Nothing But Words

Congratulate Me

Topic: Family and Friends

In two weeks I’ll be starting a new position in my department. I’ll go from “Programmer Analyst” to “IT Project Leader.” That essentially means I’ll do project management instead of programming. I’ve done project management work on a limited basis at previous jobs, but this is the first time I’ve stayed with one employer long enough to transition into it full-time (in the .com heyday, it was actually unusual for anyone to stay at a company more than 2 years, but those days are long gone…). Given our upcoming 6 month trip to Japan, I actually didn’t apply for the position at first. But we ended up with a less than inspiring candidate pool, so I decided to apply, and made a case for remote project management. I’ve had some experience with this, working with the Massachusetts Medical Society when I was at HighWire, in California.

I’ll be working part-time while we’re in Japan. And I’ll work at night, so I can be online for part of the east coast workday. Our Tokyo apartment has a fiber optic internet connection, so - assuming the ISP is halfway decent - I can be effective remotely by using SkypeIn, NetMeeting, instant messaging, etc. I’ve heard good reports on Skype from friends, who say they’ve had good connections using it to talk to people in Tokyo and Shanghai. Using it in conjunction with a local number in Philly, my clients can call me in Tokyo without making an international phone call. I’ll have a couple months to build relationships in-person before we go at the end of the year. That should provide a sufficient foundation to maintain the relationships while I’m working remotely.

After 10 years as a programmer I’m ready to start exercising some different brain muscles, so I’m looking forward to starting.

A Comic Book Confession…

Topic: TV, Movies, and Music
Tags: Comics

A few months ago I started reading comic books again, for the first time since I was a teenager. The thing that got me to walk into a comic book store for the first time in twenty years was an NPR interview with a couple guys from Marvel comics, touting their 7-issue Civil War series. The premise is essentially a non-tongue in check version of The Incredibles backstory: the people have grown tired of the often massive collateral damage that results from super-powered vigilantism. But instead of The Incredibles solution of forcing all of them to retire from the superhero business, the Congress passes a law requiring them to register with the US government as “persons of mass destruction” and to start taking orders from S.H.I.E.L.D. (a fictional counter-terrorism/intelligence agency). The Registration Act is framed as a civil liberties issue, and it splits the superhero community down the middle. Iron Man leads the registered superheroes, and their first job is to arrest those who refuse to register, which is a group led by (wait for it….) Captain America.

This sounded like a potentially interesting political allegory for our times, so I decided to check it out. I have to say it’s a pretty good read, and I’ve gotten sucked into several of the tie-in stories to regular Marvel titles. One thing that’s clearly changed since I was reading comics in the 80s is the sophistication of the stories - the target audience is adults now (in our local comics store, there’s a very small section for the comics aimed at kids under 12, and the rest of the store is for the big kids). What holds the Civil War series back from being really great though is that the premise just doesn’t hold water: by no stretch of the imagination is being a superhero a “civil right.” There’s no constitutional right to vigilantism, let alone super-powered vigilantism. Having said that, the quality of the artwork and the overall storytelling goes a long way towards making up for this flawed premise.

The Spider-Man Civil War side story is even better than the Civil War series itself. In a major change for the character, Peter Parker reveals his identity as Spider Man and comes out as a supporter of the Registration Act. But he is deeply conflicted about his choice. The current writer for The Amazing Spider-Man is J. Michael Straczynski, creator of one of my favorite TV series, Babylon 5. He does what good writers do - he gets you in Peter’s head and gets you to identify with his struggle. Here’s an example - this scene takes place shortly after Captain America loses his shield in a scuffle with Spider-Man:

For me, the one Marvel series that really outshines the others is Ultimates 2. Marvel has created a whole series of “Ultimate” titles (Ultimate Spider Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four, etc.) which they use to tell stories without being tied to the decades of history the characters have accumulated in their regular series’. This universe has much fewer superheroes in it, and is much closer to the real world (e.g. George Bush is President, we’re at war in Iraq, etc.). The Ultimates 2 series is a re-working of the Avengers. It’s much grittier, realistic, and overtly political than any comic I’ve seen before. The Ultimates team is controlled through S.H.I.E.L.D., and is used only for domestic law enforcement. But then Captain America is used to rescue some hostages in Iraq, and so the trip down the slippery slope begins. Not much later the whole team is used to perform a pre-emptive strike on one of the “Axis of Evil” countries. Here’s a snippet of a conversation between Tony Stark (Iron Man) and the imprisoned Thor after the attack (the writers have brilliantly re-cast Thor as a sort of Earth First/Greenpeace left-wing activist):

Stark: “And when did I become one of the bad guys?”
Thor: “Around the same time you took part in that pre-emptive strike against a Third-World country”

At the same time, an alliance of Middle East and Third World nations, with covert assistance from China, are planning to use their own superheroes for an assault on America. But before they strike, they infiltrate the Ultimates with a spy, and take most of the team down one by one: Thor is framed for getting his powers from stolen high tech weaponry (nobody really bought his whole “God of Thunder” story to begin with), Hawkeye is captured and his family murdered, and Captain America is framed for doing it. Bruce Banner is put on trial for a deadly rampage by the Hulk, and then secretly executed. With most of the Ultimates out of comission, “The Liberators” attack is swift and successful, including the capture of the President and control of the US’ nuclear arsenal. This situation effectively deters the Europeans and their superheroes from intervening. The leader of the attack videotapes the final moments of the assault, announcing at the end “the Great Satan has been liberated.”

The Liberators’ Leader: “This is what happens when your ambitions outstrip your capabilities”

Tony Stark narrowly survives an assassination attempt, and with the other surviving Ultimates members, they begin to organize a counter-offensive. That’s where the story stands at issue 10 of this 13 issue series - I don’t want to give away anything beyond that. Issue 12 just came out. You might have a hard time finding the earliest issues, but I think most comic shops would have it back to issue 9, which isn’t a bad place to pick it up, as that’s when the attack on the US happens. Issue 12 is just one giant battle though, so I wouldn’t recommend starting there, as you’ll have no idea what’s going on (the series tends to have 2 or 3 dialog-heavy issues, followed by a non-stop action issue).

UPDATE: The series is now available in hardcover. Here’s the Amazon link: The Ultimates 2

Hidoi Otenki Desu Ne

Topic: Japan 2007

I’ll probably be posting sporadically for the rest of the year, as I’ve started my Japanese class, and one thing that’s already clear to me is that learning Japanese will be time consuming. The title of this post means “the weather is terrible, isn’t it?” which I picked partly because it’s raining out right now, but mainly because my vocabulary is so limited at this point that I can’t yet say much that’s particularly relevant to anything. The class has met three times, and the teacher is already conducting the class mostly in Japanese, so keeping up is a challenge.

The grammar we’ve covered so far is simpler than the equivalent English rules: verbs have a comparatively small set of conjugations and very few irregular forms (the main thing to note is the lack of a future tense - you figure it out by context), there is no distinction between singular and plural (again, you figure it out by context), there are no masculine and feminine forms for nouns (like English), and Japanese has a concept of “particle” words that serve as modifiers for the preceding word, making it very clear, e.g., what the object of a verb is (so Japanese is much less dependent on word order than English).

All of the above would seem great for an analytical thinker like me, but the relative simplicity of the rules we’ve learned so far means that understanding what is being said requires really following the fluid context of conversation, which actually isn’t so great for an analytical thinker like me. But it’s learning the vocabulary that’s the biggest challenge - unlike the Romance languages I learned in high school, there are no common roots with English, so it’s an exercise in sheer memorization (not counting the borrowed words from English, which are surprisingly common, e.g., door is “doa”). But I’m actually doing fine so far - from what I can tell in class, I’m doing just as well as everybody else.

Then, of course, there are the 3 different writing systems. My class will cover the Katakana and Hiragana syllabaries, each of which has between 50 and 100 characters, depending on how you want to count (many are just slight variations on others). We just started with Hiragana last night - wish me luck in mastering all the squiggles and curvy lines!

What’s funny is that I’m the only one in the class with a clear reason for being there. When we went around the room and introduced ourselves in the first class, the teacher asked us all to say why were interested in the class. The most common answer was along the lines of “I’m really into anime.” At 20 students, the class is full right now. I’m curious to see how many people stick with it. I would think that, without a really concrete reason for being there, it would be difficult to maintain the motivation to keep up.

In A Slower, Wistful Big Country

Topic: TV, Movies, and Music

This makes me both happy and sad: Kohl’s is using a cover of the 1983 hit In A Big Country in their latest ad. I’m happy to see my favorite band get some (posthumous) publicity, but the cover version they’re using makes me cringe. The demographic obviously being targeted here is my age group. But, y’know, we’re all in our mid-thirties and early forties now, and - while we have fond memories of the electric guitar rock of our youth - we’ve all mellowed with age, and hearing it again in its original form would just hurt our aging, sensitive ears. We’re much more likely to shop at Kohl’s if they play a slower, more wistful version of the song for us.

And to think I listened to Big Black’s Atomizer on the way to work this morning.

Update: Some in the Big Country discussion forum were wondering if the surviving band members get any royalties from this sort of thing. The answer is no - Mercury owns most of their back catalogue and can do whatever they want with it, with no payment to the band. Since I’ve already mentioned Big Black in this post, I’ll quote their former frontman Steve Albini (who went on to produce albums for the Pixies, Breeders, and dozens of others) on the matter:

“Starting with Jefferson Airplane and The MC5 and going right up to Sonic Youth and Husker Du, it’s never worked. In 30 years no band has ever come out of the system alive. They get signed, they get arm-wrestled into spending too much money on their records, they get into debt to the record company, they spend 18 months trying to get out of it, it doesn’t work and the band breaks up. That has been such a constant that I can’t believe anyone still falls for it…”

Steve gazes calmly into the hell that is corporate rock. “It boggles my mind that everyone thinks they can pull the wool over the eyes of a company that’s had 30 years’ experience in dicking rock bands. Now that means that bands are being arm-wrestled into sounding like Nirvana; and the only way record companies can imagine doing that is by hiring Nirvana’s producer, so every band on a major label has been remixed by Nirvana’s producer this year…and I just don’t have any interest in being part of the continuum.”

Preparing for the Move to Minato City

Topic: Japan 2007

Last week Maria wired the deposit money for our apartment in Minato City (which is not actually its own city - it’s the central district of Tokyo where the apartment is). And yesterday she called Minato’s school department to find out about registering Kai for the public school kindergarten in Konan, which is the name of our ward in Minato. She wrapped up the whole thing in one call - Kai is now registered for 1st grade, which in Japan starts in April. He’ll also get a spot for kindergarten in January, but he may end up in a neighboring ward, since we’ll be arriving in the middle of the school year and the Konan school might be full.

Check out this web page for the Minato City schools. The first thing to notice is that it’s written in excellent English. The second thing to notice is that it has very clear instructions for foreign residents to register their kids for school. As an American used to generally lousy public services, this just amazes me. Can you imagine a US public school being this accommodating to foreign residents, and having a web site just for foreigners that’s this good? Minato has a high percentage of foreign residents, which is undoubtedly the motivation behind the web site, but again, as an American, I’m amazed to see a city district do something so eminently sensible, and do it well.

We’ve also made our travel plans for getting to Japan. First we’ll first ship all the stuff for our 6 month stay to a friend’s place in San Francisco. Then we’ll go to Newport for Christmas. It’s a Christmas we don’t want to miss - my 14 year old nephew, who lives in Australia with his father, will be in Newport for the first time since he was 6 years old. Then on Dec. 28th we’ll fly from Boston to San Francisco, and spend a day and a half there (since we’re travelling with the boys, we decided it would be wise to break up such a long journey). We wanted to arrive in California sooner, so we could we more time there, but we couldn’t get the flights to work out. But we’re looking forward to seeing our friends in the Bay Area again! Since it’s such a short visit, we’ll probably have a party one night and invite everybody. Then we’ll load up all our stuff and fly from San Francisco to Tokyo. The Japanese have great delivery services (takkyubin), so we’ll use one of those to pick up all our stuff at the airport and take it to the apartment. We’ll arrive at our little apartment just in time to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Tokyo. We’ll still be on US time, so we’ll be up!

Eye of the Storm

Topic: Kai and Eidan

Events of the past few weeks have left me too short on time and worn out for much blogging. The biggest challenge has been Eidan’s sleeping. We had actually just succeeded in getting him into a nice routine a few weeks ago, when he started getting an allergic reaction to something. His primary symptom is post nasal drip, which makes him cough when he’s lying down, and he would usually end up having a coughing fit and vomiting. The advice we got from his pediatrician was to tilt his mattress and get a cold air humidifier blowing in his face (he’s too young for cough medicine). It took a while for him to adjust to the humidifier, but now he’s finally sleeping fairly well again. Soon after we moved here three years ago, Kai developed a similar problem, although it wasn’t as severe (of course, he was also older). Kai’s problem went away about a year ago. It’s probably some kind of household mold, but I’m hoping that in Eidan’s case it’s seasonal and will go away soon. We’ll see…

Aside from that Eidan is doing great. He’s walking like a pro now. Well, actually, he’s walking like a drunk, but every day he gets better at it. And he turned one a few weeks ago! It’s hard to believe. He still has more energy than Maria and I combined, but he’s become easier to manage recently, as he’s developed the ability to stay focused on a task for more than a few seconds. For example, going out to eat previously had been a tag-team effort between Maria and I, with one of us keeping Eidan reigned in so the other could eat a few bites. Reigning him in usually meant letting him climb all over me like some kind of little feral animal while he giggled constantly, and making sure he didn’t fall as he’d go up my chest, around my head, down my side, and so on. But the other night we went out and he sat calmly in his high chair for a full 20 minutes and ate his food. When I say “ate”, I mean he smeared his food all around the table and himself, with maybe a third of it finding it’s way into his mouth (and yes, we always leave an extra nice tip when we take him out with us). Hey, it’s progress - it was a mind-bogglingly pleasant experience to sit, eat at the same time, and actually be able to exchange a few words. Of course, Kai is always there to redirect the conversation to the topics of Superman, Batman, legos, etc., as he’s not about to sit through a mind-numbingly dull “adult” conversation.

Last weekend we began the process of moving Kai out of his room. He’ll share Eidan’s room until we leave for Japan (and they’ll share a room in Japan too). Maria’s friend Jen, who will be staying in our house while we’re in Japan, is moving in early and taking over Kai’s room in a couple of weeks. I never quite finished the renovations in Eidan’s room (he lacked a ceiling light and the closet wasn’t finished), so I’ve been doing some work in there.

Maria’s been busy preparing for the Shibusawa conference, which she and Jen are co-hosting at Villanova and Penn in a couple of weeks (Jen teaches political science at Penn). This is the conference we attended in Japan two years ago. It’s in a different part of the world each time, and hosting it rotates through some of the regular participants, so this year it’s Maria and Jen.

So this weekend is the eye of the storm, in that our schedules are not overloaded, for just a little while. Maria will attend some panels at the APSA conference tomorrow (Marc Lynch shared some humorous thoughts on the conference - humorous if your a poli-sci geek, anyway) , and on Sunday we’ll finish Kai’s move into Eidan’s room. Then next week our schedules will become totally crazy again, as I’ll start a Japanese class, and Maria will be making final preparations for the conference.

I’ve added a link to the “friends” section of my blogroll - Maria’s page at Villanova! Many of you have asked about Maria’s work. Her Villanova page is not complete yet (I’ll see if I can help her spruce it up), but it should give you an idea of her interests. Also, now that Maria is a CFR fellow, they’ve posted a nice, concise bio for her on their site.