“What’s going on? Where’s that voice coming from? Who’s talking?”

When I lived in the countryside in Japan—Joso, Ibaraki, to be exact—I rarely stayed at my apartment on the weekend. Instead, I would go to Yokohama and spend Friday night to Sunday night there with my girlfriend, who’s now my wife. One of the reasons why I stayed away from my apartment, specifically on Sunday afternoons, was because of this morbid voice that would drive by in a truck and repeat something over his loudspeaker. The video below is what I heard.

Ishiyaki Imo Truck

My immediate thought was “Is that someone going around and warning the townspeople about a typhoon or fire or some other impending disaster?” The first time I heard it, I ran outside to see if people were scrambling to leave the area. What freaked me out was, when I looked around, there was nobody outside and no sound. I waited for a good minute or two until I heard a car drive by on one of the nearby residential streets.

Turns out, the voice I heard on Sundays was the “ishiyaki imo” truck, which is a truck that sells roasted sweet potatoes. And the voice? That’s the truck’s calling—think of it like an ice cream truck in the United States.

After hearing it a few more times in and around Yokohama, the voice and song (or maybe “calling” is a better word") became something that I found humorous. Still, it sounds like a pretty gloomy song, and I don’t think I’ll be buying sweet potatoes from his truck anytime soon.

Change the song, pal!

Sad story from a great sport and dedicated player

This is by far the worst story I’ve read so far this year. Trading a person for inanimate objects is an insult.

This is something like from when I was in my freshmen and sophomore years of high school. I was so bad at sports that I’d joke with my teammates to trade me to the other team for a bag of Doritos and a basketball. Except in this case, it really happened in minor-league baseball.

Never would I have thought that in a real-life situation that something even remotely similar would be reality. I mean, sure, in professional sports, players get traded for cash and the ever-so-vague “other considerations,” but to be included in part of a trade for team equipment is a smack in the face. Who cares if John Odom, the player who was traded, went along and joked with the situation. I’d bet that a good percentage of people make a joke out of unfortunate situations when they’re uncomfortable or suffering from low self-esteem.

Odom should not be dead; he should be preparing for his next game or his next conversation with his agent.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to trade a human being for manufactured pieces of wood is a complete buffoon. I hope those who were involved with orchestrating the trade feel a deep sense of guilt. And if the law plays anything into this, I hope they have thousands of hours of community service to perform.

I just hope it doesn’t have to do with teaching little-league baseball.

Reality checks apparently still aren’t working for celebs

So, Chris Brown is in anger management, huh? Well, that’s good and all, but it certainly doesn’t make up for a fraction of what he allegedly did to Rihanna. Apparently, he’s taking the anger management classes, as requested by his new publicist, to repair his image.

Maybe that’s how celebrities go about things these days, but in the real world, most people go to anger management to, oh, I don’t know… control their anger? Or maybe talk about the whats, whys, and whos of their anger. Possibly even to seek help for their anger issues? I think right now, Chris Brown needs to worry more about himself than his image.

Moral of the story: Stop worrying about what people think of you; instead, worry about yourself and those around you.

Cake the man in peanut butter and let the seagulls have him

I hope Stewart Parnell, Pleader of the Fifth and President of the Peanut Corporation of America—the company responsible for the current salmonella outbreak in delicious peanut butter products—gets prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Maybe not to the extent that this ex-health and drug official in China got punished, but hopefully to the maximum extent of the U.S. law.

Justice system, don’t fail me now!

Text messaging: urgency and occasionally unnecessary. A rant.

Up until mid-2006, I never was a fan of text messaging. I had enough minutes to call somebody, so why bother with spending two minutes to type a message on a crammed keypad? Then, I went to Japan, the land of text messaging. Making phone calls is still ridiculously expensive in Japan, so most people send e-mails through their phones to their contacts. The plus is that text messaging/e-mailing from a cell phone is fairly cheap; I remember when I was on my SoftBank plan, I had unlimited text messages/e-mail and unlimited Internet for about $9 a month. That’s about three times cheaper than AT&T’s plan in the United States.

With an unlimited text messaging plan, I didn’t mind getting pointless e-mails because they wouldn’t count towards a limit. But, after I returned to the United States, I knew that I wouldn’t use anywhere near 500+ text messages, so why bother paying $10+ alone for text messaging? I’m on a 200 text messages plan, and I use those for sending people casual notes. I don’t start conversations because if I wanted to talk to someone, I would just call them. I don’t see the point in engaging in a one-hour conversation through text messages that I could have in five minutes through voice calling.

And, seriously people, chain text messages? You don’t need to validate our relationship—as family or friends—with a pointless message that says “Little Sandy is sad. Text this to all your friends, and with the tracking number at the bottom, Sandy will see how many people made her day happier.” Hello~?! “Little Sandy” was probably just a bored intern who thought up “little Sandy” as a marketing technique… 15 years ago. Also, didn’t chain e-mails go out of style, oh, I don’t know, around the same time AOL did back in 2001?

Along the same lines, take advantage of the 160-character count in text messages. Texting back “ok” is fine if you know the person has unlimited text messaging, but when you know the person has a limited amount and gets charged for going over, be considerate. “ok” is not worth 15¢. And, jeez, combine messages if you have to. If someone asks “How’s it going? Did you make it home last night without getting lost?” Don’t reply with “I’m doing fine” and follow it up with a new message that says “yeah, I made it home.”

I’m laying down the law for those who text message me, even if it’s inadvertently. Beware, I will use the blacklist function on my phone.

Making the gradual transition back to Firefox

As you may have read on one of my recent Twitter updates, I’m having difficulty with Windows Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) Beta 2. When I open a new tab, it loads slowly even when I’m just opening a new tab for the heck of it. Also, IE8 Beta 2 crashes regardless of how many tabs I have open or how intensive the page loading is. Below is a picture of when I tried to open a single tab for Facebook and then tried to close it. It’s difficult to tell, but the popup menu window at the bottom is frozen on the screen. Bummer…

Lately, I found out that my friends and family are having the same issues with IE8 Beta 2. Quite frustrating, especially for those who aren’t computer savvy and don’t know that there are other Internet-browsing options such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome.

I hope the IE team at Microsoft has gotten word of this issue. I’d really rather use IE8 than Firefox 3, but if Firefox consistently gives me a better experience, I might end up sticking with it. In turn, that might make me abandon the Microsoft Silverlight components of my Web site, since Firefox 3 and Silverlight aren’t playing nicely. Oh, if only I could get those development hours back… I suppose learning Adobe Flash a little more in depth wouldn’t be so bad, seeing as how probably 90 percent of Web sites choose that as the platform for delivering an interactive Web experience.

Anybody else out there having trouble with IE8 Beta 2? Is moving to Firefox 3 a bad idea? Comments welcome!

Tectonic happenings in Southeast Asia

What's up with all these significant earthquakes in the Southeast Asia region? The region has been hit by 6+ magnitude earthquakes twice in the past week in addition to many smaller quakes.

I haven't found much information that backs up the polar shift theory that many believe is occurring right now, but it seems like the most plausible reason.

Any thoughts on why this and so many other recent global natural disasters are happening lately?

Those cursed Nalgene bottles and Ziplock food containers...

Hey all, just a friendly reminder to avoid drinking or eating out of plastic containers, especially those that are labeled with recycling number "7."