Posts Tagged ‘whining’
command-line, learning, linux, software freedom, technology, ubuntu, whining
In linux on December 13, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Okay, lazyweb:
Why can’t I play DVDs and why, when I have installed in my computer two RAM modules of 2GiB each, does my computer have 2.9 GiB of the RAMS? Why?
On the DVD end, I have installed one million things and gotten from an error in Totem (“no uri handler implemented for dvd”) to Totem quietly crashing when I try to play a DVD. VLC spins the disk and then stops. /var/log/messages shows this after trying to run VLC:
Dec 13 13:10:02 luna kernel: [10853.901791] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Add. Sense: Media region code is mismatched to logical unit region
Dec 13 13:10:02 luna kernel: [10853.906376] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
Dec 13 13:10:02 luna kernel: [10853.906386] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current]
Dec 13 13:10:02 luna kernel: [10853.906397] Info fld=0x98d0
Dec 13 13:10:02 luna kernel: [10853.906402] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Add. Sense: Media region code is mismatched to logical unit region
Read the rest of this entry »
linux, software, software freedom, technology, ubuntu, whining
In learning, linux on May 13, 2009 at 8:13 pm
The Frankenserver must go. Today we were having a little bit of woah with the old Phorum installation. Does seem to get derailed, that one. More on that later: the net result was that Apache was choking to the point where I couldn’t even ssh into the machine. I phoned Ye Olde Rackspace, who confirmed Franken’s unresponsiveness and had the data center reboot it.
And for a split second I was able to get in and run top, which showed me a whole lot of apache processes. More than I’ve ever seen before. I quit top and tried to stop apache:
sudo /etc/init.d/httpd stop
That failed the first time but being a persistent sort of woman I tried it again. And then I called Rackspace to find out what they were doing. We have a support contract with them, you see, and I realized that … 1) I don’t want to work at cross purposes with their esteemed technical whiz-kids, and 2) I don’t want to do work someone else is already doing. I’ve got other things to do. Blogs to read. That was a joke, by the way. I don’t read blogs at work. Ever.
So I get them on the phone and whiz kid one says to me “well, I’m just going to restart apache here and see what that tells us.” What restarting apache tells us. And before I could say “hang on” he did. Just in time to snarl my request for the tail of apache’s error logs. It just went down hill from there, the upshot being that I mostly resolved the problem despite Rackspace. I’m done paying $350+/month for Rackspace. They aren’t earning it.
I’ve been moaning about this server for eons. When last we left off I was contemplating life without a service contract. I can see now that I don’t need this service contract. Liberating revelation, that one.
Elastic clouds scare me because I don’t understand them. Also because I don’t think I can have a static IP on a cloud. VPS I understand. So now I’m sketching my new server and workplan. Here’s what I think I’m installing: Read the rest of this entry »
command-line, myself, software freedom, technology, whining
In various on February 4, 2009 at 12:12 am
One: kid brother is trying to password protect photos of our nephew. Our nephew. Kid brother did not bear spawn. But he’s struggling with htaccess and authentication. Among other things that make it kind of difficult (besides just starting from scratch being difficult) he’s stuck with FTP access. So here is the story, loosely.
Let’s say you have a directory. We’ll call it “hamish” just because that is a nice word. Yiddish, I think, for “cozy” or “familiar.” So you have a folder called /srv/apache2/example.com/hamish/ and you want to password protect it. You need a password file. You can make it in a text editor, call it .htpasswd and stick a line in it like:
waffle:N.KP5MOATfaew
If you know what a waffle is, or was, species-wise, you’ll be able to work with me. Otherwise, just figure someone’s user name is waffle and their password is not maple syrup. Unless it is. You could just use that line for now, or you can generate your own using the htpasswd command or using a random web gui. The latter method does present certain security issues, but it is convenient. The other file you’re going to need is the .htaccess file, and assuming your .htpasswd looks like mine and is called .htpasswd and lives in /srv/apache2/example.com/hamish/ then your .htaccess will look about like this:
AuthType Basic
AuthName “Not Just Anyone Can See This”
AuthUserFile /srv/apache2/example.com/hamish/.htpasswd
Require user waffle
Upload those two files and you’re good to go. Anyone who knows from waffle will be able to log in. It is true that you can do a lot, possibly even a shitton, with htaccess, but the easiest place to start is basic authentication.
Two: whining. Which goes about like so: last night, we were through debating the relative merits of naming an unnamed collaborative project Palante Tech (we decided against usurping Palante just yet) and we were almost through debating Flickr and Facebook and privacy and I said something about Gallery and how it frustrates me that I can’t get webdav to work. And dkg said something like “well, if you’re using F-Stop you can just export directly to Gallery. Why not do it that way?” I was just whining. I didn’t expect a solution. But sure enough, if you enable the remote module in Gallery 2 (and probably Galleries one and three as well) you can use f-spot to tag and name and order your photos and then export them to your gallery. I don’t really have many photos that aren’t of my wedding, so I haven’t uploaded any yet, but I’m definitely done storing my own photos on Flickr as of yesterday. Meantime, I’m uploading even more photos of Vermont fields.
Maybe I’ll eventually get rid of that dagged WARNING: block core.NavigationLinks doesn't exist. error, too.
If I whine about tags and tagging in WordPress will someone fix that for me, too? I want to choose from my existing tags. Grump.
bicycle, Brooklyn, politics, urban, whining
In various on October 23, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Got a ticket this morning, and had to stand on a traffic island with Brooklyn Bridge-bound cars whizzing by while I waited for Officer Illegible to write me up.
Apparently, you aren’t actually allowed to ride a bike from the bike lane on the street to the bike lane on the bridge. Because you have to enter the crosswalk to do so. You’re supposed to wait until all the cars coming up Tillary get a green turn signal, and then cross their path to get to the bridge. Read the rest of this entry »
command-line, learning, sed, technology, whining
In various on September 4, 2008 at 6:12 pm
What if I had a shitton of ancient shtml files that all, somewhere near the top of the body, contained a line like “BEGIN MAIN CONTENT”?
What if I wanted to wipe everything above that and substitute some include script? I’d use sed, right? Read the rest of this entry »
databases, design, learning, linux, technology, ubuntu, whining
In various on August 26, 2008 at 7:05 pm
OpenOffice has a database app. It has come a long (long, long) way over the last few years but uff is it ever just not there yet. I do need the query browser. Things you can’t do with OOo Base include add a fulltext index. Not with the gui because the gui doesn’t know that much, and not with the query browser because it balks. CREATE FULLTEXT INDEX `FILER_NAME` ON `commcand` (`FILER_NAME`); gets me an error (“syntax error, unexpected $end, expecting BETWEEN or IN or SQL_TOKEN_LIK”) in Base’s interface (“Run Query”) but worked just fine at the mysql command line. Same for “SHOW INDEX FROM tablename“. Works fine at the command line, OOo balks.
So OOo Base isn’t just translating between the two.
I’ll probably update this post as I come up with more new and different things to complain about.
command-line, php, technology, whining
In various on July 28, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Okay, so I’m getting someplace. I’ve got my chompy stuffs into an array. I’ve got it all in PHP. But now I need to sort a multi-dimensional array by a value in the second array. I’ve got an array (events) that contains each event as an array. And I want to sort by the date of each event.
<?php
#$datafile = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."[...]/featured_data.pl";
$datafile = "testdata.pl";
$upcoming = array();
if(is_readable($datafile)) {
$lines = file($datafile);
foreach($lines as $line) {
$explody = explode("|",$line);
array_push($upcoming, $explody);
}
print "<!--";
print_r ($upcoming);
print "-->";
$ordered_events = array_reverse($upcoming);
foreach ($ordered_events as $value) {
$str ="> <a href=\"/http://www.abcnorio.org/pcgi-bin/suite/calendar/calendar.cgi?request=detail &website=default&event_id=".$value[22]."\">";
$str .= $value[8];
$str .= "</a> ";
if($value[0] == $value[1]){
$str .= $value[2];
} elseif($value[1]-$value[0] == 365) {
$str .= " every " . $value[5] . " ";
} else {
$str .= $value[2] . " through " .$value[3];
}
$str .= " (".$value[10].")";
$str .= "<br><br>";
echo $str;
}
} else {
echo "Could not open ". $datafile ." for reading.";
}
?>
Brooklyn, whining
In various on April 27, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Just hung up on the customer service automaton. I was having such a nice morning, but after the third time that my phone went on a wringing binge, I decided to call. First, they have no service request on file for my number? How’s that? I tried filing one on the website but got no response. Now they need me to look up my most recent bill–why? I’m calling to say the line is broken. I could be the squatter living on the roof calling to say the line is broken. The line’d still be broken. Read the rest of this entry »
technology, whining
In various on February 5, 2008 at 6:54 pm
In which s27248.example.com is my box and 11.22.33.444 is my IP address. So AOL is right to complain to me. Now I need to figure out how firstlady.ca [70.54.215.82] is managing to use s27248 (a fine name for a box if ever there was one) as her SMTP server. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes.
Read the rest of this entry »
command-line, technology, whining
In various on January 29, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Was the mustache game fun? (tell me I didn’t miss anything).
Will they who come after recognize that these little text files named “meep” and “feh” came from me? Is this my footprint?
Why does grep think that text files aren’t?
25 Binary file ./suggests/insert.php matches
26 Binary file ./suggests/insertcat.php matches
Is it grep what thinks that? Similarly, is there a batch operation that will let me fix the file formats of thousands of files with ^M where they mean to have line breaks? Read the rest of this entry »
event, letters_home, san-francico, todo, whining
In various on December 5, 2007 at 4:16 pm
I might go see this on Friday.
By the way, am I missing something? I thought San Francisco was going to have municipal wifi by “early 2007″ — what gives? Of course, then I’d be missing the view I’ve got from this cafe mezzanine. A view of a rather burly barista who has been holding an impossibly young infant in one arm while making sandwiches and ringing up customers with the other. And making espresso, which he seems to have down. I’d be worried about babies and scalding steam, but he’s a chill dude.
learning, linux, ubuntu, whining
In various on December 5, 2007 at 1:37 am
Sometimes, especially in website work, you want to make a lot of changes to a lot of files, all at once.
If you use Textpad this is a fairly straightforward proposition. If you use BBedit, same story. If you’re a linux user, though, you are kind of up a creek. KFileReplace is just plain weird. It can’t do multi-line searches. You can’t actually store or edit search patterns. You can store parts of them but then you can’t really retrieve those in any kind of logical way.
What I want to know is not why KFileReplace stinks. It is okay, it just doesn’t really do enough. Their help files contain the rather mind boggling dismissal of regular expressions:
If you want search for every string that starts with “x”, “ht” or “u” and ends with “ml”, you can write a regular expression like this: (x|ht|u)ml. Insert this expression in the search editor, click OK, and enable regular expressions by toggling the Regular Expression button. Please note that using regular expressions lets you to make very complicated searches, but the cost could be a performance degradation. Regular expression can be very tricky, and it is often the case that “if you want to solve a problem with a regular expression, you have two problems”.
So I get where they’re coming from. What I don’t understand is how it is possible that people using GNU/Linux don’t need to do batch, multi-line, regular expression replacements. Is this just a web developer thing, and web developers haven’t historically used Linux? Is this a sign that I’m not a real programmer, my desperate need to find and replace across 44,000 documents?
Am I missing something?
organizing, software, technology, whining
In various on November 1, 2007 at 7:25 pm
After all my moaning about trying to get technology support from a forum, I should probably report that I did sort out my most recent flummox, something I could not have done without the drupal support forums.
Meanwhile, we’re using two proprietary products in our work, and I’ve been consistently struck by the limitations inherent to proprietary software as illustrated in both cases (one an email list delivery tool, the other a live chat application. I’m not going to name names because that isn’t really the point at all.) Both are hosted apps, which takes a huge load off of my shoulders (especially the list delivery. whew!) but it also means that I really can’t touch the source code on either front, no matter how obvious the fix might be. I want to rejigger our chats so that new responses appear at the bottom of the screen rather than the top? They’ve filed that request away. Maybe one day they’ll get to it. I want to make “Multipart MIME” a default list subscriber format, instead of “HTML” or “Plain Text”? That’s nice that I want to do that. I can make a list of about a hundred things I’d just go fix if I were running the software myself. I don’t have that option, and in one case we’re paying a fair bit of money to beta test someone’s chat software. Not as much as a lot of their customers, but enough that we feel it when we right the checks. In the other case, I double-dog can’t complain because we’re getting a fantastic service, gratis.
Nonetheless, I’m feeling the frustration of fundamentally not being at liberty to fix what is broken. On a very practical level, this is what happens when software isn’t free.
command-line, storytelling, whining
In various on October 25, 2007 at 1:11 am
Some of you know about my ongoing debate with dkg about documentation and public lists. Or publicly archived lists. We go round in circles about whether all lists should be publicly archived by default. In free software communities, public list archives are an important source of information, context and technical support. In political organizing communities, lists can be much more complex, places where people are exploring political and theoretical ideas that they might be embarrassed by later.
If I say something foolish and naive on a technology support list, and then years later a colleague finds it, people will understand. They’ll believe that I get it now, that my grasp on Apache configuration syntax has grown. If I say something foolish and naive on a political list, though, that can haunt me for years. Even if it doesn’t hurt me in some objectively measurable way, it can sting. Even if you aren’t worried about embarrassing yourself one day, it is a little creepy to realize that anyone with a web browser can assemble a short history of my life and career by following posts I’ve made to various mailing lists over the years. I don’t like it.
On top of that, I firmly believe that a bit of privacy facilitates frank and honest conversations. We can learn together as friends if we aren’t broadcasting our every exchange. I’m certainly more comfortable working that way. I treat my posts to large lists very differently than I treat small ones and on the whole I am much, much less likely to weigh in on a conversation that is widely archived because I feel more pressure to fine tune my thoughts and carefully edit my phrasing. I like to look good. I know not everyone does, or maybe I know that not everyone judges “looking good” on the same terms, but I take pride in my prose.
So we go back and forth, dkg and I. Read the rest of this entry »
command-line, linux, truth_in_advertising, whining
In various on October 24, 2007 at 6:01 pm
I manage some servers with a small group of guys here in En Why See. We just built a new server and so far, the version of Vim we are running doesn’t support color coding. I found some How To that actually makes the whole process sound redunkulously complicated when I’m about 100% sure there is an easier way. A package, I’m guessing.
I don’t really want a teachable moment here. I want someone to say “I think that you’re looking for vim-full. The vim package doesn’t include any of the color syntax files.” That is all. If you know, maybe you could fill me in. If you don’t know, no big thing. I don’t know either. Just thought I’d ask.
Read the rest of this entry »
drupal, technology, whining
In various on October 19, 2007 at 10:25 pm
I’m working on migrating our forums into drupal and struggling with a simplish thing. Not so much struggling as idly contemplating, but you get the idea. Right now, our homebrewed CMS requires someone (not me, thank fsm) to create a forum for the article manually each time an article is added. That is crazy talk, in my book.
In my book, anything you do more than twice and don’t script is crazy talk, and Oates has had to do this at least a thousand times. My head just exploded. Seriously. Read the rest of this entry »
capoeira, local, various, whining
In various on October 3, 2007 at 1:20 am
C’mon? I know, it is a great hulking piece of sturdy furniture and craftsmanship be damned, you don’t want it either. Bah and pheh.
I finally have a name, and it isn’t stupid, which makes me really happy. Moreia, because apparently I play like an eel. Shy and deaf with bacteria on their teeth.
art, technology, various, whining
In various on October 1, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Beth Kanter pointed me to a few videos about Creative Commons licenses and how to use them, but I am still going to share my little rant, thinly disguised as a series of Frequently Asked Questions. These are questions frequently asked of me, by all kinds of people (many of who ought to know better). Questions like … Read the rest of this entry »
command-line, learning, linux, ubuntu, various, whining
In various on September 19, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I realized that I do have a smallish file that I’ve been tinkering with that would do for these purposes: We’ll call it SVG Sample.
I’m still annoyed that there isn’t any documentation of how Dia handles SVGs, but I’ll get over that. Or I won’t, but either way it is my problem, this inability to let go of small, small things.
Dia’s diagram tree shows exactly one thing (object? Is it an object?), “Standard Image” — it displays the various nodes all assembled together as a single image. It doesn’t recognize this as a group of images.
Inkscape recognizes the individual objects (nodes? are they nodes?) but fails to recognize the edges as connectors.
Kivio asks me to “select a filter” from the options “Kivio Document” and “XML Document.” The first (not surprisingly) fails with an error along the lines of “this isn’t a Kivio document” which is cool. We’re all on the same page so far. The latter filter then wants me to import an XSLT configuration but doesn’t show me any I can import. Not exactly a brick wall, but it isn’t getting me anywhere, either.
command-line, linux, technology, ubuntu, various, whining
In various on September 18, 2007 at 6:31 pm
I do these things to make myself crazy. I use command line tools and free software and I call it cool. From time to time, however, I hit against these walls where there is something I cannot do and cannot find my way around doing and I spent an eternity trying to do them or find documentation on them and still …
This is bordering on one of those rants where I’m all “I will punish you by not using your tools anymore if you don’t help me, dammit.” except that there is no one to punish and no one to yell at. Still, I may file this one under “Free Software Doesn’t Work” for the next time someone tells me that there is nothing (nothing!) that Windows can do that Linux doesn’t do better.
And then I wind up being scolded by some free software zealot as though I’m saying I can’t be bothered to figure out why my OOo Spellchecker uses british spelling. I want to edit a flowchart. I have it in graphml format and in svg format and both Inkscape and Dia will open the svg at least, but I can’t find anything like reliable information about how to get DIa to do more than show a single snapshot of the whole svg. I can’t muck with the individual nodes, which sort of defeats the point.
various, whining
In various on September 17, 2007 at 6:00 pm
I’ll spare you the details of my recent downward spiral of circular exchanges with Cablevision customer service (can a circular exchange spiral downward? I’m not sure.) because I lack the energy for a blow-by-blow. Suffice to say that their might army of help desk automatons has reached new lows. Read the rest of this entry »
command-line, learning, various, whining
In various on September 14, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Inkscape.
Create an SVG flowchart in Graph::Easy, save the .svg and open it in Inkscape. Ungroup.
That is all. I was trying to do this in Dia, which was making me crazy because it wouldn’t let me ungroup the vector graphics that made up my flowchart.
learning, linux, technology, various, whining
In various on September 13, 2007 at 7:59 pm
As long as I’m suffering, puzzling through trac installation, I may as well lobby for some votes.
Look here, friends. If you use Dreamhost, you know you can vote for things you want them to do. I don’t really know whether they count votes or just do this to make the likes of me feel better, but on the off chance that our votes are counted, maybe you’d consider doing me the immense favor of casting your vote for one-click installs of Trac?
What do you say?
Here are a couple of other suggestions presently in the box that I think could be helpful to the likes of me who’d like to be using Trac on Dreamhost:
command-line, linux, various, whining
In various on September 12, 2007 at 6:58 pm
I’m trying to get Trac running, halfheartedly following some instructions for installing Trac on Dreamhost, but they don’t make any sense, so I tried some script thing that seemed to work, generally, but leaves me a foot short of the finish line. My installation doesn’t quite work, and I’m not sure where to go from here. Phooey.
I want to be able to manage (or at least view) a few different repositories and I’m hoping that when I get this all sorted out I’ll be able to do that. It would be nice if I could do that from within one Trac site, though I’m having doubts galore.
command-line, linux, security, ubuntu, various, whining
In various on September 12, 2007 at 6:32 pm
I’ve managed to avoid encrypting my email thus far because encryption isn’t secure, it is silly. Or I can make it sound silly if I talk about it enough. Plus I don’t do anything interesting. Now, though, I want help from this developer and he wants to communicate entirely in GnuPG form. He gets to decide that — I’m the one asking him for help.
Since I’m stuck doing this, I’ve gone ahead and posted my public key.
If you start using it, don’t expect miracles, since I check my email via IMAP from all kinds of places an my decoder ring doesn’t travel with me.
I’m secretly kind of confused, too. I can’t really explain what confuses me, which is never a good sign. I know that dkg wants a bit more from me, before he’s willing to trust that email really did come from yours truly. I am supposed to sign messages, but then you all’d have to get my public key (same key? different?) from a key server, or from me directly, to confirm my signature. I sort of understand some of this, you see, but there are layers of enough and I am not really sure how many I’ve peeled back.
learning, linux, mapping, technology, various, whining
In various on September 11, 2007 at 8:16 pm
I’m puzzling madly over this.
How to get a chart to move over, then down. And over. Then down. It should be straightforward, but I can’t work it out. I’ve tried a lot of things. Read the rest of this entry »
learning, linux, technology, various, whining
In various on September 7, 2007 at 8:19 pm
Without getting too deep into why I can’t use Visio (I don’t have MS Office) or OmniGraffle (They don’t make that for Ubuntu) or Dia (I’m fussy), I settled on Graph::Easy because I am a dork and thus anything that you install via CPAN …
So you have a million manuals and even a cool demo site, so I know that my text works fine. Yay. Read the rest of this entry »
Brooklyn, letters_home, local, storytelling, various, whining
In various on August 25, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Dubin insisted the other night that she does read my blog even though it never makes any sense. I used to offer at least a few more updates about my life as a whole, I think.
The more time I spend with writers, the more I think about writing again. Really writing, not writing about how to use code. Not that it gets me anywhere, but I do think about it. I spent the weekend bouncing around the Hudson Valley with Lex and Tarikh, eating pie and corn and letting the immense quiet settle around me. 
I’m re-learning how to enjoy this world, missing stumbling upon things like this. Also, I lost my toothbrush. Dang.
I had a longish debate the other night about the One Laptop Per Child project, which everyone seems to assume I’ll love (computers! amanda likes computers!) nevermind that they’re semi-useless hunks of manufactured plastics, or that it is a classic story of international aid that we’re always building schools and never hiring teachers.
Today, I’m working. This is part of the puzzle, that I took on a full time job and it is a code-y job and I think it might have been a terrible mistake but I’m going to stick it out for now and see if I can challenge myself to make something of it without someone else whisking me off to make something of it for me. For now, I’m a little bored, which is scary and not the sort of thing you’re supposed to blog about.
I’ve been finishing things. The BaseBox has been done for a while, and Mayfirst’s Organic Internet book is out. And yet, the list of things to do is still longish and rote. How’d I end up with so many chores? Type minutes. Upgrade operating system. Repot carnivorous plants in something attractive (buy things. Meh.) Frame prints — more buying things, and last time I tried the clerk at the frame shop was so bizarrely rude to me that I was deeply demoralized and walked out without buying anything. Taliah says to go to Soho Art Materials instead.
Is that what you were looking for, or was it something different? I’m never sure.
technology, ubuntu, various, whining
In various on August 3, 2007 at 4:57 pm
I’ve commented before about the regex searching in Quanta (the feature list promises this, the help files say that you ought to rethink how badly you need to do it and then offer no further assistance …)
Now I’m needing more love and not getting it. Sight.
Quanta is still the best thing going in the GNU/Linux programming suite world (You know different? I’m all ears!) and yet, it kind of stinks.
All I really want is basic functionality of the file tray, tag completion, color coding variety. Quanta does most of these things. Or it does these things most of the time. It also supposedly supports some kind of built in SSH action, but I can’t seem to find it. FTP is the only protocol available for remote projects, and Google isn’t helping so far.
linux, ubuntu, various, whining
In various on August 1, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Now, with updates!
Stillwell, for the uninitiated, is my new computer. A Dell with an unfancy screen (I wanted a fancy screen. I won’t deny it.) and 100G hard drive.
I’m settling in okay and ready to upgrade ole Brahms to Feisty Fawn. Thankfully, a search for “codecs” in my very own archives got me to a rundown of how to install the bundles I need to listen to WNYC at work (note to self: get a DC adapter for your radio already. Streaming radio is silly when you’ve got an actual Aiwa with its very own antenna sitting right there.
A few things are still making me batty about Stillwell, or Fiesty Fawn or computers in general, though:
nuptuals, Stating the Obvious, various, whining
In various on July 25, 2007 at 3:12 pm
I met someone just now, I think the conversation went “oh, you’re getting married, you should totally read this book …” to which I said “you are about to tell me about I do but I don’t,” to which he said “yes…”
A few notes here. One, this is obviously an aging post. I already got married. Two, I recently had an encounter that has left me seething and so this stuff is on my mind. These strange conversations where I’m trying to be polite Read the rest of this entry »
Brooklyn, local, traffic, truth_in_advertising, various, whining
In various on June 16, 2007 at 11:43 pm
It is 7:30, and N just called me from Dollar, where he was supposed to be picking up our rental car so we can drive off into the sunset. “They’re saying that because we live in Brooklyn, there is some kind of $55/day fee? Does that sound right?”
So I go to their website and sure enough the fee is clearly stated in their general policies–their site actually says the fee is $77/day for Brooklynites. Apparently this isn’t even news. So, hang on to that Michigan drivers license or don’t rent from Dollar.
Jerks.
New York Rent-a-Car is friendly and obliging:
New York Rent A Car Inc
(718) 275-9155
333 Adams St
Brooklyn, NY
And plenty of our friends swear by Speedy’s on Union:
Speedy Rent-A-Car
(718) 783-0800 800 Union St
Brooklyn, NY
learning, news, politics, technology, various, whining
In various on June 16, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Before I signed up with Constant Contact I asked around a bit. The consensus seemed to be that no one much cares for them and no one can really articulate what is so wrong with them.
One woman (alternative energy, DC. Her card is on my desk at work) said that you couldn’t slice and dice as much as she wanted. Fair enough. We send a lot of emails and didn’t really need to slice and dice that much. For what it is worth, it is pretty hard to slice and dice at all. She did have a point.
Now that we are thoroughly off of their platform, I thought that others might benefit from a brief run-down of why Constant Contact did not work out for us. For one thing, their customer service is for shit. There are all kinds of questions that they must know the answer to, some where deep down, but they will insist, insist, insist that there is no answer. For instance …
- Their interface doesn’t work with Safari, for no good reason, and though they obviously are doing some browser sniffing they claim to be unable to provide any type of requirements or list of browsers that do work.
This is the catch: when you try to use Safari, you get a message saying that your browser won’t work with their software. It isn’t just that it doesn’t work, they’re doing browser sniffing and saying “Safari won’t work” explicitly. And they won’t tell you what they’re sniffing for. It is crazy making.
Safari incompatibility isn’t the end of the world except that our editor has something wrong with her Firefox installation (I haven’t looked at it beyond confirming that it sure doesn’t seem to work.) and I just don’t think it is so much to ask to get a list of known good browsers.
- Their “compliance department” maintains a secret blacklist. Should you choose to link to someone who once wronged them, they’ll lock your account, not mention that your campaign was never sent, make you wait on hold for ten minutes and then tell you only that the linked URL is forbidden. Nothing else. No explanation of why it is forbidden, specifically. No apparent understanding of how unnerving it might be to have your account locked without warning.
And no, they can’t tell you who else is on the blacklist. You’ll just have to wait and see. At least one irreverent NYC newsweekly is on there, though.
After a fair amount of hemming and hawing, they did finally explain that the blacklist item we’d triggered was a former customer that had been using the system to spam people. You aren’t supposed to do that. Fair ’nuff. But all we did was link to them.
- While we’re on the subject, their interface is for shit. You can figure that out for yourself when you do a trial, but it certainly makes the list of reasons to use just about anything else.
And the slicing and dicing? It is pretty bad. Say you have a subscriber and you want to figure out why he gets three of everything. You’d want to search your lists for a particular contact, right? Good luck.
We’re on What Counts now and it rulez.
[tags]whining, technology, learning, politics, news[/tags]
ecology, economics, politics, Stating the Obvious, sustainability, various, whining
In various on May 16, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Mir tipped me off to this newscast about some nice people who brought kites to poor suffering African children and made them smile. Nothing about the newscast was any more or less inane than most of the rest of the evening news, but since I did watch it, I’ve been really stuck on the fact that I don’t have the language or the figures at my finger tips to really tear it apart.
Read the rest of this entry »
audio, learning, software, technology, ubuntu, whining
In various on May 7, 2007 at 4:13 pm
It is no secret that I’m kind of flummoxed by audio on Brahms. I recently got annoyed enough to send a moderately unhelpful “someonehelpmefixthisplease” query to a list I’m on. I got some response to the tune of “read the Ubuntu forums” which prompted me to try a friendlier list (and to threaten any forum-deflectors with a swift kick to the shins). Maybe it was the threat of violence, maybe it was just that radical techies are good people, but I got some great responses, which I’m filing here for future reference.
Read the rest of this entry »
linux, technology, whining
In various on May 5, 2007 at 2:08 am
I’m still getting the hang of managing a high traffic webserver, but learning that MySQL has some good administration statements. So do other databases (programmers do like to say that MySQL is lacking in all sorts of ways that I am only slowly learning to appreciate) but if you’ve got MySQL, SHOW TABLE STATUS is an incredibly useful tool. If you’re not sure whether a database (or table) is still in active use, for instance. The data_free column offers a clue to which tables are wanting optimizing (meaning that a large number of rows have been deleted).
[tags]whining, technology, linux[/tags]
radio, whining
In various on April 17, 2007 at 12:49 am
Here is my suffering, laid bare for you to witness. WNYC has gone and replaced whatever moderately acceptable talkshow they had on at 8:00 PM, my cooking hour when I’m lucky enough to be home in time to cook coincident with there being groceries suitable to cook with, with the worst *(^@@#$! show ever. Seriously, I can’t imagine how Fair Game or Faith Salie could possibly suck more, unless maybe she had Howard Stern as a co-host. Faith is vapid, vacuous. She flirts ridiculously with every male guest, not just “tee hee, you’re cute” flirting but “after the show we can get butt naked and I’ll rub you up and down with some kind of sexy oil” flirting. I don’t want to hear that while I’m washing dishes, thank you all the same.
She had Kathy Sierra on last week–the woman is famous for getting death threats on her blog. Unlike Faith Salie, she is a pretty interesting person who I was sort of interested to hear from, but Faith managed to avoid asking her a single substantive question. Not one.
So for the love of my sanity, fleeting though it may be, I need your help finding me something else worth listening to at 8 PM. News, if you please.
[tags]radio,whining[/tags]
learning, linux, technology, whining
In various on March 29, 2007 at 2:01 pm
I’m sniffing around for ideas on how to mount an OSX Disk image (a .dmg file) in Ubuntu, and I stumbled on this thread which has some other good Ubuntu ideas. I was tempted to ask there for advice, but apparently, before I’ll be allowed to comment I have to try out:
Audition to become a commenter. To become a registered commenter on this site, you first need to be approved by our team. We’re looking for comments that are interesting, substantial or highly amusing. So write a comment, polish up your words and choose a username and password below. Your comment will only appear once (or if) you’re approved.
I call bullshit on that, but it could be for the best. I think I can live without Lifehacker and they can live without me. Hmph.
So I’ll post my question here, where I’ve already passed the try-outs:
I want to mount an old OSX Disk Image, but it won’t just mount. I’m not really sure how to begin deciphering the missing piece. Is there a filesystem doodad to install? (speaking of which, what is the technically correct way to refer to a package like smbfs? It isn’t a file system, it is a thing that lets you read a file system. Not a utility either. So what?) OSX is based in FreeBSD so it can’t be impossible to mount .dmg files, but it sure isn’t obvious to me how to make it happen.
[tags]technology, whining, linux, learning[/tags]
software, technology, whining
In various on March 2, 2007 at 9:22 pm
It has been a while since I bugged Marius to make some adjustments to make Gtimelog easier for me to use. He did make some adjustments and he left me (and you) an updated version of his Time Tracker.
It wasn’t in the Ubuntu repositories, though, and I was too lazy or embarassed (or both) to ask what the heck one does with some .deb file. Here is what you do with it: dpkg -i filename.deb Simple as that.
If you are studying apt and dpkg, here is a nice how-to that got me over that particular hump.
This was all such a victory of the lazy web, you don’t even know. I mean, I wrote a blog entry about something that didn’t work the way I wanted it to, and a total stranger read that blog entry and fixed the something for me.
Thanks Marius!
local, traffic, whining
In various on December 1, 2006 at 2:37 pm
I can’t find the entry just now, but I know I moaned and groaned not long ago about the bizarre and unbelievable revelation that the Parking Violations Bureau has no mechanism for reversing parking tickets that were paid with stolen credit card numbers.[1] It seems they’ve finally caught one culprit, a lone dude who was paying people’s tickets at a discount to them. It doesn’t sound like they’ve done much to improve their system, though.
[1] In case you need a refresher, my credit card number was used to pay for, among a great many other things over the course of about a week, a handful of NYC parking tickets. Summer of ’05 or so, this happened, and it was a pain in my butt because once they’d established the abuse, my card was cut off, never mind that I had (foolishly) called them back from a payphone in a park in the woods and was going to need my credit card to get home. Not long after that incident, I got a call from some city office–they were trying to track down the parking tickets that had been paid because of course Visa took their money back and since the city had cleared all these tickets, they were wanting their money. I spoke with the woman for a while and agreed to provide various records that would help them track down any patterns in their effort to identify the source of what sounded like a rash of stolen card numbers at the Parking Violations Bureau.
But when I got off the phone, I started thinking about a fairly obvious question: why not go back to their records and see which tickets were tied to those payments that had just been retracted. Because they can’t! Because they have no audit trail linking parking tickets to instances of payment. Which is how some 23 year old could swindle the Parking Violations Bureau. Because the folks who used his service never had their particular payment questioned, so they never got caught. Even when this was enough of a problem to put an investigation unit on the case, they still couldn’t figure out how to start tracking payments more closely.
drupal, noise, scheming, technology, whining
In various on November 30, 2006 at 4:28 pm
DKG has at various points talked about projects designed to “fix” email (which is fundamentally broken by spam) that would charge a penny a message. The idea is that when you start adding a nominal cost per message, spam becomes a wee bit more costly. Some smarty pants out there have even floated an incredibly complex proposal for a bonded system, where it costs me a nickel to send you an email, and if you accept my email, I’ll get my nickel back. So I can spam you, but I have to pay for the privilege, while sending real mail is entirely free. Or costs a nickel sometimes, like when you write a nasty late night letter to someone you don’t like and they decided to keep your nickel to be spiteful.
Fundamentally, it sounds like a good idea. Or at least an interesting one. Logistically, it starts to fall apart quickly, but I’m more of an idea person so I’m still interested.
Since we rebuilt the NOSI site, kicked out a zillion spam accounts, and cleaned out seven zillion spam comments, we get about six new user acount per day on NOSI.net. Once a week, a real person requests an account, so I don’t want to just delete the account requests wholesale, I actually look at all of them. Or some of them. Michelle looks at some of them. Most of the requests are pure spam and they piss me off. I’ve been thinking that it is time to institute a nominal fee for drupal site accounts. We could keep the money for NOSI or just give it back if you don’t put seventeen links to various reduced price pharmaceuticals in your signature. According to my records, if we had a dollar for every account on the NOSI site, we’d be rich right about now. Would you pay a dollar to comment on the NOSI site?
(While we’re on the subject of me and my bright ideas, another great idea of mine is a variation on Andy Singer’s car alarm that fits comfortably around your neck and jolts you with an electric shock every time someone touches your precious vehicle. I am hoping the persuade someone to introduce a bill in the City Council that would require all car horns to sound exactly as loud inside your vehicle as outside. So Pepsi Truck Guy wants to say hello to Other Pepsi Truck Guy? Fine. And he can go deaf doing it. And every SUV with Jersey plates throwing a horn-hitting-tantrum in his rush to get to the next red light? I want him to wake the baby sleeping in the back seat. It might be easier if the NYPD could figure out how to enforce existing laws that do say your horn is for e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-i-e-s and not general communication, but that will never happen. I haven’t actually gotten past my ow fantasy stage on this one. The car alarm folks have gotten a wee bit farther–there is actually technology that, while it doesn’t deliver electroshock therapy, does ring on your key chain instead of out in the street.)
linux, technology, ubuntu, whining
In various on November 22, 2006 at 2:23 pm
I keep thinking that I’ll eventually figure SMB out and use my deep and thorough understanding of it to write a clear post that will make legions of people just like me say “ahhh, I wish I’d read this before I tore all my hair out trying to make … work!”
It hasn’t happened yet, though. Read the rest of this entry »
linux, ubuntu, whining
In various on November 2, 2006 at 5:02 am
A break from Brad. I’m learning a new thing, denial. It works wonders for getting other things done.
(Other new things I’ve learned include that you can say things like “fuck you, you are so fucking rich, I want more than that” if you are rich and famous yourself. You can be as crass as you want at your own gala. I guess I knew that, but I still got to learn it all over again.)
Read the rest of this entry »
letters_home, storytelling, travel, whining
In various on September 26, 2006 at 6:11 am
In which the Turkish Airlines desk tears up my boarding pass without anything like a real explanation and no one can tell me how to dial an international number. Now I know that everyone knows that when you write +3 42139 80972 you’re meant to dial 00 in place of the +. I blame America for teaching me poorly. Add can’t use phones to my list of imperial measurement woes.
Read the rest of this entry »
learning, linux, scheming, ubuntu, whining
In various on June 9, 2006 at 1:41 pm
This blog thing is handy, I tell you. Seems like I just put up a list of things on my mind and then total strangers (and some old friends, but it is the total strangers that get me) they tell me the answer.
So this week, on my mind, besides for “where can I have a massively large wedding ceremony in New York City without spending an arm and a leg?” is …
rss aggregator I want a free standing, pretty (yes, pretty) RSS aggregator for Gnome. I don’t want a mozilla plugin, I have one of those.
sendmail I foolishly installed sendmail because I was testing out Evolution, which I am here to tell you sucks, and it kept crashing (see what I mean? sucks.) and so I kept setting out to use bug buddy, which wants you to have send mail installed, or else it leaves this totally useless text file on your desktop and you still have to go through the bug reporting system, you can’t just upload the bug buddy report. So I was thinking “sendmail.” Also, since my ISP is touchy about ole port 25, I was having trouble with SMTP. In Evolution. Not in Thunderbird, which does not suck, and which works just fine. Okay, so I started installing sendmail and realized that I could spend a lot of time for no reason and I instead went about migrating to Thunderbird (below). Now, however, when I start up Brhams hits a few sendmail snags, launching sendmail (which was never configured). That annoys me, because it means Brahms takes longer to boot. So, do I just apt-get remove sendmail, do I configure it properly, or do I take it out of init.d (and what is the right way to do that?).
Thunderbird Fun fact: if you are handy with a command line, migrating to Thunderbird from Evolution is easy as pie, even if you are a person with many folders. You have to use the internets to find your Evolution mail folders, but then you just have to copy everything over to where Thunderbird wants your mail stored, and do a lot of deleting. (If you’ve already got Thunderbird running, you might want to be careful about this, you can definitely screw things up here at the Velo, Rapido school of hacking.) But what I did, was I moved all the mail files/folders from my Evolution folder .evolution/mail/local/ to my Thunderbird folder .mozilla-thunderbird/330inone.default/Mail/Local Folders/
and then went through and deleted everything with “ev-summary” or “ibex” or “cmeta” in the title (you can construct a nice “find” statement for that) When I was done, all my mail was where I expected it. Like I said, I am aces when it comes to trashing things, so take all my advice with a grain of salt. But most folks said it couldn’t be done, the Thunderbird migration. The only catch was that when I next downloaded my email, I got every message in my inbox anew.
wireless support in Ubuntu is weak I have a wireless network at home. It is password protected. The key is not somehting I can remember off the top of my head. I want to store it in my computer and come back to it, but basically everytime I leave Kohlrabi (our network) Brahms forgets the password. I don’t really understand why Gnome or Ubuntu can’t save network passwords. It should. It is freaking annoying that it doesn’t.
Ouch, that was Loud I need to figure out the sound stuffs on this computer. Partly, I just want it to stop beeping all the dang time, though I like the “you have mail” beep. What I really want, though, is to tell it *not* to pester me while I’m on Skype. Somehow, I want to be allowed to have Skype override all the other sounds on my computer so that I don’t have beeping while I’m on the phone. This one, I haven’t even looked at yet. Just so you know.
local, whining
In various on May 22, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Once or twice a month, I receive a renewal notice for Women’s Day or Ladies Home Journal or Newsweek or some other magazine to which I have never subscribed. I throw them away. I know that some people don’t, because for the last two years, Harper’s Magazine has been carrying a warning about false renewal notices. I sometimes read that warning and think smug thoughts.
If you don’t know by know where I am going with this, you are dumber than me. That’s right. I was clearing up my receipts from last year and the Harper’s renewal notice, marked “Paid, 5/18/05″ looked oddly familiar. Right on the notice it says, in very small print, “Miss Hickman, you have been suckered.” (I’m paraphrasing here. I could fish the notice out, but I won’t. It says something about how they may or may not have a formal relationship with Harper’s Magazine, Inc.) I checked Harpers.org, and sure enough, my subscription was renewed for three years in 2003. It expires in October of this year. They haven’t gotten any payments from me since 2003 and the 866 number on the renewal notice has been disconnected. They certainly haven’t gotten any two year renewal.
I tell you this story, because I’ve also been subpoenaed to appear in person (I’m sure my father is going to tell me that this statement is somehow redundant) before the County Clerk because I didn’t turn in my Jury Questionaire. Lucky for me, usually a terrible keeper of records, I got my First Jury Eligibility Questionaire right after I discovered the renewal notice caper. In a very un-Amanda-like act, I carefully noted the confirmation number I was given when I responded to the Jury Questionaire online and filed the notice away. So I have something to wave self righteously at them when I appear. So at least I can be indignant when they yell at me. (And they do yell. Last time I had jury duty they were downright nasty to most of us.)
letters_home, travel, whining
In various on March 20, 2006 at 7:40 pm
I’m home for a few days to regroup. I didn’t go straight to Istanbul because I had a vision and the vision told me “go home first” and lo! Turkish Airways flies direct. Plus the 10 hour flight pales in comparison to the 18 I just endured so as long as I’m not sitting in the middle with a very sound asleep man with very bad breath between me and any movement, I should survive.
letters_home, travel, whining
In various on March 11, 2006 at 1:39 pm
I am a jerk.
I just wrote a nice long piece on ambulances and bicycle ambulances and Western NGO’s and Gov’t Aid organiztions that throw money around only to see it rusting in a corner a few years later, but I killed the window. See I was trying to look up a URL and it was taking too long, so I tried to go back to my blog entry, but that didn’t work, so I tried to … anyhow. Just moments after thinking to myself “i should probably save this” I closed it without meaning to. And now it is gone.
Probably for the best, some of it was maybe impolitic.
Cape Town nice; California Bikes heavy; mountains high; views lovely; always bring bike shorts when you travel. That was the gist of the travelog. This is actually a nice internet cafe and we’ve got a few more days in Cape Town so you might hear from me again.
learning, linux, technology, ubuntu, whining
In various on November 23, 2005 at 3:21 pm
It is the little things, you know?
Something, somewhere in this beastly machine ought to be able to tell me that a file is currently being edited by someone else. Instead, OpenOffice just crashes each time I try to save the document. That is bogus. It should know better.
linux, technology, truth_in_advertising, ubuntu, whining
In linux on November 11, 2005 at 1:55 pm
It is really the little things, like there isn’t a flash player for Linux on PPC. Ask too many questions and they’ll tell you that you don’t really need flash. Who needs flash? Well, me. For one thing. I like it. With a lot of searching the Ubuntu forums I finally confirmed that it really is a PPC issue. Nice to know I am not crazy, would have been nicer to know that without so much work.
So there’s two things you can do with Ubuntu on a PowerBook: skype and flash. Alas.
I’m hoping these fine gentlemen can get me situated: UbuntuPPC.info
learning, linux, technology, ubuntu, whining
In learning, linux, various on October 21, 2005 at 2:43 pm
Tags: linux, ubuntu, technology, whining
I installed Ubuntu on my (a) PowerBook g4, for all the wrong reasons (neooffice is so slow on OSX, Linux is kewl) and I am trying to adapt, but I have hit the following walls:
* IMAP: I finally decided to go the IMAP route since I am forever failing at syncing my various laptops and checking email efficiently. I set up some folders and things are going fine, but I am confused: if I create filters locally, on one computer and/or move files into folders, will that stick on the server? Also, if I make a folder locally, will THAT stick on the server?
* Plain Text: How the heck to I make the text formatting disappear in the Thunderbird compose view? Grrr. Also, how do I force everything to plain text, coming and going? I know I worked this out on my Mac, but I don’t remember how. I think it was tricky.
Thunderbird is also ignoring my quote messages inline settings for the account in the Local Folders, which peeves me.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plain_text_e-mail_%28Thunderbird%29
Never give up: the Thunderbird Knowledge Base set me on the path to the answer for this one, It is a combination of edit > preferences and edit > account settings ... that you are looking for here. Settings are sprinkled all over but it is at least possible to turn off all inline quoting and RTF emailing and force all messages, incoming and outgoing, into Unicode. Whew.
* Threading how do I get a “threading” button to appear on my toolbar? How do I make Thunderbird always thread all folders by default?
* Key Mapping: I don’t have an “alt” key, I only have one control key and suddenly my fabulous open apple keys are moot. To right click without an external mouse I have to mouse over and press f12 which is just weird. I want to do some basic keymapping along the lines of “the open apple is the control key” not map this function and map that function.
* Repositories: I don’t have a command line mysql client, and there isn’t anything listed under Add Programs that fits the bill. I don’t really know how to look at that gui interface and understand how to edit my repository list and I don’t know how find that in a text file, though I know it is there to be found.
* Music: I can’t get Rythmbox to play music off of the network. My music is on the network, is that so hard?
* Saving Files did I already gripe about not being able to navigate to an smb share in the open office save dialog?
meta, whining, wordpress
In various on October 21, 2005 at 5:16 am
Tags: meta, wordpress
I want (there must be?) a tag cloud plugin, and a tagging plugin that knows what tags I’ve used before. Also, I’ve just now realized that this textag plugin doesn’t connect like-tagged posts.
It was Ultimate Tag Warrior I wanted. Whew!
