Nautical Nonsense

The ship named after the patron saint of bug fixing (her portrait hangs in my cubicle) is in the news for being buzzed by Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats. She could have of course harpooned their ass,  but those things are like $700K.

Since the last time I compiled the list of megayachts, Larry Ellison’s very pretty 452 foot yacht  slipped to 5th place according to Wikipedia’s list. My advice to the various oligarchs: private nucular submarine is the way to go.  Man, do I wish I could afford a 27 foot fishing boat…

Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto

I am thinking about going to Japan for my next vacation. Time to tally my knowledge of Japanese. Let’s see…

Nippon – Japan
Sushi – Raw fish with rice
Sashimi – Raw fish
Sake – Alcoholic drink. Some call it Japanese vodka or rice wine, but what do they know. It’s technically a rice beer.
Yakitori – Kebab
Tempura – Stuff fried in batter
Nori – Seaweed for sushi
Wasabi – Pickled radish
Agari – Green tea (in sushi restaurants)
Miso – Soy paste soup
Mochi – Ice-cream (or other stuff) in a dough shell
Arigato – Thank you
So Des – So it is
Godzilla – Big radioactive lizard
Sumo – Along with competitive eation, one of the few sports involving a lot of fat people
Yokozuna – A champion wrestler. Tend to be overweight
Sarariman – Office worker, formerely a Samurai. Probably.
Samurai – A Shogun’s report
Shogun – Samurai’s supervisor
Bushido – Samurai’s Rules and Regulations Manual
Geisha – A woman who entertains Yokozunas, Samurais and Shoguns. As well as Sararimen with a good sarary.
Sensei – Teacher
Kohai – What Wall Street types call a Rabbi. One who helps out somebody less experienced.
Sempai – Someone who has a Kohai.
Karate – Pronounced Kara-tey.
Something-do – Way of something.
Kendo – Way of the sword. Somehow really means fencing dressed skirts with bamboo sticks.
Robot-san – Mechanical human being. Some take Samurai or Geisha form.
Kinokuniya – Japanese bookstore chain
Ringo – Apple
Ringu – Ring
Waifu – Wife
Chambara – Japanese movies about Samurai
Manga – What Americans call Anime
Jedi – Another word for Chambara; also a person with high midiclorian count
Terevision – A device for watching Chambara
Harakiri – A suicide method very popular in Chambara
Kamikaze – A suicide method not very popular in Chambara. Also a drink
Kohee – 8 dollar coffee
Yakuza – Legitimate businessmen with a lot of tattoos and missing pinkies.
Meiwaku – Trouble, disturbance.
Kawai – Cute
Pokemon – A very kawai little critter
Makdonurado – A fast food place where sometimes you get a toy Pokemon with you meal and your food tastes like it’s made out of Pokemons.
Katana – A type of Samurai’s cutting sword. Also name of Larry Ellison’s giant boat.
Katakana – One of sets of Japanese characters. Either the one used for foreign words, or the other one.
Hiragana – Same as Katakana.
Hai – Yes
Beero – Beer.
Ebisu – God of something good, maybe beer. Also a type of beer.
Kappa – Demon of some kind, I think lives in water. Also a character in Mario Bros. games.
Tanuki – A smart shape shifting demon with huge balls.
Futon – Bed
Tatami – Rug

Uh… Yeah, I think I am done.

The (Drive)way of a Samurai

Larry Ellison’s Japanese fetish is well known. He owned at different times yachts named “Ronin”, “Katana” and “The Rising Sun”. According to “The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison” Larry often flies to Japan for Sakura Matsuri. And now he is building himself a $60 million 3000 sq. foot replica of a 16th century Japanese warlord’s mansion.

The house will be built using traditional materials and without nails (good idea earthquake-wise), but I doubt that any warlord had a house that big, especially with an amazing master bath that will include “.. boulder that will be part of the master bathroom shower. The 30-ton stone (yes, that’s 60,000 pounds) was recently moved into place with a rented high-rise crane that was brought to the site expressly to move the “shower rock.” ”

A house like that needs a driveway to match. Larry wants it paved with natural hand cut stone. The stone is quarried in Japan and China (Larry chose China because the labor is cheaper there) and for some reason needs to be cut on site. This means that the architect needs to provide a template for each and every stone. It would take months to do this by hand, but luckily a CIS student helped him, making Larry’s driveway his CS270 Project. Random, but not too random, concave and convex, angles not too sharp, 5 to 9 sides to a stone – this is not as simple as it seems :

By the way, is it just me or does Mr. Scorpio from “The Simpsons” look very much like the samurai in question?

Stroking the Genius

Right now am pretty much obsessed with books about rise and fall of tech companies.

These are the most memorable books I’ve read this past year:
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Insanely Great: The Life and Times of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything
Dealers of Lightning: Xerox Parc and the Dawn of the Computer Age
Show-Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows Nt and the Next Generation at Microsoft
The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: Inside Oracle Corporation: God Doesn’t Think He’s Larry Ellison
High Stakes, No Prisoners : A Winner’s Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars
The Soul of a New Machine
The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer

Awesome, awesome stuff. I should find time to write some reviews.

I purchased all of these books used (except “Soul of a New Machine” which I just _had_ to have at the time). Some were cheap, others surprisingly expensive. For instance my copy of “Hackers” set me back $30 or $40 because it was out of print at the time. A new edition came out very soon thereafter. Interestingly enough the same thing happened with “Alan Turing: The Enigma“. “The Supermen” was the most expensive at $50. I am still hunting for acceptably priced “The Legend of Amdahl“.

I just finished reading “Defying Gravity: The Making of Newton“. It was very good.

Right now I am reading “Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed“, which is orgasmically [spellchecker suggested “orgasmic ally” heh heh] good.

I really want to buy one of those highlighter scanners made by C-Pen so that I can keep notes for my livejournal as I read.

C-Pen’s slogan is “Stroke of Genius”. Beavis and Butthead would have a field day with them :)