Why My Life Sucks

Mother tripped and fell. Twisted her ankle, so I’m taking care of her today.  There is a trip to the local urgent card place in my near future, plus fixing the local version of $WeSellUsedMacs’ web site.

There is no end to my joy and happiness. Looks like a repeat of the ‘07 storm. Happy happy happy.

However if it’s even raining around 8:30 I’m staying home. I’m not getting iced in at $WeSellUsedMacs

Even after the great upgrade I’ve got to jump through way more hoops than I like. Flaming hoops on fire with real fire! There legacy system used a weird packet of data, but was relatively compact and easy to deal with. Not so with the XML version.

Also, some time in the last 10 years, Ingram Micro changed how often PRICES.TXT get updated AND stopped removing dead items from it. They now have a daily file with all the items they have in stock for that day. PRICES.TXT is weekly, but may have items that are currently out of stock and have not a chance of being in stock. Fixing this my number two project.

Never upgrade an OS X server. Bite the bullet and do a full nuke install.

I’ve got a OS X version 10.5.6 server that is still running 10.4 version of PHP.
That version of PHP doesn’t really support XML. FedEx’s spiffy b2b interface is all done in XML.

So, tonight, I upgrade $WeSellUsedMac website’s version of PHP. Lord I hope it doesn’t break any thing.

Seems that $WeSellUsedMacs was broken into last night. 3 laptops and 2-3 G5 towers are gone, plus a broken display case.

In other news FedEx XML is my primary goal for a while.

For the 4th Christmas in a row, I find my self totally broke, as in I owe the bank money AFTER I make my deposit. Days like today make it hard to keep going. Panic attack at 10:15 at work, followed by finding that I’m over drawn by more than my check was for. Going to make going to the doctor tricky, it is.

Actually, my mother’s roof sucks. The “cheap” price to fix it for “12-20 years” was $3,900. Some one is coming by to look at it this morning for a second price. I’m going to ask the roofing guys in my office building to come out and have a look at it as well.

If your at your local full service food store, and your in the line for other than normal services (i.e. sending money to your sister in what ever little town she lives in on the east coast), the following are not things you want to hear from staff or other customers

• “Need to reboot the whole coin counter system, it’s giving away to much money”
• “I’ve got a fist full of lotto tickets here. Some are winners and some are spit cup fillers. Can you help me out here darling?”
• Any thing said by or to a mother with 5 children in or on the cart.
• “Blood clean up by butcher block, blood clean up rear aisle
  10″
• Can I send money to Nigeria today?

Steakhouse, AKA the big boy of $WeSellUsedMacs, was offered a bonus plan. Please note that this a plan that did not lower is current rate of pay, and if I understand is correctly should have been worth while. Steakhouse wanted an hourly raise. PHB of $WeSellUsedMacs was not going for that, and attempted to explain the bonus plan. Steakhouse quits over this.

That right, one of my Cow Orkers quit a job, one that he has held for 9 plus years, and is mostlikely the one he was suited for in the local area, in the middle of recession, because he was offered a bonus plan. One based on monthly sales, just before the Christmas seasons starts up. Where is my clue stick?

However as of today, I’m the longest “daily” employee here at $WeSellUsedMacs. This bothers me.

Not a major thing, but this morning, after telling every one at work I was going to be be in early to do some server maintenance work, I over slept, plus arrived at the office with my shirt on inside out.

UPDATE: My ride was 15 minutes, more or less, late in picking me up. This lead to more drama than it should. I know they aren’t doing it to make me feel small and worthless, and that they don’t think that window shopping in a bead store is more important than me, but that is how I feel, even with my meds. Fragile ego, I has it.

Update 2: Lost a kitten. Not as in killed, as in couldn’t find it. Found it, in the mouth of Brandy, the non-hyper MinPen. We are charitably assuming she was trying to carry it some where. Kittens and Mommy Daz cat moved to lockable cat carrier for the night.

OK, 10.5.6 fixed a lot of the issues I have with, to the extent that my humping around mac has been converted to 10.5.6, KDE 3.5 running. Not quite as well as it did under 10.4.11, but Good Enough. The Big Mac isn’t, normally, it does has an external drive that can boot that way, but that’s it’s normal way.

But that’s not what I hear to talk about.

What I’m hear to talk about is the fact that OS X isn’t really Unix, it’s some sort mutant almost Unix.   Not quite like say, AIX, but close.

For example, it does use the various Apache text configure files.   However, if you make even one change “by hand”, you are fucked if you use the GUI to do any thing, in that it will, with out warning, nuke your changes. This really applies to SSL related configurations. That doesn’t effect most web sites, just, oh ones that need to get credit card numbers, like say $WeSellUsedMacs

Here is the thing that really chaps my buns about it, however.     If you poke around on something that really does need the GUI, like, for example,   the mail server (OK , yeah, I could go in a beat up on postfix’s main.cf, but life is to short for that),   at times, your web server control files get stomped on.

This is sub optimal.

It’s really sub optimal if your mail sever’s anti-spam/anti-virus thing has gone off the tracks and is eating 50-70% of the CPU time, resulting in a web server that seems to be running on a 386sx machine.

I did mention, some where that our mail server and our web server are the same physical machine right?

Any rate, after fixing the damn it’s a freaking pig in deep mud speed issue (Field fix.   Turn off the spam filter), I then get SSL related issues, because it (OS X’s GUI Server interface) mangled the Apache files.   Thank all the small gods for back up files.

This is a list of things that Ice-rocket found for my site in the last 3 weeks or so.   Not all of them, of course.   Some of my replies are snark, some are advice, some is deadly serious.   I leave it to the reader to figure out which is which.   Spelling and punctuation to the left of the : marks are from Ice-rock.   Errors to the right of the : are mine.

Leading off the pack, once you get past all the various versions of “[why] my life sucks”   is

1. Bristol Stool Charts:   Color me a surprised shade of brown.
2. lunesta drinkin:   Dude, just don’t.   It’s a waste of a drink.   You’ll get about half to 2/3 down and pass out.
3. cannot rotate dell displays d600:   Not with build in software.   However this will fix it.   Get it.
4. winterborn acoustic:   I’ve come to like that version better than the electric. Cool song Either way
5. what is shelf life of midrin:   Don’t know.   Mine are pushing 2 years old and still work.
6. lunesta redhead:   Odd mix.     Don’t think it works as a date rape drug, so that just makes it weird.
7. firefox 3.05 sucks: Some one else aiming for a ban I see.
8. why does my life suck and what can i do about i:   Find a medical professional that you know and trust.   Listen to what he or she says.   You are not alone, even when it feels like you are.
9. why is the phone taking over my life:   There is that “off” switch.   Even land lines have a switch to turn off the ringer.   Rember, the phone is for you, not the rest of the world.
10. rants about how life suck:   You may or may not have come to the right place.
11. “classic+traveller”:     Check out Mongoose’s version.   They have cleaned up some of the oddness of CT, but it feels like CT, not TW:2000 ins space.
12. my life sucks without him in it:   This is a bad sign.
13. How stool in there life pictures of them:   I am going to assume this was a Britol Stool Chart search.   Yes, they have pictures.   Not to gross, but enough to get the idea across.
14. why does tulsa suck:   Because it can.
15. Is there anyway i can make:   What?   Seem to be missing a final word or phrase there.
16. install gsl c++ express:   I know what the GSL is.   I know what c++ express is.   I don’t know what they have in common, unless GSL doesn’t expand to what I think it is, which means I couldn’t help any way.
17. Amidrine is it good:   If you freaking need it, yes, it’s God like.   If not, it will make you feel like crap.   It will make you feel like crap even if you need it, but it beat the hell out of the migraine.
18. leopard 10.5.5 vs 10.4.11: Dude, just don’t do it.   Not worth the pain for the pretty mirror effects.   And it’s 10.5.6 now any way.
19. g5 drivers sucks:   Pretty much.
20. dungeons and dragons fourth edition sucks and D&D sucks:   Two folks aiming for banning.
21. classic traveller vs mongoose:   Hard call. I’d go with Mongoose today.   Ask me tommorow I might have changed my minds.     Both are available if you know where to look (legal copies), but Mongoose is puttting out new stuff.   Just ignore the weapons in the last 10 pages or so of Mongoose Mercenary or your head will explode.
22. why life start at 40:   You might want to talk to a right to lifer about that.   Hell, even pro choice people assume that once your out of the host body, your alive.
23. tehran sucks   and khomeini sucks:   Why, yes, it does.   Course he’s dead, but he still sucks.
24. michael kors suck:   Must Not Post Gay Joke.   But he seems so nice on Project Runway.
25. upgrading from 10.4 server to 10.5 serve:   Unless you really like pain, don’t do it.
26. author of why my life sucks: J. Michael.   That’s about as much as I’m going to give out.   Real geeks could find out fast enough, but if you don’t know how, I’m not going to tell you.
27. nambla suck:   Must Not Post Gay Joke.   And, yeah, they do.   Not the good way either.
28. don’t know who to contact at ft bliss:   The offical page is here Of course you have to play silly games with getting their SSL cert approved by your browser. Why all the browser people suddenly started to not trust .mil SSL certs is a question I’d like an answer to. Starting to chap my buns.
29. 10.5.5 trying to login into 10.4 server:   Assuming you mean the remote server admin tool that used to be so cool?   They broke it.
30. lunesta and two beer: equals a long nap.
31. macports vs fink vs gentoo.   Em.   I haven’t play with Gentoo on a PPC, but I have spent way to much time with on x86/x86_64 boxes.   If you got a working Mac,   I’d go with 10.4.11 and fink.   It’s my standard for mac machines.
32. moving Mail 10.5.5 to 10.4:   Oh, dude, I feel you pain.   I think the tool you need is mailbfr
33. damn small linux sata_via sata_via sata_via:   Why the sata_via three times?   I think it works with it.

Let’s start with my car.   Well, the battery.   It’s dead.   Need to get that fixed ASAP.   dur.   Should have done it this weekend.

Which brings us to “I feel like shit.”   More or less literally, given that I’m taking a crap about once every 45 minutes or so.   For the last 3 days.   “Lots of that virus going around” the doctor says.   My crapping eating habits, due to the various anti-freak out meds I take may also have something to do with it.

Then there is my VoIP provider.   I’ve got 2 routers, and two number, one one each router.   Each router has two phone ports.   I wanted to add a 3rd number to the second phone port of the first router.   This should be simple.   It wasn’t.   6 (six) calls, average time 40 minutes each, and 2 (two) supervisor level personages.   This did not make me a happy camper.   There service if first rate, assuming you don’t have to change any thing.

The Craptop’s hard drive died.   However, I have a cunning plan, and the fact that I know what to do with Gentoo now should make it an faster rebuild.   Bonus, the cunning plan will make the hard drive bigger.   Score all around!

Got a Doctor’s appointment later this week.   Need to tweak my Cymalta I think.   Current load doesn’t seem to be working quite right.

$WeSellUsedMacs is becoming more and more surreal.   Average life span of a tech working there seems to be about 3 weeks. When I’m the most knowledgeable person about Mac hardware/Software in the building they have problems.

Google.   Go back to the way iGoogle was before you fucked it up.   It fails to read RSS titles about 70% of the time and each freaking tab has it’s own settings.   This does not make me a happy camper.   Actually, just fix the RSS feed issue and give and option to apply setting and theams to all tabs and that would fix it.     I may need to go look at my Google Lab stuff, this might be a side effect of those.   More later.

Spammers.   “Comment Spammers” in particular.   Please use software to comment spam that at least tries to make it look like a real comment. The “comment” on the top of the Spam Karma reject pile is ‘22gy2zo5g0a0f8lg paucyh yhtrg’. This, of course, is really a link to really random web sites, but, come on, what happened to “This is very interesting web site. I will be back later” comment spam?

Well, off to see if the Jump Buddy has enough juice yet.

Adderall can cause rage like behaivor,   which I tend towards any way.     No, really, I do.   Today my lack of tolerence of fools, an oncoming Adderall crash and low blood suger level damn near made a perfect storm, possibly leading to my arrest and trial for manslaughter.

Let me explain.   No, there is to much, let me sum up.

We at $WeSellUsedMacs have a dude (and he is a dude, if you know what I mean, and I think you do), that comes in once or twice a month, asks dozens of dumb questions and general takes up time and space and never buys any thing.   He came in today and   I damn near killed him.   Dude has an old ass craptacular iMac that he wants to run some version i-freaking-life.     This machine can just barely run the version of the OS he has on it.     Could not understand that it couldn’t run an current version of iLife because it’s a 500mhz G3, and it iLife needs better than that, for any version made after 2005.   Also didn’t seem to understand that the 2005 version of iLife needs a faster machine to run parts of it or that he didn’t have a fast enough machine AND didn’t have a DVD so the iDVD application would be non-functional.   Then the dude sits there and lies to me.   Example:   as a point of fact, the default setting   for Tiger (aka OS X 10.4) is to check, weekly, for software upgrades.   The current release is 10.4.11.   Dude’s machine, “Which I had on the Internet this morning” is running, and I use that term loosely, 10.4 dot nothing, i.e. never been updated.   The fact that he didn’t know what software update was means, in general, he didn’t know how to turn off the default, or, again, he was lying to me, either way, not a good idea if you want to stay on the good side of the only person in the store that will talk to you.

Once we had established that we did have a version that would run, more or less, and that we did not have the 2004 version, and that we could not get it we get a copy of the CD out of the back room.     As an aside, I have no idea why we keep something in the front and some things in the back.   It’s 30.00 item, no need to keep it under lock in key.   Any rate, it turns out that he may or may not have enough cash on him, so he wants to know if he pays cash for it now, can he come in later (like 2 or 3 days later), get the cash back and put it on his credit card.     Ah, no, and WTF, Over?   Next he wants to know what our policy on software returns is.   We don’t have one, (or more accuratly, you can’t return opened software or software that doesn’t come sealed).   Next “One more quesion ‘My father has this G5 that has iLife installed on it and iMovie doesn’t work, why?’”

Damn if I know or care, and I’m damn sure not going to attempt to trouble shoot it with out seeing it.   Told him that the only way that we could find out would be to check it in for service.   I can pretty much tell y’all that we’re going to get the 50 buck diagnostic fee up front.

One the craptop front, I’m done to the last one in the “fix the fucked install” update, and I’m going to try the uber build in a few.     If you’re going to do things like this, made damn sure that you have screen installed so you can log on and off the machine as it does this long ass sort of thing.

Update:   Not done with the fix emerge.   Have a conflict in the use flags on the last freaking item.   Fixed that and relaunced the fix emerge.   This results in only one package needing to be install.   Woot!   Might get this done today.

Updated update:   Needed 2 items after all the conflicts were resolved.

Let’s talk about Apple OS X Leopard.   The server version.     Upgrading from “Tiger” or 10.4.11 to “Leopard” or 10.5.5 has a couple of issues.

If your a old school Unix person, and keep your stuff, for what ever reason, in the /home vs /Users (where the Apple folk you should keep them, fascists that they are) please be aware that the upgrade is going to make the /home directory appear to be empty.   Don’t panic.   It really didn’t nuke it, despite what some web pages may tell you.   You need to go into the /etc directory and edit the auto_master file.   Either delete or comment out (# as first character) the line that has /home listed.   Once you do this, reboot the box and your old /home directory will come back.   You may unclench your ass now…

Next, play close attention to your mail.log file.   The upgrade doesn’t tweak your postfix main.cf file, which may or may not be good thing, because it DOES upgrade the version of postfix.     Depending on what you have set, it might need to add a few lines to reflect the new options that postfix has.

The one thing you do want to do is turn on the spam filters.     It kicks of the ass.   I created a special mail box to redirect the mail marked as spam to.     So far, in the last week, it’s taken in 23,303 pieces of email.       Oddly enough, Thunderbird marked all of those as junk mail when it connected to the server.   Funny thing that.

As major server upgrades go, it’s fairly pain free.     I don’t want to talk about desktops right now, I’m still fighting to get X11/KDE3.5 up and doing the right thing.   More about that once I do know what it going on with that.

I work, more or less part time, at $WeSellUsedMacs.   It’s a mainly web based business, and I’m the de facto System Admin and Webmaster.

I’m also on Adderall, which among it many weird ass side effects is a tendency toward “rage like behavior”, (i.e raising voice level and speed of talking) which, as any one that knows me, isn’t really something you want me to do.   I’ve been doing it a lot of late, aimed at my cow-orkers (and yes, I’m splitting it that way for a reason.   Search out the Scary Devil Monastery for   details, I’m a monk there, inactive I will grant).   Any rate, I know, given the volume level of my unloading on several of them, that the owner has heard me do it, yet, strangely, because what I’m unloading on them is for basically not working, he doesn’t seem to care, and in fact, may be supporting me.

As I’m found of saying, “Don’t know, don’t care.”.   If he tells me to lay off, I will, other wise, well, damn it, they will do their jobs, or at least do there job well enought to not make mine actively harder.   I’ve already established that I’m not going to lie to the boss to cover their actions and they know it.

This might turn out to be fun, or at least a good way to level stress, or at least transfer it to some one that needs it.

I haven’t posted in while, not because my life doesn’t suck, but because I don’t post about family members issues. Let’s just say I’ve spent a lot of time at or near the Pink Palace on the Hill over the last few weeks.

Plus, well, dealing the [REDACTED]’s city inspection teams. My back yard is now down. Grunt.

I am going to post about my Cow-orkers some time soon, however.

But, just to show you that my life has ALWAYS sucked, here is a story of mine that I pulled from UseNet about some of my time in the US Army.

[fx type="army_story"]

“This is no shit” [1]

This would have been in 1979, early spring, at Ft. Bliss Texas. I was going to my first AIT (24Q10). I was assigned to the “Student Battalion”
of the “School Brigade” of the Air Defense School. Also attached to the brigade was the International Student Battalion. At the time the US was trying to
be nice to various Arab states, among them Kuwait. Kuwait had bought some HAWK ADA systems and was having some troops trained there [2]. At any rate,
one group of trainees had finished and had gone back to Kuwait. Leaving the American army to clean up their mess they left behind. Note that where
“Attached” not “Assigned” to the ADA School, and while they were in school, no American Officer or NCO had been in their areas. Each class of
the US Student battalion (each about 30 some odd troopies) was given a half of a floor to clean (a Shower Room and say 30 rooms). We were (at
the start) given 3 days to do this. We arrive, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and went up to the 3rd floor. Gagging noises. Stench like you can
not begin to believe. Knee deep trash over the hallway. Holes punched in the wall. Our class leader, a fellow Student (who re-uped with change of
MOS) took one look down the hall and said “This is going to take more than 3 days” and ran down to the staff folk to tell them that, leaving me more
or less in charge (I was a PFC at the time and was the ranking private in the detail). I wander down to hall to the shower room, where, lo unto my
eyes I find a semi butchered goat hanging in the shower stall, and a small grill in the vestibule for the shower. Of course this is May, in El Paso.
They had been gone for, at this point about 4 days. You can guess what state of “ripening” the goat was in. The long and short of it is, while I
have not been a janitor by trade, I have cleaned up some rather gross things, not of my own choice or making.

[/fx]

[1] All Army stories start off this way. Required by law, I think.

[2] Having seen what are supposed to be the best of the Arab ground forces (Air Defense, to counter the Israeli Air Force), I no longer wonder how
the IDF did so well in ‘67 or for that matter in ‘73 or ‘80 or why Desert Storm went the way that it did. Not real good troops, IMAO