Reliving 5/29/06... Mike's Parents' Final Day in Japan
As I mentioned a few posts ago, I've been trying to catch up on all of my photographs that have been collecting digital dust on our hard drive. I've finally finished up on the pics that I took while my parents were visiting Japan back in May. On their last day in town, we decided to cover the important items on their "must see" checklist that they didn't get to during the rest of their 3-week whirlwind adventure here. As it turns out, when we removed some of the items that were impossible for the day, like catching a baseball game or sumo tournament, we were able to narrow the list down pretty significantly and ended up with three things:- Imperial Palace, Tokyo
- Shibuya Intersection, Tokyo
- Landmark Tower, Yokohama
I wasn't very impressed with the few pictures that I captured at the Imperial Palace, mostly because we only went places I had been (and shot photos of) before.Regardless, the shots I took that day are posted in our Gallery, dated 09/12/2006 to match with the date of this post.
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In other news, you may have noticed that I posted some extra pictures onto Nicki's previous post about Yunessun Hot Springs Resort in Hakone. We finally got our disposable camera pictures developed from the trip. Warning: the camera had no flash, so most of our indoor pictures are very grainy, despite my desperate attempt to "save" them in Photoshop. We got some great outdoor shots though, especially in the red wine and green tea pools. You can see them all in the Gallery dated 09/07/2006.
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Random trivial tidbit of the day: I recently purchased some more RAM for the computer, which we've been running until recently at 256MB. Not too shabby, if it were still 1995. With us running Photoshop and some of our other programs pretty regularly, our computer has been moving at the pace of a snail on a molasses path. Anyway, I did some research and figured out that our Dell has two slots for RAM, one with the 256MB and another open one. After reading our friend, Claus' blog, I always get some level of confidence about working on my computer, so I decided that I could buy and install extra memory on my own. Our good friends at New Egg deserve a bit of free publicity, because they always ship electronics to FPO/APO addresses (unlike most other online stores); and they ship quickly, safely, and affordably. I got the new RAM (512MB) in the mail yesterday and installed it in the open slot within 30 minutes of getting home last night. I'm proud of myself and our Dell is zooming right along again, but now at around 768MB of RAM instead of just 256.
Check out Nicki's Kitchen . I just added a cabbage and bratwurst recipe that was a big hit at our house!
posted by Unknown | 9:50 PM
3 Comments:
Congratulations Japan Years crew!
There's a wonderful feeling of empowerment that comes from being able to do something "technical" yourself.
If you do your homework ahead of time, it saves a lot of headaches down the road. Looks like you got it down!
Glad I could inspire you just a bit. That's how I learned what has turned into my career. Listening, asking questions from people I trusted, and then getting my hands dirty and taking lots of notes!
I bought my entire Shuttle pc system in parts from NewEgg. The rock. The delivery was shipped ahead of schedule, the everything was correct. When my first bare-bones system died (motherboard/case/psu) I got the RMA information from them, shipped it off, and got a replacement in no-time flat.
I might dash into the local pc store for spur-of-the -moment parts in a pinch, but for any "project" work, NewEgg can rarely be beat.
Did you blow out the "guts" while you had it open? I make it a habit to give it a good dust-out every 6 months or so. Buy a can of compressed air or two, take the lid off and let it rip (outside--or your spouse may have you spending the rest of the day re-dusting the house!) Be sure to get the processor/fan very good and blast the dust out of the power-supply unit as well. A pc clean on the inside cools better which helps it to run faster. That's one of my "secret" ways at work to get a user's pc back up to speed and be a "hero" after I've cleaned the software-side of things.....
"Congratulations" on Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko's new baby. Has this met with any daily excitement expressed from your Japanese friends? From the Japanese/English web-news sites, it seems like a big/fun story. Just wondering what the sense was from the family on the street over there.
Cheers!
Hey Claus,
Thanks for the dusting tip. I should buy some compressed air because our machine is looking fairly dusty.
I think the buzz has cooled down a bit over the new prince's birth. Many Japanese people around these parts were excited to hear that it was a son, but some of the more non-traditionalists (if I can call them that) mentioned that it would have been interesting if it were a daughter born, so that Japan might have to face changing it's male-dominant royal family issues.
The naming ceremony was the other day, the young prince has been named "Hisahito" and has been given the symbol of the pine tree.
-Mike
Urg! We had the same problem with our computer too. I hated it and thought about tossing it into the street on many occasions. My brother gave us 512MB of RAM that didn't work for his computer and now we are running at 1GB. Whatever the hell that means. I just know that I can receive my emails now in under 10 minutes.
Feels good doesn't it??
Thanks for your thoughts on my blog. Nothing that I hadn't already thought of, but good to remember. We talked alot about it. There are good and bad things no matter what job you have. It just feels better to know that at the end of the day we have a CHOICE. Thanks for your insight...
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