Anthony is getting to the age where he'll start preschool soon, so we've started to evaluate a number of them. Japanese pre-school, called youchien (幼稚園) and sometimes “kindergarden”, generally goes for three years starting during the school year in which they turn three years old. (In the US, of course, “kindergarden” is generally a half a day for one school year at about age four or five.)

Kids in their formal and semiformal preschool uniforms
 
 

Each school has its own formal uniforms that the kids wear on the way to/from school. Being very formal (jacket, vest, shirt) but for kids (short pants [...]
View full post »

Wonderful news: my sister Marci Kreta is now pregnant after years of trying. This follows on the heels of my niece Grace's birth three months ago. It certainly seems that a lot of friends have become pregnant or had babies in the last year or so. I sort of thought I'd hit this age when I was 25, but I'm glad I didn't, as it wouldn't have meant much to me then. (Your world view, and what you pay attention to, certainly changes once you have your own kid -- it's like you can suddenly see in color, but hadn't known that you were missing anything.)
View full post »

I had a miserable day fighting with networking issues today. You don't want to hear about it, unless I ended up solving the same problem you have (which is why I'm writing this -- for the search engines to pick up).
A few days ago, some web sites suddenly seemed mostly unaccessible (accessible, say, 5% of the time), while others were just fine. Since most Yahoo! sites were among the missing, this was a big problem.
The other day I was able to pinpoint that the problem occurred when I used my router (Corega BAR-SD) inline between my ISP and my computers. So, [...]
View full post »

The black square to the lower-right of center marks the area of Kyoto were we live.
We had the most pleasant late-summer storm this afternoon. What was left of Typhoon #14 had blown through the other day, and as always after a typhoon, today was a spectacularly sunny and clear (and hot) day.
Thus, it was with great surprise that we were greeted by a late-afternoon (~4:30pm) short but fierce thunderstorm. It suddenly grew very dark, and the dark heavy clouds rolled in quite low, as if you could reach up and touch them. Then it got a bit lighter, [...]
View full post »

I learned some new words today: 唾液腺daekisensalivary gland お多福風邪otafukukazemumps 雀suzumesparrow 蝗虫battagrasshopper
The first two I learned because one side of Anthony's face was swollen and painful this morning, as if a balloon under his ear was slightly inflated. That's apparently a classic symptom of mumps, as the salivary glands enlarge (so I find out during this continuing-education class known as “parenthood”).
Anthony has had all of his US immunizations, which include MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) but apparently (according to our doctor here) that even those immunized can contract mumps over and over, if you seem prone to it. That doesn't seem too likely though, considering that the [...]
View full post »

A Reader's Digest "Word Power" featuring words from George Washington's first innaugral address.
View full post »

I use WordPress for my blog, which has browser-based post creation. I much prefer to enter and edit text in my favorite editor, so I created a plugin that allows me to do just that.
If you'd like to check it out for yourself, see my page on the file-based posts plugin.
View full post »

Here's another one of those “in case you have this problem too” posts.
While doing a Windows-XP repair install, during the “Installing Drivers” phase of the install, a dialog popped up about my nVidia graphics board, asking if I wanted to install the unsigned driver. Yes, I did, but I couldn't tell it that because some short time before that dialog popped up, both my mouse and keyboard became unresponsive.
On a whim, I went out and bought an old PS/2 mouse (really a USB mouse with a PS/2 adapter), and with the PS/2 mouse, it could actually continue. Phew!
(I still hate Windows)
View full post »

After about two weeks of having my Windows XP box powered down because we moved to a new place, I found that the computer would suddenly freeze – just stop it its tracks – without any kind of error message or other indication of the problem. The mouse, keyboard, and even front-panel power switch all became inoperable. The freezing would generally happen overnight, awaiting my discovery in the morning.
What had happened since before the move that could have caused this? Well, the prime suspect in my mind was the move itself. Perhaps something had been jarred or broken. Also, due to a move-related project [...]
View full post »

High-resolution pictures and video coming soon!
Today, Anthony made a poopy in the toilet.
He'd been wearing underwear (not diapers) for parts of the day for a month or so, making pee-pee in the toilet with the occasional “shippai” (mistake) here and there. Since we have mostly hardwood floors, cleanup of such mistakes is not that big a deal.
Yet, the success of pee-pee in the toilet has been offset by difficulties with poopy in the toilet. We would have long talks about it, and he would claim that he can't do it. Not that he didn't want to, but that, apparently despite his best desires [...]
View full post »

Today, I ran across an interesting photo site of 360-degree panoramas such as the one above. Most of the pictures seem to have been taken in Japan.
View the main page to see a calendar across the top; click on a date to see a picture. In particular, look carefully at the Dec 11th photo to see the camera attachment used. You can see the photographer himself in a number of [...]
View full post »