Nothing too interesting here, but I managed to fix my home PC this morning. I guess the C drive is starting to crap out intermittently. It probably got stuck or overheated, and when the machine rebooted the BIOS couldn’t find it and promoted the next drive on the list to startup. All I had to do was designate the correct drive as the boot drive and it worked.
I warned you, not interesting.
Speaking of not interesting, lately I’ve been spending all my weeknights in a Starbucks somewhere, reading the Japanese translation of Catcher in the Rye. Had I not lost my iPod I probably wouldn’t have bought the book. I use my retro-cool Sony Clie as an electronic dictionary (it kicks the Nintendo DS’s ass eight ways into next Thursday) and footnote all the new words and phrases in red pen. On the train home (usually the last one) I re-read everything and try to think of ways I’d use in daily life the phrases that are new to me, so that I’m “owning” them instead of just trying to memorize them.
The company I work for is in negotiations with a major international publisher to produce a podcast for them. One of the biggest publishers in the world by far, but you’ll never guess in a million years which one, and when I can finally tell you you’ll smack yourself in the forehead. I can’t even give you a hint. I won’t be the voice, just the producer, and when you find out who the publisher is you’ll understand why. If all goes well, it’ll start in July.
I don’t expect you to confirm/deny, but if I were to guess it would be Scholastic. And the voice would be Jim Dale. đ
so its finally all going to pay off! great news đ
Wow, that sounds awesome. Congratulations Rich. You must work for a great company.
@Alex: We have boss who works tirelessly and is absolutely fearless when it comes to business. 80% of the entire company is him alone.
Glad you got your pc up and running Rich, So I presume the podcast is releated to your business what is you line of work? guess this will mean a backseat for herro flom japan?
@darren: HFJ is already taking a back seat to work and studying, but now that I have a home PC again I’ll try to put something out.
I’ve always wanted to do an episode that sounds like This American Life, but when you deconstruct an episode, man, you really grasp how much work goes into putting one together.
The publisher’s podcast…I can’t give any hints. Hopefully soon. And I hope a lot of my listeners will check it out and give us some honest, constructive feedback, even if you’re not a member of the target audience, and I guarantee 99.9% of you won’t be. But I really want to do this one well.
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You’re doing a podcast for Kodansha, it’s an English-teaching series.
How do you say, “She’ll get a bang out of that,” in Japanese? And is there a cool proto-beatnik way to call someone a “phony” in Japanese?
Is is the Murakami translation?
Garrett: Thankfully, it’s more interesting than that. At least to me.
I think just about anything would be more interesting than that to anyone.
Hey Rich it’s great to have you back and I’m sure it’s great to have a home PC now!
Well I don’t whom to guess as the publisher of your podcast, but I can wait. Still hoping to see some HFJ podcasts still, but good luck with that Rich!
I was thinking Bertelsman. They were pretty huge when I was in the book business.
It’s so obvious – you’ll be doing a podcast of the Penthouse Letters to the Editor.
“Dear Penthouse, I never thought it would happen to me…”
Ferret: Actually, you’re pretty close…I wish they’d hurry up and approve our budget so I can finally spill the beans.
And you know what, I’d love to do a Penthouse Letters kind of bilingual podcast, where we read stories either in English or Japanese and then explain them in the opposite language. The difficult thing is finding a suitable partner, someone who’s bilingual and has the right attitude.
Congrats Rich. That sounds like something you might actually like doing and getting paid… I am wondering what you meant by “owning” it. I have a hard time remembering anything. Is this your first book you read in Japanese? I am reading right now Sono tokiwa kareni yoroshiku and find it too difficult.
Hi Rich. Thanks for that. Good to hear your news again. I thought that was a great technique for learning a language (especially the red pen bit) and I’m going to give it a try.
Have you tried cleaning out the computer? You may need to open it up and vacuum up the dust or whatever is in there as that stuff can stop the heat from being properly released. (but don’t actually touch it, just a low vacuum, close to the parts. (I am currently learning hareware and what can go wrong with our computers…)