Mike's Notes on Life and Other Mysteries

So much fun! Just try entering a simple Japanese address into the various "address change" web forms around, and watch the breakdowns. "Please enter zip code" (and it will NOT allow you to either skip the zip code or enter something like 630-0101 - my new Japanese zip code). One form didn't even allow you to live anywhere outside the U.S., although the organization had a section listing "International Services." Too many lines in the "street section" is automatically rejected, lack of this or that, and so forth. Of three change of addresses, I filled suggestions about improving two of them, because I had to mangle the Japanese address to get the form to cooperate. And I didn't even try putting in real Japanese (kanji).

Time is rather odd right now. Part of the time, I feel as if it is moving very slowly, and I get frantic to get people (including myself) moving. Other times, it seems to be racing along, with huge jumps and leaps, so that what I thought was well in the future is actually just around the hour. And some of the time, it seems to be doing both at the same time! When I squint this way, it's tomorrow, with a boatload of things that are already behind. But when I tip my head the other way, time goes creeping on its appointed rounds, slowlly ticking off the minutes and seconds as they pass.

A few topics of interest:
project management (aka how do you get people to work together, anyway?)
elearning (or educational technology) where the technology and the learning intersect
software engineering (aka how do you get people to turn dreams into bits, anyway?)
writing (aka how do you get ideas from one person to another one?)
and probably a few that I've forgotten in the rush.

今日はblogを始まる。多分これは便利と思います。

Blame Ben and Brian. He suggested that it would be really good to keep a blog, and then Brian pointed out where I could set one up. So between the two of them, here we are.

I'll probably go ahead and ante up to upgrade, so that I can put pictures up, and separate the chaff from the seed. But for right now, here's blogging at you.