Japanese Food and iPods

2006-10-27T22:54:00

Went to a “Japanese” restaurant with some co-workers. If I were in the states and with my friends or family I would probably call it a “Sushi” place, but that didn’t seem to be the term used here^[1]. This place had a conveyor belt and you just picked up the stuff that you wanted as it went by. This concept has always seemed cool in theory, but also a little bit sketchy in terms of health, but the fish turned out to be quite fresh, and I would probably go back again.

The good news is that my co-workers are actually pretty cool. I keep telling people that there are no Jeffs where I work now (my adventures with jeff were chronicled here, here and here.

Jeff

There are many things that I miss about working at The Company, but Jeff is not one of them. I do miss my collaborations with Adil, Tiffany, Ed and Ed a lot.

I was excited yesterday because my iPod finally came back to me. I wasn’t sure they would actually do it, but they replaced it, so this is actually my third iPod (I checked and it has a different serial number), my second replacement by the same warranty, so that extended warranty was actually worth it for once. Would I get another iPod? I’m not sure, I mean I love having the thing and it is super simple to use, but as far as reliability it doesn’t score well. My friend e and her husband both have iPods and both are giving them trouble at the moment (one sounds like it has died, the other is having the same sort of problems that mine did before it finally died). Theresa’s died recently too. In my own experience their ability to fix things appear to operating at only about 66%, and you only get a good result if you call up and yell at them. I was actually super courteous both times because Theresa used to work in a call centre and people who work in places like that don’t deserve to have abuse hurled in their general direction, you do (however) have to be insistent when block your path with red tape. On the other hand when I actually have a working iPod it is hard to imagine life without it! I think I would actually get another iPod, but I’d get the AppleCare Extortion Plan up front this time, because although there was more hassles than there should have been, they did fix things in the end. That does count for a lot.

I think traditionally Sushi refers to the rice or something, but Americans at least usually use it to refer to the whole thing

Klingon Teaspoon

2004-08-20T04:55:00

I was having Raw Fish for lunch today (yes, some call it Sushi) and decided to have desert, which means Green Tea Ice Cream. I dunno if this is a widely accepted practice among all Sushi restaurants, but the place I was at today has these really vicious looking spoons for eating ice cream. I remember thinking that they looked a little like the sort of spoons Klingon's would use... if Klingon's used utensils.

Note: Yes... I am an X-Star Trek Geek. No... I'm not anymore.

Anyway, later in the super market today I was revisiting this thought in my mind and it occurred to me that the spoons are really too small to be entire spoons, but they are about the right size to be tea spoons. So I was eating with Klingon Teaspoons in the Sushi House Today.

On leaving the super market I started thinking about this Chatbot I have been half heartedly developing. I have two best friends from College. One of them has or had an acquaintance that spent all of his time developing a Quakebot. I think maybe he dropped out of school because of it. It made conversing with him pretty unplesant because he pretty much couldn't talk about anything else. So naturally this made me think about my friend, and social drawbacks to being obsessed with writing a bot. So I think I will cancel the bot project before it gets any further.

On the drive home, I decided to call my mother to tell her that I had eaten Ice Cream with a Klingon Teaspoon today. Then we talked about the olympics... and how well Australia is doing. Neither of us ever fails to take the opportunity to point out that Australia is always ahead in the per capita medal tally... even if it is only to each other. I am not quite sure why this is.

When I get home I chat on-line with my other best friend from college who is now working for a video game company in LA designing sound for a first person shooter. In a way, I am incredibly jealous. When I was younger I wanted nothing more than to work for a company designing computer games. Of course I was more interested in the more cerebral interactive fiction games of Sierra "[fill in the blank] Quest" fame. There is no money in that anymore, and I won't scoff at the Quake-esq games my buddy is working on. I estimate the sound on his games will be stunning. I'm really happy for him.

The Twilight Report

Japanese Food and iPods

Klingon Teaspoon