Tralfaz

Month: September 2013

  • Web Content Management Systems

    I have used several CMS’s over the years, from my time at Cisco with their internally developed system, and again starting in 2009 or so when I started working with WordPress and later Joomla! They are wonderful tools, but they do have some drawbacks.

    First the positives. Someone who is technically minded can setup a WordPress site, add a custom template, and have a pretty decent site in an afternoon. WordPress has grown a lot since I first started using it, and it is a pretty good environment to setup a public website, not just a blog. Joomla! is a bit more complex, but it is infinitely more customizable, and flexible. You can run a pretty complex site with options like project management, multiple vehicles of managing content and contributions, and even a pretty robust e-commerce site.

    Both platforms make it easy to create and modify content with either built in WYSIWYG editors, or extended editors as a plugin. That means that your contributors can easily create and maintain pretty complex content like the were creating a document in Microsoft Word.

    But that is also a problem as content is updated, modified, and changed. These WYSIWYG editors do all the html stuff on the back end, hiding the complexity from the user. They also do not create optimal html. Little glitches add up over time, and soon, if you have content that you update frequently you will need to either blow it away and restart, or drop into raw HTML mode to clean it up. Fortunately both platforms make this easy, as long as you know how to edit HTML.

    The second positive is the amount of customization possible. Both platforms have a great ecosystem of plugins, extensions, and packages. Joomla has a slight lead here, as the quality and support of these third party bits is quite good. WordPress has a lot more, but some of the components are buggy, or are security holes. Again, the community will help guide you to the best pieces.

    But there is a downside. I have been using Joomla for a couple years now, running one of my personal sites, as well as a non-profit site (Southern Arizona Greyhound Adoption). I have done lots of experimenting, and sometimes it is a bit of a struggle to undo some changes.  At first, for the SA Greys site I had a testbed, but soon the two sites structurally diverged enough, that I really just keep the main site up now. Of course, with the coming of Joomla! 3.5 stable, I will be making a new version of the website (the hassle of finding and updating plugins and components to 3.0 compatible is a task that I don’t have the patience for, or the time to do. Time for a fresh start with all that I have learned in the past two years)

    This weekend, I am beginning the process of configuring a Joomla 3 site as a testbed, and that means replication and processing a lot of data. A fun activity for a cloudy, rainy Sunday.

    (This post is a little diversion from the tedious documenting of the current site.)

  • Bad neighbors – Party goes Wild

    A little over a year ago, we moved from our “edge of civilization” house in Tucson to Chandler, a much more standard suburban setting. For the most part it has been a pretty good experience.

    But there has been a soft underbelly. We live next door to a house with a just graduated high school baseball player (presumably he is playing ball in college as well) who seems to love having loud parties. Throughout spring and early summer, the night for these parties was Tuesday, and they were not too bad, but still annoying. However as time went on, they became bigger and rowdier. A couple months ago, we started alerting the police (after midnight, we are not ogres), and that seemed to quench the growth.

    But they learned to have a lookout for the cops, and would quickly quiet up and turn off the lights. The cops would look around, see nothing and move on. 20 minutes later it was in full roar, again. Sigh.

    Last night they had a rager. When my wife took the dogs out to potty at 11PM, the yard was full, the house was full, and even the balcony on the neighbors patio was filled with people. We left it alone, but at 1:00AM it got (hard to believe it) even louder. So, a call to the police. This time, they came out in force, at least 6 cars, one k9 unit, and they processed the people on the neighbor’s lawn. The police even hunted for those inevitable “hiders” who try to become invisible.  That took well over an hour. Perhaps it was all the clear underage drinking.

    One of the annoying things about these parties besides the noise, is the fact that those who attend and smoke seem to think nothing about flicking their butts into our yard (and presumably the other yards adjacent to them). Really annoying to have to clean up after someone else’s party.

    Where are the parents you might say?  Well, I don’t know for certain, but their cars were in the driveway, so I have to assume that they either knew about the party, or helped with its execution. In any case, they can’t possibly deny that they knew what was going on.

    (Update: As I write this, two women walked out of their house, looking pretty trashed, and drove away.)

    This morning, as I was picking up the debris from the party that found its way to our yard, I peeked over the fence. Their yard looks like WWIII. I hope the son has to clean it up with a raging hangover.

    In Tucson, there was an ordinance that if a party was loud enough to require the police to come break it up, they got a lovely red sticker on their window or door, easily visible, that signifies that this house had been a subject of a noise complaint, and that sticker must remain up for 180 days. Sadly, Chandler could use a similar ordinance.

  • Another plus for Apple Support

    A while back, while we were on a trip, my wife dropped her 13″ MacBook pro. It was not the first time she dropped it, but it was enough to kill it. (it was a short distance on to a carpeted floor in the hotel).

    She got home and I did some diagnosis. The hard drive wasn’t recognized. I used all my tools, and assumed that it was just a bad HD, and that we could replace it easily enough. But to be sure, I dropped in a spare I knew to be good. No dice. Still not visible to the system (but it would boot from an external enclosure with the original drive I thought was bad.

    So I was stumped. My wife was crushed and sure it would cost a fortune to repair, so she suffered without it for a few weeks. Finally on Monday she scheduled a visit to the Apple store with their Genius bar. I got dragged along, and gave the helpful tech what I tried, and what I suspected next (HD cable (low probability) or logic board (most likely)).

    We were informed that it was 163 days out of warranty (the three year AppleCare plan) so the laptop is 3.5 years old.

    I got to watch their testing process, and I was impressed. They plug into an ethernet cable and start a network boot. That boots a series of tool to diagnose the system, and confirmed what I told them.  They used a few other tools, and decided to try to replace the HD cable. Told us to give them a phone number and that it would take probably 30 minutes.  Fortunately there is a kick ass Gelato shop about 100 yards away, and a Total Wines so we had Ice Cream and bought some tequila.

    Turned out that replacing the cable did the trick and it booted right up. Parts were $17, and a $39 charge for the labor, $56 + tax and we were out on our way home.

    Compare that with the broken display on my work HP laptop. It took 3 months to figure out how to order it, then 2 weeks to get it, and when the tech put it in, it didn’t work, so it became a warranty issue. I ended up with a new logic board, new display and new RAM after 3 days of their “next day service” dicking around (to be fair, their tech was helpful and friendly, much better than the shitheads that work for Dell.)

    (Another benefit, with their CRM system when I go in with a dead iPhone, even long out of warranty, they look me up, and all the products I have bought from them, and they have always fixed/replaced my iPhones without charge. I went through 3 iPhone 3GS’s in the 6 months before I upgraded to my current iPhone 4s. They do take care of loyal customers.)

  • Glad and Sad

    While I am not a religious watcher of The Daily Show, I do take in 2 or 3 episodes a week captured on the Tivo, and I have long enjoyed it. Jon Stewart does a phenomenal job of entertaining, while actually achieving some semblance of journalistic integrity (mixed in with a healthy dollop of humor, there are many insightful perspectives).

    Jon had been out on a sabbatical to direct a film in Egypt and Jordan for most of the summer. Now, he’s back, so yay! Of course the first episode back was epic, and of all the major media outlets, Jon Stewart’s take on the Syria crisis makes the most sense.

    But I am sad in a way. While Jon was on hiatus, John Oliver stepped in and did a brilliant job hosting the show. I always thought he was a good asset to the show, but his performance at the helm almost made me forget that Jon Stewart was ever there. Yes, he was that good. He deserves a show (beyond his stand up gig), but it is hard to see where he can fit with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central.

    Hopefully, he finds a happy home and we can then have three outstanding comedian shows to watch.

  • Woo hoo! I am a security Risk!

    A post I entered earlier got flagged by a friend’s work internet filter.

    I have been blocked! How awesome is that.

    He gets this when he tries to surf to this site:

    Clicked the link to read your post… while here at KT. Here’s what I got:

    Your requested URL has been blocked by the Global Threat Intelligence Reputation System. The URL is listed with a reputation that is not allowed by your administrator at this time.

    I guess you’re a security threat, Geoff.

     

    How awesome is that!

  • Making my job bearable – The Bose headphones

    A while back I commented on the disappointment I experienced with my Bose QuietComfort 2’s broke (plastic fatigue) and the AWESOME support that got me a new set of better headphones for << 1/2 price.

    I work in a cubicle farm. My cube is about 10′ from my boss, who is also in a cube, and I am up against an engineer’s cube who like to hum. Fortunately the Bose headphones are a godsend. Add in Spotify, and I have kick ass jams to keep my day rolling.

    The one thing I like about my new headphones is that the battery (single AAA) lasts about twice as long as in my original QuietComfort 2’s. Not only that, I get about 12 hours when it starts flashing at me that it is getting low, and I can tell when the sound becomes distorted enough to hear, I have to change the battery.

    Win – Win – Win.

  • Fitness Update – Long Absense

    Early in August, I had my 30th high school reunion. It was a blast, but I made a decision to not worry about my calories that week.

    I came back to a foot that bugged me and kept me from any serious exercise. I was careful about what I ate, but I didn’t track it meticulously. Some splurges, some good days, some less good.

    I have been dreading the scale, but this morning I stepped on it in preparation for “getting back in the groove” and was pleasantly surprised that I weigh the same as I did before the reunion trip. Woo hoo, I didn’t backslide too much.

    Now to get back on the plan. 20#’s to go.

  • Odd exercise observations

    I have been getting back into regular cycling to get back into some semblance of shape (other than pear). I have become pretty comfortable riding 25+ miles on Saturday and Sunday, and to and from work a couple times a week (~ 21 miles round trip).

    Yesterday, I wanted to try a new route. I knew it would be longer than my 25+ miles, but not how much. Turns out that the canals to Elliot Road, then east on Elliot to Mountain, then back down to Pecos and back home was about 34.3 miles total. About 8 miles (or 1/3) more than my “usual” ride. Not a problem right?

    Ugh, I was wiped out. I literally spent the day in a coma and rehydrating (I consumed about a gallon and a half of liquids during the ride – 2 hours 8 minutes, and as much through the afternoon.) Today, my legs are jelly, and the thought of riding in tomorrow is not appealing at all.

    In my youth, I would often double my distance with little or no ill effects. As I approach 50, that is no longer true, and I am suffering mightily for it.

    Ah well.

  • Some thoughts

    I have been doing a lot of reading of history, deep into European history from the middle ages to present, as well as a pretty deep dive into US history. Sparked by a conversation with a colleague in Europe who was showing me where many historical events happened in Frankfurt-Mainz during a day of sightseeing on a trip last year. It reminded me that I knew very little about actual European history, apart from what little is covered when studying the US Colonial period.

    I find that in my facebook friends feed, I have several people who are dedicated Tea Party adherents, and they love to toss out quotes from the founding fathers in support of their beliefs. However, I find that many of these quotes are so far out of context that they are contorted into precisely the opposite of the original intent. Additionally, it is clear that these folks have a pretty thin knowledge of US history, likely what they learned in secondary (high) school.

    I of course had Civics in highs school as well as the required US History curriculum, and I lived happily ever after … until in my 3rd year of college I took a university level US history course. My eyes were opened. The high school level course was superficial, and outright hid/lied about many of the formative events throughout the history of these United States. The curriculum was clearly molded to make America appear to be a beacon of all that is right in the world, and that she never, ever did anything wrong. But America is made of men, and men do many dumb, and unsavory things. Much of this came out in a fairly unbiased text when I was in college. I have additionally read a few different historians to broaden my knowledge and understanding, and I remain just as skeptical of the claim that the USA is the most, bestest, and complete beacon of freedom in the world.

    Unfortunately, as I stated at the beginning of this post, the Tea Party believers/adherents in my circles seem to have halted their study of history and political affairs after that biased high school history and civics course.

    To truly understand the writings and intents of the founding fathers, you need to understand much more than just a high school history and civics education. You do need to understand what was happening in the world at that time, and leading up to that time, and then you will have a very different appreciation of the words written in the federalist papers, and the other formative documents of the revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Jefferson certainly had in mind the lessons of the 30 year war, and how state sanctioned religion tears apart the fabric of society. How the rigid class system with ~ 5% nobility, 10% clergy, and the rest being serfs tied to a landlord. How systems of revenue generation of states by increasingly squeezing the serf population with taxes, while exempting both the higher classes.

    There is much more context, and turmoil in continental politics, and people who want to have an understanding of the forces and fires that forged the American experience ought to take the time to read up on the history that preceded the revolution, and the subsequent development of our constitutional republic.

    Some sources that are good reads:

    European history – A complete history of Europe from the middle ages to the present – by John Merrimack – Professor of history, Yale

    American history – Daniel Boorstin has a series of very approachable books that are worthy, and chart the evolution of the Americas from early colonial times through the 20th century.

    I will probably not accept any comments, as I really don’t want to get into ideological rants. I just hope that I spark a few people to look more at what was happening around the time of the formation of the USA and how we fit into the world of that time, and how we have changed to where we are today.