Ryan
Chasing greatness

Saturday was our Christmas party.  It was short and sweet.

We had an buffet of small food that was actually pretty good and we had some game that was called, “Number 1.”  Essentially there were several lists of items that were categorized by things like, “What color car do new drivers most want,” and there would be 6 choices.  You guess what the number one choice is.

We also all dressed up like Santa.  We all looked like Bad Santa.  Not many of my kids came, and the few that did weren’t assigned to sit with me.

There is nerd below.

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So here is your weird Japanese information for the day.

Tomatoes are vegetables in Japan.  No biggie, people get confused on that all the time.  Here’s the weird thing.

Watermelons are vegetables as well.

Now we tried to get an explanation from the Japanese as to why they thought these things and they were so confused that every explanation they gave pointed in the opposite direction that they intended.

To settle the argument we turned to the interwebs.  First the Japanese people go to something like Yahoo answers.  So of course some Japanese person wrote that of course a watermelon is a vegetable and so is a tomato.  I called, “Shenanigans,” and explained how I can log in and call him an idiot and say the other thing.  Then we agreed to check Wikipedia.

Urgh.

The Japanese wikipedia agrees that a tomato is a fruit.  However, it maintaints that a watermelon is a vegetable.  The English wikipedia says the tomato is a fruit and that the watermelon is a fruit as well.  So there you go.  Another example of fail in wikipedia.

On to the nerd.

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Tomorrow at 6:20AM (Stupid o’clock) we are heading to Seoul.  We have no idea what is going on during the 3 days we are there but it will be fun.  We let one of the Japanese Teachers plan the whole thing so we just do what she says.  Can’t read the travel packet to make sure anyway.

It’ll be strange converting from Waon to Yen/Dollars in my head, but I’m up for the challenge.

A new game came out today for PS3.  LittleBigPlanet.  This is a strange little game that looks awesome.  I won’t get to play it for a year, but that doesn’t make me less excited.  Megan got me a PS3 for my wedding present, and I promptly shipped it to a friend.  I can’t use it here in Japan, so I figured I might as well let a friend enjoy it while I can’t.  Unfortunately he said that he has been made aware of an unnatural noise in it that could be a problem.

Its pretty weird and terrible to think that something you’ve wanted for a long time, have never seen, but still own, could be potentially hosed before you ever touch it.

Just have to hope for the best.

I’ve been working on my project a bit and I have to say that the more I use design patterns the more I love them.

Oh, and if anyone has any good ideas on how to generate ascii art dynamically, gimme a holler.

I get kinda cranky with myself when I don’t do something productive or at least think about doing something productive.  I’ve been doing enough of the thinking part so now I’m taking on 2 projects and I will see them to completion.

Project #1:

I am making postcards out of my better pictures.  While we have our wonderful flickr account, the folks aren’t able to keep up with the masses I put on.  I think I’ve uploaded about 1,000 photos in 3 months.  That is a lot of looking.  So I will make photo postcards and send them home so they can see the best of the best and get a little letter that says, “Wish you were here,” or something on it.

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Well, I’m spending the week in Rockville Maryland.  Its where my girlfriend is for the summer.  We’ll basically be playing board games most of the time, with a few excursions out to see some fun stuff.  Hopefully the Spy Museum.

I started a new job at Books-A-Million.  It is exactly what I’ve wanted since my last job.  Its early still, but I’m sure there will be things I don’t like.  For now though, its a great change.

Also, I had another idea for a game.  This one will have the appearance of a Real-Time-Strategy game, but will play a little differently.  It will be a zombie survival game where you create a team, issue commands to your team mates to maintain your survival post, while you take full command of one person.  So team based survival strategy?  I’ll work on how to label it.  I need to get some artists and get to programming.