July 21, 2004 (day 1) – I used a shift swap with Jem today in order to get a break from my 20 days of work in a row. I ate breakfast outside of Hello House, and had a pretty relaxing day. In the evening, I went to pick up a used computer in central Tokyo. My sister’s ancient laptop is just not enough for me anymore. I searched English language ads online, and found someone selling a used desktop tower for 15,000 yen (about $150). It isn’t the world’s greatest computer, but it is a huge step up from the laptop.
Zoe and Lux came with me to pick up the computer. The seller was a Malaysian man with a fantastic apartment. He seemed nice, but Zoe and Lux were getting a creepy vibe from him. We tested out the computer and it seemed to work well, so I handed over the cash and we were on our way. I didn’t realize how big and heavy the computer was until about 5 minutes into our walk back to the subway station. The tower was huge, so it was awkward to get a grip on. I am very happy that I brought friends with me to help with the keyboard and doors. Carrying a desktop computer through busy, massive Shinjuku station is NOT fun.
On the way home, Zoe almost got into a fight with a salaryman on the train. He was sleeping while standing and kept inadvertently hitting Zoe with his umbrella. She responded by kicking him every time the umbrella hit her. Good times!
When I got the computer home, I formatted the hard drive so I could install a fresh copy of Windows. I rebooted after formatting and I couldn’t get the computer to work! F**K!! The rest of my evening was very frustrating.
July 22, 2004 (day 2) – I bailed on Thursday night karaoke to spend time working on the computer. It still isn’t working correctly. I ended up watching The Shield in the Hello House common room while grumbling about wasting 15,000 yen.
July 23, 2004 (day 3) – I got some ideas on the computer from my more tech savvy coworkers. The main problem is that the CD-Rom is on a SCSI interface, which won’t work without drivers. Windows has appropriate drivers, but my Windows 98 install disk is on CD-Rom. I ended up making a simple boot disk on floppy so I could get the new computer running. I then used my box of floppy disks to slowly copy the Windows install files from the CD-Rom on the laptop to the hard drive on the new desktop.
Once all the install files were finally copied, I was able to run Windows installation from the hard drive on the desktop. When Windows finally installed, it recognized the CD-Rom and everything started working! It took forever, but the new computer is finally running! Victory!
Drinking in Japan 