• The Week #195

    • ๐Ÿ›ฐ๏ธ In Japan, even the smallest elementary school students go to school on their own. They all go together so there isn't much risk. On days where they don't have after school care, they just come home. Leo certainly knows his way home, but once he has his independence...you never know...he might get sidetracked. We got a popular GPS unit that also allows him us to relay voice recordings to each other.
    • ๐ŸŽฅ I'm on a "classic" movies kick. Leo and I watched 3 Ninjas (1992) together. He usually doesn't make it entirely through live action movies in English, but he made it through this one. I also watched Short Circuit (1986) (my second favorite movie with Fisher Stevens) โ€“ so good.
    • ๐Ÿ›‚ I made an appointment to get Leo's passport renewed. I didn't realize the US embassy was literally next to my usual subway exit when going to work. I've started looking at plane tickets to visit Seattle this summer and...$6,500 usd for just tickets....and when combined with the weak yen...ouch...for a week? Hmmm....
  • The Week #194

    • ๐ŸŽ“ Leo graduated pre-school. While technically the main event was watching each kid walk up to the front of class and receive their diploma, the real main event felt like the thank you party immediately after. You see, Yumi has been preparing for a "thank you party" the past ~6 months...and it is finally over. The gifts were delivered and the videos / presentations we made played on the projector without issue.

      For most of the kids at Leo's school they're finished with the school for good. Lucky for Leo, he can still go through the end of the month when my wife and I are working, so he'll be able to meet his friends that will attend other elementary schools for a bit longer.

      After the ceremony itself we went to McDonalds with a couple of his friends and their family โ€“ I'm sure this will become one of those long-term memories.
    • ๐ŸŽฅ I watched two movies this week: Napoleon (on Apple TV+) and The Greatest Night in Pop (about the making of We are the world(Netflix)). I had heard a bit of hype about Napoleon, but it was just okay. On the other hand, The Greatest Night in Pop was a real fun watch. I'll sometimes listen to "We are the World" song when I need a pick me up and the world seems like it's going to shit. It was fascinating to see how quickly the entire song / thing came together. I'm starting to feel like good work demands tight time constraints to ensure focus....
    • ๐ŸŒธ It was a beautiful 20 degrees out over the weekend. Spring is coming and I can't wait. I know in summer I can't wait for winter, but really I just want ~20 degree weather to come. t-shirt and perhaps a jacket.
    • ๐Ÿ‘“ With all the flowers and trees blooming, there's heaps of pollen floating in the air. We bought Leo a pair of glasses to protect his eyes and ease his allergies. When he's wearing his glasses and a flannel he looks like a clone of me.
    • ๐Ÿค’ Between work being super busy with a buncha new responsibilities and my personal life packed with kids stuff...I've had minimal/no time for "fun" (though I did get some cafe time this week, which was nice). Either way, my body finally had enough and is forcing me to rest with a 39 degree fever. Thankfully that's the symptom. Here's to resting, also an important job.
  • The Week #193

    • ๐Ÿ“ฑ I've realized there's a few different habits I have from growing up without a whole lot. One of them is using things until they're falling apart... and then some. It's good because it means you're not always out spending money on things you just want and don't actually need. But sometimes using things for so long begins to introduce some (big or small) stresses and annoyances into your life that you just kinda get used to.

      Enter my iPhone XR. I bought it when it came out in 2018 to replace my iPhone 6+. I only bought the XR because of hardware fatigue on my 6+. One of the pins broke so I was no longer able to charge it...it was bitter sweet using it for it's final charge...knowing that it wouldn't wake up.

      It's been 5.5 years since I got my XR. I've replaced the battery on it...at least once and the current one is almost in needs servicing territory. As you can imagine software hasn't gotten any nimbler since its release. Launching the camera from the lock screen used to be instant-ish. Now it takes seconds, if it even works, causing me to miss opportunities or introduce some unneeded frustration and or friction into my day. Searching for apps takes ages. Every interaction on it has gotten slower.

      But It still technically works just fine. I can make calls on it and it charges. I don't need to worry about a pin breaking to charge it (I usually use a charging pad). It must be under-clocking itself because of the the battery health, so another new battery would probably eek out another couple of years on it.

      But I've noticed these aforementioned habits of mine and I'm going to try and change them. Buying a new phone isn't a financial burden (thankfully ๐Ÿ™๐Ÿป). I don't even want a new phone, I'd be happy if my current phone just worked like it did when it was new. Either way, it is causing me stress and 'tis the season to use some of my hard earned yennies to remove stress.

      This is a very long-winded (public) justification just to say I ordered a yellow 256GB iPhone 14. I considered a t 15, but that yellow was not nearly yellow enough. I'm curious to see how it compares to my yellow XR.ย 
    • ๐Ÿ“ก Removing more stress, I'm looking at changing cell providers as well. I currently use OCN Mobile ONE. Two phones, both with voicemail and 10GB of data is around ยฅ4,000 a month. But it's an MVNO, so data is frequently slow during rush hour. We also run out of data towards the end of the month (you may remember a bullet point dedicated to this on our last visit to Disney in December). Whenever I go aboard I have to buy a sim card/e-sim and deal with that. 'tis the season to use some of my hard earned yennies to remove stress.

      I'm looking at switching to Docomo's ahamo. It will work out to be a bit more per month, but whatever. It has more data, the same docomo network quality I'm accustom to (excellent), and international data included, so I'm never without connectivity abroad.
    • ๐Ÿข I've been promoted to the global Head of Engineering for Comms (inbound/outbound emails/sms/phone calls etc..) at work. I'm excited by the new challenge of leading a much largerย  team. Though this does mean my number of pull requests will likely significantly decrease...maybe more energy for Tanzawa? (Probably not)
    • ๐Ÿ’ˆ In preparation for graduating pre-school Leo got his hair cut. The barber asked me if I wanted them to shampoo his hair...my response was the same as usual, ask Leo (it's not my hair/head). To my surprise (and hence why it's being included), Leo got his hair washed for the first time while getting his haircut ๐Ÿ’ช.
  • The Week #192

    • ๐Ÿ‘จโ€๐Ÿณ Rather than cooking 2x-3x a day as we usually do, last week I did a bit more cooking either in advance (2 lasagnas instead of one) or also cooked dinner when I was making Leo's bento in the morning. It made the evenings so much easier and less rushed. I should try to do this every week.
    • ๐Ÿฅ– I've been wanting a good chewy wheat bread for a while and I can't find it in these parts, so baked bread for the first time in ages. It turned out great. It's so easy to make bread that tastes 10x better than what you can buy in the store, why do I ever stop?ย  This time around Leo helped me weigh and mix the bread. I hope to continue getting him involved in baking so when he's older he has the confidence in the kitchen to give it a go...and maybe remember those days with Dad baking bread.
    • ๐Ÿ“˜ I usually buy ebooks from Rakuten. The site's horrible and search sucks, but I can download the epub files (strip DRM) and load them into my Kindle. That way I'm not entirely locked into the Amazon ecosystem. I wanted something new to read and after deciding on the title, I thought how to get it. I briefly considered immediately sailing the seas to get it, but instead decided to buy it, expecting to be able to download it as I always have been so I'm "doing the right thing".ย  And for whatever reason they've removed the download button from the books page...so I ended up having to sail the seas so I could load the book I purchased onto my kindle ๐Ÿคฆ.ย 
    • ๐Ÿ“• Reading before bed has helped turn off my brain, allowing me to rest better. I tried to read some non-fiction ( Supercommunicators (the book purchased above)), but it kept me thinking about worky things. Rather I'm finding fiction (Lord of the Rings, currently) better to read before bed, even if it's just a couple of pages. I think this is important as I usually don't make time for reading fiction. That and I can slowly join the ranks of "people who've actually read the book and not just seen the movies", for whatever that's worth.
  • The Week #191

    • ๐ŸŒจ๏ธ The first day or so of this week felt like spring. 20 degrees out and sunny. It was great (except those days occurring in February causes worry). As if to make up for a couple of nice days, the remainder of the week was cold (2 - 8c) and wet.ย 
    • ๐ŸŒด We had another 3-day weekend this week and it was cold and rainy 2 of the 3 days. On the first day Yumi was sick, so was in charge of boyo. We went to the local Ito Yokado so Leo could buy some balloons ๐ŸŽˆ. He had learned how to blow them up a day prior at pre-school and wanted to show us. I'm loving watching balloons fly around the house....Sophie ๐Ÿถ, less so.
    • ๐Ÿ“บ I finished watching Get Back and it was brilliant. Their approach to developing an album is quite similar to how I feel good software products should be built. It was blowing my mind the entire...8 hours...which is to also say I've got a blog post that I need to write.
    • ๐Ÿ“š A couple of weeks ago, my old kindle stopped holding a charge. It was the base model (with ads on the cover) from probably 2015 or so...so not a surprise. I want to read more books and was quite happy I re-kindled (๐Ÿฅ) my reading habit last year...and having a dead-enough kindle was putting a hamper on that.

      ย I replaced it with the Paperwhite Signature edition. I went with the Paperwhite because it's (apparently) the best e-reader. It being lit allows me to also read it in bed / low-light conditions. Last night I read about 15 pages of Lord of the Rings.ย  I went with Signature Edition over the ads/non-ads version because we had a wireless charging pad I'd like to use it with. The plan is to leave my cellphone downstairs on the charger when I go to bed and just take my kindle (which is the opposite of when I thought I lost my Airpods and just went to sleep along with Leo, but reading feels like a better reason to stay up ~30 minutes, rather than YouTube (have you seen the algorithm doing its thing during a US election season...ugh, not before bed (or ever, please)))
  • The Week #190

    • ๐ŸŽ‚ Leo turned 6! It feels like yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital (with me thinking "wait, they just let us take him, but we haven't a clue!")...and now he's 6. As we did gifts and cupcakes the weekend prior, we kept the celebration very simple: a slice of cake and a singing of happy birthday.
    • ๐Ÿฆท As if on demand Leo lost his firth tooth (bottom incisor) .ย  The tooth fairy also exists in Japan (or at least it does for kids who watched peppa pig) and does not keep up with inflation or nor exchange rates. For his tooth he gotย  ยฅ100, analogous with the quarter - $1 I used to receive growing up.
    • ๐ŸŸ We did the loop to Enoshima to visit the Aquarium and grab a burger. It's been a few months since we've done it but this trip was probably the best and least physically demanding so far! He walked the entire 95% of the way, including the km trek from the monorailย  to aquarium. What's more he didn't have any meltdowns and managed to turn his tooth fairy money into a plush from the crane game. Best of it there also were not heaps of people at the aquarium itself, so we could actually see the fish!ย 
    • ๐ŸŽฅ Leo has gotten really into making movies with the iPad. Before he had only used it for Kahn Academy Kids or Hiragana apps, but this week he's been opening iMovie and we've been making movies together. It's a lot of fun and a sneaky way for us to make home movies with everyone on camera, naturally.
    • ๐ŸŽต I started watching Get Back and it's fantastic. The way they make music reminds me deeply of the way we (should) make software products...or any other creative process really. You talk, you riff off ideas...and eventually, as a team, shape it into the final product. George had this line, which I don't recall well enough to quote, but he was writing a song and he expressed how he has to sculpt his songs. That's exactly how it feels when I'm writing a pull request...sculpting code.
    • ๐Ÿ™ I met Chad, an internet buddy for lunch. It's always a treat to meet people you interact with online in person. We had a good conversation about schooling, climate jobs, and this particular moment on the web (including Tanzawa ๐Ÿ”๏ธ). I hope we can have another one again sometime soon.
      Me and Chad at the Kraken/Octopus Energy office in Roppongi
  • The Week #189

    • ๐ŸŽฎ There's two different ways you can beat a game: you can beat the story or you can beat the story and find/do every last thing in the game until such you've done literally 100%. Leo and I beat Zelda: Breath of the Wild.ย  I have no idea how many hours we spent playing it because my profile on the switch wasn't logged into my Nintendo account until just now when I went to look up play time, but if I had to hazard I'd guess 500? (Figuring we've been playing for at least a year and roughly an hour or so most days).

      I promised Leo that once we beat Breath of the Wild, we could move on to Tears of the Kingdom...so he got an early birthday present and we've started on our next journey.
    • โšฝ๏ธ Leo played the final game of his pre-school football career at Yokohama Stadium. His team played 3 games. His team lost their first game and Leo's face looked angry/determined with his eyebrows down.ย 

      The next two games, the team changed strategy and put one player as a goal keeper with two players (including Leo) on defense. The strategy worked as they tied nil-nil their second game, including some good defensive kicks by Leo, and won the last game! Compared to his last match in October, he was much more involved in the game trying to get the ball, which was really good to see. This might explain why he suddenly started talking about continuing playing soccer once he starts primary school.
    • ๐Ÿ•ด๏ธ With the end of pre-school and the start of primary school approaching more formal events are on the horizon. For the past 13 or 14 years, I've been wearing a cheap suit I bought for my sister-in-law's wedding for everything. While I usually don't wear them, I decided it's well past time to buy a new suit and bought one from United Arrows green label relaxing.
    • โšก๏ธ Technically last week or so, but Octopus Energy/Kraken were on NHK morning news via an interview with the CEO of Tokyo Gas. Super exciting to see us get coverage on the national news in Japan.
  • The Week #188

    • ๐Ÿ›ฌ I'm back in Japan from my trip to Spain. I haven't made a "summary" post about the trip, and I'm not sure I will. One thing I'm certain about is needing to visit Spain again for a longer period of time someday.

      The food is soo good in Spain. How have I made it this long in life without making jamรณn and olives a regular part of my life? Walking around the market with a little cup of it was a treat. It's even better put inside bread as a simple sandwich (which sadly, I forgot to take a photo of before I ate it).

      Cruising with some jamon to nibble on

      Paella from the birthplace of paella has likely ruined me. I have only ever had it before at home from a kit that was made for Japanese rice makers. And while it was tasty, the difference between that and the real thing is the difference between some cup noodles and a bowl of ramen from a good shop.
      A team-size paella

      Visiting the central market was a treat. All of the food looked so good and fresh. Everything wasn't wrapped in plastic. I had orange juice (home of the Valencia orange). It was the brightest orange juice I'd ever seen and tasted off the charts. I played a sad trombone in my head when I drank some OJ on the plane home.
      Fresh huge veg

      I adapted better to the Spanish meal hours than I had anticipated. Eating breakfast at 8am, lunch around 1:30 - 2pm and dinner around 8pm-ish was fine. While I appreciate I was only there for a week and had effectively "just the highlights" of the country/city I could picture myself living a (happy) life there for a period. Not making plans to move any time soon, but there's a seed in the back of my head... Very glad to be back in Japan and back into the regular routine with the fam.
    • โ˜ƒ๏ธ 3cm of snow fell in Yokohama starting about 12 hours after I arrived. Leo made a snow man and he seems to have survived the night. Really glad it waited until I got home, as there were heaps of delayed / canceled flights... and I'd likely been stuck at the airport in Turkey. That said, because I was already home, I missed an opportunity to get some fantastic "conbini at night in the snow" or "inviting bar on a cold winter's night" photos. Next time.
    • ๐Ÿฆท One of Leo's teeth is starting to wiggle around a bit. You leave for a week and the kids, they don't stop growing just because you're away. Glad I'll be here for the visit of the tooth fairy.
    • ๐Ÿƒ I got an email from Strava that, because I am the only user of my Strava integration, that I do not need to submit Tanzawa to them for review. I'm really glad that this is the case and that I put off doing any development work to bring Tanzawa into compliance with their requirements (mostly around branding). Procrastination ftw!ย 
  • The Week #187

    • ๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡ธ I'm in Spain and it's great! My flights were smooth as could be. From Tokyo, I went to Istanbul via Turkish Airlines (first time) and I think I wouldn't mind flying them again. The food on the plane was (steamed salmon, mashed potatoes, eggplant and such) and airport was beautiful. The planes were not parked next to the building, so all of the gates in our area were simply doors to outside and a bus would pull up and take the plane load of people out to the plane parking lot. It felt more like a bus station than an airport.
      My ride to Valencia

      Arriving in Spain and the airport was tiny. Like as soon as you get off the plane you walk downstairs and dumped directly into passport control / customs. We took the metro from the airport to the city center and it was relatively easy. Just buy the ticket and go.
      Morning in the city center

      My first impression of the city is that, at least in the center area, there are so many American fast food / restaurant chains. I reckon that's partly because they're taking over the world, but also because they can afford the rent in these locations. I didn't expect to see a five guys and taco bell directly outside my hotel.
      Random alleyway

      My hotel has been nice too, though it has probably the slowest lift known to man. Each room is themed different and mine is themed with a giant motorcycle in the wall.

      For the weekend before work we mostly explored around the city, walking around and enjoying the city. The old town is as picturesque as you'd imagine. Sitting on the square, drinking coffee enjoying some cultural dancing is something I could see myself getting used to.
      People watching at one of the many squares

      The food is all really good and affordable. I'm loving the availability of olives and ham.
      5.5 euro for coffee and a sandwhich


    • ๐Ÿ˜ฉ While I am in Spain, my AirPods are not. I was about to get ready for a run when I started looking for my airports and Find My shows me that they're in Haneda airport. Hopefully I'll be able to collect them on my way back. They must have fallen out of my pocket or something and as I was using my headphones during the trip, I simply didn't notice. Good news is that they're lost in Japan, so there's a higher probability of me getting them back.
    • ๐Ÿ˜ญ My last grandparent passed away. Thankfully it wasn't because she was sick, just because of age at 93 years old. It makes me reflect on the fact we're not here forever...and I should probably talk with my own parents more often....RIP Dotz.
  • The Week #186

    • ๐Ÿ“ฑ My new headphone jack / switch arrived for my iPod. It was easy to replace, except had the smallest screws known to man. Once everything was put together it worked! Right and left channels work like a charm! I'm excited to be able to carry all of my music with me.
    • ๐ŸŽต I'm not sure how much longer that will be true as I rebuild my music collection. I can see artifacts of the great iTunes Match subscription cancellation of 2012 as I'm finding folders that I knew were full of music, gone. e.g. I know I had all of the Smashing Pumpkins albums.
    • ๐Ÿ˜ซ It was a rough week with Leo. For some reason he's not wanting to go to school any more, so getting out the door is rough. Even going to robot school, something he said he wanted to do, has become a battle. He told the teacher he wants to quit. Thing is, when he's there (at school or robot school) he has a good time according to all. Maybe he knows my business trip is coming up and clinging because of that? If not, I hope this is just a phase and it ends soon.
    • ๐Ÿƒโ€โ™‚๏ธ On the good Leo news front, he we running with me again. He wants to go further and further...but I think we need to work on not stopping for our current runs. At school he wrote a map of where we're going to run and of course it includes a Triforce from Zelda ๐Ÿ˜†.
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