So I’d like to take a bit of time and reflect of the accomplishments of the last 6 months, in no particular order and mainly relating to work.. after all that’s what I have really only been doing.

Where to begin.. successful office move and migration of child company and management of VOIP, l2l tunnel and vpn implementation for 50 users. Build-out and configuration of ~40 pieces of network gear for a huge international securities company’s datacenter in Yokohama. Three month rollout of brand new cisco network and IPT cluster (first ccm7.2 rollout in APAC) for 600 phones in one of Tokyo’s most expensive and famous towers. (pictures soon) Camping and hiking.. continued study of japanese, to the point now where I am recognizing different dialects..

Doesn’t sound like I have done much..

Anyways, from the 11th I am office for an almost three week vacation to europe.. Still building the itinerary, tentatively its starting from Paris and working my way down to Rome via Barcelona and Monaco. Any recommendations for the south of france?

Xmas in tokyo, “America” style, with turkey, gravy, loads of veggies, pecan pie, creme brulee and various alcohols. Followed up by a jazz show at Tokyo’s Satin Doll, a pretty famous jazz club in roppongi.

New Year’s in Osaka. Did the countdown at a international party with some osaka kids and an old friend from hiroshima that is now an engineer working outside of tokyo. Spent another week traveling around kansai, exploring and enjoy Nara, Iga, Oji and Osaka.

Coming back to Tokyo, I jumped right back into work. No projects right now, but coming up soon I will be network and virtualization lead for huge server migration from > 50 boxes into two c7000 hp chassis’ with vmware.

So in the meantime, I am working playing with vmware esx and all their other utilities along with doing some proposals and general boring work.

On a side note, Osaka is so different from Tokyo, almost a 180degree difference. The general attitudes and friendliness of the people. It was really amazing. Sitting at a coffee shop, people just start talking to you and smile on the train. In tokyo it’s just the opposite… Plus things are cheap in Osaka compared to Tokyo. I spent about $100 over new years night for food and drinks and that was an all nighter. In tokyo, that would cost about triple that..

The most major difference would be that lack of people that can speak english in osaka. I definately wouldnt enjoy it so much if I couldnt speak japanese.. Fun place though!

Ignore them at your own risk.

I got this information over decades of living, but many people never learn these rules at all. And so they live in ”quiet desperation.” You don’t have to settle for that.

If you consider these Facts and test them against your experience (NOT your conditioning!), I predict you’ll adopt them, and you’ll be on your way to a life of freedom and accomplishment.
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1. SELF-MANAGEMENT AND PEOPLE SKILLS ARE THE KEYS TO YOUR SUCCESS AND HAPPINESS.

2. YOU ARE AT THE CENTER OF YOUR UNIVERSE. STAY THERE!

3. WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT MOST IS WHAT YOU GET.

4. YOU MAKE YOUR HABITS AND THEN YOUR HABITS MAKE YOU.

5. GUILT ENSLAVES YOU. RESPONSIBILITY LIBERATES YOU.

6. “OBLIGATIONS” ARE A FRAUD.

7. EXPECT LESS FROM OTHERS AND MORE FROM YOURSELF.

8. NOBODY WAKES UP IN THE MORNING CHOOSING TO BE THE VILLAIN.

9. THERE IS NO “HAPPILY EVER AFTER” IN THE REAL WORLD.

10. THERE IS A HELL, AND IT STARTS EARLY.

11. YOU CAN CREATE PARADISE ON EARTH. MANY PEOPLE DO.

12. IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO CHANGE.

ATM Ahona teishu mo iranai - “the idiot husband I don’t need in my life anymore”.

AB Amai mono wa betsubara - the kind of woman who has a separate stomach for puddings

GM Gyudon no hou ga mashi - even gyudon (very cheap fast food) is better than this muck

FK Fande koi - someone who trowels on the make-up

ND Ningen to shite douyo - what the hell kind of person is this?

NTT Nimotsu tantosha - a packhorse for a girlfriend’s shopping trips

OBM Okubyoumono - a man too chicken to ask a girl on a date

DD Daredemo daisuki - the kind of person who falls for anyone

NS Noryoku yori seikaku - someone promoted way beyond his competence

MM maji mukatsu - they are both utterly disgusted with each other

MK5 maji kireru 5 byo mae - suggests that he is going to blow his lid in five seconds

HR hitori ranchi - go eat alone

Pictures up on flickr shortly.

After that, we spent the next 5 days in Okinawa. We flew in on a monday night, Naha then to Ishigakijima. We were on the tail end of a typhoon this night, so it was overcast and raining. The next morning we hopped on a speedboat and took a 45minute ride to Iruomotejima.

We spent the next three days on Iruomotejima snorkeling, kayaking, trekking, camping and being general beach bums. Check out some of the pictures on flickr, we took too many pictures with the pentax w40 I bought (it’s ruggedized and does under water shots.) Pretty fun, and I found Nemo, anglefish and sea snakes. This island is about 80% wild-life reserve/national park. There is one main road that connects north to the south and it runs a long the coast. This island is extremely beautiful, both a long the ocean for diving and in-land for hiking, treking and general exploring. The mangroves and fauna are amazing. I recommend you skip Naha and head here for at least two days. September is perfect if you can get here in between typhoons like we managed.

After Iruomotejima, we headed to Taketomijima. This is a really small island, around 2km across at the widest. We spent the day here lounging on the beach and visiting some of the kamidana, or alcoves where sacred spirits are supposed to live.

After this we returned to Ishigakijima. We stayed in a hotel here in the downtown district. After shopping for some okinawan wine and presents, we enjoyed the night life at a popular okinawan bar. I have really come to enjoy goya…

We headed back to honshu after this. From Nagoya, we head to kyoto and to Yamauto. This is a 30 day, self-sustainable music/outdoor living/eco friendly festival. The festival was deep in the mountains of Shiga-ken, about 1.5 hours from Kyoto station by train/bus.

All in all this was a great, and much needed vacation. I met and talked with some interesting people ( including a gynecologist from Tokyo) and learned some interesting things about
japanese people in general. ( My ideas of camping and japanese, completely different.. patrol and clean your campsite before and after you setup your tent! Rocks and sticks under your tent are not comfortable!)

These types of projects are normally 9 to 12 month projects. We had basically 5 months, with a 4 month early completion bonus. So from initial planning, ordering and implementation… we made the 4 month mark!

I spent the last month doing config cleanup, training and documentation. Now, from tomorrow, I am spending my bonus on a vacation. Off to go camping in Nagano for 3 days, then to Okinawa’s Iruomotejima and Ishigakijima for beach bumming and more camping for a week and finally back to kyoto for a 3 day camping/music festival.

After that, I come back to a new project as a PM/Manager for Asian Operations for large financial company.. in Roppongi…

cya on the flip

Around two weeks ago, I made the venture back to where I used to live in Hiroshima to take part in the summer aikido camp. 4 days of Aikido, 3 times a day, followed with (un)health doses of drinking. It was great to be back in hiroshima and see how much saijo had changed. Very surprising for such a little town.

Pictures are up on flickr, at the normal place.

Working in a international company in Tokyo, I am afforded the opportunity to work with people not only from Japan and American, but from all over the world. I recently had a discussion with both a partner of the company and my girlfriend in regards to the way people approach situations and the reasoning methods. Not only from a technical approach, but in general.

I recently have had some issues with people I am dealing with not being what I consider technically capable for their positions. For example, people that are supposed to be senior level technicians that cannot identify a difference between application layer problems and network level problems. I understand that people want to immediately blame someone else when their stuff does not work, and I fully acknowledge the possibility that the network or network related issues could be the problem. However, I do expect a senior person to be able to come to me and say “Hey, I have verified the services are running and that I cannot connect/ping/access/telnet to the port of the affected server/device. I have checked log files etc etc.” Please check the network.. I do not, I repeat do not, enjoy having to learn about your application because you do not know how to debug a problem on your own. “This is the nTH time I have used this application..” is not a valid excuse. DO you think I have used it???

Perhaps it comes from having an engineer father who was always encouraging in my endeavours to disassemble and reassemble something. Perhaps it comes from having a comp sci./math background? Perhaps it comes from being “intelligent” or perhaps experience?

While I do have a lot of experience with networking and computers, I in no way expect to be more knowledgeable then a 40 year old guy who has been doing this his whole life.

At the other end of the spectrum, I want to also say that I find the learning process of some people interesting. Again, perhaps it is a product of up-bringing or education, or even lack of experience.. If you are in the IT field working as an SA you really need to know how to logically approach a problem;

1) Isolate the problem; saying the application is not working is not enough. Thats what the end users says. When an SA comes to me and says the application is broke and they want to fix the network on the basis of that, I immediately feel the urge to head butt them.

2) Troubleshoot at the application layer. You know, the OSI model fabulous for troubleshooting. I fully don’t expect a SQL admin to understand anything below, say session level, but you can verify that you server is actually working.

3) Provide a valid explanation of your problem to your network admin / senior consultant. It actually saves time in the long run, and perhaps you get a little bit of respect.

4) Profit.

As for network troubleshooting, you really need to learn the OSI model and understand what is going on within the TCP/UDP[IP] streams. Just because you cannot ping a host doesn’t mean it is not up. Just because you cannot connect to an ftp port doesn’t mean that ftp is shut off.

Did I learn any of this in college? No.. I don’t think I gained this from experience either, per say. It just seemed logical to me…

Perhaps I am to logical.. perhaps they are just idiots…