Below are the 8 most recent journal entries recorded in huegcaet's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, September 19th, 2006
1:33 pm	Time for a random YUOism! 13:30 <@flan> YUO, _________? 13:30 <~PyRC> flan, your life is like putting lasers on sharks heads and releasing them on ebay. The sad thing is that it's true, and I'd do that if I could. ----- Here's what YUO thinks about boo plushies and XHTML. 16:23 <@flanne> YUO, plushie? 16:23 <~PyRC> flanne, remember that the boo plushie has the highest orders of magic. Even my powers are incapable of understanding when to use span or div. 16:25 <~PyRC> flanne, you hear that the boo plushie has the fmws anime? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006
11:39 pm	Yahoo! Japan deputy services - Part 2 As promised, or at least hinted, I'll describe Otaku-Ya this time. --- Otaku-Ya's service is even stranger than Shopping Mall Japan's. In SMJ's case, they actually had a semi-professional-looking site, forums, and customers posting across the Internet. I found out about Otaku-Ya because someone mentioned, in a very "BTW" sort of way, that they had ordered a few YHJ items through him before. I say "him" because Otaku-Ya is actually a one-man operation, which is not, apparently, all that uncommon. Since I was considering options at the time, I decided to try a Google search, which brought me to his homepage... which still has auctions listed from 2004. Needless to say, I found this somewhat strange, and I was just about to leave when I noticed that his news link, located at the very bottom of his page, had a date of June 7th. This showed that his service was still alive, and it made me think, though I don't know why, that he must be getting enough business that he doesn't have to keep his front page up to date. Well, I did a little research on his name, and I didn't find any negative comments, so I decided to give Otaku-Ya a try. I wasn't disappointed at all, but if you thought, after reading my last post, that SMJ's operation is strange, then you may have difficulty believing how Otaku-Ya works: it's practically an honour system, and his commission prices beat SMJ by a pretty wide margin. That's right. If you want something, you just send him an e-mail with the auction URL and your maximum bid. He'll bid on it and then send you confirmation, all within a few minutes. The catch? You need to send him $1 USD via PayPal to confirm your ability to pay; he'll refund the dollar within minutes. You also need to send him your shipping information, but that's to be expected. Shocking, isn't it? Someone is willing to risk their money and auction service reputation for an anonymous user in North America. I found it impressive, myself. After the auctions I bid on were won, I was expecting to receive an invoice within a matter of hours. In reality, though, it took a few days. Why? Well, Otaku-Ya actually waited for each item to arrive before sending a total. This means he actually paid for them with his own money, and that he can charge for shipping down to the yen, rather than rounding it like other services seem to do. I'm assuming it also has something to do with making sure his customers get what they're paying for, but that's just speculation. Now, I can't recommend Otaku-Ya above Shopping Mall Japan to most people. Unfortunately, shipping from Japan is pretty expensive, and even though Otaku-Ya was obliging enough to mark my package as a gift, it's obvious that Shopping Mall Japan's batch shipping gives them an edge with large orders. I just wanted a few CDs, including my new favourite, Atelier Viorate (if you're reading this, Otaku-Ya, thank you for helping me snag it with only a few hours to go!), so EMS wasn't too bad, but it would be prohibitively expensive for cels or figures. --- So, like, once again, I've kinda gotten off track. In summary, if you want one or two small items in a short timeframe (max: 1.5 weeks from time of receipt), by all means, go with Otaku-Ya. He's fast, helpful (as long as you don't mind a bit of Engrish), and packs things really well. If, however, you plan to get a big box of stuff from YHJ, go with Shopping Mall Japan. They'll let you track everything, offer customer support in reasonably fluent English, and their batch shipping really makes a difference. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 31st, 2006
8:41 pm	Yahoo! Japan deputy services - Part 1 Today, I'll say semi-random stuff about Shopping Mall Japan (SMJ). In my seemingly never-ending quest for soundtracks, I've enlisted the assistance of a few sources in Japan, including friends, Shopping Mall Japan, and Otaku-ya, which I'll describe next time. --- I did a lot of research before picking a deputy service. Well, as much research as I could do, considering that the only real sources I could find were semi-anonymous forum-posters, all of whom had their own ill-founded loyalties and arguments. Ultimately, I decided to go with SMJ for a few items I needed to get, based primarily on service fees and customer service information (and payment methods, but I'll get into that a bit later). However, despite all of my forum perusal, I overlooked a few details, the nature of the service in particular. I was used to the 'product page -> shopping cart -> checkout' procedure and eBay's 'bid -> watch -> pay' methodology. SMJ employs a 'deposit -> deposit confirmation | bid -> watch | won notification | auction invoice -> payment | shipping to America | request for shipping from America -> shipping invoice -> shipping to you' system, which isn't nearly as complex as it looks, but it sure doesn't feel as natural; you're actually dealing with people behind a webform wall, so all the numbers you put into boxes are being processed by people... except the bidding itself, since that's automatic. Actually, maybe it is as complex as it looks. So while the important stuff (bidding) is instantaneous, the other stuff, like placing a deposit (most conventional online payment methods are accepted, including PayPal) so you can bid, paying for the items you've won, and asking for the items to be shipped to you, involves human intervention, so delays can range from hours to days. Anyway, getting back to what is fast becoming the nature of this blog, their customer service, web systems, and packaging are all decent. The same, however, cannot be said about their documentation; I had to send three e-mails to their customer service staff before I actually understood the proper procedure for making a deposit. Apparently, you just send it to the PayPal address, which is mentioned in a completely different section ('payment help', rather than 'making a deposit'), along with your username, the one you created when you registered, not that there's any sort of validation, and in a matter of hours, it will magically be credited to your account. You'll recieve e-mail confirmation a little while after that, so don't plan on sniping anything. Once my deposit was approved, bidding was easy. I just entered the ID number of the Yahoo! Japan auction I was interested in, entered my maximum bid, and filled out a confirmation form... which unintuitively happens to be inserted in the auction listing itself. It's easy to use, and I'm sure the person who wrote the HTML hooks thought it was clever, but it isn't obvious. Their auction commission fees are a bit steep, but shipping is exact, so I can't really complain, and their batch shipping method really is cheaper than mailing items directly from Japan... but only if you have a lot of items or a few really big items, since the commission fees need to be offset. I think I've kinda lost sight of where I wanted to go with this post, so I'll just mention two unexpected problems. - When filling out the customs slip for shipping to Canada, they left the total blank, which caused Customs to open my package and assess it at more than it should have cost - I live in Calgary, Alberta, not Calgary, Albert Those points aside, it's a solid, reasonably well-managed deputy service with a fair number of followers and support staff who actually read their forums. Just don't use them for small orders. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 15th, 2006
7:20 pm	More shipping-related fun Once again, I'm posting information that's only really relevant to anyone considering a few etailers. Everyone else is invited to read what I have to say, but it'll probably just be a waste of your time. And since you've read this far, you must have time to waste. I'll start with YesAsia. About a month ago, I decided to fill in some holes in my OST collection, so I started looking for a source that had everything (still in print) that I wanted. Unfortunately, no single site could completely fill my order. Dismayed, I did the unthinkable. I contacted YesAsia's customer service to ask if they could add a certain CD to their database. Yes, I sent a request to some people in Hong Kong who had no real reason to care about what I wanted, since, like, I still hadn't given them any money. I got a form letter response in a matter of hours. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but a day later, the disc I was looking for appeared in my searches. I got a message written by an actual person the day after that, telling me that they had added it to the site. At this point, I was impressed. So impressed that I asked them to do it again. Within two days, the item was listed and they told me it was available. I checked a few forums to make sure they sold legitimate discs and then I placed my order. After waiting about a week while they sourced copies from their suppliers, I got an e-mail saying that my order had shipped. This was on August 7th. It is now August 15th. The package, shipped to Canada for free, made it from Hong Kong to my door in six business days. All discs inside were in excellent condition and legitimate. Better still, they shipped the package to Ontario before sending it here via Xpresspost. Domestic shipping = no customs fees. So... yeah. I'm not being paid to say this or anything, but I'd certainly recommend YesAsia to anyone looking to import soundtracks. Or anything. --- And now Amazon.com. Last time, I said some stuff about how fast Amazon.co.jp's international shipping really is. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Amazon.com. To be fair, though, they did everything right. They processed the order quickly, batch-shipped it via DHL to their Canadian facility in Ontario, and sent it to Calgary via Xpresspost. It got here in about five business days, but after one-day overseas shipping, everything else seems slow. As with YesAsia, they avoid forcing the customer to pay customs fees, and that's always a plus, since the $5 handling fee is insane. --- 'Fore I hit submit and forget I wrote this, I'd like to say that after reworking my manga budget a little, I believe I can thank KamenReader for his whimsical thoughtfulness. Of course, he'd better be prepared to deal with my retaliation in November. >O! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 8th, 2006
10:15 pm	Amazon.co.jp's 'International Economy' shipping is fast Yeah, so, like, I pre-ordered something a while ago, 'kay? You still with me? Well, anyway, it, like, shipped, y'know, yesterday. From Japan. And, like magic or somethin', it arrived today. Seriously. An Amazon.co.jp order with 'International Economy' shipping, which I assumed would be shipped SAL, was sent via DHL Express, and it managed to make the trip from Tokyo to Calgary in a "single" business day (it crossed the date line). This was *not* an EMS order. Here's the tracking info (in English); timezones vary with the location of the package. August 07, 2006 10:14 Tokyo - Japan Shipment picked up August 07, 2006 20:44 Tokyo - Japan Departed from DHL facility in Tokyo - Japan August 08, 2006 00:56 Wilmington - Clinton Field, OH - USA Arrived at DHL facility in Wilmington - Clinton Field - USA August 08, 2006 01:12 Wilmington - Clinton Field, OH - USA Departing origin August 08, 2006 01:13 Wilmington - Clinton Field, OH - USA Clearance processing complete at Wilmington - Clinton Field - USA August 08, 2006 05:00 Wilmington - Clinton Field, OH - USA Departed from DHL facility in Wilmington - Clinton Field - USA August 08, 2006 09:01 Calgary - Canada Arrived at DHL facility in Calgary - Canada August 08, 2006 09:54 Calgary - Canada Arrived at DHL Facility August 08, 2006 10:23 Calgary - Canada With delivery courier I'm really just posting this in case someone else is thinking of ordering from Amazon Japan and happens to be wondering about that "3-4 weeks" claim. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 30th, 2006
5:20 pm	Masaki. Writhing. Awe. Query: Will Masaki writhe in awe once my Gust-heavy soundtrack order *finally* arrives? Motivation to comment: I'll probably bring some of PyRC's new features online. THAT IS ALL! >O! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 2nd, 2006
12:22 am	YUO, will you give me something witty to try posting from a Python interpreter? flan, you as in you in the interpreter, right? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 1st, 2006
11:47 pm	what happens when you have an iq over 2800 ;9 i saw grandia iii today. ultra-cute shooter involving tanks, emo-kids, cats, and other stuff on newegg. when a preposition is used, it should be able to stop talking and, like, watch anime. i had the image and trigger the exploit without warning. New versions of firefox will prompt you for the caets. Yes, you read that correctly. Unless you didn't. If you didn't, you're dyslexic or linguistically impaired. (2 Comments |Comment on this)