Gym

I was planning to go to a gym today, but I realized that I forgot to bring pants for exercise. Oh well, next time.

Pants

I felt sick at work. It's partly because I was really exhausted yesterday and partly because all of my pants are getting really tight. I haven't been to a gym for a long time. I really need to go more often.

Going back to California

Since I couldn't get the ticket to go back to San Jose, where my car was, I had to fly to San Francisco. The boarding time was 5:45 am, so I had to wake up at 4 am. The line for the security check was unexpectedly long. I didn't realize that it was the first morning of the three-day holiday. A lot of people must be flying this morning to go back to their life. I nearly missed my flight again. My seat was given to another person, so I had to sit in the middle seat.

After arriving in San Francisco, I had to take two Burt trains, Caltrain, and a shuttle to go to work directly. I arrived the company 2 minutes before a meeting. Phew.

After the work, I had to get my car from San Jose airport. I needed to take a shuttle, Caltrain, and a shuttle to the airport, and another shuttle to the parking. But, I got off at a wrong station from Caltrain, so I took a taxi to the parking. It was very long day.

Missed the Flight

I missed the flight to go back to California... Since I got so used to fly nowadays, I didn't pay much attention to the time.

Mt. Rainer Finally

We went to ski to Christal Mountain again and finally saw Mt. Rainer from the summit. It was very beautiful.

Green

It was raining over the weekend and today I noticed that the hill I could see from my office was green. California is actually greener in winter than summer when everything is dry and brown.

Christal Mountain Again

Since the weather forecast said that it would be a fine day, we went to Christal Mountain again to ski. Unfortunately, the mountain was cloudy and we couldn't see Mt. Rainer again.

Christal Mountain

We went skiing to Christal Mountain. We had a bad memory that we drove down there about 2 hours only to figure out that it's closed a couple of years ago. But, this time, it was open.

Because of the heavy snow, we unfortunately couldn't see Mt Rainier, but the snow was great. We want to come back again sometime soon.

iPhone

We started to use iPhone. It's really well made. The interface works very smoothly and all functions are well connected. The problem is that it's closed and don't give us any chance to extend and play with unless we try some hacks.

Horseback Riding, etc.

I took visitors to Sea Horse Ranch in Half Moon Bay. This place is recommended because about one third of two-course is on the beach like the picture below. We don't have to make make one straight line like at other places. We can even make horses half gallop.

After the horseback riding, we drove down to Santa Cruz.

Then, we drove further down to Monterey. We walked around the fisherman's wharf and drove the 17 mile drive.

When we drove through San Jose, it was in the middle of Christmas in the Park. So, we parked the car and walked around.

Stanford

I had visitors from Seattle. We visited the Stanford campus.

U-Cut

I didn't know there was anything called U-Cut. Anyway, It's my first time to cut my Christmas tree.

My First Jack-O'-Lantern

I carved a Jack-o'-lantern for the first time.

This is supposed to be the cat bus from Totoro.

We put a candle in it.

We found that it produces a cool silhouette.

XFig

I launched xfig after a long time and was surprised that it now has the fancy banner. But, the application itself looks the same as before.

Gym

I haven't worked out for almost two weeks, so I went to the gym today. I ran for 1.5 miles and did some weight training.

My weight has increased to 119.8 pounds.

Maru Ichi Noodle House

I had a ramen at Maru Ichi for dinner. The Maruichi ramen special was pretty good.

ATM

I deposited a check using an ATM and was surprised that ATMs have been improved a lot. Before, I have to put a check an envelope and write down my name, account number, the amount, etc, and deposit it to ATM by typing the amount again. Now, ATMs can scan checks and automatically detect the amount of each check probably with OCR. All you have to is confirm the amount.

The Garden Court

I went to San Francisco downtown with my colleague. We had dinner at the garden court. It was very nice place.

Arcade Renaissance: Nintendo of Japan dropping Hardware support for the Famicom

Arcade Renaissance: Nintendo of Japan dropping Hardware support for the Famicom

I didn't know that they are still supported. It was a decade before Windows 98.

Gym

I ran about 1.7 miles and did some weight training.

I forgot to weigh.

Gym

I went to the gym before dinner today. I jogged for one mile and did weight training.

Today's weight is 118.4 pounds. I expected my weight was lower because I weighted before dinner today. But, somehow, my weight keeps increasing.

Gym

I ran for 2 miles and did some weight lifting. My today's weight is 117.3 pounds.

Gym

I went to a gym to do some exercise. I jogged for 2 miles and did some weightlifting. Today's weight is 116.8 pounds.

Car

I bought a car. So, I can finally return a rental car.

Finally, I settled down. My apartment is still empty, though.

Apartment

I finally moved in to an apartment from a motel where I was temporarily staying.

The Crucible

We went to The Crucible and tried blacksmithing.


Well, this doesn't look professional, but we had fun.

First Day

Finally, I'm not a student anymore.

Flight to San Jose

Compared to usual flights from Indianapolis to Bloomington, the flight from Seattle to San Jose was very short without any transit.

I rented a car and stayed in a hotel. I need to find an apartment to live and buy a car as soon as possible.

Japanese Dinner

We had Japanese dinner at home. We cooked Sukiyaki and ordered Sushi. The sushi restaurant we usually go is always crowded, so it worked better by ordering Sushi to go and eat at home.

Hummingbirds

This morning, I saw two hummingbirds drinking nectar in the balcony.

Jade Garden

After sending a friend to the airport, we had dim sum at Jade Garden.

Leaving Bloomington

I left Bloomington after having lived for 4 years. The flight to Seattle via Chicago was smooth.

Southern Indiana

We traveled Southern Indiana today.

We first visited Starlite Drive-In Theatre. We didn't see any movies, but it was exciting because this was our first time to visit a drive-in theater outside of movies.

In Bedford, we stopped by a limestone give shop (Half Moon Lime Stone Product) and bought some souvenirs made of limestones.

Then, we went to Bluespring Caverns and had a cave tour on a boat.

On the way to the Spring Mill State Park, we stopped by Applacres and bought apple butter.

In the Spring Mill State Park, we saw how people lived in this area in old days. The demonstration of grind corns using the mill was exciting.

At last, we had dinner at Gasthof Amish Restaurant, a restaurant in Amish town.

It was a long day, but we had a lot of fun.

Casablanca Cafe

We had a final lab lunch at Casablanca Cafe.

Anyetsang's Little Tibet

We had lunch at Anyetsang's Little Tibet.

Bourbon Street Distillery

We had dinner at Bourbon Street Distillery in Indianapolis.

Upland Brewing

We had a farewell dinner of one of our colleagues at Upland Brewing.

Move

I moved to a tiny one-room house as a temporally living place as my current lease ends in a week.

Air Show

I went to the Dayton Air Show with a friend. Before the show, we stopped by at the National Museum of USAF to see a lot of air plains.

Badminton

I played badminton with friends.

Lucky Express

This week's lunch was at Lucky Express again.

Badminton

I played badminton with friends.

Lucky Express

This week's lunch was Chinese food at Lucky Express. This was my second time to go to Lucky Express. I can only go to this restaurant with Chinese friends because dishes I like are not on the menu. We need to ask the owner in Chinese to get them.

Baseball

I join the baseball practice. I got a blister on my hand and it burst. So, I couldn't bat well during a practice game.

Badminton

My neck became better, so I resumed playing Badminton.

Picnic

I joined a picnic at Fairfax state recreation area.

Penn Station

I had a quick dinner with my friend before playing badminton at Penn Station. I liked their subs much better than the ones at Subway, but probably much less healthy.

I twisted my neck while playing badminton. Maybe, it's because I didn't stretch enough this time. I had hard time even to lay down on the bed because of the pain.

Fireworks

This is almost the end of my fourth year in Bloomington, but it's my first time to spend the 4th of July in town. I went out to watch fireworks with my friends.

Baseball

I join the baseball practice.

DeAngelo's

After playing badminton, my friends and I had dinner at DeAngelo's.

Basil Leaf

This week's lunch was at Basil Leaf.

Table Tennis

I played table tennis with some friends.

Golden Corral

I had lunch at Golden Corral with some friends. A couple of hours later, we played badminton.

Lennie's

I played badminton with my colleagues. After that, we had dinner at Lennie's.

The Pita Pit

This week's lunch was at the Pita Pit. It was like Subway, but with pita instead of bread.

ATM Card

My ATM card was swallowed to an ATM. I called them. The representative reacted as if it was nothing and simply told me that they would send me another card.

Baseball

We played baseball. We are getting better and having more fun.

McCormick's Creek State Park

We went hiking to McCormick's Creek State Park. We hiked a trail around Wolf Cave. We didn't have any flashlights, so we didn't go through the cave.

Noodles & Company

Today's lunch was at Noodles & Company. I ordered Japanese Pan Noodle, which I didn't dare to order last time.

It was supposed to be Japanese Yaki-udon, but tasted bit different. It had too much source. But some Americans liked it.

$2.99

I bought something that costs $2.99 and gave a cashier $3 with cash today. The cashier didn't event try to give me a penny. The purpose of labeling products as $2.99 instead of $3.00 is to make customers feel like it's cheaper. Without giving a penny back, it is really just "feel like."

It's not that I want a penny back, but I think they should label the product as $3.00 from the beginning.

Sansho the Bailiff

This week's movie showing was Sansho the Bailiff by Kenji Mizoguchi.

Baseball

I joined a baseball practice. It was fun.

Siam House

This week's lunch was at Siam House. We had Thai buffet.

Table Tennis

I played table tennis with some friends.

Casio EX-V7

A new digital camera I ordered last wee arrived today. It's Casio EXILIM HI-ZOOM EX-V7. This is my 5th digital camera. The following is the history.

Sanyo DSC-X110 (bought in 1999)
Canon IXY Digital 300 (bought in June 2001)
Sanyo DSC-MZ3 (bought in December 2002)
Casio EXILIM ZOOM EX-Z40 (bought in April 2004)

Noodle Town

We had lunch at Noodle Town. Their roasted duck noodle was quite good.

Anyetsang's Little Tibet

We had lunch at Anyetsang's Little Tibet.

Google Gear

I installed Google Gear. It seems working right with Google Reader. I would really like to see this to be used with Gmail and Google Calender.

LaTeX and PDFLaTeX

Last time I wrote the following to detect whether latex or pdflatex is used to compile a source, but I noticed today this will confuse the latex commend in Cygwin. The latex commend in Cygwin is a symbolic link to pdflatex and this makes pdflatex to produce a pdf file instead of a xdvi file even though you call latex.

\ifx\pdftexversion\undefined
\usepackage[dvips]{hyperref}
\else
\usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref}
\fi

After searching webs, the following works fine.

\usepackage{ifpdf}
\ifpdf
\usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref}
\else
\usepackage[dvips]{hyperref}
\fi

Google Maps Street View

This service will be useful when I look for an apartment or something.

For example, this is the apartment I stayed last summer.

Shogun

I was invited by my friends and played a board game, Shogun.

Sushi Party

We had a sushi party. Another Japanese ordered fresh fish from somewhere and he made sushi. It was fun. I brought pre-cooked sukiyaki.

Cafe Django

This week's lunch was at Cafe Django. I had today's special, peasant momo. I have had momo multiple times at a Tibetan restaurant, but today's momos were huge.

Bombay House

We had lunch at Bombay House again. It's a Indiana style buffet. We've covered pretty much all restaurants within walking distance from the university.

Pépé le Moko

Today's movie was Pépé le Moko directed by Julien Duvivier.

Baseball

Probably it's my first time to play baseball even tough I have played softball when I was in an elementary school.

Chopstick Helpers

Today's lunch was at Noodles & Company.

I found something interesting today. They are called chopstick helpers. It's best described if I say that they turn chopsticks to tongs. Honestly, with a chopstick helper, I cannot use chopsticks at all.

Latex Tips

I was playing around with the URL formating with Latex today and found the following.

\url{http://example.com} in the url package displays URLs inserting line breaks properly. But, the same \url{} doesn't insert line breaks if you use the hyperref package with the dvips option (hyperref is a useful package to create hyperlinks in PDF), but works fine with the pdftex option.

So, I started to use pdflatex to create PDF instead of the old-style latex-dvips-ps2pdf combination. pdflatex doesn't support EPS files, so I converted all EPS files to PDF using epstopdf.

But, I still want to use latex and xdvi for quick modification. It's because xdvi refreshes the updated dvi file automatically. I can just keep xdvi open showing some specific page. Every time I compile the TeX file, I can see the modified result right away. I don't need to reopen the file and move to the specific page. So, I did the following to make the LaTeX file compilable both with latex and pdflatex.

First, I load the hyperref package with the proper option detecting how the file is compiled.

\ifx\pdftexversion\undefined
\usepackage[dvips]{hyperref}
\else
\usepackage[pdftex]{hyperref}
\fi

Then, I removed file extensions, like \includegraphics{foo}, so that includegraphics finds foo.eps or {foo.pdf or foo.png} depending on how I compile it.

cygstart.exe

I have been using the following script to open files using Windows applications, but today I got to know about cygstart.exe, which does exactly my script does. How long has it been there?

#! /bin/sh
/cygdrive/c/Meadow/bin/fiber "`cygpath -w $1`"

Extra Battery for my Note PC

Because of the recall of ThinkPad batteries, I received a new battery today. I have been using the original battery for almost a year, so it's a good timing to switch to a new one (as you know, batteries wear out).

Badminton

I feel like I finally did some exercise after really long time.

Laughing Planet Cafe

Today's lunch was a burrito at Laughing Planet Cafe.

Ugetsu Monogatari

This week's movie was Ugetsu Monogatari, by Kenji Mizoguchi.

World Cup Final

Today is the final of World Cup of, ... well, cricket, a sport I knew nothing about except the name. Recently my friends from India and Sri Lanca, where cricket is very popular, kept talking about the games. So, I went over their place and watched the last couple of hours of the game. A game is usually around 8 hours because they play shorter version in World Cup. (The longer one lasts for 5 days.) Thanks to their explanation, now I know at least how they play it.

Picnic

Today was a picnic at Bryan Park. We played regular Frisbees and Ultimate Frisbees around here. (The satellite image of Google Map has gotten better even in this small town.)

Falafels Flavors From Jerusalem

Today's lunch was at Falafels Flavors From Jerusalem. It's a Israeli restaurant.

My Laptop is Back

My laptop came back this morning. It was fast. They seem to have replaced the mother board, which they call planar card, and the keyboard. I thought it was a problem of the fan or somewhere around, but anyway, the problem was fixed.

By the way, it's still handled by the IBM repair center, not Lenovo's.

Life without My Laptop

As I wrote in DVD Encoding in a Fridge, something has been wrong with my laptop, ThinkPad T60. I finally sent the laptop for repair. Thanks to Web-based email, schedular, blog, RSS reader, bookmark synchronizer, and memo combined with classic services like IMAP and CVS, I could easiliy move my working environment to other computer. But, still something is totally diffent without the laptop.

Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Mr. Hulot's Holiday)

I watched Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot by Jacques Tati. It's a comedy and somewhat similar to Mr. Bean.

Actually, there will be a parody by Mr. Bean, Les Vacances de Mr. Bean.

Bombay House

We had lunch at Bombay House.

Sending a Package to Taiwan

I got the address to send in Chinese. Not even knowing how to pronounce it, I went to a post office and copied the address to the envelope. Because it contained non-printing materials, an post officer asked me to fill in a customs declaration form in English. Well, I need to go back to the post office tomorrow.

DVD Encoding in a Fridge

When I encode MPEG2 using my laptop (ThinkPad T60), it becomes very hot and either suspends or turns off automatically. I had the same problem last summer with my old ThinkPad X30, but I was disappointed that the same happened to the new T60.

I probably need to send back the T60 to check because it's still withing the warranty, but to circumvent the situation, I put the T60 in my fridge last night. When I woke up this morning, the encoding was done. (Of course, the computer was suspended because it's out of battery.)

ToDo List for Google Calendar

I have been using the ToDo gadget for Google Desktop to keep track of my ToDo list. But, somehow the Google Desktop nowadays uses a lot of CPU in my environment (probably after the recent update, I'm not sure). So, sometimes, I need to disable the Google Desktop. Then, of course, I cannot access to my ToDo list.

I searched a bit and found this (Google Operating System: ToDo List for Google Calendar) and decided to give it a try.

La Sirène du Mississipi (Mississippi Mermaid)

I watched La Sirène du Mississipi by François Truffaut.

Madama Butterfly

I went to watch an opera, Madama Butterfly, with my friends.

Local Google Calender

Although I haven't tried it by myself yet, this seems useful. It is still its early stage, so it has several restrictions, but we can hope for its future.

Edit (4/16):
I tried by myself and it turned out that it was not so useful because the Google Calendar provider doesn't cache the entries. If you cannot use it offline, what's the point of using Google Calendar from a standalone application? We'll hope for the future.

Cafe Ami

We had a Korean buffet at Cafe Ami for lunch this week.

Casablanca Cafe

This week's lunch was at Casablanca Cafe. It was a Moroccan restaurant. I had paella. It was really good.

Snow

Last weekend, we had a very good weather. That's why we even went hiking. But today, it went back cold again. It even snowed a little.

Nationality

When I told people that I had an engagement ceremony in Taiwan, two questions drew my attention. First question is "I thought you were Japanese." and the second question is "Did you get engaged with a Japanese working in Taiwan?" Even in this age, a lot of people seem to assume that people get married among the same nationality.