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Researching for buying a laptop in Japan is hard when Knoppix doesn't display Japanese
[Poll #1141541]
I have to admit that I'm kind of tending towards the MacBook for various reasons, but I kind of won't know for sure until I can do some actual laptop shopping. I wonder if I can head up to Urawa on Saturday after work and have a look around some shops there. But several people have recommended the Macbook to me and I have to admit it sounds pretty tempting. The only major downside is that it would seriously cost over half of my monthly salary... probably even more... and I'm not even talking about the Pro, which would cost OVER my monthly salary I believe. But I think getting an English keyboard would be easiest with the Mac as well.
I know I have an attitude mostly of "eh, it's only money" but I guess since I'm kind of staring in the face of having to pay for a laptop, a plane ticket or two home to America for Carnival (hopefully, argh, I got stuck on that process when my HD died), all of the shoes and tacos I will buy in America, a trip to Hokkaido for Golden Week I hope, and I really wanted to get a point-and-click camera besides my cellphone as well as the 18-200 VR lens for the D200 and... but... really, these are all things I want to do. I could just do none of them and not even get a new laptop. So I need to stop thinking like this and just go ahead and spend the money on things. After all, this is why I saved money before moving here and have been saving money since I came here, right?
Anyway, today wasn't too bad. Using knoppix nodma has worked great and thus I effectively kind of have a computer here again. I mean, it's still weird running a skeleton OS on my CD drive and I know I can't do this indefinitely but my god it's better than not having anything at all. Plus it's really been kinda fun rediscovering things like gaim (and chatting with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alibash! yay!), and the GIMP (with which I edited the picture below of my HD, taken with my cellphone), and just various Linuxy things. Unfortunately I don't seem to have any Japanese capability on this though which makes it hard to look for information on the web about things like Apple store locations and whatnot, but that's ok, I can do that on my cellphone or at GEOS tomorrow or something like that.
I mostly put this here for the sake of my dad and others to understand that it's not trivial for me to figure out a way to connect the thing since it's just this arbitrary connector... I'm more used to desktops and IDE cables and all. I know very little about laptop hardware in general.
I got sushi for lunch at Heiroku and at first it was really crowded AND there was absolutely nothing I wanted on the belt and it made me kinda sad, but eventually things came out that were good. I had forgotten that today started the one-plate-free campaign and the cashier was like "Do you have a coupon?" and I'm like "Errr...?" She looked at me like "You forgot again, didn't you?" "I'm sure I forgot. Forgot what?" "The one plate free special," and she went and got out a coupon and used it for me and thus I saved 105 yen. I was like "I will absolutely remember the coupon when I come back." I think. Or maybe I said "I will always have good memories of these coupons." Japanese is weird.
I also went to Matsukiyo looking for some Tylenol because I had a headache. They apologized to me for the fact that they can't sell Tylenol higher than 300mg per tablet.
Quotes of the day:
1) "Does this bus go to the Spongebob?" from my 12-year-old student.
2) "Oh, we call it 'shi' in Japanese, so it isn't a drink with jam and bread." from a later student
3) "I'm so sorry I can't come to lesson. I'm looked forward to playing Catan today. I want to play in next week." in an email from another student
Yeah, so I only had one student at 9pm (the one who had brought Catan in the first place). So we didn't get to play :( We did go over some more rules and a whole bunch of random words about games and dice, oddly (I gave him a copy of my polygons/polyhedrons paper). But, Duane visited us again tonight! My student invited Duane to come play Catan with us next week, haha. That would be really awesome. Though if all 3 of my students show up and so does Duane, I think I won't get to play :)
I did more popping of music after work. I sight-read and passed a lvl28 as Extra Stage, but since it was just Tir Na Nog, I'm not sure that it actually counts.
I have to admit that I'm kind of tending towards the MacBook for various reasons, but I kind of won't know for sure until I can do some actual laptop shopping. I wonder if I can head up to Urawa on Saturday after work and have a look around some shops there. But several people have recommended the Macbook to me and I have to admit it sounds pretty tempting. The only major downside is that it would seriously cost over half of my monthly salary... probably even more... and I'm not even talking about the Pro, which would cost OVER my monthly salary I believe. But I think getting an English keyboard would be easiest with the Mac as well.
I know I have an attitude mostly of "eh, it's only money" but I guess since I'm kind of staring in the face of having to pay for a laptop, a plane ticket or two home to America for Carnival (hopefully, argh, I got stuck on that process when my HD died), all of the shoes and tacos I will buy in America, a trip to Hokkaido for Golden Week I hope, and I really wanted to get a point-and-click camera besides my cellphone as well as the 18-200 VR lens for the D200 and... but... really, these are all things I want to do. I could just do none of them and not even get a new laptop. So I need to stop thinking like this and just go ahead and spend the money on things. After all, this is why I saved money before moving here and have been saving money since I came here, right?
Anyway, today wasn't too bad. Using knoppix nodma has worked great and thus I effectively kind of have a computer here again. I mean, it's still weird running a skeleton OS on my CD drive and I know I can't do this indefinitely but my god it's better than not having anything at all. Plus it's really been kinda fun rediscovering things like gaim (and chatting with
alibash! yay!), and the GIMP (with which I edited the picture below of my HD, taken with my cellphone), and just various Linuxy things. Unfortunately I don't seem to have any Japanese capability on this though which makes it hard to look for information on the web about things like Apple store locations and whatnot, but that's ok, I can do that on my cellphone or at GEOS tomorrow or something like that.I mostly put this here for the sake of my dad and others to understand that it's not trivial for me to figure out a way to connect the thing since it's just this arbitrary connector... I'm more used to desktops and IDE cables and all. I know very little about laptop hardware in general.
I got sushi for lunch at Heiroku and at first it was really crowded AND there was absolutely nothing I wanted on the belt and it made me kinda sad, but eventually things came out that were good. I had forgotten that today started the one-plate-free campaign and the cashier was like "Do you have a coupon?" and I'm like "Errr...?" She looked at me like "You forgot again, didn't you?" "I'm sure I forgot. Forgot what?" "The one plate free special," and she went and got out a coupon and used it for me and thus I saved 105 yen. I was like "I will absolutely remember the coupon when I come back." I think. Or maybe I said "I will always have good memories of these coupons." Japanese is weird.
I also went to Matsukiyo looking for some Tylenol because I had a headache. They apologized to me for the fact that they can't sell Tylenol higher than 300mg per tablet.
Quotes of the day:
1) "Does this bus go to the Spongebob?" from my 12-year-old student.
2) "Oh, we call it 'shi' in Japanese, so it isn't a drink with jam and bread." from a later student
3) "I'm so sorry I can't come to lesson. I'm looked forward to playing Catan today. I want to play in next week." in an email from another student
Yeah, so I only had one student at 9pm (the one who had brought Catan in the first place). So we didn't get to play :( We did go over some more rules and a whole bunch of random words about games and dice, oddly (I gave him a copy of my polygons/polyhedrons paper). But, Duane visited us again tonight! My student invited Duane to come play Catan with us next week, haha. That would be really awesome. Though if all 3 of my students show up and so does Duane, I think I won't get to play :)
I did more popping of music after work. I sight-read and passed a lvl28 as Extra Stage, but since it was just Tir Na Nog, I'm not sure that it actually counts.
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