JOURNAL: ErMaC

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  • August 10th, 11:58PM 2002-08-10 11:10:34 Whew just managed to keep the schedule of 1 entry every 2 days. :D

    So on Friday afternoon the DSL was down for some reason. I couldn't even contact the router, so I have no idea what was wrong. Yoshi wasn't home so I couldn't check the router in his room, so I just sat there for a while on dialup. Eventually it started working again all on its own, so I have no idea what was wrong.

    That evening we all went out bowling. I guess I don't completely suck at bowling, but I sure as hell ain't that great at it either. But it was fun, we eventually got all 10 of us playing (5 to a lane, we're not crazy). Biggest obstacle was getting bowling shoes that would fit on some of our feet. :) The biggest standard shoe you could get from the dispenser was 28CM which is approximate to maybe a size 10 or 11, which means it wouldn't fit me or Chris very well, although I managed to squeeze into it without much trouble but Chris had to go get a 30cm one which they apparently had a few of in the back. Also played some DDR before and afterwards. I think I may have overdone it a little though because I sorta felt like crap this morning. Sore throat, lack of energy, was generally not a healthy day. Got better as day went on, though, so I'm alright now. Unfortunately I had to elect to not go to this barbeque thing which the tutors had planned because my throat was so sore. Kinda sucks, but that's life.

    DSL's been working since then without too much trouble. 
  • August 8th, 11:43PM 2002-08-08 11:13:16 First the important news: DSL works. My access is the most flakey since I'm a floor down and one apartment over but if I move my laptop really close to the window I should be fine. I may try moving the Linksys box out onto Yoshi's porch if he'll let me since that should improve reception, but I'd rather not have to do that.

    But 2wire.com says I'm getting 550~780Kbps so I'm happy. :D

    Anyways missed journal entry yesterday. Boohoo. Was a long day. Today was too but I figure I should write at least once every two days.

    So I forgot to mention that Tuesday night I went DDR'ing by myself. Managed to impress a couple Japanese guys, and some group of Japanese girls passed by and were impressed, but nothing substantial.

    Today I went with Nathan and I got the high score on the machine. And I didn't even do very well. The scores on that machine just aren't that high, I guess it doesn't get much traffic.

    So yesterday I came home after class with a little paper saying they had tried to deliver a package but I wasn't home. It was the Airborne Express package my dad had sent. I had talked to Yoshi about what to do at lunch that day so I sorta had an idea what to do but still wasn't sure. So I called the number, told the woman on the other end that my Japanese was very bad but I had received a letter saying that a package came but I wasn't there (in that order, BTW). She asked me the driver #, and I told her (cause there was this big # with a ドライバー above it) and she transferred me to him (cause apparently they have few enough drivers that they all have phones on their trucks or whatnot and you can talk to them). I talked to him and said I'd be at home until 6PM. He said his route would be done soon and he's show up around 4PM, so we thanked eachother and I hung up. And waited.

    And waited.

    4PM rolls around and no sign of him. I begin to wonder whether I really understood what he was saying or not (cause I really wasn't sure, the previous may make it sound like I knew what was going on but I was really fumbling around in a dark room with my arms outstretched, in a linguistic sense). I call the # again and try to say that the package hasn't come yet. The woman (same one, I think) on the other end tried to be helpful but I just didn't have the vocabulary to understand most of what she was saying. At one point I thought I heard something about where I was right now so I said I was at home and would be until 6. I think she said she'd call the driver and possibly call me back if there was a problem (I know there was something about calling me back).

    So I get nervous, he still doesn't come in the next 10 minutes so I call Reiko. She's close by and after explaining my situation (in Japanese, and badly) she said she'd come by. She shows up a few minutes later, I thank her profusely, and let her in. I show her the paper, and as she's about to pick up the phone the doorbell rings.

    It's the guy, he's a half hour late, he's very sorry. I'm relieved, and embarassed at having dragged Reiko out here for nothing. She of course smiles at me and says it was no trouble, she was closeby and she was glad everything worked out.

    She's so nice. And cute. And smart. Bah, I'll gush later.

    Anyways, so I shred open the box. Yes it had the internet stuff (the router, 2 PCMCIA wireless ethernet cards, a USB one and its drivers), but what was the most important thing in the package? That's right!!

    MY PILLOW!!!!!!!!!!! OH HAPPY DAYS!!!!!

    Yes I now have a nice, big, fluffy, AMERICAN pillow to sleep on, and it makes such a difference. Joy to the world.

    As for the internet stuff, I get the router setup easily enough in my room (not hooked up to any WAN, just getting it's DHCP server and various info setup) and then hook up a wireless LAN PCMCIA card into my laptop. WinXP recognizes it and installs drivers (sweet!) and then I manage to get it working with very little effort (double sweet!).

    I hike up to Sarah's room, and try to setup the other Cisco card. Well her little VAIO, despite being cute, is not very expandable. It only has 1 PCMCIA slot, and said slot is used by an adapter going to her DVD-ROM drive (which is LOUD I might add, like a jet engine on a smaller scale). I stopped the hardware, unplugged it and put the Cisco in. Sadly, her machine had Win2K which didn't have built in drivers, and I had no drivers sent to me for the Cisco card. So instead I went down and got the USB one and installed it on hers. I couldn't get it working with the WEP encryption so I turned it off on the router and now it worked. Unfortunately signal stregth was really bad. I later found just moving the router next to the window or out onto the porch solved that problem, but the router wasn't gonna be in my room in the future anyways so I didn't worry too much, but it was discouraging to find such poor reception.

    Laura was next, and her laptop ran WinXP and had an unused PCMCIA slot so I put the other Cisco in hers and all worked fine.

    Yoshi, unfortunatey, was busy that day so I couldn't set up the router in his room yet, so that had to wait for today. That evening a big group of us went out to eat at this Japanese restaurant which I can best describe as a Japanese version of Denny's.

    So class finishes the next day, I run home to check email etc, and then go up to his room to try and setup the router. I got his login/password, and the DNS server info off his machine (since sometimes the DHCP client on the linksys won't pick that up) and then ran downstairs and brought up the router after reconfiguring it.

    Unfortunatey the Linksys had trouble logging into the DSL modem. The PPPoE just wasn't working quite right for some reason. So I ran downstairs, brought up my laptop, and used that to configure it. Wireless networking is so COOL!
    I tried for about 10 minutes changing settings, resetting various boxes, and finally got it working. YES! Yoshi's laptop I hooked up via his normal ethernet cable but plugged it into the router instead of his DSL modem. Now he doesn't have to log in anymore with his PPPoE client, and his DSL bill will be 1/4 the cost, so I think he's happy about it.
    Thankfully from his room with the router sitting right by his window, Laura (who's next door to Yoshi) gets 4/5 bars on the WinXP wireless lan status window, Sarah gets 40% signal strength in the USR utilities status window. Unfortunately, my Cisco gets one or two bars, fluctuating between the two. I moved the laptop and the table I have it sitting on all the way to the window and it works pretty well for the most part. Occaisionally the connection will stall and I'll basically lose access for a few minutes/seconds/whatever, but sometimes just shifting positions on the desk will fix that.
    I can live with that for not having to pay the phone bill and dealing with modem speeds.

    Afterwards a bunch of us (all the folks from Park View, including Yoshi, along with Courtney and Michael) took the train down to J-Mart. What's J-Mart, you ask? It's like K-Mart, only with a J!!! HAHAHAHAH!!! AAAHAHAHAHHAHA!!! I slay me. OK I said I was really tired.

    Actually that's more true than you might think. It really is just a Japanese K-Mart. Several of us went there with the express purpose of buying bikes. Which all 4 of us from Park View did. They're nice bikes, and weren't overly expensive (at least compared to the other bikes they had). We rode the bikes back home instead of taking the train (since taking train=spending money) and it was a good ride of a couple miles but it was fun and the bikes worked fine. Now I can actually get around! And I can ride to school which will be faster than walking, although walking only takes around 10 minutes. But when you're lazy like me, time no spent exerting energy is good. :D

    After that I went back to my room, checked up on email, rubbed the sweet oil of broadband access all over my body, in a metaphoric sense, and then got a DDR craving. So I called Nathan and this time he was home (when I called Tuesday he was out with his host family) so we went together. As I said I got the high score on the machine, which was no challenge really - the challenge will be beating said score later. =)

    Which brings me here. I came home, took a nice bath to cool off, and just chilled. I'm much happier now than I have been in several days, even though class sucks and the food situation isn't very good.

    I'll leave it at that for now, since it's past midnight and I'm tired as hell. Hope it was good reading. ErMaC is out like Richard Simmons. 
  • August 6th, 11PM 2002-08-06 10:18:55 Well Internet access has been sketchy at best. All afternoon I couldn't dial up because the otherside wasn't picking up. Then come 10 o'clock and it finally answered, although it didn't work at first. Then it started working and I've been able to catch up on stuff for the most part since then.

    What to talk about... Oh yea.

    Yesterday evening I went with most of the other transfers and the tutors to this festival thing they have every year. Can't remember where exactly it was but it was one of those festival things you always see in anime, lotsa booths, fireworks, etc. But best of all: lots of cute girls in Kimonos. Mmmm Hmm.... I saw more kimomos yesterday than I had in my entire life.

    The only bad thing is that the whole fireworks shpiel went on WAY TOO LONG. I got soooo f'ing bored by the end of it, I fell asleep twice sitting on the ground (since there were no seats anywhere), and this was during large loud explosions of fireworks. I'm sorry, it's interesting for the first twenty minutes, and it's beautiful - don't get me wrong, but it's boring as hell after that. There's only so many times you can watch little colorful things explode in the sky before 1) your neck starts hurting 2) you get a fat headache from all the loud explosions 3) you get sick of all the people around you smoking constantly 4) you just get tired of watching explosions that aren't actually destructive, they're just pretty. Now blowing up buildings, I could watch that for hours.

    Anyways, I basically checked out mentally for the last hour. Then there was the walk back to the train station, the trainride in a car filled tighter than the train cars the Nazis must've used to transport jews in WW2 (no offense to anyone out there), and the walk home.

    Seriously, the trains are insane. When it gets busy people are backed in so tightly that you have absolutely no room to even rotate your body. At least I can see around the entire train because I'm taller than 99% of the people. I'm like the 2nd tallest in the group, I think, after Chris, but Davee might be taller than me, not sure offhand. But anyways I could see like down 2 cars over the heads of what must've been over a hundred people. And trust me no one was sitting.

    Well today we had our first day of pseudo-class. We didn't really do much, although for the second half we watched some Doraemon so not all was lost. =) Afterwards we went to the bookstore to buy textbooks. I bought some new pigma pens (replaced my 01 micron and got an 03 micron for the times when I want thick but not 05 thick) and some notebooks along with the required texts. Afterwards I ate lunch with Davee and David, and then I went home. A buncha the other people went down to the river but it was a 20 minute drive, I hadn't had enough sleep, and I didn't want to deal with another trip thing.

    Sometimes it feels like everyone's trying to hard to keep us busy and please us. I'd rather just do my own thing sometimes, just chill, spend some time alone or hanging out with friends but all of these planned activities in the span of a week is too much.

    Tomorrow real-ish class begins. I'm very glad I have my net access back in at least a semi-stable fashion.  
  • Journal from Japan 2002-08-06 01:45:12 ---------------------------------
    Here ends the offline journal entries. If you've just come here and seen this as it was posted please scroll down to the message with the similar divider of dashes as I've just posted a series of journal entries that I made offline while I didn't have network access.

    From here on entries should be semi-live as I have internet access albeit limited.
    --------------------------------- 
  • August 5th, 2:16PM 2002-08-06 01:43:25 Oh well missed my journal entry yesterday, was too tired last night to much other than Civ3. =)

    So yesterday starts out with my very first solicitor! Whoopie! And guess who? That's right! JEHOVA'S WITNESSES!!! AAAAAAAAAAA. I cannot escape them. Anyways, after that I went to see my host family that evening (didn't do much during the day). It was really great, we had a great time talking (in mostly Japanese) and I got to know Yoshio and Shino pretty well. Estuko was very quiet, didn't say much. Yoshio's really into cameras, which is cool because my dad's father was a photographer and so my dad has a camera which is older than me! It's the first zoom-lens camera ever made, it's very cool. I used it in photography class during high school. Anyways Yoshio has a bunch of very cool cameras, one which I suspect is older than me as well.

    We talked about lots of things and finally they asked me about exercise and I told them I play DDR. The parents had never seen it before and Shino had only hear some about it and seen some amateurs play it, so we went over to the bowling alley which was very near their house and I showed them. Unfortunatly, it's not a good idea to DDR right after eating a very filling meal. I wasn't feeling too well after that. =/

    Speaking of the meal, it was all very good. Etsuko made everything herself from scratch, truly impressive. She made Katsu, which is deep fried & breaded meat, in this case chicken. Was very tastey, but I guess here in Japan if your plate is empty it means you want more, so I just kept eating and eating until I figured this out. Ate a bit too much, I think.

    Anyways, today I was supposed to get internet access, but the phone # that Ayako (one of the tutors) gave me to dial with my modem is wrong or at least isn't working right now, so looks like I may as well just wait until the package from my dad arrives so I can get some real net access.

    It's been a week now and I haven't been online at all. It's really annoying and frustrating. 
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