The test last week in my Japanese conversation class covered some useful grammar, including “dou yattara” and “~ka dou ka” (also humble form, about which the less said the better). The structure of the test was that the tutors composed a number of questions in advance, and students were chosen to answer each one. Grading was subjective, but just understanding what you were being asked was as important as composing a grammatically correct answer. There’s no penalty for occasionally passing with “wakarimasen”.

One that stumped a few people was a very polite and grammatically annoying version of “where can I go to see plum blossoms blooming?”. After someone finally got it, I said “my back yard”. It’s not as fancy as a proper Japanese plum garden, but at least I’ve got some.

Amazon’s recommendation system just blew a gasket. Here’s proof:

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So, with 10.5.2 and SuperDuper 2.5 out, I was finally willing to upgrade my primary Mac.

First problem: it merged down an old version of my Safari bookmarks from .Mac, even though I had sync turned off, and the last sync had reset this machine as the master. Fortunately, it was a merge, rather than a replace, so I didn’t lose anything, and only had a small amount of cleanup to do.

Second problem: I can’t turn .Mac sync back on to reset the bookmarks, and it falsely thinks that I’ve got local iDisk sync turned on as well (something I used to use a lot, but shut off a while back due to .Mac flakiness). The whole .Mac connection seems pretty hosed, actually.

Third problem: Mail.app’s IMAP insists on showing my entire home directory on one of my servers, and walking the tree each time to check for “new messages”; this behavior cannot be overridden from the GUI. It also completely lost track of how to connect to my primary SMTP server, but after the third try I was able to get it to send mail again.

[this doesn’t include the many problems I already knew about from upgrading other machines, of course…]

[…and I’m sure I’ll find more…]

…utter crap.

I’m not sure which is worse: having their system recommend a z-grade porn cartoon, or recommending it because I liked the Mahoromatic Summer Special.

[Update: More oddities: the “better together” section says that if I buy a really nice men’s watch, I can get a great deal on another really nice men’s watch. Of course, the price is exactly the same as if I bought them separately. Sadly for them, I bought a really nice men’s watch about ten years ago, and it’s still going strong. (and, yes, it’s a Citizen Eco-Drive in titanium; definitely worth buying, but one should be enough)]

[Update: Oh, my, this one really says something about… something:]

If ANN’s episode titles are correct, it looks like…

(no fancy spoiler tags here, so below the fold it all goes)

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Yesterday, I had a hot water heater. Today, I have an empty tank and a bunch of wet drywall. Joy.

[Update: On the bright side, while I’m waiting at home for a plumber, I can wait at home for GE, who’ll fix my eight-year-old microwave oven for free (10-year magnetron warranty).]

Please skip directly to chapter 35. No one will object. Continuity be damned.

[Update: I was going to add a comment to Ubu's discussion, but it's fallen off the front page. He poked fun at the R+V manga fanboy who whined that the anime was ruining a "serious romantic story". Now that I've read up through chapter 40 (volumes 1-10, with ~80% comprehension), I think I'm qualified to answer that. Or, rather, I'll let Tsukune's poor, bewildered cousin Kyouko answer for me:

この学園の正体ッ
それは...
風俗ね!!?
えっちなお仕事の専門学校なんでしょ
ここーーーッ

For the kana-impaired: “Kono gakuen no shoutai, sore wa… fuuzoku ne!!!? Ecchi-na o-shigoto no senmon-gakkou nan deshou, koko!”.

Translated: “This school’s true character, it’s the… sex trade, isn’t it? This place is a dirty-job vocational school!”.

Admittedly, by showing up unannounced during the school festival, she’s gotten a slightly skewed view of things. Fortunately, she wasn’t there when Kurumu’s mom met Tsukune and offered him private lessons…

On a related note, following the usual shorten-to-four-mora pattern, Jump Comics refers to the series as RozaBan. Respectfully, I submit that it should be RozaPan. There’s not a panty-shot in every frame, but there are plenty to be found, and alt-Moka’s pantsu-fu fighting style guarantees that they show up even in the middle of the most serious battle.]

[Update: Note to people following the scanlations: chapters 39 & 40 will feel like an abrupt end to the series. 39 was in fact the end of its original serialization, and 40 was a one-shot. It started up again recently in a different magazine, Jump Square, as “season 2”. My guess is that the next collection will show up around May.

Meanwhile, the DS game will be out in March, based on the anime character designs. The screenshots make it look like a dating sim (surprise!). The title (「七夕のミス陽海学園」 = Tanabata no Miss Youkai Gakuen) suggests a beauty contest, with Tsukune picking the winner. And it’s set during the “star-crossed lovers” festival…]

When I went to Japan last year, I scrubbed my laptop of non-essential data and encrypted my home directory, to avoid any hassle if it got stolen. It sounds like I should have been more concerned about the boys working Customs.

Or perhaps not, since they just waved me through in both countries, without even a cursory inspection.

It’s obvious that the behavior described in the article can’t be extended to more than a tiny fraction of travelers, but without clear guidelines explaining what they can examine and for how long, I can understand why businesses would be very leery of allowing employees to take laptops across the border. I pity the fool who tries to separate Lucy from a laptop, though…

While a lot of folks are busy crying “police state”, I’m thinking more along the lines of “poorly-trained flunkies with no oversight”. Which is more dangerous, but less scary.