I forgot

I was gonna pity Microsoft, as they have been having a rough time of things these days. I mean, it seams like very few people voluntarily made the move to Vista, big news there. The Zune has not taken off as it was expected to, and the X-Box is the least reliable piece of gaming hardware in the history of gaming hardware (I think)
And then these two gems:
"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Users of Microsoft Corp's Sidekick mobile phone may have permanently lost data such as contacts, photos and calendar entries due to the failure of a Microsoft server computer."
Ouch!
But that's not all:
"SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Monday that passwords belonging to some users of its Hotmail email service were exposed on an Internet site, but had since been taken down.

The company did not say how many users were affected, but some reports suggested that passwords to more than 10,000 accounts were exposed."

Something tells me that Microsoft is suffering from G.M. itis, where a company gets too big and spread out too thin trying to make a buck in too many places that balls get dropped. No problem if the balls in question are for ping pong, a much bigger concern if they are for bowling...

Sick Again!

I swear to God, the only time I ever seem to write in this thing is when I'm sick. And I'm getting sick of it!
But seriously, it's true. So write it down, October 13th, 2009 I took a day off from work to stay in bed and work. Sore throat, heinous cough, no voice, all that good stuff. Rest and chicken soup (provided by the always awesome Ms. Hiromi Libby- thank you very much indeed).
So the good news is that I probably don't have the flu. Seasonal or otherwise, but then is that good news or bad news? I suppose it would be best if I could get it during the holidays, when I don't have to miss work. My son Shingo got the H1N1 last month and said that it pretty much kicked his butt for 5 days. That does not sound like fun, but I suppose it beats dying of it, as some do.
Anywho, using this down time to put up a website for our students and prospective students, as all we have up currently is the lowdown for prospective teachers, which is of course only half of the equation...

What's this!?

I just woke up from a dream.
I was in India.
I was getting fitted for a mall security uniform.
The scary thing was,
I didn't mind.

Wolverine

I watched that new X-Men movie about Wolverine's origins the other day. I didn't think it was nearly as bad as many people said it was. In fact, I rather liked it. Of course, I'm not as into comics as a lot of people, I just want to be entertained, and I was.
Funny thing was, when the group gets together and heads off to Lagos in search of adamantium (which, to me, sounds like something Adam Ant should be made of...) the fly off in this funky looking jet, which I thought was some Hollywood creation (ala the jet from IronMan) but then I saw this photo today:
and I thought; "Hey, that's the same plane! Apparently it made it's debut last year at an English airshow, even though it was used in the movie back in the 70s sometime...

STS 127 continued

Looks like someone read this. The shuttle launched was (thankfully) delayed due to a hydrogen leak.
But I still think they're planning on having 13 people up there...

STS 127

I don't want to wish any bad vibes on anybody, but something seems wrong with this upcoming shuttle mission.
The space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to lift off from Cape Kennedy within the next 24 hours. It will be launching on June 13. The main gig this time around is to finish building the Japanese science module 'Kibo', but the merry crew will also board the International Space Station, joining the party animals already there. This will mark the first time that 13 people will be on the ISS.
Apollo 13 launched on April 11 at 13:13, and 2 days (April 13) later suffered a near fatal accident. Don't these good rocket scientists at NASA think about these things before they plan them? Seems like they're just tempting fate if you ask me, and you haven't...

Latest Swine Flu Madness

This just in from Reuters:
"GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization has told its member nations it is declaring a swine flu pandemic — the first global flu epidemic in 41 years.
The move came Thursday as infections climbed in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere.
In a statement sent to member countries, WHO says it decided to raise the pandemic alert level from phase 5 to 6, meaning that a global outbreak of swine flu has begun. The decision was made after the U.N. health agency held an emergency meeting on swine flu with its experts."
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jTkkEKE5LtPih_5Jcc-3MpD0gOYQD98OH0U00
As of this writing the official toll is 27,737 cases in 74 (75 if you include Taiwan) with 141 deaths worldwide. According to th WHO "Increasing the alert to Level 6 does not mean that the disease is deadlier or more dangerous than before, just that it has spread to more countries."

Where does the music come from?

I have been asked, time and again, a question that I routinely ponder myself; Where does music come from? What comes first, the music or the lyrics? The simple answer is: It depends. Or, I don't know. I am always amazed that any group of musicians can agree on anything as personal and subjective as music enough to complete a song.
Of course the story would be different if it were one songwriter working alone, or at least making all the decisions her or his self, but when a band is required to agree to create a piece of music together and all the parts eventually come together and it works, it's amazing. It's mystifying. It's a wonderful thing to be a part of, and yet, after twenty something years, I'm still no closer to understanding how or why it works when it does. Or why sometimes everything clicks so effortlessly for one song, perhaps one that at first blush seemed like it would be so hard to write, but other times, and more often than not the songs that appear to be walks in the park end up being akin to trips to the dentist.
I suppose it's the mystery that makes the magic, and if we fully understood it, it might not make it so special after all.

Just for my own information

The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic lasted from March 1918 to June 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. It is estimated that anywhere from 50 to 100 million people were killed worldwide, or the approximate equivalent of one third of the population of Europe. An estimated one third of the world (500 million people) became infected.- Wikipedia
The 1957 pandemic of Asian flu lasted from late February 1957 until February 1958. Estimates of worldwide death rate varies widely depending on source, ranging from 1 million to 4 million.
For reference, about 36,000 people die in a typical flu season.

demotivational-poster-peguin-courage.jpg (image)

demotivational-poster-peguin-courage.jpg (image)

H1N1 update

May 17 (Bloomberg) -- Swine flu sickened 21 more students in Japan and Turkey reported its first case of the potentially pandemic virus that’s spread to about 40 countries.

Nine high school students in Osaka, western Japan, tested positive for swine flu and another 12 are infected in nearby Kobe city, including the country’s first reported case of local transmission, Haruki Ogawa, a health ministry spokesman, said by phone from Tokyo today. A U.S. citizen who arrived in Istanbul was found to have the virus, Turkish officials said yesterday.

Health officials are trying to gauge whether swine flu, known as H1N1, is spreading in people not linked with international travel in communities outside North America, where most of the almost 8,500 cases worldwide have occurred. Evidence of that would prompt the World Health Organization to declare the first influenza pandemic since 1968.

The health ministry is investigating the route of infection for the Japanese high school students, of whom 11 are male, Ogawa said. The infected students in Osaka attend the same school, the spokesman said. Seven of the 12 in Kobe are from one school, and the ministry is checking on the others, he said.

I Am U

We are working on a new song. It's quite an unusual one this one is, for a few reasons. One, because of a very difficult transition between the two main parts: We have a verse. We'll call this "A melody", because that's what we call it. Morich, Masa, shunt and I are all good with "A melody", I even already have a nice vocal line picked out for it, which is fairly unusual so early in the game, (and that's reason 2). The second part, we'll call "B Melody" for the same reason as stated above has a different time signature (I think), and quite a tricky chord progression (see C. A. D. F. on facebook for that) that we're still learning. It's good clean fun, but it's also work.
Reason three for calling this song unusual is that I have chosen a title already, even though the music isn't finished and not one word has been written for it. The song will be, or is, I Am U. While we were working on it this evening, I made a face that I realized I had adopted from a former student of mine. Not a face I normally make, but one that she makes all the time. Then I remembered a thousand (give or take) little things that I have absorbed from everyone i meet and incorporate into my daily expressions. Facial poses, figures of speech, word usage, even accents and dialects. I realized at that moment that I am not, as some would say, the sum of all that I have learned, but more likely the sum of everyone I have met. I'm like a bad actor, the one that everyone who sees him perform can identify some little hint or cue taken from another actors repetoire. So if I am indeed the sum of everyone I have ever met, than in a nutshell, I am you, whoever you are. And if I'm not, I will be.

Influenza update

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization, or WHO (not the band, that would be the Who), raised the level of alert to Phase 5 out of 6 on the same day a Mexican child died of the disease on American soil (maybe that's the trigger: once someone dies on US soil, things are considered serious!)- Actually, according to TIME: "WHO says the phase 5 alert means there is sustained human to human spread in at least two countries".

from the NY Times:"By Wednesday afternoon, nine countries had confirmed cases of swine flu, the strain known as the H1N1 virus. Several European nations were making plans to regulate travel involving Mexico, where more than 150 people are suspected to have died and at least 2,400 are suspected to have been infected as a result of the swine flu"

It looks as though we are stuck with the name "Swine Flu" even though it's technically inaccurate, as, according to Reuters: "The virus spreading around the world should not be called "swine flu" as it contains avian and human components and no pig has so far been found ill with the disease, the world animal health body said on Monday.".

Golden Week '09 Begins

Oh my, the time, ow she doth slip by...
Hey, it's Golden Week! Well, it is for some people. My eldest son's high school soccer had a game today, so we all packed up and headed into Hamamatsu to watch them play. Great game, no score until just before the whistle ending the first half. Final score 0-3. Bummer. This is a tournament, and they've already made it into the semi-finals, so during the actual G.W. holidays (May 3,4 & 5) they will compete for the bottom as it were.
The weather was great, the sun was out and there was a slight breeze coming off the ocean. I neglected to bring a hat so I sunburned my little head-ouch.
Well, that pretty much sums up our day. I'll try attaching a picture or two later...

What's happening with this swine flu? It's got everybody all freaked out. Really nice timing considering we're freaked out already by the economic situation (the news on which seems to vary daily from 'things are looking up faster than we expected' to 'things are much worse than anticipated'- what are you supposed to believe?)
As of today: the CDC has raised the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 4, there are over a thousand people confirmed to have contracted the bug in Mexico, and it has killed over a hundred of them, there are reports from Europe, Mexico and Central America, some in the former Soviet States, New Zealand, Australia and maybe Korea. Also, there have been 64 confirmed cases in the USA, though the cases outside of Mexico have, for the most part, been mild.
I'll try harder to stay current.