Tralfaz

Blog

  • When being a nice guy backfires: Traffic edition

    I have an easy commute. A hair over 7.5 miles straight up a surface street, never too bad traffic. I am never in a hurry (well, very rarely), so I am often willing to let someone in who is leaving a driveway.

    But today I goofed. I waved some lady who was trying to get out of a gas station. I figured she wanted to just merge into traffic. BZZT

    She took my opening, then proceeded in slowly obstructing ALL traffic to get to the left turn lane. Sigh.

    So I, and several other (justifiably pissed off) people missed the green light while this tool stopped traffic to get to the left turn lane.

    When I am in a similar situation, I :

    • Take a deep breath. Really, it isn’t the end of the world.
    • Merge into traffic, but look for the next convenient (and safe) place to make a U turn.
    • And get to where I want to go a minute or two later.

    What I don’t do is obstruct 3 lanes of traffic, hanging in limbo, just to “make” that next left turn. Sheesh.

  • Punishment – Going caffeine free

    Every couple of years I give up the evil bean. I usually get to a point where my tolerance is huge, and I find my self caffeinating throughout the day. Then my sleeping get disrupted, and I get cranky and irritable (ok, crankier and more irritable than usual).

    Then I go off caffeine for a few months, and all is better. But the transition is hell. Headaches, missing the taste of coffee (my preferred dosing mechanism), and sleeping more than usual. Some people think I am crazy for knocking it out, but it really does help, even if it is for a limited time (I think the longest I lasted before was 9 months.)

    Today is day 4, and the worst of the withdrawal symptoms are abating. Headaches are almost gone. The desire to rush out to the coffee maker is much lower. I am already sleeping better (or perhaps that is just my wishful thinking).

    One thing is for certain, the blood pressure medication I take has greatly reduced the headaches. They were/are much less severe than in the past. One thing to be thankful for.

    I know that it is just a matter of time. Perhaps I will have a 6:00AM flight, or need a lift before a customer presentation. I will be back on the bean, but for now, I will learn to live without it.

    (* Of course I will not go completely caffeine free. That would mean giving up chocolate. Not gonna do that man.)

  • A bad day – Health edition

    Well, I have been struggling with my hand for a while. I thought I had jammed my thumb,and it wasn’t healing properly. After 6 weeks or so, I realized that it wasn’t getting better.

    About a month ago I finally went to my GP and after some X-Rays it looked like it wasn’t a damaged tendon, or “jam”. The X-Ray showed some bone spurs and what looked like it might be the start of arthritis. Gulp.

    Today I met with a specialist. It is far worse than I originally thought. I have no cartilage left in my left thumb, there is severe arthritis, several bone spurs, and it is pretty much as good as it will ever be.

    Next week I will get a special splint to hold it motionless at night. 6 weeks of that to see if the pain is reduced. If not, then we move on to cortisone shots.

    At this point there is no cure. I am considered too young for surgery (don’t ask, it is a bad option), and eventually it will all wear in and hurt less.

    One thing is for certain, today was not a good day. I can’t deny that I am getting old. Sigh.

  • Bad dog owners

    Owning a dog comes with certain responsibilities. Most people have a good grasp of these responsibilities. Keeping them licensed (if required), getting their rabies vaccination, keeping them healthy, feed them quality food, the usual items.

    Not here fidoBut increasingly I see lots of evidence of bad dog owners. I talk about dog feces left in the landscaping of the neighborhood. There are laws, there are signs posting that it is both illegal and a health hazard to not clean up after your dogs.

    But still, every time I am out with my dogs, I see lots of evidence of bad dog owners. Piles everywhere. There are definitely some places where people repeatedly let their dog do their business (as there are literally dozens of identically sized piles).

    The frustrating thing is that our neighborhood has plenty of stations that dispense baggies, and have receptacles for the bagged waste, and they are emptied regularly by the landscaping maintenance gnomes. Still people feel no shame in letting their pooches poop wherever they happen to be.

    And walking the neighborhood, I see lots of people who have let their dogs deposit their waste in people’s yards. It is bad enough that they don’t feel compelled to pick it up int he common area landscaping, but for f*cks sake, don’t just leave it when your best friend bends a biscuit on someones yard. Do they not get upset when they see dog waste in their yard?

    Sheesh.

  • Groovin’ on my VPS – moved 2 websites

    So, after a brief support interaction with my new hosting company, A Small Orange hosting is who I went with, and I haven’t been disappointed, I am up and life is good. I have learned how to use cPanel, and its companion WHM. Really slick tools, and really easy to use. I now have 4 domains setup, and have 3 more to move, and four subdomains. I have learnt a few things:

    • WordPress is really easy to move.  I moved my wife’s site no sweat. took about an hour, and I played with it before I re-jiggered the name servers. Easy peasy.
    • Joomla is less so easy. My main site is still hosed. Apparently there is a PHP setting that I need to figure out. Might be a good time to go from Joomla 2 to 3. But that hasn’t been painless so far. (FWIW there is dogshit for information on how to best make the transition on the web. Sigh). I can’t even get it moved to a local LAMP server and running. Something is hosed, not surprising, as I am constantly fucking with it, so I am sure I am the cause.
    • One of my joomla sites, a 3.1 moved really easy. Move all the files, backup the database, recreate the database, set the configuration, and BAM, it just worked.
    • I like having complete control of my MySQL instance. At Media temple I had exceeded my database account limit early on, so I had to use the same credentials/account for more than one database. A security risk.
    • My next main goal is to get my SSH keys generated and installed.

    So far, I am digging on the new hosting, and I am really pleased with my hosting provider.

    My goal is to first move all my hosting to my VPS, then cancel my hosting account on Media Temple. Then, as my domains come up for renewal, I will move them to another registrar. But I realized when I moved my main domain (tralfaz.org) that soon, Media Temple will begin to morph with GoDaddy, and move away from using tucows for registration. I will be long gone before that happens though.

  • Taking the plunge: Going VPS

    Earlier this week, I learnt that my hosting provider, (MT) has been sold to GoDaddy. While they assured their customers that they would be independent, and that GoDaddy was trying to change their reputation, I know that it was just a matter of time before the douchebaggery of GoDaddy infected the ethos of MediaTemple.

    I had used a shared hosting account that worked remarkably well. I have 9 domains and 5 active sites (and two test bed sites) on there, and have been pretty satisfied with performance, and extremely satisfied with their support. But I have gotten to a scale where being constrained by a normal hosting account was an annoyance. Several times I investigated the process to move to a VPS (virtual private server), and never took the plunge. Just too much effort.

    The changes earlier this week pushed me over the edge. I have opened a VPS account at a smaller, highly recommended web host, A Small Orange. I am in the process of moving my main site, and getting all the bits and pieces set up the way I like. A few teething problems (like the DNS changes taking insanely long to propagate), and some incompatibilities in the PHP setup that I need to overcome, but in general I am satisfied.

    Of course, I am a bit rusty on my unix mad skillz, so I am boning up on how to manage and configure a linux system. Fortunately out of the box, they set it up well, and it is pretty secure, so I am glad to inherit that state. The VPS uses the cPanel and WHM services to manage the bits and pieces, which is pretty standard, but foreign to me, so I am learning how to wrangle these tools (they are pretty damn slick though).

    My goal for this weekend is to move my main site (which currently has a module that barfs, so I have to figure that out), and to get all the bits and pieces lined up. Should be fun. And I expect that performance will be better in the long run (or at least completely under my own control).

  • A bad day – Web Hosting

    I have been hosting my websites for the last 4 years or so on a premium provider, MediaTemple. They have been efficient, no hassle, and have offered great service when I needed it. I have 7 domains hosted with them, and their basic hosting package has served me well.

    I have sung praises to them, and have recommended them, even though they are not the cheapest supplier out there. For me, the $20 a month has been worth it for the support, the reliability, and the high quality tools they have offered.

    To compare, I use GoDaddy for one of the sites I manage (for a non-profit that I donate my time to). Their support is OK. Their tools are crappy to manage the hosting, the data bases, and other administrivia. But what I hate most of all, is the constant upselling they do. They continually try to sell more domains, more services, addons. It is enough to make me loathe logging into their website unless I have to.

    I had been plotting how to move that site to Media Temple when the prepaid period was up.

    Then today I got the email from the founder and CEO of MediaTemple. Since he wouldn’t know me from Adam, I was worried.

    I was right to be worried. He was announcing that Media Temple was being acquired by GoDaddy. A million voices were crying “Nooooooooooooo!” in my head. Of all the sleazeball, scummy webhosting providers to sell to, they had to pick the bottom feeders. The shit-birds at GoDaddy. Of course the email was full of assurances that the MediaTemple experience wouldn’t change, and that it would be autonomous from the GoDaddy. Their posted FAQ was about how GoDaddy was looking to improve their relationship with web developers, and professionals, and that acquiring Media Temple was a path forward there.

    Yeah, and pigs will fly.

    If GoDaddy wants to improve its image and reputation among the serious web developers and professionals, they should probably stop being scum of the earth, marketing bloated, pushers of mediocre products. Furthermore, they should improve their infrastructure, and tools on the back end so that I don’t have to navigate 10 pages to figure out how to set a CNAME.

    Reading the comments on the FAQ was about 99-1 against this move, and how a lot of people will be looking for new hosting. I know I will be moving completely off them.

    Perhaps it is time to go VPS.

  • Why I don’t jam more: playing out

    We are having a sales meeting next month, and one of the organizers thinks it will be a great idea to have some of the team play and entertain at the group dinner. There are at least three guitar players, a bass player, and a drummer who can get together, so it is a reasonable idea.

    But I will decline to play. Apart from the “thumb” issues I have, these impromptu jams are awkward for a variety of reasons:

    • The players have no history of playing together. This manifests itself in awkward setup and initial playing. It might seem trivial, but all musicians have ego’s, and we are all concerned about not being a fuckup in front of friends. This is caused by …
    • The players will all have different repertoires. Perhaps one is a folk player, one is a classically trained guitarist, one is a dance or jazz player, and one will play hard rock. All of these styles are enormously different, and while a decent player can pick some of it up, it will feel (and sound) alien.
    • There won’t be any songs that everyone knows. This is a huge deal, as it often means that there isn’t an ice breaker. Some songs that any rock player would expect everyone to know, like “Whole Lotta Love” or “More than a Feeling” will invariably not be part of one or more member’s play lists.

    So, these sessions usually fall back to something standard, 12 bar blues in Em, and just variants around that. Boring.

    How to prevent this? First, play together privately. Find some common ground. Have everybody pick 3-4 songs that typify their genre, and share the tab/MP3’s so that the others can learn some songs.

    Play together more often. There is a reason why bands practice several times a week. Or you have a band play the backup (a tight group with a bass player, a keyboardist, and a drummer.) But then you might as well hire a band.

    So, I will sit this potential public embarrassment out, and see how it goes.

  • Shame on Agilebits and 1Password

    I have been a hearty and enthusiastic user and advocate of 1Password. It is an awesome bit of software that greatly improves the security and experience using the internet. A password store, one of its strengths was the cross platform package, and the plugins and apps for your phone. I used it on my macs and my work PC, using dropbox to keep it all synchronized everywhere I was at.

    For $40, to get the windows and Mac package, it was well worth the money.

    Alas, the Agilebits folks have gone greedy. The version on the Mac went from version 3 to 4. A paid upgrade. Not a huge deal, I don’t mind an upgrade fee to keep software current, and up to date. But this upgrade broke the PC side. Suddenly my dropbox data store was jacked. And the plugin for version 4 on the mac just plain crashes on the PC.

    Once you upgrade your database to version 4, the PC version can still read it, but it seems to not be able to add new login credentials. Boo. And you have to jump through hoops on the Chrome browser, because it will try to load the version 4 plugin, which is NOT supported on the PC.

    The support forums claim that they are furiously working on the PC upgrade, but it will be another paid upgrade. So instead of upgrading both packages for one fee, I am going to get to pay twice for it.

    And then I found that my app for my iPhone no longer can access my logins. How much for the new version? A shocking $17.99. Really?  I have bought both the iPhone and iPad app in the past.  I could see a buck or two, but eighteen bucks?  Fuck me.

    Alas, there really isn’t a competitor.  Yes, I could go the keepass route, and have a largely manual but secure repository of logins. But there is no good way to export my 1Password data into it. And with over 600 logins recorded, I am not going to do that by hand.

    I get that it costs money to develop and improve the package, that the testing and maintenance of the browser plugins is a complex task. But the current path you are on is close to alienating an early user, who has probably referred 20 people who bought your package. You really need to think about your pricing for upgrades, and your customer loyalty.

  • Getting Old – Part IX

    I hate to sound like I am complaining, but alas, it is hard to not whinge. I am getting old. Latest victim: a repeat offender, my left foot. I have battled plantar fasciitis, and a sprained big toe in the last year. But today, it is feeling like it might be a stress fracture.

    Yesterday, I did a mild 4 and a half mile walk. Felt OK. Sometime yesterday afternoon, my foot started bothering me. Sharp pain in the top, on the outer part of the foot. Tender when I poke at it, when I stretch (like I would do to help my plantar fascia) it is a debilitating pain.

    This is just the latest in a long list of body parts that hurt. I am not 50 yet, but I feel like my body is falling apart.

    Sigh.