As those few of you who look at this page regularly probably already know, the USS George Washington finally arrived in Yokosuka, Japan to much fanfare on September 25th (and then promptly turned around and left again less than a week later to steam in circles around the Western Pacific for a couple of months). The twist to this particular tale is that I, your humble blogger, am still here! Due to a minor surgical procedure and an ensuing month-long recovery period, I was placed in a medical holding pattern while the ship is underway, leaving me temporarily attached to the hospital on the base here in Yokosuka.

All that aside, I figure this would be a great opportunity to relate my experiences thus far after two and a half weeks in Japan.

First off, the people. The Japanese are by and far the most friendly, polite, and well-mannered folks I have had the pleasure of dealing with in my twenty-seven years thus far. Despite all the brouhaha in the media about the locals' opposition to GW's deployment here due to its nuclear-powered nature, even the one protest I witnessed up close was very well-organized and well-behaved. Even the taxi drivers are unfailingly polite -- now that's a telling attribute!

Next up, public transit. The train system in Japan is renowned for efficient, timely service, and boy, has it lived up to its reputation. It took me the better part of two days to get familiar with the system -- which lines go where, which trains stop at which stations at what times, and so on -- but within a week I was extremely glad I did. Nearly everything worthwhile in Japan (at least, as far as I have found so far) is within walking distance of a train station. With the RFID-based card system the transit system has in place, you don't even have to take the card out of your wallet -- just tap the whole thing on the appropriate spot on the turnstile, and off you go. Very convenient and efficient. (Just don't try to stick the card in the slot where "regular" tickets go, as I did right after I got mine -- I felt a bit sheepish when the station agent plucked the card from the works after it got stuck inside.)

Then, there's Akihabara. Where to begin...? Akihabara is the home of all things geeky, from videogames to computers of every description, from manga and anime to life-sized models of popular characters. If you have a hobby of nearly any description, you'll likely find a place for it in Akihabara. Among my personal favorite places to frequent: the Mac Collection, four floors of Apple goodness, including two floors of second-hand Macs covering the entire line. Highlights: several classic Macs (including the Mac Plus), two (as of my last visit) G4 Cubes in great condition, a green clamshell iBook, and even a 20th Anniversary Mac, all for sale! On my last visit, I was lucky enough to snag a second-hand (but apparently lightly or never used) Wacom Intuos3 6x8" tablet for $199 ($100 off retail!). All in all, an awesome place for a Mac enthusiast like me.

Speaking of Apple, let me relate a particular experience with the company here in Japan. I picked up an iPhone 3G from SoftBank Telecom at the Navy Exchange on the base, and made the mistake of not checking to see if everything worked right before leaving. When I took it back to my room, turned it on, and fired up Safari, a problem quickly became apparent -- the screen immediately shifted to landscape (as if the phone had been turned to the left side), and no amount of coercing could get it to return to portrait. The same problem exhibited itself in every other accelerometer-enabled application I ran. Upgrading the software to 2.1 and restoring again did not correct the problem. A call to AppleCare in Japan (a very polite lady who spoke clear English) confirmed the problem was hardware-based, and she set up an iPod Bar appointment at the flagship Apple Store in Ginza for the next evening.

The next day, I take the phone to the bar for my appointment. The Genius takes a look at it, asks a few standard questions (did you try restoring the phone? Does it do the same thing in more than one app?), and confirms that the problem is indeed with the hardware. Not ten minutes later, I'm out the door with a brand-new, fully-functional iPhone in hand. No other company I have ever dealt with has given such consistently satisfying support and retail experiences as Apple -- they are absolutely deserving of their reputation as one of the best consumer electronics companies today.

*Ahem*. All evangelizing aside, I am thoroughly enjoying my time here in Japan, and am looking forward to the rest of my tour. I'll doubtless have more stuff to post about in the coming weeks/months, so don't forget to come back later!

I'm using the MBA right this second to type up this post, sitting at the bar at a Starbucks in Chesapeake. This is exactly the sort of thing this machine was created for; it's so light, I could barely tell I was carrying a laptop around in my backpack. It's thin enough that it fits perfectly in the back pocket of my MacBook Pro's case - the one meant for carrying papers, magazines, that sort of thing. It's the sort of machine you carry around when you don't really feel like carrying a laptop around.

The MBA is not without its faults; the 4200 RPM hard drive is not exactly the fastest thing around, and the machine frequently stutters under heavy disk load; tasks such as Spotlight indexing and permission repairs take significantly longer than on my other Macs, and the entire system occasionally hiccups for no apparent reason. The battery on this particular system takes an inordinately long time to charge, another issue that seems to plague some machines and not others.

Those issues aside, the Air is an outstanding machine that could conceivably serve well as either a secondary or primary computer, depending on what you intend to use it for. For myself, it will fit into the 'secondary' role, mainly for web browsing, blogging, and writing projects; that it takes up very little space and thus fits well into a locker is a nice bonus.

-Macworld Expo next week: wow, so much going on during Expo this year that I'm seriously wondering whether I'll actually be able to make it to everything (on time, at least). Unlike past years, this time I'm actually (more or less) on a schedule for the entire week, Monday to Friday; between Lightroom training, the Stevenote, meetings, parties, and even a shift at the Apple Consultants Network Tech Assist booth (which I'm really looking forward to, actually), I'm going to be busier this Expo than I've ever been - and that's a good thing, believe me!

-Leaving for Japan: this is coming up quicker than I realized. Among other things, before we leave the East Coast for good, I've got to figure out what to do with my car -- the most likely scenario being considered involves yet another cross-country drive (my fifth) with a one-way flight back to Norfolk. While I very much enjoy visiting home, I much prefer the 'not having to spend eight hours a day in the car' option; in any case, it most likely can't be helped, especially if I want said car to be in decent condition when I (eventually) return to the States. At least I won't be bringing (too) much with me this time.

-Going into business: I'm looking into starting my own consulting and tech support business, primarily based around Apple hardware and software solutions. There are some unique challenges I'll have to overcome, however, before I can actually get this off the ground, one being location: I live on an aircraft carrier, and for the forseeable future (about the next half a year or so) the crew itself would be my primary client base. As-is, there is a small but slowly growing Mac user community aboard the USS George Washington, and in my short time aboard I've been frequently questioned about various aspects of the Mac and iPod families. Another challenge is the lack of reliable Internet access aboard the ship; many aspects of performing technical support or product research require having access to the most up-to-date information available, and the de-facto source of such information is, of course, the Internet. Having limited access to that invaluable resource could potentially make the job much more difficult (but not impossible). Challenges aside, this is an opportunity that I am seriously pursuing, and hopefully things will work out in the end.

-Getting to Japan: we're expecting to arrive at our new homeport of Yokosuka, Japan sometime in the latter half of this year, and I am very much looking forward to seeing my new home in person. One of my first priorities on arriving in Japan is finding a place to call "home": someplace reasonably close to transportation (the train, of course), but far enough from the base that I'm not surrounded by "squids" 24/7. It's not that I don't enjoy working with my shipmates -- far from it. However, I do like having the opportunity to spend some time away from the people I already live with day and night when the ship is out to sea. Even tolerant folks have their limits. :) The nice thing is that I've got a fairly reasonable living budget to work with: ~US$1900/month housing allowance, $500/month utility allowance, and $700/month cost of living allowance -- all tax-free. So, one intends to get the best place available (within the budget, of course). All in all, can't wait to get there.

Not bad for the first post in almost half a year, eh? I'll have to make it a late New Year's resolution to post here more often. (Yeah, like that'll happen.)

First thing first: I'm no longer in Sacramento. In fact, I'm about a week away from heading across the country to not-so-sunny Norfolk, Virginia, enroute to my next assignment, the USS George Washington, to begin my second carrier tour. The nice thing about going back to sea is that I've already got a fair idea of what's going on, what's good to know, and more specifically, who is good to know. It also gives me an opportunity to start off with a clean slate; I didn't exactly start my first sea tour off on the right foot, and though I did eventually get onto the right track, life would have been much more pleasant had I put forth a bit more effort.

So, in the meantime, I'm cooling my heels (metaphorically speaking) at my folks' place in the hills east of Fresno, enjoying my last week in California by pretty much doing as little as possible (except spend money, which will be touched on in a paragraph or two). I have taken a couple trips up to Kings Canyon National Park, as well as a day trip to Cupertino to visit Apple at 1 Infinite Loop a couple days ago. Selected pictures from these trips are up on my deviantART gallery.

Pictures, I'll add, were taken with my new Canon EOS 30D DSLR camera, which I'm still trying to figure out the controls for. I've got the basics of ISO adjustment down reasonably well, but I haven't even touched on things like shutter speed, aperture settings, etc. I'm too used to the typical point-and-shoot, though the Olympus SP500UZ I previously used had similar user-adjustable settings (which I rarely used). I'll adjust in time, I suppose - after all, practice makes perfect.

The camera was but one of a slew of acquisitions in the past few weeks, which include:

-17-inch MacBook Pro, with high-resolution display, 160GB 7200 RPM hard drive and third-party upgrade to 4GB of RAM

-8GB iPhone (yeah, that was a given)

-Three external hard drives (1TB dual-drive RAID setup, and two 160GB 2.5-inch bus-powered drives)

-Final Cut Studio 2 (which was a #&*$! to install, since I was putting extra content on the new 1TB drive which accidentally got powered down 2/3 of the way through the first attempt)

-FileMaker Pro 8.5 (which, naturally, was superceded by version 9 two whole days later)

-Adobe Lightroom (coupled with Photoshop CS3, this makes processing the 30D's RAW images so much more enjoyable)

I really need to start posting on here more often; I know, I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again in my next post 2-5 months from now. If, for some strange reason, you're wondering what I've been doing lately, better places to look would be my Twitter profile, or my deviantART profile (which has the bonus of including pictures!).

(Oh, and you can see the real thing right here.)