Birthday Party!!

So, I promised Linda I'd post on my blog tonight, although I'd much rather be sleeping right now... After a night on the town (well, inasmuch as Nara can be called "the town") I came home and spent about 3 hours adjusting the dérailleurs on my bike. The shifting has gotten horrifically out of whack lately, and I figure hey, if I can program a robot, I can fix a bike.

Much to my dismay, I found some similarities in the two tasks... tuning a dérailleur, especially on a crappy bike like mine, is like tuning a control loop or particle filter - you have a whole bunch of coefficients, setscrews, or other variables that you can control, and although there are general guidelines on how you can more or less get the performance you want, the last step always seems to be "and if it's not right, tweak it until it is."

There were moments when I thought I pretty much had it, but ... no. Too many variables. In the end, I got it more or less working, although the rear sprocket's shifting performance seems to be too dependent on which ring on the front chainwheel the chain is riding on. But good enough. :P

So, here are some pics from my birthday party last weekend:



First, I had a pleasant surprise at work - Three of my coworkers got me a cake! You can almost make out the cute little blue robot on it, which unfortunately appears to have been thrown out with the candles. :(

The funny thing was, they came in to give me the cake just at the beginning of our lunch break, and then we're all like ... um ... we should have lunch first. So I blew out the candles and we put the cake back in the fridge for later. :P



Next, we went out for a gourmet lunch at "Joyfull", the woefully understaffed restaurant next to our company. We were all positioned for a picture, I had the camera fired up and ready for the push of a button, and we asked the waitress to take our picture. She looked at me quizzically, hesitated in deep thought for about 20 seconds, and then was like, "No. Too busy." That was a first for me in Japan...

Thus we had to put my camera on the next table over and do a timer shot, with the result that you can't see what we're eating. But it's not about the food - it's about the company. And the iced cappuccinos at the drink bar. :D



And of course we had to have my second annual takoyaki birthday party! I even pulled out the Hanshin Tigers jersey that the CJP's gave me last year. It was a pretty good party, but as usual we made too much takoyaki batter and got too much octopus. The next day I finished off the octopus in a funky omelet-like creation.

Somehow Anton managed a smile here, even though his body was battered and broken from carrying a mikoshi that morning. I think the mikoshi-carrying industry is secretly funded by the chiropractors' guild.



I like this picture, although I think that's the same takoyaki ball that I'm trying to eat in the previous shot. :P



Hehe, gotta love the fact that they let you drink in public here. We all piled into the last train to Namba to go to a club for the rest of the night. Yuki made sure she didn't go empty-handed. :)



But of course we all had to help her.



Watch out Osaka, here we come!