Step 1: Move to a new apartment.

Step 2: Decide to connect the utilities.

Step 3: Decide the phone company has a better combination deal.

Step 4: Discover that the phone company doesn't provide Internet in your area.

Step 5: Discover that you can't talk to the right cable people until you have a local phone line.

Step 6: Order phone service.

Step 7: Nearly have your phone service order cancelled because you can't check your email.

Step 8: Gather proof of identity and residence to fax to the phone company.

Step 9: Drive around your new home town for a hour trying to find a Kinkos (2 minutes from your new apartment)

Step 10: Discover that your proof of identity came through too fuzzy to read, prove your identity over the phone

Step 11: Pay deposit.  Confirm address.

Step 12: Wait a week until your connection date (no dial tone).

Step 13: Repeatedly call four different numbers given to you by the phone company as y0u try to determine what the problem is (Incorrect address).

Step 14: Correct address in phone system records.

Step 15: Wait a week until your connection date (no dial tone).

Step 16: Repeatedly call four different numbers given to you by the phone company as you try to determine what the problem is (Order stalled).

Step 17: Cancel old order and create new order.  Receive new phone number.

Step 18: Wait a week for connection date (no dial tone).

Step 19: Call one number, specifically given to you by the last operator, for who you should call if your phone still doesn't work by 5PM on the given date.  Be informed that this is now your apartment owner's problem.

Step 20: Inform landlord that your phone does not work (work order placed).

Step 21: Inquire weekly after work order until it is clear that someone did something to your phone jack (no dial tone).

Step 22: Inform landlord that your phone still does not work (new work order placed).

Step 23: Discover that the phone wires were not properly trimmed before the new jack had been installed.  Problem fixed.  Your phone now works.

Step 24: Attempt to set up cable internet service.  Be informed that your address cannot be found.

Step 25: Call number provided  by first cable order person.  Address is found, after 20 minutes of looking.  Attempt to place order.

Step 26: Phone call gets disconnected.

Step 27: Try again the next day.  Order successfully placed.

Step 28: Wait a week and a half for the intallation date.

Step 29: Cable guy arrives.  Cannot access cable room, due to not being able to get the key from the rental office, which is closed.

Step 30: Cable guy returns the next day, kind enough to come on his day off, gets the key.  Cannot access the cable room because the door is jammed.

Step 31: Inform the landlord that the cable room door is jammed (work order placed).

Step 32: Wait to hear from the cable guy as to whether or not he was able to get in today.



Well, that's where I am now.  And I still don't have the internet.  It wasn't supposed to be this complicated... but I will have the internet.  It's only a matter of time.  I'm patient enough to buy the ShinRa beach house in Costa del Sol by sitting through enough low-level random encounters in the surrounding countryside to earn the gil instead of coming back and getting it later... I can wait out a simple cable connection.



So, I did in fact acquire (at last) my copy of the official Geneon release of Shounen Onmyouji.  It took some doing, since the package had to be held until I could pick it up at the post office, and the only day I could do that was Saturday (when I was at Otakon, a good hour away).  I c onvinced the post office to hold it for an extra week, and picked up the DVD over the weekend.



Some brief notes... I will make space for a full review somewhere on my project page.



1) The subtitles were reasonably accurate.  Go Geneon.  There were a couple lines that I felt lost a little bit of dynamism in translation, but they were mostly in the spells (which basically can't be translated).  But the literal accuracy of the subtitles cannot be faulted (certainly not by *this* translator).



2) The dub contained honorifics, and the sanskrit wasn't that bad.  I was amazed.  The voices may not have been what I'd have picked, and I wasn't thrilled with the acting of whoever was playing Masahiro (for one), but it earned a solid "Way better than the Tokyo Babylon OVA".  And did I mention that the dub contained honorifics?



I'll give the DVD an overall 3 out of 5 stars and I'd rate it worth buying.  My fully featured review will, as I said, be posted to the project page once  I get it polished, as well as to Amazon.  I think that my disc may have been damaged, since episodes 3-5 wouldn't play properly, but I'll give it a day before I say that for sure.  And even if it is, I don't intend to return it for a working copy, really, since I'm basically buying the American release for legitimacy's sake.



Well, have a lovely day.



Your humble proprietor,

Skinner