Geekism is universal
Apr. 22nd, 2007 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksSo, I get back from a two-hour walk in humidity that I am not used to, have a shower, and hear the telephone ring. "Mr Birks? We are coming to fix your broadband connection".
I had been planning on heading to the lounge for the free non-alcoholic drinks happy two hours, but instead I had the joy of watching two people attempt to fix my laptop, which, to be honest, I would happily throw through the window.
The connection in the room is fine. We worked that out as soon as the spare laptop ws plugged in and the nice yellow light started blinking.
On my laptop, nothing. Well, not quite nothing, because the connection is working. But the TCP/IP bit isn't. When we look at DNS Address and IP Address, it says "unavailable".
And thus, as is the way with computer-related matters when IT people are involved (or not involved), an hour was wasted with no progress being made.
So, I brought the machine down to the lounge and plugged in the wireless connection. And, guess what, no connection (as was the problem in Hong Kong). So, it's nothing to do with the hardware. There's something odd going on in the software, but I'm buggered if I can figure out what it is. And neither could our Vietnamese IT guys, despite the fact that one of them spent twenty minutes talking to HIS boss, presumably the head of all IT in Vietnam.
I vaguely recall something similar happening on my main computer a few years ago, and I only got round it (eventually), by typing in the IP address manually.
+++++
This hotel is not as far away from the centre of the city as I thought, although I guess it is about half an hour's walk. Everyone in Hanoi travels by small motorbike and would not dream of walking for half an hour, mainly because the humidity necessitates wering light clothing and flip-flops (no socks) which are not good clothes for walking. Honda must have made a killing here. The net result of this is that, as a walking tourist, you are consistently assailed with offers of a motorbike cab, one of the standard means of transport. When you tell them that you WANT to walk, they smile with that knowing grin of "ahh, mad foreigner".
I wish I could upload some pics, because that would give you a better idea of things. There is a constant feeling of familiarity and alienation. Crossing the road is often a matter of gritting your teeth and praying that the oncoming bikes will miss you. I'm glad that I'm from London, where you have some idea of how it works. However, at one crossing, I was stumped for a good couple of minutes, until one of the chaps who had offered me a mototbike ride, said "Go! Go!" presumably assuming that, if I failed to follow his advice, there would be a newspaper headline of a mad foreigner dying of old age while trying to cross the road. So, I went, ducking and diving like a good'un in some weird impersonation of a video game where, if you lost a life, you probably lost a life. I made it to the other side.
Hanoi retains something of an early to bed and early to rise philosophy. It gets dark around 6pm and the shops start shutting up. The restaurants don't tend to stay open that late either. Part of this may be due to the perpetual power shortage in Vietnam, but I suspect another part might be linked to the good old Vietnam War, when Hanoi hardly wanted to keep itself lit up at night.
After escaping the shopping quarter )(without summoning up the courage to bargain for anything, although I will have to tomorrow, if I don't want to run out of clothes), I observed several games of street badminton -- clearly a favourite in Vietnam, and a couple of guys playing what I can only call "kick badminton" -- an odd mixture of volleyball and football, but played with a shuttlecock.
On the way back, via the bridge across the West Lake, I espied the opportunity to partake of "Swans Trampling On Water", which turned out to be pedalos in the shape of a swan.
What struck me about Hanoi is that a large percentage of the population seem to be scraping a living whatever which way - bars selling beer that are little more than a couple of upturned beer crates and a small table on the pavement. In fact the pavements are frequently impassible because of bars, motorbikes, or whatever. There's far less distinct delineation between "in" and "out" Homes have balconies that slowly become living rooms. Shops have deep dark backs, and yet do most of their business at the front.
While scratching their living, people seem to spend time talking to their friends. But you do have to wonder at the level of poverty in the countryside if it's worth the while of someone to walk the streets selling a few fruit. Their income can't be much more than a couple of bucks a day.
After the long walk to drenchdom, it was back to the hotel, shirt bespattered with sweat. I actually weighed myself before going out and after coming back, and I lost four pounds in two hours.
So, the body clock is still messed up, and I don't fancy spending $20 on a meal downstairs. Neither can I really face going outside again. Richard Herring writes about the misery of being alone in hotels when on tour, but at least he can drink a few beers in the bar, whereas I would be restricted to diet cokes or something equally disgusting. Compared with that, reading a book in bed seems positively enervating.
That said, I feel okay, just guilty about hiding in a hotel room when I should be "out there, discovering the city". Christ, why should I feel guilty about it? God knows, but I do.
What are the chances of my laptop getting connected before I check out of the room? I'd put it at less than 50%.
(Later)
Yes, we have hotel room lift-off. As suspected, for some reason the computer was not automaticaly detecting the IP and DNS Server address. As not suspected, the connection takes place even though my "broadband connection" remains disconnected. No, I don't understand it either. I shall probably have fun with this machine when I get back to my own broadband connection (assuming, of course, that that conection is restored when I get back home).
So, can I upload some pictures?
Well, no. Not via my usual means (tinypic). This is because Tinypic informs me that uploading from Vietnam is impossible because "this country has violated our terms of service". Makes you wonder what must have happened for an entire country to be banned.
I may seek out alternative routes.
Meanwhile, I'm going walkies.
Oh, and breakfast was very nice, TYVM.
(Later Still)
Yes, I think I've found a getaround. I can only seem to get the pictures at 320x180, or whatever, rather than the 640x360 that I want. But, well, beggars can't be choosers.
Hong Kong Haze
Take Off From Hong Kong
Hanoi Airport
A Room With A View
A Street Scene: Hairdressers, Kid playing
Up The Revolution!
Old French architecture. Notice also the ubiquitous telephone lines/power cables.
Even in Hanoi, sometimes shooes just go beyond the pale.
"I think you'll find it's my right of way here, sir."
"Hey, fuck you!"
Ground Level: Birks risks death and destruction for the sake of a picture. Vietnamese bike rider looks down on mad foreigner.
I had been planning on heading to the lounge for the free non-alcoholic drinks happy two hours, but instead I had the joy of watching two people attempt to fix my laptop, which, to be honest, I would happily throw through the window.
The connection in the room is fine. We worked that out as soon as the spare laptop ws plugged in and the nice yellow light started blinking.
On my laptop, nothing. Well, not quite nothing, because the connection is working. But the TCP/IP bit isn't. When we look at DNS Address and IP Address, it says "unavailable".
And thus, as is the way with computer-related matters when IT people are involved (or not involved), an hour was wasted with no progress being made.
So, I brought the machine down to the lounge and plugged in the wireless connection. And, guess what, no connection (as was the problem in Hong Kong). So, it's nothing to do with the hardware. There's something odd going on in the software, but I'm buggered if I can figure out what it is. And neither could our Vietnamese IT guys, despite the fact that one of them spent twenty minutes talking to HIS boss, presumably the head of all IT in Vietnam.
I vaguely recall something similar happening on my main computer a few years ago, and I only got round it (eventually), by typing in the IP address manually.
+++++
This hotel is not as far away from the centre of the city as I thought, although I guess it is about half an hour's walk. Everyone in Hanoi travels by small motorbike and would not dream of walking for half an hour, mainly because the humidity necessitates wering light clothing and flip-flops (no socks) which are not good clothes for walking. Honda must have made a killing here. The net result of this is that, as a walking tourist, you are consistently assailed with offers of a motorbike cab, one of the standard means of transport. When you tell them that you WANT to walk, they smile with that knowing grin of "ahh, mad foreigner".
I wish I could upload some pics, because that would give you a better idea of things. There is a constant feeling of familiarity and alienation. Crossing the road is often a matter of gritting your teeth and praying that the oncoming bikes will miss you. I'm glad that I'm from London, where you have some idea of how it works. However, at one crossing, I was stumped for a good couple of minutes, until one of the chaps who had offered me a mototbike ride, said "Go! Go!" presumably assuming that, if I failed to follow his advice, there would be a newspaper headline of a mad foreigner dying of old age while trying to cross the road. So, I went, ducking and diving like a good'un in some weird impersonation of a video game where, if you lost a life, you probably lost a life. I made it to the other side.
Hanoi retains something of an early to bed and early to rise philosophy. It gets dark around 6pm and the shops start shutting up. The restaurants don't tend to stay open that late either. Part of this may be due to the perpetual power shortage in Vietnam, but I suspect another part might be linked to the good old Vietnam War, when Hanoi hardly wanted to keep itself lit up at night.
After escaping the shopping quarter )(without summoning up the courage to bargain for anything, although I will have to tomorrow, if I don't want to run out of clothes), I observed several games of street badminton -- clearly a favourite in Vietnam, and a couple of guys playing what I can only call "kick badminton" -- an odd mixture of volleyball and football, but played with a shuttlecock.
On the way back, via the bridge across the West Lake, I espied the opportunity to partake of "Swans Trampling On Water", which turned out to be pedalos in the shape of a swan.
What struck me about Hanoi is that a large percentage of the population seem to be scraping a living whatever which way - bars selling beer that are little more than a couple of upturned beer crates and a small table on the pavement. In fact the pavements are frequently impassible because of bars, motorbikes, or whatever. There's far less distinct delineation between "in" and "out" Homes have balconies that slowly become living rooms. Shops have deep dark backs, and yet do most of their business at the front.
While scratching their living, people seem to spend time talking to their friends. But you do have to wonder at the level of poverty in the countryside if it's worth the while of someone to walk the streets selling a few fruit. Their income can't be much more than a couple of bucks a day.
After the long walk to drenchdom, it was back to the hotel, shirt bespattered with sweat. I actually weighed myself before going out and after coming back, and I lost four pounds in two hours.
So, the body clock is still messed up, and I don't fancy spending $20 on a meal downstairs. Neither can I really face going outside again. Richard Herring writes about the misery of being alone in hotels when on tour, but at least he can drink a few beers in the bar, whereas I would be restricted to diet cokes or something equally disgusting. Compared with that, reading a book in bed seems positively enervating.
That said, I feel okay, just guilty about hiding in a hotel room when I should be "out there, discovering the city". Christ, why should I feel guilty about it? God knows, but I do.
What are the chances of my laptop getting connected before I check out of the room? I'd put it at less than 50%.
(Later)
Yes, we have hotel room lift-off. As suspected, for some reason the computer was not automaticaly detecting the IP and DNS Server address. As not suspected, the connection takes place even though my "broadband connection" remains disconnected. No, I don't understand it either. I shall probably have fun with this machine when I get back to my own broadband connection (assuming, of course, that that conection is restored when I get back home).
So, can I upload some pictures?
Well, no. Not via my usual means (tinypic). This is because Tinypic informs me that uploading from Vietnam is impossible because "this country has violated our terms of service". Makes you wonder what must have happened for an entire country to be banned.
I may seek out alternative routes.
Meanwhile, I'm going walkies.
Oh, and breakfast was very nice, TYVM.
(Later Still)
Yes, I think I've found a getaround. I can only seem to get the pictures at 320x180, or whatever, rather than the 640x360 that I want. But, well, beggars can't be choosers.
Hong Kong Haze
Take Off From Hong Kong
Hanoi Airport
A Room With A View
A Street Scene: Hairdressers, Kid playing
Up The Revolution!
Old French architecture. Notice also the ubiquitous telephone lines/power cables.
Even in Hanoi, sometimes shooes just go beyond the pale.
"I think you'll find it's my right of way here, sir."
"Hey, fuck you!"
Ground Level: Birks risks death and destruction for the sake of a picture. Vietnamese bike rider looks down on mad foreigner.
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Flip-flops
Date: 2007-04-22 09:09 pm (UTC)As a matter of fact, I'm wearing flip-flops now, at this moment. Not planning to go anywhere other than bed, though.
-- Jonathan
Feeling violated
Date: 2007-04-24 12:41 pm (UTC)I suspect (c), myself.
The internet connection is also bizarre, and it worries me, because I intend to go on a round-the-world trip myself, later on in the year. The problem is obviously at the server end, and equally obviously something to do with DHCP, in that it's not assigning an IP address to you. Hopefully you're using the wireless access software that came with your USB dongle, or whatever. If you're using the native Windows software, you could indeed be in trouble when you get back home, since the Microsoft stuff is apparently, ahem, not very easy to configure.
Probably all you will need is to reset the "IP Address" to automatic (thus DHCP), to re-enter your SSID, to re-enter your WEP password (assuming you use WEP security), and, possibly, to re-enter the IP address of your DNS server.
Simple, really.
If the viet-geeks have messed with your IP stack (and I wouldn't even know how to do this on Windows, so I doubt it), then you're in trouble. They'd have to be insane to do this. Geeks, in my experience, are two or three shots behind in the sanity handicap races.
This is actually a good reason to set a "restore point" before leaving for foreign climes. You're not going to be putting anything new on your computer, and at least this way you can easily get back to where you were ...
Not that this is a particularly helpful suggestion for you at the moment.
Re: Feeling violated
Date: 2007-04-24 04:29 pm (UTC)I know that on my base machine at home I actually assigned the IP address, because one day it decided that it wouldn't fetch one off its own bat. I don't think that I did this for the laptop, and, in any case, things had worked fine in LV (both non-wireless and wireless).
As for the SSID and WEP stuff -- well, no, I don't. And, yes, I consistently feel guilty about this, but I'm too scared to reset the whole caboodle,and I can't remember my password to access the Belkin site online, which is required to change all the settings. BT Broadband now spots if you aren't using their own system software, and offers to install it. But, well, with three wired connections and one potential wireless connection (I can/ ought to be able to use either with the laptop), the thought of spending a weekend of my life installing WEP is just too much. It will all have to be reset from scratch eventually, I know. I just keep putting it off.
So, to cut a long story short, they didn't mess with the IP stack. Apparently the problem was with the Network Bridge (Network Bridge) MAC Bridge Miniport, rather than the Local Area Connection (Network Bridge) National Semicoonductor Corp DP83815/816, or the Broadband Connection (which remains disconnected, but fails to stop things working as they should -- go figure) or the 1394 connection (Network Bridge) -- the still mysterious "1394 Net Adapter". This too is now disabled.
So, all in all, a total mess, but a mess that is working. I am not panicking. I'll sort it out when I get back.
PJ