Is all it took to restore torrent traffic to my network, to open up rsync access and even allow Skype traffic. For almost a year now I’ve assumed the settings were part of the router setup, but they weren’t — it was a setting accessible only on the ISP’s home page.

Two minutes. Two minutes for a native Japanese speaker (in other words, kanji reader) to log me in, find the setting and disable it. And now I have full torrent access, ABS probably works now, who knows what else. …

Isn’t that just the way life works though? You struggle and struggle and struggle, and then someone comes along and pushes a button, and suddenly everything is golden. It’s almost magical.

I’m pleased. I compiled a stable version of rtorrent in Crux and I’m downloading the Ubuntu 8.04 ISO, just as a test run. Too bad everything can’t be that easy.