tsearch and parking My big accomplishment for the week was an install of PostgreSQL on windows 2000. The postgres team just released version 8.0 beta4. It used to be that you could run postgres on windows through the cygwin environment. As of version 8.0 they have released a native win32 port. So I downloaded the installer available from the FTP mirrors and I went to work.

The installation itself is slick as a greased slip n' slide. I don't like windows at all, but I wanted to try this out. It will bennefit me a great deal to be able offer this as a solution to potential clients if they have windows requirements.

So ... the installation is a typical windows installation. It creates a user for the PG superuser, and sets everything up. Part of the installation process is a selection of all available contrib pacakes (including tsearch2). Just a simple click of a checkbox and you are on you way. :-) So the installation is _very_ easy.

It still comes with all of the regular PG command line utilities (createdb, pg_dump, psql etc). It will also install pgAdminnIII for you. I have started using that a little bit on windows, but I found myslef still going back to the command line. This posed some difficulties on my part. I'm too used to a good operating system like any *nix based OS. I ended up writing batch files for ls.bat, cp.bat and will most likely continue to do so to avaoid smacking my computer screen every time I forget to type dir in a DOS command prompt.

I installed vim, of course, and I am currently looking for some other kind of console programs for windows. I seem to be out of luck. cmd.exe it is ... and man does that thing suck. I took me _forever_ to figure out how to do simple things like add a directory to the $PATH variable, or turn on tab completion. BTW ... there is character completion in the DOS window, it's default key just happens to not be tab. I don't understand that ... and It really bothers me that simple things like that have to be configured in the regitry. @#!@#! windows.

I got an email about my tsearch2 intro documentation. Someone had a problem installing tsearch2 following the steps because the user they were installing as did not have superuser privileges and therefore could not install functions with language 'C" (it's not a trusted language).

I started walking through my documentation. I've had some additions on the back burner for the last few months. I asked Oleg what he would like to see added to the docs. I'm also going to run through everything on my new PG windows installation. I figure there will be some new additions based on my playing around. I'll let everyone know when a new edition is out.

I went to Safeway earlier today. I ran in to get a couple of things to make an awesome chicken taco salad. When I came out I put the bag in the passenger seat. Then when I went around to the driver to to get in I couldn't. The owner of a new acura SUV had parked not only crooked in their spot, but angled accross the lines into my spot. I'm a big guy to begin with, but I could only manage to open the car door enough to have about 4 inches of space between the door and the seat. Paris Hilton couldn't even squeeze into my car ... that's how bad this was.

So I leaned up against the trunk of my car. I decided this was the most opportune time to have a cigarette. So I smoked, and watched the passers by in a busy parking lot. All giving me strange looks as this wierd guy just "hanging out" in the Safeway parking lot. After about 10 minutes of sitting there I heard a click click of the SUV automatic doors unlocking. An rather cute girl was walking toward me. She too looked at me kind of wierd, and got into her truck, started it up and backed out ... slowly ... really slowly as to not hit my car. So I then proceeded to get into my car.

Around this point in time I think she must have realized what had happened. This girls was an idiot, and parked so close to me that I couldn't even open my door to get into my car. My door was was still open, and she rolled down the window and was apologizing profusley. I just turned my head and waved. I really didn't care about standing outside for a few minutes. If people flipped out over losing 15 minutes of a saturday afternoon ... you've got some issuses. Now if I had been mising the Roughriders game because of this I probably would have keyed her shiny new van, and smashed her window. But the game wasn't on for like 3 hours ... so who cares?

I drove out the back end of the parking lot. The girl had driven out the front end, and so she passed me on the street as I was waiting to leave. She saw me again ... and she looked pretty fearful. I think she felt really really bad for being stupid. She had her hand covering her mouth, and although I couldn't see clearly into her vehicle ... I think she might even have been crying about it. Now I felt bad. How does that work? Girl is an idiot, can't park, blocks me from getting into my car, I don't even care about it ... really I don't, she feels bad about being and idiot and starts crying, and I feel bad about her feelings? I guess I'm just too nice ;-)

I can't believe the Riders lost against B.C tonight!

  ¶ 2:24:00 AM 0 comments

  DNS & Color Coded Girls I seem to be stuck in a professional rut lately. As I am providing my services to fix people's problems ... someone else's problems somehow manage to affect what I'm doing. Perfect example was today's mishap.

I develop several websites for one of my clients. I admin a few servers that these websites reside upon. I however do not manage their DNS. The gentleman who is their computer supplier maintains their email, public websites, and DNS for the companies. I have never intended to move in on his homeland. When I need domains created, I would send him and email and eventually they would be setup.

Over the weekend I did massive amounts of coding and testing to complete the section of a website to manage and maintain employment records and vaction/sick time for a group of employees. After I was completely satisfied with the result I checked in the code and updated the live server. I planned to go down south and demonstrate what I had done for the client.

So after a very small amount of sleep (I went to bed around 5:00 A.M). I got up in the morning, showered and trucked on down. Pumped up to show off my work to Robyn, I strike up IE on Win XP at her desk. Cannot Find Server. WTF?!?!?!?! I just updated it last night? like a few hours ago?

I start the technical hunt. I can :

1. ping other boxes through the same gateway so we have network.
2. I can ping the actual box by IP so the server is up and running.
3. I can log in to the server via ssh so it is the right one and not some IP mess.
4. I can reach other virtual domains on the same webserver so apache is running fine.
5. I can get into the proper website by IP address only. (it's the default virtual host)
6. nslookup was giving some wierd errors. (I don't trust windows anyways)

So it's a name thing? I give the local computer guy a call and he comes over. I found out that the guy who manages DNS got pissed off at his ISP for charging him too much and cancelled his account. So he's moved his server's to dial up temporarily _AND_ he didn't tell anyone. The DNS rollover (IP change) takes 1-2 days to propegate properly (such is DNS). And this will happen again when he moves the servers to a new ISP shortly (Another 1-2 days of downtime). Knowing I have no control over the DNS and now it's semi-fried for the time being, I realize I just wasted my time going down to the office. I do appreciate the good conversation with Robyn though.

I wish some people would just get a clue!!!!!

Maybe some people need hints ... which leads me to my next topic. I was watching a TV show with a court case going on. the case was a 14 year old kid accused of sexual assault. Apparently it was at a "sex party" where the kids would pair off and "do stuff". It came out in the court case that to eleviate pressure on the girls who attended, the girls would wear colored bracelets. An orange bracelet meant "kissing only", a blue bracelet meant "oral sex", and a black bracelet meant "I go all the way".

I thought to myself as I was watching this that it was pretty sad that children jump into a social situation like that and don't really ... then I realized that those kids were onto something. Wouldn't it be cool if grown up women did that? "Hey you with the green bracelet, can I buy you a drink?". (I'm not telling you what the green bracelet means). Women are mysterious creatures to begin with. Don't get me wrong, women are fabulous, and should be worshipped and pampered accordingly. Women are mysterious ... and guys are pretty simple sometimes ... so why not just advertise for us? I mean every guy would just wear _every_ colour bracelet (except pink ... pink means something very very bad ;-)) ... wouldn't he?

Then I got to thinking ... wouldn't it be great it this wasn't just a sex thing? Wouldn't it be great if the computer people of the world who really don't have a clue wore the red propeller beanie on their head? I could wear my black top hat and happily go about my daily routine of fixing the red beanie's messed up attempts at something. Then I could poke the red beanies with my walking stick. *poke* *poke*. Stupid red beanies.

At least this way the red beanie population would eventually dwindle ... people would start to reckognize the red beanies and run from them like the bubonic plague. Meanwhile the upper class top hat wearing folk could streamline the entire professional world, and no propblems would happen in my euphoria.

All and all it really wasn't a very bad day. The DNS crap irked me earlier, but it opened up my day to go for coffee a few times with different friends, and clients. So my planned day of demo and coding turned into a relaxing day of schmoozing. Which is actually about to continue. Time for coffee again.
  ¶ 8:58:00 PM 0 comments

  Other People's Computers *Sigh*

I just realized on this blog site that checking the preview and then hiding the preview is not a very good idea (at least in Konqueror it isn't). I just lost an entire blog because the nifty js didn't apparently hold onto the text properly. :-( I'm too annoyed to actually investigate it more. This one will be better anyway.

I'm trying to get some work done at 3:00 A.M. now. I'm working on some new features for a client's intranet. I've been writing a section to track the vacation and sick time for their employees. I'm pretty pumped about it. I ran my design by my friend / colleague / buddy I get into trouble with ;-) Aaron Seigo He gave me some ideas, and handed me a torch to waddle into the forray of coding with. Thanks man!

I periodically check KMail to see if anyone loves me. And to see if anyone new loves me in the five minutes that passed since I last checked. I have come to the conclusion that several people who are combinations of people that I already know love me.

I love other people's computers that have viruses. Especially those that attack outlook contacts, scramble the names, and address, and send a whole whack of e-mails to me. That's right I said whack, but did not define the number that a "whack" equates too. Let's just say that spam assassin has been doing it's job, and my spam folder is filled and emptied on a regular basis. Good thing perl can keep up with the volume ;-)

I sometimes wonder who owns the computer(s) that seem to have genuine feelings for me. If I knew, I would of course help out a friend and rectify the problem (don't you think it's about time you installed linux on this thing?). Then my fat and lazy genes kick in and I feel content to let cool software handle the overflow of electronic love for BDDF.

Oh well ... at least I get some lovin'  ¶ 1:41:00 PM 0 comments