Maitta! Always - Daily Amazing Confusions -

At the year end of 2016, I was inactive, down with a cold. The year 2016 was good in that I was healthy enough to work through it, and also I continued the habit of writing something here. What comes in 2017? I'm feeling urges from the group of adults with similar disorders like me. I'm feeling mental pressures from the urge to the group go forward, considering messages shared by some members. Of course I'm not personally attacked. In my view, it is really difficult to the organization go ahead without help of people of the different type of us. I think the nature of people with similar traits to mine is they are far too less interested in other people's needs and idea however hard they try to understand. We first need to be understood by our key persons who are good at listening to someone else's voices and empathize with them. I quite often feel that I'm really understand some other members' needs to put out a certain message. On the other han...

It's fortunate that my cold have gotten worse. My fever level in the morning is 36.9C. I hope I'm getting better in 2 or 3 days. By the time new year has begun.

My fever seemed to come down to normal, but actually have stayed in the level of around 37C. My hip joints still sore. I have no choice but staying lying on my bed most of the day and browse some web pages once in a while. I had planned to ski twice in this year since the beginning the holidays, but plan for this year have to be rescheduled. New year's skiing, it depends on my condition especially on my fever.

My fever came down to 36.9C in the morning from 38.5C last night. Until now at 6:00 a.m. my body temperature has been the same level. It is less likely that I have flu, but still I have to be careful enough not to chill my body, absorbed in reading articles on video games.

It looks like I had already caught a cold by yesterday afternoon. Even worse, it can be flu. In the morning, my fever was 36.5C, slightly higher than usual, and I had sore throat. I'm feverish with 38.5C after I came home from work, and 100 heart beats a minute. Now almost all my joints seem to sore. Tomorrow, I will go to hospital. Fortunately I'm off duty until January 5, but I'm worried if the hospital nearby will be open, and if I actually have flu.

If cold prevention is my priority, giving up posting everyday can be a choice to sleep early taking care of myself. In the morning I was fine, and it seemed to have been so throughout the day. Things changed in the afternoon. At 4:30 p.m. I suddenly lost my concentration. I was gradually becoming weak on the train home, feeling my every muscle and my throught slightly sore. I'm not really coughing, but my parents are. My throat isn't really sore so much that my voice change, but has a kind of "itchy" feeling in the back of it. I wondered it may be an early sign of cold. If I take a rest now, perhaps I will find myself driving away cold in its early, but I think this is only if I go to bed immediately, stopping thinking about what to post here.

I got two fluorescent lamps and 2 CDs on this Christmas day. These are what I got at an auction and ordered at Amazon. However I'm feeling that the arrival of these product as a Christmas present and I got another present. I was able to attend the worship service today and the party after the service with much less tension. I didn't need earplugs to "endure" piano sounds of worship songs, and even able to sing properly. Surprisingly I didn't panicked when I was at church. I attended the series of events 95% fully. I left during cleanup after the party, because I needed to take care of myself, but it was after most of the work had been done. My anxiety is that these days more and more people close to me has caught cold. I have got a lot of presents, but getting flu is unwelcome present.

33 sheets (124 pages) for a book on alternative set theory, my major in graduate school. 5 sheets for documents about skiing training sessions. 5 sheets for notes for reference books of foreign lanuages. 17 sheets for my recent receipts. Total 60 sheets for today so far. ...... Still 7 sheets left to scan. There is another 3 receipts at hand, and what will the last 4 sheets be? I finally achieved the goal by scanning 7 sheets of one of my recent sketchbooks. These are the holidays to celebrate that Christ was born, but also I secretly felt like to celebrate my achievement I had set in the beginning of this December to scan 1,000 sheets to clean up my room. Actually my room was still persistently in a mess. I would have to give up tens of thousands sheets of my old documents as they are in the printed form. However being able to dispose of pending documents and notes related to my major in graduate school help me step forward in cleaning up my room and my memory. By the ...

My goal set: scanning 1000 sheets of my old printed documents by Christmas. The process by yesterday: having scanned 700 sheets, and 300 sheets left to scan. The process today : scanning 233 sheets, 67 sheets still left and it's due tomorrow. The documents I scanned: handouts of math seminars, and a book by an adult with Asperger's syndrom.

I'm almost burnt out from year-end works of December. Sometimes some easy words are hard to say from tiredness and I'm embarrassed when it happens during a phone call, a meeting, and a report. This morning my scanning task advanced a lot. I scanned a book by the scenario writer of Dragon Quest. The book was published in 1988. I happened to scan 136 sheets and still have 300 sheets to scan to achieve my goal for Christmas. Another good thing, than number of sheets I scanned, is I finished this work before 7:20 a.m. Typically my scanning work finish around 7:30 a.m. and have to hurry to have breakfast, to leave home for work 8:09 a.m., getting on a train 8:19 a.m.

I scanned 59 sheets this morning. This was the workbook for the interview session of an English test. I am not good at having a conversation, so I failed many times in the interview test, until I finally passed 4 years after when I first passed the paper-based section of the test.

I took advantage of the half holiday this morning and scanned 129 sheets. It was a workbook for a French language test. 129 sheets for a workbook for a French language test. Its level was called 3rd grade, but 4th highest level. I took this test 14 years ago and passed it. Since then I seldom read back the worksheet. After I got to the age of 30 there was no chance to use the French language, and my obsession about this language since then got much weak than that of when I was in university, and much weaker than I had about the English language even though I have few people I can talk to. Anyway, my scanning has advanced much and now I have 571 more sheets to scan. [December 20] In the morning I scanned a book on Japanese brand-new sporty cars in the year 2000. I scanned 76 sheets, and I have 495 sheets to scan. I thought to myself, "16 years passed, and I've come to think 'A real car better than a sport car'."

This year I'm going to make it in keeping on posting here something every day. This means I'm going to post more than 365 posts in this year. I guess almost a third of my posts in this year refer to my sleep. Perhaps I have posted 100 articles about my sleep in this year. I'm so much concerned about my condition and so much concerned about problems with my sleep. This time too I can't take next action and moving to and fro web pages sitting in front of my laptop. I was thinking of what to write today, thinking "writing about my sleep again?". Perhaps I'm always thinking about having sleep when I'm able to work on this edit page, typically either right after I'm back from work or after I have supper. "The next task is having a lot of quality sleep, but I have a task of post here for today." In this way, probably, my blog topic typically become about my sleep.

Finally I can sit and relax for next 18 hours, after all work has been over for this weekend. On Thursday, preparing PowerPoint for the meeting. On Friday, meeting. On Saturday and Sunday training session for ski instructors. Today I was almost mentally wreck, shouting out loud, panicked and needed a lot of drinkable water. For some time I manged to behave and enjoy skiing. I was totally out of place in the session in that I have several mental dysfunctions and needed myself someone to mentally support me, and I was no problem in that I understand and demonstrate basic techniques for teaching someone skiing. The mental load for me in the session isn't small. I almost forget what to say and much vocabulary to tell how's it going. I know I need 1.5 time sleep of my usual one after such a mental wreck, to go to work on Monday with smile. It's fortunate that Monday morning will be a half holiday and I have a chance to recover from this mentally drained condition. It is...

At 7:20 P.M. today I scanned 60 sheets. 640 sheets to scan by Christmas! Some of my past lecture notebooks were interesting. I took these notes around 2002. I was surprised that I then took notes with beautiful and tidy letters, which is I think not characteristic of me. Somewhere my handwriting got so rough that I can't read. Some words was masked with a black marking pen . They were the name of a girl who was one of the classmates and she told me that ...... I blushed when I read the word under the marker. My goal of scanning documents and sketchbooks hasn't much advanced yet. The priority of scanning was put lower level than preparing for monthly meeting and skiing training. Having plenty of sleep is also higher priority. This evening it look like I can make 30 minutes to scan. With this time I will probably able to scan more than sheets. The problem is what to give up as paper version and choose to PDF files.

"Monster surprised you." I suddenly uttered in the middle of the skiing teaching method training. This is a message I often saw when I played Wizardry series when I was a teenager. Horii Yuuji, famous for the scenario writer of Dragon Quest series, also put this message in the 3D maze of his earlier work "The Portopia Serial Murder Case", paying homage to Wizardly. But why during skiing lesson did I uttered this message? Is this another version of flashback, although it wasn't unpleasant, in order to relieve my tense mood to cope with a duty even though skiing was a pleasant thing. A few tiny monsters of petty flashback and trivial riddle actually surprised me a bit.

Skiing anxieties I feel recent year in the beginning of the winter It is not about whether I can ski or not. In the first few years since I began skiing, I felt this exact anxiety. The fear I feel now is about the equipments. Aren't there something missing when it comes to the time when I'm at the mountain and about to ski? This is the same kind of worry I feel every day whenever I go to work and leave offs after I finish the work of the day.

Agenda and PowerPoint: done Especially it was thanks to today's small amount of my regular work that I completed my PowerPoint. The next climax will be the meeting tomorrow afternoon. The third: skiing on Saturday, and the fourth, skiing on Sunday. Climaxes one after another. Every morning I'm thinking about survival. It probably will happen on Monday or Tuesday morning.

Minimum task for today. Going to the office without delay. No time for cleaning up my room, studying and relaxation music. I have breakfast and change clothes. It was raining outside in the morning, and is expected to turn into snow. Physical and mental safety is my first priority today. Work comes next, and learning comes next.

"It was a torture." If I try to describe the state of mind when I was taking a class in university in my first 3 years. Mathematical formulas and equations flew hear and there on the blackboard. I didn't understand even a word what the teacher said. Students were sitting and strenuously taking notes during that 90 minutes. I couldn't. I sometimes cried and shouted and got away from the classroom. I was even collapsed on one day in May of the first year, and was taken to a psychiatrist. My major was mathematics in university. I didn't study calculus in high school. I wasn't in science course then. I took art and letter course in high school, hoping to enter a law school and become a lawyer. Then I suddenly felt that it was shame that I can't understand calculus formulas science students study. I learned calculus by myself outside classes. "As you all learned in high school, ..." a teacher said. "I did, but never in high school...

Skiing on the next Saturday and Sunday. A training session for instructors. I enjoy skiing, but for this time, anxiety is overwhelming. There won't be enough time on Sunday to rest and prepare for Monday's work. I took a half holiday on Monday, but I'm still worried if my tiredness wouldn't affect my work. 8 days later, probably my anxiety will disappear. I'm looking forward to this.

104 scans on Sunday. 734 sheets, and 14 days left. 1000 scans (5) A sketchbook: 57 sheets A mook about writing: 47 sheets. Task other than scanning. Receiving a pair of skis I had had tuned. Waxing another pair of skis.

"Unexpectedly tired in this week", I answered. "There were unexpectedly many events and task to do in the beginning of December, and by Friday morning I had been exhausted." The doctor told me that having a rest is important when tired. 9:30 a.m. : Went to a mental clinic, and had conversation shown on the top of the post. 10:00 a.m. : Went to Sendai to do some tasks. 10:30 a.m. : Bought a 100g bottle of instant coffee because it was special discount. 10:45 a.m. : I got a medical lip cream, which was also on discount. 10:50 a.m. : I went to a shop to have the heel of my shoes repaired. 11:35 a.m. : Road the train for Ayashi.

Dec 9: 28 Dec 8: 41 Total by now: 142 sheets Left: 838 sheets

3 hours ago I had a wonderful idea, and I was thinking that that was the perfect subject of today's blog post. By the time I got home I had forgotten what was the idea, just remembering the fact that I had had a wonderful idea for my blog post. My productivity at this time sharply decline from that of the afternoon, and it's really hard to "reproduce" "that wonderful idea."

I appreciate their courage. This motivate me to continue writing daily in the English language on this blog. Some members of the blog community I'm a member of began to blog in English. This community is for middle-aged Japanese who learn English. Blogs by some of the members may not be well-written, but still it's worth while reading at least for me, because it encourage me as much as, perhaps more than, the posts about how to write in your second language. I have been thinking what value this blog can give. For the time of being I'm only able to write daily matters, especially my problems, stress tiredness of my daily life.  

More sleep. I want. Although I've got the best sleep in these weeks. My sleep last night was not bad. I turned in before 9:30 p.m. I didn't have a bad dream. I woke up 6:00 a.m. However I still want more sleep. I hope it won't happen in the afternoon when I'm at work.

* Dec 6: 31 sheets  Sketchbook: 11  Information about Abilympics : 20 Total by now 104 sheets, 896sheets left ================================== * Dec 5: 54 sheets  Receipts: 15  Sketchbook: 34  Information about Abilympics : 5 Total by now: 73 sheets >Sheets I have scanned: > > November 29 morning: 15 > > Nov. 30 morning: 4 > > total by now: 19 > > rest of sheets 981 > > rest of days 26

My main browser at home is Pale Moon Browser. Recently it has been upgraded to version 27. This upgrade has so drastic changes that I have to suffer a few inconveniences. I can't fully use Yahoo Japan and Google without editing user agent setting. In addition to that, I can't view PDF files directly on the browser. (This is not critical at home because I don't view PDF files so frequently as I do at work.) On the other hand some shortcomings of it has been improved. Some sites which didn't work properly now work on Pale Moon. Now I can post entries on Facebook, and fully use LingQ. I prefer to use Pale Moon because its user interface is the older version of Firefox, which I had been familiar with, and support silverlight to use latlonglab to look up terrain of my bicycling course. Google chrome is the best for web developer use, with its convenient debugging tools. 

I went to Akiu hot spring area with the fellows of the meeting of people with developmental disabilities. It was a good holiday to forget about tiredness from work and stress of the city.

New speaker I assembled last Saturday was awesome!! My CDs I have long forgotten more than 10 years has been revived. Instruments and vocals sounded much more lively than ever before. I also ordered a few used CDs I'm interested in. The main playback environment is my old laptop with new usb dac which arrived today, I had gotten through an auction. PC: Toshiba dynabook AX/740LS CPU Celeron M 360J  OS: Centos 6.8 (Previously Windows XP but I gave up it after its end of support.)  Main audio player: Audacious 3.2 (I wanted newer version to meet more various sampling rate needs, but on this OS this looks like to be the newest version available.) USB DAC: Fostex PC100USB-HR (44.1khz/48khz/88.2khz/96khz)  Amplifier: Lepai LP-2020+  Speakers: Fostex FE83-Sol (Enclosures: Yoshimoto Cabinet DB-80SS Side Slit Enclosure)  (Previous and sub speakers: Fostex P800K with enclosures Fostex P800-e) Some setting could be better, but I hear incredibly lively sou...

At this time of day, finished the work for today, arrived home and about to have supper, I'm in a tired and hurry mood. Usually I write a post in a few minutes of that period. Probably this period of the day may be the least productive time in the day, and it may be the time I want to spend much more slowly.

Yesterday evening I attended a meeting for adults with developmental disabilities. That time members shared how to cope with stress. Members attending yesterday's meeting were likely to prefer meeting people with same hobby or same kind of disabilities. Unfortunately I couldn't agree their preference from the heart, in terms of coping with stress and tiredness. I would rather prefer exercising alone, such as walking or bicycling traveling all by myself, because my stress is mainly from my extremely limited capacity of coping with amount of communications, numbers of occasions to meet people, as well as handling complicated real time business communications. It was good to share diverse ideas of stress coping from diverse participant though with same kind of disabilities. And at the same time, unfortunately, I perceive that even this kind of meeting with my kindred in terms of the autism spectrum can be another source of stress.

Sheets I have scanned:  November 29 morning: 15  Nov. 30 morning: 4  total by now: 19  rest of sheets 981  rest of days 26

I felt empty by the time I arrived at the station near home. I swung fore and aft in strange posture. I leaned forward, I bent backward, then my body was lifted upward by my arms shrunk with distress. After I got off the train the stairs up to the overpass on the Senzan Line looked like a wall. Is this rock climbing to get across this railway? I thought I have been O.K. and relatively physically and mentally in shape. Actually now except that I'm exhausted by that stress, I don't feel so bad. Probably a series of stressful events on the train make me exhausted to that empty.

In order to clean up my room, reducing the amount of paper in it is critical. To dispose of unimportant paper, I scan it and convert it to digital data. I set the goal 1000 scanning by Christmas of this year.

Gasp! This is when I was set to write something, 2 hours after annual training session for skiing instructors. I, on the autism spectrum, with mental illness and with little acquaintance, was totally out of place. One thing good for me was that the course went on ahead schedule and dismissed 1 year earlier. Of course I enjoy skiing, but these years I'm feeling that I totally lack the skills and the aptitude to communicate how fun skiing is.

Finished speaker craft today. Speaker units: Fostex FE83-sol Enclosure: Yoshimoto Cabinet DB-80SS Side Slit Enclosure Kit Coated polyurethane 6 times, sanded before each coating, first with #180, then #320, #600, #1000, and finally #2000. Finally the surface become much smoother, but I couldn't go so far as to finish with mirror surface. It was not until then I attached terminals and speaker units. It took less than an hour, in contrast that I had to wait 6 days after the speaker units arrived, and 4 days after the enclosure kit arrived. I lost no time in listening to music with the speakers. I connected them to the amplifier, and play several musics. Vocal, piano, and many instruments were amazing. They sounded much vivider and warmer. Tomorrow I have to attend a training course for skiing instructors. I have no time to enjoy music tomorrow. That's too bad.

Coating speaker enclosure with water-based polyurethane. At first I was planning attach the speaker without painting, and if I want surface decoration, I was planning to use texture seals. Then I got advice that coating making sound better, so I decided to coat the enclosures. Since it was early winter, and I wanted to work inside my room, I chose water-based polyurethane. Now I'm on the second coating. After coating four or five times, I will attach the terminals and the speaker units to the enclosures. Then it will be time to enjoy new DIW sound!!

The monthly member meeting for this week, biggest task for this week is now over. I feel great but at the same time I'm gradually feeling tiredness. Sleep for this night may be the key to work through without any trouble.

6:20 A.M. Began to assemble a speaker enclosure I had ordered the kit of. 8:00 A.M. Contacted to the manufacturer of the enclosure kit, because I got wrong connection wires. 9:00 A.M. Went to Ichinoseki city to buy apples with my parents. 3:00 P.M. I got home and dripped 3 cups of coffee. 3:30 P.M. I assembled the rest of the pair of the speaker enclosure. 4:00 P.M. I went to a DIY store to solve, hoping to solve speaker wire problem by myself. I also looked for varnish to coat the enclosures. 4:30 P.M. I was relieved and glad that I got the reply from the manufacture of the enclosure. The right cables will arrive in 2-3 days.

Movements of my tongue are the key to pronunciation, especially of English words. I need to systemize movements to make sounds like a native speaker. On the other hand, I haven't systemized my tongue's movements when I acquire my mother tongue Japanese. It's not until I want to speak like a native English speaker that I'm conscious of movements of my tongue. Perhaps I would be able to make same sounds like a native speaker, but this systemized theory is too far from the feel of a native speaker. I haven't thought systems of pronunciation whenever I speak Japanese, either.

"I want 100 meter farther." I thought to myself when I jog in front of the gate of a junior high school nearby. My body had gotten warmed up by the time 10 minutes after I started jogging from home after supper. In the beginning my body was so heavy that I was reluctant to jog long. I had to return several hundred meters anyway if I had wanted to give up jogging then. I went on jogging, thinking jogging in a fair pace is good for forgetting about stress in the city and on the train. After I finished jogging, I measured the distance I jogged on a map. It summed up a little more than 2 kilometer. It is likely to take this distance for me to feel I'm beating stress. It take about 20 to 30 minutes for me to perceive jogging as pastime and a means to beat stress, rather than an ordeal.

I tried to use the TV in my room as a PC display, getting mini D-Sub cable. I couldn't comfortable view the display on the TV, because resolution is 1024 x 768 and its aspect ratio is incorrect. I decided that I continue to use the screen of the old laptop instead of using the TV screen. I may be going to use the mini D-Sub cable, when I got a better PC screen.

I ordered a pair of speaker units and enclosures craft kit. Hoping to arrange hi-res audio playback environment, I installed Linux on my old laptop. I'm going to purchase and connect USB-DAC to it. In the laptop Ubuntu had been already installed, but it was too heavy on it, so I got rid of it and installed CentOS. Wireless internet connection was unstable even after I shut down IPv6 configurations, and I haven't established MP3 playback environments (it look like GStreamer is the key, but I haven't found the right path for my environment). I also could want test web server settings to get more familiar with web servers apart from XAMPP. I'm going to use this old laptop as sub PC, music player, and test web server for the time being, however I plan to get a new, low-cost, low-energy-consumption, and low-heat (power is lower priority) in a year if I get along with the Linux PC. Working on an operating thing make me forget about time passing, so I want to be careful more a...

Arranging things and data in my room is what I'm really poor at. This is also a bottleneck as a computer engineer. Acquiring the habit of arranging things and data is the key for me to grow as a computer engineer.

Considering contents on it, this is one of bottom blogs. However why am I obsessed with writing something English every day? I know there is little hope of a dramatic change in my human relationships unless I begin to take much bolder actions. Status quo is no better than speaking to myself in English. It appears to be meaningless, however I can't stop none the less. Why don't I stop learning English even if I have no plan to communicate anyone in it? One of the reason is learning English has become my obsession, having little to do with English as a communication tool. It began when English was one of compulsory subjects as well as Japanese, math, and science. Keeping up with this obsession with English, perhaps the time may come that I would like to talk to someone or I would like to travel abroad.

I sweated hard suddenly, after my right back began to convulse. The train was at a stop, waiting for the oncoming train. The panic came so suddenly that I couldn't fully behave. It got suddenly much hotter and I took off my coat. Fortunately I managed to get of the station near home, but I had to take extra two minutes to put my coat again before I headed for home.

Little progress has made in my conversation skill since I entered university more than 20 years ago. I tried to enjoy conversations, and enjoyed them for several times, but in most cases I ended up getting frustrated because I couldn't enjoy enough. This has made me more seclusive, finding myself more comfortable with minimum communication to do my daily work. Most English learners, it appears to me , focus on conversation, setting their goals to being able to speak fluently, enjoy conversations, and live funner life. As for me, I may want to seek more fluency in both Japanese and English, however I'm often reluctant because added fluency overwhelm my capacity of communication. Communication capacity as well as fluency is what I lack in my daily communication, however typical communication lessons don't focus on communication fluency. Maybe I need to look for a way to improve my communication capacity or to get along with little communication capacity and enjoy ...

On Saturday and Sunday was full of panic although it was sunny and warm weekend. I was a little bit worried about coming weekdays. It appears to be O.K. after I work through Monday. There are still 4 days left, however my worry has gotten much weakened.

Today I was collapsed from panic 30 minutes after the Sunday service ended. I couldn't handle inputs from outside and I hesitated to talk to a person who I usually talked to when I was panicked because she looked very busy. It was a shame that I was panicked 2 days consecutively. Yesterday, I was panicked at a ramen shop because my order arrived at the same time I was asked to move my seat. I couldn't tell if I can begin to eat after I moved. A few minutes later my panic was settled after I told about my panic. These events reminded me the difficulties I meet in my daily life.

I visited a mental clinic today. It was much hotter than in the middle of this week. I walked from the clinic, viewing autumn color along the road and river. Regretfully the only camera I had was that of my Kindle, with the lens only on the front and very poor resolution, I had hard time with taking pictures of red and yellow leaves of the trees. If I had a better camera I would enjoy the view more.

When I visited a psychiatrist for the first time at the age of 18, doubting if I was schizophrenia I was told that I was not, and instead the doctor said that I have traits of autism. Then he introduced me a book by Donna Williams Nobody Nowhere . At that time I didn't understand how I was like her. I had no idea that making up characters like Carol and Willy to mask my personality. Years later, I have acquired skill to become slightly more sociable, and behave slightly better in business situations. At some time recently I notice that these skills are somehow incompatible with my crude personality, curious about every shape and meaning at hand. When I try to be sociable it looks like that I'm playing a different character from my crude self. It was only a few days before I have noticed that this is a similar way that Donna invented personalities like Carol and Willie.

Wrong thought 2: There is no place for me. I'm not good at communication and have little contact, so I have few place where I can spend time comfortably. However at least I have home to live in and workplace at which I work. "There is no tomorrow, and there is no place", I hear some echoes like that, but these are wrong thought I have to fight against.

Wrong thought: There is no tomorrow for this blog. The fact: I have done little in this blog, but tomorrow will come, and no one can predict that what I am posting 5 years or 10 years later. I reminded this because I am almost being obsessed with the wrong thought I stated at the first of this post, and almost utter. I'm also thinking about speech therapy. I took a speech therapy when I was in elementary school. I had no idea that I had a problem with my speech and my communication. When I record my voice and listen to it, I realize that there is a problem.

2 days after the race, I'm a little bit feverish and heavy. Now that I'm home, it's time to have a rest not to catch a real cold.

After the race I'm basically fine, except for severe muscle soreness of my legs and occasional heart uneasiness. I'm watching carefully my condition, having plenty of rest.

On the first Sunday in November I participate in a road race in recent years. Last year and the year before the last, I went on a Kakuda event, and this year I went on an Ishinomaki event. I ran 10 kilometers and my time was 50'51. It was for the fast time I ran a road race with my friends. It's fun to participate in a road race even all by myself, but it's much funner to participate in one with friends.

Are you OK? I heard a voice from English teacher. It happened when I was at English conversation class of university. Students made pairs to practice conversations. In that pair session, I was frozen. I lost my voice and I limped, even collapsed. I had already known more than 3,000 English word through preparation for entrance exams, however I was at a loss what to do when it comes to speak with someone else. At that time, around the year 1995, I hadn't realized that I managed to make conversation with my fellow students because I was helped by them with communication. It was no wonder that I can't make a conversation even though I know relatively large vocabulary because I couldn't expect on substantial help, because the student I was supposed to talk didn't go so far as to know how to help a person in a foreign language. It was not until almost 20 years later then that whether I can communicate greatly depend on assistance from people I talk to, not only in E...

This morning I forgot my ballpoint pens in the pockets of my shirt. I had prepared a spear pen in my workplace, so there was no problem with my work today, but I realized again that how much I depend on my pens and sketchbook as a means of my stress relief. Having said that, I found another way to spend my time on the train to and from work. I read books I was away from for month on my Kindle, thinking that there are another way for spend time and relieve my stress and anxiety.

The pleasure when a code I first typed ran after correction of a few errors, this is the motivation I'm still learning computer programming. To increase this pleasure, it is import to spend time with typing and reading program codes as many as possible.

What's next right after I got home? Probably supper, and I may want to turn on the heater in my room. Instead, however, I sat in front of my desk, doing nothing for 5 minutes, but checking some Yahoo! news items. What's next? What to do next? What to say next? Probably this is what I make me want to shout out loud about.

After the holidays for the skills competition, it was already cold outside, but the workplace was heart-warming. I had rather a lot of workload today, but I got over with a warm help from the staff in the workplace. I could have done detailed reports of the competition for the workplace, but I'm going to do later some time in this week, if I managed to make time.

Now the skills competition ended, I was free to go out for early morning bicycling. I went for "autumn color hunting" along Hirose River, running through Sendai from west to east. It was as cold as 5C (41F) this morning. In the western mountain area of Sendai has gotten fully in autumn color in higher elevation areas, but the area near home was yet to fully get in autumn color. Still I enjoyed the scenery from several bridges upstream. The problem was the I wasn't fully prepared for this coldness. When I road downhill, my ears and ankle was chilled. Next time I hope I'll see the scenery in fully autumn color near my area, preparing some equipment which make me warmer.

My performance of the skills competition (creating web pages) wasn't up to satisfaction, so was my result. In the competition, each player was given 3 hours and 4 requirements, plus descriptions of improvements each player made during the time of the competition. I spent too much time on one requirement, for 2.5 hours out of 3 , installing a slide show on my website. I hadn't perfectly mastered the usage of JavaScript setInterval function and jQuery removeClass method, which made me spent twice time as I had expected. I had little time to cope with the rest 3 requirements, so my overall score wasn't up to any award, but when I heard the comment from the judges, my score was a little bit lower than those who won medals, and if I had chosen the right strategy, I might have won a medal. This experience showed the result of my effort and my weakness, which also often appear in my work every day.

Today is the day.  In this afternoon I'm going to go for the competition. Today is the day. In this afternoon I'm going to  go for the competition. There are still a few hours until the competition actually begins. I'm having a cup of Starbucks VIA coffee to energize myself. I have no idea if all my efforts are going to produce something worth an award, but at least I have done well that I finally didn't give up or run away from participating in the competition.  I have no idea if all my efforts are going to produce something worth an award, but at least I have done well that I finally didn't give up or run away from participating in the competition.

The opening ceremony of the skills competition for this morning, and in the afternoon inspection on and setup for the PC I'm going to use tomorrow. I'm relieved that the ceremony and the setup have been done successfully. In the opening ceremony, there were hundreds of, perhaps more than one thousand participants from all over Japan. There are 22 skills they compete in, including cleaning a building, serving as a waiter, and data entry. People with disabilities, with brushing up and competing their vocational skills, will obtain confidence more as working parts of society.

I'm really grateful that many invisible helps that brought me here. I has been poorly in shape in my state of mind from this September. It's already been the end of October. The time I've really worked hard with web page creating, but I'be been fighting with great anxieties from my poor state of mind. It's been a victory to some extent, and this is every reason to go to the coming competition with my face up.

It's time for final check for a skill competition. It will be a four-day trip. I'm checking if all data required will be available and luggage for the trip.

I learned a lot about customize of a Wordpress site, a day before the departure day of a skill compatition. I have to make a DVD-R medium with the data of my work before I start in the next afternoon. I don't bring Wordpress document with me, but a html and css reference book for reference, so I would like to do as much as possible on Wordpress tomorrow morning.

No time to lose for setInterval function I have only less than 24 hours available to complete main contents!!

I have just worked on the breadcrumb navigation on my Wordpress site, which will be my base work for the vocational skill competition for this weekend. It took longer than I had expected, because I misunderstood several concept. First, I confused post objects with post IDs when I deal with a post with its ancestors. Finally I decided to control everything based on post IDs rather than post object, because when I tried to obtain the post object of the parent object. Second, I have misunderstood array operation in php. I wanted to connect two arrays like [apple, orange, banana] and [dog, cat ,bear] into [apple, orange, banana, dog, cat, bear]. I had thought that the array_merge function inappropriate because I had thought it overwrite the former one with latter one and all I would get in the example above would be all animals, losing fruits. (This function do overwrite associative array and I have known this by reading examples of building a mini blog framework)

Many progresses for Abylympics for the next weekends, especially in web page layout, illustrations and icons essential for user interface of the webpages. I have to prepare for 4-day travel in the first half of this week, as well as preparing for skills I'm going to compete in.

One of the problems with my perception is my recognition, is that it tend to delay my telling whether information is appropriate or not. This sometimes cause check many times the sheet I have sit on on a train when I leave the train. Otherwise I won't be sure that I leave nothing on the train.

I hope to create a refined and well-organized web site, and I have been frustrated that all I can present is a set of crude thought. However my heart has become much lighter after I have come to thought that a crude idea can be a start point for a refined work.

Web sites of major businesses look like not to consider viewers viewing in a narrow window in order to cope with other task with another window side by side. Typical widths of corporate web sites are more than 980 pixels, and many of them are more than 1000 pixels. These widths isn't good for working on multiple windows, for example editing a document, and looking up on the web for reference. The advent of smartphones may make us forget that there are still many users who view webs in multiple window environments. This is a point we want to consider when we design a website.

Until now I haven't noticed that I was kind of affected by mental depression in September, last month. I'm finally getting back the energy to tackle problems prepared for vocational skill competition in 10 days away. Until 10 days ago, I didn't have the energy to learn anything to build up skills for this competition.

I have learned that anxiety beats me, actually kills me, but this week, I have hard time with beating anxiety. When I looked up Google for an expression "kill anxiety" I got a practical advice to reduce my anxiety. Breathing deeply may help to some extent. By the way, when I was elementary school, I learned how to take a deep breath. I learned the form of swinging my arms around my body, so taking deep breath was about the action of my arms, rather than about actually my breathing. I noticed this when I was said that "You are stopping breathing, although you are moving your arms." It was not until then I really learned deep breathing is actually about my breathing, rather than actions of my arms.

These days, I'm working on applying for Wordpress the style of a website I have made. I'm learning how to create a wordpress theme from html and css files I have already created. There are a lot of rules and functions to learn in order for my style to work as a wordpress site.

I have a lot to learn about web page creating, preparing for a skill contest for 2 weeks ahead. I'm now struggling with incompatibility between css display and transition property, although I had expected that I would like to show a transition effect of an item of animation, expanding child items when the mouse pointer is on an item. I sort out that css transition property isn't compatible to display property, although I have preferred to use display property to implement a drop down navigation.

[Notice] This is not real disaster information. This is an incident in my last night dream. It was before daybreak. I was writing this drinking non-wake-up (decaf) cafe au lait, hoping to get back to sleep then. Last night I had a busy dream, and I felt an earthquake. It was rather mild but the quake lasted for more than a minute. I anticipated that a big earthquake was happening far away. I saw news, probably on TV, and surprised. M 7.8 in Kanto area. It looked like in some areas were volcanic eruptions. Then soon after I heard an early earthquake warning although I hadn't turned on my TV, radio or PC. The quake wouldn't stop. It continued during all this happenings. Soon after I noticed that it wasn't ground that shook as an earthquake happens. It looked like it was only me that shook during all this dreadful nightmare news.

Challenging a vocational skill competition with mental disorder is not an easy way. My performance sometimes sharply decline as my mental state goes down. However, I can see this challenge as honorable challenge. I wouldn't have a chance to face this challenge if I hadn't won a prefectural contest and fight the competition on behalf of my prefecture.

I post a brief article every day here Blogger. Sometimes I wonder, "Why not Twitter?" Twitter, as I see , by every user's brief posts as contributions, is a service to help viewers have a glimpse of what's new. The problem is I'm more interested in my inside than what's new in the world. This is one of the reasons I'm not so familiar with twitter, and I prefer to use blogger to post daily short posts.

This week I'm abstaining from having Starbucks coffee, which is luxury for me, because I had a holiday on Monday. I treat myself with a cup of Starbucks coffee for working through 5-day weekdays.

Disaster prevention for disabled people, I hope, would be an extend of total care of their daily lives. Under this concept, I'm thinking of "disaster prevention cafe", a place (either on the Internet or in the real world) people can casually discuss disaster prevention, just an extension of everyday conversation.

Designing structure, editing contents, creating images and logos. It's really hard to do these tasks required to design web pages all by myself. Looking for good available material for the sites is also the work for a web page desinger.

My panic behavior has apparently gotten better these days, but sometimes take some invisible forms. Some symptoms take forms of obsessive behavior. For example whenever I get off train, I can't help checking three times the top and the bottom of the seat I have taken before I get off a train to work.

Yesterday I installed an extra memory in my PC. The memory cost about 3,000 yen. I had ordered it Thursday morning and It had arrived by the time I was back from work. After I had supper, I took up installment. Although I had to open the bottom cover of it, the installment ended in 20 minutes. Now my PC has 8 GB memory and works much lighter than before.

In order to prepare for a skill contest, I test my web page 2 browser. I also use Illustrator to edit images for the pages at the same time. I felt, "I want more memory". Yesterday I ordered extra memory and today it arrives. I'm going to install this evening or next morning.

My mind has gotten weak for 3 months. I often turn away from braking news because it easily make me upset. Keeping in touch of news is basically good for us, but news, most of which are bad ones, can be stumbling blocks for us when our mind is weak.

On the way home I felt a strange tension and had a tic that violently pushed my body forward. I walked a little more right after I arrived home to calm myself down. I had intended to spend time slowly, taking a train 15 minutes later than the one I usually take, but with a train delay, I after all took the train I usually take. It was so crowded that my stress came over the limit. Now, at home, I'm thinking that I'm going to take time out carefully.

In the morning my condition was not bad, but it required more sleep to recover from my tiredness. The time of this morning was passing. It was windy outside, although a strong typhoon was 1800 kilometer from here, near Okinawa. It was going to be hot, with high temperature 26C (79F).

I wear ties from today, considering appropriate outfit for season, weather and area, although "cool-biz" style is still allowed in October for still hot weather of south and west regions in Japan. Yesterday's low was 17C (63F) and high was 25C (77F), and it was beautiful day.

I go to bed as soon as possible to recovered from my tiredness from 2 consecutive days bike riding. I wake up around 5 a.m. My condition will get much better. I make my morning coffee, do some exercise, and hopefully work a little bit for web page coding. Game play will be once at most. I clean up my room a little bit hopefully. I get a few podcast files I listen for this week.

In the morning I went on bicycling, and in the afternoon I went shopping by train and returned by bus. On the bus, the last half was the same route as the last half of the ride in the morning. I enjoyed much just a fact that I passed the same road by bicycle and by bus on the same day. This may be because it was clear today, for the first time in half month.

Clear autumn sky finally returned after the "second rainy season" in September. Until yesterday, it was humid, but today I used humidifier because it was cool and dry. I felt as if I had been forgotten for long time the feeling of dry and cool weather.

In September we had about four rainy days in a week. September this year was the second rainy season, as we had the first in June and July.

This is the season of harvest. I felt when I was jogging this morning. When I was going through a small path near the city branch office, rice paddies to the right was already harvested and ones to the right was about to be harvested. Sparrow was flocking and singing. I had planned to jog just a little bit, but I jogged unexpected 4 kilometers.

These days, I'm frustrated by topics of English learning, especially preparation for the TOEIC test. They caused flashbacks of troubles over my photo and miscommunication to show that I didn't have a mobile phone, when the test staff checked if examinees' mobile phones were power off. Now learning materials of English tests sometimes reminds me of the flashbacks, so it may be wise keeping away from topics of English tests.

I feel happy when I feel I can relate to something sweet or bitter of someone else. Unfortunately I have usually shared my bitter sides. From now on, I look forward to a way to share my sweet sides, like fun of bike rides or game plays.

In the beginning of today's worship service I took a time out because I felt uneasy. I saw a grasshopper flying. It looked a little bit down. When I approached it it didn't fly away. I took a photo of it. Around the area the church and my home are in is full of nature. I often see animals and bugs I rarely saw in my childhood, in a countryside of southern Iwate. Even when I feel down, I can usually relax just viewing them.

5 P.M. September, Light is on It was on the way home from local indoor pool. I was riding on a bike. When I entered a small street and checked the back mirror I saw lights of a car. It was not really dark yet, but it was twilight. The light gave me a relief because I thought that in that twilight I was getting slower to notice other traffic to keep safety. I also turned on the light of the bike and safely rode home. In September there are still some days as hot as summer, but it's much darker than summer, so turning your light on when you are driving a car or riding a bike is a good idea.

By the time I left my workplace today, it had been gotten dark. I heard crickets chirping by a park in the city as well as near home, in a suburb of Sendai. In the summer the sky was still light when I got to home after work.

On the autumn equinox holiday a garden party was held at church. It makes me happy that little children are joyfully playing at church.

Tomorrow is the equinox holiday. I'm relieved because I have already been fatigued a lot. There is no problem with my work, but on my way to and from work I have to struggle with my tricky temper which make sometimes look so high and sometimes so low.

In this September, we have had many rainy days, but today's was much colder. When I turned on auto air conditioner, heater instead of cooler began to run. I have to take care of myself not to catch a cold, with this cold weather and many frustrating things I have had these days.

I was not good at narrate a story from a series pictures. I'm not even now. I failed many times in English interview test, doing poor at this type of questions. I also noticed that I'm not good at telling a story by pictures rather than words. I'm perhaps able to draw a person or a thing, but not good at composing a scene combining persons and things. Telling a story basically have to combine persons and things that are related to the scene or the event. I thus noticed that I'm not good at dealing with stories, although I'm relatively good at knowing about one specific thing and then another separately.

Yesterday I went on Mt. Izumigatake by bike. It took 38 minutes from the bottom bus stop to the parking lot of skiing area. It was 7 kilometer run and 400 meter hike. Today I have severe muscle stiffness. My faculty of thinking is somehow impaired. This morning I started to church but I couldn't remember if I locked the key, so I went back home, although worship service already began. After I arrived at church I could hardly enter the chapel. I had to fight against flashbacks of when I was in elementary school. I daydreamed and shouted to myself to remember that it's me who choose to protect or defeat myself. The pastor comforted me, saying that it was important for me to be able to come to the place of worship. Fortunately tomorrow is a holiday, so it's a day to relieve my tiredness

Windows update - reboot - notification of iTunes update - install - reboot again. Today, I had to reboot my PC in this way. I remember I experienced a similar pattern the other day this year. Software update is important to secure our PC, but it's frustrating to have to reboot my PC many times in one day. It takes more than 10 minutes to reboot one time, install 10 minutes, so more than 30 minutes disappear in this process.

Mt Izumigatake bike hill climb 2nd try. Visiting mental clinic and ask for diagnosis for disability certification. Maybe having a bowl of ramen to relieve daily stress. Maybe swimming as I do on Saturdays. And more... I'm looking forward to weekend schedules since the "third half" of weekdays ended. The first half was Monday. I had thought that the second half was from Tuesday to Friday, but had ended some time before Thursday, so I had to endure the "third half" of this week. Finally, however, I have been released and released from this long weekday.

I'm being discouraged now because of a few additional expenses. When I tried to use internet banking to make a bank transfer, I was rejected because one time password has been required from this Sunday. I could apply for, but chances are I can't get one time password card before I have to make a transfer. So it looks like there is no way to avoid commission fee for the transfer this time. In addition to that, I counted on a discount at a drug store at Sendai station, for I had gotten discount tickets with the receipt when I bought electric shaver pre-shave lotion. The discount begins from tomorrow, but it applies for drugs and cosmetics, and it won't probably apply for supplement food and deodorant I planned to by for this opportunity. I may be too nervous about minimum cost, but anyway I need to relieve the stress of these additional expense in a way that wouldn't require much more additional cost. Extra expense may be stress to me, but worrying about the expense...

My tense mind recently is about to break. Many unexpected thing have been hard on me. Unexpected reschedule of meeting, unexpected delay of train, and prolonged rainy weather which wouldn't allow us seeing blue sky for a month. It's very difficult to understand what various people are interested with my characteristic with very limited interest, automobiles, railroads, trains, and video games, but computer and math is dropping out and history and society is about to slip in. One alert sign is hearing alarms inside my mind. Another is I feel that I might be able to see through everything and learn proportions of things, humans, automobiles, and buildings. This is my perception is getting excessively active. Fortunately the frequency I utter "suicide" has been reduced to half of that in the beginning of September, and I'm less irritated than I was yesterday.

Looks like I'm dropping out of use of a handheld PC, while many people I see on trains are always viewing their smartphones when I go to and come home from work. I got a used iPod Touch in the beginning of September. Since I have gotten much older version, my first experiences of this device was far from comfortable. I must get older versions of almost all apps when I search for what I'm interested, and I can't get directly the older versions. First I have to get the apps through iTunes before I can obtain older version through my iPod Touch. Besides that, the battery has become almost running out, so no matter how long I charged, I can't get correct information of the state of battery. All I get is "battery is almost empty", "battery is full", or "device temperature is too high", and the chance I actually can power on my device is not so often. Now I'm almost forgetting about this portable device, and enjoying my "comfortab...

Monday, the half of weekdays, passed successfully! When my condition is not enough or I'm subjected to anxiety about the week, I make it a rule to think this way. This help me passing the rest 4 days, "the latter half of weekdays", feeling much better.

3 blog articles (2 posts for this week and 1 draft for the next week) 1 sample evacuation information web page Reports for monthly goal (review for this month and ideas for the next month) for the report on the Tuesday in next week : Especially it's tough to decide the goal for cleaning Daily reports for our clients Filling in and sending forms to Abilympic Miyagi team Relieving anxieties and tiredness

One of few comforts I had in my elementary school day full of panics and anxieties was Railroads. The railroads running beside the school The Tohoku line run beside the school and trains pass several times an hour. Freight cars, container cars passed frequently, although I then liked passenger cars. At that time most passengers cars was dragged by electric locomotives, although now almost all passenger trains electrically powered, and a few trains was powered by diesel engines. Now freight trains was much fewer than when I was in elementary school Also, the sub library of the school had a lot of picture books, perhaps as many as 100 books or more, at least 5 of which was on railroads and railroad cars. The railroad was an oasis in my tough elementary school life The railroads and railroad cars passing it was one of few comforts, because I was under a lot of stress from my behavior problems I was not aware and stressful relations with classmates. Basically classmates treate...

Looked up a timetable on the web with my iPod Touch. Interrupted by an ad which recommend the app version. Went to the app store. Required to enter the password. Installment was rejected because the iOS version was too old. ...... Isn't it enough to use the web version with ad interruption at most once, if I can't really install it, even if the web version may be much more inconvenient?

3 month ago I went to a repair shop to have the heels of my shoes repaired. I then couldn't communicate well, so I had no choice but taking my shoes with worn out heels home again without being repaired. Since then I have been reluctant to go to the shop again, remembering the embarrassment I felt on that day. It took great courage, therefore it took another 3 month and a paid holiday, to go to that shop again and ask for the repair. This time my communication was successful and I'm getting repaired shoes for nest Sunday.

Today is my paid holiday. I'm released from my duty, but at the same I'm released from languages. Now I have little energy to read and write words, making any idea, taking any action. I hope I will have been released from my tiredness, go to work and make ideas and take actions again tomorrow.