April 2005

What seems to be making my entire week is that for the past week, Second Life is crashing and crashing.

It’d be perfectly fine for Second Life to crash and leave me on the desktop.

Second Life IS NOT doing that.
It’s taking out my entire OS when it dies.
I haven’t had decent uptime in a fuckin’ week, and this is getting on my nerves.
I’ve tried reinstalling my video card drivers, my sound drivers, SL itself, my antivirus application…
I’ve removed components from Foobar2000 that I think might be responsible (since I use it to listen to music while playing SL)…

I’ve shot down just about everything that I can think of, save for reinstalling Windows, which I’ll do as soon as this disk is ready, ’cause damn, I’m getting pissed off.

I pay $22.50 every quarter, plus $8 every month to socialize.

That’s $15.50 every damned month for a social world.
I could probably pay less for fuckin’ World of Warcraft.

(22:36) <@Xial> Era, How much is WoW per month? :\
(22:39) <+EraDra> $15 a month
(22:39) <@Xial> 50 cents cheaper than what I’m paying for SL right now.

With three months of SL and L$2000 (about USD$8 before their service fee for converting at GOM), I could have paid for my copy of Guild Wars.
Hell, I could hunt down a broadband adapter, pick up a router, and get my cousin a PSO Hunter’s License so he can play online on my Gamecube, with all the cash I’ve spent on SL.

This is a mighty fucking expensive world.

If it weren’t for the fact that There’s customization just plainly blows, I’d be gone already. :-/

Happy birthday, lj:ngarewyrd:.

Okay. So one of our users approached me today, asking for help.

When I ask them what with (of course, I need to know what they need help with, to help them, right?), they said, “MT“.

Some of you know of my automatic reflex to those letters.

I suppressed most of it, said,

(12:26:11) Xial: I’ll regret this later when I scrub my hands with acid, but what can I unbreak with MT?

and started working on it.
The time stamp is important.

Okay. So I’m sitting here, digging around with settings, looking at permissions and owners, and most of the things of that nature. I stop for a bit, because it was irritating me. That inspires this post so that I could get myself calmed down. (I need to fix times here.)

That was the hour marker.

Shortly thereafter, I log on to Freenode, and make comical remarks about having to help someone upgrade MT in #wordpress. A few of the WP users were ex-MT users, and offered me a few tips.

I continue to dick around with it, and then suggest that we try upgrading to see what happens.

They goes along with it, so I go to mt-org to get the latest version…
Only to find out that I have to register to even get the download done.

A few moments later, I thank bug me not for existing, and grab myself a copy of 2.661 and 3.16.
Problem.
Lynx sucks.
The downloads I did with Lynx were shot to hell. I had to run my local server, and grab the files off my desktop so that I didn’t have to sftp them up.

It’s 3 pm.
I’m reading the upgrade nodes for 2.661, and put files in their place.

Tried MT for them again.
That failed to build indexes as well.

I went to 3.16, did the upgrade script dance, and tried that.
At first, that failed.

(15:34:55) Xial: Okay. This is ridiculous. 2.661 fails. 3.16 fails. Something is up, and I have got to get to the bottom of it.

I dig around and play with settings.

I try rebuilding once more.
This is where the magic happens:
Renaming tempfile '/path/to/archives/2005_04_20.html.new' failed:
Renaming '/path/to/archives/2005_04_20.html.new' to '/path/to/archives/2005_04_20.html' failed: Disc quota exceeded

This is when I got the clue:

Check their quota, dumbass.

Sure enough…

(15:47:49) Xial: You know what?
(15:47:56) Xial: I think I might have just found your problem.
(15:48:01) Them: What?
(15:48:06) Xial: I’m checking now to be sure.
(15:48:10) Them: Is it really stupid?
(15:48:24) Xial: Yes.
(15:48:31) Them: -_-;;
(15:48:42) Xial: You have a 550 MB RAR archive in your home directory.

That pushed the user over quota.

Lessons learned for the day:

• If a user says they can’t get something to output to their directory, check their quota!
• If you’re a user, and you’ve gotta upload a big file here, kindly let me or Gushi know.

Fun stuff, eh?
And then, it was 4 pm.

Avoid Dehydration at all costs.

Remind your employer from time to time that you need a drink to prevent dehydration.

Suggest to your employer in a group that they allow all of you to at least keep a water bottle at your cash register if you are a cashier. This saves you the time of having to run to the water fountain here and there, and makes your lane look like it’s always open. This also makes it much easier to talk to the endless stream of customers, since you probably can’t chew gum or eat a piece of candy while you’re working.

Remember that being properly hydrated is a benefit to your health. Not only are you getting the liquids your body needs, but if you’re drinking only water at the registers, you’re also helping to flush some of the excess stuff out of your system. This helps your kidneys.

Just a random tip.

So, here’s why I’ve been quiet as of late:

* Haven’t felt like blogging.
* I’ve been in and out of the hospital twice in the past week or so.
* Pneumonia.
* Viral Infection.
* Vertigo.
* I’ve been in and out of Second Life a fair bit.
* I’m expanding my house.
* I’m adding a gallery for Furball to my house.
* I made the ‘clamshell’ image holders, with lights, for her gallery.
* I need to ask her how many horizontal pictures does she have, so I can compensate with horizontal frames along walls.
* I need to re-wallpaper her gallery floor.
* I need to export lj:mousran:’s commission, which I’m still working on.
* I’ve been perusing F-Chan and 4-Chan.
* I’ve been trying to put together a resume.
* I want to apply with Stream (AOL Call Center, Tech Support), since they offer better money, and probably 20 times less physical grunt work.
* I want to apply with any local businesses that’re looking for someone geek enough to handle some of their troubles.
* I’ve been helping Gushi out some.
* I need to get to where I’m sitting and focused again.
* I’ve been chewing on logical web development.
* I have an idea for a resume generator. It’s very ajax in its implementation.
* I haven’t decided on whether I want to try to eke it out in PHP, or wait for a couple of Perl books and do it that way to show I’ve learned something.
* I’ve been avoiding everyone on IM.
* Sorry, guys, but until I get better, and get less scatterbrained, it’s hard for me to handle conversation in a timely manner.

That sorta sums up everything for now, I think.

Right now, I’m just going to bed.

Yes. That’s right.
I said it. SPEWS is Gay.

They’re happy when they block entire ISPs, and force the average joe to remove anti-comment-spam blocking so anyone can slam him with trackback spam.

Fuck you, SPEWS, you’re too block-gay for my liking.