Beware of Binverse

So I was looking for a usenet provider, and stumbled upon Binverse. I was going to sign up for the trial, but it asked for a credit card, like most, so I stopped. Randomly, a day or so later, out of desperation, they sent me an email giving me a login with 1gb of download on it and 14 days.
So I decided to try to log in. Firstly, they make you download their client software. That is, if you didn’t know to append @binverse.com to your username when you connect to their server. They don’t tell you this because they want you to download their crap.
So I did, and I did a random search, found a 45 day old file, worth 2k, and clicked download. The transfer failed, and they removed 1MB from my transfer limit. But that is not the worse part. Upon inspecting the packet log, I found they aren’t even a provider at all. In fact, they want to charge me for a bandwidth cap on CHARTER’s server! Say what? Seriously? I can do that for FREE. Thanks, but no thanks, Binverse.

200 Welcome to Charter NNTP Service (newsfe06.iad) (Tornado v1.2.7.560-2)
AUTHINFO USER bnv-t********-trial@binverse.com
381 More Authentication Required
AUTHINFO PASS T*******
281 Welcome to Binverse.com
ARTICLE <005f309f$0$14117$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>
430 No Such Article
ARTICLE <005f309f$0$14117$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>
430 No Such Article
ARTICLE <005f309f$0$14117$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>
430 No Such Article
ARTICLE <005f309f$0$14117$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>
430 No Such Article
ARTICLE <005f309f$0$14117$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>
430 No Such Article
ARTICLE <005f309f$0$14117$c3e8da3@news.astraweb.com>
430 No Such Article
QUIT
205 GoodBye

Flood update

Well, they are only predicting a rise to 22ft, so we shouldn’t have to leave. We’ll see what happens. Might make for some interesting pictures and video though :)

Possible Downtime due to Flooding

There is a small possibility that the server may be taken offline in the coming days. We are scheduled to receive 5-7 inches of rain. We live in a flood plain and the river will be at 7ft when it starts (normal is about 4ft). Flood stage is 18ft, and evacuations occur around 24-25 feet. I’m not sure how high it will get.

It probably won’t get into our house, but the side end of the trailer park is lower, and as such, they evacuate everyone and cut power to the entire park. Therefore the server would be taken offline, and if we do evacuate, I will be taking the server with me just in case.

I don’t know, but you can keep an eye on it here and here.

Nocturnal

I’m bored and I can’t sleep. I don’t know why. I should be sleeping considering my schedule but I just can’t. It sucks because my schedule will become wacked. I feel slightly tired but not enough to sleep. I’ve been playing World of Warcraft again. Finally made it to 55 on my Warlock so now I can make Death Knights. They rule. My DK is 60 already.

Yeah, um. This sucks. I’m broke already after getting gas and cigs and stuff. So I can’t even go to Wal-Mart or something. Well, I think I have like $1 left.. *checks*

Yeah, I can’t wait until November 3rd when I will be getting the HTC Hero cell phone. Yay, Linux phone. Yay, google phone. Yay, new fancy phone. lol.

La, la, la. Wal-Mart’s txt crap isn’t responding, as usual.. .. oh, there it goes, $1.35. Not even enough for a Pepsi or Dr. Pepper. How sad.

Well, maybe. I guess I could go see. I have to go to my car to get cigs anyway.

Oh yeah, I need to post pics of my car on here. It is nothing fancy, but it has less than 100k miles on it. But more about the car in it’s own post.

Okay, I’m gonna find SOMETHING to do.. x.x Later…

Amazon Marketplace and APO

When selling on the Amazon Marketplace, I guess you need to charge extra for the item. Because if a buyer buys your item and has an APO Military Address, you do not get any extra credit for shipment.

I sent Amazon a letter regarding the charges. We’ll see what they say in response.

In my letter to Amazon, I wrote:

The Amazon Marketplace charged the buyer $5.49 for shipping, however due to the fact this was an APO address, the cheapest option available was $12.70. Why does the Amazon Marketplace not adjust the shipping charges accordingly for the pricey APO shipments? How can I get the difference?

Amazon’s Response:

…

Because your buyer selected standard shipping, you received $4.49 + $0.50 per pound for your shipping credit. This resulted in a total shipping credit in the amount of $5.49.

When you create a listing, the shipping credit you will receive is displayed on the last page of the listing process. It is also included in the e-mail listing confirmation that we send when you create a listing. If the allowed shipping credit will not be sufficient to cover the actual cost of shipping the item, we encourage you to keep that in mind when pricing your item.

…

My response:

While I understand your pricing scheme, the problem is with just APO. I seen the $5.49 shipping credit when I listed the item. This was sufficient for most addresses. When I’m listing an item, there is no way for me to know if it will be an APO purchase or not. Most sites classify APO as International, and credit the user as such. Amazon should incorporate some way to credit the user for an APO shipment, because it is not the same price as a standard shipment to the continental US.

Server Downtime

I’m not quite sure what the problem is with my server, sometimes it just powers itself off for no reason. It is not the board, even though the CPU isn’t supported, when I used it as a desktop, it ran for 2 weeks+ straight.

I’m thinking it is the power supply but not sure exactly what. It seems the connection for the power cable to the PSU is a bit loose, so it could be that it is just being shifted out randomly by the forces that be.

Either way, the server cannot recover itself due to the unsupported processor (E7400 on the G965 chipset). The processor works, but only at half speed, and requires one to press F1 to boot the server from the BIOS. I’ll try to get another board, but the problem is the case, its HP and as such it does not like to have a board besides theirs. The way the tray is designed prevents you from attaching a cooling device to the board when its another board.

I’ll figure something out. It is pretty stable until I start rummaging through the wires back there, so I guess if I just push it in every once in a while it won’t “pop” back out.

Anyway, all should be fine now.

Abandoned Blog

Yeah, I never blog anymore, I just don’t really have anything I can say publicly anymore. I guess I can start with an update since I deleted the last update. I have been living in Arkansas since October 2008. I came down to Benton AR and stayed at a motel for a while, and met this crazy guy at the motel and ended up becoming roommates with him, I abandoned that after realizing I was just being used for money (and for other reasons), and am now living with my girlfriend (asashimitsumi) at her Mom’s house.

I don’t know where things will go from here, I am currently on a waiting list for subsidized housing, since I am eligible for it. But that could take another year or two, so who knows what will happen by then.

Well, I guess that is all for now.

P.S. I may start tweet’ing more, so be sure to check out my Twitter, or my Facebook if you have me as a friend, since all my tweet’s update my Facebook.

True love?

What is love? What is true love? What are these feelings I really feel?
I took a few online quizzes from random sites, don’t know if they mean anything or not. One told me I am 80% (4 of 5 questions right) in true love. The other said I’m basically 60% in love, 40% infatuated.

So what is true love really?

When you just want to be with the other person?
When you would do anything for them, just to see them smile?
When you would gladly give up anything for them?
When you know the person has flaws but you love them regardless?
When you feel their pain?
When you worry at night about them if they are upset and you can’t help them?

These are just some of the feelings I have, but there are many more…

Love

How do you distinguish the difference between loving someone romantically or just loving them as a best friend? I mean, is it as simple as the desire to be in bed or is it more complicated than that?

I care deeply for her and connect with her very well, and trust her with anything. I miss her dearly when we don't talk which leads to an obsession of sorts, but I believe this is just because we connect so well and I feel I can tell her anything, and I don't have many friends like that. Therefore I always seem to yearn to talk to her the most. I know love her but in what way? I don't really think it is romantically, I enjoy making her happy, and she makes me happy, that's all. Of course, that is not to say if she were to ask me out I would say no. I really don't know this kind of feeling.

Emotions confuse me.

Update

Well, long story short, our previous place of residence wasn’t nearly as bad as this place. When we first moved in it was just the Landlord and his wife upstairs. Then, without warning, about a month later he decides half his family can move in with him. 5 adults and 1 kid, all who walk with lead feet, and the kid, undisciplined, runs around back and forth and also plays with our doors when outside.

We are working on moving yet again.

Also, I have restored Sakura Radio – www.sakuraradio.com

Moved

We moved out of the dump and things are slowly getting better. More detailed post in the future maybe ;)

I hate Apartment 5

Is this really necessary? What the hell are you doing? And WHY the hell are you doing it at 6:30am?!. Note that the video doesn't really do much justice, since he started around 6:30am, and I didn't think to start recording until 6:45am, when he was nearly done. Also it was about 4x louder IRL than in the video. There was one point where he also crashed something into that propane tank, making a HUGE "bong" sound.

Ugh. I hope we can move in May/June with the stimulus check thing.

(video missing from archive, sorry!)

Obligitory Update Q1 2008

• I sold my Nintendo Wii, since I never played it.

• I upgraded my computer to a Intell Quad-Core Q6600 @2.4ghz. I ended up with the G0 revision, so I can overclock to 3.2ghz

• I got an nVidia GeForce 8800GT

• I ended up spending about $1600 on this new computer, which I built myself.

• I saved over $100 at FYE on my birthday, by taking advantage of the Backstage Pass program. [Click to see goods]

• My Credit Card company is more worried about the payment coming from a source I’m authorized to pay from, rather than my card being stolen. (I made a bunch of micro-transactions in one day, and they locked the account. For security reasons. But not because they think the card was stolen, but because they think *I* stole the card I pay on it from. How nice.)

• Apt. 5 still annoys the hell out of me.

• I bought a 1500va UPS from my Web Host, and now I have a proper electrical ground, since it is using the Cable Coax ground.

• Still waiting for Final Fantasy XIII. And Crisis Core, and Persona 3 FES.

• I didn’t get another camcorder (and the guy who bought mine still owes me $40), but I got a new digital camera, which has auto-focus thankfully. However it’s slightly more picky about being perfectly still when taking a picture, ugh.

• I have a single on sale at Amazon.com. iTunes, Napster, and Real Rhapsody soon to follow.

Thats all for now. See you next quarter. ^.^

Obligitory Update Q4 2007

Just an update I guess, since its been a while since I posted.

• I got a Nintendo Wii.
• I got a Facebook.
• I will be finishing my album soon, and hopefully publishing it somewhere. (I am currently looking at Magnatune (Internet Record Label), and TuneCore (Service to publish on iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, ect)
• I quit smoking for about a month, then started again on a stressful day. :/
• Hikari Radio was acquired by Keiichi.net Radio EX²
• I am finally using zefie.net for something,besides just redirects (although those are still there). I also changed my email address, but you know me and "backwards compatibility", therefore all of my old ones still work.
• I sold Oblivion for PS3 on eBay, since I never played it. Then I baught Folklore for $60 and Enchanted Arms for $20. I feel the prices were reversed because Folklore bored me and I sold it on eBay, whereas I still have Enchanted Arms.
• I got a Visa Credit Card.
• My ISP still sucks ass, just 10% less since they downgraded our modem package (caps are still broken), and changed the modem's internal frequency channel (better connection)
• I got rkuchiki on YouTube back, along with all of my videos. Therefore old videos that didn't work in this LiveJournal before should now work again.
• I'm slowing learning Japanese using The Rosetta Stone.
• We (Mom and I) are having Thanksgiving dinner alone this year.
• I once again promise to try to update this more often.
• I once again will probably not update soon, since I always forget to. >.>

Sayonara.

Bandwidth

So my ISP recently made an upgrade in our area, or so they said. A week ago the internet was out a good percentage of the day, when it came back, all hell broke loose.

I have 5mbit down, 256kbit up. But this is what I get between 7am and 1am:
(speedtest img missing, thx dslreports.com)

And this is what I get between 1am and 7am (a whole 6 hours a day):
(speedtest img missing, thx dslreports.com)

As you can tell, the upstream is consistent, but the downstream is on crack.

Cable internet is a shared network. At first I had good speeds all the time. Apparently someone on the node closer to the ISP than me decided it would be funny to stream some HD pr0n or something. Anyway I don't mind the speeds at night, but I would prefer a more stable connection. Especially since I'm paying more than most, and most likely paying more than the guy on the node who is stealing my bandwidth.

They said they are aware of the issue and are working on it, but I don't know. How do you leave an entire node uncapped for a WEEK?