Queen Elizabeth II and James Bond - London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony

20 Years of Namie Amuro

In 1992 Namie Amuro started her music career as part of a group called Super Monkey's. Eventually going solo in 1995. Super Monkey's changed their name to MAX.

安室奈美恵 / PV HISTORY [PAST VS FUTURE] from dAnny bazan on Vimeo.

Japanese Pepsi Commercial

In Japan the product is called NEX but in America we call it NEXT. Either way I love the animation.

A Difference 5 Minutes Makes

Wendell, North Carolina

Speeding on the Internet

I called AT&T to cancel my internet account. I informed her that the reason was due to slow speeds. She wanted to transfer me to technical support to try and get a better connection. Even offering to increase my internet speed to 6 Mbps. 

She gave up when I told her that I already have signed on to another company and the speed I was getting from them all for the same price. I got my free internet speed test results at www.speedtest.net

More Internet Speed

I now have a better internet service. And it only took 20 days to get it.  Originally I had service with Bellsouth which later was taken over by AT&T. Paying close to $50 a month for 3 MB a minute but only getting less than 1 MB was becoming a real pain. Kids complaining they couldn’t play online games, a wife who had to wait to watch computer generated men do choreographic dancing. And I had to wait a long time for my “educational videos” to download.

On June 26^th I went to the Time Warner office and signed up and paid all the fees for the internet service. By the 29^th while I was at work, the service technician showed up and wanted the money for the instillation. My wife was a bit nervous and called me. The Time Warner employee stated that he couldn’t call his boss to clarify that I had paid already. I had to do this.

He left to go do another job and within a few minutes a Time Warner representative called me to reschedule the appointment.  I inform the lady on the phone that I had already paid but she could not verify this as her only job was to schedule appointments. She gave me the number to call another Time Warner employee who fixed the problem by unchecking the COD (cash on delivery) box.

On July 2^nd the second Time Warner visiting technician shows up a little late. Upon looking over the information I gave the customer service people on June 26^th , when I first signed up for service, he stated that he couldn’t do anything until a new cable line was installed. Seeing as the old cable line was cut when a water line was connected to our house.

He left quickly as another Time Warner employee called to set up another appointment to install internet service. I had to wait until July 11^th for the third Time Warner technician to come out to my home again and install cable line and internet service. I was still mellow on how this was going as my wife was pulling hairs trying to figure out why it was taking so long to hookup a cable to a computer.

By July 9^th a two man crew, out of the blue, shows up by 5 PM to start burying a new cable from our house to the main box across the street. And I must say they were very good at not hitting any of the water lines running through our yard. Leading up to July 11^th on a Wednesday afternoon, almost two hours passed the appointment time, the third Time Warner technician shows up and the fun really begins as he needed my help to install the cable connection.

As there was already a place to run the cable line under our house and into the livingroom, this technician was having a problem with getting underneath the house. The 29 inch (73.6 centimeter) doorway leading underneath the house was too small for him. Also to get to the opening behind the TV set, I had to move the TV stand and everything else out of the way so he could work the cable line into the room.

An hour or so later as he spent most of it outside doing something out of my view I finally had internet service. A bit slow at first but a huge difference as the evening went on. My boys were amazed at how fast they could log in and play Cartoon Network Fusion Fall. My wife loved seeing her videos without it pausing every 5 seconds. And I quickly downloaded within a minute an “educational video” for my enjoyment.

But with this new internet speed we all went back to doing what we usually do. Two boys playing Lego Batman 2, my wife reading the internet news and I’m watching a multitude of Top Gear episodes that I copied off of TV while at the same time watching an episode of Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters on the computer.

But all was not right in our little world. By the next day we kept getting error messages and blank screens stating we had no connection to the internet. The lights on our Ubee router looked more like a CB scanner than a router box as all the lights just kept flashing to the point my two boys started singing Christmas songs.  And for once my wife was very grateful that I forgot to call AT&T to cancel out internet service.

And so I called Time Warner Thursday afternoon and after talking with the computer system on how to restore internet service, I proceeded to repeat for the tenth time of unplugging cables and power connections, restarting my computer and cleaning out all cashes and trashes. Luckily when I called back I pressed enough buttons and was able to talk to a live human being with a wonderful accent.

She was really smart for she quickly found out by pinging and other techniques that my router was not working properly. DUH! All this time I thought it was solar storms, gov’t eaves dropping unto my line or UFO aliens trying to phone home. Of course I didn’t say those things to her. Just grunted like a man who was waiting to hear when I will have to wait for a technician to bring me a new router box to keep my wife from giving me the skunk eye.

Till then I hooked up the AT&T router and everyone is surfing again. That is till I got home Friday afternoon from work and hooked up the broken router from Time Warner and nobody is surfing and my wife is looking at me but not in the good way. But lo and behold I get a phone call at 7:30 PM, just slightly outside the 5 to 7 PM timeline I was told when someone was to be here to fix it, saying they would be there to fix it by 8 PM.

The 4^th Time Warner technician arrives and immediately gets to work checking the cable line first. And sure enough he figures that the buried cable could have been damaged during the burial process. He calls it in to his boss as we told that we will have to wait a few more days for a new line to be buried in our yard again. But this man decides to not give up and soon he wants to try one more thing before he leaves for the night.

A very small cable piece connecting the buried cable to the one coming into our house turns out to be the damaged part and within a few minutes everything is working like new. The router is working better than ever as none of the lights are blinking me into a seizure.  And as my wife is told that the internet is working properly again, she disappears back into the bedroom fast than lightning to surfing the internet again: for at least a day.

By the next day many web sites weren’t loading up completely. Sometimes error messages saying there was a DNS error. After a long search on the web I finally found the reason for web sites not loading up, constant error messages and downloads taking longer than usual. I had too many active firewalls.

Our Time Warner box has a firewall as does the software we installed into our computer to protect it. And once I turned off the firewall in the Time Warner box, the internet really opened up for us. We were getting speeds faster than what we were paying for. I had downloaded a full movie while watching commercials on TV. As for the firewall issues, I found out my firewall software is way better than Time Warner’s version.

Now I just need to get the kids off the computer so I can use it.

Information on Those Who Bullied Boy To Death

Due to the local police in Otsu, Japan not investigating the death of a boy driven to suicide has caused many people in Japan to turn to the internet to do what the local police refuse to do.

The three main bullies parents and a grandparent are connected to the school, PTA and the police department. Unlike here in America, many people in Japan have already found out who the main bullies are and have seen the web postings they and other school kids have posted that drove the boy to his death.

The video is in Japanese. The narrator changed her voice to protect her identity. But a great deal of information presented shows that many officials in the school, city and police department are guilty in what has happened to this boy.

School Bullies 13 Year old to Death

Link 1    Link 2    Link 3     Link 4     Link 5        Link 6

The case of a schoolboy driven to jump off a building after relentless bullying at the hands of his classmates – apparently with the active participation of his teachers – has outraged Japan,  as much as have the insistent attempts of his teachers and even local police to deny the bullying had anything to do with his death.

The bullies who's parents and family members who are in control of the school and police department

The incident occurred in the Shiga prefecture city of Otsu, where a 2nd year middle school boy jumped from his family’s apartment to his death after suffering intolerable bullying at the hands of his classmates and even apparently his teachers.

Both the nature of the abuse he suffered and the unwillingness of teachers to help have scandalised Japan – though not, it seems, any of the officials at the school or local authorities, all of whom have resolutely stonewalled any effort to connect his bullying to his death.

The school distributed a questionnaire about the bullying (the results of which it attempted to keep secret), and 14 students reported that teachers either overlooked it or actually participated – “the teacher warned us once but after that we laughed at him together.”

Cities Dept. of Education leader, pro-bully teacher and  Crocodile Tears Mayor  (all claiming they knew nothing)

He was reportedly repeatedly beaten by multiple assailants in the school toilets, forced to eat dead wasps, and one occasion had a dead sparrow shoved in his mouth.

Other reports from the students suggested he was “repeatedly made to practice committing suicide,” was made to strip and then photographed, had his money and bank account details stolen, was made to shoplift, was repeatedly bound with tape and beaten, and of course was mercilessly mocked at every turn.

Even after his death, his classmates continued to deface and scrawl graffiti on a photograph of him displayed in their classroom.

Some students insisted the abuse was “just playing” and that he was just responding badly to them “messing around.”

New and old school Principle (relatives of Sergeant Schultz?)

He approached teachers about the abuse, but they apparently did nothing, and nothing came of approaches made by his parents to the school either.

One teacher who witnessed the bullying did feel it necessary to laughingly tell them “not to overdo it.”

His father also approached police and attempted to file a victim report and press charges of assault against the bullies, but police refused to accept that any crime had taken place and have further refused to comment as to why.

Since police refused to pursue charges, the boy’s family have been reduced to launching a ¥77,000,000 lawsuit against the school.

Students later reported being told by teachers “just ignore anyone who asks you questions about this,” “just don’t talk about any of this to anyone – keep your mouths shut” and “don’t say anything funny.”

The local school board actually admitted telling students not to talk about the incident, saying “there is no problem with telling pupils not to say anything unreliable.”

They also made a public statement saying “the bullies have human rights too, we have to think of their education.”

16 students reported knowing about the suicide practice in the questionnaire, but the school says it “cannot confirm it is true.”

The parents of some of the alleged bullies have also denied anything was amiss – one mother told the media “the reports were all from kids who had nothing to do with it, they are just saying what they heard.”

The lawyer of the boy’s parents has stated “it is unthinkable that 15 students would all write about exactly the same thing if it had no truth to it.”

His bereaved father said “they are throwing away the voices of the kids who so earnestly reported what they witnessed.”

In response to the lawsuit, the school submitted a defence to the court demanding the parents “tell us exactly who witnessed this bullying and where” and “explain just what the steps were which could have avoided his suicide?”

They deny there was any connection with the bullying and his suicide.

The town’s mayor has given a tearful press conference appearance in which she expressed her regrets, but it took the intervention of the prefectural governor for the school to begin a series of emergency countermeasures to prevent any more of its pupils being bullied into suicide.

Celebrating My Birthday

The day started out great. I already had the day off and planned to spend it all day in front of the TV set in an air conditioned room. But I was wrong. Waking up early and nudging my wife a bit for an early morning activity to which she declared a resounding NO. And anyone who’s been married more than 10 seconds will know what that means.

So I rolled out of bed for a trip to the livingroom to watch some TV and surf the internet for a while. That is until the boys woke up and begged me to play their new Lego Batman 2 game. They wanted me to join in with them but only realizing that it was to look up cheat codes and strategies on how to play the game.  This went on for a few hours.

My wife then gave me my birthday present; a wristwatch. A very good one even though it is too small for me to wear. There was no cake. Except for Little Debbie cakes, birthday cakes tend to grow mold as the remains of it sits in the refrigerator. So we all agrees to just serve ice cream with a candle in it. Afterwards I took a nap.

My wife woke me up saying that it would be a great idea for us to go see a movie. I’m thinking of seeing the Avengers again or Men in Black 3 but I was over ruled and we planned to see PIXAR’s Brave. Not my top five movies to see but a PIXAR movie is worth seeing no matter how bad Cars 2 was (too much Mater).

As the only driver in the family we loaded up the car and after a 25 minute drive we find out the movie theater in Smithfield, NC decided to stop showing the movie due to their inexperience in finding the volume button.  So we drive 27 miles in 100+ degrees weather to the next nearest movie theater in Garner, NC. Parking was easy to find a ¼ mile away from the fully pack movie theater. And as we marched through the parking area of doubled parked cars we reached the ticket booth.

$40 later we were inside as two boys disappeared into the arcade room as my wife drooled over the Expendables 2 movie posters.  We grouped together to see what everyone wanted. And $50 towards a large popcorn, 2 soda’s, big pretzel, mini corn dogs and two hot dogs later we were heading to the theater room as my wife kept complaining that we were too early and she wanted to go back out and look at the movie posters for a while.

I put my foot down and we sat in a vacant theater for about 15 minutes before a flood of people started to enter the room and within a very short time, the place was standing room only. I leaned over to my son and told him that this is why I like to be early for anything. The movie started and for nearly two hours I was greatly entertained.  Afterwards we trekked through the hot sun to our car where we drove home the way we arrived at the movie theater. Listening to all the opening and closing songs to all the Super Sentai TV shows.

Once home, the boys began playing Lego Batman 2, my wife was on the internet watching amateur created videos of computer generated men doing choreograph dancing.  I ate a hamburger from last night’s dinner then got ready for work.  Getting home after the boys were already asleep and my wife was still on the internet, I watched some TV as I fell asleep from having the best birthday I have every year.  And the reason is simple.

All day the boys kept telling me that I don’t look that old. They sang Happy Birthday to me, made me a birthday card, even allowing me to win a few video games. They didn’t fight as typical brothers do, were very well mannered in public. No burping, passing gas or making farting sounds when they saw someone bending over. (I taught them that one.) They even cleaned their room. Well just the Lego pieces but it’s a start.

Even my wife joined in. Being Japanese, she’s not too use to holding hand or showing too much affection compared to couples here in America that can’t seem to keep their hands to themselves when in public. But on my birthday, she held my hand; which is something she does when we walk together.  But this time, as we held hands, she leaned next to me so she could rest her head next to my arm. Gave me the goose bumps in the nice kind of way.

Even coming home from work that night, she was still up waiting for me. Taking my shoes and making me more comfortable, I savored every moment of it. The boys were already asleep so my wife and I finished celebrating my birthday together in our bedroom. Turning this year birthday celebration into another great one for me.  It’s not just the presents and the people you are with but how those moments are used that to me make it more special. 

Double Parked Corvette

At the Regal White Oak Stadium 14 located in Garner, North Carolina many people going to the movie theater were treated to an individual who didn’t know that someone, not me, had left a mark on his Corvette that was taking up two parking spots.

Andrew Samuel "Andy" Griffith

June 1, 1926 – July 3, 2012

The comedy skit that made him famous and jump started his career. Enjoy.
more info about him and his career here

Japan Bans American Pens

original story here and here

Japanese customs have banned the import of US-made ballpoint pens after determining they constituted “weapons” and “could be used in self-defense.” Customs authorities in Osaka and Nagoya ordered that the US-made pens be denied import permits after classifying them as “weaponry.” Due to their pointy shape and metallic construction, customs say they are actually intended as self-defense pens and most likely illegal under Japanese law.

The importers and their US makers have criticized the decision as “unfair,” and after having been unable to reach any agreement with customs have seen 237 of their pens held at airports for over a year. The pens in question are made by such renowned American cutlers as Smith & Wesson and Benchmade Knife; their rugged metal construction and militaristic design were apparently just too much for officials to countenance as being anything but evidence of them being designed for killing.