January 27, 2004
Berkeley; how I hate you.
Other than being as left as you can get on the political-educational spectrum, they make a crappy perl database. DB_File ought to be chucked into the ocean and weighted down with a 1000 tons of concrete. Yeah, yeah, I know; it's free, but that's no excuse. Open-source is supposedly the wave of the future. Yeah, right.
The upgrade the the new blog server was supposed to be a cakewalk. The older server...a workhorse of a NT box, ran activestate perl 5.8 and DB_File 1.8. So, by all accounts, the new Win2k box should be able to run perl 5.8 and DB_File 1.8; right? Sure, so says all the docs. I even extracted the specific load of DB_File I had in perl, rather than EMACS myself a new one, just to make sure the versions work correctly.
Did it? Not in the least. After stopping the old DB and migrating it over, it just kept barfing up a lung everytime the DB was accessed. After a day and a half, I just gave up, installed MySQL and we're now running on that as a backend. But, MySQL had it's issues too. For some dumb reason, the daemon wants to do DNS lookups everytime you access it, but only when a Win2k client or greater hits it; so yet another problem we didn't see since the last MySQL I ran had an NT client and NT server; this one is 2K client and NT server. Well, buried in the docs is a way to make it NOT do that...another half day.
I think I'm just going to have to port movable type to MS-SQL. Really, it's the only damn stable DB out there that's easily maintainable
January 11, 2004
indiana legislature to full time
link to the story here. also info on the public forum to bitch about it.
January 10, 2004
another one hawking a book
honesty just doesn't exist anymore. it seems like everyone stumping for readers will say whatever they can just to get you to buy a book. keep in mind, this guy was fired (forced to resign actually) in 2002 from the bush administration as treasury secretary because he wouldn't go along with the tax cuts and the fact that his big mouth altered the market every time he opened it.
:hat tip to drudge:
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES:
Jan. 12, 2003:
O'Neill: 'I'm determined not to say any negative things about the president and the Bush administration'...
Jan. 10, 2004:
O'Neill: Bush's performance at cabinet meetings resembled that of 'a blind man in a room full of deaf people'...
January 09, 2004
a good friend will be missed
sadly, i'm shortly about to end a relationship that really hasn't lasted very long at all. you see, i got this bottle of small-batch Bookers from wendel late last october and we became very good friends. however, it was a one-sided relationship entirely...all i did was take take take. well, the takin' almost done, but it's provided me with great relaxation and time to ponder. these friends aren't meant to stay, but to flow in and out of our lives to make us reflect. we'll see ya around again sometime mr. bookers; now back to the house blends.
:hat tip to wendel:
January 08, 2004
don't call me a libritarian just yet...
but where are we going to be in a hundred years if the government (congress / president) keeps passing laws at the rate they have? every time i turn around it's president signed this, senate vote that.
at this point i think i'd like to double congressional pay as long as the job is reduced to a part-time position. have them come in at noon and work till five and then go home.
i'm probably as republican as you can get, but even i'm getting tired of all the spending; so much of it pork tacked on to bills specifically written to be politically undefeatable.
i'm wondering...even though the branches of government have checks and balances against each other; do we as a people have enough of a check against our elected representatives? sure, we can vote every 2 years; but the more i think about it, we can't remove enough of them each time around to dislodge the status-quo; and when we do, we keep sending men/women without enough conviction to do what they know is right. the old guard convinces them to tow the party line early in their freshman training.
i'm toying with the idea of specifically voting against incumbency in congressional elections. although, i'll still be leaning repbulican, if a republican running for re-election doesn't have a republican running against, i'm gonna have to vote the bum out. we need to get our congress reset so it has a healthy amount gridlock and uses it's time to pass meaningful and specific legislation.
January 07, 2004
More Lord of the Rings
In this installment, ex President, Jimmy Carter turns into a pussy.
January 06, 2004
preemption must be bad...because it works
North Korea seeks to rekindle nuclear talks
January 05, 2004
get the popcorn
i saw a preview of this last night, sans some final footage being prepared for the tuesday show to update the progress. if you have any space-geek in you, watch this.