Best.Corn.Ever (from Google Cache)

Originally posted August 20, 2008

Rails and params hash (from Google Cache)

Originally posted January 7, 2010

Perhaps This is Stupid (from Google Cache)

Originally posted August 21, 2008

iPhone Update (from Google Cache)

Originally posted June 28, 2009

The Little House All Alone (from Google Cache)

Originally posted June 6, 2009

Happy New Year and New Year Spamassassin Issues (from Google Cache)

Originally posted January 1, 2010

Blown Power Supply (from Google Cache)

Originally posted October 14, 2009

RubyGems Notes (from Google Cache)

Originally posted October 15, 2009

I’ve been trying to do some stuff with ruby on rails and getting my program up and running here on coldandheartless. I had all kinds of trouble when I finally got to the deployment stage. The first errors I got were:

yo:site maryh$ cap deploy:setup
/Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems.rb:280:in `activate’: can’t activate net-sftp (= 1.1.0, runtime)
for [], already activated net-sftp-2.0.2 for ["capistrano-2.0.0"] (Gem::LoadError)
from /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:35:in `require’
from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/
gems/capistrano-2.0.0/lib/capistrano/upload.rb:2
from /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require’
from /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require’
from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/
capistrano-2.0.0/lib/capistrano/configuration/actions/file_transfer.rb:1
from /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require’
from /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require’
from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/
capistrano-2.0.0/lib/capistrano/configuration.rb:12
… 7 levels…
from /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require’
from /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/
capistrano-2.0.0/bin/cap:3
from /usr/bin/cap:19:in `load’
from /usr/bin/cap:19

After screwing around for a very long time, I found that I seem to have some old versions of gems that were messing me up. And I when I tried to uninstall them, I got this error:

yo:gems root# gem uninstall capistrano -i /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
Remove executables:
cap, capify

in addition to the gem? [Yn] Y
ERROR: While executing gem … (Gem::FilePermissionError)
You don’t have write permissions into the /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/
Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/bin directory.

So I went to go and look at the above directory and it’s true that I don’t have write permissions because there was no bin directory there at all. After I created the bin directory, I was able to uninstall the gems. So now I should be able to uninstall the old stuff and put the newest files on.

Working with httpd.conf (from Google Cache)

Originally posted October 16, 2009

Comcast, SurfBoard SB6120 and Airport Extreme (from Google Cache)

Originally posted Nov. 28, 2009.

My First Solar Image (from Google Cache)

Originally posted March 3, 2010.

Business is Open!

I got my first consulting work check today. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I’ll have to build on this to get the business going.

A New Coldandheartless

It might be a bit obvious now, but my coldandheartless server died a painful death last week. I finally got around to seeing if I could fix anything and found that the system drive had completely failed. I tried rescuing files from the drive and it didn’t work. The good news is that I had the webpages on a separate disk which was still fine. So I could copy all of those files to my new server. Unfortunately, my wordpress database was not backed up (my bad) and I was unable to restore any of the files. The good news is that I did find one old backup (from sometime in 2008) that I could use to get back some of my posts. So there is now about a two-year gap in the blog. Oh well. Lesson learned. Now, I have to devise a new backup scheme. I haven’t yet decided how to do it, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

Recycling

It was beautiful out yesterday and I couldn’t go anywhere because my car is still in the shop. So, I decided to put the vent for the bathroom fan on my house. I also did some cleaning in the basement.

NXServer/Client Issues

If, say, your server crashed while you had an open nxclient session, you may have the problem of not being able to start another one. Here is the solution.

A Little Bit of Work

I admit that I have not been working on my house much of late. I’m pretty much completely satisfied with the fact that I can take a shower in my own house. Pretty much anything else is just gravy.

The Visitor

John and I went to go and see “The Visitor” tonight and it was terrific. It’s about a guy from Connecticut who finds two people living in his NY apartment. Basically, the idea is that your life could be changed drastically by people that you meet. The movie was really sad, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. (I don’t always like sad movies, but I did like this one.) And it wasn’t all sad, it had some very funny moments and some incredibly touching scenes. So I highly recommend it, except to my sister Julie who doesn’t go for sad movies at all.

My Sister is Going to Europe and I’m Not

My sister is going to Europe this summer for three weeks. She is now in my house, planning her trip with the help of my brother John. I’ll see about giving her an account here, so she can blog her trip while she’s gone.

My Favorite Things

I bought myself an easter lily yesterday. They are, unquestionably, my favorite flower. I like lillies in general, but the white, easter lily just smells so nice and looks so pretty that I love it. Now my house has that nice smell as well. And since I spent today doing some cleaning, my house is rather neat as well. Altogether, a pleasant place to be.

Approaching 40…

We’re just over six months until my fortieth birthday. I thought I was going to be a bit depressed about it, but I don’t think I will be. However, I do think that I’m going to be making some changes in my life. It probably happened a couple of years ago, but I’m now fairly sure that I’m in the second half of my life. The first half was good, but I want the second half to be much better.

The Barber of Seville

I saw “The Barber of Seville” last night. It has, I think, one of the most recognizable openings of any opera that I’ve heard. It’s great to just watch all the people in front of me swaying along to the music. And I know, for sure, that I could not have been the only person picturing the Bugs Bunny cartoon as the music played. The guy playing Figaro, Nathan Gunn, was very good and, looking at the photo in the book, incredibly good looking. My seat is much too far away to be able to tell myself.

What’s the Point?

I’ve been thinking a lot these days about money. And it’s just depressing, though it shouldn’t be. Honestly, in the grand scheme of things, I’m quite well off. I have a good job with good benefits and I own my house. Well, the bank owns it, but they’re letting me live there as long as I give them 21% of my take home pay for the next 18 years. Aside from my mortgage, I have no other debt, so that’s good. I guess what is depressing me is that I don’t live that extravagantly, but that I feel like I’m always stretched for cash. For most of my working life, I’ve been saving as much as I can for retirement. It just doesn’t look like there’s ever going to be enough there for me to retire.

Mac Problems

I have had my MacBook Pro for just over a year now and have been very happy with it. All of that changed lately, after I tried to update the operating system to 10.5.2. This was just another update (though a large one), that I tried to install with software update. My first problem was that it didn’t work. After a while, the screen went black and basically nothing was happening. I forced a reboot and then, the computer would not boot at all. I left it in disgust for a while and then when I returned, it went on fine.

La Traviata

I had the absolute best time at the opera last night. I saw La Traviata with Renee Fleming singing the part of Violetta. She is AMAZING! And, the two seats in front of me were empty, so I didn’t have to keep moving around to see the stage. I could just sit back and enjoy it. The two seats behind me were empty for the first act, but then an older couple sat in them. I wouldn’t have cared, except that they had the annoying habit of making little comments to each other during the applause. While normally, this would have pissed me off to no end, I was so enjoying the singing and acting that I didn’t really mind it. The tenor who sang the lead (the character name is escaping me right now) was terrific as well. I hadn’t seen La Traviata before and I just loved it. It was a little long, ending around 10:30pm, but when it was over, I could have sat and listened even longer. It’s for shows like this that I continue to subscribe to the Lyric. Finally, a great show from this season.

Juno

Since I feel like I’ve given my life over to my house since I’ve moved into it two years ago, I’ve decided that 2008 will be the year that I take my life back. So, starting with something easy, I went to see a movie, which is something that I think I did once or twice in 2007. I went with the Julies to see “Juno”. It’s the story of a pregnant teenager and it was very good. It was both touching and funny and I really liked it. The Julies thought that the main character looked like Punky Brewster, but I was a bit old for that show and never really watched it, so I don’t know about that. Whoever she looked like, she was really good. Anyway, I don’t want to get into details about the movie, except to say that I really liked it. Hopefully, I’ll get to see more good movies like this over the year.