Maitta! Always - Daily Amazing Confusions -

A spring storm coming for tomorrow. It's fortunate that I'll be on a half holiday in the morning, but in the afternoon, probably reaching my workplace will be OK, but return train ride may be the problem due to strong wind.

It's not so cold outside compared to previous 2 weeks when low temperatures were sometimes 5C degrees below zero. There is wet snowfall outside. It's about my behavior. After I had supper I didn't do anything but browsing Internet news. I have no idea what to write.

Monday morning I was OK although I got up as late as 7a.m. I energized myself with a cup of Starbucks drip coffee. I want to cut spending on daily coffee, so I'm planning I count my spending by my original unit in which a canned coffee would be about a point. A canned coffee is 100 to 120 yen, and today's spending is a short cup of Starbucks (280yen, 2pts), one more coffee (108yen, 1pt), and VIA in the morning (about 103yen 1pt) so the points for today is 4. I won't count when I drink instant coffee, which is relatively reasonable. I would like to control points below 10 in a week.

Finally my wireless internet connection recovered its speed. Now connection speed is more than 10Mbps, while before this solution the speed was only less than 100kbps. I haven't added an access point. I changed channels of the access point, having checked the results of WiFi analyzer. I have used auto channel configuration and dual channel, which the access point use channel 3, which is actually busy. Channel 14 was the recommendation, but when I use dual channel I can only use up to 7, each of them is as busy, so I turned dual channel off. The I got additional alternatives up to 13. Channel 14 isn't still available in my current configuration, so I chose channel 13. This change, giving up auto configuration and advantage of dual channel, however, gave me more than 100 times faster wireless internet connection.

After all I went on skiing today. I got better in a night over long sleep. After I was home I trued my old bike wheels instead of going on cycling, because it had gotten much windy in the afternoon. I found that the hubs need overhaul. With its poor movement truing didn't go smoothly.

Last night I felt really cold although nights in several days were as cold or even colder than last. Today tips of my hands, foots, legs, hip, and eyes were sore. My body temperature are 0.3C degree higher than usual. I'm catching a cold, so I'll sleep instead of spend time in front of my PC, checking updates of my favorite sites, taking medicine. I had planned to go on skiing for Saturday, but this time I may be going to suspend, if I don't feel good enough in tomorrow morning.

Last night I recaptured the orchestra sound track of Dragon Quest 4 into my audio PC. I bought this CD when I was in ninth grade, that is, 27 years ago. Last night I suddenly wanted to listen to Dragon Quest BGMs on my audio PC. I had already copied from another device, but the Asound app threw an error, and didn't play back. I ripped the CD with Asunder (these apps sounds similarly and I sometimes confuse). After the audio files got available, I listened to the musics, and I had a few discoverys. For example I noticed that the theme of castles was played only by strings, while in the prelude and normal battle BGMs trumpets played the major part. When I got the CD, I couldn't tell the difference of instruments and I hardly knew the pleasure of symphony. I was just satisfied with the musics of great quality that reminds me the memory of the game (although I got the soundtrack prior to the game, and it was 2 years later than I got the CD before I actually played the Dragon Q...

Today I was OK on the train back home. I didn't take a seat. The area I was on was less crowded. Crowd looks like affect more on my state of mind than no seat to sit on.

I almost panicked on the train back home today. The car wasn't really crowded, but the place I was in was kind of. I sought a wider space rather than a seat. My behavior got slightly wilder. I once took a seat, but it was even more uncomfortable because there were a lot of people around me. I stood up again and move to the area near the door, which was much less crowded. Some people moved to another car. Considering my behavior, there's no wonder that a few people would be scared. And unfortunately so was I then.

My process speed at work was fast enough today. Accuracy is OK too. Last Saturday and Sunday turned out to be a good refreshment. I hope I will keep to this pace, keep this performance for the latter half of this week. Tasks around personal monthly goals remains for the coming two days, so I also hope I'll reflect well on ones for this month and come out with suitable ones for the coming month.

"You bring us plagues." The voice of flashback beat me. I was told similar when was the second year of elementary school. That (35 years ago) happened when I sought fellowship in a gang of kids where I was an unwelcome kid. This (today) happened when the preach was speaking that "What would you feel if you were said that there is a devil among you twelve." I have to endure flashback typically a few times a week. Sometimes I end up shouting a deep breath in public, and sometimes I mutter incomprehensible sounds to drive out the idea. One relief of my flashbacks is I "bark far" at a roadside in suburb or countryside where traffic is not near enough to hear my shout.

This weekend again a snowstorm is coming. I was looking forward to riding my road bike with my new wheels, and also I wanted to go to swimming for the first time in more than a month, because if I miss this weekend, I can't use the nearest local indoor pool because it will be closed due to a maintenance of its heater. I hope it won't be so cold and so much snow tomorrow.

Windows update for this month is likely to be done. Now I'm about to reboot my PC to apply the update. Sometimes Internet connection recovers and transmission speed is fast enough. Most of the time my connection is slow, though.

Slow Wi-Fi Internet connection on my PC is continuing. Sometimes its speed recovers and I can browse the Web comfortably, but most of the time the connection is really slow. It's so slow that I gave up browsing some news sites, and even thought of posting a blog entry from my Kindle tablet, not from my PC. Now the connection is not fast enough, but I have minimum connection to post this from the PC. Another problem is Windows update. It looks like it may take several days to download all the update program. It takes three hours to download 1% of one component of the update programs. Even I'm not certain that I can entirely download the update.

These days I can write only trivial things. I sometimes feel that my feeling comes with delay, and also I sometimes think that "I must be tired, because I only can feel pleasure a week later than my achievement, but now I'm even unable to feel my tiredness."

Now I can collect gold stars of Starbucks Rewards program. A few day's ago, I got a notification email. Typical weekly spending for Starbucks coffee is: a cup of short drip coffee (280 yen) + one more coffee (108 yen). When I'm a bit down and need more stimulation, I sometimes visit and get the coffee twice a week. I also spend on 12 sticks VIA once a month.

Last night we had huge snow fall in our area. The snow piled up 20 to 25cm high. According to news, there were and are great snowfalls in wide area of Japan. It's fortunate that today was a holiday, off duty, and didn't have to go to work, because confused traffic gives me a lot of stress.

The main part of my wheel building ended. It was unexpectedly hard to attach the tires to them, but I finally found that they are working as bike wheels. Two minor problems remains. First, I have to adjust the brakes. The rims are a bit wider than ones I had been using, so the brake clearance with my new wheels is really tight. Second, the shape of the rear quick release skewer was the problem. It interferes with the frame if I set to the angle I was doing with my old one. It also doesn't go with the display stand, which I use to stand the bike outside. I'm thinking of using the old rear skewer.

Today I went on alpine ski race training. I was disappointed to find that I'm much slower than most of other participants. I kind of want to become faster and keep up with them. This is my new motivation for skiing. Meanwhile, I felt that skiing is really enjoyable, especially in a beautiful weather, being able to enjoy and control speed and courses using techniques I have acquired. Skiing is really enjoyable as a personal sport and looking to competitions also may give us new motivation, especially for people who like competing with other people.

Wheel building: The front wheel has almost been done by this morning. Tonight I have taken up the real wheel. I set all spokes into the rim, and what will come next is give them more tension, true the wheel, dish it. I'm going on skiing tomorrow, so I'll restart the wheel building for tomorrow night.

My wheel building starts. All parts and tools have arrived. I've already taken up the front wheel, but it looks like I've made some mistakes. The places of spokes mismatch. I'll check up how-to videos and documents and try again.

Wireless adapters of my laptops are likely to be the problem. This is the conclusion I reached after I tested connection speeds with my Kindle Fire HD. I connected from the same place, to the same access points, and max connection speed was more than 3Mbps, and average is around 1Mbps, while when I measured with my main laptop, max 300kbps and average 50kbps, and sometimes even failed to connect. Fortunately this morning, connections from my laptop is faster and more stable. I'm thinking of stronger wireless adapter for my laptop or using an additional access point much nearer than the laptop.

My Internet connections these days are slow and unreliable. It's slower than analog modems generally used more than 20 years ago. Is it problem of wireless connection, or ADSL connectivity? Speed isn't not the only problem. I posted an entry a few minutes ago, but the content of the post was lost because the request to deal with the post failed. This time, I copy the content to the buffer of my PC in order to retrieve it in case I lose it again.

I didn't run a full marathon in my 30s. I ran a few full marathons in my 20s. My best time was 3 hours 55 minutes. I wish to run a full marathon in my 40s. 8 years left. Now I can't run 10 kilometers so fast as I did in my 20s. I was able to run 10 kilometers in 45 minutes. Now I can't run the same distance in 50 minutes. In order to run full marathon, I have to jog longer and more frequently, and I have to do this while working full time this time. When I ran marathons I was a student, so I jogged in plenty of free time. Now I have to spare energy for work and jogging. This is much greater challenge than when I was able to run a marathon when I was a student.

Flood of sounds in my head. Flood of imaginations. Flood of images. Flood of memories. Yesterday, a week ago, and years ago. After these flood in my mind, my mental meltdown is more likely to happen, so I have to be careful and refrain from push myself too far, too fast, when a flood in my mind happens.

1 week ago it snowed in a wide area of Japan. Also in Sendai, we had about 5-10 cm snowfall. Last Sunday it was not safe to go out by bike, because even on a relatively wide road was hard packed snow. This week snow on major roads have thawed while that of most sidewalks and small paths remain piled. I road my bike for the first time in February. I was reluctant because I was in low spirit with daily stress, but I went out anyway with minimum prepare, with my coat, helmet, glove and binding shoes, instead of I change clothes to wear more suitable. Cycling for the first time in 2 week released much of my stress. It was really good that I had a chance to pedal over and over again, and had a place where I don't bother anyone while I shout out loud expressing my mental distress these days. After all I don't want to attack anyone, but at the same time I have to cope with screams echoing within my head, and if I had carelessly released them on a train on weekdays, I could have been ...

I had planned to ski in gates for this Saturday, but after all I didn't enter the course and skied freely instead. It was because my mental state in the morning wasn't so good, and skiing in the gate would only be the source of stress, and wouldn't pay for the cost I was going to pay. Maybe next time for gate training.

This Wednesday I received the hubs. I have gotten rims one week before last. I calculated the spoke lengths and ordered spokes early in the morning of Thursday. I got a mail informing me that stocks were confirmed. I didn't receive shipment notice until this night. On Saturday and Sunday, the store is closed, so shipment of my spokes will be after Monday. Probably it will be 8 days later that I begin to lace my new bike wheels.

1. How can I change?   There are many frustration because some of visitors of my Japanese blog have quite different view from mine, especially about work and abilities. I thought I have been a strong believer of focusing on your strong point and things you like. Even though now I'm not so independent enough, I'm taking actions with the awareness of my strong point. Some visitors don't think that way. They prefer less demanding working environment to one a bit more demanding but can maximize workers' strong point. I have been frustrated from this difference of views. I often hear the word; "It's really difficult to change someone else, and it's much easier to change yourself." Then how can I change? Well, my idea is not the real problem, but it's a problem that I havn't fully understood the idea, "There are a lot of different views from yours, and you may want to get along with people with various views."