Autumn is finally here! Much as I’ve enjoyed the Indian Summer, I wondered how long it would last. Now, we have brisk days, a low sun, and beautiful fall colors.

I listened to Career Tools (a podcast about professional behavior) as I drove in to work this morning; I’ve been catching up on early episodes I either missed or skimmed. This morning’s episode focused on early layoff advice–what to do when you hear rumors of layoffs or an actual announcement of impending layoffs.

Their advice: keep doing your work, look for another job quietly (in a way that doesn’t impact your current responsibilities), and listen to rumors (but don’t pass them on). In their section on looking for another job, they recommend reaching out to one’s business contacts.

It reminded me of one of the books I’m currently reading, Well Connected. It offers the unconventional suggestion that one should connect deeply rather than broadly. Instead of broadcasting out to dozens of people, focus on trying to connect with one or two. Build up a campaign, essentially, of trying to reach the best person (and that campaign doesn’t mean trying to contact that best person immediately).

© Marvel, Madhouse

I’m two episodes into the recent Iron Man anime, and I’m having trouble.

The story builds slowly, so I’m reserving judgment there. My main problems with the show are two-fold:

There are only two major characters: Tony and the nervous female reporter Nanami. Pepper has only appeared once to my memory, and that was on a video phone call. That is one of the interesting elements of the show: Tony is cut off from his normal support network as he visits Japan, and the Japanese have their own opinions of his antics.

But the lack of characters mean that I have to enjoy Tony’s arrogance or Nanami’s worrying. They both make for interesting characters, but not as the sole focus for 30 or 60 minutes, especially when Tony’s still in relative control.

The action sequences are also, well, accurate to the comic book (what little I know of the comic book, that is). The battles are relatively short and brutal, as befits large, complex machines blasting away at each other.

Unfortunately, that leaves a lot of time with Tony and Nanami. And this show features typical modern Madhouse character animation: perfectly serviceable, but dull. This just just isn’t very interesting to look at most of the time.

I’m still watching it, but mostly because I want to see if the story develops in interesting directions. Considering that Warren Ellis provided the story, I have high hopes. And the characters are accurate; Tony is arrogant and smart, with a bias for action.

It’s just not very entertaining, at this point.

Theree are so many sites and services out there that I feel Ike I’m always late to the party.

A perfect example is GigaOm, a tech blog that I’d always ignored under the assumption that it was another Techcrunch–breathless articles about new smart phones or social networks. I then saw GigaOm’s founder on This Week in Tech, and he impressed me with his knowledge and deep thought. So I checked it out.

GigaOm’s articles provide perspective. A recent article about an outsourcing service pointed out its potential applications and impacts, along with a healthy dose of skepticism about the service’s practicality.

It’s exactly what I want out of a tech blog: information and analysis.

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m broke. Almost literally. Lots of assets, no cash.

This was driven home to me yesterday evening, after work.  I stopped by a gas station on my way home to fill up my truck with gas. My debit card didn’t work, and neither did any of my credit cards. All denied.

To be fair, several of those cards I paid over the weekend just as their due date came up, so I think they’re just locked until those payments go through.

Still. Embarrassing. I called my Dad, and he suggested that I run back to work and see if I could borrow some cash. Brilliant! I did, and all was well.

Then I returned home to check my bank account balance.

Gulp.

I’m fine, really. I transferred some cash from savings, and my paycheck comes through this Friday. I just have to live frugally for a little while, and use a spare credit card for this week’s expenses.

I’m just shocked, to be honest. I knew I was low on funds, but I didn’t realize it was this bad. I’m usually good at keeping my finances in shape.

To be brutally honest with myself, I haven’t been paying enough attention. I ignored a few bills. I kept ordering anime and manga online even when I was low on funds, justifying that I needed it to keep up with Otaku, No Video. I’ve been foolish.

So, I’m facing up to it. I’ve stopped making any entertainment purchases. I’m eating frugally (inexpensive meals at home and leftovers at work; no restaurant meals). I’ve identified a paid service I can cancel and a few gadgets I can sell.

And I’m re-establishing my budget, which laid out how much I could spend each month on movies, manga/anime, my garden, etc. Very simple. It’ll need to be updated, but it helps.

Come to think of it, I should also establish an entertainment purchasing plan: what books/movies/etc. I plan to buy each month. Hmmmmm.

Well. I’m back from South Africa, and my finances are my new worry.

I’m tapped out. There’s simply no way I can afford a new home, even with a minimal down payment or closing costs. I’ve decided to wait for a while, despite having found the (almost) perfect house. It’s just immature to put myself into more debt right now.

But it’s all right. My Halloween party will happen this Saturday, at which I’ll re-connect with new and old friends. I have a nice house, a good job, and great friends and family.

I’m a tad embarrassed to mention this, but my anime/manga YouTube channel, Otaku, No Video, continues to do well. I have over 1,300 subscribers, and my videos have been viewed a total of 200,000 times. My weekly live news shows are getting steadily more popular. I’m quite simply enjoying that experience, of making videos and building that audience.

So. That’s where I am right now. Um. How ’bout you?

This is the sixth in a series of blog posts about my recent trip to South Africa. I’m posting them a week after they happen. For all 825 photos from my trip, see my Flickr photo set.

This was my full day of safaris. The itinerary:

• 5:00am Wake-up call
• 5:30am Gather in the dining area for snacks (hot coffee, iced coffee, hot tea, iced tea, water, milk, cake, scones, etc.)
• 5:45am Head out on morning safari
• 7:30am Stop for snacks (water, smoothies, wine, muffins, scones, etc.)
• 9:00am Return from safari
• 1:30pm Lunch. I had the sweet potato orange soup and grilled kudu (a game animal) with fries. Everything comes with freshly-baked bread, sweet butter, iced tea, water, etc.
• 4:00pm High tea, including cakes, cookies, breads, etc.
• 4:30pm Head out on afternoon safari
• 6:00pm Stop for snacks as the sun sets
• 7:00pm Return from safari for a dinner by firelight

As you can see, they fed us extremely well. All the food was excellent, too.

Fortunately, a storm had blown in the night before, cooling down the air and clouding the skies, so it never got above 80 degrees. Perfect weather for sitting in an open-top jeep and taking photos.

Now I face a problem: how to describe the excitement of seeing a giraffe or cape buffalo up close. There’s little stunning about these animals; the excitement comes from knowing that I’ll probably never see one again. The photos don’t do the experience justice.

So I spent the day eating and watching animals in their natural habitat. Nothing beyond that, and I’ll never forget it.

Dinner topped even the prior meals: rack of lamb, beef, chicken kebabs, potatoes, mixed vegetables, creamy soups, apple crumble, lime tart. We ate and chatted, and listened to the rangers’ “war stories.”

We were then escorted back to our rooms–a detail I should explain. Since the resort is in the middle of a national park, and there’s only an electric fence to keep out large animals, smaller animals can easily get in (particularly baboons and small ruminants). They even had a leopard take up quasi-permanent residence for a while. So you can’t roam the resort at night; you have to find a security guard who’ll escort you from the main rooms to your own.

I felt comforted by this. We were in the middle of nature, not some human-cleansed zoo. We were forced to respect it.

The next day isn’t really worth blogging about; I got up, was taken to the airport, and flew home. Other than the chatty van driver and the prop plane from Kruger-Mpumalanga Airport to Johannesburg, there was nothing remarkable.

An ad described its product as meant for people who measure their wealth not in dollars, but in experiences. I’m fully content with this experience and the memories I’ve made. I feel more rounded-out as a person.

Africa changed me for the better.

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts about my recent trip to South Africa. I’m posting them a week after they happen. For all 825 photos from my trip, see my Flickr photo set.

My tour van picked me up at 7:30am, meaning I had to get up at 6:30 to finish drying my clothes. My shirts were dry, but not my jeans, drat the luck. I dried them as best I could and stuffed them into my dirty clothes bag.

The van trip to Cape Town’s airport was wholly uneventful, though I was able to talk to others on the same tour. The couple from Alaska talked about their game hunting and travel plans.

At the airport, we boarded a small plane. By ”small,” I mean it seated less than a hundred people. At least, I figured, it had jet engines. An hour and a snack (!) later, we landed at an airport that just barely qualifies for the term.

We were met by our agent, who informed us of our 3-hour travel time by bus to the resort as we walked out into 100-degree heat. We were now in the Africa of the 19th century, of basic infrastructure and an actively hostile environment.

But the trip went smoothly, as I snapped photos of the sprawling banana plantations and pine forests (brought to this country by the Dutch). We spent ten minutes waiting for the border patrol at Kruger National Park to let us in, but eventually we made it to the Lion Sands Reserve, where we were met with lavender-scented moistened towels (not towelettes; actual towels) to refresh ourselves, followed by tea, then a drive.

A drive into the bush.

I was the only single person in the group of eleven. One couple consisted of twentysomethings from New York, another was from Alaska. Fascinating people, really. We chatted and figured out who would be in which jeep.

So we clambered into open-top jeeps and drove out into the bush, our ranger Trevor in the driver’s seat and our tracker on a seat at the front of the vehicle. As we bumped along well-worn tracks, Trevor and the tracker pointed out impala and various birds, then driove along a dry river bed, up to a spot where a leopard made a kill the day before.

A leopard padded out and flopped down on the sand, not thirty feet away from us.

The only equivalent feeling to a modern America is watching a horror movie. Adrenaline rushed through my veins. I was a few steps away from a wild creature that viewed me as potential prey.

This particular leopard had just finished feeding on an impala, though, so it was completely relaxed and politely posed for pictures.

We eventually drove on, and stopped at groups of rhinos and giraffes.

I was stunned. Because these animals have grown up with jeeps traipsing through their terrain, they’re completely used to a jeep driving up next to them and stopping. So you could, and we did.

Night fell, and the ranger stopped the jeep at a clearing and brought out some snacks: pierogi, corn muffins, jerky, and various bottles of wine and spirits. We watched a lightning storm gather in the distance.

Absolutely magical. When we returned to the lodge about an hour later, I fell into bed and slept soundly. I was undoubtedly helped by the lack of visible electronic equipment in the room; there was literally no ambient light. Once I turned off my bedside lamp, I saw no difference between having my eyes open or closed.

The next day, we would go out in search of lions.

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts about my recent trip to South Africa. I’m posting them a week after they happen. For all 825 photos from my trip, see my Flickr photo set.

As planned, I never left my hotel today.

Some may cry “Madness!” at this. But I was exhausted, and one of the goals of any vacation is to relax. So I relaxed.

Fortunately, it was a rainy day in Cape Town, so there wasn’t much for me to do anyway.

Thanks to my iPad, I finished Faulkner’s Of Mice and Men and started A.J. Jacobs’s The Year of Living Biblically. Thanks to my hotel room’s TV, I watched Transformers 2 and random TV shows.

I’m trying to avoid sarcasm, so I must avoid a snarky comment about television. I will point out that I literally can’t remember anything I watched.

I also slept sporadically. I could only manage a few hours at a time, but I felt better after every nap.

Sounds like an unexciting day, eh? Well, let me relate the Laundry Incident.

I only brought five shirts and two pairs of jeans on my trip, as is my standard procedure. I could stretch those out if I needed to, but I wouldn’t need to: I’d have the hotel launder the first few days’ clothes halfway through the trip.

Or I thought so.

At about 11:00, I put my laundry in the appropriate bag, set it out for housekeeping, and merrily skipped downstairs for lunch. When I returned, sure enough, the bag was gone.

After my relaxing day, I ordered dinner through room service at about 8:00, and realized that I hadn’t seen my laundry yet. So I ate my dinner (they got my order wrong, incidentally), then strolled downstairs, and politely explained the situation, and could they just check on it?

The guy manning the front desk gladly did so, agreeing that the laundry should be done by now. He got on the phone, and his face turned glum.

He told me that my laundry was now on the truck going to their laundry service, but it would be back by mid-day tomorrow.

I explained that this was a problem, since I’d be leaving at 7:30am the following morning for the next leg of my trip.

So he called his manager, who made her own phone calls, and sadly informed me that she’d contacted the laundry service, but they hadn’t answered, so she left a message and would call me at my room once she heard.

Back I went to my room. A few minutes later, my phone rang. The manager said that they found my laundry…in the hotel laundry room. It hadn’t been touched. Not only had it not been put on the truck, it hadn’t been cleaned at all.

Minutes later, an apologetic member of the housekeeping staff appeared at my door with my bag of laundry, exactly as I had placed it on my bed 9 hours previously.

So. After the door closed, I ran some hot water in the bathtub, poured in a full bottle of the hotel’s body wash–noting that housekeeping had given me two bottles of body wash and no shampoo–and washed two shirts and a pair of jeans.

So. An unusual day, and an important bridge, as the next day I would get on a plane for Kruger National Park, and explore my accommodations in the bush. I was now quite intrigued to find out how it would compare to 15 on Orange.

This is the third in a series of blog posts about my recent trip to South Africa. I’m posting them a week after they happen. For all 825 photos from my trip, see my Flickr photo set.

Today, I fully toured Cape Town.

Those sightseeing buses were fabulous. I took hundreds more photos, learned all sorts of interesting factoids (the thickets of thorn bushes that cover one side of Cape Mountain were planted at the direction of the governor, to prevent the natives from stealing their own cattle back from the Dutch and driving the cattle down the mountain), and rode up Table Mountain.

That last was quite an experience. A cable car takes you up the final few hundred yards, and I’m afraid of heights. Moreover, at the top of Table Mountain, the railings are quite basic; no more than hip-height at the most. It took me a while to make it out to the edge. But the view was breathtaking. Totally worth it.

Moreover, I completed two quests today.

First, I have a goal to visit every continent, and to bring back and live with some physical artifact from each continent. I found my African artifact: an ivory corkscrew, sold by a local. Practical and beautiful.

Second, another goal is to eat every dish in every cuisine. While in Cape Town, I kept hearing about cape snoek, a fish only found in the southern hemisphere. So when I sat down at a restaurant on the Victoria and Alfred waterfront and saw snoek on the menu (served with a lemon-honey sauce with french fries and a South African white wine), I just couldn’t pass it up.

I discovered that the warnings I’d heard about snoek’s extreme boniness were true. I’ve never had as many bones in a fish.

Worth it? Oh yes. It was literally the best meal of my life.

I spent the rest of the afternoon taking pictures, then scurried back to my hotel before night fell, and read until bed. What a fantastic day, and what a contrast to my gloom the day before.

This is the second in a series of blog posts about my recent trip to South Africa. I’m posting them a week after they happen. For all 825 photos from my trip, see my Flickr photo set.

I awoke at 7:00am on Friday, feeling relatively refreshed (jet lag wouldn’t allow full recovery), and determined to take a photo walk around Cape Town. The night before, I’d studied some maps and books about Cape Town, and one of the books recommended an interesting walking tour very near my hotel. I re-drew the map on an index card so I wouldn’t have to pull out a map while in the middle of the city, then grabbed my camera, applied insecticide to every inch of exposed skin, and headed down for breakfast.

My tour package paid for breakfast in the hotel restaurant, which is an odd thing (the restaurant, not my tour package). It’s on a slightly raised dais in the foyer, one half separated from an adjacent cafe by a fancy equivalent of a hanging bead curtain. It feels nothing like a restaurant; it feels like dining in the hotel lobby. Which you really are.

But the food was exquisite: fruits, scrambled eggs, bacon, spicy sausage, juices (one of which I couldn’t identify by label or taste), half a dozen different breads, cheese, several flavors of gourmet yogurt…I could go on and on. Fantastic.

But I had exploring to do! So at 9:00 I ventured out into the streets, taking photos like crazy. Cape Town is a highly photogenic city: the Dutch architecture–both colonial and modern–give the city a pleasantly jumbled, New York City vibe, and the majestic cliffs of Table Mountain that surrounded it on two sides frequently peeked out between and above buildings.

I had 3 SD cards with me, each capable of storing about 700 photos, which I figured would be plenty (I was wrong), so I happily snapped photos of everything around me.

After about an hour, I noticed something: A lot of people were staring at me. After about two hours, I noticed something else: they weren’t staring at me, they were staring at my camera.

I’d borrowed my Mom’s expensive Sony camera for the trip (at her insistence). I never realized the full power of manual zoom until this trip: no waiting for the lens to zoom as you press the button.

But I digress. Mom’s camera was clearly expensive, and I realized I was frequently set upon by hungry eyes.

One of my stops was an old church, and the wonderful older lady who took me around the place actually winced when she saw my camera. She politely but firmly told me to wear it slung around my neck and shoulder, or somebody would grab it from me. This was after several different people had warned me to never go out after the sun went down.

Gulp.

I returned to my hotel, where I found a nearby pizza place and ordered a strawberry salad for my suddenly nervous stomach. I remembered one of the guide books mentioning a sightseeing tour bus that circled the city; one fare paid for the whole day, and you could get on or off at any stop throughout the day.

I found the nearest stop and hopped on the bright red double-decker bus. I received a pair of iPod-style headphones to plug into jacks on the bus, and rode around Cape Town.

This was the way to see the city. Safe, informative, and with easy access to dozens of interesting places in Cape Town. Unfortunately, I only had space for about 12 pictures on my first SD card, so I spent most of the afternoon gawking at the beautiful beaches, sheer mountains, and gently rolling countryside.

I returned to the hotel, ate my dinner, went to my room, and felt miserable. This was the lowest point of my trip. I wanted to be home, I wanted to be in England; I would have taken Chicago over this. Plus, I checked the weather, and learned that a storm was coming in the day after tomorrow.

In bed that night, after tapping out my disappointment, I made a deal with myself: I’d take the bus tour tomorrow, get out at high-class touristy spots, and take a lot of photos. The next day (the rainy one), I’d stay in the hotel and read. That would be my last day in Cape Town, and I trusted I at least wouldn’t get mugged that day.

I agreed with myself, then tried to sleep. But fate denied me even that pleasure. I tossed and turned all night.