genman’s blog

As I blogged a few blogs ago, it was supposed to be going to China, but those plans had been changing up until about two weeks ago. Eventually it was decided I'd be going.

Hitomi came back that same week (Sunday) and I had less inclination to be anywhere without her. Plus I'd be missing out on Halloween. In some ways it was my fault, in that I was asked by work to give reasons why I was needed in Shenzhen and I came up with a pretty convincing e-mail, I suppose.

(By the way, I'm typing this in Hong Kong. China blocks pretty much all the blog sites out there. So that's why I hadn't posted any updates to Facebook or here.)

I'll need to update this as time goes by.

Flight: Eva Air leaves around 2AM for Taiwan from Seattle, and pretty much nobody's in the airport, so it's a pretty lonely affair. I was flying business but for whatever reason it was tough feeling comfortable sleeping. Shoulder room was great but I experienced the usual leg fatigue and being by a window of course I had to pee every few hours it seemed.

Felt pretty good in Taipei. The airport terminal I remember from my last to Taiwan with Hitomi brought back some good memories. But there was no Hitomi this time around. And though I had plenty of food on the flight in the middle of the night, I enjoyed breakfast yet again.

Hong Kong airport: Felt like a step up from Taipei. I was taking the ferry to Shenzhen and the ferry service will transfer your bags from the airline directly, which is a help. While waiting for the ferry, I bought some books and coffee. The ferry sounded better than it was: For one, you're inside. For another, there's a lot of waiting and being transferred.

Mainland China landing: Definitely pretty ghetto and strangely what I expect to see. Luckily, customs and immigration was efficient and not at all pushy like in the U.S. I exchanged some cash and proceed to the taxi area.

It was about 350RMB (Chinese money) to the hotel, and basically I was ripped off (again) by third World taxi drivers. Alas, it was only about $50 US, so no great harm. I thought I learned my lesson in Thailand: Never, ever ride in a taxi with no meter running. Plus I should have realized when the driver said he liked the U.S. I should have realized I was being conned.

Of course the first thing I do in the hotel is assemble my bicycle, which actually was difficult this time around. It's been awhile but also the front brake (caliper) was misbehaving. Somehow the nut on the middle of the screw got loose or something causing the head to get loose. A lot of knucle banging later and it was okay. Then: Where to ride?

Speaking of screws loose, yes I rode in Shenzhen, where the drivers are insane. Shenzhen, in short, is like a heavily polluted and spread out version of Hong Kong where the roads are bigger and traffic perhaps more vicious. In some ways, it's all a reflection of life is worth less and standards of living are sacrificed in the name of advancing progress. Some suspect Barack Obama may be Communist, but the Chinese are Communist, and the Party is more vicious and heartless than even your most avaricious right wing Republican's fantasy.

I highly value my life, yet paradoxically ride a bicycle in this sort of shit. Anyway, where should I go? I bought a map of the city, which was designed to work okay for drivers who take major roads, but I wanted to find minor ones, which tend to be more interesting. But the way the city was designed, there are basically islands of huge towers and communities and they are like islands surrounded by big roads. Taxis are thankfully cheap (for us foreigners) and there is a subway which provides refuge for pedestrians.

In terms of traffic safety, here are some things to note: Pedestrians must yield to motorists. Motorists never signal. They can drive however they want, as fast as they want. Note: There are bicycle lanes, but motorists can and will use those for parking or driving if they feel like it. If you are more than 1 second late accelerating, they will honk at you. They will honk when passing on the left or right or if you are in front of them. Seatbelts are optional, especially in taxis where the buckles might be broken or missing. If the driver wears one, he will likely be sitting on the shoulder strap.

First ride I did: Came back exhilerated but my lungs hurt from...something in the air. And in addition to the persistent pollution, which scarily blankets the sky with a dull brown on even a sunny day, a lot of places smell like old garbage, ala Ho Chi Min City. What am I doing here?

Hitomi (who's in Japan) called me out of the blue. It was good to talk to her. I hadn't talked to her since Friday. I was in the middle of work, unfortunately and had to keep the conversation short.

Something threw me off about her phone call. For whatever reason, I didn't really want to talk. Isn't there a rule when you're on vacation you're only allowed send postcards, letters, or e-mail? But I understand her position. More frequently, I'm out of town and Hitomi's at home. And being alone on vacation feels incredibly alone.

Last weekend I was out hiking with friends. We went off to Manning Provincial Park in B.C. Admittedly I didn't think too much about my wife while freezing in the mountains. I wasn't struggling to survive but the cold took my mind off a lot of things back home. And let's not discount the great scenery: Where we were camped probably has one of the best views of the North Cascades than anywhere else.

Also to keep my mind of Hitomi, I was busily ordering a bunch of manga. I kind of got shopper's euphoria there for a bit. Lately, I've gotten into girl's love manga (often called "yuri" in the West) so I ordered a couple of those sorts of titles.

From what I hear, Hitomi managed to assemble her bicycle and is getting ready to ride on her own through Shikoku. I wish her luck. She's only riding about 40-50 miles for a few days, but she said it was pretty warm so it might be difficult in the heat.

Things have gotten extremely busy (comparatively) these past few weeks thanks to a new project/demo we're putting together for a Chinese company. This is all good but I've been less motivated to spend my day in an office due to the incredibly fine weather as of late.

Most of the difficultly, project-wise, has been finalizing requirements. So, you build what you think you need but then expect some of that work to be wasted.

Anthony, a young Momoist who've we've met in Japan, San Jose, Vegas, but never in Seattle, came by our house on Friday. We watched/sampled a bunch of J-Pop concert videos as well as Evangelion 1.11, on Blu Ray. Dinner was nabe, not really appropriate for the warm weather but almost always good. Plus we had moon cakes. (Moon cakes are kind of like Christmas cookies that you do like them once in a while but wouldn't want to eat them all year long.)

Bedtime was around 3AM for me, so Hitomi and I spent most of Saturday morning in bed. Worked on my Chinese project at home: Not sure why I felt compelled to spend the day hacking. Maybe because of the weather. Didn't want to cook, though we had tons of leftovers, so went out to Malay Satay Hut.

Sunday was Tim's birthday. I rented a bunch of movies. Tim, mom and I watched one. Alone on the Pacific was about the first single-handed sailor from Japan, Horie Ken'ichi. Movie probably exaggerated and changed the order of events of his 94 day sail, although I'm sure there were numerous challenges. (Note: Ruriko Asaoka is incredibly sexy. Would not leave Japan with a sister like that!) Then I spent the evening hacking away at JBoss deployment configuration.

Monday I spent dealing with more configuration issues. JEE is like that.

Tuesday (and until Friday) I went into work, either the whole day or part of the day.

I went out two a couple of movies. First was 9 (3D animation). Animation-wise, and aesthetically, it was quite well done. However, it lacked pacing or something like it, since it was mostly scene after scene of crazy rescues and fights. Too much action and you stop caring. I was with Ian, and he suggested the movie, so walking out of the theater, I wasn't too sure if I should say anything bad about it. (It's easy to complain and that ruins the fun for people who enjoyed the movie.) But still, there were really good aspects.

By the way, I'm not big on celebrity voice acting for animation. Sure, it sells tickets, but well-known celebrities aren't necessarily qualified for voice acting. And rather than the celebrity sounding like the character, the character tends to be changed to fit with the voice actor. And celebrities are often famous because of how they look not because of their acting skill.

Eureka Seven (anime) was much more entertaining. There was a one-time screening on Thursday at Pacific Place, though it was unfortunately sparsely attended. The story was really too intricate and complicated for its own good. (Anime can either be inextricable or overly dense, it seems.) Fortunately, the character interactions were good and animation and action was high quality. The dub actors were good but the writing wasn't agreeing with my ears. Dub translation scripts often add extra words, so dialog often seems unnaturally wordy.

I managed to get out for a swim September 22nd. Water's been getting colder but, hey, mid-eighties temperatures should not be squandered.

Friday I left work early and shopped Uwajimaya. We had Sanma Hiraki, a fall-appropriate fish. If I stopped eating animal meat I'd probably switch to eating fish like this. These guys are really oily, which you'd think would appeal to Americans, but there's just something about oily fish which Americans don't like I guess. Plus, Hitomi made a bunch of interesting side dishes.

I watched two movies that night, since they were due Saturday. First was The Warlords, which was an interesting take on history but seemed to drag on. Spoiler: Everyone dies. Then I saw a classic movie, The Great Escape, which was a lot more entertaining but since it's based on a real event, it was sad at the end. Spoiler: Almost everyone dies. So I get to bed really late.

And then there's this hike the next day. It was a Sakura-con guest relations hike, plus a couple of friends of friends. It was just a short trip to Baring, then Barclay Lake and back again. We manage to start a fire out of embers left over from a fire pit. It kept us warm. I can't say the mountain (Baring) impressed as much as the glaciers on Rainer from Paradise but it was less than half the drive and a much easier hike.

I went to Ian's birthday party in the evening. Since Ian is poor, people were asked to bring their own food, though he did have some chicken, rice, and sauce but maybe enough for about 5-6 people. (About 15+ came.) I got him a massage gift certificate, since he walks around like a crippled old man with bad posture, and maybe a massage might help some. (Exercise would help him, but he's not too into anything intense enough to make much difference.) I pick on him some but he has lots of nice *other* friends, okay? And his mom's a yoga instructor, so it's not as if he couldn't do yoga for free.

Sunday (today): Slept in, or tried to. We have an obnoxious (old?) cat who doesn't let us sleep in on Sundays it seems. Left a little late for a football game. To this fan, football's much more interesting than baseball. I tried explaining the game to Hitomi but she got busy with crocheting and ignored the second half. Nintendo had a suite for this game, which included free food and drinks. It must have cost about $200 per person, times about 20 or so. Seahawks lost, of course, but I enjoyed the game.

We biked back: Beautiful weather again.

I inherited a Maytag Neptune front loader washing machine with my house.

It's been mostly fine until recently. But now the front door no longer unlocks and the washer does not stop when the washing cycle ends.

I got a Maytag Repairman (sort of) to come by and 20 minutes later (at the cost of $150), he discovered the main circuit board was shot. Apparently by design, the circuit board will short out (and burn out) when the wax motor goes. So repair this mess would cost about $400 plus.

Which would still be cheaper than a new washer, but the bearings are also shot. To repair this would cost probably another $400 or more. $400 to repair bearings--and presumably bearing races--since the bearings are sold as part of a large assembly.

So much for repair. I'll need a new washer. For now, I can force the door open, but eventually the machine will seize.

I asked the repair guy what sort of washer to buy. He suggested a top-loading machine with a mechanical timer. Basically the repair guy suggests a non-electronic washer. (Not sure I'd want to go that way, as top-loaders use a lot more water.)

I wonder if there's a washing machine that has user-serviceable bearings. I joined Consumer Reports online ($12). Looking at the top rated machines, it seems most still have bearings that will last about 5 years at most. So get an extended warranty.

Back to work on Tuesday. Heard some more about my project at work. I'm going to China! But when?

Spent some time working on patches for Verizon. Nothing big but the change required fixing about 4-5 build scripts and migrating source repositories. And getting all the build configurations right through a GUI is a chore.

Most of the work for China so far has been pulling out code from existing places and making separate modules.

On the domestic side of life, I had my 10th wedding anniversary on Thursday. Hitomi's still quite the charmer. I put together a card and we had sushi at Village Sushi, which is always reasonable and good. There's probably better sushi places around but there's something I like about this place. Maybe it's the affable owner? Or that it's in a remodeled house with bad wiring? If you go, order the Omakase. At around the $60 level there's a lot of good stuff in there for two.

Friday we drove over to my parent's place and spent the night. We were doing a ride on Saturday which started at around 8AM so it was nice to be closer to Mount Vernon. The ride was beautiful. I liked crossing the Deception Pass bridge and the little bridge they have from the refinery over to Anacortes. On the way back, I was harassed by some random local. I was riding off course, so no other riders were around. Apparently the first time I wasn't harassed enough (by horn), so she pulled over, I passed by and then she came up behind me and leaned on the horn one more time.

In the evening, we had Yakiniku (BBQ) at Eugene's place. He lives in a condo in the U District but, like in most anime, his parents never seem to be around. Being the manager, he has access to the roof and so we had BBQ on the top of the building, in view of Downtown Seattle, and Mt Rainer, etc. Hitomi and I brought over the shaved ice machine, toppings, including fresh fruit from Skagit Valley, and we eventually got sleepy and went home.

Sunday was another BBQ at Ryan and Emi's place in (The People's Republic of) Wallingford. Again, we brought over the shaved ice machine. They have a nicer place than their old one in Magnolia. They're in a duplex and have a nice yard. They have a tortoise, named Isoroku, which seems considerably more active than our cat, Rei.

Monday I went to the DOL. The DOL in Greenwood's closed so I had to go to the Downtown office. In the waiting room, with my things, I smelled cat pee on my bike bag. Actually, I had realized Rei peed on it, and cleaned it up early, but I hadn't really noticed the smell hadn't really gone away. He peed on plastic--nylon--which couldn't absorb a liquid, but what do I know?

(I mentioned being kicked out a concert over the weekend on Facebook. A little background on this first.)

Halko Momoi is a very popular singer and voice actor, at least in the anime community in Japan. Definitely one of the top five performers of her genre. She's my wife's most favorite performer.

Momoi was approached by Mr. O (not his real name) to perform at this fairly small event. Mr. O with the chairman of Anime Vegas, helped bring her to the event. This decision was made at the last minute. Her dedicated fans, mostly from out of state, including Hitomi and I, made special last-minute travel arrangements (flight, hotel, etc.) as well as worked on a "call book", brought hundreds of glow sticks, etc. We dedicated fans also make an effort to do live internet broadcasts, translate material, etc.

As it so happens, we were allowed to internet broadcast some of the performances at Anime Vegas. But not the concert for Momoi. And although the connection (through an EVDO modem) was physically disconnected, someone it was reestablished again automatically. (Or deliberately?)

Contractually speaking, free live broadcast was not allowed, although live recording was. As it turns out, the chairman got informed that the live broadcast was active. (By whom?) And then convention security was upon, at least, some of us. The guy manning the computer was kicked out immediately. And--by being in the front row with an Momoi t-shirt on?--some of us other guys were told to get out as well. (Not Hitomi, who looks innocent I suppose.)

I had nothing to do with any of the broadcast. I'm just part of this fan club, and I didn't know what was going on. Still there I was out in the hall with the chairman and a couple of other innocent and angry fans during the middle of the performance. Two or three songs later, we were let back in. Hitomi was a bit confused by this and you can read her blog, if you can read Japanese.

Needlessly to say, us fans were upset at all this, and vow not to return. Especially since she was only performing a short one hour set and here I was spending three days in Las Vegas, which is like Los Angeles but a lot more miserable.

...I could also fill this post with a list of things that weren't cool about the event but I will keep it to this.

To make up for all this I did have a lot of fun at meals with her fans. Monday, since Momoi wasn't showing up at all, Hitomi and I went and enjoyed a few short hikes on the outside of town, at Red Rock Canyon.

I wonder why I still use Yahoo! as an RSS reader. A lot of the time my.yahoo.com looks like this screenshot:

Oops-yahoo

Spend Saturday cleaning house, with a vacuum strapped to my back. Hitomi was out getting a haircut, eating fresh peach crepes and getting a massage and facial.

I was alone and so I had Ian come by early. We went out and watched Ponyo, which was amazing, and a fortunate return to the Miyazaki storytelling we saw in Spirited Away. The dub was pretty good, minus the rock and roll send up of the ending theme song.

House cleaning was primarily for a draft tournament I was hosting later that day. As it was my first draft tournament, I didn't know what to expect. Greg Marques, an employee of Wizards of the Coast, brought over a box of the popular Magic: The Gathering "M10" core set. (I had bought a box online back at the start of the month but it was back-ordered.) He also brought a box of Alara to draft.

We started late. Probably around 8:30PM. Originally conceived as a small get-together, I somehow ended up with about 8 people. (And at one point I expected about 10-12.) Games take some time to run, as what you do is first draft cards--that is pick cards out of packs and pass the pack around--and assemble a deck. So it's about 9:30PM when we start our first set of match. Each match you may play up to three times.

I drafted really well. I basically ended up with a green-white deck, where I chose green mana acceleration spells, big green, and white control and white evasion, i.e. flyers. I drafted a Serra Angel, Overrun, Might of Oaks, the new Great Stable Stag, and Birds of Paradise, plus a couple spells like Silence. I lost once to a black/red control player. I made a few bad choices on control cards, and a couple of bad plays, which probably cost me in that game.

Half the players left around 12:30AM. I had won second place, but not definitively. I was sharing second with about 2 others. I did win some cards.

We then ran another draft. And I was tired and it was a hard series to draft for: Mostly two-, three- color cards. So I wasn't winning very much and we only got through a few games until it was about 2:30 and it was time to shut down.

Slept in on Sunday. Was tired much of the day anyway. Walked Greenlake with Hitomi and had a good dinner. Then I "beat" Fallout 3.

Not sure why I took so long to source a networking library for use at work. I've already wasted so many hours dealing with packet fragmentation, socket handling, and assorted bugs. (TCP isn't a great protocol for sending messages. I await SCTP adoption eagerly.)

Not only fragmentation, but dealing with simple stuff like reading and writing using Java NIO. ByteBuffer is oddly a hard class to use. Something about having to flip it around and whatnot. It's also fixed length buffer, which makes it pretty much inappropriate for serializing a variable length message.

I went with JBoss Netty on a project which handles framing, has a nice replacement for ByteBuffer, and a pretty simple and elegant architecture as well. And I managed to implement a replacement for an old bit of code in about two, three hours, just following the surprisingly good documentation and examples.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind. One is that all reads/writes are asynchronous and even closing the connection is asynchronous. Thus, you need to pay attention with the ordering.

Competing products Grizzly and MINA don't seem to be as simple or have the above features.