The more painful it is, the more unruly - and, it often but not always follows, creatively liberating - the technology is.... Thus did the gods fashion FreeBSD.
.d.
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Oh you got that right. It's like struggling with unruly and arbitrary gods who plot against each other through us hapless mortals. The terrifying beauty, Athena plots to out wit her stern father and her dark forbiding uncle, Poseidon. The only solice on the tossing wine dark sea is Calypso.
Ah, but when it works, in those few and far between moments (Stolen Moments, hence mention of Oliver Nelson), it is beautiful. One of those `Yes' moments, before plunging back into the abyss, the storms, the darkness and the chaos.
So then in this voyage, Calypso is Ubuntu, a possible refuge, maybe not so much a lost island as a brief glimpse of the sun above the clouds. Can't decide which---to many metaphors. Whatever. What I want is to get back, return home. I thought the wars were over, but I was naive and had no idea that like Odyessus, the journey back would require more epic effort than fighting the war itself. Strange how getting back to peace is far more difficult than making war. But George was never a big reader.
What really scars me is X. And ravi was so right about that. Just as I got the new box up and began upgrading the ports, I discovered that Xorg had frozen the ports system to update their massive X system with a new version. Just to make this discovery, I had to turn the old box into a network server, so I could use its modem as a gateway, because the new box modem connection was broken somehow in a way I didn't understand. Meanwhile I decided to skip the modem problem and convert to dsl. Now that dsl is working flawlessly on the new box, I have to reverse the network flow and make the new box the server to the old box, if I want dsl on the old box. That's what I am working on tonight, but as usual, I've done something wrong, the gods have deserted me.
In this scenerio, getting X on the new box is home. I find Xorg is a house in complete disarray, dogs and cats living together, children thrown out of their own house, ugly suitors (graphic card drivers) wooing the vulnerable but tough Penelope (GeForce 7600 card).
Besides the computer, there is always the wars in Iraq, Afganistan, and the sorry state of the nation. Why I take the latter so personally is beyond me. Maybe Justin was right to say he was patriotic. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. I can't stand it that my country does what it does.
Anyway, there's more. Get this. On the friday before Memorial Day, I am working in my stall on some grubby piece of shit chair and two well dressed people walk by and stare at my work space. The older rather arty looking lady says to her more trendy, happening younger male companion, ``Yes, I think my girls would do just fine in spaces like these.'' They continue their walk through.
I am mystified. Who the fuck are those people? They looked straight through me. Then the chill creeps up my back side. These are business real estate people---she must be an owner, and he would be the business broker. They are looking at me as commerical space. Shit. My boss is selling the fucking building. Oh, my god. We are going down the toilet. I go ask my supervisor who were those people---completely cool, studied neutrality. She looks back at me with a slightly red face and says, ``I don't know, but they were talking like they owned the place.'' I go back to work. She calls the owner. On my way out at five, I stop by her desk. She tells me she called El Honcho, and yes, the building is for sale.
I stew on this all weekend, along with my computer problems and the rest of my world going down the drain. Boom I read Carl's post on the lady on the grave and I go ballistic. Sorry folks. I really don't want to abuse people here with my anger---we all have our own struggles and I should be more respectful.
(That is a personal apology. I could give a fuck about the police state and its jack-off Patriot Act. I honestly believe, there will come a day when we will have to face this monster, and we will have to violate it en mass to kill it, just as we did the Selective Service laws of the past.)
So work has a staff meeting on Wednesday, and sure enough the business and the building are up for sale. Too many years of trying to get Medicare, MediCal and private insurance to pay their bills, too many lines of credit, too many short term advances to cover payroll, too much of the whole nightmare. My boss is about six years younger than me, I've known him for thirty years, and he doesn't have enough years left to keep rolling debit over until next year with the hope he can get out free. He has to dump this place while he still can, before it sinks him and takes his whole world with it. Sickening as it sounds, I feel bad for him. He has worked hard (and often been nasty to me over the years). But now he is lost. The system, old pig capital, has beat him. We are in different dimensions of this struggle, but I still have emphathy for him. It's been a long fight, thirty years, and we are both loosing.
But today was delivery day for me, so I could chill in traffic, muse on the world, get my nose into the depths of poverty and despare, see good people struggle their mightiest and lose heroically, some with grace, some with a curse. Suddenly I am on 6th Street between Market and Mission---this is one narly block of traffic, homeless, weirdos, druggies, and so forth. I am taking one chair out to get to another behind it. This strange looking guy starts inspecting the chair in the middle of traffic and the street, asking questions about the motors. I figure, fuck it, we are in utter urban chaos, why not go into the engineering problems of DC motors? Hell this guy is no dummy. Sure he is dressed in rags, looks like every down and outter there ever was. Why not? So this guy starts proposing a pet project he has and we drop into electro-mechanical tech mode right in the middle of heavy traffic, street jams, garbage trucks, fire engines, cop cars, cabs darting around us, and the meter running on quarters for every five minutes. I tell him, forget wheelchairs, they are over priced. The best place to find motors for his project is armature rewinding and electric motor rebuild shops. Where? Look for used appliance stores, auto starter motors, and such. There is sure to be such motor shops nearby (like two blocks south on Folsome). Or where ever. We do the shake. I screw it up as usual. He is off into the crowds milling on the sidewalk. This is like arguing Chinese trade policy in the middle of a Shanghai traffic jam.
I love these chance encounters. They make my day. They make me believe people are cool, people are good hearted, and it is fine to be alive on the street with them. So I go into this downtown hotel owned by the city running it for a homeless shelter, senior, disabled, and otherwise generally fucked people and the barely intelligible Chinese lady running the desk gives me her keys (unheard of security breech), so I can get into the room a bed ridden old lady, paralyzed with only one eye that works lives, and where her powerchair will only get her onto the street outside where absolute chaos reigns. The security guard coming out of the elevator gives me the high five---more power to the people, he laughs. What a scene. The lady P is so grateful to have her chair back, it breaks my heart.
(This is another test pattern, written on the old box, moved to the new along a mechanical line, then off to the world of lbo, via sendmail masquerade a la dsl---to keep the samurai minons in line that the great lord Jordon, prince to the Shogun commands as guards at the gates of Eado...)
CG