Today I got my 300th subscriber at Youtube. Whohoo!

Well, it’s nothing compared to geriatric1927’s 44,466 subscribers, but I guess it isn’t bad since I started just a few months ago.

I won’t make any more videos or audio stuffs until I finish moving TJP to the new server, but please subscribe!* I always enjoy seeing the ’so and so subscribed to your videos’ message. I can’t wait until I have the free time to get back to making short, stupid (but educational - I hope) videos.
This morning, I woke to a strange situation. First someone pulled into our driveway at 6 AM. We are usually up around 6:30-7, but at 6, it is still dark. I was awakened by the woman ringing our door bell. Dazed by the sleep still in my eyes, I peaked through the window to see who it was. I didn’t recognize the woman so I played dumb. ** The lady went to the next house and did the same thing. I hope she got what she needed, but it was odd to say the least.

Weird continues
Next, I turned on the computer to find out my websites wouldn’t pull up. Other websites came up quickly. Yahoo, Youtube, Google, etc all fine. But none of my sites would pull up (including this one). I then tried to go to 1and1.com (our host). Even that page wouldn’t pull up. I thought, 1and1’s entire network must be down! Unlikely.

I IMed a friend in Tokyo who reassured me all my sites were visible to him. I then called my sister who has a different ISP but lives in this town. She could pull them up. I tried different browsers, different computers, reset the cable modem and router and did an IPconfig /refresh to get a new IP. Still nothing.

I was pretty sure at this point the problem was with my local ISP’s (Comcast) DNS not being set up correctly or perhaps the problem was an overzealous spam blocker. But it was Comcast’s problem.

I called Comcast and got them to submit a ‘trouble ticket’ to a higher authority after going the common list of “Yes, I’ve tried that already.” After a few hours, it worked and I could begin my work day finally…

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* To subscribe simply sign up or log into Youtube and click on ‘Subscribe’ at the top of my page:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=thejapanshop
** There is a neat phrase I learned years ago in Japanese for pretending to not be home. I’ll remember it shortly and post it here. This is especially useful for when the NHK ‘donation’ guy comes around. NHK is like the US’s PBS but people actually watch it and it has good, but boring content. However, everyone with a TV is required to ‘donate.’