LiveJournal Project - September 2005

In which we are introduced to the terror that is the Thunder Dolphin....

Date: 2005-09-04 16:17
Subject: i'm moving to tokyo. (well, it's a nice thought, anyway)
japan kicks ass. pictures and a real update to follow. to everyone who requested a postcard and got your address in on time, it's in the mail. danie, you missed the cutoff, but i may have an extra postcard in my bag that i'll send you, direct from tempe. must sleep now.

Date: 2005-09-05 01:23
Subject: japan post #1
these are pictures from tokyo dome city - we went here on saturday, the day before we left - tokyo dome is where the yomiuri giants play baseball (hideki matsui used to play for them) - and there's a whole amusement park / entertainment zone set up around it. the main attraction here is a roller coaster called the (booming voice, please) THUNDER DOLPHIN! i don't generally mind roller coasters - i don't particularly like them, but i don't really hate them either, but when i saw this one, i wasn't looking forward to going on it. cory is a thrill ride junkie, and at 263 feet (maximum drop 218 ft, max speed 81mph), the thunder dolphin is #7 on the list of the world's tallest roller coasters, so you can imagine the irresistable force that was exerted upon her by said dolphin, screaming "ride me, ride me" over and over again in her head. there would be no denying the power of the porpoise.

in situations where i have no control over my motion, i'm afraid of heights, and the lack of a shoulder harness on this ride only made things worse. putting a death grip on the grab-bars in front of me, i went on the dolphin anyway. abject horror and 60 seconds of hell later, i really wished that i hadn't. as you might guess, cory loved it and had to go on it a second time, while i happily watched from the comfort and security of stable ground. in one of the pictures here you can see her in the second car from the rear.

click on a thumbnail to enlarge. (fullsize pics are about 1MB, 2200x1700 or so) more later. i have over 200 pictures to sort through.

Date: 2005-09-06 05:51
Subject: Japan post #2
on thursday, we went to akihabara, harajuku, and wandered around the high-rent district of omotesando. akihabara is tokyo's big electronics district, and if it has any connection to electricity, chances are it could be found in there somewhere. definitely a hardware-geek's wet dream with spooge to spare. we wandered through kiosk after kiosk of vendors selling individual parts (we're talking cables, transistors, resistors, and the like) as well as some of the larger stores that carried consumer electronics. by and large, stuff is cheaper here in the US - a 1GB secure digital card, for instance, sells on CDW.com for $90. the cheapest i saw this same piece of hardware in akihabara was about 11,000 yen, or $110. of course, i also saw things in some of the stores that i'd never seen anywhere else, and i think that's the major attraction. too bad i didn't feel like spending upwards of $2000 on what you see here in picture #2. i did get some brochures, though, should the desire ever come over me.

one thing that i noticed while wandering through tokyo in general is that japan probably has more video arcades per square mile than anywhere else in the world - and their games are better than anything we have here in the US. they also seem harder - either that or it's just me being out of practice, since i don't play video games as much as i used to. here's a short (4MB, 10-15 seconds) video i took of a game that looks really fuckin' cool. no, i didn't play it, because i couldn't read the instructions and probably would have gotten schooled even if i could have. i did, however, completely obliterate the high scores on a strength-testing game at sega's joypolis in odaiba, but those pictures will have to wait for another day.

from here, we got on the JR yamanote line and headed over to harajuku. on the weekends, harajuku is supposedly overrun with teenagers in cosplay outfits - during the week it was considerably more subdued, although there were uniformed schoolgirls everywhere. i did see a few people in what i would consider "non-standard" clothing - see picture #6 for one example. these girls seemed pretty surprised that i spoke to them in japanese - i guess i look like a mono-lingual american or something. anyway, next time i go back, i have to make sure to check this area out on a sunday. some of the stores sold some cool stuff (very goth and neo-punk oriented, mostly), but given that i'm about the size of two average japanese men, there really was no point in trying anything on. cory did acquire some socks, though.

the harajuku area is also home to the meiji jingu shrine, and we poked around in there, too. i bought a charm that's supposed to give good luck on entrance exams, and with my LSAT retake coming up on october 1st, hopefully it will be 1000 yen well-spent. the thing that struck me as most interesting about the shrine is that it was right in the middle of the city - you can wander down a path or two and forget that you're actually in a bustling metropolis. given that i've lived in phoenix most of my life, i've never experienced such a thing, and i have to give the japanese credit for not completely paving over all of their available dirt like we continue to do here. i'm ready to go back.

click on a thumbnail to enlarge.
Music: Chemical Drive - Atomic Drive (Chemical Drive V)

Time: 10:48
Subject: 235 what? (japan post 2.5)
just for clarification, my new user picture is not a picture of me standing on a scale. it's from a game at sega's joypolis arcade in odaiba where you can test either your grip strength or your leg/lower back strength. this one's from the leg/back strength test - basically it's like doing a deadlift from a high starting position. the average (i guess - i couldn't read those kanji) number for males in my age range, according to the machine, is 140kg (308 lbs). 235kg = 517lbs - a high score by 50kg. not too bad for someone with a bum knee that hasn't been to the gym in 2 months.

i told cory that next time i'm in japan i'm going to have to go back to odaiba specifically to do this again (and to ride the kick-ass snowboard halfpipe thingy) and make sure i break 300kg. why? why not. i can't beat the japanese at games which require mashing of buttons or dancing around on a control pad, so i have to take my gaijin victories wherever possible. =)

Date: 2005-09-08 10:02
Subject: completely useless pile of shit.
ETS, the people that administer the GRE, offer a "diagnostic service" that you can look at after you receive your score report in the mail - it tells you what kind of questions you got right or wrong, how long you spent on each question, and what the difficulty level was for that question. that's great, but what it doesn't tell you is what the fucking questions were! apparently i missed 3 "difficulty-level 5, quantitative comparison" questions on the math section - but jeebus only knows which ones they were. in the final analysis, i suppose that it doesn't really matter, but i distinctly remember looking at some of those quantitative comparison questions and having a feeling that i was going to get screwed because there were multiple ways of reading the question. oh well. bastards.

and in random stock market news. i really wish i'd loaded up on the LSI when it dipped below $9/share.

back to work.
Music: Quadra - Energy Transport

Date: 2005-09-10 15:59
Subject: ravyn: 1, boy scouts of america: 0
went to the grocery store today, and on my way out, i was accosted by some boy scouts who were selling god-knows-what for who-the-fuck-cares reason. the kids asked me if i wanted to buy one, and my response was thus: "well, i would, but the boy scouts is a discriminatory organization, and although i'm not gay, i think that's wrong. sorry, i can't help you." the looks on their parents' faces were priceless. boh.

and then in other news, the people two houses down from me had a for sale sign up a couple days ago. the asking price: $424,900. for everyone who's never been to my house (most of you), let me just say that those people were on crack. no house on this street is worth more than $300k, and even that is probably a stretch. today, the for sale sign was gone. whether that means that some sucker actually paid their asking price, they decided not to move, or they came to their senses and got a different realtor, or what, i don't know. i'll be watching to see what unfolds, if anything.
Mood: amused

Date: 2005-09-22 19:57
Subject: ...
rita says...
if y'all need gas in y'all's cah, y'all bettah buy it before the weekend.

ravyn says...
i predict gas will be at least $4 per gallon by monday.

time to buy a bicycle.
Who the fuck is Rita? -Ed.

Date: 2005-09-24 11:31
Subject: baaaa.... but the results are accurate
This was a politics test from OKCupid - which is sort of ironic given that I've actually been on OKC in the past couple of years trying to do the whole dating thing. But basically it said that I am a social liberal (78% permissive) and an economic conservative (71% permissive), best described as a libertarian. -Ed.

Time: 14:57
Subject: i bay, you bay, we all bay for ebay?
ok, maybe not, but in any event, i'm trying to unload some spare shit.
(800mhz powerbook G4)
(rossignol soft-1 ski boots, size 29.5)

Date: 2005-09-27 00:02
Subject: ebay, revisted.
y'know, i don't use ebay all that often - up until a couple days ago, my only experience with the site has been as a buyer, and overall, it hasn't been that bad. now that i'm actually trying to SELL something on ebay, however, i can only say that i think their system was designed by a bunch of ASSCLOWNS. if i pay $19.95 to have my listing featured, then my listing had better appear in the bloody "featured listings" results page the moment that i decide to add that option, not 6 hours later. ASS CLOWNS. you would think that ebay would actually give half a shit about the people who sell things on their site, because, well, the people that sell things are the ones that pay. if all you do is buy, you never give meg whitman one cent. what else sucks about ebay? their fee structure. you pay to have your item listed, you get one picture for free, and then for every other little thing you could possibly add on to your item listing, you pay more. want to have more than one picture and don't have your own webspace to host it on? you pay. want to have a subtitle? you pay. want to have your item listed in more than one category? that's right, kids, you PAY. maybe the site should be called "uPAY" instead of "eBAY" -- fuck, they even charge you money for bold - a whole fucking dollar to add 7 characters to your title's HTML, as if that somehow is going to impact their storage and bandwidth requirements so significantly that they need to butt-rape their customers in order to provide it? oh, but it doesn't end there. after you've taken it up the ass to put your item on the site, should you be so lucky as to actually SELL your item, guess what else that means? YOU PAY. and the more you sell your item for (and the more you list it for), the more you pay.

now, i understand that ebay is a public company and therefore needs to focus on achieving revenue growth at the expense of all other things in order to keep the investors happy and the stock price up, but this shit is ridiculous. unfortunately, when it comes to the online auction market, ebay is pretty much the only game in town. yes, i'm sure there are other online auction sites, but has anyone ever heard of them? does anyone know where they are? (does anyone care?) do they get widespread mention around the internet? no, no, no, and no.

it's time for a new site. i can think of a million things that i would do differently (better) than ebay. unfortunately, someone already owns "fbay.com" and "febay.com" (as in fuck ebay) and i don't have the time right now to embark upon a quest to slay the mighty dragon. =/
Mood: annoyed

Date: 2005-09-28 03:53
Subject: ebaysucksdick.com, part 3.
as i'm browsing through the other laptops for sale, i notice that many of them say things like "machine comes preloaded with XYZ software" or "machine has XYZ installed (disk not included" and the like. when i originally listed my laptop, i said "i can install os x 10.4 if desired" - and ebay said "fuck you, your listing violates our TOS." what's the bloody difference? if you're shipping a laptop where you're not giving someone the original media, then i'd say there's a 99% chance that you're giving that person a pirated copy (or at the very least, an unlicensed one, if you bought the program and kept the media). it even says so in their TOS: "Software loaded onto a hard drive that is not being sold with the original media (disks, manuals, etc.)" may not be listed on ebay.

well, what the fuck is this, then? (from three separate listings)

• These iBooks will all ship without the original box, manual or software pack shown.
  Tiger 10.4.2 Operating System(Disk not included)$100.00 Value!
  Office 2004 Mac Edition(Disk Not included)$150.00 Value!

• Loaded with applications, programs, screensavers, and extras, this laptop features a top-of-the line array of connectivity ports including a super fast firewire, dual usb ports, apple DVI video port, audio in and out, local ethernet for lan connections and a fast 56k modem for additional dial-up type internet connecitons.

• Fully loaded with over 100 applications by apple, microsoft, adobe, macromedia, others and more all ready to go at the click of a mouse, including an apple professional usb mouse. A listing of this included software is available with your computer or via email, please feel free to let me know if the pictures below do not load or if you would like additional photographs before making your purchase.

hey, ebay, you shit-for-brains ASSCLOWNS, haven't you ever heard of a little something called uniformity in policy enforcement?! well, the angry blackbird isn't going to put up with this shit. if other people are going to try to squeeze extra dollars out of their auction prices by selling software that they don't own when you dinged me for doing the same thing, i'm going to harass the fuck out of your customer service people until you do unto them as you have done unto me.