Took this test (with a lil’ help from Sharaun) and ranked as a “Pop Junkie.” Combined, we fully kicked this test’s arse. I thought it was kinda fun, but only if ya got a good bit o’ time to waste on it.
If ya noticed, I fixed the comment script. Yup, it was exactly the problem I thought it was. I just needed someone on the host server to reset my permissions page so I could make the comments database writeable again. I had been sending unanswered mails to tech support since last Wednesday, every one of them marked as “level 3: critical site or network outage,” and I was getting increasingly short and kinda ornery with them. So yesterday, I decided to go the other route – and mostly out of frustration fired off this guy:
i tried to set some permissions,
but 404s filled my visions.“page not found” is all i see,
why would they do this to me?it worked last week i swear,
but now the page ain’t there.oh sweet permissions,
how i wish i could change thee,
because right now my visitors,
cannot write to my DB.i’ve wrote a hundred times now,
always “level 3,”
adaptive won’t you please,
chmod or calcs for me.thanks!
dave
www.pharaohweb.com
Now, I don’t know if it was coincidence or not, but within hours I got this:
We will reset the permissions link immediately.
Sorry for the delay.tech@daveshost.net
After which the permissions page was back in order, and I replied with the following:
you guys are da bomb, sorry if i sounded harsh… not like the fate of the free world hinges on my dumb blog anyway 😉
take it easy!! hope ya had a good turkey day.
dave
www.pharaohweb.com
Yeah, I was easy on ’em, but they did get it fixed. Don’t think I didn’t entertain thoughts of nastiness. At one point yesterday I had tracked down the name and home number of the dude who owns the server that was misbehaving. I even managed to dig up pictures of him and his extended family. The web can be scary in the wrong hands, but I donned my white hat and took the high road. I’m just glad the site’s working, and you can all leave nice derisive comments again. Ahhh, the world is right once more.
Been seriously hitting the Decmeberists again. I think I’ve moved onto Phase Three of musical enjoyment with them. Lemme break it down for you. Phase One is the “humming” phase. I listen primarily to the tune of the songs, the music dominates and it’s what I remember most. Sure, I might learn a hook or two lyrics-wise, but not much more than that. Phase Two is the “hearing” phase. This is where I listen to and learn the words of the song. At this point I’m mainly concerned with being able to sing along, ’cause you can derive all new levels of enjoyment from a song when you can sing along with it. Phase Three is the “ah-ha!” phase. This is where I start interpreting the words I’ve been trying to learn. I put the song together to pick out ideas and themes, and try to figure out what’s being sung about. I think Phase Three is the ultimate level of enjoyment I can get from music, like being in on the secret message the songwriter is trying to get across or something.
Anyway, I’m in Phase Three with the two (one, two) Decemberists albums now – and yesterday at work these songs sent me to dictionary.com like a hundred times. Seriously, this guy must have an old 18th century thesaurus nearby when he pens his songs. With gems like “stevedore,” “bombazine,” “oligarchs,” “laudanum,” and countless others – he by far out-vocab’s anyone I’ve ever listened to. I even got tongue-tied reading the reviews of the dang albums. But whatever, I’ve talked about a group 90% of you don’t care about (and would probably laugh off as novelty) for too long now. Next subject please.
Anthony and I were talking yesterday about how much we like getting new tools. We both agreed that, the less oft-used the tool, the more we want it. Meaning, I have no problem buying tools I’ll only use once – on the contrary, I love it more than buying tools I’ll use every day. Saturday I bought a staple gun to help hang the Christmas lights on the eaves. I bought the most top-of-the-line model that Home Depot had. Why? Hell, I don’t know why. I’ll probably only ever use it once a year, but if staple guns ever come up in conversation I’ll be able to say “I have a sweet staple gun, super powerful, the best.” I guess it’s also a status thing, the more tools I have the more times I can say “I have one you can borrow” to a buddy lamenting about not owning a planer when his project requires one; to which he’ll reply “Really, awesome. I can’t believe you have one of those.” Obscure tool: check, ego-food: check. Done and done.
Even though I’ve shied away from talking about the blog in person (talking about it makes me feel like you think I write it just so you’ll talk to me about it, and that makes me feel like a cheap attention whore), my pops said something interesting to when we were together over Thanksgiving. I don’t know how often my folks read the blog, but I suspect pops reads it fairly regularly. Anyway, he made the comment this weekend that we think a lot alike. Actually he said something to the tune of “we think a lot alike David, it’s kinda scary.” Pops… I agree! I don’t wanna think like you – you’re insane! Anyway, I thought that was kinda cool. Pop: you can talk about the blog when you want, you’re OK in my book. Makes me wonder though, how many of the millions of things I thought about during my youth did my parents also think about at one time during their youth.
Last night Sara (or Dan? I dunno) and I got to talking about rhymes and I realized that there are two distinct schools of rhyming. I’m what I like to think of as a “relative” rhymer, whereas Sharaun is a very “literal” rhymer. I guess you could say I’m a leftist rhymer, while Sharaun is a right-wing rhyming nut. Us rhyming liberals have it a lot easier than the rhyme-Nazis though, that’s for sure. For me, “away” rhymes with “foyer” and “bacon” rhymes with “naked.” For Sharaun, “away” rhymes with nothing, and “bacon” only rhymes with “Macon” or maybe “shaken.” Literal rhymers need both absolute rhymage and matching syllable count. Relative rhymers are happy enough with similar sounding words like “leanest” and the last ‘P’ of O.P.P. (for the ladies).
Gee, what an eclectic and long-winded blog this turned out to be. I kinda cleaned out some of the “blog_ideas.txt” file and probably put too many unrelated things into one entry, but I was in the writing mood. Sheesh, just re-read this thing for “editorial” sake, I write terribly sometimes. How can you even figure out what I’m trying to say? That paragraph about my dad’s comment… absolutely horrid. Sorry. That’s it for now.
Dave out.
Also written on this day...
- fraud! - 2010
- counting the hours - 2008
- something new - 2005
- my kingdom for a pagerank - 2004
It should be noted that the conversation between Dan and Dave was over an instant messenger. I know Dan and I hang out together a lot, but we haven´t started sounding like each other yet. I just don´t want people thinking you have some sort of She-Male friends (not that I have anything against them — See Halloween pictures).