Category: Geekery

I suppose it was too much to hope for.

The other day they “upgraded” our Lotus Notes to a “6.0 style”. Evidently I had been using a “4.x style” without upgrading it. Ok the new view looks more modern, but it’s slow. Even by Bloated Stoats standards it’s slow. About the only thing I like about it is that when you delete something, it actually goes away off the list instead of still being there but with an “X” beside it until you hit F9. The user interface still sucks like a really sucky thing.

One of the things I really hate about Lotus Notes is that it doesn’t just encourage “TOFU” (Top post Over, Full text Under), it makes it hard to NOT do it that way. I noticed an option on the “reply” button that says “Reply with Internet-Style History”. Dare I hope? Would this be a way to do trimmed quoted text with the reply text interspersed? Breathless with anticipation, I clicked it. And disappointedly, I exhaled. I ended up with the cursor at the top, followed by the reply to the reply to the reply, then the reply to the reply, then the reply, then the original text. And it was quoted with a single line of “>” quote marks, not multiple quote marks for the multiply replied to text.

Oh well. I still continue to expect miracles, I guess.

Today’s interesting discovery

I’ve just discovered  lighttpd, a small memory footprint web server that supports all the stuff I currently use on my Linode – it’s got server side includes, fast cgi, simple virtual hosting, and mod_rewrite type redirection.  And Ruby on Rails supports it.  Ruby on Rails also supports SQLite, a small memory footprint SQL RDBMS.

Considering the small memory on my linode, I’m thinking that a transition from Apache and MySQL to lighttpd and SQLite might be just the ticket to improve the performance.  Which will be important if I start playing around with Ruby on Rails, because these “do everything including the kitchen sink” things tend to be memory and CPU hogs.

Now I’m trying to figure out how to test a transition.  I could install both of them on my home server and run it on another port.  I could install both of them on my linode and run it on another port.  Both of those options have the problem that it’s not a 100% accurate test, because I’d have to change the code to support a different port, and then change it back if/when I make it the true thing.  Another possibility is to buy another Linode for a few months and try it out there.

Stupid tooth

One of my teeth exploded this morning.  I went to the dentist and they poked around, took a ton of x-rays, and scheduled me for about a bazillion appointments.  They haven’t put anything on the hole, but it isn’t hurting much.

In other news, somebody from my pimp agency came by to see me, because the INS was asking for proof that I have a legal right to work in the US, so I had to show him my green card.  Not sure why it didn’t take the last time I showed it to them.  I was asking him about the current job market.  Not that I expect anything – my contract has been extended to the end of the year, but it never hurts to keep your eyes and ears open.  He said that right now, the hot technology is J2EE.  I’m not entirely sure how J2EE differs from all the Java Swing and RDBMS stuff I’ve been doing is, but I suppose I should do some research and become buzzword compliant.

Which is too bad, because in aid of my desire to get some more experience with AJAX I was planning to teach myself more Javascript and maybe Ruby on Rails.  There just isn’t enough time, nor enough room in my head.

What crack is Adobe smoking?

Last night I wanted to install Acrobat Reader 7 on my laptop.  Normally installing a program in Mac OS X is just a matter of downloading a .dmg (Disk Image) file, opening it, and dragging the application out of there to the Applications folder.  Sometimes the .dmg has a package installer in it.  So I wasn’t too surprised when I found that the .dmg file I’d downloaded from Adobe had a package installer in it.  But when I ran the package installer, it didn’t just copy some files from within itself to places on the destination drive.  Oh no, that would be too normal.  Instead, the package installer fired up a Adobe download tool that downloaded another freaking .dmg file!  And that .dmg file had a package installer that actually installed the Acrobat Reader.

Can somebody please explain why they wouldn’t just let you download the Acrobat Reader installer package, instead of making you download an installer installer?

Rone, you want to comment?

Phew!

The problem described in Rants and Revelations : Oh, buggeration! has been fixed.  It was a simple matter of some bad DOM programming – the way I was turning on and off the divs to show various parts of the refresh screen, specifically to show the “You’re done” part, was incorrect.  It’s unfortunate that the way I was doing it before worked on Firefox and Safari, otherwise I wouldn’t have assumed it was correct.

In case anybody cares, I had

div.setAttribute(“style”, “display:none”);

where I should have had

div.style.display = “none”;

which of course makes a lot more sense and is a lot cleaner if I ever put a style sheet on these things.