My brother’s-in-law wife’s grandmother…

Saturday July 14, 2001

My brother’s-in-law wife’s grandmother died five days ago.  Yah, i know.  It’s pretty far removed from me.  Nonetheless, it’s a family thing.  She was 93, widowed before.

Big news here – rain.  And more rain.  Massive flooding here in Seoul and south of here.  

  • about 50 people missing from collapsed housing from water and mudslides
  • 17 people electrocuted in the streets while waste deep in water
  • thousands of cars parked near the Han river totaled
  • hundreds of people’s houses gone under a sea of mud and water
  • hundreds of basement apartments flooded
  • subway stations on number 7 line near the express bus terminal under water

Funny how a person can stop…

Thursday July 12, 2001

Funny how a person can stop mid-sentence when writing in a diary.  Just what came over me that i had to stop with “Then “?  Hell if i know.

Anyway, as some of you were watching today, i put all my windows separating the balcony from living room and office back up this afternoon.  Now we have a cool living room and cool office, and the plants are left with the heat and humidity of a Korean mid-summer.  Better them than me!  Not only that, but i can now take the hose to them all without fear of flooding the rest of the apartment.  He he.

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The following week…

Tuesday July 10, 2001

The following week.  Hanmee cooked some pork for us today, and i’m just eating the last of it now.  Pretty good.  It’s 9pm now, and there’s nothing left to do but relax and kick the cats.

Notice:

No harm has come to any cats being kicked this evening.  All cat kicking has been done under supervision of trained cat kicking technicians.  All cats were wearing proper cat kicking apparel.

Having said that, i think i’ll torture everyone around me by playing my guitar.

Another muggy day…

Monday, July 2, 2001

Another muggy day.  That’s okay.  We’ve had our air conditioners running most of today.  However, one of them decided to sweat a little and dripped onto our couch.  Caught it in time, and now it’s dripping elsewhere – like out the “out” tube.  I put the drip hose into a plant that demands a lot of water.  How is that for being an ecologist, eh?  Ha ha!  Yah, i know.  I’m using electricity.  But these air conditioners are supposed to be pretty efficient.  I’d like to take them to Canada whenever we end up moving there, but they run off of 220 VAC rather than 110 VAC.  Not sure if i could wire it up properly without singing my hair!

Something else in the news.  Not necessarily today, but news of recent nonetheless.  Hanmee & i went down to Kyobo book store, the largest bookstore in South Korea, to poke around and see what we could see.  I had in mind to pick up some reference books on Windows 2000.  Turns out, there are books from Microsoft that cover the entire core-four MCSE courses.  They call it the MCSE Training Kit.  It covers, in a four book & 2 CD package, Windows 2000 Professional, W2K Server, W2K Network Infrastructure Administration, and W2K Active Directory Services.  These are the four core subjects of study needed to get the MCSE ticket – Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.  Along with these core, 2 to 3 electives are also needed.  So this gives me a solid base to start on this road to tech stuff.  More later.

Hey, folks.  It’s terribly rainy today

Saturday, June 30, 2001

Hey, folks.  It’s terribly rainy today, gray skies, windy, cold (according to Hanmee), and generally very dull.  We’re planning on going to Kyobo book store soon.  But first, we have to clean up our apartment, eat, etc.  Lynn (Ingyoung) is planning on coming here this evening.  Dunno though.

Good.  It’s done…

Thursday June 28, 2001

Good.  It’s done.  My USB webcam and the old camera are streaming independently.  One is running with iVista, the other with Windows Media.  Of course that means the whole computer is much slower, and the frame rates of both are much lower, but at least it’s working.  Okay, so this really isn’t a big thing to anyone else, but it’s been something i’ve been working on fixing for a couple weeks now.  Video codecs are always a dilemma.  Sometimes a real head-scratcher.

The cats are still alive.  They’re fat as ever.  Hanmee’s father seems to think that, when we move back to Canada, taking the cats with us is stupid.  Crazy.  A waste of effort.  “They’re just animals.”  To each their own.  As far as i’m concerned, he’s just a stranger, and my cats are my family.  Nothing else matters.