Sunday, March 26, 2006

Land of the Rising Sun

Well, sitting here in the HAL business-class lounge. Got in from Chicago a short while ago. Now, I'm in Narita, Japan...which must not be too far from Tokyo. It's breezey here, which is nice. How do I know how it is outside, you might wonder. Well, I'll get to that.

We closing on the house yesterday. Everything went quickly on the bank side so there were no problems at all. We got a key and the previous owners will be out on Friday the 31st so we'll really take possession at that point. They'll leave the rest of the keys in the house.

We stayed over late at Mom and Don's and watched some stuff off of the Tivo. I say 'we', but Court was sleeping most of the time. Sometime around midnight we headed over to her parent's to go to bed. My flight left at 11am so I slept until after to eight or so. Court's Mom had made french toast and bacon and pancakes and stuff so I ate a good breakfast, which I was thankful for, because for the next few days I've got to eat whenever I can when it's something I'll enjoy.

We headed to the aiport and said our goodbyes. I miss her. :(

Anyways, I was flying on a 777. First time I've ever been on one. VERY nice plane. Business class seats were really comfortable and had plenty of room...I didn't see the First Class setup as that much better. We got some Bose noise-cancelling headphones, which are FANTASTIC. I'm thinking of getting some because they work so well. Too bad they're expensive out the ying yang. The work like a charm tough...it takes 80% of that constant airplane THRUMMING out of the picture totally. I hooked them into my iPod and listened to some old TK shows I had missed as well as some music and stuff. I also read a lot and watched the end of National Treasure.

I say next to a nice guy who works for UL. We talked about travelling and stuff. He's doing a talk to some Chinese manufacturers about new specifications for mattress flamability. I guess they're upping the standards so they have to be able to withstand an open flame without bursting into flames...the old standard was a cigarette-style flame I guess. That was good to hear. He's flying somewhere else so we said our 'have a good flight' things and went on our way.

The Boss had called me the other day to say that there was an odd setup at the airport here...that I would have to take a shuttle to another terminal to get where I needed to go for my connection. The thing was...I had no boarding pass. I had to go through security to reach the shuttle but they were happy to just look at my intinerary. When I got to the connection office I got my boarding pass and all that, and they told me where the lounge was, and here I sit. Got a nice power jack here, so I'm charging back up since I siphoned off my laptop's power for the iPod when I was at O'Hare. I've newly discovered the 'hold' function which is like a keylock that stops the iPod from turning on whenever it gets bumped or anything. I think it was on and 'playing' Friday night because the batt was a little drained this (Sat) morning.

The iPod has worked great...I'm figuring stuff out on it and everything. The guy from UL had one he had just bought too but he was having some problems. He didn't have the software loaded up on his laptop but I told him I had the driver CD (which I just happened to have) so he loaded it up. However, I think when he loaded up iTunes he chose to sync his local Library with his iPod and thus erased everything he'd put on his iPod earlier with his empty local library. At least, I think that's what happened. No big loss, he said, since he had it all at home.

I've just found out it has an alarm functionality, which is nice. The clear case is working out nicely.

My flight boards at 5:50p and it's 4:03p now, local time. In Chicago, it's 1:05 Sunday morning. My cell doesn't seem to work here so I can't let anybody know I've gotten here safely. I've just found a wireless LAN to hookup to! NICE!

(too bad it's un-secured pay-to-play...no thanks)

More later

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

duh who doesnt know about the hold button :-p even my zen has one

Anonymous said...

Uh, I haven't been on in quite a while but, I clearly remember you saying at Gram Keegans Christmas Day party in '05 that noise cancelling head phones don't work. The reason I remember is because Mom D. gave you a splitter for the portable DVD player and said you should get the noise cancelling headphones for your travelling. I agreed that you should because they really work well. At the end, in your, look down at people face, you said those don't work like you know everything. And now I read that you wan't to buy some. I bought mine for $70, they weren't Bose, rather Phillips and they absolutely work on an airplane. Why do you say there so expensive, don't you make good money, or is that money being spent on Star war toys and crap like that. You owe me an apology for shrug off my comment on the headphones. You always try to ACt like you know more and now I have you. Lets go Nancy speak up.

Rich said...

uh huh...I think you just have an inferiority complex. BUH-ZA


Anyway, I don't remember that conversation. I think that some time ago somebody told me that the Bose ones were not very good ones. I don't know if other brands are any better/worse than the Bose ones, because Bose are the only ones that I've tried.

The Bose ones I've seen are something over $200 I think. Not worth it unless I have to do a lot of long-distance travel...and if it's that long it'll be a business class flight where I'll get them for free to use anyway.

And you'll never have me, Sally.

Anonymous said...

Hey Boy, Muscles might never have you, but I sure have on several occasions. Actually, I think my toilet is stuffed up. I'll stop by to borrow your plunger soon.