• The Week #89

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    • I got boosted. This time I was able to get my shot through my job. Tokyo Gas is trying to get all employees and employees of related companies, Kraken Tech/Octopus Energy being related, boosted.

      The mass vaccination site was in Shinjuku and very well run. There weren't any lines, but there was fairly constant stream of people. I was in and out in about 20 minutes, including the 15 minute waiting time. 

      Getting boosted in Japan is much easier than the initial shots were. I'm not sure if it's supply has caught up with demand or what. Even the clinic we used during summer had plenty of openings for getting boosted. Those first shots you 500 reservations would be gone in minutes.

      I can't find the link, but Japan, despite getting a late start has now boosted over 30% of the population, which surpasses the US.
    • While the booster rate is going up and the infection numbers are going down, Leo's school was closed all last week. He started back on Monday for the last full week until spring break to fantastic 23 degree weather. Unfortunately he was wearing a sweater and began to overheat around lunch time, which the school saw as him having fever, and was sent home.

      I understand being cautious about Covid, especially as all of the kids can't be vaccinated yet. At the same time, I'm annoyed that Leo was overheating and they didn't even have him take off his sweater to cool him down and went straight for the "must be covid" line of thought.

      As soon as I saw him, I took off his sweater and he started feeling better, but rules are rules.
    • Speaking of rules, I did my taxes in Japanese for the first time. Usually Yumi's handled the leg work for me in the past. But this time I was able to file them all by myself without issue, including dividends from my accounts in the US. I have a feeling I may have forgotten something, but I imagine if there's an issue they'll contact me and I can sort it then.

      I really like that I could file everything via the Japanese tax authority's website / webapp. It might be a bit clunky, but how I wish I could do the same in US instead of paying a fee and dealing with dark patterns to scare me into upgrading Turbo Tax like I do with my US taxes. It even has some great integrations like being able to use your MyNumber card to automatically import doctor visit deductions.
    • We've decided on a solar system to move forward with.  The solar guys came to measure the roof and decide on placement for the power conditioner etc... We're still waiting for the final layout, but it sounds like the chip shortage is hitting them too, with installs being 6+ months after contract 😞.
    • Leo was adamant about going to IKEA because he wanted some more of the Bygglek lego boxes. He even said he'd use his own money! So while mom was recovering from her booster, we decided to head out there together. We rode the IKEA bus (his first time) and ate lunch.

      Leo's first ride on the IKEA bus

      He proudly carried his shopping in the store (part of the way, at least) and when it was time to pay he handed the cashier his money.

      Walking and carrying his shopping!
    • I watched 1917 on Netflix while recovering from my booster. I really enjoyed it. With everything going on the world, it was hard not to imagine similar scenes playing out these days as well, however. War is dumb.
    • I started playing Zelda: Breath of the Wild and it's really good. I haven't played a Zelda game since perhaps the N64 (and even then that was just bits of pieces, never all the way through). It's a great escape.

  • The Week #88

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    • We made it through an entire week without any closures or Leo's school! 🎉  We were also notified on Saturday that it will be closed all next week 🙃. You win some you lose some, I guess. Most schools in our area aren't as cautious / having nearly as many closures as Leo's. You can complain, but it's probably the right thing to do, even if it is inconvenient. 
    • I did the legwork to proper organized al of my trades/dividends of my US accounts using the exchange rate of the day so I can report them the city and not be committing tax fraud. Getting it all organized into excel sheets has been a huge relief. For a while now I've know that I need to collect the data, but I never could what format or exactly what information would be required, so I just put it off.

      Thankfully there were some helpful posts on /r/JapanFinance that had a screenshot of a header of the document that they use to organize their trades, which was enough to get me over the hump. Now that I have the format decided upon, it should be much easier to update each year.

      As a bonus, because it's less than ¥200,000 (roughly 2k usd), I shouldn't need fuss with updating/finalizing my national return  and my "End of year adjustment" is enough. Probably. Will confirm when I visit the city tax department.
    • We celebrated baba's 78th(!) birthday! I can't imagine what it will be like to be 78, but I do hope it will be in the same manner as baba's birthday: with delicious sushi and all of the kids/grandkids.
    • At work I managed to get the second of two big PRs across the line for review. Two big features that will (eventually) be used worldwide. I felt a bit bad throwing not one, but two 1,000k+ line pull requests over the wall. But there's one critical difference that makes it possible: each commit matters and each commit in the PR is expected to tell part of the story of that PR.

      This means no commits like "fixed bugs" or "fixed bugs, for real this time". But rather you're expected to squash those bug fixes into the appropriate commit before asking for review. It makes for such a cleaner history.

      Sometimes you mess up and you commit things together that shouldn't be. And you have to rebase and split them apart. And it's a pain for a couple of a minutes. But thinking about your PR at that lower level helps you create higher quality code because you're forced to ask yourself "does this change make sense in isolation and how does this bit of fit into the grander scheme of this PR". And cleaning up your commits can also be incredibility therapeutic. That level of fit and finish that only the craftsperson sees and knows about.

  • The Week #87

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    • We made it through an entire week without school closing due to Covid 🎉. And indeed we are officially peaked as cases have been on the downward trend for what feels like a couple of weeks now (but you know how time is a lie in covid).
    • There was an event at Leo's pre-school where has on display some of the things they've made this year. It's fun to look at the work of students just a year or two older and see how much more capable they become.

      The coolest part was in the hall where the oldest students (due to become elementary school students in April) build interactive toys? games? with cardboard boxes collected by the families. Things I've never imagine making like castles, 3 washing machine boxes high, or a roller coaster, or a climbing wall. The biggest hit though was the hot springs, with water made of torn up newspaper. Why was it the biggest hit? Because you could take the newspaper and toss it at the teacher (and vice-versa!).
    • At Leo's birthday celebration earlier this month at school, when asked what he wanted to become when he's big he said "Shinji" (from Evagelion). When he got his haircut this week we asked the stylist to cut his hair, as requested, like Shinjis. He did a great job. They might start mistaking him for the real deal at school.
    • I signed up for the Vox Meat/Less newsletter course. I've been learning a lot and hope to start implementing the advice soon. "Vegan before 6pm" sounds doable most of the time.
    • We ran out of storage on our 200GB iCloud account. It's mostly photos. Upgrading to the next tier (2TB) would increase storage to $10/month. Since I got my AirpodPros a few months ago, I've been on a 6 month trial for Apple Music. While it annoys me sometimes, it's much better for music than cheapskating with YouTube. So I'd been mentally preparing myself for the 10/month cost to start paying for it.

      But adding on Apple Music to my current AppleTV+ /(presumably upgraded) iCloud storage would bring my total monthly cost to $25/month, for just me. For an extra $5 / month, I could get Apple One Premier, which will  allow our entire family to access everything: AppleTV+, Apple Music, News+ (just as I had been thinking of subscribing to the New Yorker – it's on there!) and Fitness+. 

      Writing this all out has made me feel a bit better about signing up, but it's a big jump from $8/month total to almost 4x as much. I guess you don't become a trillion dollar company by giving this away for free.

  • The Week #86

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    • I watched Inside Out with Leo and it is a great movie. The main characters are the personified emotions inside people ( Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger) inside Riley, an 11 year old girl. They look through her eyes and take turns directing her reactions. Lewis Black plays Anger, which it fits his schtick perfectly. I highly recommend it.
    • Leo's school was closed all last week except Friday due to Covid. With the wave seemingly peaked and heading downwards, let's hope we can make it through an entire week without closing and everyone stays healthy. That said Kanagawa stopped releasing data after hitting 100% positivity. Lest you worry, it is/was mostly a math issue of not being able to count all of the tests taken everywhere but getting all of the positive results.
    • My compost bag is officially full, so I've started on the 3 week process of watering it a couple times a week and giving it a stir. After that I should have some great compost to grow stuff with. I ordered a second bag so I'll still be able to compost while the other finishes processing. It won't come until my scheduled delivery of  the starter next month, so in the mean time I'm back to food trash in the bin. It's the worst.
    • I ran 7km, my longest run in a while. A couple of months ago, when I was just getting back into the habit of running again, I was thinking about how I just wanted to be able to run 5km a few times a week without it feeling so hard. Keeping up the runs at least twice a week has allowed me to build some base cardio and slowing way down has made it much more enjoyable. 5km seems like it's the "base" run now.

  • The Week #85

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    • Last week's getting locked out of the house caused some hassle this week, not with the locks or door, but with the car. We were waiting in the car while the locksmith did his work and as it was dark out, we turned on the interior lights (you can see guess this is going).  In the rush of finally being able to get inside / on with our evening, we forgot to turn them off.

      The next time we went to use the car (Friday?) the automatic sliding doors didn't work...immediately I figured the battery was dead. Thankfully I carry a pair of jumper cables in my car (though usually I'm the one giving the jump). 

      Thankfully my neighbor across the road was home and let me connect my my cables and give me a jump.
    • I fiddled around with Minecraft on my switch for a few minutes to figure out how it works. I can see how people sink hours and hours into this game building cool stuff. Leo also wanted to play. The controls are pretty complex, with one control stick being movement and the other being looking around,  so I have to help him frequently while he masters it.
    • Leo turned 4. For his birthday he got two small Lego sets: a 4+ helicopter and since he's taken to Minecraft, a little Minecraft set. We went and picked out a cake together. He picked a simple cream / strawberry cake (though he skips the strawberries).

      We shared cake and pizza at the grandparent's house. While I enjoy celebrating with the family, I am looking forward for Leo having a proper birthday party with friends someday.
    • As I mentioned, Tanzawa got it's first non-me user! Exciting and illuminating of all of the little issues that exist in the back of my head as a "someday" or have just learned to work around. 😅
    • The covid numbers seem to be starting a downwards trend. Most recently we've had 3 days with fewer cases (by the hundreds or thousands) of the same day the previous week. With this trend and constant public pressure, it seems like Japan will finally start letting non-tourists into Japan again. I don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but hopefully we'll stay open "for good" or at least long enough for the rest of our team to move to Japan. They've been waiting for over a year now.
    • I ordered two books that I'm really looking forward to reading: Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in our Lives and Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. The first I suspect may just be preaching to the choir for me, but I know I'll learn something from it. The second, I read the sample chapters a month or two ago and I really enjoyed it. I got both of them in print, rather than e-books, as per usual. (I was quite tempted for the Kindle versions, and they're easy to read that way, but I want to spend less time looking at my phone).
      Love the covers!
    • I discovered The Linda Lindas, an all girl punk band from L.A. (the YouTube offers a good suggestion for a change). Really good music. My favorite so far is Missing You, about being stuck in the house during the pandemic. And the line about wanting to eat at grandma's place is punk as f.
    • As part of my reconsidering solar / batteries for the house, I did some searching. And in that search I discovered that a) I can get a Tesla Powerwall in Japan and b) Despite being double the capacity (13.5 kWh), they seem to be cheaper than domestic counterparts (6.5 kWh).

      I've asked a local installer for a quote for a system and I'm patiently awaiting it. My theory is that it will cost a bit more than the all Sharp system I was quoted before, but who knows.

  • The Week #84

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    • I hoped we'd make it a week without Leo's school being closed, but we weren't so lucky. Thursday was canceled because of a close contact somewhere, but re-opened on Friday. It looks like we're in the clear, at least for now. That said, dropping Leo off in the mornings is noticeably quieter as about half of his class is taking off by choice.
    • Relatives in Tokyo managed to get Omicron and thankfully it was just a fever for a night.
    • We signed up Leo for swimming classes at the local Y and he had his first non-trial lesson. We can watch from outside the pool and he looked like he had a blast. I'm sure he'll be swimming like a fish in no time.

      I know I took swimming a swimming class as a kid, but only as my mom told me so. I must have been young enough when I took them as I have zero recollection of the class itself. Swimming has always felt like one of the things "everyone can do naturally", but that isn't the case.

      Basic swimming is such an important life skill. I'll breathe a bit easier when we go to the beach during summer once this is finished.
    • I'm trying not to blog about my runs every week, but this week was notable because I ran 3 times. Since I've been slowing down I've been switching my focus to time more than distance. But since I'm not slowing down that much, an extra 15 minutes adds another couple of kilos. Two of my runs were over  6km, 50% more than my usual 4km course.
    • In one of the episodes of Shinkarion (Leo's favorite train/mech show), they have the Evangelion Shinkansen (since retired) as a guest mech. When it's transforming from a train to a mech they play part of the opening song for the anime. Leo's constant singing of it inspired me to start watching Evangelion for the first time since high school. It's as intense as I remember.
    •  Like most Japanese front doors we have two locks. And for a while the bottom lock has been acting strange. In the mornings it would take a lot of force to unlock it from the inside. But it'd be fine some afternoons. I carry both the card for the autolock and the backup key, just incase the electrics stop working.

      After cycling back from Shonandai, we went to open the door and neither worked on the bottom lock. I got locked out of my house. It sounds like it's getting caught on something. We called our house maker because "that's what you're supposed to do" and they were, as anticipated, useless. You'd think they'd have, at a minimum, a local "lock guy" to recommend, but that's not the case.

      We find a locksmith he comes out about an hour later. I'm glad I didn't lock the car so we could at least sit inside of it where it was a touch warmer. While we're waiting I'm thinking about Sophie, hungry and may not get dinner tonight. I'm thinking about work and how funny it'd be to have to take leave because I can't physically reach my computer. 10 minutes after arriving he manages to jimmy the bottom lock open. I've never been more happy to get inside of my house.

      After he opened it, he took it apart to see if he could deduce what the issue was. It's not the lock itself. It appears to be the hole in the frame where the lock latches on to is slightly off. The lock itself appears to be fine. Who knows. Best ¥5,500 I've spent in a while.

  • The Week #83

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    • The same as Michael, we had an outbreak of covid amongst family,  so Leo's school closed all week.  It's re-opened now, let's hope it stays that way. Winter break just never ends for this boy 😅.
    • I finished watching Generation 56k, it was really enjoyable. I was disappointed it was only 6 episodes long to start. I'm looking forward to Season 2.
    • So far I'm keeping pace with my goal of 100 runs in 2022. In January I ran 9 times for a total of 40km. My recent focus has been to run slower and keep my heart rate down, which is proving more difficult than anticipated. But just letting myself slowdown has made running more enjoyable.
    • I've made some more small contributions to indieweb-utils this week. James and I seem to be in a bit of a groove timezone wise. I'll send my reviews/PRs in the morning before work while he's winding down/sleeping. And he typically responds / handles them while I'm winding/down sleeping. And still the project moves forward.
    • DHH wrote a good post about  We can't live without friction, about how the friction is a great filter. It's important to remember this because of the years of engineering frictionless reactions to things in social media is a large part why it can be such a cesspool (my words, not his).

      For a few days I was thinking it might be fun to add a comments form to Tanzawa posts, so I could perhaps replicate the communities that used to form around a given blog. Where your blog would connect not just you and a reader, but your readers, too. I think I'm going to let that stew for a bit longer, and perhaps add an email link in my footer for non-webmention responses.
    • I started looking at the quotes we got for solar panels and a battery again, mostly for two reasons:
      1. Disaster preparedness. We're overdue for a big quake in the Kanto area. Having a stable, rechargable power supply would be really nice if the power was cut because of it and remove a lot of stress. The battery is small enough (6.5kWh) that we'd still need to conserve electricity, but we wouldn't be in the dark or without heat.
      2. 2.6kWh is a small system. And based on the generation estimates it would only ever produce about half of our usage during fall/winter. We might get a few months in early summer where it can cover all of our usage. Post-lunch dishwasher runs would be "free". But it's more about the feeling I get when I come back from walking Sophie and the sun shines down on my house: that feeling of missed opportunity.
      I haven't pulled the trigger yet, but it's back on my radar. Again.

  • The Week #82

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    • I added a proper favicon to my blog and Tanzawa. It's something I've thought about for a while but delayed doing because "doing it right" requires making heaps of files in different sizes. But then I saw a blog post by Adam about how to add a favicon to Django and it included a svg example. Using svg for my favicon means I forgo Safari support for now, but it would let me generate the icon from site settings . And since the code samples were plug and play, I decided to do it. Yay favicon.
    • We took Leo to the big park nearby to practice his cycling. We're still practicing the push start, but he's getting really good. He navigated through people, barricades, and dogs without hitting any of them. He's gaining for confidence too as he told me not to run after him. The best part, at least for me, was that he got to experience the joy of cycling while watching his favorite trains roll by.
    • Omicron has officially found its way into Leo's pre-school with a couple of kids getting diagnosed with it. We have no idea which class (or multiple classes?) the people infected with it are in, so we have no idea of our potential exposure. With how transmissible this variant is, my assumption that it doesn't matter who had it or which grade and we'll probably be testing positive in a week or so. Hopefully not, though. 

      For now school is closed for half a week, but I expect for that to be extended. The hardest part of the extensions/sudden closures is that winter vacation never ends. Each morning he wakes up and asks if he has to go to school, and if he does, he starts crying. This happened after summer break too, but after a week of school, he got into the routine and it wasn't an issue. This time we can't get back into the routine.
    • Since we're going to be staying home a lot more again, I caved and bought a Switch to play with Leo. I'm a bit conflicted about my decision. On one hand, almost 4 feels early to be playing video games. On the other hand, I seem to recall playing NES/playing on my 8088 and I turned out fine (or at least I think I did). It's not like he'll be playing by himself – we'll always play together. It's probably fine. 

      I picked up Mario Kart and Minecraft. Minecraft is probably too hard for his age, but it's similar to his Legos in that he can build stuff. Mario Kart's auto accelerate and steering assist is brilliant for young and old alike.
    • I started leading part of a new global team, the first of its kind, at work. While I can't talk about the details of what we're building, it is exciting to be shaping and developing new core functionality that the rest of the company will depend on.
    • I switched my electric from Octopus' initial offering (no longer available) to their new 100% renewable Green Octopus plan. While I liked being on a fixed tariff (where the price of each kWh doesn't change with usage), supporting renewables with my wallet, in even a small way, felt like the right thing to do. Especially when you consider the average kWh in Japan costing 500g~ of carbon. Compare this with the UK where it's closer to 10g of carbon/kWh... Green Octopus is also currently cheaper than Standard Octopus, which won't always be the case.

  • The Week #81

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    • I made a lot of good progress on Tanzawa this week, releasing 3 big features.

      First, and most apparent, is support for themes. In my release celebration post I decided to adopt the Platinum theme on my blog temporarily. But the platinum theme is growing on me. I may keep it active for longer than a couple of days.

      Second, I added support for rel-me. I closed this ticket exactly 364 days after creating it. rel-me support will allow new Tanzawa users who haven't already registered their domain with IndieWeb services like Brid.gy, to prove that their domain and the Twitter/GitHub profile are indeed, the same person.

      Lastly, I added settings to allow you to change the site icon (⛰) and to paste a custom HTML snippet in the footer. The footer snippet is mostly because I got sick of git stashing each time I did a deploy with changes to the base_public.html file. You'll notice my icon is now Mt. Fuji as a) I always post photos of it on my twitter and b) it's purple-ish like the platinum theme.
    • I also made some more contributions to the indeweb-utils library. The library is starting to take shape, too and get a solid foundation. It's also fun helping other developers write better Python.
    • My composting bag came in and I started adding our food scraps to it each night. The suggested amount (up to 300 - 400g / day) easily fits everything we produce in a day. The experience of composting vs tossing it in the bin is much better too. No more basket in corner of the sink with a wet/sometimes slimey bottom and then smelling it when I open the trash can while I wait for burnable day.
    • Belated Christmas presents arrived from my mom. Leo scored this cool spinning top that lights up when it spins. More than that, it has a handle and release system to help you get the perfect spin. You put in the handle, wind it 2 or 3 rotations, press the button to release it.

      It's funny he got the spinning top as the day prior, he brought back a Japanese Koma for a top spinning contest they'll be having at school. Using this top requires a bit if finesse and practice to get really going. Naturally he prefers the easy one with lights. Such an American. 🤣
    • I've been keeping on my running schedule. Setting my goal for 2-days a week (achievable) vs 3-days a week (achievable sometimes) seems like it was the right decision.

  • The Week #80

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    • While I bookmarked a post about No Social Media Club, there are social media accounts that make me chuckle. One of my favorites is the World Bollard Association because it shows basic infrastructure protecting their city from dumb/reckless drivers.
    • I made a few small PRs to indieweb-utils Python library. I haven't made any functional changes yet, mostly just laying groundwork for future development. I'm looking forward to pushing this library forward a bit, so I can adopt it and remove some code from Tanzawa.
    • Covid cases are spiked like they have elsewhere in the world with the new variant. Two Saturdays ago, 20 cases, last Saturday 354 cases. Yikes. It was fun couple of months while it lasted, getting back to normal-ish.
    • The street in front of my house at night is quite dark as I'm next to a field and it's a dead end. But people do walk along my street quite often as there's an "emergency only" path (also sans lights) that people use as a shortcut all the time. Basically, it's too dark. some day, there will be a small road connecting us to the houses across the small field. I'm happy to say that after 2 and a half years, and 2 applications (1 failed), the city finally installed a light on the utility pole on the edge of my property.
    • We went for a short day trip to Hakone. It wasn't anything planned, we just decided to go and 20 minutes later we headed for the station. It was a fun ride a sbuway, commuter rain, another train that climbs a mountain (with it being the steepest tracks in Japan, 2nd steepest in the world), a cable car, and finally a ropeway over "the valley of hell" to Owakunidai.

      Owakunidai is an active volcanic valley, which sulfuric gasses venting all the time. It smells as nice as you'd imagine. Maybe because it smells like eggs, they also boil eggs in the sulfur/iron rich water, which turns the shells black. Eating one is supposed to extend your life 7-years. You can buy 5 with some salt for ¥500. Not bad for an extra 25 years of life! 

      Hopefully this trip should fill Leo's rail needs for the next few weeks while covid does its thing.
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