Anacortes Art Festival

Sawako and I watched our grandson last night and stopped by the Anacortes Art Festival today. 

Read More

New - Used Car

Our trusty Toyota Highlander finally reached the end of its useful life after 22 years and 273,000 miles. 

Read More

Volunteering - Say Yes to Life Swims

A few days ago I was a safety kayaker for people participating in Say Yes to Life Swims. 

Read More

Volunteering - Tunnel Marathon

 A few days ago I volunteered to work an aid station at the Tunnel Marathon held at Snoqualmie Pass in Washington State.

Read More

Issaquah Garden

 Got my garden in for the year...

Read More

Favorite photos

I curated my favorite animal and plant photos from 2025 and put them on a separate page for easy viewing and access.  Use the main menu or click on Favorite Photos.  Enjoy!

Read More

Automated Mobility Devices

 I took a flight from Seattle to Denver recently and at the Seattle airport there were several of these.

Read More

Squirrel Antics

 I have a bird feeder with a cage around it to keep out the Red Wing Blackbirds, which are not very nice birds.  This way I get to see lots of finchs, junkos, and gold finches (my favorite).  I found out it is not only blackbird proof, but squirrel proof.

Read More

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connnection Tear Us Apart by Nicholas Carr

This book reinforces my beliefs that we are much more a product of our environment than we like to admit. As with the concept of Blue Zones where if we are in an environment that encourages healthy habits, we will do them; this book discusses how social connection technologies shape us and are the root cause of many problems today.

I like Blue Zones because (1) Dan Buettner bases his ideas and hypothesis's on a lot of empirical research and then, most importantly, he tests them out and finds that they hold up in areas where he gets cities, organizations, etc to make changes in their environment to encourage more healthy behaviors.  Simple changes such as putting healthy foods is better locations in stores, making areas more walkable, etc.  Living in Tokyo, I find that the environment encourages much more walking so I walk more than when I live in the US.

In Superbloom, Nicholas makes the point that we are now overwhelmed with data from a zillion different sources.  To deal with this, our minds use shortcuts, rules of thumb, etc as that is the only way we can deal with it.  The problem is that the rules and shortcuts do not work well with this mass of data.  One rule is that if something is repeated a lot, we pay more attention to it whether it is true or not.  As he states "Repetition is, in the human mind, a proxy for facticity," which unfortunately is just not true with all the data we are exposed to these days (e.g. Trump and the Republican party is a great example of this problem).

We are also changed by all this data and the shortcuts we take to make sense out of it.  The screens full of abstract, often incorrect information cause us to become dislocated from reality.  We start making decisions based on alternate realities, instead of based on what is best for our physical selves just to get more cred, more attention in that alternate reality (e.g. people doing internet challenges that hurt themselves, people seeing family members dying from covid, but still refusing to be vaccinated).

This problem is especially acute for children as they are trying to make sense of their world.  They a need a firm basis in the physical reality before being exposed to all the data of the internet.  I feel they need to be taught and trained how to critically view the data they see via screens, especially with the ability of AI to basically fake anything these days.  Anything you read, hear, or view over a screen needs to be treated as untrusted unless you have some basis in reality to trust it (e.g. you see the bank branch, you trust the source of the information you are reading because of their reputation, etc.).

Read More

Poland no longer exists

I am a third generation immigrant.  My Dad's mother and father immigrated to Canada and then to the US. I remember asking my Dad why he did not speak Polish and he replied "when Poland became communist in 1946, his mother said Poland does not exist anymore and refused to speak Polish or remain in contact with family in Poland".  This is how I am feeling about the US.  The country I grew up in is rapidly disappearing and, unless something happens, will no longer exist in a few more years.

Instead of a country:

• for the people it is becoming one ruled by oligarchs.
• based on law, it is becoming one  which ignores the law.
• based on justice, it is becoming one based on revenge.
• welcoming immigrants, it is becoming one of mass deportation.
• whose leaders believe in science, it's leaders believe in conspiracy theories
• for all genders, it is becoming one of gender discrimination
• who our allies can trust, it is turning on them
• respecting the sovereignty of other countries, it is trying to take away their land
• of a good example of democracy, it is becoming a bad example

As of now, things could still change in the next 2 - 4 years.  If they do not, I am not sure what I will do.

Read More

Starting a new chapter in my life

 

My daughter gave this to me.  I think it was a wonderful way to tell me the great news.  Now I get to figure out if I am a Grandpa, Ojichan, Opa, or ???.  

Read More

Tokyo Apartment

We decided to get an apartment in Tokyo as it looks like we will be spending 5 - 6 months a year here. This is easier said than done as there are many, what seem to be weird, rules about getting apartments that make it very difficult for a part time, retired, non-japanese person to get one. A few of the rules are:

• Require income equal to 3 months rent (kind of hard as we have no income)
• Require a guarantor who is local - this is someone who will pay if you cannot. 
• Require a residence card
• A Japanese phone number
• Japanese bank account
• Emergency contact in Japan

But where there is a will, there is a way.  Sawako found a non-profit rental corporation called UR that will waive the income and guarantor requirements if you pay for a year up front.  We got a 3 bedroom apartment so Joichi can live there with us which takes of the next 3 items.  Finally, Lisa is the emergency contact.

The apartment is in Hikarigaoka which is a planned development on an old military base in Nerima City (heart icon) on the Northwest side ot Tokyo. 

Read More

Site Information

After looking around for a way to host this site, including setting up a WordPress instance on my home NAS , I decided on blogger for these reasons:

• It has a great Android app for posting and I will be doing a lot of posting from my phone as I travel
• Note: the app turned out to be unusable for several reasons 
• It has tight integration with google photos which I use to manage my pictures so it is easy to add photos to my blog
  
• There is a dynamic community of people who create themes for it so I was able to find a theme that worked for me.

There are zillions of theme options, but I narrowed them down to just a few with these criteria:

• A responsive theme that looks good on desktop and phones
• A theme that does not require a photo with the blog post - all but just a few assume that all posts will have a photo so if you do not have a photo, you get a big blank area.  This was really the gating criteria.

I end up using a customized version (colors and a few other things) of the Earth Pro theme.  The colors I picked remind me of the pink cherry blossoms against the blue sky that is very pretty in Japan in the spring time.

The only downside to this solution I have found is that blogger has a limit of 10 email addresses for post notifications.  I tried several ways to get around this (contact group, google group, etc.) with no luck so for now I have set up a manual process to send out a quick form email to a contact group when I make a new post.  Perhaps later I will figure out a way around this limitation.

Read More

Introduction

My name is Ski and this is my little part of the internet.  The blog name and URL, skikangae, merges 'ski' (me) and kangae which in Japanese means 'thoughts'.  I plan to use this site to post about items that interest me about life, the universe, and everything as Douglas Adams would say.

I grew up on a small hobby farm in a small logging town of around 700 people in the Cascade foothills of Washington State.  I left the state for college and was educated in physics.  I returned to Washington State and found work in the, then new, field of system administration back in the mid-1980s.  I worked at a very large company for around 10 years, then spend another 8 years chasing the big payday with startups (no luck), before spending around 19 years working for a school district.  Along the way I was fortunate to meet many wonderful people and be part of the transition from large mainframe computers to the current cell phone computers.

I retired from work in 2023 and when not traveling, I split my time between USA and Japan.  I love to teach and am an adjunct professor at Bellevue College in their Cybersecurity BAS program.  In the USA, I volunteer with Habitat for Humanity, the local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), the Issaquah FISH group, and enjoy hiking.  In Japan, I love to walk and explore the local cultures and cuisines.  I am fascinated by, what I consider, the coming tsunami of changes due artificial intelligence and climate disruption.  My feeling is that the quote 'may you live in interesting times' will be very applicable over the next few decades.

If you want to get email anytime I post something, please fill out the subscribe box on the right side.  I hope you enjoy reading skikangae.

cheers,

Ski

Read More