Japanese is not Easy #2

My first visit to Japan was for 3 days.  I didn't even open a Japanese phrase book.  It was really just a road bump on my big adventure, after all.  And I didn't even appreciate it like I could have.  It wasn't a break from my humdrum life.  It was the end of my Thailand adventure.  I was at the end of the longest vacation, by far, of my adult life and I was ready to be productive again.  I expected to like it as a vacation destination and was surprised to see it as a place I could live.  I'm really glad I'm getting a second shot at it.

Could I stay?  Well, they are more open to immigration than a lot of countries.  They have had a declining birth rate for many years, but not a declining population.  They've managed this by letting people in.  But I would probably need a business to sponsor me, or a woman to marry me.

The business would be tough.  Ideally, I would find a job where having a working knowledge of Japanese and English would be an advantage.  Unfortunately, there isn't a big need for native English speaking computer support technicians in Japan.  I would definitely like to explore that some when I'm there though.

I could definitely teach English there, but I don't think I'd be good at it.  There are organizations that help people come to Japan to teach English.  The crazy thing is, they think speaking Japanese would be nice, but having a 4 year degree in anything is essential.  Mine is a 2 year degree.  Although, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't need any help getting there to teach English if I did speak a fair amount of Japanese.

I'm getting a head of myself, or course.  Even if I continue to practice everyday, I still won't be fluid when I get there in 10 months.

Oh.  And my cousin's girlfriend from Japan things finding me a Japanese wife is something we can do one evening.  She says even offered to be my wingman in Roppongi.  So that's an option.

Japanese is not Easy

They say persistence is the most important part of learning a new skill.  They also say it's a lot easier to be persistent if you have an interest.

I've always wanted to be able to speak Spanish.  It would be the most useful language for me to know, by far.  It would help in my current career.  Many of the countries I'd like to visit, and can visit cheaply and conveniently, speak Spanish.  And it would be the simplest language to learn for me by far, being familiar with their alphabet, and having so much exposure.  The language just doesn't interest me.

Japanese, on the other hand, has always interested me.  I like the symbols it uses.  I like the media coming out of Japan.  I just like the way it sounds.  But speaking it wouldn't help with my job.  It's only spoken in one country, and that county is far from me, and expensive to get to.  And I have no familiarity with the language, or even it's alphabet.  Learning it would be like pulling teeth.  But I've been pulling them.

It all started with my cousin.  When I met him in Vegas he introduced me to his new girlfriend.  They weren't dating when we started planning the trip.  Their relationship actually came on strong and fast.  But I can see why.  She's great.  They told me their planning to visit her family back in Japan at the end of this year.  I sort of invited myself.

My first day back in Minnesota I started studying with Duolingo.  I expected my interest to wane after a few days, but it didn't.  So I purchased a book, and found an interesting Youtube channel.  It's been more than two weeks now.  I've spent at least 20 minutes a day; sometimes a full hour.  I have very little to show for my effort, but I'm still here.  Still pulling teeth.

Testing a Political Theory

"Don't engage in divisive chatter. Listen."

The Christmas cards I wrote for Ellie and me for 2017 referred to the current political climate ( sometimes rather darkly ) and said the only thing left for committed Christians to do is "Refuse to engage in divisive chatter. Listen. And pray."

Though I have a theory, I have often wondered how those on the Christian right come to support our current president, My theory is that, like many Trump supporters, they like one or two of Trump's "core beliefs" a lot, these are different from the position of the opposition, and they support him for those few beliefs. I'm guessing that his "pro-life" position is number one on most of their lists. I further guess that they either don't understand or pay attention to the implications of most other of his positions.

My theory is based two pillars:

The generalizations with which his supporters respond when TV interviewers ask, "What do you think of how President Trump is doing?"

"He's doing a great job."
"He's fulfilling his promises."
"I like everything he's doing."

The questioner never seems to ask, "Could you be specific?"

The other pillar of my theory is, per polls that I've seen/heard about, many people were fully behind repealing Obama-care, "go Republicans." But the poll results differed greatly when asking about key features of the Affordable Care Act, features such as: covering adult children on parents' policies through age 26; covering pre-existing conditions; no life-time cap on benefits. These same people liked these features of the health care they then carried.

In response to a politically oriented group email I had published, an acquaintance communicated to me that President Trump, though he has some flaws, as everyone does, has some "great Christian ideas that have already gone forth." I had seen the polls, of course, and heard the stories, saying the Christian right favors President Trump. This was the first time I had heard this kind of talk from other than a talking head. I saw this response as an opportunity to take my Christmas card advice: shut up and listen. And test your theory.

I wrote back, saying I was very interested in what these great Christian ideas are, and asked "Would you be willing to tell me what some of them
( or all of them, if you wish ) are?"  I believe I was not confrontational; I did not want to be that way and I do really want to listen and learn.

As it happened, President Trump gave his first State of the Union talk prior to my acquaintance's response.  This was convenient for her, as her response referenced the talk and said he "made it pretty clear what his priorities are." After this she listed three specifics. Three.

While I am not finished exploring this question with my acquaintance, I believe this response supports my theory: generalized and vague support; the support is based on very few specific policies of the president's.

Perhaps her three items are only the first on a long list; perhaps they're the only three she can name. I'm hoping to find out.

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Sure, I Like Chocolate

It's so funny to me when I ask people if they like fancy chocolate, and they tell me, "Sure, I like chocolate."  Which is not an answer to the question I asked.

My favorite candy bar is back!  Some time ago they took my favorite candy bar, changed the size, the shape, the recipe, and increased its price.  In a shocking twist, customers didn't like that.  Or at least I'm assuming that, because they brought it back.

The price is still higher, but at least I can get it again.  Which I did while visiting a fancy shopping center in Las Vegas.  $4 is pricy for a candy bar, but I was on vacation.  It tasted exactly like I remembered.  It's about 33% bigger than a normal candy bar, and costs about 5 times as much.  But I was on vacation.

I promptly tried to share my joy with others, which is where I ran into the usual trouble.  I'm starting to think I should be asking, "Do you enjoy fine chocolate more than say, a Hershey's bar?"

Going forward, I'll probably only buy a couple a year.  It's my favorite fancy chocolate, but I only know that because it was cheap enough to buy once in a while.  There are a lot of fine chocolates in that price range, so I might as well try a few.

Bright Light City #2

I'm back, and had a ton of fun.  Quite a bit of it was unexpected.

For starters, the planning issues I spoke about earlier took an unexpected twist.  My cousin and my friend spent pretty much the whole trip with me, sharing a two bed hotel room, with one of us sleeping on the floor.  As I was the one who paid for the hotel room, it wasn't me.

I expected to do a bit of gambling.  Normally I start gambling with the intention of losing some amount of money, then stopping.  I was so busy, I never really did much.  I stopped to do a few $3 pulls here and there, hit a $165 payout, and ended up leaving $50 or so up.  We also got a free walk through of how to play Craps, which was fun.

The Venetian is a hotel with some very expensive shops.  Normally I would have no business shopping there.  In a surprising turn, Godiva brought back my favorite candy bar, and a friend asked me to pick something up at Mont Blanc.  It was pretty neat doing some actually shopping at such a fancy place.

"How's your night going?"  It delighted me to no end being asked how my night was going, whenever I ran into someone before dawn.  I too have always considered dawn the start of a new day.

Something that really surprised me was Las Vegas is a city that definitely does sleep.  Walking around the city at 5:30 am, wishing that Starbucks was open, was not part of the plan.

Lyft surprised me.  They did the shared ride thing there.  It was kind of a gamble.  Once it added 30 minutes to my trip.  In general, it took about 10% longer, and saved a couple of bucks.  They were usually within 3 minutes, when I needed them.  And in Vegas it was a legitimate job; one you could support yourself on entirely.  Conversations were often interesting, and they knew a lot about the city.

Self driving cars.  They were around.  Probably mostly for CES, which had wrapped up a few days before I arrived.  Pretty cool to see people sitting in the driver seat, looking around the strip instead of where they were going.  Safely, of course.

I do want to talk about the shows, but that will be another post.

Tempermental Butler versus Servant

"Your temperamental butler is listening."

My last post spoke about my helping a friend with Dragon speech recognition software, so she could speak rather than keyboard her story to create an editable text computer file. I frequently speak into my phone to create text rather than use my swype keyboard ( which I love dearly ) but have not done so with my computer. At least recently.

My experience with Irma and Dragon re-whet my appetite for speaking to rather than keyboarding at my computer. I recalled that the capability is built into my version of Windows and I had successfully experimented with it sometime ( likely a long time ) ago. I could see speaking to my computer for at least two things I do virtually daily: making journal type notes in a free program called iDiary; writing … I have, in spurts of success, committed to writing for at least ten minutes, on any topic that seems of interest to me, every day, in either my paper journal or in Microsoft Word. I could easily see speaking as making both tasks easier, more fruitful and, therefore, more rewarding.

It was not hard to resurrect what I knew.  The application is called, appropriately enough, Windows Speech Recognition.  I opened the program and went through the tutorial.  This gave me all kinds of options about commands and what not, all of which may someday be of some interest, but all I wanted to do was speak and obtain editable text as a result.  Doing that was very straight forward … and getting the program to be ready to listen to me or turn that off reminded me very much of how Dragon both worked and looked.

I opened iDiary, told Windows Speech Recognition to listen and spoke. Nothing happened.  Nothing. As though the microphone were disconnected. To say that was disappointing would be a significant understatement.

I thought I would try Microsoft Word. Microsoft makes the speech recognition software I was using and it also makes Microsoft Word … a natural, eh? You would think. You'd be wrong. It was better than using

Figure 01 - The editable text in a pop-up Insert Box window.

iDiary ( nothing happened there, remember? ) but speech did not directly enter text into the Word application. Instead, speech entered text into a pop-up window, which text I could edit and review and then enter into the document by clicking the Insert button … see Figure 01. This is clearly better than my experience with iDiary, but not a great deal better. I got disgusted and left the project for the day.  

I decided to write a blog post about this experience. Wondering if Windows Speech Recognition would work directly with the Google blog creation tool, I tried it. It worked. Perfectly. The spoken words appeared in the tool just as though I had keyboarded them. This was exciting
( "Wow, I can speak my blog post material!" ) and disappointing ( "Why can't I speak and obtain text at all with iDiary??" ) at the same time. 

Being a stubborn techie, I thought I'd try speaking with iDiary once more. This time it worked … the text didn't enter iDiary directly, but via that same pop up window of Figure 01. While I consider this less than ideal, it is far superior to nothing happening. 

I tried Microsoft Word again; guess what?  My spoken word appeared directly in the document that I was creating!  To show you, I am going to dictate a sentence and put it after the colon here just as it came from Windows Speech Recognition: "I dictated this sentence as an example for my block polls." The correct sentence is, "I dictated this sentence as an example for my blog post." Whereas Dragon seemed to be saying, "Speak, your servant is listening," this system seems to be saying, "Your temperamental butler is listening."

This system is not perfect.  There is possibly work that must be done.  I realize that my phone converts my speech into text far more reliably than this configuration does.  I wonder if that is because the microphone I use here is relatively cheap and old or whether the speech recognition software in my phone is much newer and much better … or some combination of both.  Time will tell.  Either way, temperamental or not, I'm excited about this development.

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This is not a Medieval Dragon

"Speak, your servant is listening."

My friend Jane has a friend (  Irma, not her real name ) who is interested in turning her lengthy story into a memoire, or book, or something; but first she has to turn it into some sort of editable electronic record.

"My friend has asked me to help her," Jane, told me, "with Dragon. Do you know anything about it?"

"Dragon?"

"Yes, Dragon."

"Could you provide me some help … like what's the context?"

"Computer. Software."

I don't mean to disparage Jane. She is a generous person, willing to give you the blouse off her back. A computer whiz she is not. If Irma is asking her for computer help, Irma is in desperate need. ( You might remember Jane and I really got acquainted because she needed some ( computer ) help, first with Windows 8 and then with her genealogy project. ) Two prior stories are here and here.

"Yes, I know something, though nearly nothing, about Dragon. It's about speaking to your computer instead of keyboarding."

"She needs help installing it. The instructions don't make any sense to her."

After a large amount of hemming and hawing at home, I finally told my wife I knew enough about it that I was willing to see what I could do. Soon enough she, Jane and I were at Irma's house, munching on the pizza she offered in exchange for the help I was about to provide.

First sign of trouble: I noticed that the laptop on the kitchen table, which seemed to be the unit on which we'd be working, was an Apple machine and the box for Dragon said it is for IOS. I am a Windows guy.

Next, it wasn't installation Irma was having trouble with; it was use. Opening the laptop, I saw that the dragon icon was open and instructions opened. It seemed straightforward enough. I was able to get the microphone icon inside the window to turn on and off in response to my wanting the microphone to listen or not. Irma's daughter had shown her how to use it and had dictated into an application and Irma saw the text in the document. Dragon worked; but Irma's daughter had done everything so quickly nobody knew more about how to use Dragon after she left than they did before she showed up.

Finally, I realized the problem was understanding the entire procedure for opening a document, entering data, editing it, saving it and opening it later to continue. Irma had no idea what applications she had which might offer this functionality.

After poking around as best as I could ( which likely was not very good on the Apple computer ) I thought, "Google Docs!" Irma has a gmail account, so I asked her to log into her account. I then took the machine, clicked on the nine-dot icon to get to Google docs, opened a new DOC document, and we used Dragon to enter text into the document. ( Metaphorically, Dragon said to me, "Speak, your servant is listening." ) Having done that, I closed Google Docs, closed gmail, and I told her Google would automatically save the document, and she could later return to open it and edit it as needed. Having closed Google Docs and her gmail, I had her reopen gmail, click the nine-dot Google tools icon, find and click the Docs icon within, and open the document we had just created. Viola! It was there, she opened it, and she was happy as a clam.

My wife and I were able to go home with a sense of accomplishment.

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