Maybe quiet for awhile..?

I have had series of not-so-happy events during the last 24 hours: to start off, I had pleasant 14.5 hour flight from NYC to Narita, starting with a security check (.. surprise ..). The flight ended relatively happily (half-full plane, so I had 2 seats to myself, luxury!), although I forgot my pen somewhere on the airplane. Similarly, I forgot my pen case AND pens on the flight from Narita to Chicago bit over week ago, so I guess it is a trend.. I hate the idea of shopping for replacements, sigh.

That was not a big hurdle though, and I got off the airport (relatively) happy. Of course, I missed the train home by 3 minutes and needed to wait another half an hour. Then, I got home and learned that our most recent hunting dog (Tupu) had died (driven over by a car) during the week. I wasn't too happy after that.

Then, I went to bed too early (7pm), and woke up 1am and could not sleep. Again, not a huge obstacle. Then the fun began.. I started playing with my laptop, trying to backup files from the trip, and suddenly all sorts of strange error messages started showing up. Not deterred, I played with it few more hours, but in the end even the adminstrator's profile got corrupted and I got depressed and decided to debug things later on after trying to copy what I could to safe place in safe mode.

On further examination, I guessed problem to be either memory or CPU - the machine booted randomly, or programs crashed, depending on phase of the moon or something. After fiddling with memory sticks, USB devices, and the CPU's thermal paste, I ran memtest86 - and lo and behold, the internal memory was partially broken. (few bits on 168mb (out of 256mb internal memory) point did not work correctly)

So to conclude, it seems that my pimped Panasonic R3 laptop is dying, sigh.. 3 months after the hard drive upgrade, to boot. I see only two real alternatives - move to a Linux-only environment at home (because Linux can be told that the few kb of memory are dead), or alternatively have the laptop repaired/replaced. I guess I will inquire Panasonic if they do memory chip replacements (somewhat unlikely, as it's somewhat tedious thing to do), and if not, I suppose I have a Linux-only laptop - and nasty decision whether to buy a new one for Windows use or not.

So, the NYC pictures will show up once I salvage them off my laptop's HD (one way or another), and until the time I get laptop up and running I don't think I will be reachable via Skype or MSN either. I'm safely in the land of the more free though, so all is well, relatively speaking - potential financial expense of replacing the laptop is not appealing.

(Although, the repairs of my camera were fairly cheap here, so maybe laptop repair is cheap too - we shall see.)

Ode to shopping

To alleviate my 30s crisis, I set myself interesting policy for New York trip - no budget whatsoever. Of course, the hotel I picked wasn't 5 star one (pictures to follow, once I get home), but for everyday food I've eaten everything from 2 dollar hot dog to 62 dollar lunch in a 5-star french restaurant. Most of the stuff I've shopped have been cheap (new bag for my laptop, climbing shoes, bunch of books) but it does add up.

Most annoying thing about tourism in NY nowadays is that every damn attraction has it's own security checks to deter terrorism, with various levels of strictness and efficiency. So far my laptop+camera backpack's been prodded by at least 5 security checkpoints, and at Liberty Island ferry (to the Statue of Liberty) they actually wanted to open it+check it was really a laptop+etc just like as if I was boarding a plane. sigh. Some stores also have wanted bags checked in, but luckily all except one accepted "sorry, I have camera+laptop here, are you insured for this?" question and let me keep it. The exception was a bag store, of all things, which I promptly left once they insisted on having my backpack (and considering my backpack contained, among other things, electronic keys to our corporate network, I chose not to leave it at the counter).

Food's been mostly terrible, only few good restaurants I randomly picked being the exception. In general, compared to Japan, there's too much food but unfortunately of inferior quality. The Metropolitan museum was ok, but much advertised Museum of Modern Art was a bore - I spent 20$ to get in and in the end was interested enough to stay inside for all of 90 minutes or so. Weather's been excellent, though, and I've gotten HUGE(tm) pile of pictures that I will dump this weekend (most likely) to somewhere accessible.

Internet access has sucked in general too. *sigh* Typing this from seats in theater of Spamalot musical, waiting for it to start - refreshingly enough, they had free wlan access, third one I've found so far. Of course, I paid $112 for the seat to the musical so maybe it's not exactly free.

I suppose that's it, most likely next one and more comprehensive NY report coming up weekend or early next week, once I am back in Japan and settled (for some definition of settled, of course).

Welcome (*cough*) to the Land the 'Free'

For a change, not going to post any pictures as I am writing this from w-lan spot in downton Manhattan, while waiting for lunch. So far the trip to the States have been fairly boring, 3 days in Durham(/Raleigh), during which I only worked and had one evening free to go sightseeing.

Much to my surprise, for the first time ever, I wasn't classified for a "random" security check at the airport when changing planes in Chicago. In hindsight, I figured out why - I got the boarding cards to Durham (Narita-Chicago, Chicago-Durham) from Tokyo, and they put the "S" markers (that are something along the lines of "suspicious", "security check needed", "spy" or something else) only when doing check-in in the States. Therefore, the way up to Durham wasn't actually too unpleasant.

Of course, for the Durham-New York leg of my trip, "Sir, you have been chosen for random security check." (...), and the plane was delayed. Despite thinking of swearing off US travel for awhile when I heard that, not to mention the fact that plane was delayed one hour, I got to see a rare sight when arriving at NY - shortly after sunset, we flew over downtown Manhattan to the La Guardia airport without a cloud in sight. Now _that_ was one impressive sight! (Unfortunately, at that point we were already in the 'landing mode', so couldn't take pictures). After that, the trip from the airport to the hotel was fairly uneventful, although I put my airport shuttle reservation to my big suitcase and forgot about it (I had woken up around midnight that day, as I was still terribly jetlagged despite having been in the States for 3 days by then). Luckily, I got to the hotel anyway (which incidentally is "the dump", but the price is right so I don't think I'll complain), and even tipped the shuttle taxi driver excessively (13$ fee, I paid 20$ and said something about "forget about the change, I want to sleep.").

Today, been walking around, the weather's excellent and the number of pictures taken so far is also excessive (in the region of 200-300). I doubt I'll keep many of them, but at least there's something to choose from. The weather forecast for the weekend is excellent, but after that it will get cloudy, and from Wednesday onward it supposedly rains until I leave on Friday. So, I decided to do my sightseeing walks today and tomorrow, and go for the indoor sightseeing/museum/concert/theater/shopping angle next week.

Funnily enough, one small plane crashing to a condo on Manhattan has led to prevention of private plane traffic on the rivers - good old-fashioned "terrorists might do that!?!?!" argument again.

Week went by fairly fast. Didn't have quite the time I could've wished for, but finally in the /album/ (for those who know where), there's some new picture sets. Didn't have time for much postprocession/selection of pictures, however :p

Been bouldering a bit (see picture below for idea about the indoor gym we go to), but my arms are still way too weak. Last week was mostly rain up to Friday, but Saturday-to-current-Monday was brilliant weather. Hardly a cloud in sight. See the Fuji images below for idea :-)

Now all I need is lot of luck that I will survive the good old "land of the free" and their terrorist profiling, considering I think I've been pulled aside last two times out of two visits done recently.

Bouldering gym

Fuji from Western Tokyo (90km?), with bit over 100mm-equivalent lens.

Fuji from Shinjuku (120km?), with 640mm-equivalent lens.

Also finally took a picture of the moon. I guess I need bigger lens if I want better picture than this: (click link to see original)

Full moon with 640mm-equivalent lens.

Another month, another post?

Unfortunately, my picture management program turned out to be bit faulty and I spent next few weeks fiddling with it. So no pictures to show here, yet..

Due to knee pain, finally decided to see a doctor few weeks ago. My Japanese hospital experience was mostly positive; the initial diagnosis of my knee cost ~20 euros, MRI scan of it 50? euros and the final telling of the diagnosis about 10? euros. Something or other in the knee was ruptured apparently, but it should heal on it's own, and I got some assorted medicines to help with the pain (if any). That's the impression I got anyway, as the doctor wasn't incredibly keen on speaking in English and my Japanese wasn't quite efficient enough. Still, considerably more fun experience than in Finland, as 3 trips total cost 80? euros, and I waited maybe total of 15 minutes..


Not much else to note; bought new camera lens (Canon EF 24-105mm f4L), ordered trip to Finland (15th of December - 8th of January), and apparently will be spending the next two weeks in good old US of A. Still debating if I should buy a cheaper camera to drag around the seedier parts of NY, as SLR makes me look too touristy/robbable? Hmm. Panasonic Lumix DMC LX-2 looks promising, as it is capable of taking RAW pictures, has manual settings, image stabilization and fairly compact size.

Pictures coming up before the next week's US trip, really!

What else..

- 23th of September - Tokyo Game Show - was quite fun
- New hobby: bouldering (climbing up walls with hand/footholds and no equipment)