September 2003 Archives

Tonight I started working on an appendix for the MySQL book, which deals with PHPMyAdmin. So, to start with, obviously, I had to install it.

After installation, I realized that phpmyadmin was now wide open and available, and people could (in theory) start beating up on the web interface to try and guess passwords to the DB. Obviously that would be bad, so I decided to protect it behind some HTTP Authentication stuff.

So I go into a different virtual host, copy out the relevant sections to the clipboard, paste them into the PHPMyAdmin virtual host. I'm smart enough to remember to change the password file. I'm smart enough to remember to change the AuthName to something else. I'm even smart enough to remember to do an /etc/init.d/apache reload afterwards.

What I'm not, apparently, smart enough to do is notice that I copied and pasted the config from a WebDAV host, which didn't have limits on GET requests.

I spent far more time than should be permissible trying to figure out what I was doing wrong that the requests were not generating "enter your password here" dialogs.

Ugh. There's two hours of my life I won't get back.

As anyone who has ever built a PC from scratch can tell you, there's an adage about how "the PC isn't done until the case has drawn blood" ... it's a maxim I learned to accept in the many years I was building PCs for myself or work from spare parts. Without fail, at some point in the equation, I'd slice a finger open and bleed all over the case.

Apparently, there's a similar rule for colocation facilities.

I was in our new cage, racking some PDUs in preparation for the first server installs next week. I'd been uncomfortable, but that was understandable. Crawling around on hands and knees on colo tile (the kind with all the holes for air venting) can be uncomfortable, even painful, so I paid it no mind.

Until I saw a big 3" x 2" smear of bright red blood on the floor. I touched it, it was fresh. I looked down at my shin... yup, nice thin 1" slice from .. well, something on the floor, who knows what.

Like I've always done with PC-case-bloodletting, I let it dry in place. It's a testament to my (literal) blood, sweat and tears from the installation.

Tabbed chat-windows. There's no need for me to have three or four different 200x200 windows open, most of which are sitting idle waiting for a reply. Let me have one 200x200 window with tabs across the top for everyone I'm chatting with online.

*ring*
DB: Hello?
*click*
(looks at Caller ID, sees the now familiar "SCHNEIDER, SHARO - 845-679-0591")

*ring*
DB: Look Sharon, no matter how many times you call this number, Woodstock Taxi will never be on the other end, it's just the way it works!
*click*

10:45pm
*ring*
DB: Hello?
DF: Woodstock Taxi?
DB: (Looks at Caller ID, recognizes it from the other day) Fucking 'ell lady, this isn't Woodstock Taxi!
*click*

11:10pm
*ring*
(Looks at Caller ID)
DB: THIS IS NOT THE GODDAMN CAB COMPANY!!!
*click*

It's funny, too, because I always give the Caller ID a second look, because Dumb Fuck's name is "Sharon Schneider" (and, obviously, I was married to someone with a very similar name, so I always double-check to make sure I'm not about to scream at the ex when I pick up the phone).

So, since Dumb Fuck didn't learn her lesson the first time, I'm open to suggestions on how to handle it if she persists in calling here looking for a cab company. This time, she got her name published. Maybe next time she does it, I'll publish her phone number. Then you can all call her from all over the country/world and ask for a cab. ;-)

As anyone who has a cat will know, you can get infinitely more "cat enjoyment" mileage out of the free stuff (milk-jug cap-rings, empty boxes, etc.) than you can from the high-priced "cat toys".

G'Kar, the younger of my two cats, has been in cat heaven for the last week or so. I'm in the process of building out the new colo facility for The Pit. That means there's literally dozens of empty boxes all over my apartment — server boxes, switch boxes, cable boxes, you name it, it came in a box and I've got the empty box somewhere in my living room or dining room area, while I prep the hardware that came in it.

Which, of course, gives the cats lots of places to hide from one another and pounce on each other as they go by.

They're going to be disappointed the beginning of next week when it all starts vanishing...

The National Do-Not-Call list, set to go live October 1st, has been put on hold pending a court case. The Direct Marketing Associations claims free-speech will be impeded, blah blah blah.

Free speech guarantees you the right to say something, it does not guarantee you the means to say something. I've got every right to choose to not have my service, which I pay a monthly fee for, used to carry your telemarketing crap.

I'm sick of phone spam (telemarketers) and I'm sick of e-mail spam. My snailmail mailbox is filled each day with 95% junk mail. Pretty much the only communications medium that's still usable in any sense of the word is face to face communication, and that doesn't really scale well.

I'm about ready to move to Montana, live in a cabin somewhere in the middle of freakin' nowhere, and live solely off the game I can kill.

*ring*
DB: Hello?
DumbFuck (DF): Is this Woodstock Taxi?
DB: No, you have the wrong number.
*click*
*ring*
DB: Hello?
DF: Woodstock Taxi?
DB: No. You have the wrong number.
*click*
*ring*
DB: This is not Woodstock Taxi.
*click*
*ring*
DB: Woodstock Taxi!
DF: Uhhhh, hi, I need you to pick up some medicine for me at the drug store, it's already paid for.
DB: What drug store?
DF: Eckard's
DB: In Woodstock?
DF: Yes.
DB: Where's it going to?
DF: address_of_dumb_fuck
DB: And your name?
DF: Dumb Fuck
DB: and your phone number?
DF: phone_number ... I just borrowed money to pay you will it be less than seven dollars?
DB: Yes. We'll be there in about thirty minutes or so.
*click*

Once upon a time,... well, many times actually, I've lamented to folks that we have the "United Negro College Fund", which only gives money to black students, but that if I was to form the "United Caucasian College Fund", which would only give money to white students, only one of those two organizations would find itself labeled "racist".

Kudos to Lisa McClelland in Oakley, California, for attempting to start a Caucasian Club in her high school.

Her theory goes: "If there is a Black Student Union for African Americans, a Latinos Unidos for Latin Americans and an ALOHA Club for Asian Americans, then why can't there be a Caucasian Club at her school?"

And that's a pretty good theory. Why can't the caucasians get together, and perhaps discuss issues that are relevant to them, such as "why everything white people seem to do that is related to being white is considered racist".

In fact, the first topic of discussion at the Caucasian Club meeting could be the topic of the reverse racism that threatens their club's existence to begin with.

In a fit of stupidity, one of the detractors, whose complaint seems to rest on the name of the club, said, "I mean, why not? But couldn't she call it a White Heritage Club? That sounds more politically correct."

What!?? Calling it the "White Heritage Club" doesn't sound more like a Southern Klan Rally name than calling it the "Caucasian Club"?!

Good luck, Lisa! Stick to your guns!

When I was kid, the ultimate way of saying something was stupid was to call it "gay", or in the extreme, "gay as hell".

But then, the politically-correct 90's came, and calling something gay fell by the wayside along with calling something "retarded", because some people felt that by using a word in one context as an insult ("that's gay!") that you were also demeaning a group for whom that word was also descriptive in a perfectly normal sense ("my life partner and I are gay").

Frankly, to me, that's bunk. A word can have multiple meanings without one meaning poisoning the other, and I've never been one to be the most politically correct character around.

I have tons of gay and lesbian friends. You can't work in Silicon Valley for three years and not unless you're completely homophobic. Hopefully, they'll understand that I'm not trying to offend their sensibilities, I'm just saying that if someone is offended by it, their priorities are a bit out of order.

That's why I'm on a campaign to bring back "Gay" and "Gay as Hell" into the lexicon of modern language. It's a viral thing. At my cousin's wedding, she said something was gay without even knowing about my one-man campaign to bring it back.

So the next time you see something stupid, take a second and think to yourself, "Hey, is that gay or what?"

Whoever set up the IBM service contract tracking system are retards...

A week or so ago, I made my fall picks.... my buddy Jay, though, is way more into the TV and Film industry than I am (want to know who's got the 18-49 demo for Monday 9-9:30? he can tell you).

He did a great job this year with his annual fall preview. Check it out, it's a great side-by-side comparison, with predictions for what will succeed and fail, etc.

As I was getting ready to get some groceries yesterday, I put the Jeep in drive, heard a thunking sound as the engine sorta "caught" as it went into gear and the little "Engine Malfunction" idiot-light came on.

Well, says I, I guess I'm heading for the dealership before I get my groceries.

Two miles later, the Jeep's engine cuts to zero RPM and I coast to the side of the road, dead. Turn the key, silence.

That can't be good. I whip out my service contract card (which includes the tow-to-dealer portion of my warranty... had 400 miles left to go on the "bumper to bumper" warranty, so whatever it was, it was covered.

An hour later, I'm at the dealer. The service manager decides "well, let's see what you're in for" and attaches the diagnostic computer to the onboard computer.

I felt like I was Jim Lovell watching my spacecraft die. Low speed on the crank shaft, faulty behavior on some other thing, an unknown problem in the transmission. I look over at the guy with a knowing, "I'm so glad this is all under warranty, because it just sounds ... pricy!" He agrees with me.

So, I get a loaner/rental (it's a rental, but the warranty covers the rental car), and head home, expecting to see the Jeep in a couple days. I get a call a couple hours later, "It's all fixed, come get it."

boggle

SYSTEM TEST HAS CODES P1391 AND P0725. CHECK AND TEST PER DIAGNOSIS MANUAL. FOUND FAULTY CRANK SHAFT SENSOR. INSTALL NEW CRANK SENSOR. CLEARED CODES

I ask the service manager, "But it died, that was no phantom sensor-ghost that put my car dead in the water on the side of the road."

Oh, but it was ... see, apparently the computer thought it knew best and was trying to figure out what was "wrong" based on the crappy input it was getting from the sensor. Garbage In, Garbage Out, and it decided it was best just to call it quits and demand qualified attention immediately.

Remember the days when cars didn't have on-board computers? I'd gladly sacrifice a couple mpg to get back to when I didn't have to worry about some broken electronic widget deciding to have my car commit harikari on the road, or have my car testifying against its owner about my driving speed or seat belt status.

I wonder if there are sites for hacking your own car, to remove the onboard computer sensors and such. Can the modern car even work without all that computerized horseshit?

Remember that UPS order I was talking about a week or so ago, that a friend of mine was receiving.... he got an interesting e-mail this evening:

Due to an unexpected supply delay, we are unable to ship the following item(s) by the date that you were originally quoted: M8981LL/A, PBG4 15"/1.25GHZ/512/80/SD/APX/BT-USA will now ship on or before 09/16/2003

Except, of course, that such a model doesn't exist on Apple's web site. Apple scooped themselves.

To say that he is eagerly awaiting his new laptop is an understatement, and if they decide to bill him for it, he'll happily pay it. :-)

I'm on a LIRR train headed for Montauk, blogging from my Sidekick.

LIRR trains are so much nicer than Metro-North trains.. Feels like heaven, and I still can't figure out why trains aren't more popular here in the States.

John Ritter died this past evening after a heart problem that was previously unknown to him caused him to be rushed to surgery.

But, one has to wonder who exactly it is in Hollywood that sold their soul to ensure ABC can't possibly climb out of the ratings hole they've dug themselves. From the lengths to which things will happen to prevent it, it must be someone pretty damned important.

Ritter, 54, was the central character on ABC's 8 Simple Rules For Dating My Teenage Daughter series, scheduled for a season premiere this coming Tuesday. The show was widely regarded as one of the best shots ABC had at maybe pulling a couple Nielsen points out of the magic hat.

Obviously, it's uncertain if ABC will pull a Dick York/Dick Sargent style switcheroo on the central character, but if they don't, that show is pretty much as dead as John is.

Ever have one of those fun times with a friend/date/lover/whatever, and enjoy yourself so much that you just want to keep doing that same thing every day, but that would be like an imposition. Sorta like how you are when you get a chance to meet and hang out with someone famous, where you wish you could do things like that all the time but it's obviously not going to happen (or, if it is, you can't act all fanboyish and such, but have to be patient and let it take its course).

Or, to put it in kid terms, it's like finding a half-gallon of chocolate milk... if you really want to enjoy it, you have to drink it only occasionally, so you savor every drop of it ... if you keep pounding down glasses full of it, you'll only enjoy it for a couple minutes, and then spend the rest of your childhood pining for the chocolate milk you could have had.

There's lots of things in life like that, and I'm trying really hard to savor the chocolate milk, because it's really delicious, and I want it to last.

I had an odd desire to listen to Don McLean's American Pie this evening, so I was the perfect candidate for an iTunes Music Store impulse buy.

Lo and behold, the American Pie single will cost me $10.00. Oh, yeah, and it'll include a shitload of other Don McLean songs I couldn't give a wet slap about, because I can buy every other song on the album as a single, but if I want the one that is actually popular I have to take a load of cruft with it.

Guess what, Don? I'm pirating your music, because you (or your label I suppose) are a greedy fuck trying to milk folks into paying for a whole album just to get a single.

I have two weddings to go to this month. The first, this weekend is way out in Montauk, at the very tip of Long Island. It's a three-day bash, essentially, for my cousin Kristen.

Then, two weeks after that, Big George is getting married here locally.

The big decision for me, though, has to do with Krissy's wedding... do I take the train out to Montauk, which would be about 4.5 hours each way, or drive (3 hours). The advantage to driving is that it's faster, and the drive out will probably be beautiful. The disadvantage is that Sunday, when I drive back, it's supposed to be pouring all day according to the weather forecast, and that's totally not-fun.

My copy of Quicken 2004 For Mac arrived the other day, and I dutifully installed it. Today, I downloaded transactions in it for the first time, hoping beyond hope that finally, in this version, the horrible bug that's been present (and reported by me) in Quickens 2001, 2002 and 2003 was fixed.

Nope.

What is this bug that is so diifficult for Intuit software engineers to figure out?

If you're downloading transactions, and attempting to match this brand new transaction the bank just told you about to the ones in the registry, it's a pretty good bet that a transaction you've already reconciled against the bank isn't the one to match it to!

I mean, seriously, how hard can that be? Apparently, it must require an advance degree in Quantum Mechanics or something.

A couple weeks ago, I mentioned about how cool my Danger Sidekick is. It is, in fact, quite cool.

However, the main reason for me getting it was after watching a friend of mine at OSCON using it to SSH into his home server. I was sold. I sold management on them.

I got them. No SSH client. "Oo!" says I, the next morning, "an automated software update over the air! Yayyy, my SSH client." ... nope, no SSH client.

So I ask my original guy, "What's the deal?"

"Oh," he says, "I know someone at Danger, it's not part of the general release, you have to join the developer team."

So I join the developer team. Except the only access level of developer you can get is "Joe Fucktard" which basically lets you run an emulator on your desktop, and not really put any code on the phone. So if I want to SSH via the emulated Sidekick on my desktop, I'm in great shape, but if I'm in a restaurant somewhere and need emergency access, I'm boned.

So I sent an e-mail to the "developer team" e-mail address, begging for the higher level I need to push code onto my own phone. Still not even a reply, that was a couple weeks ago.

Another friend of mine the other day was asking me about what Palm to get. I told him to get a Sidekick, but not to count on SSH, but that I had heard it was coming "real soon now".

He IM's me this evening to tell me how much he loves his Sidekick, "and tomorrow, I'm going to try out the SSH".

Uhhh, how? says I.

"Oh, I know someone at Danger"

What the fuck!? People who actually have uses for the SSH client basically get ignored, and Danger practically gives the access away to every retard they know who really has no legitimate "need" for it?

I'm the proverbial "this close" to just sending the fucking thing back to T-Mobile, and switching back to my Ericsson. Why? Because all I use it for is a phone... the mail doesn't support IMAP (hello, it's a mobile device, let it stay in sync with the mail server using a protocol that's designed precisely for that purpose), so the mail client sits unused. The web browser is nice, but how often do you really need to do that?

Without the SSH client, it's the same use as my Ericsson, except three times as big and four times as heavy, with a keyboard so it's damn near impossible to thumb-dial a phone number one-handed.

A friend of mine ordered a computer system (and a bunch of associated stuff) from a computer vendor online. As part of it, he ordered it using their financing option. Except that he was turned down for the financing, so he forgot about it and went on.

Today, parts of the order show up... more expected tomorrow, and more expected next week.

Now, I know that 39 USC 3009 relates to how unsolicited merchandise that is mailed to you "becomes yours" magically by statute, and life is good.

Except how does that apply to packages received via other common carriers such as FedEx or UPS? Have courts interpreted 39USC3009 to also include those services? Are there separate statutes I can't find which protect consumers there as well?

Trying to figure out if he actually has to give the darn thing back or if the computer vendor's poorly designed order-flow just cost them a computer system. :)

I'm with Adam Curry on this one... I want one.

*ring*
DB: Hello?
Service Guy: Hi, this is "Bob" (name changed) from Begnal Motors Service Department calling about your '02 Jeep Liberty?
DB: uh-huh.
SG: It's done, ready to pick up.
DB: Ah, so they found the electrical problem.
SG: No, they weren't able to find it.
DB: Then how is it "Done"?
SG: The tech wasn't able to reproduce the problem.
DB: How could not reproduce the problem? About one in three times I drive it at night, I have that problem? (background: if I turn on my headlights, the dash lights dim, that's normal, but if I hit bumps in the road, or use my directionals, quite often, they will jump back to full brightness, so there's a short somewhere)
SG: I don't know, perhaps you could come in and take a drive with one of our techs.
DB: Well I can't just take a day off to go gallavanting with your techs to find a problem.
SG: Well, they can't reproduce the problem.
DB: And you won't just take me at my word that the problem is obviously somewhere in the blinker stem since I can be riding perfectly smooth road, and do a lane-change and have the motion of the blinker-stem cause the flicker?
SG: No, sir.
DB: And, since I'm at 35.2K on the Jeep right now, what happens when this problem reoccurs at 36.5K, past the warranty point, is it still covered?
SG: Unless you can demonstrate the problem prior to 36K, no sir.
DB: Well, I guess it's time for me to find a new place to take my Jeep to have its work done. I'll be in later today to pick it up and to take it somewhere else.
SG: Very good, sir. click

Fucktards.

Late last week, The Pit signed the paperwork with our new colocation facility, Cervalis. Having been to their Poughkeepsie facility (a converted IBM Mainframe manufacturing facility) it's amusing to note that while it's advertised as "N+1", quite a bit of it is actually "N+2" or even "N+3", because of the ludicrously high levels of redundancy IBM demanded when it had a production facility that could lose a couple tens of millions of dollars in hardware (mid-production stuff) if the power or HVAC or whatnot shat itself.

For me, though, aside from the infinitely better customer service, and the fact that it's about 1/3 as far from my residence as The All Time Suckiest Hosting Corporation Ever was, is the fact that I get to design the colo the way I want it to be.

No more 15" IBM CRT. Replacing it with a 1U flip-out keyboard/mouse/LCD-monitor tray.

No more bulky-and-inflexible Belkin KVM cables running all over the place. Replacing the KVM with Dell's 2161DS, which uses CAT-5 to go between the KVM and a little "pod" that breaks that out into the usual PS/2 and HD15 connectors.

No more hodge-podge of ad hoc cabling. Cables will have color codes for what type of cable they are (external ethernet, internal ethernet, serial, KVM, crossover, telco, etc.) and might even be labelled.

Plus, it's the simple things like having a cordless screwdriver that belongs "there", and a label-maker whose home is "there".

I plan to feel all warm and fuzzy real soon now.

Well, it's September, and that means yet another chance to try and find the nuggets of good programming in the ocean of crap that network TV foists upon us each fall.

What will Derek be telling his TiVo to grab?