It has been brought to my attention that I have been a bad bad BAD web-logger person. I have not updated this site for over a week. I have betrayed the trust of my readers. I have been rude by not telling why I did not write.
Well, I have been busy... after getting back from the US I had allsorts of little projects I wanted to take care of, not to mention a pile of books I brought back with me that I wanted to read as son as possible, and of course there were certain responsibilities to others here that I had put on hold to go to the US.
I am settling down now I think, and two of the books are out of the way, but don't be surprised if I am not updating every day.
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This is what has been happening... I made my new “business” site. Check it out. It's actually still in a “not-quite-yet-ready” state, but I think I should have everything cleaned up by the end of the week. I am afraid that if I wait until it is perfect before making it live it will never be live and I will end up paying that $5.00 / month hosting charge for nothing.
You can now mail me also at kevin@kevincameron.net.
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I just took Guri to the vet as she was puking this morning and looked pretty weak. It's a good thing I found out yesterday that today is a holiday so I had time to take her. It's not good that it cost me $55. At first I feel a little ripped-off, especially since I already knew the problem before I went (every time they say the same thing... bacteria in her stomach, take this medicine). If you think about it though, they did do some tests, and did make the medicine, and it took just over a half hour to do everything, including a little paperwork, and so I guess $75 / hr is reasonable. I just have to figure out a way to get Guri to pay me back.
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I've been trying to get my apartment in order, but it just becomes more and more clear that I have no room. Now that I have to keep Guri in a separate cage from Awii for a while and I couldn't find anyplace to put the cage that is nearby a electrical outlet (for the heater since it has been getting pretty cold lately).
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I finally got around to getting Linux installed on the used computer I bought five months ago, so now I can work on programs and web-sites and what not right in my home without have to wait for my ultra slow 56k connection to upload files to the live server. With my new computer, I can have a little test server set up here. Only one problem...
My very most favorite text editor -Ultra Edit- is not available for Linux, so I have to do the work on my Windows and upload to my Linux with the apache and mysql servers. So just make a little network in my apartment right? I thought so but after one trip so far away to the big city to buy all the gadgets I need, I find that I bought two of the wrong thingamajig, and that the used computer I bought doesn't have anyplace for an Ethernet... who would have thought they actually made computers like that? I guess it shows my youngness to the computing world.
So not I have more junk in my apartment, and it is doing me no good, and I have to go all the way back to the city to buy more parts, and hopefully return the wrong parts, and even once I do that, I somehow doubt that I will be doing any networking sometime soon
Oh yeah... I bought a ethernet card for my notebook, and when I try to install the driver, it says it is already installed... but when I try to use the card it says that there is no driver. Any hints?
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I said I brought a couple books home for the US. One that I had wanted for a long time, but couldn't order from Amazon in Japan because it was too cheap (not expensive enough for them to give me free shipping) was The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. I learned a lot mainly that I resemble him more than I would have ever thought. I am genius. Actually only some thing resemble him. It makes me wonder thought what would have become of me (or many of us living in 2002) if we had lived back when a complete education didn't even include anything abut electricity. Just think of how little there was to know back then. It makes me wonder how much people will have to cover in their basic education 200 years from now. The amount of knowledge needed will be enormous!
I'm almost done with The Sales Bible, a great book about pretty common sense sales basics, but just because they are common sense, that doesn't mean that sometimes I don't need them explicitly told to me. And although it is common sense, it is amazing how many sales people, (or business people in general) don't follow it.
I recommended this book to the one salesman in my company, and he seemed to be quite offended that I was reading a sales book, when sales is his job. He must think I am trying to steal his job. Oh well... maybe a little competition will get his butt moving.
Of course the GRE book I wrote about last post was on the list... I still haven't gotten a reply from the help desk about the crappy software that was included.
I have been using Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Watercolor. I love it. I also went out the other day and bought some real waterpaints. Being from a school that tries to shelter their students from anything that might interest them enough to not go to the pastor school, I never even knew that waterpaints aren't really those hard little pieces of color that you use with a wet brush... There are actually liquid types that are so much better to use. Of course Tomoe is amazed that I didn't know that. In Japan art is required curriculum.
Finally, a (so far) awesome book called Naked with autobiographical short stories about some regular old (or young maybe) writer in New York named David Sedaris. I try to make a rule to buy one (cheap) book on a whim when I go to the book store, and this time it was this one. So far I'm still in his childhood, but there was a great story about how he was plagued with tics when he was a kid.
According to her calculations, I had left my chair twenty-eight times that day. “Your up and down like a flea. I turn my back for two minutes and there you are with your tongue pressed against the light switch. Maybe they do that where you come from, but here in my classroom we don't leave our seats and lick things whenever we please. That is Miss Chestnut’s light switch and she likes to keep it dry. Would you like me to come over to your house and put my tongue on your light switches? Well, would you?”
I tried to picture her in action, but my shoe was calling. Take me off, it whispered. Tap my heel against your forehead three times. Do it now, quick, no one will notice.
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Nudie lady art group is back from summer vacation. I went there Friday, but havn't had a chance to photograph the drawings yet. Not that they are really anything worth photographing this time.