Sooo this weekend finds me in smoggy, slightly hazy Anaheim, land o’ Disney and the 55 freeway.
Since a wise person once said, “Frequent Flyer miles dun accrue interest” and I waited until the last minute to come down here, I burned 15K miles for a free trip here. It’s nice because this flight would have cost US$300+ to leave on Friday and come back Monday from SNA.
But enough with the travel logistics. On this short hopper flight (on an Airbasi 320, I might add!), the “pilot” was soooooo bad, I got airsick. For the first time in at LEAST 15 years.
Me.
The guy who actually sorta likes flying. The one who flies low fare airlines in Asia based on their website, stewardesses and price. Who actually flies domestic in da PRC for god’s sake! Airsick.
Anyhoo, our “pilot” must have either been a rookie or drunk. But she was sooo into rocking the plane from port to starboard soooo much that the plane got spookily quiet, because ppl were sick. And then, when we landed, we landed lopsided. First the left side of the jet hit the tarmac, then after a few seconds, the right, followed by a loud BAM.
A landing worthy of China Airlines.
And, if you’re a regular victim of this blog, you can guess which airline I was on today….if not, click here.
Morning Wisdom
Don’t drink grapefruit juice immediately after brushing your teeth.
If you haven’t, don’t. And if you have done so before, you know EXACTLY what I mean!
Movies during my formative years
OK back online now
Whew, that was a long 6 hours! But land line is back now. Means DSL is back now. Yay.
What’s worse then no DSL?
No dial up!
My land line went down today. No dial tone. Nothing.
Phone company says “it may be fixed between now and friday”.
Funny how they want to be paid IMMEDIATELY but when they have to do something, you get fuzzy time…
Grrrrr.
Ramen Primer
Sooo, some people here ask me, “what’s the big deal about top ramen”? That question usually comes after they view pictures in the blog or gallery and see steaming bowls of ramen with the perfect soft boiled egg and tender cha siu…
Mmmm. Getting hungry and it’s 00:40 right now!
Anyhoo, after I beat them senseless with their own top ramen packages, I try to explain (briefly) the different styles and broths and it’s not instant noodles (which call themselves “ramen”, sacrilege!), but a category of noodle along with soba and udon. Then they run away right after I swoon over how smooth kyushu ramen is over shoyu.
Here’s a page that explains the whole ramen thing in Japan. (from QuirkyJapan).
Now if I could only find a good ramen shop in San Francisco! We have three for the entire city, all clustered within a block of each other and not that terrific…
SF Summer
Yup, that IS the Golden Gate Bridge shrouded in “summer”. I went out on a Sunday ride and saw that I was heading into that, so it was worth a snap.
Summer here means bone chilling wind and the sun disappearing around noon. That ain’t haze or smoke (for all of you in SE Asia), it’s just plain fog!
I live IN that fogbank, BTW…
Upgrade Complete!
Took a tad more work this AM, but got the NetPBM module to generate thumbnails of pictures with a little help from IPC Run!
I know, waaay too much geek speek this early in the day…
Here’s a lion from a fren’s wedding.
There’s a tradition during the lion dance that you throw oranges for good luck. At this wedding, an orange, hurled from one end of the room, hit a waiter square on the head on the other side of the room. He cursed up a blue streak in Guangdongwa, despite the fact that he probably is more familiar with some of the obscure traditions than anyone else in the room!
The Longest 3 hours
Six Apart has released the latest version of Movable Type, 3.2, a long overdue overhaul of its blogging software. With lots of anti-spam goodness. And because this goodness is built in, it should make leaving comments easier!
The upgrade instructions seem simple enough.
Replace files in your installation with the files in the upgrade package. Make sure permissions are correct. Then log in as you usually do and blammo, it upgrades itself. Sounds easy, right? Not by a long shot!
New Line in Tokyo! With Wi-Fi!
There’s a new train line in Tokyo!
The Tsukuba Express begins in Akihabara and ends in the college town of Tsukuba, some 35 miles northeast of Tokyo. Here’s some english info.
Why is this important? Well, one of the stops it makes is Minami-Senju, the JR/Subway stop where the Juyoh, the New Koyo and other low-cost lodgings are clustered around. That means convenience!
But what’s really cool is that the train cars and five of the stations have Wi-Fi! It’s on a trial basis for now and I’m not sure how much this will cost, but it demonstrates that it is possible.
Of course, in San Francisco, this technology will probably be implemented after we get cell phone coverage in the trains and stations.
Maybe in the year 2100. How “progressive”!