2010-05-28 • Brasil
Today is the 28th of May and we have been in Brasil for almost two weeks. It is winter here and not at all hot like in the summer but the temperature stays around 22° C to 30° C during the day and drops a few degrees in the night so I can´t say I´m suffering.
So far we have resided only in my family’s house in Peruibe. I know the iron bars covering the windows makes it look a bit jail like but it is actually I quite nice house. This small town however, is really not my cup of tea. In a sense it is home but in another it is so terrible small in all ways. Especially during winter time, Peruibe is more or less empty. I need more movement than this to feel good. That is why it is going to be a really nice break to go to Rio for a few days next week.
Work is going quite well. I never thought it would be this easy to focus down here but I have had a good start and soon I need to have a meeting with my manager and the project stake holders. Unfortunately that is a bigger problem than I originally expected. I cannot understand for what reason they complicate things so much here. The Internet connection (some kind of PPPoE ADSL connection) has been a huge problem area since I first plugged in the cable.
First I had trouble with a Windows 7 bug which I managed to resolve after almost one entire day of struggling. It seems that the modem is somehow assigned with an IP address through regular DHCP and then the connected computer is assigned a local IP address (192.168.1.x). That would be enough one would expect but I then need to log in through a PPPoE connection. Bizarrely enough, whether or not I could connect seemed to be completely random. Since my router broke down and given that they are super expensive here, we decided that we would share the connection by switching the cable from my dad’s computer to mine. It worked for a while but then it gradually went from being able to connect to sporadically being able to connect to not being able to connect at all. These are the dialogs I´m presented with...
Not having access to Internet at home has become a real pain. A technician was supposed to come today at 9 but the way it works here it doesn´t really mean anything. He will probably not be here until Monday. If they aren´t showing up today I´ll go down to the Internet café again tomorrow (where I´m uploading this). I can´t say that it is the easiest of tasks to focus with all the noise and people running all around but it´s better than nothing. I think the modem is broken but if you have any other ideas that could help me, please keep me posted.
