Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

Editing iptables config. That’s something I haven’t done in years. Yup.

Had an American style dinner last night. Pretty good. The French fries were pretty authentic. The pizza was tasty very little sauce and a good amount of cheese. We drank a fair amount. I played a Clark 8 song (never said) for the folks and they liked it. I think it would go over better if I played covers, but I really don’t commit other people’s songs to memory much.

Then speaking of covers, we went to the karaoke room of this compound… (if I ever have a compound it will have a karaoke room) and then true Japanese karaoke madness began. If you have Facebook you can see various pics of me singing Livin on a Prayer, some aerosmith, some Simon and Garfunkel. Japanese karaoke is usually done with two people, which kind of takes the pressure off a bit. I have done two singer karaoke in the US just far less often. Also the sound system was rad with a couple crazy clear plastic sphere speakers hanging from the ceiling, in addition to the big monitor size speakers.

So yeah, getting a good slice of Japanese culture here in this small town of Izu. Can’t wait to see Yokohama and Tokyo tho!

Also there is one analogy I would like to make:

coffee flavor:Japanese coffee::vermouth:dry martini

It’s strange to me. Japanese coffee kind of tastes like watered down and filtered Turkish coffee. Like the beans have been lightly roasted and ground into a powder and somehow in that process lose the oily tasty parts. Leaving a sort of afterimage of coffee, like a picture of coffee or a scratch n sniff coffee bubble sticker. You get what I’m saying?

That said there was that starbucks in the narita airport. I don’t know if I want to drink starbucks in Japan. If it tastes like American starbucks I will bemoan the Americanization of Japan, and if it tastes like crazy weak Japanese coffee I will be sad that I can’t get a real cup of joe. But then what is a good cup of coffee? I enjoy everything from Folgers crystals to sunset junction’s intelligentsia coffee to brooklyn’s gorilla coffee. Gorilla coffee would be my overall fave. Followed by LA’s groundwork and Urth Caffes.

I have time to pontificate on coffee because in spite of being here a few days, I still don’t understand Japanese.

Configuring our 5 machine cluster. Pretty straight forward except we are doing something crazy with LDAP which I’ve never used for a cluster. Wacky, huh? Forgot to take a before picture of breakfast, but it was big with fish and clams. Also some spinach and a nice egg custard, replete with meat.

I grew up eating the standard middle American veggies and only after I moved to NYC for college did I get to try more adventurous foods. My general rule for eating a bunch of unfamiliar foods is try everything. Then eat in order of weirdest (least appetizing) first. that way you end on a high note.

Also this morning I discovered why I detest those day-glo yellow daikon radish pickles. They have saccharine or something in them. blechhh. I’ve been assured that proper traditional daikon pickles don’t have any fake sugar in them.

I’ve been blogging on my iPhone and then uploading via wifi. I connected to NTT once when I took my phone off airplane mode. I received one txt message in that one minute period. Probably the most expensive txt I’ve ever recvd.

One more thing Japanese coffee is sort of like watered down Turkish coffee. No roasted taste, just sort of a hint of coffee flavor. Also in related news about me enjoying the labors of underpaid workers in 3rd world countries, I haven’t had chocolate in 2 days. My skin has lost its greasy pallor, but at what cost!? How will I reintegrate into my corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oil regimen when I return to the US!?