Broken again

Being a strangled cry of rage.

And of course it doesn't work today. Windows XP cannot connect to the Internets at all, and the VPN does not work. There seems to be a network gateway component missing today which prevents XP from reaching outside the Parallels software box. Not that I changed anything, of course. The gateway is simply gone, with no explanation of where it went and no visible means of creating another one.

Fortunately, because I have such a deep and well-justified fear and loathing of all things Microsoftian, I made a copy of the Parallels environment before configuring the VPN yesterday. The copy can of course connect to the Internets normally, because it still has this magical "gateway" thingy. Still, there is nothing in the configuration of the gateway object that tells me either why it is missing from the other environment nor how to create another one.

"Piece of fucking shit" is the expression that comes to mind.

Trivia, Saturday edition

I bought a copy of Windows XP Professional today, the first money that Microsoft has ever had directly from me, largely because I was fed up with being unable to ask for assistance and worried about downloading updates for the—what shall we say?—borrowed copy I had been using on my old PC for the last few years.

I'm blogging now on my Mac Mini while installing Windows on that very same computer, to run under Parallels Desktop in parallel (as the name implies) to the Mac OS. I have my doubts whether this will be as fast or as smooth as running Windows in Boot Camp, but not needing to reboot when switching between systems is very appealing. We shall see.

Had a nice day yesterday, went downtown for lunch at a fish restaurant and permitted myself a glass of Blanc des Blancs with it; very pleasant. All manner of bloggable topics ran through my mind as I sat there watching the pedestrians, but none left traces deep enough for me to recover now. I guess I shall have to carry my Moleskine around town to record my thoughts in, as I did in Venice two summers ago. Doing so would be quite appropriate, in a way, because one of my first impressions of Germany (before coming here) was that everyone carried around a little black notebook all the time, to jot down the poetical and philosophical insights that crowded their day (of course). This idea came, as did many of my early ideas about what life was like and how the world worked, from the cinema, in particular from Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog, Herbert Achtenbusch and Rainer Maria Fassbinder (pretty much in that order). I was quite disappointed when I started visiting Germany, to discover that not one of my friends carried a little black notebook, and that some of them wouldn't know a poetical insight if it bit them in the arse.

Linden Labs has published the in-world economic and user-base figures for Second Life for 2007 in the official SL Blog, and a fine piece of sleight-of-hand they are too. Start with that first graph, titled "LindeX Volume Millions of USD," noting please the nice straight arrow leading smoothly upwards for eighteen months. Bullshit. It is a lie. Look at the grey bars behind it, the actual monthly figures, and you will see a different story: traded volume peaked in March and has been flat since. Bah. I can understand the impulse to massage information, but why would anyone be so blatant about it; how could anyone intelligent enough to make this graph be so stupid as to think that we would believe it? It's a mystery.

The Economic statistics page also makes interesting reading (this may be members-only, I can't tell because I get logged in automatically (it's a Mac, it Just Works)). I draw your attention to the second table, un-informatively titled "Linden Dollars." This does in fact show who earns how much in Second Life, and the executive summary is that 472 people earned US$ 2,000 or more in December '07. There are already more than 470 people active in Second Life who could close down their First Life businesses and still earn an adequate to very good living. I find this fascinating and very encouraging. But read on:

What I find greatly discouraging is the statistics on sign-ups and returning users posted on Dwell on it, the blog of a SL avatar who is keenly interested in such things (scroll down and look in the green column at the right). They tell a depressing story: the rate of new sign-ups is slowing and the number of residents who actually visit SL is declining. Attendance (let's call it that) dropped by 20 percent between July 07 and January 08. If I were one of the 472 lucky high-earners, and had actually taken the step of closing my First Life business, I would be getting worried.

To end with a laugh file this under "E-Mails that I didn't finish reading."

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We've noticed that customers who have purchased or rated John Tavener: The Veil of the Temple [Hybrid SACD] have also purchased Greatest Hits by Spice Girls...

Ermmm, no, I'm fairly sure that they did not. You must be confusing two quite separate groups of people. But thanks for trying.

Moving rapidly along

... as I do think we should, here is the latest, hot-breaking news from the employment front: There isn't any.

The Münsters are still farting about struggling to make up their minds. The job is unlikely to start before October, which means November really because I'll be in Canada for two weeks in mid-month and it hardly makes sense to work a week and then leave for two. I'd forget all that I'd acquired during that initial week-long induction phase.

Ageing Yuppie is considering the possibility of recalling me to Hamburg for another session, nothing definite and certainly no dates and times. If it does come to pass, he will call on a Saturday morning to ask whether I could start on the following Monday. Fine.

One of Princess' colleagues mailed me a few documents in German and asked whether I could translate them to English: sure, why not. Replied with a price which I thought reasonable, she agreed in principle but now wants only the two shortest pieces done.

The database enters a new and exciting phase of problem-finding, as the first customers switch to Windows Vista. Apparently, something in the database makes Vista's implementation of the Windows Explorer crash, rendering the computer pretty damned useless (not that Windows is ... ah, skip it). De-install the database, and WE runs again properly. Damn and blast.

My only solace is that there are several programmes which trigger this crash, all of which work perfectly under Windows XP. The logical inference would be that Vista is at fault, not the programmes, but that doesn't help when the customer says "everything worked just fine until I installed your programme." (I then inquire, "what does work?" and get the reply "Ah, well, I haven't actually installed any software yet, and my files are all still on the old computer." Presumably, the customer means that the power-on button lights up when he presses it.)

What makes this even worse is that there's no solution. I am still using the previous version of the database toolkit (programming environment), which is no longer under development and not certified to work with Vista, therefore this problem will not be addressed by the makers of the toolkit. Upgrading to the newest version would cost me 5600 Euros, which I don't have—and would not even guarantee success! According to colleagues who do use the newest version, it too occasionally crashes Vista, although it's certified to run. What a mess.

We Mac users really are pampered beyond the wildest dreams of you poor Win-Victims.

Very B.S.D.T.

And the punchline is: I can't even format the hard disk and start again. An error message appears, saying (and I quote at full length) Windows konnte die Formatierung nicht abschliessen. You will note the absence of explanations or reasons or suggestions or even ways to go about finding out what happened.

I am going to throw this fucking thing out of the window.

What enrages me most, as a pampered Mac user, is the utter opacity of Windows. "The operation failed." Whaddaya mean, you want to know why? You are not entitled to know that, you pathetic little (scornful sneer) user. If you were entitled to know why the operation failed, it would not have failed. Just because it's your computer does not mean that you have any say in what it does or doesn't or should or shouldn't do. So there.

And people voluntarily buy this stuff? Does not compute.

B.S.D.T.

The world needs a new emoticon: the exact opposite of the heart in "I heart NY". I propose the big stinking dog turd (imagine it as drawn by Keith Haring).

I big stinking dog turd Windows XP.

I've written before about the problems of getting things to work properly after reinstalling Windows XP. Well, tonight I cannot get the compiled application to run. It throws out an error number which doesn't exist (i.e. is not in the system documentation) and then quits. I can't even open it with the debugger to watch how and where it crashes. I would format the hard disk and start again, were I not afraid that it would take two weeks to get the system running again. Damn damn damn damn damn and damn.

Very big, and very stinky.

In happier news I'm listening to a recently-purchased CD, Em Minas ao Vivo which I'd recommend to all fans of Antonio Carlos Jobim. This is a live album recorded in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1981. It's very simple, just Tom and his piano, miked up very close and personal as though he were singing just to you. There are no surprises here, you know every tune by heart; but damn he's good.

The web page linked above is worth reading (for Jobim fans) even if you aren't going to buy the CD.