japan.narnarnar.com

Nar3: Japan

Computer frustrations
Posted on Sunday, March 28th, 2004 at 2:52am by Brett.
(Sunday, March 28th, 2004 at 4:52pm Japanese Standard Time)

It all started with a simple email. I wanted to email my academic advisor at OSU to get some info about the classes I need to take next year...but I couldn't because I remembered that I didn't have the SMTP server on nar3 set up. SMTP servers transport email from either your email client, or from email server to server. I have the server to server bit working, but the client to server part has me stumped. If any one there knows how to set up an exim 4 mta, give me an email. (The first person that says RTFM or sends me a link to online documentation will be hurt.)

Along with exim giving me woes, the time on the new nar3 server is all kinds of messed up. I have no idea where PHP is getting these times for the posts and everything, but I'm looking into it...

In other news...

Break is coming to an end...bah. It was nice while it lasted, and I'm not really ready to get back to class. Yes, I know the webcam has been off during break, and I haven't posted, but I'll start back up...

The webcam, though, might take a bit. Over the break I reinstalled debian to my ...(More)

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Pics
Posted on Saturday, March 27th, 2004 at 3:26am by Brett.
(Saturday, March 27th, 2004 at 5:26pm Japanese Standard Time)

The picture galleries (everyone's) work again. I've uploaded Katie's pictures of the Snow Festival here

Enjoy...

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Baka na hito...
Posted on Tuesday, March 16th, 2004 at 7:05pm by Brett.
(Wednesday, March 17th, 2004 at 9:05am Japanese Standard Time)

Derek from Superuser.net is still giving us problems. We're not alone, though...He's done stuff like this to a few other people. Check narnarnar.com for info. I also have noticed that superuser.net has what seems to be a record with the Better Business Bureau. They'll be having another one here soon...

I'm working on making a "proper" review of their services later on. There are a couple forums used to relate your experiences with different hosts...

The galleries will be back online as soon as I get my lazy butt around to upgrading them and muddling through the config files to make them work again. Shouldn't be too long...

Everything else on the sites should be working. There is still some email issues, but that shouldn't affect many people. Though, if you do send an email to me and I don't get it or reply, it's probably the over-zealous spam filters I'm using. Send it again (from a different server, if you can) and I'll probably get it. Let me know that it didn't go through the first time...wanna squash the bugs...

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Back online
Posted on Saturday, March 13th, 2004 at 1:53pm by Brett.
(Sunday, March 14th, 2004 at 3:53am Japanese Standard Time)

We're back online with out new servers at tektonic.net. Life is good.

( Read More | 103 views | 1 Comment )

Stupid superuser...
Posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2004 at 2:35am by Brett.
(Saturday, March 6th, 2004 at 4:35pm Japanese Standard Time)

Superuser.net sucks. We have been hosted on their servers for nearly 4 years, and their quality of service has been, shall we say, less than decent.

We were often unable to contact anyone from superuser for months at a time. Many services magically stopped working with out notice, and very rarely did we receive replies to our emails. But we tolerated it. Why? Because it was cheap. No other place we could find would offer the features we had for the cost.

Recently, however, it became obvious a change of hosts was in order.

Around the middle of February the image galleries stopped working completely. I sent an email to superuser's support, which was promptly ignored. I waited 5 days, and send another.

If you care to read these emails--and I suggest you do--they can be found here.


Read them? Jerk, isn't he?

There is an additional email that was never sent. It wasn't sent for a couple reasons. First, Jason stole my thunder. Dang him for living in the same time zone as our host...DANG HIM, I say!!! Secondly, "Derek" (for whom I now have a sort of...pet name, if you will) still has control of the content of our ...(More)

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End of term and vicious lies
Posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004 at 5:54am by Brett.
(Wednesday, March 3rd, 2004 at 7:54pm Japanese Standard Time)

Done...DONE FOR A MONTH! No classes, no pointless meetings, no essays, no assignments...no band!!!! This is great. It's like summer vacation, but in spring...

I'm going to address a vicious rumor that has been floating around about me. No doubt, you've heard this lie, and probably even spread it around a bit yourself...you know how you are...

People have been saying that I'm going to be in Japan "forever". This is a nasty lie that I would like to put an end to right now. Forever's much longer than most people realize, and my time in Japan will be a little short of it.

As of this post, I have almost exactly 4 months left. 4 months really isn't that long...certainly not forever. If you think about it, it's hardly any time at all.

Think of it like this: 4 months. 1/3 of a year...about 16 weeks. So that's 112 days, 2688 hours, 161280 minutes, or 9676800 seconds. Numbers don't work for you? Ok then...


My study abroad will be done in about:

The Barber Party
Posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2004 at 8:18am by Brett.
(Tuesday, March 2nd, 2004 at 10:18pm Japanese Standard Time)

I've mentioned Tohru before. He's a guy that I'm tutoring in English. A couple months ago, he said that his friend, who happened to be a barber, wanted to meet me. It turned out to be a good deal for me because I got a free haircut from it.

About a week after the haircut, Tohru told me that his barber friend wanted to have a party for me and my gaijin friends...He said that they could all have free haircuts, as long as they didn't mind be models. I didn't quite understand that, but told my friends, and Shannon knew that being a "model" was a lot closer to being a guinea pig for student barbers. Needless to say, my friends weren't thrilled with the idea...

I told Tohru that my friends didn't need hair cuts, and he said that his barber friend still wanted to have a party to "make sure we're enjoying our time in Japan." This was during my time in hel^H^H^Hband so it was kind of hard to find a decent night to have this party. He would ask me about it every week, and I, in turn, would ask my friends. It become known as "The Barber Party."

When I had my hair cut, The Barber took a picture of me on ...(More)

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Only 3 more days....
Posted on Monday, March 1st, 2004 at 8:55am by Brett.
(Monday, March 1st, 2004 at 10:55pm Japanese Standard Time)

One exam and *surprise!* two essays down, I am now one step closer to a month of no classes.

Today was our grammar exam. I'm pretty sure I did quite dreadfully on it, but there were many factors working against me. The "Puns" essay that I thought was due Tuesday was, apparently, due today at noon. I have class from 10:10-11:35, then lunch until 12:15, and another class after that. Unfortunately, the first period was the period in which we were to have the final exam. When I got to the class room for the first final and found out that the paper was due at noon, a quick...slightly insane...count of the hours revealed that I didn't have enough time.

I plowed through the grammar test as fast as I could. I finished it in just under 35 minutes. They gave us about an hour to do it...The results will not be pretty. After the test, I jumped on my bike and cycled the half a kilometer ride back to my dorm to finish typing the essay. It would be another 1k to go back to the library to print out the thing. I had exactly an hour.

I typed like I have never typed before. I started making ridiculous claims..."The Japanese are a society infatuated with cuteness"..."Kami-sama and ...(More)

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Stupidity
Posted on Sunday, February 29th, 2004 at 8:08am by Brett.
(Sunday, February 29th, 2004 at 10:08pm Japanese Standard Time)

Have you ever done something stupid? Not something bad...just...something stupid that made your life a little more complicated than it really needed to be...

It's finals week. I have 2 essays, 1 presentation, and 3 exams standing between me and a wonderful month-long holiday.

I somehow managed to finish the first essay (A Brief History of Japanese Weaving and Textile: From The Tokugawa Period to Today) and had started on my second one (The Use of Puns in Japanese). I really gave up with this whole "school" thing about 3 weeks ago, so it's been like...hrm like what...like pulling hen's teeth to get my brain to do something other than nothing. I had typed about a page of my pun report, and I got dangerously bored with the topic.

Looking around for something to distract me, I noticed two little nobs at the top of my laptop's keyboard that I had never seen before. Immediately I opened my desk drawer and pulled out a screw driver and pushed the nobs in. With a gentle *click* my keyboard popped up out of the laptop. If you know me, you know that this is basically standard "Brett" behavior. I pretty much go around looking for things that can come apart, wondering why ...(More)

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Image Galleries
Posted on Friday, February 27th, 2004 at 9:56pm by Brett.
(Saturday, February 28th, 2004 at 11:56am Japanese Standard Time)

Image galleries are offline. All of them. It's not my fault, but I'm yelling at the people who did it.

HEY! SUPERUSER! IF YOU'D READ UP ON SECURITY EVERY NOW AND THEN INSTEAD OF JUST BLOCKING THINGS, YOU MIGHT BECOME A RESPECTABLE BUSINESS!

Couldn't have that, now could we...

( Read More | 89 views | 2 Comments )

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