Transitioning… Happening, without me even realizing.

The though tonight surfaced when considering the origin of the headache that bothered me all this evening. I have known this headache for a few years already; it happens every now and then, the pain creates each time a sensation of déjà-vu without clear hints as to its precise causes.

Until today, where the dots were connected very blatantly. I had initiated today several interleaved conversations simultaneously in more than two languages, two of them being very intensive and conceptually complex.

Wait. The sheer intricacy of this statement sounds sufficient to warrant a headache, right?

Well, actually not. The complexity of the conversations per se was not relevant; nor was the multiplicity of languages nor their simultaneousness. Indeed, part of my daily work is dedicated to long work-related, technical and complex conversations in two different languages (not counting those I use with my computers), often alternating between both at short intervals, and without any subsequent pain nor second thought. I enjoy this situation greatly; it brings me both joy and fulfillment. It is part of my life, to the extent that these languages are also those I use daily with friends and family for social and personal interactions.

No, the headache only appears in this very specific situation when I start to use my native tongue during the day — next to the two others. This ability I am carrying around, learned at a young age, is hurting me whenever I exercise it in my new world. Unsurprisingly, I also no realize I am starting to avoid it altogether for this very reason — often unconsciously, and yet…

Last week-end I realized that several grammar forms that were once as natural as breathing are now eluding me. Understanding is still effortless, but the communication becomes straining. When compounded with my normal daily interactions, the effort becomes painful and causes the dreaded headaches.

I am slowly and deliberately ruining — in the literal, etymological sense: think about the crumbling stones of an old castle — my relationship with the first language I ever learned.

Some of my medium- and long-term plans already included taking on Swedish and Frisian classes. Now, I am seriously considering inserting German into the list as well, because it is the social norm where I live. This may require some additional sacrifice, too.

And yet I don't care. Actually, it feels great. I prefer my new tongues anyways.

Disclaimer: this is a post about its author. If you just want to be entertained, you can skip reading.

One more page turning. While I have spent the official “big party time” of the year quite comfortably lying on a couch, watching TV and playing video games, the occasional greeting SMS compounded with heavy fireworks and an yearly summary e-mail from a close friend reminded me this is the time of the year to contemplate the time passing and make the best out of transitions.

So here is my summary.

The year 2009 was about growing up. I am officially an adult now. During this year, I have started: considering an actual career, caring for retirement plans, comparing health insurance plans, caring about world politics, contracting a mortgage, planning for future savings, considering the financial well-being of my family before making big spending decisions, planning to care for kids in a somewhat near future and — biggest one among the rest — contemplating and actually enjoying the prospect of getting older, especially turning 30 in the coming year. If I told myself how comfortable I would be with these “accomplishments” a mere 5 years ago, I would not have believed myself. 5 years earlier, I would have been down right suspicious and would have showed contempt. Time does wonders!

At the same time, I have been somewhat unsatisfied with the way I take care of the people who are more or less regularly part of my life. Many times per week, if not every day, I spend a few moment thinking about how much I respect / like / love / admire / am grateful towards the people I know, wondering how to inform them of my feelings. All my acquaintances have contributed in one way to another to the person I am, and for this I am routinely and genuinely grateful. I try to smile, interact socially and positively, send friendly words on cards, e-mails or facebook messages, be supportive. But I realize I have not taken the time to really get to know my entourage better and understand their existence as human beings outside of the pleasure I have interacting with them. In short, I often fear that I appear to act as if I was using my friends to entertain myself or acknowledge my own existence, and that I do not show them (often) enough how much I care about them. At the same time, I feel childish at the thought of more frequent tokens of appreciation; I fear I would come across as “bizarre” or “creepy” by overwhelming friends with tokens of affection, or come across as flirtatious or romantic instead of genuinely happy to know them.

And 2009 was also the occasion to take on bad habits. I have become cynical; I tend to see either stupidity or malice in all aspects of the world that I dislike, instead of considering that my expectations have become distorted by a lack of diversity in my channels to the outside world. In my efforts to move forward dutifully and fight procrastination, I have set up a routine where I pursue small goals one after the other — often losing sight of the big picture and overall direction I would like to go. And I have let work take away a lot of my free time, reducing greatly my opportunities for social activities and self-development. All these changes impact me negatively.

My own resolutions for 2010 area bout sharing and improving my contact with other human beings. I will try and learn to trust friends. I will interact more emotionally with the people I meet and try to understand who they are and what is important to them. And I will exercise more at enjoying my immediate surroundings, instead of worrying about remote issues that I have little impact over.

Using Maslow's hierarchy of needs, evaluate how you were happy in 2007 and what you're up to for 2008:

1. Have you been healthy in 2007? Are there major illnesses preparing for 2008?
2. Have you had sex in 2007? How do you plan to have sex in 2008?
3. Have you had a home in 2007? How do you plan to have one in 2008?
4. Did you feel safe, protected against crime in 2007? How do you plan to feel safe in 2008?
5. Did you have a safety net against accidents or illness in 2007? How do you plan to have one in 2008?
6. Did you have a steady source of income, or otherwise a resourceful environment in 2007? How do you plan to have that in 2008?
7. Did you have close friends in 2007? How do you plan to have/keep close friends in 2008?
8. Did you have close emotional or intimate partners in 2007? How do you plan to have/keep partners in 2008?
9. Did you have a supportive and communicative family in 2007? How do you plan to have one in 2008?
10. did you respect yourself and other people in 2007? How do you plan for respect in 2008?
11. are you proud of yourself and what you did in 2007? How do you plan to be proud in 2008?

How to use this quiz for 2007: answer the questions in order. Then take the number of the first question where you answered no. That is your happiness score out of 10. Now, try to improve this score in 2008.

If you answered yes to all the questions, then you've been happy already! Keep going for 2008.

A while ago I acquired a Brother laser printer, model HL-2030. This is a cheap printer with excellent printing quality (up to 1200dpi) and power saving features. Moreover, it supports the standard printer language PCL-5 which makes it “polite” to free and open operating systems — such as, GNU/Linux and FreeBSD.

On Linux, the Brother printers are fairly well supported. There is a lot of information on what drivers to use on LinuxPrinting.org and several good hints for the printer HL-2030 are hinted there as well. Brother also provides official Linux drivers that give access to all the printer features.

Using the generic driver

Unfortunately, Brother “officially” indicates that they do not have specific drivers for FreeBSD, and that FreeBSD users should use the generic drivers. Of course, using this printer (as well as many others from Brother) with FreeBSD is possible using CUPS and the generic printer drivers provided in the packages Gutenprint and/or Foomatic. For example, with my HL-2030 printer I proceeded as follows to use the generic driver:

1. install and setup CUPS (not covered here, there is a section for it in the FreeBSD documentation)
2. setup appropriate permissions on /dev/unlpt0 (USB device for the printer) — I used root:cups 0664
3. generate and download the PPD file for HL-2060, (HL-2060 is a compatible printer)
4. setup CUPS to use this PPD file and the USB device (use device "no-reset") to reach the printer.

That works very well, but I wasn't satisfied because it supports only resolutions up to 600dpi, and the paper margins are not well defined.

Using the Brother driver

Hopefully, I found possible to use the official Linux drivers provided by Brother on FreeBSD. This is made possible by the Linux emulation layer on FreeBSD.

Note the following:

• CUPS should already be installed and running, and the printer should have been tested first using the generic driver as described above. Rationale: if the printer or the USB device somehow don't work, the official driver can't do anything about it.
• This has been tested on FreeBSD 7.0 for i386 (32bit). See notes below for some hints for the x86_64 architecture (64bit) and other versions of FreeBSD.

Here are the steps:

1. install the Linux compatibility libraries through port emulators/linux_base-fc7. Likely you need to set the Linux kernel version high enough prior to installing the port, using for example sysctl -w compat.linux.osrelease=2.6.9 (save to /etc/sysctl.conf to make the setting persistent).
2. install print/psutils which contains pstops required by the Brother drivers.
3. download the LPR driver and CUPS driver for your printer from Brother. Download specifically the Debian .deb files.
4. extract manually the contents from the .deb files. They are .tar.bz2 files in disguise: use the command tar -xjf
5. place manually the files in the appropriate FreeBSD directories:
   • .so in /compat/linux/usr/lib
   • bins in /usr/local/bin
   • Brother-specific files in /usr/local/Brother
   • CUPS data+filter in /usr/local/share/cups and /usr/local/libexec/cups
6. edit all the script files included in the .deb and change the following:
   • all references to files included in the .deb should be modified to point to their new FreeBSD location
   • references to other tools (gs, pstops...) should be modified to point to /usr/local/bin instead of /usr/bin
   • use path to USB device /dev/unlpt0 instead of /dev/usb/...
   • the LPR installation script may contain commands to change the owner/group of files in /var/spool/lpd. Replace with user "root" and group "daemon" instead of the default "lp".
7. open the "postinst" scripts from both .debs and read what commands they use to setup the printer, and execute them manually (LPR driver first, then CUPS driver). This should register the Brother PPD file into CUPS and create the printer configuration.

Et voilà!

If anyone volunteers to create a FreeBSD port, that would be great.

Special Notes

Users of FreeBSD x86_64: the binaries and libraries provided by Brother are compiled for Linux 32-bit. You need to ensure that your linux_compat package supports running 32-bit binaries.

Previous versions of FreeBSD: you are on your own. The steps above are untested. It may be that the USB stack in previous versions of FreeBSD (than 7.0) cannot send data to Brother printers.

USB device: the standard USB printer device file on FreeBSD (/dev/ulpt0) fails with (some) Brother printers. Use the non-reset /dev/unlpt0 instead. This works. The drawback is that the printer needs to be switched off and on when an error occurs (the driver cannot reset the printer using this device).

Last week my company sold old hardware for a bargain price. I got one, a dull Dell machine self-named "Optiplex GX 260". It gained a place in my home next to Albert — my plant — and also a new name: "fungus".

Fungus was the occasion to refresh my experience with FreeBSD. I have very fond memories of this operating system, which I used in the past for network services; this week, I wanted to extend my knowledge of the system by trying out the new features and checking its compatibility with various pieces of hardware which prove burdensome to use with Vodka-Pomme, my iBook.

Suffice to say, I am not too proud with the results.

It did begin quite well. Well, not that well. The system fails to boot with the default settings, due to a faulty hardware feature (broken ACPI) which is not (yet) worked around by software. Only some research brought me the magic string required to move to the next step: hint.apic.0.disabled=1

Damn the bogus Dell hardware.

For the installation I used the April snapshot of the 7.0-CURRENT branch, the brand new stuff scheduled to be released later this year. My purpose in using the latest and greatest (and I had to expect, also unstable) was to benefit from the recent inclusion of the ZFS filesystem into FreeBSD.

Installation went smoothly, and I could perform the following operations with much success and pleasure — pleasure to feel in known territory, pleasure to discover the changes since the last time I used the same steps:

• load updated system sources from CVS
• rebuild and install the world and a custom kernel
• install some shells and utilities
• configure some networking and connect to IPv6

Everything went smoothly so far and I could nearly believe that I was on the road to success for all my plans with Fungus: file server, webcam controller, ip6 gateway, scanner controller, and maybe some more! Spare time allowing, of course.

Before going to work last morning, I plugged in the USB flatbed scanner — CanoScan Lide 500F, based on chipset GL841 — and decided to give a try at SANE using a remote access to Fungus during the day.

It turned out that:

1. the scanner is not supported by SANE (bad)
2. it disconnects itself from the USB bus when it receives data it does not like from the driver (good)
3. my first attempt at hacking some SANE parameters to forcibly attach the closest matching driver (sane-genesys) to the scanner caused the scanner to disconnect (bad, I was 10km away)
4. my second attempt (back home in the evening) involved actually changing the source code of the driver to extend its compatibility to the model of my scanner. It was met with the scanner disconnecting again (bad) and a kernel panic. (doubleplus bad bad)

No amount of quick-'n-dirty hacking would avoid me doing the work of the developers of sane-genesys. Since I did not have either time nor knowledge to proceed, I decided that my scanner would keep its place somewhere next to Vodka-Pomme.

Next attempt was plugging in an USB Creative WebCam which I sometime use to capture short movies or interact visually with friends over the internet.

It turned out that:

1. there is no infrastructure for video capture on FreeBSD, like V4L on Linux - therefore, no standard driver interface (kinda bad, mostly inconvenient since no generic capture program is thus available)
2. the only existing driver, a port from the Linux driver using a system glue adapter, does not compile out of the box — I had to manually tweak the sources to workaround some incompatible definitions of the system call "msleep" (some time wasted, bad)
3. the driver triggers a storm of kernel messages upon load (bad)
4. no data is actually returned by the driver upon request of a picture from the camera (very bad)
5. unloading the driver after the tests causes a very verbose kernel panic (doubleplus bad bad)

At this point I decided that my webcam would also keep its place somewhere next to Vodka-Pomme, and I abandoned any hope of using FreeBSD for multimedia purposes.

It was therefore obvious that I should focus back on my main project, which was setting up a file server.

That was easier said than done. Most of the data I want to serve is stored on two mirrored hard disks connected via USB. My primary goal is ensuring redundancy at all times, so that loss of one disk does not cause loss of all the data (sorry for stating the obvious). The secondary goal is to be able to take away one of the disk at any time to access the data using a different computer if needed, and still be able to plug it back into the main system afterwards and synchronize with the first disk. This later “feature” seems simple enough to me, and this is already what I am doing with the software RAID driver of MacOS X.

For this purpose, four different mirroring systems as available on FreeBSD:

• the plain CCD driver, quite simple and basic
• GEOM vinum, “traditional” way of doing things
• GEOM mirrors (gmirror), the recommended way with FreeBSD 5 and later
• ZFS mirrors, the latest and greatest.

All four work quite well and are (in my opinion) fairly easy to implement, although I am not yet sure whether I want to go for ZFS or if gmirror is good enough for me...

At this point my primary goal was within reach with no hassle, and I could focus more seriously on the secondary goal, the ability to take one disk away while the system is running.

Interestingly enough, it works quite well if you instruct the system to “say goodbye” to the disk before it is unplugged, by means of "unmount", "gmirror detach", "zpool detach" and so on. However, that is too much of a hassle. The point of USB is precisely to be able to unplug devices and expecting the system to recover gracefully whenever possible — and disk mirroring should make this possible if the other disk is left plugged.

Unfortunately my tests exposed the final blow to my efforts: FreeBSD cannot deal with disconnects of USB mass storage devices while the devices are in use. “The full fix will require a fair amount of rearchitecting.” Yeah, right, I don't really have that time to wait.

Now, I'll let Fungus rest in peace for a while, and I'll try reviving it later and see what good can come out of it. If none, I'll go for OpenSolaris instead.

Tomorrow evening I will be in a train to Paris, France, as a stopover to the French alps. A week of vacation and sports should follow. Assuming enough snow, I will be riding a snowboard for the first time in the 3 vallées.

Leaving for vacation is, by all means, no easy task. Besides the very basic need to guarantee a cash flow for what is probably the most expensive form of vacation on land, and arranging for minor details such as equipment, tickets and reservations, a number of items needed specific care:

• arranging water, food and company for the cat who will be guarding my apartment,
• battling with the French railroads company about the 300 euros that they owe me,
• explaining to the 8 people in my group who are oblivious to the art of cooking that rice and pasta are not a sufficient and healthy diet for one week of sport,
• preventing any sickness that could have assaulted me before my departure.

Now that the end (or beginning) is near, it becomes clear that at least half of the energy that this vacation is costing me was spent before I even left. In other words, planning a vacation to a place where everything is not taken care of for you is a real life project that needs appropriate resources — time, energy, cleverness, social interactions, business contacts, contracts signed and bills paid in due time, and the like. That may seems obvious to the seasoned vacation planner, but is new territory for me.

Considering that my other vacation plans for the year include at least 12 visits to friends in various places in Europe, as well as serious culture tours around the Netherlands, and attending some conferences for my curiosity's benefit, I have now decided to plan budgeting energy and time to organize my travels.

Sometimes, I long for the days when leaving for holiday was (and hopefully will be) simply a matter of saving up enough cash and catching the first plane to my destination…

• go to a gay bar, dance like crazy, hook into a random guy's eyes, exchange two times two stupid^Wsimple conversation lines, kiss, fondle and dance together, play tongue catch with an ice cube, and then leave the place with no real intent to see him again-

check.

Well, I still left him my number. He's cute and kisses well. I would not mind a followup.

The main reason behind my receiving my mother and brother at home for the two Christmas days was to take a point across to myself (first) and to my family (next).

It has to do, of course, with emancipation. I needed to make a statement, make it clear that the place I call “home” is now the place I am living in and not anywhere else. That I am fully able to be in charge and host an elaborate family event. And allowing them to peek around freely at the various queer items laying around my place was part of the story, too.

And all went well, much too well.

They made me feel that I was doing well, but exactly as good as they were expecting me to do. And I knew it. I did my best for the event, knowing in advance that it was expected, would be “appreciated” but would not create any feeling that I was treating them in a special way.

When I think about it, I see either that I was raised with insanely high standards of making other people feel at ease without them even noticing, or that my family was totally insensitive, as if we had no ability to be positively surprised, or acknowledge with genuine gratitude as special token of attention.

Either way, it is quite a disaster for my mood and my ego, and a serious drawback in my social life. I come to be very careful with all guests, whether I like or dislike them, and provide a level of attention and service usually unexpected from them; although it is totally "natural" and un-exceptional for me.

I've been explained once that if I was a woman fifty years ago, I would be considered “ideal wedding material.”

But!

The first issue with this situation, now, is that I have absolutely no idea of how to make someone who is special to me, feel special with me.

The various attitudes displayed by other people, used for seduction purposes and considered as “attentive” or “caring,” strike me as totally obvious and common. I do that all the time, and not for seduction — so then, if I want to do “more,” what's left? Besides, I tend to show very publicly that this behavior is automatic for me; with time, people who become closer to me get used to it and their expectations raise, too.

The other issue with this situation is that I become gradually “out of reach” for the other way around. This behavior of mine tends to make people believe that I also have high expectations, that I need a lot of display of attention and care to become impressed and notice. Although it is not true (I am really easily impressed) it comes through this way quite often because I tend to keep my feelings for myself — another habit carefully learned from the family environment.

Hence comes another resolution for 2007: actually show that I am happy instead of keeping it for myself.

Activity on the workplace has been quite hectic for the last few months. Increase in work load, decrease in business, environment changes piling up one over another, conflicts, political dances, uncertainty… Although I could handle everything until now, I was spared nothing.

Yesterday I felt that I reached my limits. I was stressed when I went to sleep, for the first time since my arrival in February. I had a few nightmares. I was angry when I woke up.

One of my projects for the day was to skip work pretending to feel unwell, to remind my supervisors that my technical skills should not exempt them from paying all due respect to my well-being. To explain them that the situation they let me put myself in is precisely the kind of situation I have been running away from multiple times in the past. I felt as if “they” put me in a position where I was not meeting expectations and not knowing how to perform better. I felt betrayed in my trust in our relationship.

But then I blinked my eyes and I was enlightened.

I realized that I would achieve far more interesting results by trying to state my concerns and work a solution with “them,” instead of running away from the situation. Because I feel I now have the power to change my surroundings and make people adapt, instead of the other way around. Decide to be part of the flow and work to shift it where I want to go, and not fight against or get out of it.

This is a huge personal achievement! My first of the kind in a lifetime.

Now I'm relieved. The pressure is still there, but the stress has disappeared.

I guess that feels like growing up. What a life.