Szkandelous.archive.october2_5

Welcome to the future (16 hours). After a long, long delay (2 months) Szkandelous.com is finally up. To those of you whom I promised would upload the site by Wednesday, I am sorry, an unpredicted delay occurred. What, might you ask was that? Well, thinking that since Keio University permits people to connect their own computers to the campus T1 line, I mistakenly over-estimated the quality of the service I would be afforded. Perhaps it was a little unreasonable for me to assume that I would be able to upload a site through ftp. And really, what was I thinking when I assumed I could access my hotmail account.

Soooooo, about the site… It's best viewed in a later version of Internet Explorer. Not that the site doesn't work with Netscape. Simply, the version of Netscape that I have (4.75) does not fully support cascading style sheets. The site is still usable, but not quite the joy that it is on Internet Explorer (did I just use "joy" and the name of a Microsoft product in the same sentence?). The Flash 5 plug-in is also a prerequisite.

As for the design, some testing has been done along the way many spelling and grammatical errors linger. If you feel like it, email me. You can get the address on the "about" page of this site. Other than that, I'm planning on updating both the menu graphics and the flash stuff to the left. I threw those together as placeholders and, although they are perfectly functional, they aren't quite the art that I would like them to be.

Other things to be looking for in the future: soon there shall be an interactive tour of the classical Japanese palace-like house in which I did my home-stay. Also, I’m planning on adding a photo collection of Keio University and photos of new apartment, as well as standard diary updates. Maybe I’ll add some other new galleries too. If there is anything else you guys want, write me. -dan.

I've been working for 11 hours straight trying to get this site up. I shall blame our apartment manager for this. See, he's this really cool guy.

He is 53 or so years old and, although he has worked at this exchange student house forever, he doesn't speak a word of English. I've also recently discovered that he writes articles for alcohol magazines. When I first moved in, he asked whether I smoked and I said no, to which he replied, "Why? It's good for you". He's that kind of crazy old guy.

So he calls me up last night (Monday, when I was to start working on the website) and he's like "yo yo yo, want to go eat with me and a couple of the other guys who live here." Of course, he did so in Japanese.

I had promised him that I would go out to eat with him several days previous (which I didn't) and felt bad. On top of this, I did have today off, so there was no way I could tell him no.

We walked for about 20 minutes in the pouring rain to a restaurant where we get some really good hamburger steak things and a flask of sake each. We sat and talked for a while and then went home.

At home, the other guys that went on the excursion and Sumida-san (the manager) busted out this HUGE bottle Japanese whiskey. We then sat around for about 3 hours drinking it with whoever else came by.

Now, I'm being entirely serious when I say that I tried to leave something like 8 times before finally being successful. They just wouldn't let me leave. I also have this problem where, if something is in front of me, I'll drink it.

So despite my protests, my glass was filled roughly 2.5 times. By the end, although I was coherent and not really too intoxicated, I was in no shape to work on the site.

Today I went to Doutor and worked on the site until my battery nearly went dead. Then I went home, plugged in and continued updating until now.

I’m not quite done yet; there are still several more galleries I want to put in and updates will never be done; but at least it's presentable.

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