Archive for May, 2007

2007.05.08

Beulah Land

What a strange couple days. I probably won’t be posting for the next several as I’ll be travelling to Detroit for the funeral of my Grandmother, Rose “Peg” Haynes, who died yesterday. Rest in peace, Gramma. I will miss you badly.

Despite this heavy burden the past two evenings have been quite eventful. Last night several friends came over for a dinner party (I really really appreciated the distraction) and we had a hearty steak, potatoes and corn on the cob dinner augmented with red wine and lots of talking.

Then tonight I did two things I’ve never done before and never thought I’d do for that matter. I went and got a massage (at Sain Saine in Japan Town) and then to the Kabuki Springs for some steam followed by hot bath and cold bath. Afterwards the five of us that went found ourselves at a great little Korean restaurant.

Now I’m in the midst of packing and the weight of the trip is hitting me. It’s funny how the mind works. I keep thinking that if I don’t pack and don’t go then everything will be the same as it was before. So back to reality and packing.

Before that, though, the subject of this entry comes from a request from my sister to bring the song Beulah Land with me. Hopefully it will be some solace for her.

2007.05.06

San Francisco and Science Fiction

My friend and co-worker Marc Weidenbaum posted an interview he did some time ago with local science fiction writers Richard Kadrey, Pat Murphy and Rudy Rucker about the future of the genre and about San Francisco.

Kadrey: For me the thing that makes San Francisco unique is that we’re waiting for the catastrophe. I honestly believe this plays into the ethos of the city.
…
Kadrey: That’s Susan Sontag: “Science fiction is the literature of catastrophe.” We’re living in a catastrophe zone. It’s part of the air here. Like L.A., we’re the end of the world, as far west as you can go without falling into the water. The difference geologically is that probably we’re going to go first. We’re on more of a time bomb.

Murphy: One of the other things about San Francisco is the geographic constraint. If you want to leave San Francisco, you either use the bridge, or there’s a very narrow neck of land. The constraint of being packed into this one area of land, and you can’t have suburban sprawl, it really does sort of shape the character of the city.

If you’re into obscure electronic-related music be sure to check out the rest of his site, too!

2007.05.05

The Computer Guy

As “The Computer Guy” you never get a break. Mostly people only care about you when something is wrong. When strangers find out what you do they almost always want to talk about computers. Usually theirs. They assume you know everything about computers, which would be an impossible feat. If there was ever a problem with, say, the email servers then the next time their email signature disappears they firstly ask if there is something wrong with the email server, secondly when are you going to fix the problem.

It’s an ungrateful job, but I think I’ve gotten lucky in my IT career. I’ve had a few mostly good bosses and mostly worked in environments where my services were appreciated. Still, it does weather my soul over time and I wonder why I’m at it. My CEO even asked me why I’m in IT. I still don’t have a complete answer, but here’s part of it: I like to help people. In fact I think I need to help people. Maybe it’s an inextricable part of my psyche, maybe even my genetics.

I come from a family that has served others in various capacities. Several members of my family served in the military, one served as a minister, several others have volunteered in public service. In fact you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in my family not willing to drop everything and help you unless you’ve dumped awful tasks on us in the past or tried taking advantage of us.

We don’t expect volumes of gratitude. In fact I’m always surprised and a little embarrassed when people thank me because when I help, it’s just something I do, and I happen to get paid for it. I know that there are a lot of people who burn out on this sort of thing and someday I might, too. Until then, though, I think I’ll stick with it.

(In case you were wondering what brought this on, I happened to run across this article which garnered a lot of sympathy from me.)

2007.05.04

Uphill Both Ways and the Big Surprise Ending

Uphill Both WaysI’m in love with Uphill Both Ways. I’ve seen them several times and tonight I caught their latest with Sean and Dave, Uphill Both Ways and the Big Surprise Ending. I don’t know if the ending was a surprise (though definitely unexpected) but some of the new skits were hilarious and the improvisation, such as the sound of gravity, made my throat raw with laughter.

If you’ve never caught the boys at their antics there is one more episode of this show next weekend on May 11th. Support the local funny guys! Make sure kittie gets fed!

2007.05.03

(Not So) Free Day

Today at around noon the power went out in the Fisherman’s Wharf/Pier 39/North Beach area. Unfortunately there are absolutely zero news articles about it on the web so no linky.

I was just sitting down to order take out fried rice at China House when the lights went out. So much for food. Then I got a txt msg from Jerome saying the power was out so I hauled back to work and we got all the computers on UPS power shut down. Then we waited till we heard PG&E wasn’t going to have the power on for a few hours. The decision was made to send everyone home except, of course, Operations and IT (lucky me!).

At about 2:30PM I had to eat. Jerome and I headed off to Burger Meister. We were almost done eating when the power went off there, too. I’m glad we got our food because if I didn’t eat at that point I was ready to hurt people. I do not play well with others when I’m hungry.

I think it was 4:30PM by the time the power was up, and a bit after that Jerome skived off and joined a few other fellow electricity refugees from work and imbibed vino at one of the local cafes.

I heard the figure thrown out that we lost about $200,000 in productivity (salaries, work stoppage, etc) in the half day no one could work. I will never understand how someone out there isn’t responsible for this…

Besides, I’m just wishing I could have spent the whole afternoon drinking wine and not worrying about work. Maybe I’m hungry again. Grrr.

2007.05.03

WordPress Geo Plugin Snafu

For a couple weeks now I’ve noticed that the page I use to write posts to this site wasn’t loading completely. The section that allows me to upload pictures or add custom fields was missing! Today I finally decided to start digging into why this was happening, and I isolated the problem as something within the Geo plugin.

Naturally I started Googling to see if I could find someone else who had the same problem and had found a solution. Unfortunately no solutions seem forthcoming.

The problem from what I can see (I’m not a PHP coder so this is educated guess work) is that in the file edit-form-advanced.php the code <?php do_action('edit_form_advanced'); ?> should pull in data and fields from plugins. Indeed the Geo plugin seems to have a hook function edit_form_advanced($not_used). I thought the “$not_used” was a clue but even when I pull it out things aren’t better.

This bug trac seems to indicate it might be a problem with PHP itself and mentions a problem with PHP 5.2.0 which was supposedly fixed in 5.2.1… but my host is running that already. The ticket also recommends using the latest cache.php include for WordPress but there was no love there.

I’m running the latest version of the Geo plugin (1.9.1) and have confirmed this behaviour in WordPress 2.1.3 and 2.0.2. Unfortunately I’ve only been able to test this on PHP 5.2.1 (I have no idea when my hosting provider upgraded). If anyone has any clues as to what could be happening I would love to know!

2007.05.01

MacArthur Maze Abuse

By now I’m sure most of you have heard that our notorious MacArthur Maze was partly destroyed by an overturned gasoline tanker truck that overturned and caught fire. The Maze is the confluence of 80, 880, 580 and the Bay Bridge and is the heaviest travailed spot in the Bay Area. After the accident, before it was known what really happened, I was really proud of our local media making no mention of the possibility of a terrorist attack. You guys did me proud.

But now, in an attempt to milk this story for anything and everything they can, the media is digging for dirt in all the wrong places. Their new target: James Mosqueda, the driver of the truck. Apparently he was convicted and served time in the early 90s on drug related charges. After release for serving his due time he cleaned up.

I feel sorry for the guy. It seems the news agencies are “up in arms” about how someone who was in jail could possibly be driving hazardous materials around. Um, excuse me, but the conviction was 10 years ago, he did his time, and he needs a job. He passed all the background checks and passed the tests to be a driver. He even had to pass strict Federal guidelines. He doesn’t have a single record with the DMV, so he must be a decent driver.

Leave the guy alone. Quit harassing him. He has to feel enough like crap as it is. He’s lucky to be alive. Just because at one point in his life he was having a hard time doesn’t mean he isn’t supremely competent to do his job now. Seriously, George Bush was an alcoholic, cleaned himself up and somehow got to be President (where he isn’t even competent). Leave Mr. Mosqueda in peace.