Shutting out the sun

This is the title of a new book by Michael Zielenziger, who was the Tokyo bureau chief for the Knight-Ridder newspapers in the 1990s. He became interested in the emerging hikikomori problem in Japan, and the book is the result. Has anyone on my f-list (particularly jariten, jiawen, materia_indigo and marainsanity) seen this book yet? If so, what did you think? There's an excellent review of the book at the Chicagoboyz website, and it really makes me want to get hold of the book, which seems to be chock-full of cultural goodness. (Rachel)

Post title also applies to today; it's that time of year when the Great Fusion Bomb In The Sky is especially harsh and shades must be drawn against it.

I didn't get laundry done last night, but I did get most of the dishes done and successfully burned a couple of mix CDs. Progress.

Last, a tech bleg: does anyone know how to make the shift key work to turn off the caps lock in XP? I can do this on my work box, which is running Win2K Pro, and on Cowzilla, which has XP Home, but the Optiplex has XP Pro and I can't find out how to make the shift key unlock caps. It's really playing hell with my typing. :(

Shutting out the sun

This is the title of a new book by Michael Zielenziger, who was the Tokyo bureau chief for the Knight-Ridder newspapers in the 1990s. He became interested in the emerging hikikomori problem in Japan, and the book is the result. Has anyone on my f-list (particularly jariten, jiawen, materia_indigo and marainsanity) seen this book yet? If so, what did you think? There's an excellent review of the book at the Chicagoboyz website, and it really makes me want to get hold of the book, which seems to be chock-full of cultural goodness. (Rachel)

Post title also applies to today; it's that time of year when the Great Fusion Bomb In The Sky is especially harsh and shades must be drawn against it.

I didn't get laundry done last night, but I did get most of the dishes done and successfully burned a couple of mix CDs. Progress.

Last, a tech bleg: does anyone know how to make the shift key work to turn off the caps lock in XP? I can do this on my work box, which is running Win2K Pro, and on Cowzilla, which has XP Home, but the Optiplex has XP Pro and I can't find out how to make the shift key unlock caps. It's really playing hell with my typing. :(

I never thought they were as smart as they acted

Via Spook86: This story conforms all my ancient prejudices regarding the NSA, i.e. they're really good at crypto and other arcane acts of SIGINT, but most of the people that work there have no common sense. You would think that with ten years to work on the problem they would have figured out a way to cogenerate power from Fort Meade's steam plant or get Congress to pony up for some kind of boondoggle that would have the fringe benefit of pumping a few megawatts into the grid, but nooooo...

I never thought they were as smart as they acted

Via Spook86: This story conforms all my ancient prejudices regarding the NSA, i.e. they're really good at crypto and other arcane acts of SIGINT, but most of the people that work there have no common sense. You would think that with ten years to work on the problem they would have figured out a way to cogenerate power from Fort Meade's steam plant or get Congress to pony up for some kind of boondoggle that would have the fringe benefit of pumping a few megawatts into the grid, but nooooo...