You are Stormy. You have no real mind to speak of,
but people like you. No, wait, no they don’t.

Which Sealab 2021 character are you?
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I am Frylock from Aqua Teen Hunger Force!!
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I think I am going to get VatoBlog to a working point and upload the new version and then do some CCNA studying. More to come very soon…

Well I took about 190 pictures from japan I have uploaded almost 50 of them. I took several panorama pictures and shot that weren’t really impressive so I left them out. Also, there were a few shot from the hot tub but I don’t think it is in my best interest to post them. So if you want to take a look, you can check them out here.

More of my trip to Japan to come later…

Day 2

We woke up at about 7:30AM after just 5 hours of sleep. We got cleaned up and went downstairs to have breakfast which was a nice western and japanese buffet. After having breakfast we walked over to the nearest subway station and bought tickets to Kyoto. We weren’t really sure what we were doing so we transfered at Osaka station and got on another subway. Later we realized we got on the slow subway and it took us 1 hour to get to Kyoto station when we could have taken the express train and been there in 30 minutes.

When we arrived at Kyoto station I wasn’t feeling too good so we found a drug store and stocked up on cold medicine which set us back more that 3000 Yen, ouch! I doped up and we headed to the tourist information office to decided where to go and how to get there. Sang Hee decided on a few places to visit and we found our way to the bus stop. The bus took about 25 minutes to get to our first destination, Gingaku-ji Temple which is really covered in gold. It was pretty cool and cold too, the wind coming off the pond was really cold. We had some Japanese tea and snacks there and it was nice and relaxing. Then we went to Kiyomizu-dera Temple which took a long time by taxi from the last place and cost a lot of money, even though we did get to see lots of Kyoto. The temple is at the top of a hill which has lots of restaurants and souveneir shops that kind of ruined the feeling of the place. The temple has a really great view overlooking a lot of the city and it was nice to walk around and take lots of pictures. After leaving the temple we walked down the hill and found a little restaurant where we asked for advice for our last stop in Kyoto. We chose to go to a large park which I can’t find at the moment. Since it was winter, most of the plants in the park were dead but it was still nice and relaxing since there were not many people there. We walked through the park and decided to go back to Kyoto Station. When we got to the station we saw some posters for an Astroboy (Atom) exhibition so we wandered around the station until we found it. We got our tickets and went inside. There really wasn’t alot, it was just a multi screen sequence of Tezuka Osamu’s works, a big screen Astroboy cartoon with smoke and water effects, and the chamber of Astroboy’s rebirth. So we took a bunch of pictures and I snagged a bunch of pamphlets which I will upload later and then we took a look at the gift shop where I bought a tie with a subtle astroboy outline. After finishing up at the exhibition we grabbed tickets to the proper express train back to Namba station. Before we reached the platform, Sang Hee insisted on grabbing some food from a bakery so we missed our train and had to wait for about 15 minutes for the next one. While we were waiting for the next train there was a great sight I wish I could have taken a picture of but I thought everyone at the station would think I’m some kind of pervert. There was a schoolgirl about 16 years old wearing a super short skirt and in front of her there were two little school children. For some reason they were wearing summer uniforms and the boy was huddled over shivering with a huge Japanese schoolbag on his back and tiny shorts on his legs. Eventually the train come and Sang Hee found a seat while I stood for most of the 25 minute trip back to Namba station.

Upon ariving at Namba station we walked a long way to Bic Camera where we met Sang Hee’s 2nd sister and her boyfriend. I wanted to look at some Japanese electronics but they dragged us around the store most of the time so I didn’t get a chance to look around as much as I would have liked to. Then we went to meet another of Sang Hee’s 4th sister’s friends who bought us dinner at a nice Vietnamese restaurant called “Vietnam Frog”. We had a few drinks after dinner and left to go back to our hotel. While we were in a cab going back to our hotel, Sang Hee’s 2nd sister called and said they wanted to have a drink before the went back to Seoul the following day so we stopped our cab at Namba station where were supposed to meet them so we waited for a long time before they showed up. I wasn’t to happy and I wasn’t feeling good so I went back to our hotel room and went to bed while Sang Hee had a drink with them and then came up about 30 mins later.

Again it took me longer than expected to write Day 2 so I will try to write Day 3 tomorrow during my breaks at work. Peace!

Wow! What a great trip. It was only 4 days but I did so many things and we had a really great time. There are so many things to mention, I just hope I remember them all. The trip was basically free thanks to my Sister in-law’s friend who just happens to be one of the richest people in Osaka. So here is a break down of our trip:

Day 1

We arrived in Osaka at a little after 4:00PM but we missed the rapido train to Namba at 4:30PM so we couldn’t leave the airport until 5:00PM. When we eventually got to Namba we took a taxi over to Sang Hee’s sister’s apartment. This was the first Japanese apartment I ever saw and it was really nice and very space efficient. I should have taken some pictures of the apartment to show what I mean but I never got around to it. One thing that really impressed me was the toilet. When you flush the toilet instead of the fresh water going directly into the tank, there is a sink built into the top of the tank so you can wash your hands before the water goes into the toilet, very space and environmentally efficient!

At this time we were also introduced to Sang Hee’s sister’s friend who is owner or co-owner of three companies and lots of real estate in Osaka. He made plan for us about how to spend our trip, however the plan was completely scrapped the following day due to changes in timing and weather. We then jumped in another cab and he got us a room for two nights at the New Otani Hotel in Osaka which overlooked a large park and Osaka castle. We had a really nice room and it was a great hotel, one of the most expensive, if not the most. After dropping off our baggage he took us to full course meal at the Chinese restaurant inside the hotel. I had so many different things but the most memorable was the shark’s fin which was about 8000 Yen (100CAD) per person. It was also during this meal when he gave us 100000 Yen (1230 CAD) to travel around Kyoto the following day. I still have no idea why he gave us so much money as we obviously did not need that much, so we still have most of it. After eating too much food we went to Shinsaibashi and he took us to an underground Yakuza roulette parlor where he gave us 20000 Yen (245CAD) to play with. Sang Hee and I pocketed 10000 Yen each and played the other bill. I lost all mine, although I was up about 10x for a while but since I didn’t consider it real money and I had to keep playing for another 15 minutes, I lost it all, Sang Hee walked away with about 8000 yen I think. After that, we went to a transvestite show club. It was kind of interesting but nothing too special, the place was packed though. All they did was dance and sing half naked (literally). I can’t find a good link for this so I will be sure to include a picture or two when I upload them. As soon as the show was over we bolted and went to a little bar and drank more whiskey until about 1:30AM when Sang Hee and I decided to go back to the hotel and get some much needed sleep.

I didn’t realize I had so much to say so I am going to wait until tomorrow to post more info about our trip because it is getting late and I have to wake up early to go back to work.

Tomorrow:

Day 2 & More!

I’m still working on VatoBlog 2.0.  I am hoping to put a Beta 1 version out in the next week or two. I don’t think there will be any RSS however there will be all the features of 1.0 plus new design and constant CSS throughout all pages.

In other news, I have scheduled my CCNA test for February 27th at 4:30PM so I will be studying very hard for the next month. I’m shooting for a 900+. I was considering the 2 test approach but I decided that I would save my pennies and just go for the 640-801 test. Wish me luck!

It’s currently 11:41PM and I have to wake up early, finish packing, go the my sister in-law’s boyfriend’s house, catch a taxi with them to Incheon airport, get a re-entry permit from immigration, and hop on a plane to Osaka so I better get some Zs. I promise to take lots of cool pictures of Japan, I’m taking 208mb of CF so I think I should have enough for 5 days.

Peace!

I finally put up some of the pictures from our trip to Busan and Gyungju earlier this month. You can take a look at the gallery here.

On another note, I have been looking into XSLT as an option for trying to comply with XHTML. I’ll keep ya up to date with what ever I choose to do.

Hey All,

I decided to go back to the drawing board and thus scrap VatoBlog 1.x. VatoBlog 2.0 will be a >25% of code and design with a major focus on the separation of content, design, and function. Here is a list of tentative features:

• XML support (no database needed)


• CSS2 support (I would like to promise XHTML support but asp.net does not do a good job of that at the moment so I will wait for asp.net 2.0)


• WYSIWYG content management (Thanks to FreeTextBox.com)


• RSS Feed & Consumption


• Open source (I’ll probably use a workspace at GotDotNet or Source Forge)


• And many more… (I’m too tired to think of anything else right now)

One thing I should also say is that VatoBlog has never meant to be and will never be a replacement for other CMSs. The role of VatoBlog is merely to help the little guy start a blog on a Microsoft server with as little time, effort, and resources as possible. This is a market that I find is desperately lacking behind others and so I have started this project as hobby and to create some useful software for myself and hopefully others.

Time to go watch The Simpsons and get some sleep. Peace!

Serious Problem!

I was trying to play with my code, trying to remove the tables and make it all CSS based. However, that is a really big project. Thus I gave up on that idea and went back to my old code. Then I was trying to work on my old code and I found that a critical part of the website was missing. So I have made a new decision, unless I can find a recent backup of my code I am going to rewrite the site again!

Oh well, looks like I found a way to fill up my time that is already filled up.

Yes I know, this is long overdue but here it is. Not too much is new besides the usermenu on the left and the comments on the right, but the admin side is greatly improved with the addition of the FreeTextBox from www.freetextbox.com.

I plan to work on the site a little more this weekend. I should also get back to my CCNA studies so I can hopefully get a new job this summer. I am starting to feel like I have wasted so much time.

Peace!

This is a picture from the Korea Times welcoming the Year of the Monkey. However, the problem is that neither of the animals are actually monkeys. Anyway, it is funny to see a chimp and a orangutan where traditional Korean clothing

I have a reasonable schedule this month; 6 hours between 7AM and 3PM. So today when I go home I am going to finish getting my computer up and running and then I am going to do some long needed work on the website including adding FreeTextBox.com to my blogging software.