Oideyasu! Please take off your shoes.
Apple Japan is trying my patience. They took my order on the 14th and sent me an invoice, and their tracking system noted that my eMac was to be delayed and sent on the 28th with Panther. I waited, but yesterday on the phone they said they still hadn't sent it, because of the price drop since my order, and did I want to reorder to save 36,000 yen? Sure, but when am I going to get it? About a week. What if I keep the old order? About a week. Send me the freaking computer before OS X 10.4 Bobcat comes out, will ya??!!! I've got a iBook with a refractory kernel panic here.
My new Mac finally shipped yesterday.
I ordered it from the Apple Store, and a few days later my iBook's hard disk, which had never given me a bit of trouble, suddenly wouldn't boot. Jealous rage, according to Yoshiko, because I used the G3 iBook to order the G4.
"Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas [Islamic fundamentalist schools] and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?" Rumsfeld asked.
Good question, Rummy! Keep 'em coming!
Unfortunately, since you are helping them so much with their recruiting drive, I think the answer is that they are winning. But, that's OK, because the President and Osama basically want the same thing: to rid the world of evil. A plan so crazy, it just might work.
(counting the days until OS X Panther and my new computer arrive)
New superdrive eMac ordered on the 14th seems to be embargoed on shipping dock until OSX 10.3 is officially released on the 25th. iBook with all my data suddenly won't start up. Can't find right keys on Yoshiko's Japanese keyboard iMac.
Only International Rescue can save me now!
-nils
I don't know what this is called: post cap? stanchion brightwork? Doodad?
When Yoshiko planted cotton seeds this spring, I was amused. When the stalks shot up out of the planter under her care, I was suprised. When cotton flowers bloomed, I was delighted. When bolls appeared, I was incredulous. When the bolls began breaking open this week to reveal their bounty, I must say I was amazed. Cotton grows in Kyoto pretty well, and isn't perturbed by typhoons. Umm, anybody know where we can get a very small burlap sack?
The best of Tenessee Ernie Ford on Rhino Records is an excellent album, by the way
HEY, MR. COTTONPICKER
TENNESSEE ERNIE FORD (Capitol, 1953)
Yonder comes a cotton picker walkin' down the road
Puffin' like a locomotive carryin' a load
Hey, mr. cotton picker watcha' gonna do
Gonna get gone away from you
Here is mr. cotton picker passin' by my shack
Seems as if his back is breakin' with a cotton sack
Hey, mr. cotton picker when you gettin' paid?
Reckon as soon as my sack gets weighed
He's been a-pluckin' old king cotton
All day in the sun
By tomorrow sweat's forgotten
I've got another field that must be done
There goes mr. cotton picker totin' all his pay
Just a sack of snowy cotton took him all the day
Hey, mr. cotton picker hope you have a ball
Hope you get all that's comin' to you
Our Central Park. Several blocks on each side. That's right, no pictures of the palace itself here. The buildings are actually not all that impressive in comparison to many other places in town, but the palace grounds were opened as a public park after the capital moved to Tokyo in 1868, and the wide avenues give you an idea of what it must have been like to be an aristocrat. The Jidai Matsuri is coming up Oct. 22, when people will parade in period costumes starting from here. Pictures show one of the many gates ringing the park, one of the avenues inside, an inner wall surrounding the palace grounds, a pine tree.
Did you ever see the first movie Woody Allen "directed", What's Up, Tiger Lily? (1966). Directed is in quotes because it's actually a cheap Japanese spy yarn that Woody Allen bought and dubbed into English, changing it into an absurd quest for a legendary egg salad recipe.
Now that the honorable Arnold Schwarzenegger is the governor of my home state, I was thinking that someone should do a "Tiger Lily" on the 1987 movie Predator. Instead of trying to outsmart an invisible alien, edit and dub it into a story of Arnold and pro wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura plotting their strategies to win the gubernatorial elections in Minnesota and California. With the software available now, this is the kind of project you could do at home.
Remember that paint thinner trick some people were doing a couple years ago to make the white iBook's clear? Well, it works for iMac's too. More details here. He has more.
More mad mods, including a Kyoto Nishijin yuzen-dyed G4 Powerbook.
Wally George, the frothing right-right-right wing idiot TV host back in my hometown, is finally dead. This guy would make Dubya look like an intellectual in comparison.
Looking toward the eastern mountains and Ginkakuji
The yellow triangles of fried tofu on the left are atsu-age-doufu, or o-age-san if you wanna be down with the old ladies in kyoto.
Sorry, this post was destroyed by a spammer.
click here for the original image of tabi, Japanese socks for wearing on tatami. This shop on Sanjo Street in an old machiya reportedly supplies the Minami-za kabuki theater actors, who apparently demand the finest tabi. Why not.
Recently cut stalks of rice hang out to dry under netting (protection against birds) in a small field in Takaragaike, Kyoto. Awful crop this year, according to the experts, because of the cooler than usual weather this summer.
