The Command Center

Now, I try to keep to my budget as much as possible, but sometimes I just have something I need to have. This urge doesn't happen a lot, but something has been bothering me a lot lately so I decided to do something about it this morning. What was it thats been bothering me for so long?

I hate laptops.

I may be old fashioned, but something about the frailty of portable computers annoys me to no small extent. If I am going to explore strange new websites, seek out new news and new bits of internet humor; to boldly change my desktop picture to something very few man have ever seen before, my work space had better be stationary.  It is for this reason that I went out today and bought a real keyboard and a wireless mouse and pugged them in to my laptop, creating a "command center" in my room that I can simply leave there and not feel obliged to take with me simply because I can.

(Yes, that is XKCD on the screen.)
Of course we have the essentials; water fortified with vitamins, dual white boards for notes, laptop, wireless mouse, speakers that for no reason decided that they want to be radios, new wireless mouse, and finally the most important thing my Japanese keyboard.
Why is this the most important thing? Simply for the reason that it frightens me with it's complexity and mysteries.

OK, it doesn't look to threatening, right? Wrong. First of all the keys are set up in ways that are clearly meant to destroy the western mind. The thing hides keys for goodness sake! I've had the thing for a good four hours and I still have to go up to my laptop to put in the ", @, *, &, and / symbols. Adding to the confusion is that the thing is multilingual. You think your typing in something legible and then you find to your horror that the cursed thing has decided that you need to alternate between roman characters, kanji, and symbols for Japanese car makers. I may depend on spell check sometimes, but I know for a fact that the word 'important' is not spelled with the kanji for fire or the Starbucks symbol. Bah, I'll figure it out later, time for class.

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Japanese Time! Answers to yesterday's Japanese Time!

わたし - watashi - I

こわい - kowai - scary

たべもの - tabemono - food

こにちわ - konichiwa - good afternoon

でんわ - denwa - phone

くるま - kuruma - car

じてんしゃ - jitenshya - bike

おかね - okane - money

りょかん - ryokan - inn

からおけ - karaoke - karaoke

I hope you figured them out!

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Best Wishes,
Dan