RasterWeb!

Well, I’ve settled on Mantis for our bug tracking needs. It’s a PHP/MySQL app, and does a pretty good job of things so far. In the past I’ve used Bugzilla but unless you’ve got your own server to run it on, and a day to spend tweaking your environment and install perl modules, Bugzilla isn’t really an option. Mantis was up and running in about 15 minutes…

So now it’s time to track some issues, squash some bugs, ignore feature requests, and generally attempt to get organized. Yeah…

Over in the code/src/jedit section I’ve updated a few things. There’s now a clipperlib file for perl functions, and I’ve uploaded a new version of my xinsert file for perl, and new versions of the templates for various DOCTYPE’s.

Dig around… Enjoy, and what not… you jEdit users…

I normally don’t pay attention to things like weblog awards, but Mark mentioned his winning of a Bloggie so I thought I’d take a look.

Well it appears at though there’s a category for ‘lifetime achievement’ which says it’s for Webloggers who have been blogging at least since July 1, 2000. I would have thought 1999, or perhaps 1998, would be more appropriate years. Some year before Blogger came along perhaps… How about 1997?

Since this award can only be won once, I figure it’s only a matter of time before they award it to me. Unless they change that 2000 date to some more recent date. I mean, if you look at the page of only weblogs under ‘ye olde skool’ and pick one each year, then eventually they might get to old RasterWeb! right? All I’ve got to do is outlive the competition, and in 10 or 20 years I’ll be getting the coveted ‘lifetime achievement’ award! Mwuhahaha!

Or maybe not, I mean, it’s all just a popularity contest, right? And popularity is one contest I’ll never win. If I ever do, it’s obvious I’m doing something wrong…

Besides, I can’t attend that SXSW thing, because it’s always at the same time that we have the MXMW thingamabob each year… aw foo…

Recently some people expressed concern about Google. Should I use Google? Why does Google store a 35 year cookie? Is Google turning evil/becoming a competitor/employing ex-NSA people? None of that matters as much to me as this: I’ve become reliant on Google. I think that I need Google.

Anytime you come to depend on some resource not in your control, you need to put a certain amount of trust into that resource. Trust that it won’t go away, trust that it will always do what you want it do. Trust that it won’t turn icky. All sort of different trusts emerge.

So do I trust Google? Right now, sure, but that doesn’t mean things can’t change. Do I trust Apple? Pretty much, though I do admit to having some mistrust in some of the things Apple does. Do people trust Pyra/Blogger? Many people lost the trust in Blogger’s reliability and jumped ship to Movable Type. In doing this I’d argue that they just exchanged one trust for another, and since it’s still a resource you don’t have complete control over (read the license) it could also go away at some point. (Though you get to keep your data…)

But I’m getting off the subject…

Google is still a great search engine. It almost always seems to find what I need, quickly and easily. That doesn’t mean I won’t continue to look for alternatives, and see what other search engines out there might be doing a good job. I’d hate to have to someday look for an alternative to Google and realize that when I wasn’t looking all the alternatives ceased to exist.

So if someone thinks that blindly trusting that Google (or anything) will always be there for you, and do exactly what you want it to do, well, good luck with that. I, on the other hand, will continue to search out alternatives, other ways of doing things, other tools to get the job done. There’s more than one way do it, you know…

If this web site had a special categorization for automotive problems, it would have quite a bit of activity in it. As frequent readers know, our luck with cars is not good. We’ve blown out (or blown up) tires, transmissions, batteries, pump, and various parts that probably do nothing but the car won’t function without them… But this time… arghhhh…

See, yesterday I get ready to leave for work. I unlock and open the side van door. I then close the side van door. (I do this so the kids can get in quickly for school.) So after the side door closes, I heard this sound like a big sheet of ice falling off the back window. One problem. There was no ice on the back window. The process of closing the side door of the van caused the back window to shatter. At this point I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to get to work on time.

I then figured I’d make some sort of cardboard/plastic window, and I’d take the van instead of the car. I then found out that duct tape won’t stick to anything when it’s below zero outside. I give up, decide to work from home, and attempt to come up with a plan.

A plan you say? What plan? You call an auto glass specialist, and they fix it. Sure, if you’re one of the elite ruling class with many dollars in the bank. That would not be us. After receiving a clue about how much getting the glass replaced might cost, we get an alternate plan. This is, in a nutshell, the alternate plan: Go to junkyard. Buy van door from smashed up van. Switch doors. How did the plan work? Well, we didn’t match the color, so we’ll have to paint it once it gets warm enough, which should be June or July around these parts, but we did get a door. We haven’t put it on yet either. I will require assistance in doing this, and there will most likely be cuts and bruises involved, and since we’re dealing with wiring there’s always a chance of getting a nice electrical shock along the way as well…

So that’s what happened yesterday, and why I still hate cars.

Oh, and I was so sick all weekend I could barely move. Not that it has anything to do with the van hating us, or me hating the van, but I thought it should be mentioned…