Aino Minako-chan

I blame this all on kinomakoto. Okay, so for those who are wondering, Npyu2 (pronounced "n pyuu~ tsuu~") is my little computer that I got last year after I got a job. It has all sorts of spiffy things that Npyu (my dead laptop) didn't have, like DVD-RW drives and video capture cards and internet connections and all that jazz. Anyway, I've been making screen captures for a while and capturing video, but last night I finally decided to make My First DVD out of stuff I wanted to send to Mako-chan. Needless to say, it didn't work out so well.

First of all, I should have quit when I noticed that my DVD drive was acting up a bit. It took a couple tries to convince the drive to recognize the blank DVD-R disk. The DVD making was nearing the end, when the DVD drive suddenly opened and closed. I'm not entirely sure if it was the fault of the drive or the program, but this is where poor Npyu2's troubles started. I tried recording, well, anything, to DVD again, but the drive wouldn't recognize any disk I put in. The system insisted that the DVD drive was working properly and even operated fairly normally... except for the fact that it said no disk was inserted. I shut down my computer and decided to try again in the morning.

Morning, it was even worse. I tried getting the drive to read two different DVDs of data that I had previously recorded (and opened) on the comptuer with the same drive. Not only were the DVDs not recognized, but I had trouble ejecting the disks. I would press the eject button, the drive would whirl for a while, then the drive would open and immediately close again. This happened a few times. I eventually succeeded in snatching the disk out of the tray, and tried one last disk that I knew would work. The disk wasn't recognized, so I tried ejecting again. What happened this time? The power suddenly went off. WTF?

I started to think that maybe Npyu2 had a slightly larger problem than I first thought. I turned off the main circuit breaker power, waited a bit, turned it back on. The computer refused to turn on again, and the power button started flashing. Tried it again, waiting about half an hour before trying to turn it back on. Nothing happened. Minako-chan starts panicking. Even though the DVD in the drive isn't really important, I decided to at least try and get it out, so I unfolded a paperclip and tried to eject it manually. I felt the little manually level get pressed down... and nothing happened. Nothing at all. The tray didn't pop out like it usually does; it didn't even loosen. Sighing, I decided to try turning on the computer one last time. Lo and behold, it suddenly booted up perfectly fine. No problems. According to my computer, there aren't even any problems with the DVD drive. Except, of course, for the fact that now my DVD drive refuses to respond to any stimulous whatsoever and still doesn't recognize the DVD stuck in the drive.

This is normally the part of the story where I would bring out the screwdriver set and start poking around inside of Npyu2 myself. But if you'll notice the first paragraph above, I mentioned that I bought the computer AFTER I got a job. In other words, it's only 11 months old and still has one month left on the warranty. So even though I'm itching to start problem solving for myself, I'm going to call up customer service instead. If it happens to need a big fix (like a new DVD drive or something), then at least I'll be able to tell them that I didn't do any unnecessary poking around, so it'd all better be covered in my damned warranty. Feel better, Npyu2~!

Well, we’re well into week two of life as a Japanese OL. It’s overall going very well. On the home front, I’ve either bought or ordered all of the necessities for life, including a table for my living room (no more eating on the floor for me~!) and a computer (goodbye, dying laptop NPyu. Hello, beefed-up desktop NPyu2 (pronounced: n pyuu~ tsuu~)). At work, I’ve gotten to learn all about a handy-dandy translating software known as Trados, which is the freaking coolest thing in the universe. Look at the consistency~! The Virgo in me is weeping with joy.

The only problem with the work is that we small group of translators don’t really communicate with people during the day. This is mainly due to the nature of our work, and to be honest, I don’t mind at all. I get very touchy when I’ve been translating all day, and people interrupt me while I’m trying to figure out if there’s an opposite to “deepen”, such as “shallowen” (there isn’t). But still, that made things rather lonely at lunch. One of the translators, Fujii-san, flees like a horde of angry bees is on her tail the instant it hits 12:00. Another, Ogawa-san, eats a bento at his desk and goes to sleep. My boss, Yagi-san, appears to neither eat nor rest during lunch, just work.

Needless to say, it got rather lonely eating in Mos Burger by myself every day, and eating out all the time can get rather expensive, so I got myself a bento box over the weekend and prepared myself a lovely bento for lunch on Monday. So I was surprised when I walked into work on Monday morning and there was a new employee: Tasaki Yukie. Tasaki-san is super cute; she’s only 20 and fresh out of a design program at junior college. I thought I’d ask her out to lunch, but her boss and senpai in the design department took good care of her and took her out. I was a bit disappointed, ready to return to my cheap but lovely bento, but the design folks saw me hanging around and asked me out, too. Hurray~!

I didn’t know what to do with my bento, and finally decided to bring it back to work the next day. The design group seemed to take well to Tasaki-san, and I really should save money and use my lunch hour to write emails online so my family doesn’t freak out from the lack of contact. But then 12:00 rolled around. The design group boss had pulled out his bento, and the design senpai was staring at her computer screen like it held the meaning of life. So Tasaki-san caught my eye, I shoved my bento back under my desk, and we went out. The two of us have been going out every day this week and tomorrow plan to hit a Thai restaurant that we found. It’s more expensive and probably unhealthier than making my own bento, but I get to leave the office, and I make a friend, so I think it’s worth it.

Long story short, I ate my unloved bento two days later at home for dinner. It was small and dry, but for some reason, I felt good while eating it.