As some of you may know (I've bitched about it to anybody who'd listen, and a few who wouldn't), I've had some internet problems. That's putting it mildly. For me, it's been a crisis.
I rely on the internet for everything, and since the beginning of June I've not been able to use half of it. It may sound like nothing, but for me it's like waking up one day and you've lost a testicle. The part of the internet that got severed was the part that allowed me to download listening sections for my students, talk to my family, and get my credit card company to allow charges to go through so I could pay for hotel reservations in Malaysia. Basically for a month and a half my life was paused.
Turns out my fool of a roommate(the internet's in his name) told the phone company he was moving, but somehow neglected to tell the ISP that we were. Turns out that something got reset, and the network barrier (ISP's firewall?) was set to allow browsing, but packets were put on the strongest filter setting (ie, nothing gets through).
After half an hour of complaining to the wrong company (in Japan they aren't very clear as to who's handling what part of the operation), they gave me another number.
This time I got the right guy, but he spoke no English, only keigo Japanese. He directed me through their website and had me fix the address and filters, and less than 5 minutes later, we're up and running. Now I got 75 podcasts queued up on iTunes. Let's hear it for rikaichan, it saved me with the kanji. Otherwise I'd still be listening to him say, "now go down 5cm and click on the button with lots of kan-- wait! Not that one!"
Happy Mike (my roommate) told me that fixing the internet "isn't one of my top priorities." Now he either owes me a case of beer, or I might find that it's not one of my priorities to keep the gas, electricity, or water on in MY apartment when I go on vacation for a month.
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