Five years...

I've been working on a little side project. I would like to have an app where people can read updates that I send out. It seemed like a fun way to learn more about programming mobile apps and it's something I could actually use if I can get it to a decent state.
 
I'm keeping it simple. I decided the app would just be an rss feed reader. And that meant I need a feed. I want it to be very specific to my app so I decided the way to go would be to just create my own back end for creating the feed. I decided to use php and I wrote a simple set up using the codeigniter framework. That gave me a quick way to set up authorization and it was easy to tie in styling from bootstrap so that things can look decent without any effort.
 
I've been doing all the work at my office, on my desktop running Fedora. I have two nice big lcd monitors and developing on Linux is just so easy. I had the environment up and running in no time.
 
Then this week my son got sick. Nothing serious - but enough for him to stay home from school for a few days. I worked from home to keep an eye on him. I've been putting off getting my Macbook set up to do this kind of stuff but now I really needed to tackle it. Ugh - what a pain. The machine itself has grown on me. The hardware is decent and works pretty well. The software isn't horrible. But oh my word - when I want to do anything 'out of the ordinary' and by that I mean any kind of meaningful work with the system, it is pretty bad. I know lots of professional developers use Macs but I'm stunned at what a pain it is to do things that are trivially easy in Linux.
 
Getting Mysql installed and running with Apache was a lot more work. Getting PHP working the way I want took more time than it ever has before. Things are far from ideal even now, but I've got it to a point where it works.
 
And now I have my code in 3 places. So I'll be using github to keep code in sync between them. It's a little more of a challenge because I have the production environment set up a little differently than the dev environment. But not so differently that it is a huge deal. I have ssh access to my hosting environment (Bluehost) so that makes it pretty easy. - Oh and that is the one thing that saves the mac - having bash. If it didn't I'd have given up on it long ago.

This has a ring of truth to it with respect to Slashdot. I've been on the receiving end of repeated accusations used like bludgeons to the point there are some people on here to whom I just ain't got jack to say beyond: "Lord bless your heart".
Which is not to whine about it. This is Slashdot; let the incontinent go elsewhere.
Rather, I'm yawning.

http://dilbert.com/series/60-Elbonians-hack-Dilbert-s-company-network

apt-get update; apt-get upgrade|sleep 2 yes&&sleep 3 killall yes
if that isn't the correct way to autoupdate please inform me...

Researching Scott Walker's college years is called "vetting". Researching Obama's college years is called "racism"

That 140 character limit has people breaking things down for even us knuckledragging, inbred uni-brows.
Thanks, Twitter!

Bonus:
It's amazing how left-wingers can detect the secret motivations of everyone except militant Islamists who don't make it a secret.

Pravda on the Hudson decided to un-frack itself with its Gail Collins hit piece.
I don't really care if Slashdot's favorite dirty diaper un-soils himself on the subject as in this JE.
It would be fine if he manned up and repented of being a total crapflooder; I'd enjoy adult conversations with him, as he seems an intelligent person. But then, we're talking about a dedicated bile spewer here. The sort that yields to nothing less than full-on Divine Intervention. So let me pray for that.

HEH => http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-15/greatest-obama-error-ever

Update on the Debian kernel bug

NYT Columnist Blames Scott Walker for Teacher Layoffs That Occurred Before He Was Governor
This may help explain the violent incontinence and all-orifice fluid ejections noted on here at the mention of the name "Scott Walker".

I wonder if I should file a bug with the Debian kernel team

The Republican Party Is Not Your Friend.
[your preaching goes here]

i saw the pilot for a potential wheel of time tv series. if you've read the books, it's nothing new but for any diehard fan it is a must see. it takes place in the age of legends just after the taint. the actors did a decent job, the scenes were ok and the special effects were laughable. but this is a pilot and it was based on perhaps 1 or 2 pages from the book. apparently the company that holds the rights to WoT was obligated to make something WoT to not lose the tv/movie rights. it was filmed in a single day by a crew that makes a lot of pilot episodes, it's overall quality is very poor but i don't blame the actors it simply is a pilot and they are making it to not lose rights to something they think more people will pay for it if they wait for the big networks to buy the rights to air the program. that being said i would geek out if i got the actual file(DVR quality) for the pilot. they have made series that are worse than the WoT pilot before. i remember how bad SG1 was in it's early seasons, but i still loved it. a WoT series would be awesome but i would prefer it to be on a channel i get... or on netflix or amazon prime. getting fxx is out of the question and getting a dvr would require me paying my dad the cost for switching to the satelite to dvr model instead of the regular service we have now... needless to say this is not something i can't live without. i already have more entertainment than i have time to watch (unless i went off line and only watched my physical discs) or if i quit social media and went to streaming/buying discs but i am a news and social media junkie and it took me a long time to quit gaming, so i wouldn't really expect me to have an easy time quitting social media...

I'm really past caring. Somewhere around the thousandth iteration, the trash talk just got tedious. It's my fault. I'll take the hit, like an RPG striking a helicopter carrying Brian Williams. I just can't muster the interest any more.

I got a thing from the IRS and they want me to fill out an on-line form.

To successfully complete the form I have to enter my filing address and it has to match my return. The form fields don't allow me to correctly enter the address.

So the address has to match for the form to validate, but the form wont allow me to enter the address correctly. It's beautiful. There's an email address to send information about the process and it says below the address that you can send an email but they wont respond. Super.

So I go to the page with a phone number to call. It says "You can call between 7 am and 7 pm your local time." I'd wager not.

I've never had a problem with the IRS or filing until this year. Something has put me onto some list with them, which they wont tell me about other than in a general way and now everything is exponentially more difficult. Fantastic.