Pre-flight Check

Hey everyone. I'm here, about 15 hours away from leaving the airport in Moline, and heading off. It's crazy! I'm gonna change a couple things on here, in hopes that more people from around the globe might take part in what is going on here. That includes a recent linkup to Technorati, a huge social networking site. I'll also try to start posting more regularly. I'm looking at a Tuesday/Thursday/Weekend posting schedule, with more in between as needed. We'll see what happens.

Well, back to my life, pre-trip. I went bowling over the weekend with some of my friends to celebrate the fact that I'm leaving. We arranged the bowling party for 5 o'clock. I was the first to show up, at around 4:35. After telling the person at the desk that there would be a group of about 6 of us coming in at 5, I went out and listened to some music in my car. About 20 minutes later, another couple people show up: Blake and Garrin, two of my friends and fellow D&D players from this area (yeah, I know. We're all a bunch of geeks. :P) Another 10 minutes pass, and the last group shows up: Laura (my ex-girlfriend, but we're still close friends), and her entourage of people she brought home from Luther College: Steve, Elin, and Sonja.
By the time that we were all there, the bowling alley had become full, and so, without any open lanes, we decided to order pizzas at the Happy Joe's that was in the other part of the building. About the time that our pizzas were ordered and we had made ourselves comfortable at some tables, however, someone came by to tell us that, yes, now are lanes are open. Go figure. We let someone know that we'd take the pizzas over by the bowling lanes, and set off to bowl. Blake, as predicted, won both games. Elin and I posted second and third once each. That's as much as I can remember. If someone kept the scoresheet, I'll make sure to get the rest up here.

After our hearty games of bowling, I went over to see my sister and her fianceé for dinner. She had come down to the Quad Cities from South Bend, IN, to say goodbye, and this was her way of doing it. We all ate a delicious meal, and we talked about Japan, how their culture and methods of doing things were different than ours. After dinner, I headed home, and, as I typically do, played on the computer for a couple hours, and went to bed.

Sunday morning was a bit emotional. Since it was the last time I'd see any of the people in the church choir for a long time, everyone got a chance to give me wishes of good luck, handshakes and hugs, and prayers. It felt good to have everyone caring so much about me. Fortunately, I know that everyone has a link to this blog, so they can all see what's exactly going on with me as I go. I asked my pastor, Fr. Jack, to place something into our church bulletin about my trip, so I know everyone has a link here.

Monday, I went over to the airport to get some last-minute details ironed out (is this bag too big for a carry-on? Can I get my ticket printed yet? etc.). Everything about my trip, which had kinda been sitting in the back of my mind as a superficial thing, suddenly became very concrete. I realized, "Hey. I'm actually leaving in 2 days." It was awesome - such a rush of excitement and power.
My mom arrived home around 5:30, bringing home a copy of Casino Royale; I hadn't seen the movie yet, and so we spent the evening watching that. It was enjoyable - and Daniel Craig makes a good Bond (he reminds me of how Roger Moore portrayed the character).
After watching the movie, we got everything packed up into my suitcases - all the clothes I'll be taking, all of my extra gadgets (Camera, Laptop, Magazines to read, etc.). After packing, sleep kinda failed me, and so I didn't make it to sleep until about 1:15 in the morning.

So far, Tuesday's been not too bad. We're planning a dinner cookout at my house this evening as a going away party, with my neighbors and a couple of family friends. I've been cooking this potato-cheese casserole thing in the crock-pot, and we've got a couple loaves of bread out that I'll throw in the oven around 5:30. It should be tasty, and a good way to say goodbye to everyone.

Before leaving, I'd like to say thanks to everyone who's helped me out so far. Without all of your care and interest, I wouldn't be going at all. Thanks to all of my Clarke friends - you guys make Dubuque like a second home to me. Thanks to my family - without you, I wouldn't even be here. Now look at what I'm going to be able to do! And thank you to everyone out there who has been taking the time to actually read all of this - you are the ones that make it fun to post here, and let me see what you guys have to think by commenting.

さよなら！

The 28th Fast approaches!

Hey everyone. Just figure I'd let you know what's been going on lately.

I headed up to Dubuque on Monday for a concert. I've waited almost 12 years to see Rockapella live, and I finally had the option to. I had work off on Monday and Tuesday, so I made a nice stay out of the trip too. The concert was amazing - all of them were wonderful musicians, and most of them were genuinely interested in what was going on around them. One was a bit hasty, trying to get me through as quickly as possible through the autograph line, but I can understand that. The one tenor, Kevin Wright, was very nice, and we had a good conversation about everything. He even took a written link to here (I had an extra scrap of paper handy, and wrote it down.)
Here's a picture of me with some of my friends with Rockapella behind us.From Top to Bottom, Left to Right, we have Kevin Wright, Stephanie Goedkin, George Baldi, moi, Scott Leonard, Kristin Purcell, Jeff Thatcher, Megan Mooney, and John K. Brown.

It was an awesome concert. Sean (Megan's brother, and one of the best people you will ever meet [just don't touch him, he's contact - ophobic]) had said that it's all right: he can die happy now. Spent the night over in Sean's room. He's got a comfy couch, but it's a bit short. Can't complain though, since I was randomly crashing there anyway.

Tuesday came and went, it was pretty uneventful. Got my Deposit slips for my bank ordered, and they arrived here today with no problem. Now if it's needed, my mom can send money to my bank, and I can pull it out with my atm card in Japan. All will be well. I keep feeling that I'm going to run short on money, though. Something will never really add up, but that's inevitable. You always have some things that will nag at you. My personal ones are finances, and forgetting to bring something. I'll pack and repack everything probably 5 times before my trip, just to make sure that there isn't a chance that I'll forget anything while I'm over there.

I leave in 10 days and 7 hours... It's getting interesting. The nervousness that I felt a couple weeks ago left and came back again, but it's left again. It's kinda back and forth on a lot of things.

Info: I found out some things about my home-stay. I'll be staying with 多田　由美子 (Tada Yumiko, for those without Eastern language support). She is a landlady at the building that I'll be staying at, and lives with her daughter, 森　裕子 (Mori Yuko), her daughter's husband, 森　春樹 (Mori Haruki), and their 22-month-old triplets, 森　しゅんたろ (Mori Shuntaro), 森　せいらん (Mori Seiran), and 森　水練 (Mori Suiren). It's about 20 minutes away from the college, by bus.

Oh, if you couldn't tell, I figured out a way to do my kanji/kana on my laptop. Kyoya-kun has been very helpful. :)

PS: Yumiko-san, if you are reading this, my apologies to the first two children - the Kanji didn't look right for their names, and so I used the hiragana instead. ごめん　なさい。 Hopefully I got everyone else's name right.

A changing of the guard

Well, yesterday was quite the experience. I had to say goodbye to one of my closest and dearest friends - my laptop. It stuck by me for a long time, and it did a wonderful job in all it did. I had gone to turn it on Sunday night to play a game of the Battle for Wesnoth(a turn-based strategy game, quite fun), and as the laptop powered on, I noticed something odd... The screen would not turn on. I had a blank screen. I power cycled it again, to see if it was just a fluke thing, and it wasn't. I had no visual on the LCD. Monday, in a fit of experimentation, I decided to hook it up to the monitor to see if I could switch displays, and get it to work like that. The monitor came up fine, and when I hit FN+F5 to switch displays, the LCD came up again! Monday and Tuesday I left the system running, just to make sure nothing was going to die again. I finally turned it off yesterday, to see whether or not it was going to happen again, and it did. No screen. I tried hooking it back up to the monitor, and this time, the monitor worked, but switching the display did nothing. So I have a working laptop without an LCD screen, that will work when plugged in. That would be fine, except that I leave for japan in three weeks (Exact date: March 28th, 6AM). So, I called Toshiba tech support, to see what they could do. Turns out, I'm over my warranty. They gave me a referral to a company to try out and see what they could do. I talked to them about it; to take it in to be looked at is a flat rate of $100. In order to replace the screen, it was $650. Grand total, plus labor: around $800. To which I thought, "that's more than the laptop is worth, and I could probably get a new one for that much.

And that is what I did. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to intoduce you to: Kyoya.



Allow me to go into geek mode, for just a bit. Kyoya (named after the character seen here is an Acer Aspire 5610Z, which includes:
Intel Dual Core T2060 (Before the Core Duo series) @ 1.6Ghz apiece
80 GiB HDD
1 GiB RAM
DVD+ and DVD-RW, including dual layer
Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics (not bad, especially for my use)
Integrated WLAN (Atheros-based chipset)

Not too shabby. And, I picked it up for $150 less than what I would have paid for repairing my other system: $643.49, after sales tax.

Kyoya came with Windows Vista Home Premium preinstalled. I left it on there for the novelty. :) The real story came when I threw in my Sabayon Linux 3.2 LiveDVD to install Sabayon to my HDD. I think there's one thing that hasn't worked out of the box, out of the entire system. PCMCIA registered fine, Sound, Video (with help from 915resolution), AIGLX/Beryl working beautifully, and it suspends to RAM and disk! The only thing that wasn't working at this time, with no configuration, was the LCD does not change on an ACPI call. In other words, when you unplug it, the screen doesn't dim, and vice versa.

I was worried that I might not have a laptop to bring with me on my trip, but I'm glad I made this choice. Things couldn't be running better.

Have a good day everyone!

Chicago trip and Power problems

Hey everyone. Sorry to get this out so late, but we were out of power since Saturday night, until Tuesday. Wednesday and today I have work, but since I woke up early enough, I figured I might as well write.

Monday was my Chicago trip. We had quite a blast - I didn't know that it was the first time my mom was in downtown Chicago to enjoy herself in it. The ordeal at the consulate took an overwhelming minute-and-a-half. I basically dropped off everything that I needed to there, he took a look at it, said everything looked good, and said it'll be mailed back to me later. So, we had gone 3 hours to Chicago for a two minute meeting; now it was time to have fun. We ate at the Grand Lux Cafe, on N. Michigan. They had great food, and for being an up-class dining area, it was fairly inexpensive. Before you ask, yes - I got pictures. Here:Coming in to town - a bit foggy, so you can't see the buildings clearly.

A clock tower we passed while heading on this road:

Also known as N. Michigan Avenue.

My brother, Calvin, enjoying his complimentary bread and butter at the Grand Lux Cafe.

Well, I wonder who this handsome bloke could be? The statue's nice too.
Another shot from the Cafe.

Another couple shots from the Grand Lux Cafe.

Just a random shot of Saks Fifth Avenue across the street from the Consulate.

The past week hasn't all been fun and games though. As I said, from Saturday night (roughly 7:30) to Tuesday night (around the same time), our power had been out. Monday was a nice way to escape a cold house. Unfortunately for us, when our power goes, so do most of our supplies: water pumped from our shared well has an electric pump, so no water; our waste pump is electric, so no flushing toilets (yuck!); our heating goes out; and everything is just more than a bit uncomfortable. We made it through, though; we placed blankets on the floor and made a makeshift bed for everyone in the living room, and had the fireplace going strong.

Finally, I point out this last little bit of good news:

That's right, folks. No longer are we living in the stone age: we've moved from 56k to EV-DO-based broadband! It runs quite nicely, too. I did a couple of downloads to check out speeds on it: svn (subversion - a way to work with source code with other people and place it in the same area, for those less geekily inclined) ran at an average of 150 KiB/sec. Quite an improvement over 3 Kib/sec we were getting with dialup.

A quick connection test here [dslreports.com] shows that I have a 1005kbps (divide by 8 for KiB/sec) down/353kbps stream, with a latency of 192 ms. Not bad.

Well, have fun everyone. I'm gonna take a shower and head off to work.

Weather Woes

It's just that kind of day today - yuck and blah. Anyone living in the midwest, you know exactly what I'm talking about; it's not rain, and it ain't snow... we're getting ICE CHUNKS. Absolutely disgusting. I Headed home from work early today, because business was slow (hmm... not many people want to come out and eat when the chance that they wreck along the way is about 50/50...) and that I'm the person that lives farthest away from the restaurant. Not much extra happening about my trip - a while ago, but after the last entry here, my Mom and I went out and got some of my travel gear; among it was a luggage set that, while really unnecessary to get (because we had luggage here), works really nicely and will be easy to spot coming out of baggage claims. It's bright red, with fluorescent green tags. Check it out:

Yes, I know - I said that it had GREEN tags. Keep in mind I also said fluorescent. They seemed to react to the camera's flash when I took the picture. Trust me, though... they're green.

Anywho, back to the point (if there was one). Ice storm. It hit around 9:45 around here, starting as freezing rain. Nasty stuff, there. Once it hits something, it's frozen. Take the cars in the parking lot at work, for example. There were people coming out of the restaurant and scraping their cars off. Mine didn't have much luck escaping the weather, either:


So yeah, it's pretty much disgusting out. I love how you can see the ice actually coming down in the last pic, but I hate the fact that the ice is there. Hopefully this'll all be gone by the time I have to leave on Monday morning for the Consulate.

Have a blast, everyone, and keep warm. It's nasty out there...

motto baribari (Keeping busy)

Sorry about cutting off so abruptly and staying quiet for the past week point five - it's been busy.

Since I last spoke on here, I've gone through quite a bit of stuff for my trip. My certificate of eligibility came in from NUFS, and so I'm going to head up to the Consulate in Chicago on the 26th of Feb., and take care of that. On Monday, I went in to Gulliver's Travel, and picked up my plane ticket receipt. I use it for each of the stops on my way in.

Here's me and my travel agent, Janelle, reviewing all of
the ticket's info.

I've gotten much of my stuff ready for packing - bought the essential things for the bathroom yesterday, after taking my family out to eat at Granite City, in Davenport, IA. It was awesome food, but the price on the bill left my wallet cringing, to say the least. Definitely a place I would recommend for people to go once or twice a year, for special occasions.

Work has been keeping me really busy. Keep in mind that this is a Good Thing™. Keeping me busy also keeps the moneys coming in for my trip. I've added it up, and I'm expecting around $400 or so for the next two weeks, and another 2 checks like that by the time I leave. However, it's running me a bit ragged, as you can tell - I haven't been posting on here regularly. I haven't been on the internet for more than 5 minutes at a time in the past week; some of you know, that's quite a statement for me. Fortunately, I get this weekend off, so I'm going to plan a optometrist appointment, get some traveler's checks, and keep preparing for the trip.

Now that I'm done here, I'm off to bed. Have a nice night everyone, if there's even still people reading. I'm sure that with a week off, most people have forgotten about my little corner of the inter-web here. Oh well, I'll keep on posting - it makes a good vent for me as well to remove some of my building tension.

Snowed In

Sorry about not posting for a while... things have been a bit busy, and I haven't touched my computer in days - which is quite the feat.

I went up to Dubuque on last Wednesday/Thursday to take care of some business, and also to get my tuition reimbursment check. The check was nice... I'm expecting people to be asking for "borrowing money." Sorry, guys - all of that goes to my trip. On the weekend, we went out and used some that I paid back to my mom (I owed her a bit for car payments), and managed to buy a new DVD player, coffee pot, microwave, tv antenna, and some stuff for my new job. Monday, I went in for my first day of work. It went well - I was trained for the greeting line (getting people their drinks, silverware, and running them through the cash register), and quickly took the hang of it. There are some things that I still need to be shown (temp checks are the biggest - making sure that everything's at the right temperature), but I'll pick it up soon enough. I would have gone in today, but it snowed over the past day; there was enough snow that I got out to my main road to Davenport in 30 minutes, instead of the normal 5. I pulled over at the Rock Island County Animal Control Center, and hung out there for a while, so that plows could come through and so the snow would die down. I came home after calling to tell them I couldn't make it. It turned out to be an all right day, however.

I got my partial schedule for school while I was up at Clarke Wednesday. Seems that Clarke is going to be getting rid of it's Computer Science division, so they're going to be running all of us through in three semesters; I finally get a schedule that I like - many different major studies classes in one term.

On Monday, I bought my plane tickets. Going through a travel agent in our mall in Moline, I picked up a round-trip ticket for my trip at a nice, low price of $1402.

Cutting a bit short here. I'll put more up later.