Greetings from J-List January 18, 2000

Greetings, Programs, from J-List.

I’m typing this on my new Power Macintosh G4 right now, experiencing the thrill of being “edge” again, for however many months it will be…

January 17th marked the fifth anniversary of the terrible Great Hanshin Earthquake, which devastated the Kobe-Kyoto-Osaka area and claimed more than 5000 lives. I still remember getting beeped on my “pocketbell” (everyone had pocketbells back in 1995, no one had portable phones yet) and hearing Chiharu tell me about the terrible earthquake and fires that were destroying the city. It was very humbling to the Japanese, who openly consider their civil engineering to be the best in the world. I had visited Kobe myself just two months before the tragedy, to see the city and also to add another notch in my Old Spaghetti Factory belt — whenever I travel to a city that has an Old Spaghetti Factory, I am compelled to visit the restaurant. It turned out that the manager of the Kobe branch had done a year of management training at the OSF in San Diego and we became friends, and he drove me around the city. I was happy to hear that the old restaurant (which was formerly a brick warehouse used to store torpedoes during World War II) suffered some damage, but none of the staff was hurt in the quake. We’ve got a bunch of great items for you tonight.