The Vineyards

Before writing about music in any form, I wish to let it be known that my current power supply is making noises stranger than usual, and at stranger times. It has been making strange noises at certain times since three weeks after it was bought, but now it seems to be heading to its end. Seventh, right? I lost count.

I promised myself to buy (probably import) a very good power supply this time. The limit has been crossed three or four clouds of smoke ago. "Another? There is probably something wrong with the current there." No, there is not. This room has the best wiring in the house - if the electric current was not good, many things would die before my power supplies. "You are putting too much stress on them!" So? I leave Asgaard on for periods of up to 60 days at once, is that what is wrong? "Yes! No one should do that!" I know many people who do, and they never have this problem - let alone have this problem seven times. "But they live in the United States!" Yes, they do. You mean living in the Uncivilized Lands denies me the right to keep my computer on? I do not accept that.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man tries to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." You do not suppose I will just sink into the mud with the rest of the country, do you?

Speaking of sinking into the mud...

A long time ago I bought an Ethernet switch, to see if I could plug both Asgaard and Olympus directly into the ADSL modem and stop using Connection Sharing. I spent an afternoon recrimping cables to get the plugs right, and eventually came to a working scheme. But it did not work. It would only accept one computer connected each time. Because Telefónica de España does not allow me to use the connection on more than one computer. The only choice was to use a router, or another computer serving as one. Too much trouble.

Recently I found out that my ugly old ADSL modem, a Parks Prestige 632R, has routing capabilities. I studied the setup carefully, read line by line how to do it, made sure I understood each step. When I was absolutely sure it would work, I decided to move from theory to practice. And it did not work.

As I changed the modem's setup, it became inaccessible by Telnet. Apparently, one thing I did not at all consider had been done to it - Telefónica added a filter to its internal firewall preventing access to any IP that was not the original set up one. I never could imagine such a devious trap. I tried all things I could think about, but came to the conclusion I needed another way in - I needed a serial cable and a specific Parks program. I had neither. I called tech support. "A technician will be sent within 48 hours." I know. I heard that about ten times this year already. "Can you put an 'Urgency' tag in it?" "Okay, I will do it." I am becoming very knowledgeable on the workings of Telefónica's tech support. "With some luck, he should be there within 24 hours. But no guarantees."

Indeed, he was. Next morning, about 9h30am, a technician was here. The least friendly tech guy I have ever had the displeasure of receiving. He said he was from Telefónica - and nothing else. Walked in, tested the line, went for the modem. "I changed some internal configurations to make it a router, but something seems wrong." No response. He connected it to his Compaq laptop, tried to log in; no avail.

"I changed the password, too." All he needed to do was ask me for it, log in, change the setup back (I have a copy of the original setup), and go away. He could had let me do it, if he wanted - all I really needed was a way into the modem. But when I said I had changed the password, he immediately gave up and replaced the modem's firmware along with every bit of information in its ROM. He reconfigured the IP settings to what they were - ie, non routing, and put the cables back in place. The modem led said "connected at 10 Mbit".

"It is at 10. It should be 100. It was 100 before."
"That is because the Ethernet card is faulty."

Ah, of course. Let us reconfigure the network in Windows, then, because I changed lots of settings in my attempts to reach the modem.

"It will not retrieve its IP automatically?"
"No. I will set it manually."

But DHCP auto-update was working perfectly before. He set it up manually. Launched Internet Explorer, got completely, absolutely lost because there were no URLs on the location bar history. I told him to click the huge "Google" button in my links toolbar. It worked.

He picked up the phone and called the central. They took generations to respond, and another era between each question answered. His complaints about it represent more than 3/4 of the words he said while here.

Modem at 10 Mbit, DHCP not working, and my switch still useless because the modem is not properly configured ("We do not make this kind of change, and the user is not supposed to."). He walked out.

A reboot and resync fixed the 10 Mbit and DHCP problems, as I knew it would. But why did he dare say my card was faulty, and my auto-configuration was a lost cause?

Ah, yes, I live in Brazil, the Uncivilized Lands. I am not supposed to expect things to work as they should and services to be any good.

Sorry about that, my mistake.

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Three days? It is ten days already! You said you would post frequently! What is going on?

Ah, very much is going on. Yes, tremendous lots of big things are going on. But I will not mention most of them here, no no. On the other hand, in these last days I have been pondering about a number of things to talk about. I have three posts in mind already, and a story that keeps getting bigger whenever I think of what to do with it.

The only problem is I have not started to write any of them. But that is easily remedied, and once done, all should flow well. I have a strong tendency to not stop writing until I reach the last line. Later I may go through it again, rewrite some things, fix some errors, but I always consider it written once I finish it - imperfect, but written. And for a post that is good enough - I will not ponder for hours over a blog post, will I? Not saying my five readers do not deserve it, but it simply is not necessary in this context, it would take away too much of the spontaneity of it.

So, when I begin to write these posts, they will be done in a few hours. No major worries there. And the first is likely to be about a song - a theory I formulated while I walked the space of fifteen meters (from the front door to the kitchen).

I will leave it at that for now, and not mention the other ideas, especially because they may be too complex to bother with. I will consider it further.

The story is about Etienne destroying Temuair, or something like that. I have many things to add to it, but the ending is still to be decided - so maybe he will not destroy Temuair, really. This one, however, I certainly cannot write in one go.

Just to mention it, on Monday I will visit an advertisement agency. They need someone to write for one campaign - a freelance job -, and perhaps remain there afterwards. It is the same I did for the previous agency - just this time I have a better chance of being paid. Regardless, I hate it. I completely hate this kind of work. "But nowadays any work, paying anything, is great", they tell me. Fine, I will not sabotage myself, but I hate the job. I do.

That is all for now.

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It is fair, now that I have introduced this new home, that I thank the one responsible for it from the beginning. But I will do so without the cute fantasy setting. And I had it planned from the start, too, even if some dare question it.

I do not remember if I asked or was offered, but sometime in 2002 Justin told me he would give me a Live Journal code if I wanted. To make it clear, back then Live Journal required one to have a code to start a free account. A number of codes were given to owners of paid accounts; free accounts got one every now and then. So, Justin, who had lots and lots of money at the time, had his paid Live Journal account, and offered me a code. I declined.

On January 1st, 2003, I changed my mind, and asked for the code. What Justin was doing online on January 1st is beyond me, but he always seems to be around when I need something. So he gave me the code, gave me some instructions on how to start the journal, and left to go party with friends. He always seems to be around, but he always seems to go out with friends afterwise, too.

There are some posts in the archives about things Justin helped me with. And I even mock him for one occasion where his directions led nowhere (although I admit it was partially my fault).

Having lots and lots of money at the time, Justin had one of his Dream Machines "sent to Newark, NJ, for colocation" (he said that a dozen times; I always wondered what was so important about it being in Newark, and why it had to be specified that Newark is in NJ). That Dream Machine is Eris, where the Vineyards now reside. Before I could complain, he had given me some webspace in it, under the discordians.net domain. He told me to keep my portion of the now abandoned Dark Ages Manual there. Once that was left behind, I used the space to store little things, like images for my sister's blog, my writings for Dark Ages (which will be here eventually), and some other random things.

Then I had this odd idea of having my own domain. Primarily because it was cheap to have, really, and I was tired of Live Journal's complete lack of everything (except cats).

If you were so tired of it, why did you make an exact copy of it here?
Good question. I did an exact copy of it, yes, because I wanted to do it this way - not because this was the only layout among the seven that did not clasp horribly with my personality. See the difference? Now I have complete control over how to make things look, I have the absolutely important choice of keeping it this way - I am no longer forced to.

So I mentioned the idea around. ruby, always very practical and helpful, found me a number of possible hosts, most very affordable (in our currency, even). But I wanted something less impersonal, and where I had very little to worry about (because I do not like to bother with php, javascript and cgi not working, or only the hosts' scripts being allowed - I want my things to work) - and once again Justin was online precisely when I needed it. We arranged to have the new Vineyards hosted on Eris. I insisted I wanted to pay for it; he kept saying there was no need. Maybe I will make use of that "no need" in months to come, but for now I am managing.

Justin's blog, deadmemes.net, works on his very own blogging system, if I am not wrong, completely written by himself. That naturally makes it very complicated for mortals like me who have not yet attained Unixhood, so I bugged him until he installed Movable Type for me. After many days of intense fight against the 500 Internal Server Error(s), he did it. It took me quite some time to get up to speed and set up the Vineyards here, and the process again involved Justin's help, when I needed to convert and import all the Live Journal entries.

Now here we have it, the Vineyards hosted on Eris. It is a bit expensive for one who lives in the Uncivilized Lands (where capitalism crawls), and I cannot upload any saucy or juicy files because Justin has access to everything, but it works better than I imagined, and it has role-model tech support that always seems to be around when necessary.

Here it is, then, my thanks to Justin, who is responsible for the foundations of the Vineyards since their beginning.

Anyone else not from New Zealand I need to thank..?

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And these are the new Vineyards. I hope you all liked the new sign at the main gate. "Lorneau.net" - cute, no? And if you look from that side, over there, it says "Lorneau.com". That is fun, eh?

Not much has changed on the surface, but there are many differences under the soil and down those corridors. Do not concern yourselves with that just yet - what needs to work is working satisfactorily, and what is not ready yet is behind locked doors. Everything else should feel just the same, except those cushions over there, they are more comfortable now. The cats... Ah, the cats, I spent three whole days running after them, putting them in boxes, and bringing them all here. This house was never supposed to have cats, you see. With all the movement, there is a lot of hair hanging in the air, so I hope you are not allergic.

Oh, and those little notes my delightful friends left all around the previous yards, I sincerely apologize, but it seems their ink corroded their paper, and I cannot move them without ruining everything. So, instead of copying them on my own handwriting, I chose to leave them there, safe, at least for now. That does not mean new notes cannot be added, eh! By all means, grab one of the quills scattered around (one the cats have not ruined yet, please) and write something, I really appreciate it.

What? Well, yes, it is nearly identical, and it took me a lot of time to make it this way. Why? Because I wanted to. Maybe I will change it someday later, but for now the change of address was big enough for me. Just look around, this new place is wonderful. I can have many new things here that I never thought of before. I will work on that soon.

Oh, yes, here! Have a bottle of wine, before we store them all again. This was a good vintage. I am sure there will be more of these ahead, this soil seems very promising.

Excuse me now, please, there is still much to be done. Feel free to look around, and come back often. I do not promise more wine for each visit, but I will try to keep the crops growing.

Great weather, no?

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Note: This is the last post in the Live Journal Vineyards. It is here as well because I wanted to keep the entire archive locally. It does not mean this site was going to end and I changed my mind...

This is the last time I write on this Journal - this Live Journal. On the day it completes 15 months, I announce its end.

The quote for this last post is by Kosh, from Babylon 5 - as is the quote for the first post. I had the choice of closing the loop or using Bilbo's "I regret to announce that this is the end!". But I like Kosh a lot more than Bilbo - the last quote is his.

The Vineyards, as I finally managed to title them months after their start, recorded a vast number of dead power supplies, my last few complaints about Dark Ages, my adventures into the realm of Playstation emulation (someday I will have the console... someday), one unpaid and one badly paid work - and the one that paid good I forgot to mention -, three cats, and one amazing change that could make one dance all night. I regret not having written more, but I am glad I wrote all I did (except that post about the radio, really... and that other about Matrix Revolutions).

Abandoning this is costly to me, I realize, as I struggle for a long time and fail to find proper words to conclude this ending. Abandoning this is also a bit unfair... The lovely rose garden recently planted on the other side of my fence seemed promising, but grapes for company the roses will have no more.

Ah, I am certain no matter how much time I spend here trying to write a worthy finale, I will think something is missing or badly written as soon as it is posted. I will skip the phase of spending hours here, then, and just post what I have.

My six readers, I sincerely apologize, and hope you can find another source of endless, evergoing texts about the most pointless of subjects. So no one can say I merely abandoned you to your own luck, I will mention you can start searching here.

And now I cheat Kosh and conclude with a quote from Loom, said by Fleece, leader of the Guild of Shepherds:

"Hail, and fare well."

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