Thanks to excessive downtime at work today...

...I find myself reading Kodansha's Effective Japanese Usage Dictionary cover to cover. (Yes. I am a geek. Be quiet.) The dictionary's purpose is to clarify the difference between various Japanese words and phrases which have seemingly interchangeable English definitions.

More often than not, I find myself reading the various explanations and example sentences and saying, "Of course you would never use that word like that!" Considering these reactions, I often find that I can't say why, a certain usage sounds wrong, just that it does. This means that I've come to have a decent intuitive grasp of how to use these expressions, which is very gratifying.

That will be all.

For all you liberal RPG geeks (like me)...

...firesign10 found this beauty of a link, which human decency compels me to share.

I laughed my ass off.

That will be all.

(no subject)

I arrived back in the Robe after eight days spent in the Kansai area. God, I love Kansai. Anyway, I sandwiched plenty of kicking around in Kyoto and Osaka between a week of intensive interpretation classes. Which were waaay good. I love interpreting. Too bad it pays less than shit.

More on this later as I have more time to type various things up, but for the moment, I leave you with an episode of doofusry, perhaps unrivaled save for this brilliant moment in China.

I left the seminar dormitory on Friday afternoon. I had plans to stay in Kyoto for at least one night after that, and had yet to purchase my train tickets back home. Nevertheless, I still managed to ship my house keys, bike keys, and $500 in cash back to my home in the Robe, to be delivered on Sunday evening.

Yeah. True story. Somehow, I still managed to graduate from college and walk and breath at the same time.

That will be all.

Virus?

Okay, swear I'll stop spamming everyone's flists after this post, but I do wonder.

A curious thing occurred about a month or so before ye olde computer stopped working. The recycle bin icon was always on 'full', even if there was nothing to be recycled in it. When I'd go to delete whatever mystery file the computer thought was in there, it would ask me, 'Do you want to delete the program WINDOWS?'

The new computer is now doing the exact same thing, within two days of my having brought it home. The only programs I've downloaded onto it are winamp, aim, and opera, and I do have the firewall and virus checker enabled. What on earth could be causing this, and can I expect the new machine to fry within the month?

And as a corollary, ( about the external HD. )

That will be all.