badmigraine
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Posts posted by badmigraine
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Just got the Sony DVD201, about 100,000 yen at BIC Camera. It's my first videocam, so I can't compare it to the other types, but it sure is amazing.
The DVDs are the smaller size but play in my home DVD player and computer DVD-ROM, no problem. They even have little chapter menus like when you rent a DVD such as Star Wars Episode One.
The Sony digital editing software app that ships with it is pretty poorly designed and barely rates as bad. You'd want to have iMovie or Roxio Toast on a Mac, or one of the big DVD editing/burning suites like Roxio Media Creator 7 or Nero on a PC.
A DVD burner drive would be nice so you can make copies of your DVD home movies to send home to your olds and all that.
Or you could dub from your home DVD player to videotape, if, like me, your Dad still doesn't even know how to play a CD, let alone own a home DVD player.
I love the damn thing. I would say the only objection I have is that now I have to go and buy a DVD burner and application suite heh...this winter should be fun with movies featuring Mogs wiping out at high speed, or the two of us gingerly getting about 15 cm of air and panicking all the while.
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Used to be only the Communist bloc athletes were "pros". It was their job.
They probably got paid in steroids and livestock growth hormones. I remember more than one female East German swimmer who looked more like an unshaven professional linebacker than a woman in a bathing suit.
I read an article a couple years back. A number of the former East German track and field, swimming, weightlifting and other athletes were claiming some kind of compensation or trying to make a lawsuit for the damage done to their bodies in service of the state. Infertility, cancer, birth defects, etc.
Terrible.
And now look--the athletes are now taking steriods voluntarily...so much for advancement.
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Plucks is right, Kamo! I'm in Japan and haven't seen the US coverage this time at all
Just exaggerating while drinking either too much coffee or too little beer.
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You're right, Plucks. The team play thing can be great to watch when it's done well.
The greatest athlete I saw during my recent 2 years in Walled Lake, MI was Scott the Mountain Biker. He is a graphic designer by day but a mountain bike enthusiast in the evenings and on weekends. With a workshop in his basement, a few credit cards and studded tires for racing down icy ski slopes, he is a true enthusiast.
Now add in that he'd win almost every race by a comfortable margin and you've got a minor hero.
Then you notice he wears the same Star Trek shirt for every race (Captain Kirk shirt replica from a Trekkie convention), and after winning meets the rest of the field at the finish line smoking Marlboro reds with a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in hand, and you've got a true athlete.
We need more of this kind of guy at the Olympics. Ross Rebegliati got it right in Nagano.
Imagine if Kitajima's buddies set up tequila shots with lemons and salt on the side of the pool, then made him do one for every .10 over his world mark.
Imagine if Yawara-chan knelt down and did a beer-bong on the gold medal platform.
And I've yet to see an overweight archer come out and win Olympic gold in a speedo bathing suit, reeking of whiskey, with a giant sagging gut hanging down and a mashed-up cigar hanging out the corner of his mouth.
Hell, I'd watch the Olympics if they'd just make it a bit more real like this.
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Right on, Toque! CBC coverage rocks. I used to live in Michigan, where we could pull in broadcasts from Windsor, Ontario no problem. During the 1976 Olympics in Montreal I think we hardly left the TV except to sleep. You got to see everything...qualifying rounds of pentathlons, up-and-coming flyweight boxers, vicious fencing finals between world beaters who are mostly unknown...sometimes it seemed CBC would just point the camera at a venue and let it run...almost as good as being there.Quote:I love the Olympics. Winter more than Summer though.
The CBC in Canada does almost 24 hour coverage.
And the commentary was minimal and unobtrusive. No need to waste 40% of the broadcast time on yet another crushingly dull and panderingly idiotic "Up Close And Personal" report about how some twit trained for the Olympics, what he ate, what time he woke up, what his family and neighbors said...
Canada does so many things better.
PS - Nice to see you over on the TGR boards too...obviously you have as much free time on your hands as I do. -
I love to see the vaunted US teams get drubbed. Particularly satisfying is seeing a host of small country teams whip the arrogant, childish grown NHL men of US ice hockey, and seeing the showboating "Dream Team" of NBA stars revealed as the self-centered, issue-laden prima donnas that they really are.
There is something very dull and hollow about watching these guys flail around outside of their chosen run. Pro sports in the US is in a sorry state indeed. Every cheap, vulgar and irritatingly teenage aspect of sports has been blown out of proportion until it is all there is. Everyone has the cool ESPN sportscenter talk down pat. Every day there are 5-10 "monster heroes" who slam-dunked in someone's face, then claimed like it was the greatest thing ever. It's almost as tawdry as pro wrestling, including the steriods, except with more ugly uniform copies, rotisserie/online teams, betting and sitting around sports bars eating pizza and getting even fatter. "Sports bars"...yeah right. More like Fatass TV bars.
I used to play sports and I miss the thrill of competition, the striving toward sportsmanship, and the amateur vibe. I used to spend hours watching great international contests involving uncommon sports, but now it's all cartoon like. Give me a ping-pong or fencing match. Turn on American football or the Dream Team and I'm out.
Now you can't be a hero without Smacking Down somebody and being on steroids. Just no fun to watch.
I hope nobody starts a thread about how the Olympics coverage is all Japan teams only, as if there are no other athletes in the Olympics, because it's the same in the US. You'd think no other country was there except as a minor foil to display the greatness of much-hyped US athletes who are forecast to win multiple golds and featured in product tie-ups, then branded as a "disappointment" because they only managed one gold and three silvers. Yeah. What losers. Only one gold. A terrible fate.
To watch good Olympic TV, you have to go to a country where they don't have many athletes, so they just show the most exciting or interesting contests, regardless of nationality or hype.
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It was trashed over on the Teton Gravity Research forums. Don't go there and read about it, because they spoil the surprise ending for you, within the first line or two of the first post.
I'll probably end up renting the DVD about 8 months from now, and eating two bags of lowfat microwave popcorn while watching it.
Sounds like an OK movie for me then.
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Short answer: it's not ready yet. Wait a year or two.
Longer answer: Mogs and I have the Vodafone global standard phones (V801SA, by Sanyo) and they suck for the following reasons:
--handset was very expensive (maybe you could get one for cheap now, but read on).
--handset is giant, clunky and heavy. It sucks.
--everyone I know who's had one has returned it at least once for service. I've returned mine 3 times for service. Everything from freezes and crashes (like a bad computer) to very hot battery that runs out in less than 1 hr. Mine actually changed its own clock time, and because I use my keitai as an alarm clock, I got to work an hour late. Of course nobody believed me. Would you? The damn clock set itself back by over 40 minutes. WTF?!?! I should have got a 1-yen regular keitai...my wife has one with an E/J encyclopedia and a little bear that lives inside the screen. Fantastic.
--J Phone shops will return the handsets for service as much as you want if you can show it is defective, but after 3 times I thought I deserved a refund, upgrade or switch to a different model, but guess what? NOT ALLOWED. If this were a car or computer, you'd have returned it for your money back. Meanwhile, the handset price is less than half what I paid for it.
--These phones need a different kind of relay station or antenna, and this requires a huge capital investment by the keitai companies. The work is not done yet, so although you have the Latest Thing with "Global Standard" written all over it, the signal and quality is much worse than a regular keitai. I often can't get a signal here in Shinagawa, while others with all makes of keitai around me have a full-strength signal all day every day. Mogs' home is actually a zero-signal area until Vodafone puts in more antennas or relays down there. Imagine that. He got it as a home phone replacement, and it doesn't even work at home. So much for "Global Standard".
--the handset eats battery power and you only get most of one waking day out of it. If you make a few calls, it's dead by dinnertime.
--due to the antenna/signal problem described above, the phone is constantly seeking a signal and working hard just to get through the day...this makes the battery run out even faster.
--on/off time is slow compared to other keitais I've had, and so does deleting mails. This thing is more like a computer that has to boot up, than an instant-on keitai.
--Mogs has used his abroad and it works in most places. Not too hard to make the phone calls, but e-mails have been a problem. Yes, airtime costs a lot.
--[my own fault] I got it because I'd been told I'd be traveling abroad half of the time, but since I got here the company had drastic changes and there are no int'l trips for me. A waste of money to get this phone.
Given all the problems, I would have been better off getting a nice 1-yen model with a camera and all the bells and whistles. Then, if and when I had massive international travel, switch to a cheaper GSM model (by then there should be more of them and some of them will be down to 1 yen, right?). If you join the J-Phone club or whatever they call it now, it's not much money to switch handsets.
Maybe Mogs, who's just getting back from overseas today, will post more about the cost of airtime, phone/e-mail service abroad, and his take on the whole thing.
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Yeah, mee too. I never owned one but used to dream about the Gateway Handbook...
Gotta love those Computer Museum sites. There's been some really odd stuff over the years that's quickly forgotten...but when you see it again you go "Oh yeah...THAT thing..." and suddenly feel rather old.
I remember cruising the Net on Compuserve with a 14k dialup modem, and thinking it was hot stuff.
I remember my brother writing his papers on a Commodore64, and showing me the word processing key commands and the silly games it had.
Still not a bad hobby platform for video I hear.
Sort of like the old Ataris had a resurgence a few years ago when various techno and core bands used them as sound generators for various kinds of electronic noise. Atari Teenage Riot for example.
It's hard to keep collections of stuff when you live in a rented apartment, but when I get my own place back home, with a basement, attic and garage, well...I'll see you on some BBS in 2034, talking about how I just sold my mint condition Vaio for $50,000 (about $300 in today's funds of course).
It's not just baseball cards and toys anymore folks. The geek in all of us can now collect and croon over a hoard like anyone else!
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Go to "forum home", then click on the forum called "SnowJapan.Com NEWS, ANNOUNCEMENTS & UPDATES". The information is in there.
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The badmigraine take on mp3 players, including the iPod:
A lot of people have no interest in portable music.
Gadgets and gewgaws are nice and I like toys as well as the next man, but I would never use one of these devices. I just never have occasion to listen to music that I already own over tiny ear bud phones while walking around noisy streets, riding trains, working out, or sitting in waiting rooms. If I have idle time, I read a book. No book? I send obscene and juvenile cell phone messages to Mogski and my crew in Walled Lake, MI.
In my Stuff drawer, lying dusty and unused, there is a superslim walkman, a portable CD player, and--until I gave it away--a portable MD player won at a wedding raffle. It used to puzzle me why I never used these expensive items when they were the best thing you could get, and everybody was clamoring to have one...then I figured it out...I was a stooge of marketing and consumeristic craze mentality.
The iPod. A clever expensive toy. If I win one at a wedding raffle, I'll post here to give it away.
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Amazing, and to think that he's sure to be a snowboarder grommet after just one trip to the mountain with Uncle Badmigs!
I can hear it now.
"Daddy, I want a new Salomon board and Flow bindings just like Unca Badmigs!"
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I wonder what these desserts think about us?
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I don't mind eels, but I prefer oes.
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Yeah, what a surprise. The guy interviewed on this "fair and balanced" Fox page is a "national security expert" at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think-tank favored by Reagan and one of the major designers of the Bush administration's "plan" for "regime change" in Iraq...they also assert the US involvement in Iraq has nothing to do with oil.
This is a wonderful thing for them to say, considering that Lee Raymond, CEO of ExxonMobil is the vice-chair of their board of trustees.
OTHER ILLUSTRIOUS IMPARTIAL MEMBERS INCLUDE:
--US VP Dick Cheney's wife Lynn Cheney as a senior fellow
--Rejected oddball Reagan supreme court nominee Robert Bork
Check it out yourself at:
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=American_Enterprise_Institute
"AEI states that "The extraordinary growth of advocacy NGOs in liberal democracies has the potential to undermine the sovereignty of constitutional democracies, as well as the effectiveness of credible NGOs." Ralph Nader responds with "What they are condemning, with vague, ironic regulatory nostrums proposed against dissenting citizen groups, is democracy itself."
Heh.
But don't worry. None of this is about oil! The CEO of ExxonMobil assured us of that.
It must be about Freedom, Pride and Heroes!
Let's continue to spend more in one day in Iraq than we've spent in total on US "homeland" security to fix the broken immigration system that lets in bad guys, but makes my wife wait over 2 years of dumb paperwork for a green card based on marriage to me, a US citizen.
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Yeah, the word "ambition" has a bad rap.
It sounds like it only means what a jr. mgmt. trainee in his first cheap suit feels when he drinks his morning coffee and thinks "I'm going to kick a** at the next meeting and really impress the boss and get that promotion!!"
I've got ambition, but not in that direction.
I've also got a wife and unborn baby in the hospital and I haven't the option to Chill Out and find myself. I won't be able to do that anymore until I become independently wealthy, or run out on my family and be a deadbeat dad.
I'd love a job that matches my lifestyle and leaves me time for my family and personal development, but wouldn't we all. I'll let you know when I find one. Until then, as unhappy as it is, I am keeping my high-paying "day job" and reserving the right to whine about it!
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There's plenty of work at my company today Scoobs!
Anyone else have the pleasure of working at a company where national holidays mean nothing?
When I think back, I've never had a job where national holidays meant anything.
IN UNIVERSITY DAYS
Bartender and sperm bank donor. The former was busiest on holidays, the latter knew no rest.
POST-UNI JOB
Cashier at a record shop. We sold most records on weekends and holidays. I was always working on July 4 or Xmas day or what have you. Terrible.
FIRST LAWYER JOB AND EVERY OTHER SINCE THEN
Holidays? Forget it. In fact, forget about dinnertime and skip lunches too. I need two hands to count the number of Xmas days I've worked, and the number of last-minute-cancelled ski trips, camping trips, weekends with good friends and family gatherings. I'd need many more hands to count the number of dates and small promises I had to break due to work requirements.
Yes, I've always made the mistake of getting a job where "the buck stops here". Another way to put this is, I am the trap at the bottom of the porta-potty, and the s*** all lands here.
This is a real issue for me now as I try to find stable employment for the next long while to support my new baby and give her a solid home life. When I start looking around, it seems all there is are soul-killing high-pressure jobs like "challenging position available for stellar attorney", "yes we work hard and are dedicated to serviing our clients no matter what" and "self-starter needed to handle complex and detail-driven legal and financial compliance issues companywide"...
How awful. I get sick just thinking about it. It's not that I have no ambition, it's just that I used up the supply of dumb ambition to blindly serve Corporate or Client interests merely to hold a job and get the chance to wake up the next day and do it all over again, again and again until I retire or drop out.
--badmigraine, at work on yet another national holiday.
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Sadly, they pawned all their guns for booze money!
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Another ad that drove me crazy was the one apparently telling people to get out and vote in the elections.
The scene as I remember it opens with the bleachers full of Japanese people cheering on a sports event and waving flags.
Then, a dramatic cut to a serious angry righteous man in a casual suit with open-necked shirt who yells out in didactic anger, "HEY JAPAN. IS IT JUST SPORTS FOR YOU THEN?!" and then he righteously guilts them into voting in his Big-Man angry voice.
The counterpoint to his macho tirade is The Cute Young Woman who is quietly appreciative and apparently somewhat taken with his impressive manly outburst...this poor weak doe is justly chastized and swept away by his manly anger and righteousness and she gazes with silent deep respect at him as the spot lurches to an end.
What I find most annoying about this commercial are the ridiculously childish stereotypical sex roles, and that angry bully orders and shaming are used to convey what is Proper.
If I had to make a CM urging people to vote and be socially responsible, I would try to appeal to different things.
It just seems so irritating and stupid that the people who dropped millions on making and airing this spot thought the best way to get out the vote was to show a skinny kakko-ii angry macho runt yelling out orders to a bunch of nitwits and then a sexy girl swoons because this is clearly The Way To Be.
Or, even worse, that the people who dropped the millions on making and airing this knew that this was the best way to get out the vote in Japan. "I think it's important to vote because a kakko-ii guy yelled at me and I'm ashamed that I wasn't doing what I'm supposed to."
Take your pick.
Sheesh.
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Another nice cheapo player is "furin" wind chimes. Those little glass ones shaped like fish or piglets. My local 100-yen shop has a great selection, and they even come wrapped in a protective box cushioned with paper...this is one of the few non-edible gifts where a year later I still saw it in use hanging outside the kitchen window or on the back step.
Another good one is a six-pack of those tiny cans of Asahi beer...they're about the size of 2-3 shot glasses. Not only does the recipient find them a cute conversation piece, but they are also perfect for when somebody demands that you shotgun a can of beer for losing a bet or a game of chance...a routine occurrence in Walled Lake, MI.
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grungy-g, I agree. The equipment I was born with, though neither spectacularly large or low, just hangs out the leg chute of most boxers. I have to buy the long, mid-thigh version.
The other day I went to Muji to see if I could pick up some underwear. Though my waist puts me into their M or possibly L size, when I looked at the things, even the LL (biggest size they have) look like the skimpy short undies I had at age 11 before things kind of enlarged and began flopping around more. There's just no way I could use those Muji panties. My entire set of reproductive weaponry would be out and bobbling on my thigh and chafing uncomfortably against my pants.
I think we can make a killing selling boxers for the low-hangers among us. It's a fine idea, and I think I've got the balls to make it happen!
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Just took it and the results sound like they belong to a different person. "Precise and meticulous, this person is a stickler for detail." Actually, what trips me up most is lack of attention to detail and letting things slide...one detail I did notice though was a spelling error in the fake letter from HR to the line manager.
This whole thing of grooming oneself so that They will give you a Good Job makes me nauseous. I know it's a reality of today's world, and a far cry from feudal servitude, but it makes me feel ill nonetheless. Who are these faceless judges that I must impress, and why?
As Ocean intimates, one natural reaction during the hiring process is "F--- you!" and for good reason too.
There may be a market for a different kind of website here.
Here was another gem in my personality test results...after telling me that I tend to take work home with me, they wrote this bizarre statement:
"Although not a bad thing in itself many employers are concerned about work life balance and will take an active part in ensuring that you do not overwork and burn yourself out. Knowing what an employer may be reading about your weaknesses can be a great help in preparing for interviews."
Employers take an active part in ensuring that employees do not overwork and burn themselves out?
WTF?!?!
I've never had a job where the expectation was less than robotic late nights and weekends. If you tried to start a conversation about why this might not be a good idea, you actually had to start from first principles and explain to the boss about what dinnertime means, what a family is, why reading a book, exercising, or simply finishing work at the end of the business day might be something that some people regard as desirable. And then you'd just get a blank look.
Am I the only guy who thinks the people who run this careers website are out of touch?
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I think I just found my new look...should be easy enough to get the threads. Then all I need is windswept northern shores bathed in weak sunlight, and jagged hulks of rock poking through turf and shale.
All joking aside, I'd love to be the tele guy swooping down a double-black diamond run in a stylie Nordic sweater!
Skol!
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When I was a boy, my daddy told me...
My daddy told me many things.
He said, Son, there's a lot of things
In this world that you're gonna have no use for.
And when you're feeling blue,
And you've lost all your dreams,
There's nothing like a campfire
And a can of beans.
Female janitors at the onsen/sento
in General off-topic discussions
Posted
Oh how naive...you mean you guys don't know about that over-sixty male cross-dressing onsen fetish club? Good heavens. It's almost like you really believe they're women.