What the heck is a BlackBerry?

And why do people actually use it?

Ai and I have been discussing this. What exactly is a BlackBerry. As far as I can tell, it's just a wireless handheld device that can send and receive emails. That's it? All Japanese cell phones can do that, and the last cell phone I had in the US could also. So what's the big fuss? Why do I need a blackberry if my cellphone can do email? Granted, my last cell phone didn't come with it's own email address like the ones in Japan did but that only meant that I could use any account I wanted to. Why don't he cell phone companies add that feature for five bucks so that people don't have to spend the extra forty to fifty bucks a month(?!) and take the business away from the company that makes BlackBerry devices? I guess I just don't get it.

Test

This sunday I have my Japanese Proficiency Test Level 2. I've been studying for it for a while. I'd originally planned on taking it in Japan, but since it's only offered once a year, on the same date all around the world, I signed up to take it in Seattle. The level 2 test is the second highest, and tests reading, listening, and about 1000 kanji.

New toys

Ever since dad went to Randy's race back in September, dad's been wanting to get a motorcycle that he can fix up and race. His goal would be to not be lapped by the person in first place. So for the last few weeks, dad's spent his Wednesday, through Friday nights on craigslist.org looking for pre-70's Honda's. So every Thursday morning that I don't have chemo, dad's been waking me up to be a carpool dummy on his way up to look at bikes that he's called on. This Thursday, he woke me up at 9 am and said "we gotta leave quick". The add that he called on just said that it was a 63 Honda Dream. He really didn't know what it was, but it was old, so he called, found out that he was the first one to contact the seller, and that the bike had a title. When we got there, we saw it under an awning at the apartment complex that the guy lived at, and almost turned around without getting out. The guy had torn a bunch of it apart, so it looked like a bunch of it was missing. But I said "You might as well take a look at it", so we got out just as the owner set down the box of parts. He was just taking his fourth call of the morning as we approached the bike. Once we got a closer look at it, we realized that it was pretty neat looking. After seeing that the tank was in almost perfect condition besides the paint, and that most of the body parts were there, dad handed him the cash and we went in to get the key and title. Once inside, the seller could find neither the key, nor the title. The key had been a victim of "organization" by his girlfriend, and what he though was the title turned out to be the title to a 38 Harley that was mistakenly given to him by the original owner... He said he would track down the key and the title. His girlfriend should know where the first is, and he knows where the original owner lives and works. Even if that doesn't work, I'm sure we'll be able to track down the registered owner through the state listening dept.

Once we got it home, we started to track down what it actually is. It turns out that it's not a Honda Dream. This seems to be a common misidentification. I found the engine serial number, and from that found out that it's a Honda CA95 Benly Touring, a street bike that did only okay in the US, but quite well in Europe and Asia. It has a distinctive frame stamped out of sheet metal, forming a solid frame from the head to the tip of the fender. It's no racing bike, but it's such a cool little thing that dad and I are going to restore it. We've already found quite a number of parts for it. Obviously, at least once we got it home and started looking at it, we'll have to find the correct seat. The one that's there is in pretty good shape for an original seat, but we don't know what bike it's actually for. We should be able to sell it and buy the correct seat. It's also missing the tool kit and battery covers, and the head light. One thing that we have that's probably very rare to have is the frame mounted tire pump, in working condition. I think this is going to be a fun project, and I hope that it's not going to be too hard to tack down the title.

First is a picture of the bike sitting in the garage. Most of the body parts are in the plastic bin on the left. The body had been painted white, by brush, and the guy we bought it from started to sand it down and primer it.

The next picture shows what it looks like in original condition. Ours was originally white, but they came in black, red, or blue (And in rare cases, pink).

Here is another example of the Benly in white, the original color of ours.
In other news, Ai just got back from a trip to Hong Kong with her mom. You can see her Hong Kong pics at her page.

The night before Halloween...

Last Sunday, Kelsey picked me up from Bonney Lake and brought me to Bellingham for a few days. I'd kept saying that I'd be going up there, but didn't have a way to get up there until last week. The first night, I slept on Kelsey's couch, but it's way to small and uncomfortable, so I found a real bed for the next two nights. Lyle, from Tokyo was also in town, and he'd just bought a new bike, which he let me ride around the block. Very fast!

I also met Rick and Susan from my old job at ATUS, and went out to lunch with them. I also spent a good part of two days in the computer labs scanning negatives. Later that night, I was going out to Korean food with a friend, and we hit a road biker. He was okay, but his bike was bent up pretty bad, and it was scary watching him do a cartwheel through the air into a hedge. Now my friend, who hasn't really ever ridden a bike, hates bikes, so I want to buy her a bike. I think she needs it.

That kid in the picture moves too fast. He's hard to get a picture of.

Working in Wood

For my warmup to building a 4x5 view camera project, I've started building a pinhole camera. Dad's got tons of scrap plywood out in the shop, so I designed a camera to work around my 4x5 film holder. Last weekend I researched how to make a box joint, and after a few practice runs yesterday, got a working jig. Today, I adjusted it a bit to make it cut accurate 1/4 inch cuts, cut out the frame of my camera. The picture shows the box before I glued it, with the film holder in it to test the fit. Sitting next to it is a piece of coke can with a .23mm hole in it. Once the glue dries, I will mount the front and figure out how I'm going to hold the film holder in place.

Okay, I'll post...

I haven't posted for a while because I was feeling crappy right after chemo #3, and after that, I've been keeping myself busy. I'm finally on the way to emptying out my apartment in Tokyo. Hopefully, that will happen in the next week or two. Since about a week before my last chemo, my hair started slowly falling out, but not enough that I wasn't going to have any any time soon, or even that anyone else would notice it probably. But it was annoying to shedding hair everywhere, ( although Ellie does it all the time) so I cut it all off.

I've also been working in my darkroom, but I don't have enough film to keep up with my printing, and I left my two favorite cameras in Japan, so I started playing with a 95 year old Kodak Brownie that we've had forever. The pictures it takes are in what was called the "postcard" format, about 4x6 inches, and no film company has made film for this format for a long time. So I took a piece of photo paper and cut in down to 4x6 and put it into the camera. This way I can make negatives on a sheet of paper, then contact print them onto another sheet of paper.

Playing around with this inspired a few more projects. First, I need a contact printing frame, which is for printing negatives directly onto a sheet of paper without using an enlarger. This is pretty simple to build once I find a piece of glass I can use. The second project is a view camera. Typically, they use either 4x5 or 10x12 inch film, and many are made fairly simply out of wood. To buy a new one often costs over $1000, but a fairly nice one can be built much cheaper. The first project, is one that many home builders don't make on their own, the bellows. By studying a few websites and the Brownie, I was able to make a small paper model. After a few attempts, I was able to make a symetrical tapering bellows, but it's rectangular rather than square as I'd hoped. It makes sense that it's rectangular, but I still need to figure out how to make it square.

Printing

My darkroom is running! On tuesday, I finally settled on a layout and got it approved with the Boss. I put a board across the washer and dryer for the developing trays, set up a small table for the enlarger directly across from the toilet. Tuesday night I mixed up all my chemicals. Last night when dad got home from work, we went to the hardware store for some weather stripping and plumbing hardware, and I made my first prints last night. I was lucky that the guy who sold me the equipment had some boxes of paper and some paper developer that wasn't too old. I think today I will get out the negitives of Kelsey and I that I wasn't able to finish printing before I graduated and left for Japan last year.

Chemo Part 2

I had my second dose of chemo on Thursday, and it was worse, like I've been told it would. This time, the nurse hit a valve in my vein, so it took two tries to get the IV in me, but the infusion went okay. Nausea has been worse this time though. The thing that's really bothering me though is my insurance company. They've restricted my nausea medication to 12 pills in a 23 day period. The instruction say to take it 3 times daily as needed, so you can see the problem here. I haven't really needed it too much, but I currently have only 3 pills left, and if I needed them, I wouldn't be able to get more without paying $45 a pill. Luckily, there's a process that the doctor and pharmacy can start to get me more. The insurance company just doesn't like paying $45 per pill if they don't absolutely have to.

I got my darkroom stuff on Wednesday! I'm very happy with what I got. I'm sure that it's worth far more that what I bought it for, and everything is in great condition. Now I've got to figure out where it's all going to go. It will be pretty easy to black out a room, but right now, I can't figure out how to fit it into the utility room with the tables I've got. I don't want to have developer chemicals in my room obviously, so I'll have to get a few brains together, and maybe some wood, a drill and some screws together to work on it. I think I can have my first prints made in a week.

Ai and I have bee talking about when she's going to come here again. She's going to Austria and Germany for 2 weeks at the end of September, and she's got another break in October, but I think it'd be nice for her to come in December. She's worried about if other people will mind. You wont will you?

Darkroom coming

It looks like I've found a dark room. I my room. I found what I think will be a nice setup for only $125 including the enlarger, two lenses, a color head, and everything I need for developing prints and film. The enlarger is a nice model, though kind of old, and will be able to do both my 35mm and medium format films. I've convinced mom that I need something like this in order to not die of boredom, and that I'll be a really good son if she finances the purchase. So she's at the ATM now getting the cash. I'll go to the guy's house today to take a look at it and make sure that everything is in working order, and if so, probably buy it.

Tomorrow is my second dose of chemotherapy. I'll go in at 8 am with dad again. I've been feeling completely fine since about 4 days after the last dose. I don't know how the cumulative affects are, but I don't think I should expect anything worse than last time. I've noticed that since before I started treatment, I have a lot more energy, which is not what you'd expect. But before I started treatment, I was in pretty bad shape. Just a short walk was very slow, and left me huffing and puffing, especially if it was up hill. Last weekend I was in Seattle, and I stopped at the SCCA for a second, and when walking up the hill, I was at my normal fast speed, and wasn't huffing and puffing when I was done. However, last week I decided to go on a bike ride, and only made it a mile before I was exhausted. If I didn't have two dogs to look after right now, I'd take a ride and see how I am.

Ai Ai Ai Ai Ai.

Gotta love Adult Swim

Adult Swim, Cartoon Network's late night, always has little text blurbs in their commercial breaks. Tonight it was:

Netherlands: $6.63
UK: $6.21
Germany:$5.99
Italy:$5.91
France:$5.74
Japan:$4.45

Try to keep in mind what the rest of the world is paying before you all start going "Road Warrior" on each other.

And just a little graph I found that's sort of related.

Affecting me

The day after that last post, I started to feel why chemo isn't much fun. I woke up the day after writing my last post, and threw up before I was able to take my anti-nausia medicine. After that, I was more careful about listening to my stomach and taking my medicine when I felt problems coming on. It's been a few days now since I've had any problems with nausea, but my weekend at the cabin was anything but relaxing, and I was exhausted when I got home. There were so many people down there this weekend, that I had to escape to Annette's house a few times for some peace and quiet. I helped her get her internet hooked up, and brought my wireless router over and got her addicted to it. That night and the next morning were enough to get her addicted to sitting on the couch with a laptop, and she went out and bought a wireless router the next day. My work was done, and I was able to take mine back home.