Never been one to let the carrier drop

Yaay my IP troubles might be over..

S.

I tried replacing teh splitter with a uber-wide-bandwidth-low-loss model. No improvement.

I tried setting up QoS to limit outgoing rate to 500kbit/sec. No improvement.

I tried putting the modem in the flow from the fan. Noticable improvement.

Now I’m trying filling a pan with ice and setting it on top of the modem.. no improvement yet, but .. ahh.. yes.. there we go.. 25 ms ping times as long as the modem is kept iced.

No packet loss either..

later update: oops. Problem recurs. Just takes a while longer to do so.

Now I’m trying modem on extremely low line voltage.. (100v)

seems to doing better..

Cox is supposed to send someone out here tomorrow @ 1p. Problem happens quickly enough that I’m guessing I can get him to wait the ten minutes or so it usually takes for ping times to go to hell in a handbasket.

I’ve concluded that there’s some bit of me that wants – deeply wants – to be unhappy, and that spends a lot of time trying to plot out how to sabotogue the rest of me.

I need to figure out why this bit of me exists, and find some way to either come to terms with it or excise it. Otherwise I’m not thinking my life will get any better going forward.. I’ll continue to hurt people and continue to be unhappy..

My network continues to suck.. the cable modem works great for a few minutes and then comes progressively more nad more unglued. They’re supposed to drop by tomorrow with a replacement modem – hopefully that will help the situation.

Yesterday I set up a linux firewall with arp proxy – now all of my machines, even the public-subnet ones, are actually hiding behind a firewall. This has pro

Well, I haven’t exactly been writing much in livejournal. There are a number of reasons for this..

1) Various of my friends have expressed concern about the detail level I include in my journal about their lives, thoughts, or actions. I am going to make a greater attempt in the future to segregate posts into private, secured, and public as per the wishes of the people being posted about. If you are someone who is concerned about me posting about you and who hasn’t yet approached me, please contact me. In the meantime, I will attempt to err on the side of caution in terms of talking about relationships and individuals.

2) I’ve been extrordinarily busy unpacking and working and moving and stuff. I still haven’t managed to unpack my studio although I’m hoping to make some progress in that direction today.

3) I just haven’t really had that much to say, I guess.

Me and Kayti had thanksgiving togeather – we made stuffing and rolls and uncanned cranberry sauce and gravy and had a microwave turkey breast. It was pretty tasty.

I had a really disturbing dream last night. I was seated in the witness box of a courtroom, and the judge asked me what my final verdict was on God and I said that *e was evil.

I really don’t like to think that way, and I don’t really think that it’s true. I don’t think whoever’s in charge around here is perfect (as some people would claim) but I don’t think they’re actively evil either. They may have bad days…

so it was disturbing. Not quite as disturbing as the dream two nights ago where I threatened someone with a knife, or the one before that where I went off on someone who was the same gender as I am for asking me for sex.. (apparently I am homophobic in my dreams).

In general, my dreams lately have been pretty disturbing.

It rained here this morning.. I almost felt like I was waking up in Seattle or something. It seems to have stopped now though. Luckily yesterday one of the things I did was hook a 12v charger up to the remains of the EV and roll the windows up. (I’m still awaiting a replacement inverter, or at least a verdict, from Metric Mind)

I’m feeling rather sad right now, and I really can’t identify why.

I’m guessing my system clock is really out to lunch, since it seems to have dated this entry the 24th. But I’m not going to let that worry me.

Just a post to report that I and Kayti had a lovely thanksgiving dinnerr, some assembly required, and have successfully moved to 27262 Principe, Mission Viejo, CA. It’s sunny. It’s warm. My entire life is still in boxes. I got about a eighth of the studio unpacked, and a small portion of the LAN..

http://www.addictinggames.com/theidiottest.html

According to this test, I am ‘average’. I tried three times, and that’s where I ended up all three times. This is something I’ve suspected for a long time – even though people from time to time make a point of telling me I’m intelligent.. (almost as if they sense I have some weakness in my own personal opinion of my intelligence).

Actually, this is sort of a odd point. I’ve been thinking about it, and compliments about your DNA – like your intelligence, or your beauty, aren’t really as much directed at you as they are directed at whoever wrote your software. (Which probably wasn’t you, although the jury is still out on this). On the other hand, there are certain compliments that are very directed at you.. like that you’re a peaceful person, or that you write good software or good emails or good sex stories or what have you.

—–

Every year my Dad’s family gets togeather and has a holiday they call Thanksmas. For a long time I avoided them as most of my memories of my Dad’s family include things like being spanked for crying after one of my uncles took part of my kite to fix his kid’s kite with, and being forced to sit in on family photographs taht I didn’t want to be in and other similar events.

Then, I went for a few years.. my grandfather was dying (except it turned out that he wasn’t.. which I’m glad of), and then I thought I’d go back to see if the results were better, and they weren’t.

I’ve concluded that in my father’s side of the family, insulting someone is a way of showing love. I wish that I could adapt to this, but I really can’t. Every time I go to a family gathering with them, someone says something incredibly hurtful. They don’t like my culture, I don’t like theirs. I think the best thing to do is just to avoid them in the future.

There’s this sense that you’re supposed to have this obligation to your family no matter how they treat you or what they say. They can use physical violence as a reaction to your crying, or threaten physical violence in order to control you, and you’re still supposed to love them and go to their family events and listen to their negative comments about how you look, who your lover is, what you think is morally right and wrong, what your politics are, and probably what car you drive with good grace.

I don’t see the point. If we weren’t related, we would actively hate each other. These are the kind of people who think that the Iraq war is a beautiful thing. They drive a SUV and have a giant american flag on their house. I fly a U.N. flag (I’d rather fly a UFP flag, but no one would get it but other severely geeky types) and would devote my entire life to working for peace if I thought it would actually do any good.

So, my mother asked me if I was going to Thanksmas this year, and I answered no, that I’d had my quota of that side of the family for a while. And then I felt bad, because that’s a really harsh thing to say. But, on the other hand, it is the truth. My shrink keeps telling me I need to ask for what I want, and with regards to a lot of those people, what I want is to never see them again. I don’t want them to be unhappy, I don’t want them to suffer or fail to prosper in any way, I just don’t want to be exposed to them.

And I don’t think that that’s a unreasonable thing to want. But yet I feel bad about wanting it.

I think if they looked into their hearts, and listened really hard, what they’d find is that they don’t particularly want to hang out with a anti-war, left-wing, socialist-communist-grean-libretarian (yah, YOU try and figure out which bits of me are which bits of those;)) pro-drug, anti-religion, musician hippie beatnik computer programmer anarchist like me, who I’m sure they are convinced is destined for eternal suffering when this lifetime is over.

So I think by staying away I’m doing us all a favor. There are a few individual people in the group that I like quite well, and perhaps I will make some effort to run into them individually instead. (assuming, of course, that they don’t also want to stay as far away from me as possible, which they might).

I’m beginning to think that with the exceptions of raves and other IT people, I’m very antisocial. I’m not particularly comfortable in a bar, or a church, or any of the places people gather that aren’t all about the music. (I do music-parties and concerts just fine and enjoy them rather a lot). I enjoy seeing people within the framework of work, but we’re all working on solving some common problems, and those people generally don’t insult me (except occasionally on fuckedcompany.com) and they generally don’t make me feel threatened.

I also seem to be able to manage things like SEVA – groups of people trying to solve a particular problem. I think SEVA is just another kind of work for me.

Anyway, that’s enough of my thoughts for tonight I think.

So, for those of you who are wondering why I haven’t been updating lately, it’s mostly because I’ve been in the process of moving. I’ve brought the first vanload down along with Kayti’s car – the drive was uneventful, possibly even fun in spots. I’m flying back to Seattle tomorrow to repeat the process – unfortunately, the rest of the house isn’t exactly packed yet, so part of what I have to do is pack my house in three weeks..

I also have to get cases for the music equipment that doesn’t have cases yet (mostly the MP-9000 and the DA-7), change the battery pack in my car (I’ve ordered the new batteries – I’m temporarily going to use a cheap lead-acid pack in order to let me work on my battery management system without worrying about damaging anything – I went with PowerSonic AGMs – yes, I know they’re not the best batteries in the world, but the price was right.. ), drag much stuff to the dump, juggle a bunch of credit cards, and not go crazy.

S.

To those of you who followed the much earlier thread on AES <-> SPDIF conversion, the matching transformers suggested (provided by markertek video) worked beautifully. No more clicks, no more pops, no more Sheer tears out his hair, just sweet audio, digital all the way through.

It’s amazing how much better it sounds, actually. It doesn’t seem like it should make that big a difference, but I guess when you have many sound modules going to one summing bus, all the noise from all of them kind of adds up. Also, I think the A/D in the Behringer mixer might be better than the A/D in the E-Mu modules. Ultimately, of course, I want to go digital all the way to the recording interface – and there’s no reason to think that I won’t be able to. The only problem is that for some reason the Panasonic and the Behringer boards don’t seem to be able to stay in sync. I might try a word clock cable or I might try feeding the Panasonic via ADAT instead of analog.

The problem with this kind of thing is that it can turn into a obsession. First, I just wanted to hand off my racks as optical so that I had less things to connect. Then, I started wanting to keep things digital throughout the racks. Now, I’m thinking of buying different versions of sound modules (the Command Station version of the XL-7, for example) in order to get SP/DIF outputs. I’m trying to figure out where I could find a upgrade card for my Emu 6400 to give it SPDIF or AES outputs.

All this in the middle of moving.

Sick sick puppy I am.

So, I now have broadband in SoCal. There’s one linux server there right now – not actually running anything yet, but at least it can be ssh’d into.

I’m very tired – cable guy came @ 9a..

If anyone cares, I’m now past my previous all time high on the day counter. Woo hoo etc.