Part Seven: Delicate like a panda, the Golden Bear can only truly shine with European voltage.

I was reading up about time zones on Wikipedia, when I came upon this chart showing the difference between UTC and the real time (mean solar time) over the last few years, and how leap seconds are introduced to keep UTC from diverging too far.

Apparently, there hase been a leap second about once a year until 1999, when the divergence rate slowed down and did not require adjustment until 2005. So I thought that they maybe tweaked the formula a little, but as it turns out for unknown reasons, Earth has sped up after year 2000, so the mean solar day has become 1 ms shorter and fewer leap seconds have been since then.

Should I be worried?

Part Six: Finally, a dish washer!

• Micro Mutants: Evolution
• Tannhäuser
• Wings of War - Famous Aces

Part twelve: Protective goggles in the hardware store.

42.195 km, 05:48:32 (gross time). Ran for 20, walked for 20, limped along for the rest.

Point	Split	Lap	Time
5km	00:50:20		10:00:20
10km	01:23:03	0:32:43	10:33:03
15km	02:00:39	0:37:36	11:10:39
20km	02:33:37	0:32:58	11:43:37
25km	03:10:54	0:37:17	12:20:54
30km	03:52:46	0:41:52	13:02:46
35km	04:38:34	0:45:48	13:48:34
40km	05:28:20	0:49:46	14:38:20
Finish	05:48:32	0:20:12	14:58:32

Now those are the official gross times, counted from the starting signal (starting gunfire). I'd also like to point out that my net time is about 15 minutes less, because my block (the last one) was started about 15 minutes later. That would be about 05:35.

• Darjeeling
• Oregon
• Ach, du Mauseschreck
• Hamburgum

The recently reunited Police are currently stopping by in Tokyo and I went to see their concert at Tokyo Dome tonight. They played all their greatest hits, from Message in a Bottle to Every Breath You Take. Opening act: Fiction Plane, fronted by Sting's son. Now, the problem with huge venues like Tokyo Dome is that you end up sitting (or standing) a hundred metres away from the stage, so that without those big video walls you could not really say what was going on there. In effect, you have 25,000 people watching a music video together, which of course still makes for a nice event.

Trivia tidbit for the day: Tokyo Dome is an air-supported structure, the roof being held up by constantly keeping the inside of the stadium pressurised, which is very noticeable when going in or out.

I am getting closer to the point of having enough data to draw a chart.

	June 30	July 29	Sept 02	Sept 30	Oct 28	Dec 02	Dec 23	Feb 03	Ideal
Weight	69.7	70.7	70.6	71.1	72.6	73.3	72.7	72.9	77.1
Muscle	56.7	59.2	58.7	58.9	59.4	59.8	60/2	60.8	62.1
Fat	9.8	8.1	8.6	8.9	9.9	10.2	9.2	8.5	11.6
BMI	20.6	20.9	20.9	21.0	21.4	21.7	21.5	21.5	18.5 to 24.8
Body Fat Pct	14	11.5	12.2	12.5	13.6	14	12.7	11.7	10 to 20
Tipness Score	76	80	80	80	81	81	82	80

Part eleven: Zhang Jiwang, whose desk is opposite mine, and who came back from China with new glasses, becomes the first one to be featured here twice. Also, one of the first pictures taken with the new phone.

Kitty was always very shy with or afraid of strangers and would run off to hide in the furthest corner of the house, nervously eyeing the intruder, ready to scurry off to someplace else if approached. Well, this is how she treats us now.

We went to Kitty's new family's house in Chiba today, and after just two months she seems to have completely forgotten who we are. Or were.

:-(

Did I mention we brought a video camera to capture the joyous reunion?

Give food to a cat, and she knows you her slave

PS: Patai, the household's other cat, was not any friendlier, either. Impressive hair, impressive hiss.

• Parker Lewis Can't Lose
• Riptide
• The A-Team
• Hart to Hart
• The Fall Guy
• Scarecrow and Mrs King
• Falcon Crest
• ALF
• The Bill Cosby Show
• North & South
• Highway to Heaven
• Matlock
• Simon & Simon

It is a cat-and-mouse game between the content owners and the uploading fans (there is currently no Remington Steele for example), but basically YouTube has everything I need to travel back twenty years and relive my Hollywood TV youth. It was funny and interesting to finally learn the original US titles of these programmes, knowledge that could come in handy should I ever find myself trapped in an American hotel room with a TV guide.

Now I only need Nintendo to start selling C64 games on the Wii Virtual Console.

Hurt my back on the infernal machines (twice!) and had to take it easy gymwise this month. On the other hand, I am 24 again as far as Wii Sports is concerned, and recently added Dance Dance Revolution and Wii Fit to the mix.

	June 30	July 29	Sept 02	Sept 30	Oct 28	Dec 02	Ideal
Weight	69.7	70.7	70.6	71.1	72.6	73.3	77.1
Muscle	56.7	59.2	58.7	58.9	59.4	59.8	62.1
Fat	9.8	8.1	8.6	8.9	9.9	10.2	11.6
BMI	20.6	20.9	20.9	21.0	21.4	21.7	18.5 to 24.8
Body Fat Pct	14	11.5	12.2	12.5	13.6	14	10 to 20
Tipness Score	76	80	80	80	81	81

• Gangster
• Before the Wind
• Battue: Storm of the Horse Lords

Oh, man! I was so looking forward to my patented Van Hallgren nickname, but apparently Sam just googled me.

The first report from her new home:

Kitty is already very comfortable with the new environment and checked all corners of the house. She also tried to be friendly with the other cat, but the other cat is nervous about the newcomer and too stressed to eat. So Kitty happily eats two cats' portion of food now.

Queen of the Hill, that's my girl. Just hoping that she does not stretch her welcome too far and gets kicked out. She did venture out by herself on Tuesday morning, but was recovered soon thereafter.

Patai, the other cat, is also a girl, and seven years old. There are pictures, but not with both of them together, because they are never together.

We have given Kitty away to one of Cissy's co-workers.

This is probably a more momentous event for us than it is for Kitty. Her new family already has another cat, and will certainly provide her with a nice home. If anything, one has to worry for them, or the other cat, in case Kitty misbehaves and turns into a house-wrecker. If that happens, we will have her back in a week or so. If not, we will go visit them sometime later. Not sure, which outcome I prefer.

The results of Cissy's allergy screening are not good for Kitty: Out of the sixteen allergens in the test there were measurable reactions to house dust (slightly elevated antibody levels of 1.5 UA/ml), to the botanically inaccurately named Japanese Cedar (unhealthy 9.37 UA/ml), and to cats (an even higher 15.5 UA/ml). We'll see if it gets better if we keep Kitty out of the bed and study rooms, give her showers more frequently (that is always a spectacle), and clean the house more often.