Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.

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Sunday, July 12th, 2009
madbard	10:34a	The first thing to note about the financial crisis is that the federal government never had any business intervening in the personal decision of whether you want to own a home. There is no rational economic argument, or any argument I know of, that says the market of buying and selling homes is imperfect in some way, requiring government action. Construction firms have plenty of incentive to build homes and sell them. People who have the wherewithal have plenty of incentive to buy homes if they so choose. For the government to intrude into homeownership was an off-budget, nontransparent, backdoor attempt at redistributing income. And when the policy became a way of transferring income to people who couldn't afford those homes, it was doomed to failure. ... The stunning thing about Obama's spending proposals is that there's almost nothing you could defend from the perspective of efficiency. It's all about redistribution — not redistribution to the poor but redistribution to Democratic interest groups: to unions, to the green lobby, to the health care industry, and so on. At some point these everescalating government interventions will affect the size of the economic pie. If we start looking more like France, with more than 20 percent of GDP controlled by the federal government, output growth and economic freedom will all suffer. The Case For Doing Nothing, by Jeffrey A. Miron, director of undergraduate studies at Harvard's economics department, reprinted at the Cato Institute website (3 Comments |Comment on this)
dr4b	10:54p	The last few days Haven't been writing journal entries. Not much to say -- well there is, but most of it's introspective what-am-i-doing-in-japan stuff. In a good way. Like, I've been having many very peaceful moments while riding my bike or walking around alone late at night, and it's always like "I could not do this anywhere else in the world." So yeah, baseball on Tue/Wed. And going to Hokkaido. Need to buy plane tickets still, but have baseball tickets, which is the first step. Thursday I had a phone interview for a summer job and today I got email saying they're interested in me, so I need to decide in the next day or two, and go in for an orientation meeting later this month, something like that. It'd put me out of commission during the daytime on Aug 3-7 and 10-14, but I'd still have the evenings free to go to the Fighters games and whatever else is going on. I'd basically be leading kids on fieldtrips during the day... in English. But yeah, Thursday night and Friday night I essentially did nothing, being exhausted after school from 3-4 hours each day doing mock Eiken interviews with some of my 3rd-year students. I don't even remember what food I ate or anything -- think I went to Heiroku on Friday though. I spent time working on blog stuff a bit and goofing off on PP and such. Saturday, I decided to go watch baseball, and went for the cheapest and healthiest option, which was Shonan Searex at Lotte Urawa Marines, in other words, a minor-league game that was free of charge and 6 miles away, so I rode my bike there and back too. I have gotten to the point that I no longer know if 12 miles round trip is a long bike ride or not. It felt GOOD though -- it was around 25 degrees and cloudy outside all day, which was fantastic bike weather. Stopped at Kappa Sushi on the way back for dinner. Kappa is another 100-yen sushi place, up on Road 17. (Seriously, all the 100-yen sushi places are way far away from stations.) Anyway, they VASTLY improved it since last time I was there -- now there are not only touch screens for ordering, BUT they also have these adorable train thingies that deliver your orders! Most normal 100-yen touch-screen places, your order just comes out on the normal belt and beeps when it gets to you or something. But at Kappa there's a second track above the belt and the staff puts the plates on this train thingy and WHOOOOSH it comes to your spot, you take the plates and hit a red button and WHOOOOSH the train thingy slides back away. It's awesome. Oh, I did laundry on Saturday too. I ostensibly cleaned up the house a bit too, but nowhere near enough. I'm such a lazy slob. Today I just hung out here for most of the day. I ate shells&cheese (my last box, sigh) and watched the Fighters game on TV, which they won in the bottom of the freaking 12th after Hisashi Takeda blew the save. So it was a 5-hour game. Went to Yokado after that for some errand-shopping-stuff. You know what I can't figure out? How am I being eaten alive by bugs here when I don't SEE any bugs and I have tons of spit-chemicals-into-the-air-to-repel-bugs things all over the place? Yet my legs are totally bitten up and I have a few bites on my arms too. I can write off the legs to sitting out at Lotte Urawa yesterday, but WTF, seriously. So, Gokusen the Movie just came out and Harry Potter comes out on Wednesday here. I think my plan is to go see at least one of them next Wednesday the 22nd since it'll be "Ladies Day". Or something like that. Hard to believe just 4-5 more days of school and then I'll be on summer vacation... (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 11th, 2009
iseebi	10:02p	Bustles I wonder if I can make a bustle skirt... (for a larger "I enjoy meals" size, of course) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
iseebi	9:37p	Writer's Block: All-Nighter When was the last time you stayed up all night? What were you doing? View other answers Um, last night. I was trying to sleep. This is stupid. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
docjeed	10:52p	I think I need an icon of a Pirate manager curled into a fetal ball. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
madbard	2:14p	So far, goodness The weekend thus far, which I define as late Thursday through right now, has been nonstop awesome. Yesterday: Dinner at El Cholo with subset-of-friends-circle. Though it is tamale season, I decided to spare my stomach some of the calorie bomb and enjoyed a fajita instead. Then, along with a giant heap of my friends, enjoyed MTLA's production of Cabaret, at the conveniently located Met (not that one) theater. furfybird, though onstage only occasionally, was fantastic as I've come to expect. Her gorgeous voice just fills up the room, and she completely owned the end of the first act. I wish she could have cloned herself and simultaneously sat in the audience so she could have seen herself and swooned. One day, science, one day. This morning: I defied most of my rules for jogging and somehow had a great time. Under the impetus of the running-enthusiasm-generator that is duckierose, I drove up the very end of Encino Blvd to the Mulholland Fire Path. We did a five mile run in the blazin' heat (usually a huge no-no for me) and along a dusty, hilly trail. The view was gorgeous, though; we followed an mountside ridge circling a broad valley of SoCal hillocks and chaparral. I was covered in dust and sweat by the end, but miraculously unsunburned. After I finished the run, Lance Armstrong congratulated me on my longest run to date. This Nike+/iPod gizmo never runs out of surprises. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
docjeed	2:23p	I can has mural! My friend Puff (deathling) was in town visiting, and came over to hang and paint a mural on one of my walls. Before I bought the house, I offered her a tableau to express herself, and she accepted, so here's the (near-final) result: ( You, perhaps, expected something else? ) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, July 10th, 2009
docjeed	8:06p	There ain't no justice I found out today that the finest craft/hobby brewer I've found is no longer brewing beer. It turns out he has Celiac Disease. He is, however, going to be brewing with the five grains that are gluten-free. I'll still miss his chocolate espresso porter. Fine, fine stuff. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
madbard	12:23p	The machines have begun to rise Last night my Nike+ module congratulated me on setting a new personal speed record. (Based on its fairly limited exposure to my running history.) Moreover, it wasn't an impersonal robo-voice, but a specific woman who identified herself by name. I don't remember who it was; I assume some celebrity runner. This is sort of cool, and sort of creepy. I hope Apple never feels the temptation to insert spoken ads into this thing. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
ts4z	2:29p	I own seven pinball machines. If you're counting along at home, that means I acquired two more. I got Back to the Future in May at Pin-A-Go-Go. It didn't work, but Chris said, "oh, it's probably a bad cap on the power supply", and I replaced them, and then there were some bad transistors ... ... when a pinball game doesn't work and doesn't boot, TURN IT OFF, because what happens is that when the +5V power wanders off because it is borked, those transistors aren't sure what to do and so they wander off and maybe turn on, which causes them to die, which causes them to burn stuff. This has been a public service annoucement... ... and after six or so transistors were replaced, it works! I rebuilt the flippers and replaced some playfield inserts that had been burned up and badly replaced. The previous owner had cleaned the game up and put nice rubber on, but hadn't actually bothered to make the game work. Back to the Future is *the* game that got me hooked on pinball. This is a bit embarassing, because it is a damn shallow game. But with the overpowered DE flippers, it still kicks my ass. The sound is excellent. And a few weeks later, Chris got a lead on ten games in a warehouse. The rent is going up on the warehouse so there were some deals. Chris wanted the Spy Hunter; I wanted the Firepower. The price was right. After twelve our so hours of shopping the game out, plus whatever time Chris put in, Firepower works! There are some cosmetic problems (the playfield is as damaged as I have ever seen one, without losing paint) but it plays well. I am particularly self-satisfied because the bumper switches are pretty good, and the top left bumper will trap a ball between itself and the rubber, and just pound the life out of it. It's... so beautiful... BOTH OF THESE GAMES WILL BE AT California Extreme THIS WEEKEND. YOU SHOULD COME. The problem with owning seven pinball machines is that I really only have space for, realistically, two. So I'm going to put prices on stuff and see what sells, and try to get down to five. I'm not intending to sell any video games, but that might happen. I need to do some last-minute work on Black Hole ($800), so I'll be in the garage late tonight. Also in attendance should be: High Speed, Meteor ($700), APB ($400), Star Wars, and Millipede. PLAYING OLD VIDEO GAMES HAS BEEN PROVEN TO MAKE YOU HAPPY. California Extreme: YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO. Extreme is at the Santa Clara Hyatt this year. I'm looking forward to the new location. The old one was fine, but apparently the management was slightly insane. Hopefully parking will be close enough, but we'll miss the inevitable (but pleasant) meals at Peggy Sue's. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
madbard	12:52p	Daughters of Nerddom I've been thinking about the Breaking of the Nerd Gender Barrier that happened in the 90s. You younguns may not be aware how few females were into sci fi/fantasy/etc. prior to then. (Any nerd who went to my high school will attest to this with a deep sigh.) Of course, there were always outliers, e.g. a certain girlfriend of mine, whose Star Wars mania dates to childhood. But by and large, women watching Battlestar Galactica or playing video games alongside men is a fairly recent phenomenon. One causal factor was no doubt the general nerdification of both genders as the web became more mainstream. But I speculate that the turnaround really came from the release of sci-fi/fantasy with either: 1) Pretty boy actors in lead roles, in the case of film/TV (e.g. LOTR and Dr. Who) 2) Heavy emphasis on romantic subplots (Harry Potter, Buffy) It's safe to say that this is not something that would have happened 20 years ago. (Though I have painful memories of massive women dressing as Klingons at a Star Trek convention.) (73 Comments |Comment on this)
avocado_tom	1:33p	Wanted: 60+ Gig IDE drive Anyone out there got a 60+ Gig IDE hard drive that's taking up space? I'm looking for a cheap drive to throw in an old machine...just enough to back-up a reasonable music collection. Willing to pay up to $40 or so depending on size. Thanks! (4 Comments |Comment on this)
macosx [ steverogerson ]	9:20a	Scrolling problem My Mac Pro has developed an interesting problem. It is constantly scrolling down. Say I am in a window and click on the top item, then it immediately scrolls all the way to the bottom. If I am in a Word document, for example, and click on the first word it scrolls straight down to the bottom. It is not a mouse problem as I've tried it with two different mice and even without a mouse, and it still does the same. I've rebooted to no effect. This is stopping me working and is very annoying. Has anyone any idea what might be wrong and how to fix it? Edit: Ignore me, problem solved (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
madbard	6:03p	Charge! My phone charger may have been a causality of hasting packing. Does anyone happen have an extra charger for a Motorola Razr? (Since these phones were mega popular five years ago but passe today, I figured it might be worth asking.) (7 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 9th, 2009
dr4b	12:31a	Who the fuck is Tatsuyuki Uemoto anyway besides being the guy who hit the go-ahead 2-run homer off Darvish tonight that eventually won the Lions the game 4-3. Seriously, you know I'm a walking player meikan and even I was like "I've never heard of this guy" when he came up to bat. It seems that he's been with the Lions organization for like 7 years, but he hit his first pro home run on Sunday against Rakuten... and his second today against us. WTF. Anyway, I sat in the front row of the outfield at the Seibu Dome because I knew some people sitting up there and when I arrived I just ran up like "hi! let me sit with you!" and they were like "...sure?" I was so grumpy about the Fighters losing that I basically went to Lawson's around 11:30pm tonight and I bought baseball tickets for 7/31 and 8/1 in Sapporo. So, I think this means I am going to Hokkaido. I have to go get plane tickets next. They will be slightly more expensive than the baseball tickets. Hmm... I should seriously consider getting the Seishun 18 pass and use that to go to Koshien and whatnot. The only question is whether I can somehow make it work out with Oren and Carl visiting here. It'd be pretty funny to travel with them where they can take a 3-hour shinkansen and I take 10-hour local trains :) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
madbard	8:20a	iCover So apparently the cover of the June issue of the New Yorker was drawn with Brushes, a graphics app for the iPhone: (2 Comments |Comment on this)
dr4b	10:00a	July 7th is Tanabata day School was school. As usual I don't talk about it in public entries and I haven't even been writing friendslocked entries recently, though maybe I should be. I left promptly at 5pm and ran to the train station and got on a train and managed to arrive at Seibu Kyujo-mae at 6:09pm, bought a ticket and a sandwich and ran into the stadium in time to get there halfway through the bottom of the 1st inning. Couldn't find any of my friends quickly so I sat in the back with Akki and his friends for the first few innings, THEN I spotted people I knew up front so I ran up and sat with them for a while, then saw other friends on the way back up. The nice thing about Seibu on a weekday is that it is totally uncrowded since it's so far from Tokyo. Itokazu forgot his jersey so he was pitching wearing Brian Sweeney's jersey, which was pretty funny. (Akki was even yelling "Ganbare ganbare Sweeney!" instead of Itokazu.) Unfortunately, the Lions won the game 6-4 as Takayuki Kishi pitched a complete game. Sigh. But, Yoshihiro Satoh hit a home run in his first ichi-gun at-bat of the year, and I got to see that at least, yay! I just saw him play all weekend in Kamagaya so it was kind of weird. Halfway through the game they announced that Wednesday's starter is Darvish, so I guess I am going back for another day of this craziness after all! The game was over at 9pm, which would normally make me grumpy, but it was a good thing this time because I got home around 10:30pm after a short errands run to Ito Yokado, and could go to sleep around 11:30pm. It's a really exhausting day to get up at 6:30 and go to work from 8-5, then go to the stadium so far away, cheer my heart out for 3 hours, ride home for an hour, etc... but I really don't regret it. Also I checked with some of my friends and while they all have plans to go to Hokkaido to watch the Fighters this year, they are all at DIFFERENT TIMES. Some are going during Obon or right after (which is RIGHT OUT), one guy is going in September, things like that. I might be going to Sendai at the same time as some of my friends though, so that is good. But, the upshot is, I should plan my Hokkaido trip on my own and when I think is best... and maybe talk to others about closer trips like Sendai/etc. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
madbard	8:45a	Darth Pope VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Tuesday called for a "world political authority" to manage the global economy and for more government regulation of national economies to pull the world out of the current crisis and avoid a repeat. I see the Germans are back to their old tricks... (11 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, July 6th, 2009
rapier1	11:39a	McNamara I'm strangely touched by the passing of Robert McNamara. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
macosx [ jackal ]	11:23a	LiveJournal iPhoto Exporter for iPhoto '08 (version 7) Is there a plugin for iPhoto that allows you to export photos to pics.livejournal.com that works with iPhoto '08 ? The version posted on filmgold.com only works with iPhoto version 6. (Comment on this)
dr4b	10:46p	Maybe I'm nuts But basically I've been poring over travel brochures tonight and I figured out a few things about my harebrained plan to go to Hokkaido the Sapporo Dome over my summer break. See, thanks to the Fighters' retarded schedule, pretty much ALL of the games at the Sapporo Dome during my 6-week break are on WEEKENDS. They do have a home series from the 14th to the 20th... which is a) Obon and b) two of the games are in Asahikawa. Fuck that. Obon is one of the three worst times of the year to travel, first, and Asahikawa means possible rainouts AND not the damn Sapporo Dome anyway. Weekends mean more expensive travel and more crowded games, of course. But worse... almost every travel plan, it's like $200-300 more expensive to stay over Saturday night. The plan I'm looking at, if I want to go from Friday to Sunday for the Softbank games, July 31-Aug 2nd, it's like 70,000 yen for those three days... but if I go from Thursday to Saturday, it's 50,000 yen. Yeah, I'd only see Friday night and Saturday afternoon's games, but I'd also have Thursday to hang out in Sapporo. It seems a little dumb to go up there for the purpose of being a Fighters nerd and not staying over for Sunday, but a free day on Thursday would give me the option of doing several things: 1) Sapporo Dome stadium tour!!!! I've always wanted to do this. They have them all day Thursday and in the morning on Friday, but not during the weekend, which means if I go up Friday I can't do it. 1a) Sapporo Dome observatory!!!!! When I was up there last year I asked about going to the observatory and they were basically like "You can't. You should have come here yesterday." But I checked the schedule on the Sapporo Dome website and it seems to indicate that everything is open on Thursday, all day. 1b) Fighters store shopping, without ninety thousand people there. 2) Hillman's Hangout for Thursday night's game. Maybe even with friends, if I can round up anyone I know who lives in Sapporo. 2a) Other random touristy crap on Thursday night instead, although I tend to believe that night time is not the greatest time to be a tourist. It is, however, a good time to go EAT stuff. 3) Touristy crap on Friday afternoon! I don't really know what, but... hell, it's summer, I bet there's got to be a lot of nice places to just walk around town and see flowers and whatever. I can research. Maybe go to Otaru or somewhere like that, though I dunno how feasible it is before a night game. Then, Friday night and Saturday afternoon I watch the Fighters games, and come home Saturday night, and I can even maybe go play volleyball on Sunday afternoon with Intervoll. The more I think about this, the more I love the idea! I do have to decide soon though, and buy tickets to the games, if I want to actually sit in the leftfield bleachers with the crazy fans. I'm going to Seibu tomorrow night and I'm going to ask around to see if anyone else I know might be going up to Hokkaido that weekend (possible) and doesn't already have tickets (unlikely). And in theory, sitting alone is perfectly fun for me anyway, because I'm weird, although it'd be kind of neat to travel with other people for once. What's the downside? Well, first, spending the money. But I basically kind of already have it in my head that I'm going to blow a bunch of money travelling this summer. I think I'll regret it if I don't, especially once Carl and Oren come to visit Japan. Plus, I am trying to pick up a summer job for a week or two, as well as MAYBE picking up a regular extra part-time job one evening a week or so anyway... and I have been trying to save money on a regular basis, too. The other downside is, on the topic of summer jobs, this travel plan would basically totally kill one of my summer job options, which is for the week of the 27th-31st. On the other hand, that one is an hour away from here for like 3 hours a day of work, which is retarded anyway, and doesn't pay THAT well, and who knows if I'd even get it. Yeah. Okay, so there is a really good chance that I'm going to go ahead and get the baseball tickets in a day or two and then go make travel arrangements later this week as well. And then I'm going to go to Hokkaido in a few weeks, because I love Hokkaido and it's got to be even more awesome in the summer than in the early spring. Plus, adventure! Excitement! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
tangerinpenguin	12:07a	Next Food Network Star After Next And the episode goes pretty much as I expected it to this week, so not much to add. Except that one of Flay's comments last week - "you're the last seven people on the planet to get this opportunity" - had me wondering if he was just referring to this year's NFNS winner's circle, or if they had in fact decided to retire the franchise after this run and I had just missed the memo. The answer to that, of course, is like hell would they shutter their cheap ratings printing press after this season, and auditions for 2010 are starting near you as early as this Wednesday. Break a leg, everyone - judging by our knowing armchair analysis, I'd expect anyone on my friends list who's crazy enough to try out to at least sail through midseason, right? :) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 5th, 2009
demonlurking	6:38p	- Pennsic Heralds' Point Secret Project 4E - ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. ) Current Mood: cryptic (Comment on this)
macosx [ catharsis_o_s ]	11:21p	I can even screw up a mac. Oh lord. I'm using an OLD iBook with OS X 10.4.6. A while ago I managed to get my mac so stuck that I couldn't even get it shut down by pressing the power button. Obviously the next (not so) logical thing to do is take the battery out. And I did. I put it back and restart. I was doing this on work ofcourse and had to serve a customer after booting. I left my computer alone for about ten minutes, when I came back the screen was black and there was these white stripers running on it. I booted again, this time the computer respondet to the power button. This time the mac started on a tigers' welcome screen asking me to fill out all the information etc. I didn't really have any important files on this computer so it doesn't bother me that much. But the hard drive on this thing is really small, like 14gb, and i had some big files on it and they still seem to be there filling my hd. So my question is this, is there any way to restore those files, defragmet this thing, anything, so that i can get that space back? I bought this thing really cheap from my school, so i don't have any backup systems or cd's or anything really. Please help me out, this thing is dying on my hands. Current Mood: drained (5 Comments |Comment on this)
iseebi	12:40p	(Comment on this)

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