Ach, I almost forgot. Happy Chinese New Year! On Sunday, we were invited to a delicious Taiwanese hot pot party. It was similar to Japanese shabu-shabu but instead of a citrus or goma sauce, they use a sauce made of egg yolk, sesame oil, and soy sauce. It was sooooo good…
It was also an occasion to take the baby out again and although it’s still challenging to do stuff with Dyson, it’s getting more manageable. With every new stage he goes through, I reclaim a bit more of my social life.
Japanese business periodical, Weekly Diamond, is doing an article on the Walt Disney Company for their February 25th issue. It’s a huge company of about 156,000 people so they went to a bunch of the Disney companies, including mine, and talked to all sorts of important people.
But they also talked to me, presumably because they wanted to interview people who spoke Japanese and I was as close as they could get what with everyone else being so busy working on the next project.
So I spent lunch today talking with several Japanese journalists trying to answer questions that I think I understood about my company. It was a surreal experience.
I don’t know if they’re going to use any of what I say in the article, but my mom was pretty excited.
I’ve heard that approximately 1% of people who download free apps then go on to make in app purchases (IAPs). I was curious to see how this would compare to my 3.0 update to Mach Dice, which is a free update but includes a $0.99 IAP to create custom dice.
I figured that the conversion rate would be quite a bit lower because the IAP is to make custom dice, which is a pretty niche feature. But surprisingly, 1% turned out to be pretty accurate.
Another nice surprise was that the update seemed to have increased sales of some of my other apps as well (there was a big bump from Christmas, but it usually tapers off quickly after that). I’m not entirely sure why that would be but I put in a link to my website in the update (to get more custom dice) so I think that helped.
I’ve experienced a fair share of death in my life. I’ve spoken at more funerals than weddings. The first funeral I remember was for my grandfather when I was a child. I missed him and I was sad, but I didn’t really understand.
In high school, I lost my piano teacher. She wasn’t just my teacher, but also a mentor and a friend. It was the first time I really experienced loss like that and I learned how death could take something from you that you always counted on.
Over the years, I lost the rest of my grandparents and also an uncle I was close to in the US and an uncle I was close to in Japan. And then my father. I learned how death was unpredictable and leaves behind a hole in your heart that never entirely closes.
But the most frightening experience was after my wife developed her heart condition. There was one episode where she ended up convulsing from multiple defibrillations. As she was rushed into the emergency room and operated on by people whose job it was to perform miracles, I sat there powerless and afraid.
I didn’t want to lose her. Even though I’d gone through losses before, I didn’t think I could survive that. Eventually, she recovered enough to come home, but that fear stayed with me. I didn’t want to feel that loss again, that pain. So I held back. I didn’t want to depend so much on her because I didn’t want to risk losing so much again.
But that’s no way to live. As hard as death is, it’s more important to keep living, even if it means increases the chance of losing more. Because life isn’t about mitigating losses. It’s about experiencing all the love you can while you have the chance.
The subject seemed resistant to all at reconditioning. Removal of spongiform undergarments had initially resulted in phlegmatic micturation in full attire or on the floor despite any cajoling, pleading, or gummy bears.
Eventually, urination was predominantly controlled but bowel movements proved to be more challenging. The results … were not pretty.
However, today, through constant vigilance and persistant application of buttocks to portable toilet device, we achieved a breakthrough: boom boom in the potty. There is light at the end of the tunnel.
It’s finally here! The update that I’ve slowly been working on for months has finally been approved. So download the update from iTunes, watch the video, buy the new in-app purchase and start making custom dice!
I didn’t really go into details in the video but you can email the dice you make to other people who have Mach Dice for their iOS device by going through Settings: Custom Dice: Your Custom Die: “Email Custom Dice”. You can also download more dice through Settings: Custom Dice: “Download Custom Dice from Machwerx.com”.
Version 3.0 also makes Mach Dice a universal app which runs on the iPad and is enhanced for Retina Display. Download it now!
As someone in a fairly technical field, a big part of my job is to figure out why something broke. Sometimes, that’s the entirety of it. And when that’s your job, it helps to think of every possible explanation as fast as possible, even if they’re implausible. One time, I spent several hours trying to fix a broken header file include only to discover that it was because of a missing semicolon in a different file. The only reason I found it was because I started thinking of increasingly unlikely things that might cause the problem.
Unfortunately, this tendency carries over into my real life as well. Whenever someone brings up something, I tend to play Devil’s advocate and come up with all sorts of other explanations. I’m not even conscious of it but I know I’ve always done it.
The problem is that people are not computers. And when they talk about problems, it’s not always because they need to get fixed. Sometimes it’s more important to just hear what the other person has to say.
The very best thing about Christmas when you have a kid is that you get to experience it all again, through the eyes of the child.
I don’t think Dyson quite realizes what’s going on, but he does seem to like the tree. I hope he likes his gifts. I got him a little bear puppet and Tracy got him a giant tool bench set.
That’s a little bit of a spoiler, but I don’t think he can read yet.
Spoiler alert. You may want to skip this blog post if you’re, like, 12.
So, Santa Claus doesn’t exist. (“Wait, whuah?” Dude, I told you “Spoiler alert.”) I’ve always known this because I grew up in an apartment in LA and we didn’t have a chimney. Come to think of it, I don’t think any of the other neighborhood kids believed in Santa either.
But now I’ve got a kid of my own and I’m trying to decide whether or not to do the whole Santa thing with him. On the one hand, it’s generally good policy not to lie to your kids. On the other hand, I don’t want him growing up like me.
See, my dad was a pretty literal guy and my mom is from Japan, where they don’t really have things like sarcasm. So I grew up kinda not getting certain social cues. For example, I was super gullible. Also, I had a hard time understanding humor, although I was obsessed with it. I’d spend hours pouring over the Sunday comics trying to figure out what was funny. (Mary Worth was particularly challenging.)
So I’m wondering if maybe lying to Dyson about Santa Claus and then having him figure it out on his own is just part of the growing up process. But if I’m going down that path, I think I’ll just go all the way and tell him that we’re descended from Elves.
Ach, I almost forgot. Happy Chinese New Year! On Sunday, we were invited to a delicious Taiwanese hot pot party. It was similar to Japanese shabu-shabu but instead of a citrus or goma sauce, they use a sauce made of egg yolk, sesame oil, and soy sauce. It was sooooo good…
