America

Erin's picture

Long time

A couple of days ago I fired up my Skype and heard this message left by 2 drunken fools rambling on and on about how I never call and write and how they had t shirts for me.... In addition I have got a few email enquiries asking how things were going.

I have not posted anything since I got to America. There was just too much going on and I was not really feeling like .... well like I was really back in the USA. I have had the feeling more like I am on vacation from Japan and soon I will have to go back. There was more then a few times when I questioned why I was here WTF I was gonna do about XYZ problem and how I was gonna make it till the next day. In that time a couple of things pulled me through, team reports of matches on the TokyoGaijin.com text messages and emails from friends and lastly, the videos of all of my teammates at my going away party. Honestly, Lonnie told me not to watch them till I was on the plane. I waited till I needed them and they really helped me get through a couple of tough times.

When I got to Texas, the first thing I did was try to find the rugby club in my area. It was kind of a disappointment. I have been on plenty of teams before, but the coach and a couple of others made me feel pretty unwelcome right away. I shrugged it off and things got better, but when I got my work schedule I found I had to work on Saturday, our game day here, and the fact that I did not have health insurance till February did not help. Finally in January I scratched my leg. I slid in on my shin for a try in touch and got what I thought was a little brush burn. $300 and a swollen leg and 3 weeks of antibiotics later, I decided to wait till I had real health insurance to keep playing. There are some summer 7s and 10s matches coming up and I am trying to get fit to play in them.

After a long peacefully quite wait Satomi, Eric, Anna, and little baby Sara all arrived with the help from my mother in law.  

It took some time to get all our stuff and fill the house but we did it and now have a guest bedroom, anyone want to come and stay in Houston for a couple days?

Eric started going to school and playing rugby. Both are going well for him, he scored a hard fought try on the wing in his last game of the season, and his English is improving also he passed ESOL reading and writing level 1, and his teachers and coaches are always ecstatic about having him around. In school Eric seems to be enjoying himself and his teacher is very happy at how well he does in math, especially word problems, with out being able to read them he still manages to under stand the problem and solve it correctly.

His Rugby Couch lets him play all over to get the feel for the right position and he likes prop lock and hooker, but the assistant coach would rather stick him on the wing cause he is tall skinny and fast. In his first couple of games Eric made a name for himself and had everyone screaming his name as he ran across the field twice to drag a player to the ground from the opposition who had made it past everyone else and stop what seemed like inevitable tries.

He is naturally better then me at everything he tries to do, but he is never very serious about anything still, like father like son. He always asks why we do not have after parties for his team like we did in Tokyo? "In a few years..." I say.  

Anna has become quite the handful since moving but is still cute and funny! She speaks Japanese and English, in a very matter of fact way, so fast that the words sometimes run together into nonsense. Her favorite phrase right now is "You gotta wait!"

Sara is a patient little angle who rarely cries.... except at 4 AM or when she really wants to be held.

Finally I left the company I came to Houston to join, and had to find some new employment. There was nothing wrong with the company I was at, I just did not fit in. I found a new job and it appears to be a great fit so far. Things are getting better little by little.

I want to say that I miss all my friends from Japan and enjoyed the lessons learned, during my time in Tokyo. I miss all of my friends at GMO, TGRFC and TLUG, and hope through out the crisis you are doing well. I think about you all at least once or twice a day and think Gambatte!

Seriously if you're interested in coming to Houston, send me a message on my contact page or you can hit me up on Skype at erin_hughes_jp. 

Erin's picture

Corrosion of Conformity Take What You Want

Corrosion of Conformity Take What You Want

Just as long as we are here, standing tall for one more year
Sing out loud and keep away the cold

When you're blind and you can't see
Realize it's them, not me
I might be hard to find, you know it happens everytime

When I'm tired I crawl, I can't stand to see you fall
And the years they don't treat you like they used to

When you're wide and I'm awake
I got time enough for days Take a-want you want
It just might set you free, not me ...

Oh no way, I've been up for a thousand days 
But you can cut me down when I'm old and gray 
And if you catch me on the move, you can come along
Or you can disapprove

I might be hard to find, you know it happens every time

When I'm tired, I crawl, I can't stand to see you fall
And the years they don't treat you like they used to

When you're wide and I'm awake
I got time enough for days take a-want you want 
It just might set you free and not me...

Does it feel the same

When I'm tired I crawl like the savior in us all
But I don't mind it's somethin' that I'm used to

And when it's time to go, I just thought I'd let you know
Farewell this time, you're always on my mind

When I'm tired I crawl, it's a shame to see you fall
And the years they don't treat you like they used to

But when you're wide and I'm awake
Baby, I got enough damn time for a million days
Take a-want you want and it just might set you free....

When you're up you roam, it's a shame to see you go
And the years they don't treat you like they used to

Just as every light you see might be the one that sets you free
Keep on rising like the ones you used to know, let's go.......

Erin's picture

Axe Cop

Axe Cop

Axe Cop is a web comic written, by a 5 year old and illustrated by his older brother.
According to Comics Coast To Coast.

"Just as interesting as the webcomic itself are the creators of this viral internet phenom. The writer, Malachai, is only 5 years old. His brother Ethan, the artist, is 29 years old. Despite such an age difference they are able to work as a team to create a powerful and amusing webcomic that has the creativity of a child with the artwork of a self taught cartoonist. In other words...pure magic."

Here is a the latest video and if you have the time check out the pod cast at iTunesAnd of course check out Axe Cop.

Erin's picture

Hollywood

Welcome to 2009, where on October 16th my last and possibly most fondest child hood memory of my Aunts reading Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are" to me, will be raped by Hollywood in... it's quest to ruin everything I thought was great as a child.

I read this story to my son for almost 3 years straight at least 2 times a week. I love this book. I have this book almost completely memorized. I am sure that I own at least 3 copies of this book, one that my Aunts (Aunt Lyn my godmother) gave me as a child, that my mother then gave to her when she had children that she gave back to me, when Eric was born.

It is redeeming to see that Spike Jonze is directing it and really seems to care about makeing a film that doesn't suck.

The people who made Transformers, Terminator 4 and G.I. Joe should all go see this movie. If the movie is 1/2 as good as the trailer they might learn something.

Hollywood please stop making movies that suck, just because you think I am a 30 something guy with kids who will say "AUGH COOL I use to watch/read/play with that when I was Eric's age. Eric will love it!"

 
Here is the trailer, enjoy it, I did.
Erin's picture

TEST-IMAGE2

My favorite Anna picture!
Erin's picture

For the love ROCK!

Ya so Kid Rock. Love him or hate him, he has some tonge and cheek things to say about downloading music. Me I might have downloaded a song or 2 in my day, I will say "Do not follow all his advice!" There are a couple of reasons for this, and while most of my ideas are not well thought out, I think this one is pretty sound. When you steal a iPod a laptop or a tank of gas all your doing is inconvenience someone ... just like YOU! Rock and I are almost the same age and while I do not make as much as he does, I will be dammed if I am gonna inconvenience myself with a run in with the popo cause I think "Well Bill and Steve got lots of dough they wont miss this stuff." They won't ... heck they probably cant even quote accurate sales figures of the latest Windows Pitsa or iCrap w/o 20 assistants telling them where, when, and how. They are so far removed from the sale of each device that it is .... sad. The people who will feel it are you neighbor who works at the local PC place who gets laid off cause PC sales are slacking, or your other mate who works at the Apple Store, or finally your best friend who washes cars at the Toyota dealership for minimum wage. While I totally feel where Rock is coming from and I think he has a valid point that "Corporate America is raping the lower and middle class." Stealing from you Steve and Bill is not going to fix the problem. They will never feel it. Your friends will.
Erin's picture

A AMD fanboy. Laymans reasoning.......

Wow so I looked on Reddit today and found not one but 2 articles about Intel Vs. AMD.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080507-amd-intels-misdeeds-killin...

And

http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/107495

I didn't read either...... but I am a AMD fan from way back to my second computer which had a AMD Athlon. It was a 1300 mhz chip that over clocked beautifully to 1600 mhz and only took 22 hours to render a 15 minute video clip........

Reading that you might notice that I got into computing quite late in the game. True, I was almost 30 when I got my first computer job. Regardless I have always been a AMD fan even though some would say Intel based processors are "better".

Lets clarify "better" for one second .... there are a million ways for a processor to be FASTER , or more power efficient or a number of other qualifications, but if your mother board memory and video card not built to match, and you do not have all the most recent drivers patches and firmware you might .... as a end user notice the difference.

This argument brings me back to my youth ... Chevy Vs. Ford .....then throw a Hemi fan in the mix and .... well forget your civility's.  In reality it was the same thing. It would always
boil down to a 305 V8 vs a 302 V8, then you change out the valve trains, cam and exhaust. Wait you can still overbore and ......................................

The arguments of yesterday carry over to today.
Erin's picture

It is nice to be remembered.

So I have been doing some work for a company that I worked for before in America.

When I started there I was fresh out of computer careerer training and had only passed a couple of tests and gotten Microsoft Professional Certification. Which was pathetic even at the time. When I think how now I am Unix Administrator for the second largest ISP in all of Japan..... man how things have changed.

I started at the golf company with out a clue, and through allot of hard work and help from others, I built what is still one of the strongest standing testaments of my ability.

But this is not really about me .... it is about how it got done.

My old boss got fired and my new boss came in .... I did not meet him on the first day cause my newborn son and wife were leaving the hospital and I wanted to take them home.  When I did meet him he layed it all out.

"We are behind"  Bubby said "We need to connect these 2 sites to our ERP app by the end of the month. I hear we have Citrix and Citrix Licenses, you should look into that."

With that he went back to reading his e-mail and sending instant messages.

Over the next couple of days we decided on Citrix and got the routing setup via frame relay.  This was particularly funny, cause I had never worked on a actual router in my life and was still having trouble setting up Windows in some situations.

I went to my boss .... "Bubby I do not know how to configure these things."