Hisashiburi desu.

Haruki Murakami was in town last week promoting The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Read all about it in Words.

July 6, 1997

I've created a page for testing the way various browsers handle Japanese text. Check it out by clicking here.

July 4, 1997

Ah, ye olde neglected WebSpace. I've got to make it a point to get back here more often. Where to begin?

Well, for starters I'm graduating. For the last three years or so I've been working part-time while taking classes and living the harried life of a student, making just enough to get by after paying for tuition, books, rent and the other essentials. All things considered, though, I didn't so much mind the semi-poverty because being a student also alllowed me to spend my time in classrooms and libraries and involved in studying, all of which I've come to enjoy greatly.

But now that period has more or less come to a close. The course credits I earned at Aoyama Gakuin have been scrutinized by the corresponding departments here at UW and just this week appeared on my transcripts as something other than simply Foreign Study. That now done, all of the necessary credits are in place for me to actually graduate. Henceforth, my academic credentials will include (more accurately, consist of) a Bachelor of Arts degree in Japanese Language and Literature. I'm still not sure what this gets me.

I had planned earlier to pursue another degree, specifically one in Technical Communication, but after considering the time required to do so (just over two years) and my advancing age (omitted here) I concluded that it was time to concentrate on adding to my existing qualifications and return my attention to work. And then there's money, of course. I've been scraping for so long that it'll be refreshing to enjoy a little financial freedom.

[here comes the part about the new job]

So anyway, it was that time of quarter when classes are winding down and people begin making plans for the summer that I received a call from a local headhunter. She had located my résumé on the web and wanted to talk. To make a long story short, I interviewed for a position at Microsoft (gasp!) and accepted an offer of employment there as a contractor. Now I work as a network test engineer, and deal primarily with the Japanese localized versions of the new Windows (called Memphis) and third-party network software such as Netware, Vines, Pathworks, and (hopefully) OS/2.

So, what's it like working at Microsoft? Initial reports read: RATHER KEWL. Here are some examples of why I think so:

• Every effort is made to make life as easy as possible for MS employees, so unnecessary regulations and restrictive policies are kept to an absolute minimum. Need office supplies? Walk over to the storage area and grab whatever you need; no requisitions, no paperwork, no micro managing busybodies to obstruct you.
• Liquid refreshments of a surprisingly wide variety are available free of charge, all day every day.
• My office is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I can come in and work essentially whenever I want, provided I work at least a full 8-hour day. Overtime is encouraged and paid-for handsomely.
• Should I be working in the evening between six and seven I can receive up to seven dollars of credit toward food purchases in one of the cafeterias located nearby.
• The MS "campus" as it is called offers a number of libraries that are well-stocked with all many of books and other publications of interest to the computer freak set. I've made great use of it so far without even having physically visited any of the branches. Instead, I simply point my browser to the Library home page on the MS intranet, search for subject or title(s) that I'm interested in, place requests for them online, and then pick up the materials at the reception area of my building after they have been delivered. Sweet.
• I also picked up my free Metro transit pass that will give me access to all local mass transit options for the next year.
• I have four computers, three of which are high-end Pentium systems from Compaq, IBM, and (urp) Packard Bell. There are servers all over the place. I'm surrounded by people who know as much or more about networking and software than I do, which is the way I prefer it.

But I don't want to gush endlessly about life at Microsoft. It's not perfect, to be sure. For one thing, the Net access more or less sucks due to the obviously excessive load placed on the local proxy servers there. Attempting to download a file of any respectable size more often than not results in frustration. This is compounded by the fact that we're all using the latest beta versions of MSIE which (between you and me and, well, the whole bloody Net) completely sucks. Slow, cumbersome, buggy as fuck, did I forget to say SLOOOOW, and--oh, don't get me started. Predictably, I nuked the thing and now run Netsc-- <yabai!>

Haha! Just kidding! To be perfectly honest, I *love* MSIE. It's the best browser of them all for sure! Just the best!

(Note: some heretofore deeply buried employment-preservation instict just rushed in and seized control of the keyboard. After delivering it a sound thrashing, I've sent it packing. Unbiased rhetoric will now resume).

MSIE sucks! Sucks! Aaaaghh! Use Netscape!

So anyway, while we're on the subject, I've already come under questioning by some who have listened to me pontificate on the evils, real or imagined, presented by software Goliath Microsoft, some of whom have even gone so far as to speculate on the state (intact or otherwise) of my own moral fiber and conviction with regard to some vague "selling out" thing. I suppose some explantion is in order, considering how vocal I've been in the past about MS's place in the greater scheme of things. You should know up front that the decision to go to work in Redmond was a difficult one to make. If I remember correctly it went something like this: they offered me more money than I was making at the time, a position in which I could use both computers and Japanese, and the opportunity to be surrounded by network gurus. My resolve held for a handful of seconds, and then I slipped to the ground, a twitching, squirming mass of anticipation, avarice and gratitude, and blubbered my assent.

I have been assimilated. You will, too. Resistance is futile.

But truth be told, my reasons for accepting the position had more to do with a realistic, forward-looking analysis of the software market. Simply put. Microsoft products are going to completely dominate the NOS market in a handful of years. I think it's inevitable, and the best thing I can do at this point to prepare for that eventuality is to familiarize myself with them as much as possible. There is also a certain appeal in being part of a team that is working to ensure that they are the best products available. As NT ascends and takes more and more market share from Novell and UNIX variants, we should expect no less.

Now, I still have a number of issues with regard to Microsoft's hegemony of the software world, and will continue to be vocal about them. I'm a rather harsh critic of Microsoft's localization philosophy as applied to their Japanese products (read my essay Katakana Revolution for more on this), and their aggressive tactics in the marketplace that many times result in the development of superior products being obstructed, or the companies that produce them being assimilated. This dominance of the software market ultimately stifles the diversity of software development. Consequently, consumers like you and I are relegated to selecting from a more narrow field of useful and innovative software products. So I think it's important that Microsoft's position in the market should reflect the quality of the products themselves, rather than simply it's monolithic presence there. By way of example I could site the ongoing "browser war," where MS's lame offering, MSIE, actually poses a threat to the comparatively superior Netscape Navigator. The status of MS abd Netscape Communications as market-share archrivals has little to do with the quality of the two browsers, and almost everything to do with MS just throwing its weight around. In other words, since MS has both control of the distribution channels and the power to insist on its software being preloaded on new machines, the playing field is hardly as level as it would be were customers required to select a product based on its merits, not simple convenience.

So, with MS the undisputed market leader, the best I can do is to work to ensure that what goes out the door is the best it can be. That's what motivates me. And the money, of course. The training should be useful, too. And I like it there. You get the idea.

May 4, 1997

1:55 p.m. Sunday remains mired in indecision about whether or not to produce good weather.

I've dumped the old WebSpace layout due to it being simply too frame-intensive. In the interest of improving the presentation of information here, I've moved to a simple, two-pane affair and reduced the number of colors throughout. Also, all text and link colors have been standardized with the exception of the Jump Page, which indicated a preference for Teal.

You will also want to install the Verdana font set if you have not already done so, since WebSpace documents are optimized for use with it and it's an excellent font for viewing documents on CRTs. It's free from Microsoft, and you can download it here. The dictionary function has also been modified to open a new window when selected. Simply close or minimize when not using it.

The latest (and final) edition of the Blue Mountain Journal is now online, and can accessed via the BMJ button below or by clicking here.

I'm really starting to get a lot of junk email these days. Mostly, I'm sad to say, from a few of those adult sites that I inadvertently landed in while exploring the web. (I swear it happened by chance) As you probably know, it's not difficult at all for a site to extract information from a browser's configuration data by using a simple CGI script to read and store HTTP environment variables such as REMOTE_IDENT, SERVER_NAME and HTTP_USER_AGENT. So as long as information such as your name, organization, and email address are entered in the various

Options.Main and News Preferences.Identity

fields that you are prompted to fill in when installing Netscape, for example, all of that information is just out there, waiting to read and stored and used for ... who knows? Mostly a lot of spam so far, but I have a sneaky suspicion as to where it may be heading.

One thing that I can't help thinking about is that HTML was built from the ground up with this characteristic of making information passively available. I'm sure the reasons for designing it in such a way were perfectly benign early on ("We need it for logging purposes," etc.), and concern for the potential exploitation of this information by commercial interests limited. In any case, the cat is out of the bag, as it were, and a real feeding frenzy has begun among the many interests that are working to profit by the Net.

Hence the spam. And lots more on the way, to be sure. Now, due to reasons other just because the information is and will be used for marketing purposes by more than just amateur T&A sites, Netscape and Microsoft both require that you include at least your name and email address before you can use mail or news, and doing so makes the information readily available to site designers any time you load a web page into your browser.

So what can you do?

I recently noticed a poster in fj.life-in-japan that had appended a ".nospam" to the email address in his .sig (signature file) with a note telling people to strip the .nospam from it when sending him mail. (USEnet newsgroups are regularly processed for email addresses that are used for sending bulk email). I think this is a great idea, at least for the browser configuration, and may keep you off the occasional list. An address edited thusly looks like this:

denbushi@u.washington.edu.nospam

or

jdoe@internet.com.nospam

The only downside would be the potential for confusing users who unwittingly attempt to reply to the bogus address (if, say, the person reads mail using Exchange or one of those others that doesn't even put the email address in the address field, but just the name) and ends up with the mail bouncing. Oh, and of course programmers (no, not web page designers. actual programmers) will have little trouble scripting out the .nospam bit anyway, but it'll take awhile for all of the amateurs to figure it out.

So I was listening to NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday today when the subject of the extraction, processing and use of Net.user information came up, and was appalled to hear one of the talking heads (talking voices?) go on about what a great thing it was going to be for US CONSUMERS because it would allow for effective net-based marketing. For example, user XYZ arrives at a certain news page and the system determines that she has come from a site about, say, Tennis. So the system offers up a page of sports news because it expects the user to fall into that demographic slot (Sports Fan.Tennis.Net-User.Middle-Income or somesuch). This is just another example of the new Push Media that is beginning to emerge as commercial entities find ways to narrowcast by sending carefully selected information, ads, etc. to internet users. Personally, I prefer the term Shove (as in "...down your throat"). What I'm having trouble with is the way supposedly Netizen-friendly voices like Wired and others gush about it like some kind of fucking panacea for we, the modern Netizen-cum-Consumer. I foresaw all of this four years ago and detailed the progression of the Net from communication medium to commercial medium in an essay titled Ronco in Cyberspace, but at the time I had no idea how fast the transition would take place.

The consensus among the three people involved in today's discussion was that, although a great deal of personal information on each of us is collected every day (net usage, credit and debit card purchases, etc. ad nauseum), there is little cause for concern. The reason being that the people involved with marketing based on this information have very little interest in individual information, and are instead only interested in aggregate data, the way purchasing trends look from a very macro perspective. I think that this perception is either very naïve, or, more likely, offered in hopes of placating a consumer population that is increasingly wary of the technologically-armed marketplace.

I prefer the individual view, that of a certain Michael Rollins, in fact, to the macro perspective because the anonymity that marketeers so confidently reassure us exists and protects us is simply a fabrication designed to distract us from the reality of our place as consumers in a hegemonic free market. It is at this individual level that my email inbox exists, and it is there that I can expect nothing more than ever-eroding privacy and the loss of control over what arrives.

Living as I do in a society that gives the delinquent market free reign to invade our "anonymous" sensory space with gaudy ads on posters and billboards, nothing if not commercial graffiti, and to intrude into virtually every medium that exists, the latest addition, spam, is hardly unexpected but depressing nonetheless.

In any case, try not to be distracted by all of the shiny somethings that they'll dangle in front of you, and remember that everything you tell the market will find its way back to you sooner or later. Methinks the less they know the better.

March 6, 1997

Seattle. I'm back in Seattle. I'm back in Seattle, and if it rains for another bloody day in a row I'm gonna shoot myself in the head.

So I arrived on the fifteenth of last month, at seven-thirty on a cool Saturday morning. As we made our final approach the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon, but many of the lights from the houses below could still be seen in the hazy twilight of dawn. My face remained glued to the tiny portal beside me, and Seattle looked altogether like a city in the middle of a great forest. After a year of endless pavement and cityscapes sketched from a palette of dull greys and browns, I felt the urban sterility of Tokyo being washed away, and replaced by the lush and fertile green of the Pacific Northwest. It was almost mystical.

Bump-screech yelled the tires, and then we were disembarking. I collected my things from the suitcase merry-go-round. I waited in various lines. I looked for an ashtray in the vicinity without success. And eventually, I pushed the steel cart that bore most of life, stuffed uncomfortably into four or five largish pieces of luggage, out the wide glass doors that read simply, "EXIT."

To find a smiling, early-morning Dan.

Dan put me up for a week or so while I searched for new digs. We shared his tiny room and didn't even seem to mind the close quarters. There was plenty of Phish, and that made me happy.

I looked around for a new place for most of the first week, walking (in the rain, of course) around areas in which I thought I might like to live, and ringing buzzers or taking down the phone number for building managers that never bothered to actually answer the phone, or, it seemed, even check their messages. I gave up on the University District, now that it has become completely overrun with street urchins and other "homeless" who have given up on both job hunting and the occasional haircut. Pretty seedy these days, it is. So I turned my attention up The Hill and spent numerous afternoons exploring.

And then I got lucky.

I had gotten in the practice of simply buzzing the manager of any place that made me think: "I could live here" whether there was a posted vacancy or not. On one occasion it happened to pay off, and now I'm happily ensconsed in a nice, small studio on the fourth floor of a six floor building that was built in the 1920's and offers a stunning view of downtown, the Space Needle, and Queen Anne hill. It's expensive, but worth it. You can get my new address by sending email here.

Now that I'm fairly settled in, I'll have a little time to catch up on the numerous emails, letters, phone calls and whatnot that I've been too busy to take care of (i.e.- putting off) for the past few weeks. Friends and relatives will kindly accept my apologies for the delay.

Well, it's 1997. Just thinking about it makes me yearn for a steaming cup of coffee. But then, most things things make me yearn for a steaming cup of coffee. Anyway, I have one more month left here in Japan, and am busily making all of the necessary preparations for my return to lovely Seattle. Still no place to live yet, but I'm working on it. I've always had a certain fondness for the alley behind Safeway, but I think it may already be taken.

Here is the coolest thing I've read in a long time, found more or less by chance quoted deep in a paper titled The Political Science of the Internet that was also pretty impressive:

It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all that the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening...

A day will come, one day in the unending succession of days, when beings, beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars.
H.G. Wells

Pretty awesome, eh? Now where was I? Oh yes! So I'll be back in Seattle on or around the 15th of February, and I must say that I'm looking forward to it. One thing that I can definitely say at this point is that I have a newfound appreciation for, well, all manner of things in my country of origin. To list a few of them:

• NPR
• Alternative anything
• Good radio
• Seinfeld
• Meaningfull higher education
• Space
• Fruit
• Foliage
• Space
• Affordable living
• The interstate highway system
• Diversity
• Real coffee
• Space
• Real coffee houses
• Furniture
• Ready access to the Net
• Freedom of speech
• Jazz bars
• Lakes
• Flavored yogurt
• A moviegoing experience for under $15
• Toilet paper
• People looking right at you when they talk to you
• Dogs
• Lamps
• Affordable telephony
• Recreation

Now, in the interest of equal time for Japan, here is a list of the things that I'll miss about Tokyo once I'm gone:

• Modem-ready pay phones
• Really great sushi
• Being able to use Japanese pretty much everywhere
• Intercommunication magazine
• The Alien
• What the Dicken's in Ebisu
• Late-night television
• Izakaya
• Kichijouji
• The rail system
• Mr. Big videos
• Shimokitazawa
• Kaya in Ikebukuro
• Nomihoudai
• Kogyaru
• Yatai
• Phone cards
• Drunken forays to Matsuya
• Kanji

There you have it. America wins 28 to 19! (It's not that simple of course. Or maybe it is. Whatever the case, I'm ready to get back.) One of the things I'm working on now (besides my research paper, due on Friday and berating me as I tap this out) is the final edition of the Blue Mountain Journal, which should ideally hit monitors sometime in, what, early Feb? Anyway, it's in progress...

Not much else to say at the moment, I guess. There's nothing new with WebSpace, although I'm tossing around a few ideas. One thing you might want to do if you have time is stop in over a Lucien Jamey's new web site and take a look around. He's in the web design business and I think it shows.

Finally, thanks to all of you for the assorted cards, gifts, e-mail, nengajou, etc. It was almost like Christmas over here! Also, thanks to Jay for equipping the entire family tree (well, almost anyway) with video conferencing capability. I can't wait to get back and try it out. Bye for now!