Alan made a bold statement

Alan, today, got a call from a lady recruiter of No. 5 accouting firm (I forgot the name as it's not familiar at all. Alan said No.4 and 5 are rather new to an ordinary people as some well-known are gone now either by abuse or acquisition) with a good offer, not only by money but by location.

He said he's quite happy with the current status and it's hard to leave unless the offer is much more attractive than a good prospective of a top position of a firm such as an owner. She said it's a bold statement to make but yet she asked him to prepare a resume for her. He thougth she sounded very interested in Alan.

Let's see

I've got OS X 10.3 today

I know it's kind of late but it's OK because I'm still here in U.S.and not with my Mac anyway. I also have CD-ROM version of Canvas 9 here with me, which's been delivered here last July. I cannot take Adobe premier CS to Japan with me because it will be delivered on 11/13, the day I leave. I don't think I can ask Alan to bring it over to Japan when he's coming in December as it's expected to be a heavy package. It has to wait till my next visit, probably sometime in next April.

I've ordered the Beatles' "Let It Be - Naked" CD and "King of Quees Series 1" DVD at Amazon.com today. Thus I'll have 4 DVDs and 1 music CD on order now at Amazon. The other DVDs are "Loving You", Presley's movie I've been waiting for so long, "Generals and Glories", a sequel to "Gettysburg", and "Finding Nemo." I expect Alan to bring all of them to Japan.

It's gonna be a fun to have all of them. (And I've got to add "Masters and Commanders" to a watch list of movie/DVD.)

All over again

There was a general election last Sunday back in Japan and I didn't vote - I couldn't. There were tons of updates in Mac area but I couldn't do any of them. In other words, I've missed a lot by being over here. I should've taken a Mac with me next time. That's certain.

And adding to it, the Nikkei also has been reset to square one of  10,100. I've lost more than a million yen but I'm not so angry (of course, I am) because it's gotta turn around again.

I'm flying back to Japan on Thursday Nov 13 as there'll be a game on Saturday Nov 15 and also Alan will be away to Orlando, FL on the weekend  for 3 week stay. In order to make my stay enjoyable, I need a car or bicycle and a Mac. Till then, I don't think it's feasible to stay, or rather, live here.

I've lost the key

Two days of examination were over yesterday and I felt tremendous relief after that. No matter how I'd said before the exam, it surely was a pressure. It was a heavy rain on the 2nd day and I had to make an extra round trip by car from home to the site as I lost the key there. I didn't know until I got home (not for a lunch but after the exam). I've searched my pockets and everywhere home but it was nowhere. I was almost 100% sure that it must've been at the place where I parked a car because it could've been the only place I could lost the key. I picked the car key out of the pocket where I had the house key as well. It was the only place and time it could've come out of the pocket.

Surely enough it was there lying on the pebble. Pebble, yes. When I got back there almost at 7pm. the place was deserted (that's good 'cause I could search around the place without being bothered or suspicious). I parked the car some feet away from the location I thought I parked the car in the morning and turned the light on. It was bright enough for me to look around but the line of light was sort of horizontal and even a tiny pebble created a shadow that made my searching a little difficult when what I'm looking for was a tiny key.

At first I couldn't identify the exact location I parked the car. That's crucial but I couldn't. I looked around but I didn't see anything metalic. I spent, say, 10 minutes, I'm not sure. Then I expaned the searching area but still no luck. I started to feel like giving up. I moved towards the car but I've tried to concentrate my focus on the surface. At one moment, I thought I saw it. I took a good look at the place and surely it's the key. I felt really lucky then.

Looking back, I could've have missed it for a thousand chances. It was so tiny and small. Nobody would be able to discover or notice it for years. Even if I can tell that I almost was certain it's there, it 's another matter to have located it there. Thank, God.

I've gotta think when I'll be heading home and what I'd do till then.

I have ordered some software at Apple Store US

I didn't know until it said so that the sale tax applicable at the receiving point would be applied to the sales. To my knowledge, one benefit of online shopping is no sales tax applied. It's never happened to me. Thus I've gotta pay extra $38 bucks. If I used Amazon, that much could've been saved. Christ!

I've searched the way to cancel the order but there's no such thing in their web pages. Was my searching a crap or does Apple reall not approve cancellation of the order?

"Read more..." is empty

I've been reading others' iBlogs and have noticed some annoying trend among several iBloggers.

You know that "Read more..." will show you a body preceded by an abstract, but some guys leave a body empty often. They just put everything in an abstract. It's handy in a way because you don't have to open a body to read everything there, but who knows there's nothing to read there until you actually open it.

It's understandable to write everything in an abstract myself but if you do, don't you think you should warn a reader to spare him/her a click.

It's really annoying to open an empty body.

My first Halloween

I knew that there'd be a Halloween this friday when I left Tokyo last Tuesday but I wasn't really thinking about it. When Christina told me about it when we were at Kroger for groceries, it was still someone else's job to me.

Then today is a Halloween day and Christina told me again that I'll be the one to open the door for "trick or treat". Then suddenly I was serious and started to wondering how to respond to it. How should I offer candies? How should I greet them? And most of all, do we have enough of candies or too little of them?

Alan wasn't here and Christina left for a dinner. I'm all alone and kids started to bang on the door. I didn't know anything about it so I just stick out the candy  bowls (actually that's full of chocoloates like M&M and Milky Ways) in front of them. Most of kids were kind of shy and took one. I figured then there'd be a ton of candies to be left. I started to hand them more or ask them to pick more than one.  We still had a plenty of them.

Then Alan came home and told me not to let them have more than one. Alan was rigtht. More kids than I started to expect came to pick them up and we were out of them sooner. I learned a lesson. I'd be able to handle it better if I'd lived here. Well, I wasn't

Most of kids are at elementary school ages but some are older than that. Majority wore some sort of costume but some wore none, just ordinary.

Thus at 7:30pm, candies were gone and we had still some knocking on the door if we had turned out the door lights.

It was fun, though. I'd handle them much better if I'd be here next year.