• This week was Halloween. For Halloween Leo dressed up as Woody and we had a friend over for lunch. I made a quick chili (although they wouldn't call it chili in Texas, as I put beans in it). Leo ate it up as we called it curry and put a little cheddar cheese on top.
• Friday was a day off for all the Kraken devs in Japan. Leo's been wanting to take Yumi to the Romance Car Museum since we went together last month. So after kindergarten finished we took our bikes to the station and rode the train to Ebina.
  
  Despite there not being very many people at the museum, we lost the lottery the ride the simulator. Maybe third time's a charm and we can drive it next time we visit the museuem. Leo and I also spent 30 minutes in the play area, which was a lot of fun. There's a latter and nets that go across the roof, with a ball pit. There's also a big window where you can watch the Odakyu line and we got a good look at a train getting washed.
• I want to start running more regularly (a regular theme on the week it seems...). But one thing that "stops" me is a lack of music. When I got my Airpods years ago it sustained  a solid 6 months of running regularly and doing long (~14km) runs.
  
  The battery started failing about a year ago. 20-ish minutes into a run they'd just die, taking with it my tunes and my beats to power on. With the cold in winter they'd last about...30 seconds. They can't even handle my commute to the office.
  
  I bought a pair of AirPod Pros to replace my old AirPods with my first check from the new job.
• My first run with them was great. I'm trying a new strategy this go around; rather than always looking for scenic routes, which usually means hills, I'm going to try and keep my runs as flat as possible. This basically means running along a big road near my house.
  
  Before when I ran along this road, even a single truck going by would drown out my music unless I had them near max volume, which can't be good for my ears. With the Pros I enabled noise canceling and they sound like EVs going by (but they still smell like the stinky trucks they are). So far so good.
• We had two more meetings with some installers for solar panels/a battery for the house. Their prices weren't too dissimilar, but they both recommended Sharp panels/battery and a 2.6Kwh system. An earlier quote 2 weeks ago recommended  Q-cells panels/different battery, which would let us get a bigger 3.5KWh system. While I like idea of having the same manufacturer for panels and battery, giving up a KWh of generation for the lifetime of the panels is a lot of electricity to forgo...

With enough people doing the work we need not be beholden to the gatekeepers and large corporations. The web can, once again, be for the people by the people but we have to give a shit. Therein lies the problem: not enough people seem to give enough of a shit to do anything about it.

• I started watching The Billion Dollar Code on Netflix. It's based on a true story about a lawsuit around Google Earth between  a German startup and....Google. The origin story of Terravision (the Google Earth a decade before Google Earth) is really good. The early 90's techno-visuals really hits that Hackers spot for me.
• Kanagawa hit single digit covid numbers ( 7 ). There's a number of arguments made for why this number is so low so quick. The cynics say it's because there's an election coming up. Others think it's Japan being good about masks and getting some high vaccination rates. I think it's somewhere in-between. Vaccination rates are really good in Japan, people generally wear masks when out and about, and you don't get an official test unless you're showing symptoms, and if your vaccinated the chances that you're symptoms serious enough to get an official test is much lower. Either way, the number of serious patients in the hospitals is also declining, so they must be improving.
• I made some small improvements in Tanzawa. Nothing frontward facing, but some small bugs and quality-of-life improvements ( reordering menus and such). Been thinking about my priorities for Tanzawa development recently and I think I've figured it out, but need to work through all of my thoughts in another blog post.
• Friday it rained which pushed Leo's Sport's Day festival to the Saturday morning, the same morning we were planning a trip to the Atami area to visit a friend. Leo' had 3 activities against : a game where his group tried to collect their color ball from around the ground faster than the other group, an x meter dash, and a dance.
  
  During the race he fell behind, realize he couldn't win, so he just walked the rest 🤣. Unfortunately, this soured his mood for the rest of the event and despite looking forward to the dance and despite his teacher holding him to try and calm him down, but it was a lost cause. In the end, everyone got a medal and we were able to make as planned.
• Driving to a new place in Japan is always an adventure. Our destination had two possible routes: one along the ocean and one a bit more inland. The ocean route is closer to my house but my gps said it was going to take an extra hour over the weekend, so we decided to go the inland route. 
  
  Along the way I got to drive the Hakone Turnpike, which is a famous twisty road to get you through the mountains. There were a lot of motorcycles and a couple of super-cars as well. Driving all the twists and turns was a lot of fun.
  
  As we got  closer we switched from my car navi to Google Maps, as my car navi didn't have the exact address we were going. Remember how I said driving is always an adventure? It sent us one left too early to save maybe a hundred meters on distance. That left too early also tried to send us up a 1 way road through the middle of the forest. Which I tried until there were too much debree that I decided it's best to turn back. Thankfully I was near a bit of the road that was wide enough I could turn around. I wish I had taken a photo. Either way, this quicker route still took us 3 hours.
  
  Thankfully we arrived in one piece and we were able to meet some friends who we haven't met since January 2020. Also thankfully Leo and their son had no problems playing together that night.
• On Sunday we went to a local farm? zoo? where you can feed the goats / cows / rabbits. Leo fed the rabbits and I fed the goats / cows. The cows were determined to lick me each time I tried feed them.
  
  After that we went to Jukkoku Touge (Ten Mountain Pass) to ride the cable car.
  
  

  

  
  
  At the top you can get some great views of Mt. Fuji and the ocean.  It's close enough and high enough that on a clear day you can see Yokohama Landmark Tower and even Tokyo Sky Tree.
  
  After a quick bite to eat at the bottom we got drove home. This time we took the ocean route and it was a great view. Leo's already planning his next trip and thinking about which trains he's going to take with him to play with.