No Brainer

I usually enjoy using the Internet, but there are times when I just can’t stand it! And right now is one of those times!

The Internet brings a plethora of things to our home, good and bad. But the bad stuff is not what I hate so much right now. Of course, don’t get me wrong, I do hate the bad stuff. But right now, what I hate so much is the fact that the Internet isn’t working!

I don’t know why, but sometimes I cannot get any Internet. I have tried solving this issue, but never found a remedy! I’ve called my ISP and asked them tons of questions, at which time they asked me equally if not more questions. In the end, neither of us ever found the answer we were looking for. I’ve even had them call NTT to ask them if they were experiencing problems on their end. Once they found a problem and resolved it. But since then, they’ve said there were no problems on their end or mine and have never helped resolve my problem.

I’m actually writing this post using Windows Live Writer so that when Internet does come back for me, I will have this written and ready to post. So if you can read this, then Internet came back long enough to post this. Which can also mean, you may be able to read this, but I still can’t because the page won’t load on my end! Sometimes uploading is okay, but downloading information just doesn’t work!

Have you ever had problems with your Internet? Ever experience downtime, either short or long, called your ISP and phone company and found the answer to your problem? If so, then let me know. I’d love to hear how you resolved the issue. Maybe I can use the answer to your problem to solve mine! So then I can get back to doing something I enjoy like surfing the Internet and actually reading and seeing stuff instead of twiddling my fingers waiting for the bytes to come pouring into my computer!

Today, I finished repairing my van! It wasn’t an easy process, but then it wasn’t that difficult either.

Last week, I found I had a cracked radiator. Luckily, I was only a few hundreds yards away from the house when I found this out. So I was able to drive home safely and avoid having to call JAF to repair my car roadside.

Since moving to Japan, I have not done many car repairs. One reason is I don’t have all the tools I had when I lived in America. Those lovely things were left behind. Over the years though I have acquired a few tools, enough to build a loft bed for my kids, repair a few things around the house and so on, all of which only called for a few tools. Changing out the radiator in my van was luckily another job that called for only a few tools. But it didn’t come out easily!

It took me over two hours to take the old one out and put the new one in. The hardest part was pulling the old one out after I had taken the hoses off, undone the bolts and screws and disconnected the plugs and wires leading to the fans. One fan came out rather easily, but the other one I had to leave in because it was connected to a wire I couldn’t figure out how to disconnect. This is what made it difficult to pull the radiator out. But after looking it over, I figured a way I could turn the radiator to allow me to pull it out and put the new one in without doing any damage to it. Once I put the new one back in, all I had to do was the reverse of what I did taking the old one out. That took me only about 25 minutes or so…a lot less time than what it took me to pull the old one out.

So I reconnected the wires and plugs, put the hoses back on and then bolted the fans back on and then the radiator. Then I checked it to see if it worked and/or leaked. Yeah, there were no problems! But I wasn’t finished. I still had more to put back together.

I put the hood lock back in place and bolted it on, but had to align it so the hood would shut and lock. That didn’t take much, but it had to be done right. Once I got that done, I put the front grill back on and fastened it. Done! Everything worked and was put back together without any missing parts or extra bolts I’d forgotten.

After all that, I took about a 20-minute shower to wash my grubby hands, which were near black from the grease and grime of working on the car! It was a tough job, but worth it! I think I saved about 40,000 yen or more overall in labor and parts costs.

If you don’t know how to work on a car, try reading about it on the Net and then try doing it yourself. It’s not fun most of the time, but it saves money and afterwards you may feel tired, grubby and hurting, but it feels good to say you did it yourself!