The Vineyards

Before continuing the tale from the last post, I will write about something ruby suggested a few weeks ago. Perhaps no one has the curiosity, but I should explain eventually why my computer is called Asgaard (and my sister's Olympus).

Of course, it is not so "because I thought it was nice". This is The Vineyards, after all, so it will be a long story.

It began in the days of Sherwood BBS (a BBS being those things from the age of 14.4k modems). One of my friends there started a company called Omnimedia. I was never sure what it did - and I still believe it did nothing, really - but I was quite sure it did not make e-books.

Back then there were CDs with collections of shareware programs and games. A famous one was CICA, and I had one of them. I do not remember many of the programs in it, but I know there was one e-book, by a company called Omnimedia.

I was only interested in it because of the coincidence. It took no time to see it was not the same company, but both are certainly gone by now. That Omnimedia tried to apply the shareware concept to the e-book - in the CD there were the first five chapters, and the reader could buy the rest. The interesting fact about it is that it was in the now abandoned Windows Help (.hlp) format, at the time the only format that allowed indexing and hyperlinking (html was known only to those few who had seen Mosaic).

The name of the book was "Fire and Fur". I do not remember much (perhaps I should read those chapters someday), but I think it was a medieval fantasy novel with furries. Now I think that was a very silly name, but I liked it enough back then to use it.

I still have my very first hard disk, of 120Mb (yes, Megabytes), and it probably still works. But it did not work for a while back in the day, so I had a 540Mb installed, with no label. Until I decided I needed more space, with all those games counting six, eight, twelve floppies! Star Trek: Judgement Rites and Pagan: Ultima VIII were my biggest (and largest) problems, at 60 and 50Mb, plus savegames.

In a maneuver very impressive for a pre-geek in the days where motherboards had no HD detection feature, I installed the 120Mb, hoping it would work after apparently being broken for months. It worked. To celebrate, I used the always overlooked DOS command "label" and called it "Fire & Hope" (see, hope - get the idea?). Ah, up to NTFS, the file system used in Windows NT, 2k and XP, the labels of HDs could have only up to 11 characters. At least they could have spaces.

As I said before, this were the days of the BBS. We used odd programs to connect to them, and to each other sometimes. I used to know all these fancy commands like ATDT, ATH, AT H1&Q&F1, and dreaded the NO CARRIER like no tomorrow. The very first program I installed was called Quick Link II, and it sucked, but I knew no better. It put all the downloaded files into C:\QL2\inbox\. So when I switched to Procomm Plus 2.0, I made a C:\Inbox just to keep the habit.

Then the Gigabyte barrier was broken, and from 540Mb I switched to 1.7Gb. Wow, that was so much space. So much, in fact, that I divided it in four partitions. And to honor my faithful "Fire & Hope" that served me so well earlier, I labelled the C: partition the same. That is where the system went. D: was "Myscelamnia", because I wanted a funky name; big programs and saved files went there. E: was the games partition, "Game Basis", for no particular reason. And F: became "Inbox Prime". A whole partition for downloaded files, named after the Centauri Homeworld in Babylon 5, Centauri Prime.

When I got a 6.4Gb HD, I followed the same scheme for the partitions, but gave them new names, based on the previous ones. C: became "New Hope" - I was not sure if the new drive would work, due to limitations in the motherboard, so the name was still fitting (and no, I never thought of a Star Wars IV reference, honest). I made D: "Absurdya", because it was absurd to me that a partition that big could be filled with files alone, whatever they were; E: became "Fame Thesis" - gamers were getting in the spotlight a lot at the time; and F: was turned to "Inbox Rhyme", just because it rhymed.

The internet came, and with it a program called Net.Medic. Net.Medic showed the status of network traffic, routes to sites, pings, things like that. I loved it. It also showed the computer's name. I had no idea the computer had a name as well. Tired of seeing "local computer", I figured out how to change it, and made it "D.Rod", my nickname at the time. But, really, the whole setup was very silly.

When the AMD 586 was replaced by a Pentium MMX, at the time one of the best things available, I knew it needed a better name, one to represent its great power (heh heh). So I thought of the land of Nordic Gods - I always thought Nordic Gods were a lot stronger than Greek ones. And I made the computer "Asgaard".

The four partitions in Asgaard then became "odinsthrone" (C:, system), "freyascave" (D:, files), "lokistoybox" (E:, games), and "freysstudy" (F:, downloads). Each of them had a reason to be, and when I finally installed WinXP and could give them proper names, it became more apparent.

In "Odin's Throne" sits Windows and all programs, it reigns over Asgaard.
Inside "Freya's Cave" there are things mortals do not quite understand. Everything I did not know where to put I would throw in there, and it quickly got out of hand.
"Loki's Toybox" holds all sorts of games. I know it is not mentioned anywhere Loki had a toybox, but he was always the most playful of gods, even if his tricks were never harmless.
What arrives goes into "Frey's Study". The wise god is always seeking new things, and into his room files from other lands arrive for sorting before going to the rest of Asgaard.

I made up the stories for Loki and Frey, and I do not know if Odin even really had a throne, but there is a cave in Freya's story. All in all, I liked that setup enough to keep it for a very long time.

But then I realized Freya's Cave was not really necessary. Yet I could not forsake her. The other choice was Frey, but he, too, did not deserve it. I removed them all. Asgaard remained Asgaard, but at least for now the partitions are "System", "Games" and "Media". That will obviously change when I install a second hard disk, but for now, Asgaard goes godless.

Ah, Olympus. Its story is a lot simpler. I told my sister my computer was called Asgaard, she wanted hers to have a similar name. Given they were comparable in processing power at the time (now Asgaard is behind...), we named it Olympus. No gods there, either, as there is no need for more than one partition.

Notice the names always remain, even after system upgrades. My main computer has always been called Asgaard since its baptism, through all the hardware it has been made of. The previous machines either lose the status or become something else: the backup Win98 machine is called Midgaard, and if I set up another one it will be Utgaard; if I ever make a Linux or FreeBSD box to use as router, it will be called Bifrost.

I admit it is possible, however, for a computer of mine in the near future not to be called Asgaard. But the price still prevents me from assembling Valhalla, and probably will still prevent it until it is no longer worthy of the higest name. A shame.

And this was the story of Asgaard and Olympus. A very poorly done text, but today was a very melancholic day; I really did not want to continue the story from the previous post, and I wanted to write about something a bit cheerful.

Posted by Etienne at May 7, 2004 08:52 PM