The glitches of yesterday have been rectified. The front door was fixed today (just inform my head teacher, she calls the propery manager, and the job is done before I return). Turns out they do have a key to my place - he locked the door after he was finished (which sent all sorts of worries when I found that upon my return - just think if Mr. FedEx came by after the repair? another delay in HD reunification).

After unlocking the door, I found that such was not the case. A nice cardboard box was waiting for me. I nearly fell over it jumped so high against me! I calmed it down and quickly replaced my hard disk.

debian is up and running. And smooth. Just need to spend a few solid hours setting it up the way I like it. Ah, the hands-on hands-on-ness of linux. Remove programs that I won’t use, add others that I will (need the skype among other things), and burn the debian iso’s (thank god there’s a Japan mirror).

And did some planning of the old doco today.

uf, missed the FedEx man today. FedEx can only mean one thing - Mom. FedEx is the exclusive carrier for all things sent by mothers. My hard drive stood outside of my front door momentarily at 11:30 today. At least they have English support, as my date/time confirming skills in J are still developing (prolly woulda asked for the thing to be delivered in March or December). They will leave it in my genkan at lunch time tomorrow. w00+. Too bad my front door broke today. And I can’t figure the thing out - it doesn’t fit inside the jam any longer. This morning ok, go grocery shopping, disfunction.

The JET forums elsewhere in the ether led me to more strongly consider (and then finally decide upon) linux as my OS of choice for editing this crazy doco. I was informing the unwashed masses about video camera purchasing in Jland, when a guy asked if I did my editing in Linux (I never hesistate to drop the *nix in a sentence, so the question was natural). I said no, but couldn’t reply without including some helpful links, and I stumbled on some killer software. I am now determined to make this project entirely open source.

Hrm, outside technology… Well, here’s a transition at least. I used my new camera for the first time on Saturday. There was an open mic nite a nice bar in Shizuoka. Aroop was playing, so I decided to film him. It’s really fun to film when your ears are connected via head phones. Hearing what the mic detects is really enlightening. The onboard mic is pretty good - no motor hum - but it’s too far from the subject, so the sound is too inclusive of the background and a bit tinny. Next on the testing block are lapel mics (my preference for interviews).

Before the open mic night, I went to a meeting for another camp (which I’ll be going to). A private high school in Shizuoka has connections with the JET program (their English director was on JET before it was called JET) and eventually my shoulder was tapped. The camp sounds pretty fun and I got to meet the students after the meeting. Up to snowy mountains of Japan’s Southern Alps (seems like a lot of countries have these mountains).

This week is a review lesson week, and finals are next week. I will have heaps of time to plan and research this film, if only I could get started. Funny how when you know you need to do something, you don’t wanna do it? And then you start doing something else instead? Well, at least my Japanese study has picked up….

Sorry for the delay, but it appears that if other can take a break (*cough* alan *cough*), so can I.

But actually, not a whole lot was going on. Now, it’s full-on craziness in the exact same way it’s been for the last month. Get my drift? It’s winter and it’s cold.

Speaking of drifts, I did get to see some snow drifts over the weekend. Aroop and I decided to break the monotonous cold conditions (how long till I say ‘e’?) by going to Sapporo’s (still going!) Snow Carnival. An hour flight to Chitose (nuts!) and a short train brought to the land that is equivalently temperate to Evergreen or Estes Park.

We spent 3 wild days there, eating grill-your-own food (the Genkis Khan style similar to Korean yakiniku), some of Japan’s most famous ramen (on Ramen-dori), and drinking the freshest Sapporo nama beer (straight from the brewery). Oh yeah, we also went to the festival and saw the buildings made from snow (you can’t go inside them, they’re more like the Old West shop fronts), the world snow sculpture competition, a street lined with ice sculptures, AND a live appearance from Hello Kitty.

The best day was the last one: we missed our flight back to Tokyo. A true adventure that was. Get train tix, figure out the train won’t get us there in time. Opt for a taxi, tell the driver to step on it, he’s sliding all over the place on the snowy roads. Get to the airport (2 mins before the flight is scheduled to depart), tell about the taxi’s “problems” and they switch us to the morning flight at no charge. Sweet.

In our haste taking our bags out of the taxi’s trunk, we took everything, including the cabby’s jacket. Upon rifling his pockets (for cash for the hotel, of course), we discovered his car and house keys (and a payment receipt for a credit card - the very piece of evidence we gave to the hotel staff). The front desk make quick work of getting the cabby’s father’s phone number, ringing him up, and making arrangements for the coat to be couriered back to Sapporo that night (as we were now in Chitose - where the airport is). We left 4oooYen and a note (in Japanese) that he was the best driver in Japan. Quite a good laugh after everything, and the best missed-flight story ever (even better than me showing up a day early to fly to NZ).

I’ll post pictures once my computer is operational. Received word from LAC linux that they’ve shipped my new HD to Colorado. So, I’ll have a fully-functional lappy in under 2 weeks! w00+. Still no word from them if they got my old HD - it think customs swallowed it.

Things are a-changin’ with the weather and looking up again!