As I write this it’s Friday night and I am still waiting for a server to finish virtualizing so I can proceed with the rest of the project plan and possibly get to sleep before sunrise. Given that I am prone to bouts of lazy and vigor of equal and epic measure I’ve been queuing up random posts for the last 2 hours and just setting a future publish date (or leaving them as drafts) so it looks like I’m all chatty. Twixsy hobbitses, am I rite?
Anyway, someone in my guild mentioned that he read my blog and has tried to comment in the past but didn’t have any luck. So after turned comments back on (no idea how that got fucked up) I also went ahead and linked up to Facebook. People hate logging in to <yet_another_website_001>. Options, we haz dem!* I actually got the idea from Lum’s blog, he did the same thing (although a different method) a few months back with great success.
The guide I followed was a pretty manual process, but once I got a handle on the nuance it was slick as could be.
So yeah. Fuck you WP-FacebookConnect. I’ve programmed professionally (briefly) and have no issues reading docs and hacking on PHP, but holy christ getting that shit to work right was a nightmare. I finally gave up and implemented the OpenID plugin. So there’s that at least. I installed 2 plugins and configured the shit and it was working. No them hax, no bullshit. It just worked.
A pleasant surprise indeed.
In other news, I just popped the newest version of the wp-armory plugin which features a 3D modeler. More shit on the sidebar? Yes. Yes it is. Suck it.
… On second thought, that’s horrible. It’s off now. Look right for proof. —————->
Aren’t you glad you asked?
edit: Let’s just go ahead and add the OpenID plugs to the FUCK YOU list. I leave this only as a signpost, to illustrate how far we have yet to go before all this stuff “just plain works”.
I was on my way to a customer site today when the Cranberries “Linger” started playing.
On TWO stations.
Thanks ClearChannel! We sure owe you one…
How is it that the FCC can spend so much energy keeping nipples and profanity off the air, but when it comes to something that’s actually profane they’re nowhere to be found? It’s not even that I’m offended by the Cranberries. I like Linger just fine, really. It’s the fact that a company, any company, can simply OWN the entirety of something public. It’s like if Chevy owned every bus in town. It’s not about what they DO, it’s about what they COULD DO. It’s a horrible precedent. I’m no fan of making ethereal slippery slope arguments, but … fuck, man. Why do people put up with this shit?
Wake up sheeple?
Oh well, maybe in B-Rock’s second term he’ll have time to tackle that bunch of hapless ninnies.
I keep guild drama off the front page most days, but sometimes it’s cathartic to just vent. I’m pretty sure no one from my guild actually reads these pages so the risk is pretty minimal.
The core players in my guild have been around a long time, some going back years into EQ raiding on Prexus. In that type of mix of old/new players and grudges YEARS in the making, it’s a wonder we don’t have more angsty bullshit than we do… *knock on wood*
A few months a back we gained a couple players who were with us in the beginning on Stormrage. They left to join the #1 and #2 power guilds on the server and did the whole hardcore thing for a couple years. Their departure caused a few ruffled feathers. These guys are pretty caustic individuals. I don’t mean that in a bad way – I find their demeanor to be absolutely hilarious. But I’m not a 6-year-old-girl, either. I can take a hit and give it right back when the need arises.
What gets them in trouble is that they have no issues telling people the plain truth no matter how ugly it might be. Again, I’m a big fan of honesty. If you don’t say what you mean how can anyone take you seriously? So combine old grudges with their no-holds-barred truth-telling and you have the pack of dogs with bees in their mouths that I’ve got now. Tank A told tank B that he was frustrated with the quality of tank B’s tanking. Tank B threw a hissy and bailed on the raid all the while going batshit crazy in private about how he won’t put up with that shit and why weren’t we supporting him. It was a fun night, lemee tells ya. Tank B still isn’t raiding after two weeks, but he’s apparently found time to pug 25s and run some sort of clandestine 10-man operation. What can you do, really? My initial solution of throwing them both in a burlap bag and chucking it off the side of a boat was a non-starter.
Getting pissed off at other people for inexplicable reasons just bugs the shit out of me. Seriously. What the fuck is the point? Anywho, here’s a helpful life lesson from me to you – don’t be that guy. Just don’t.
What scares me? These people actually get a vote. The problem with democracy isn’t the politicians. It’s people like the ones in that video. Here are some helpful tips, from me to you, o’ people of the video.
1) Catholic doctors and Catholic hospitals are allowed to have all the moral objections to abortions or penicillin or anything else that sticks in their craws. What they are NOT allowed is to deny legal treatment to patients. Here, try this for some light reading. I know fitting the time in for intelligence is tough, what with a full day of demagoguery and dunking witches in the river, but give it a fucking shot, eh? Oh, and nice touch with the triple-peck on your baby. Why won’t those evil Democracts PLEASE think of the children?!
2) The tenets of Socialism, morally, are a beautiful thing. The belief that people should contribute to society based upon what they are able to contribute and should receive the full sum of benefits that they require from society is pretty god damned idyllic. That doesn’t make me or Obama a Socialist. Social programs in this country allow millions of good, honest and hard-working American’s to provide enough to eat for their families and to keep a roof over their heads and the lights on. But hey, it’s not you, right? So fuck poor people. Fuck people with disabilities or who are just down on their luck. The measure of a society is how it cares for the least among them. I don’t believe in hand-outs for the sake of hand-outs. I don’t believe in punishing people for being rich or successful. If a penny from me, a penny from you, and pennies from everyone in this country can feed a child in poverty or keep the fucking lights on so some single mother in Peoria can study for her GED before heading out to her 2nd job? Money. Well. Spent. I wish every fuckwit who bashes social programs could get put on a biiiiig list and then summarily denied access to each and every one of them. I wonder what that old goat says if his Social Security check is a day late?
3) There is no far-left agenda. We can’t agree on ANYTHING, let alone a fucking agenda. I realize that’s not a rebuttal, but it informs point number two – Barrack Obama isn’t far-left. With a few exceptions Senator Obama is a moderate Democrat. Liberal, for sure, but just like Senator McCain he’s nowhere near the outskirts of his party. Oh, and not for nothing, but the last 8 years have been the far right’s agenda being forced upon the country. A country, I might add, who is repeatedly demonstrated that they are MODERATES. The vast majority of people in America have opinions on both sides of the aisle. Even moreso in recent years as the traditional values of the major parties have gotten so murky. We’re currently experiencing the worst economic downturn since the great depression. After 8 years of fiscally responsible growth and prosperity under a “tax-n-spend” liberal this is hardly the crowning achievement for the party of fiscal conservatives, no?
For those of you who care about such things, and that should be ALL of you, it’s been a great couple of days.
Firstly, the opening ceremonies were just plain awesome. I don’t mean the sheer scope of things, although that in and of itself was amazing, but it was just… fitting. China has over 3500 years of recorded history! They’re not going anywhere and our generation is the first that’s truly been able to experience their culture and peoples. The TV was calling it “China’s coming out party.” I’m inclined to agree.
As every human on Earth expected Michael Phelps picked up his first gold and slapped his own world record down by ~2 seconds.
Misty and Kerry, goddesses each, had a slow start but ultimately showed why they are the best players in the world with an easy 2-set win in their opening match. The men’s team, slightly less dominant, got just spanked by Latvia. It was painful to watch, they had nothing going at all.
Katie Hoff just took the bronze in the 400 IM. It’s her first loss in that race in some amount of time, I guess. But the winner (and silver) were both below the old WR. Australia has great swimmers. This is not news. I <3 competition. Oh, and the Aussie who took gold is a little hottie. Must be the accent. I’m weak, sue me.
I watched the crew semi-finals. Or sculling or something. I have no idea. People in boats. It was boring. I made lunch. The US team (both from New England) got spanked anyway.
The men’s gymnastic team his hella-good. So is China’s. The finals promise to be amazing.
The Olympic commercials have been wonderful. Morgan Freeman’s narration for Visa has been poignant, inspirational and just plain good. We’ll call that tasteful commercialism.
That, of course, is the segue to the campaign ads. What the motherless fuck is wrong with the McCain camp? I realize that the Republican party can’t help itself but dissemble these days but come the fuck on. There’s an old tradition called the Olympic cease-fire. It would have been nice for the nominees to read that memo. The Obama ads have been tamer, but not by much. I’m just curious as to how stupid one has to be to fall for this shit? Seriously. Are you so stupid that some narrator guy saying “raise taxes” 5 times in 30 seconds makes you want to give Bush the 3rd a seat in the oval?
The NYJets.com store already has replica #4 jerseys on sale – if you could load the thing anyway. The packers.com store, as you might expect, loads just fine.
I don’t know the real story. We probably won’t hear it until Brett’s ghostwriter pens his memoirs. But we “know” what happened. Thompson’s first decision as the Packer’s GM was to draft Favre’s replacement. That was 4 years ago. That was also the first time the organization and media started talk of retirement. Coincidence? Yeah. No. Thompson has wanted Favre off “his team” since day 1. But how can you fire a legend who is not just one of top players in the league but also still playing MVP-caliber ball? Answer: You can’t. So you wage a media war. All nice and clean through the back-channels so no one knows it was you.
You’re a douche Ted. A giant smelly steaming shit-sandwich-eating douche.
So Green Bay loses a legend and becomes the footnote in one of the greatest careers in NFL history. And you get … Aaron Rodgers. Grats. Asshole.
Guess which games I’ll be watching on Sunday?
Update: I still can’t get to the Jets online store. Hell, I can’t even get the page to LOAD half the time.
Tell me again how playoffs in college football would be bad?
Blowouts are not good football. Blowouts are clear indications that one of the two teams was in the WRONG FUCKING GAME.
Of all the games I could stand to watch the only one that was an actual game was the Outback Bowl wherein my Wisconsin Badgers and the Tennessee Volunteers were actually a good match-up. Wisconsin lost (21-17), unfortunately, but it was at least an appropriate game. Those two teams were in the right game together and the game was still up for grabs until the 2nd-to-last play.
Illinois had no business being in the Rose Bowl against USC. Period. It was embarrassing to the program and to the Big 10 and only fuels that idiotic “we can’t compete” nonsense.
Georgia vs Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl. Another what the fuck? Having an undefeated season in a glorified high school conference doesn’t put you in the same league as a team that probably SHOULD have been in fighting for the Championship.
Fiesta Bowl. WVU completely outclassed an Oklahoma team that is, in and of itself, quite good. Doesn’t that just mean that the BCS works and 2 good teams played and one was just better? No, actually. It means that the math behind the BCS selections has very little to do with quality of the team that shows up on gameday.
The Virginia/Kansas game is tonight, it SHOULD be ok. I’ll buck the trend and pick Kansas in a 20-point victory. And yes, 3 TDs is a blowout.
Why are playoffs better?
Simple. You win, you advance. The best teams in football, the true champions, are champions from top to bottom. Part of being a champion is showing up on gameday! Part of being a champion is doing your homework and preparing for each and every new opponent properly!
Example a: The NFL Playoffs + Super Bowl.
On Sunday (or whatever day) I watch the Packer game. If it doesn’t conflict with said Packer game I watch the Colts and Pats play. I like Peyton Manning. In 5 or 6 years he’ll be what Brett Favre is today and probably breaking all of his new shiny records. I watch the Pats (this season) because it’s history in the making. That’s not that many games, really. When the playoffs start (this weekend!) I’ll watch just about every game that’s on. It’s GREAT football.
The NFL players frequently say that once they’re in the playoffs everyone starts at 0-0. May be the best team of the day win.
Example b: March Madness.
I don’t enjoy college basketball, but I watch a TON of it during March. The games during the playoffs are just plain great.
There are 12 conferences and (this year) there were 32 bowl games. There is PLENTY of time and teams that could play. Even something simply like a 3-week playoff would be tolerable. You still get to have the $$$ games, but in the end you actually have a real champion.
Multiple plugin fuckery, editing, site re-organizations, etc. are now “complete”. Apparently I’m still doing things wrong, so we’ll see what breaks in a week. The new mod-rewrite stuff is ridiculous – and I’ve been using it in “regular” Apache setups for years!
I’ve been tagging/re-tagging everything that appears on the front page as of the last post, which populated the new cloud. Still no connection to technorati, but that’ll get in there eventually I hope. I’m still working on getting the categories/tags set the way I want them. Shit happens, I guess.
I added links to two new special pages, accessible via the menu bar (top right) or the sidebar. Unimpressive stats, to say the least, but I’m a nerd.
edit: As referenced by this post, Technorati support has returned!
As chronicled here and here I, on occasion, make bad choices when it comes to my own personal web stuffs. For reasons that escape my current understanding I upgraded my perfectly tuned and working Wordpress 2.2.3 install to the “eagerly anticipated” 2.3. I followed the preflight checklists the the letter and even used a “preflight” plugin that verified everything I intended to use was on the compatibility list.
Result? The db failed to upgrade on the first, second and 3rd passes. A db/file restore got my old stuff back up and running again tried again after reading some of the troubleshooting instructions. Huzzah, the db upgraded cleanly…sort of. All my categories were deleted and the new cano-rewriting engine sent my crap into infinite loops for a solid hour until I moved things around. Apparently trying to redirect “www” traffic AND having my blog in a folder called “/blog” was an unforeseen function. Oy.
I made the assumption that eventually I’ll have to deal with this crap so I chose to do it now. I just finished re-categorizing every post I’ve ever written. Of course all my old technorati tags are gone now as well and the native tagging features are … whatever. I don’t know at this point. I was under the impression that I would be able to (finally) just use tags instead of categories but there are still two blanks. Color me confused, I guess.
Anywho, bear with me. I’m searching for a 2.3 compatible theme that doesn’t suck so I can re-mod everything to get back to where I’m happy. If shit is broken blame THESE GUYS and not me, ‘kay?
Also: It seems that 2.3 is dogshit slow. Sorry. If it really starts to be an issue I’ll launch a ticket with dreamhost and see if there’s something they can tell me.
edit (11:25pm): After a few hours of hax0r I think I have this working somewhat reasonable. I really like the theme, which means that it’s already in use on 99.9% of all blogs ever. Such is life. This theme is actually plugin/tag aware so everything seems to be kosher. I’m using about half the plugins now that I was before. a) in an effort to speed things up and b) because they’re broke.
Yes, my roof still leaks. Needless to say, that makes the recentweatherpatterns especially troubling. I wrote a pleasant letter to the “administrator” over a year ago when the leak first appeared. I’ve been attempting to follow up via phone on and off since then. Best line from all the conversations: “I didn’t receive a letter.” But the check for my dues that was stapled to the letter got cashed, so that statement seems… improbable, to say the least.
So I realize that my next door neighbors are the V-P and Secretary of the board and during one of the typhoons last week I asked one of them to come take a look at my waterfall. She was rather disturbed and called the administrator immediately demanding action…of her answering machine.
I missed her initial call whilst driving to my parents home for the weekend and returned it about 3 hours later. Three guesses as to where this story goes… I’m on my 4th call-back-back-back-back so far and I have yet to speak to her directly. Best line of day, from a post-it on my door. “Diane said she hasn’t heard from you, please call her cell phone and you’ll get her right away.”
I, and my neighbors, pay this woman, btw. We PAY her to treat us like shit.
We have the annual board meeting in early September, my statement to the association promises to be colorful, to say the least.
Upside, it’ll be winter soon, and it doesn’t leak during the winter.
A: Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis bored.
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