, but I’ll probably save that until exam time.

 

 

Keeping the Place

Leave a reply

Not feeling it today, er, this morning so this will be short.

Only a few days until I start working at the school where I work and I’m already in Most Horrible Anticipation Mode. This is the mode where I imagine the worse possible scenario and mentally live it until it comes true or not or, most likely, comes partially true.

The worst possible scenario involves the worst possible students with the worst possible number of days and the worse possible encounters with the company I work for.

I realize this is the worst possible way to view things, but it’s that time of year and I’m in that kind of mood.

 

 

Better Easier More and Less Improving

Leave a reply

It’s easy enough making them do what they want to do. It’s trying to get them to do what you want them to do…that gives you a headache. –Azolan (Peter Capaldi) Dangerous Liaisons

The above epigraph was said about women but today I think it applies more to computer software.

As part of my house arrest “work” I spent part of the day redoing the spreadsheet I use to record marks and do all the cipherin’.

This involves lots of clearing and cutting and pasting and swearing when the formulas don’t paste correctly. Things that should have been easy cut-and-paste jobs required lots of extra attention as I was forced to manually edited formulas. Some cells that should have been class names had been replaced with random formulas. (More on that in a second.) Then there were the sections that could only be handled a certain way and couldn’t do what I needed them to do. Then there were the missing columns that required an internet search and a live animal sacrifice to recover. (Well, I tried anyway, but it really didn’t help that much, but there are still lots of feral cats around here to experiment with.)

Remember: we use software to make our lives EASIER.

Eventually I got the spreadsheet into shape and all the parts and formulas seem to be working. Now, though, I have to move on to the second phase of swearing, er, preparation: making sure it all works on my tablet.

For some reason I have the only major brand tablet on the planet that can’t use a version of MS Office and, until recently, Open Office wasn’t available. I tried using a different office program, but it wouldn’t let me save to the tablet and was so buggy I went back to pen and paper until they ran a couple bug fixes.

Now, that program is destined for the scrap heap of software history. However, its legacy will be a lot of swearing as I get used to the new software.

Remember: we use software to make our lives EASIER.