The camera that I ordered two weeks ago arrived yesterday. It is much larger than I expected. I had examined the Canon SX130IS at Best Buy, but the camera that I bought is the Canon SX30IS. That "1" makes a big difference but I didn't notice because I was shopping on a Monday. I had been planning to buy a second camera soon, which would be a DSLR, but I don't have enough room in my backpack for that and the SX30IS, which is as large as an SLR with 50mm lens mounted. I may wait until a backpack upgrade.

Also, I bought a second battery for $5. The supposed retail price is $57. I knew there was a high probability that something would be wrong (note the pessimism). When I charged the authentic battery, there was nothing odd about it. When I charged the $5 battery, the charger stopped acknowledging that a battery was present after about a minute. I had to remount the battery several times before it was acknowledged. It also finished charging in about 45 minutes. The one that came with the camera took 2 hours to charge. I suspect it might be a used battery, but it doesn't look old.

I won't have the opportunity to play with it much today, because I have to carry a lot of gear today for an emergency repair.

I waited 2 hours for a pillow and it's not even for my own use.

I do not pronounce the "r" in "banana".

Last month, I had a conversation with one of my clients about creating a new website for a business that he was planning to start. After he gave me a detailed description, he asked me for an estimate of how much I would charge to create the site. He said it was a "fair price" but asked me to not start working on it yet, despite wanting it completed within 5 weeks after whenever I start.

At some point, he mentioned outsourcing to India. He also overpaid me for my time by a very significant amount. I got the impression that it was hush money to prevent me from discussing his business plans with anyone. This also gave me the feeling that he was planning to outsource the project and he wasn't actually going to use my services. I thought that he only wanted a good cost estimate which he would use to negotiate with programmers in India.

I got a message today stating that he mailed out a check to me as down payment, and he wants the site finished within 5 weeks.

I was thinking about Godzilla while staring at "Mozilla Firefox" in the title bar, and I thought about how Godzilla is called "Gojira" in Japan. This got me wondering if Japanese people call it "Mojira", so I consulted Google. I did not find "Mojira" and I also did not find "モギラ" , but I found the Japanese version of the Mozilla website as the third Google result for "Mojira".

I just found the website of my former Tai Chi school. I was looking for the exact name of the breathing exercise that was taught there, because I was going to leave a comment on Gastronomer's blog post about transcendental breathing.

The Tai Chi school's home page has a message about the master instructor not teaching anymore and it lists the names of two students who will continue teaching "in his tradition". I'm not sure if this means Master Ahn has died or if he just fully retired. He had announced several retirements in the past but continued teaching on a smaller scale afterward. Considering his age, I would not be surprised if he is dead or has health problems that prevent him from teaching. The part that troubles me is the students who are named as his successors. I have no idea who they are.

When I started studying at that school, there were 5 elders who had been studying there long before me. When I left that school 8 years later, 4 of those students were still studying there, and they were teaching beginner level classes. I expected one of them to continue the lineage. I feel like the strangers who have taken over are unskilled impostors. They might not be, but that is how I feel.