Last summer the hard disk on my MacBook died.  At that time it was just over a year old.  And now to celebrate its second birthday the hard disk has died again.

Although it makes me sound like a stereotypical geek I found it really hard to do anything without a computer.  The only task I seem to do without one is housework.  And that’s not completely true as I like to play music when I clean, which was stored on my computer.

It took forever to do my Japanese homework without an online dictionary.  I couldn’t work on my sewing or knitting as the patterns are online.  I couldn’t make an appointment at the beauticians because I do this online.  I was restricted in what I could cook for dinner as I didn’t have access to my recipes.  All these things were annoying but the feeling of being trapped in Tokyo with no way to communicate with anyone outside this city was horrible.

The two days offline made me realise that I need a second computer.  I really like my MacBook but having two of these doesn’t seem overly sensible.  Back in April Marty tried to convince me to buy a netbook. I could see why it would be useful to have one but my desire to own one wasn’t as strong as my reluctance to try something new.  After two days of being offline I rang Marty at work and asked him to please buy me a netbook on his way home.

I’m not sure what I think of my new HP Mini but it’s so much better than being computerless.

I have been complaining recently about the jet lag I suffer when I return to Japan.  It’s been really hard trying to stay awake through the hot, humid, afternoons.  But there has been one unexpected benefit – I’m waking early in the morning.  At first this bothered me.  Who wants to be awake at 5:30am on a Saturday? But then I realised that I can actually do more with my day.  I wasn’t expecting this.  Why should getting up at 6am and going to bed at 10pm be any different than getting up at 9am and going to bed at 1am?

It turns out that I do less in the evenings.  I’m much more inclined to sit on a chair and watch a DVD.  I never want to do this in the morning.  This morning I got up at 6am.  I did some online things for about an hour and then I woke Marty up.  We went out cycling and had breakfast before he left for work.  It was a really pleasant way to start the day.

I’m not sure if I will continue to wake up like this as my internal clock will get messed up when I travel to Europe – but  for now I’m going to stop moaning and enjoy it.

As part of my education on American things my friends took me to the Big Butler Fair.  I’ve been to fairs before but we weren’t there to see the ferris wheel or the the dodgems.  We went to see a school bus demolition derby.  I had heard the phrase “demolition derby” but I wasn’t sure what it meant.  I knew it would involve destroying something but it never occurred to me that this would be the destruction of vehicles that people were driving.

It was a strange experience.  Someone had mentioned heats so I thought that maybe 2 buses would compete at a time.   I was wrong.  There were two heats of 5 buses and then a final.  I still don’t know what the point of the heats was.  Maybe it was to try to eliminate some of the competition but all 10 buses were allowed through to the final.  (One bus broke down right at the start so only 9 buses actually competed.)  To win the competition you had to be the last bus running.  At the start it was quite tame.  The vehicles reversed into each other and slowed down if it looked like they would come close to the front of another bus.  But by the end it was viscious.  The rule about not crashing into the driver disappeared with the thrill of smashing up someone else’s engine.  What better way to stop a bus than hit it until the engine goes on fire?

There was something fascinating about the whole thing but the destruction and the possibility of the driver getting hurt made me feel a bit strange. But it was certainly a memorable way to end the 4th July weekend.

It’s been a while since I’ve attended a TLUG technical meeting.  I usually enjoy the meetings but I’m not that interested in Linux and sometimes the talk topics are too specific for me. Since Marty was speaking today I decided to brave the heat and humidity.  I really dislike summer weather in Tokyo but I can’t spend the rest of the month hiding in my air conditioned apartment. (I’ll be spending most of August in Europe.)

The other thing that sometimes stops me attending the meetings is that they are quite far away.  The public transport system is really good but it still took nearly an hour and half to get to the venue.  One day I’ll get used to living in such a large city and remember to ask in advance where exactly in Tokyo a meeting is going to be held.

At the start of every meeting every person is expected to introduce themselves.  This is not something I enjoy.  It’s obvious that at least 50% of the attendees are really uncomfortable having to do this.  It also ends up sounding like the opening of an AA meeting just with Linux Users.  “Hi, I’m X and I’ve been using Linux for X years”.

Marty gave a talk that he is planning on giving at YAPC::EU in August.  This is going to need quite a bit of work as it’s more than twice the length it should be.  At first I thought it was because he was having problems with the live demos but actually Marty always runs over time.  He gets so excited.  It’s obviously much more fun to jump around and draw diagrams on the white board rather than actually stick to the scheduled timings.

I’ll go and hear the talk again at YAPC::EU as I imagine it will be entertaining and by then the live demos will be fixed.

I always find it hard to sleep in a new place.  Last night I was trying to sleep at an airport hotel.  The bed was comfortable but the room made strange noises.  I could hear the sound of water running through pipes.  I could hear the electrical hum.  I could hear the fans used for cooling.   All of these are sounds I can cope with but the mystery creaking disturbed my sleep.  It’s not regular or rhythmic and I still can’t work out what is causing it.  I can’t even tell what direction it’s coming from (though that does suggest that I’ve been sharing a room with multiple creaky things.)

I turned off the air conditioning at around 3am, in case it was the culprit, but now the room is just hot and creaky.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of the firework display in Pittsburgh on the 4th but it didn’t disappoint. It was loud, brash, and completely over the top.  Thirty minutes of firework mayhem that lit up the sky over the city.

I went to bed early last night.  I was so tired I forgot to set an alarm.  But I didn’t need this.  At the exact time I should have had an alarm fireworks went off somewhere in the city.  Good morning 4th of July!

I have not had a lot of time to blog lately.  I always imagine I will blog more when I’m at a technical conference but that’s just wishful thinking.  I realised yesterday that I hadn’t updated people on my whereabouts.  This led to lots of strange conversations as some of my family thought I was back in Japan.  But no, I’m still in America.

I’m going to be here for the 4th July.  Not sure what to expect but I imagine it will be fun.

I’m still in Chicago.  My 9:30am flight yesterday morning was cancelled because of the bad weather.  I had seen the news about the storm system, before I left for the airport, but there was nothing listed on the airport’s website to suggest any problem.  The airport was chaotic when I arrived around 7am.  Hundreds of people were queuing for check-in.  It’s almost as if United hadn’t realised that people were going to turn up to fly.  It was under-staffed and the staff who were there spent their time walking up and down the lines yelling instructions at passengers that were hard to understand.  They even started to yell at people telling them not to miss their flight because they were waiting in line – but they didn’t tell them how to check-in without queuing.

It took over an hour for me to get to my gate.  I got to spend a pleasant hour chatting to a friend who was travelling through O’hare that morning.  Once they left I sat and watched the “flight delayed” notifications turn into “flight cancelled”

I had to go the service desk to get re-booked for another flight.  I was lucky in that I beat a lot of the rush (later on in the day as more flights were cancelled the queue was 3 hours long), but they still told me I would have to wait 27 hours before I could get another flight.

I asked about compensation, food vouchers, hotels, but was told that there was nothing they could do.  The person I was dealing with looked quite put out and asked why I thought the weather was the airlines problem?  I told her it certainly wasn’t mine and did they really think customers who didn’t live in the city should sit in the airport for another 27 hours?  I was told I was free to spend my own money on a hotel but that they wouldn’t be providing me with anything.  The only thing they could do was put me on the standby list and maybe I would get lucky and catch a later flight.

By 5pm I knew there was no way I was getting to Pittsburgh on standby.  I was number 84 on the standby list. (This makes it sounds as if they were useful and told me what place I was on the list.  That’s not what happened.  I had to move around the airport as the gates kept changing for the flights to Pittsburgh hoping that the board by the gate would display a list.  I waited 6 hours after being put on the list to see my position on it.)

There were only two planes left to go to Pittsburgh, both were overbooked, and they only hold 66 passengers each.  I found out they were overbooked as the woman I ended up spending the day with rang the airline.  She was put on hold for more than 30 minutes but eventually managed to speak to someone who told us that the rest of the flights were already overbooked before the delays and cancellations.

Thankfully, I have travel insurance.  So instead of sitting in the airport all night, as the airline staff suggested I do,  I am at the hotel in the airport.  My new friend and I went shopping last night so that I would have something clean to wear today (the airline refused to give me back my luggage as I still want to travel to Pittsburgh).

I’m hoping that things are better today.

Sitting in the airport this morning I have that feeling you get when you’ve forgotten something.  Last night, instead of packing, I went out for dinner and to see the new Terminator movie.  By the time I got home I was tired, grumpy, and had a dull throbbing headache.  I just hope my camera lead is the only thing I’ve forgotten.  (I do realise that very few things are essential for travel but I hate re-buying things because I was stupid and left them at home.)

The journey to the airport is more annoying than I expected it to be.  I like the fact that our new apartment is closer to the airport but it still involves at least 20 minutes of walking and a couple of trains.  Walking through a packed Ueno station with luggage is not a pleasant way to start the day.

Japanese trains are clean and air conditioned so once I hauled my luggage into the train I was looking forward to relaxing for an hour.  When I found my reserved seat someone was already sitting on it.  This lead to a strange conversation where I showed a Japanese man how to read his train ticket.  A year ago I would have assumed that I was in the wrong place but now I’m fairly sure I can read a ticket.

Everything went smoothly at the airport until I tried to find the ANA lounge.  I think I’m just tired as I had difficulty understanding the directions I was given.  I did find it eventually.   I should really aim to get more than 4 hours sleep the night before I travel.  Maybe then my brain would function better.