Twenty Seven in Human Years.

Today was my birthday.  Happy birthday me.  Congratulations to me for surviving twenty seven revolutions around the star we call "Sun", on the planet we call "Earth", in the galaxy we call "Milky Way" in the space we call "Universe".  I would go into further detail here, but then I would have to choose which group of people I want reading this.

Grandmother had surgery Friday.  Walking around same day.  Granted it should not have affected her walking.  My point is that she still had energy.  She was doing well today too.  We went to dinner with Carolyn to celebrate my birthday.  I really wanted to get a cheeseburger from Wendy's, but that is not the sort of thing we do here, so I had a subpar steak at an upscale restaurant that deserves no advertisement from me.  It was expensive.

On an unrelated note, Carolyn started talking to the manager who lost 118 pounds by changing his diet.  He attributed it to a book called "The China Study" or something like that.  Apparently it exists because someone was trying to prove that nutrition cannot cure cancer.  Then they discovered that their hypothesis was incorrect.  I think I want to look into that book some other time.  Someone please remind me in six months.

I took a nap today before dinner.  My grandmother was asleep for a long time and I thought, "yay, I can sleep without getting lectured."  So while each of us was sleeping, someone snuck into the house and delivered a cake.  Apparently the cake maker called out our names a few times, but after nobody answered, she just left.  Note to self, never lock door, burglars bring yummy treats.

To those that called me or sent me a message, thanks.  To anyone that did not, [shunning silence].

It Rained Today

I think I mentioned it before, but I'm taking Japanese over the summer, two semesters of it.  The first portion ended, I got an A (go me!).  We have a different Sensei (professor) this semester.  She seems new to teaching.

We're currently learning how to express preferences, saying what we do and don't like.  When a student asked Onishi-sensei what she likes to drink, I was expecting something like "water".  Instead, she replied, "beer and wine."  New to teaching.

I realize that most of my readers aren't interested in how my website works, so I'm going to try to stop mentioning technical aspects of things.  Suffice it to say, I obsess over them, and spent most of yesterday working on my website.  It didn't slip my mind that I had a lot of homework to do, but I didn't bother starting it until after 10pm.  So I went to bed around 2am.

I was very tired when I woke up, so I had some coke (caffeine content).  I read something on lifehacker.com about caffeine helping your memory or some such nonsense, so I figured it wouldn't hurt with my kanji quiz.  I spent about 10 minutes looking over the kanji before class started, I think I did all right.  I know I missed one, but if I make no mistakes, people get jealous, so it's not worth extra effort.

When I got home, I was no longer tired (thanks to the coke), but I still took a nap because I knew I needed it.  It takes a long time to fall asleep when I'm not tired, which is why I'm so accustomed to falling asleep around 4am.  At that point, most people call it "passing out", rather than "going to bed."  Taking a long time to fall asleep often leads people to believe that I sleep a lot.  I don't.  It's not really insomnia either.  If I'm left to my own schedule, I get about 7.5 to 9 hours a day, and I fall asleep within 30 minutes of the attempt.  However, most of the waking hours are when the stars are out.  Although, nobody lets me keep my own sleep schedule.  Everyone has some kind of input.  Which has lead to my current situation of 4.5 to 6 hours and coke in strategically dosed amounts throughout the day.  I mean the soda, despite using the word "dosed".

Today, while I was napping after class, it rained.  I think that's the second time this year.  When I "finally" woke up my grandmother "Aunt" Joane pointed out the puddles in the carport.  The expensive new screens in the contemporary design she wanted, rather than the suggestion a neighbor made, facilitate the formation of a thin sheet of water the whole length of the carport.  Most of the water evaporates shortly after the rain stops, but a significant amount of water pools in the dips of the concrete floor of the carport.  The concrete has been there for decades so it is no longer level.  This leftover water "of course" is the "neighbor's fault" for (beautifully) installing a (functional) trench drain that "doesn't work".  A (permeable) vertical screen wall is "obviously" waterproof.  So I'm supposed to have the neighbor that dug the "failed" (working) trench drain fix the water problem (that his recommendation, if taken, would have alleviated).

I think I'm going to buy a big squeegee for the monsoon season.

Primary Sources

As things stand, this is how I expect people to follow my life (if they are so inclined):

• Browser: http://www.tekempire.net/
• RSS: http://feeds.tekempire.net/tekempire
• ATOM: http://feeds.tekempire.net/tekempire
• E-Mail: http://www.tekempire.net/feeds/email

These all have the same content, so take your pick.  If you follow me on another site, that's fine too, I don't plan on eliminating them in the near future. Just be aware, the above are the primary sources.

Website Overhaul

Everything is different!  (But you can keep accessing the blog however you do now.)

Between today and yesterday, I added wordpress and bbpress to my website at "http://www.tekempire.net/".  The users are integrated and the wordpress side allows OpenID logins.  (I'm not entirely sure what happens if someone logs into the wordpress side with an OpenID and tries to post comments in the bbpress end.  Feel free to try if you know what I'm talking about.)

The reason for the change is because posterous does not yet allow advertising.  Oddly, they do allow propagation to wordpress blogs.  At some point I'll put adds on my website.  For now though, I'm still tinkering with the appearance.

I added bbPress because I remember I had a forum on my site before that people seemed to like but I got rid of it because I couldn't figure out how to integrate it with the rest of my website.  Anyway, if people are afraid to use the site because they think I'm going to make changes and delete everything again.  Don't worry about that anymore.  I'm trying to get into the habit of iterative upgrades.  If I want to make a huge change, I'll first figure out how to recover the content.

The genealogy logins for "http://family.tekempire.net/genealogy/" are not integrated with the logins on "http://www.tekempire.net/"  (Hence I'm keeping it on a seperate subdomain).  Don't worry, this applies only to one person right now.

I can technically provide e-mail from my domain (through google apps), but I'm not going to automate the process for two reasons.  First, I'm not a fan of spam, and automated e-mail providers usually end up being zombies.  Second, I can't figure out how to integrate the system with the user database in wordpress.  If you would like an "@tekempire.net" e-mail address and don't mind it being a separate system from the rest of the site, just ask me.  (Note: If you aren't family or a business partner, I'll probably ignore the request.)

Dinner time.  Bye for now.