Feorlen's Other Blog

Well, sorta.

I was able to use the .mac key just fine, basically MobileMe is .mac with some new chrome. I wasn’t able to get a .mac address as well but now I have my spiffy new me.com address. What I’m going to do with it, I haven’t decided. I’m doing this for the other sync stuff right now, with the option to use their IMAP if getting ours set up continues to be a headache.

But boy is webmail slow. Response on all the web stuff is sluggish at best, and I’m talking from my computer. I haven’t even tried setting up my phone yet.

I went by the Apple Store last night, having heard that Mobile Me was up and running. They told me no retail packages would be available until Friday. Well, since the .mac transition page said that I could still activate with a .mac code, I got one of those instead. I had to ask for it, but they had them.

I don’t really like going to the Apple Store, the downtown San Francisco store is a tourist destination so it’s always packed. But for small things it’s cheaper and faster to just go there. I walk past all the time anyway.

So now I have a .mac box (unopened) and the service is still down, even this morning. It appears I could sign up for a free trial of Mobile Me, but I really don’t care about free or not. I can always take the package back and swap it out, but I was hoping to avoid a second trip to the store.

I thought to get a picture of the amazing cured pork things I had for lunch at the Ferrry Building last week. I was bad and bought a boxed lunch at Boccalone:

There was paté, lonza (bacon looking stuff) and I think the other thing was soppressata but I’m not sure. Some bread from Acme down the hall and I was all set.

Must learn more about iPhone web apps so I can rewrite my admin interface. It isnt even the lack of flash (can’t see stats chart) but the damn fixed width post edit box. The regular user comment interface is way better than this.

Way back in the dim mists of ancient time, like January, I got an iPhone. I ordered it online and while I waited I picked up a case at MacWorld. So it’s been what, just over five months? Said case, a Marware neoprene thing, is totally trashed. Shoving it in my pocket has destroyed the fabric, scraping it across a concrete bench at the WWDC bash was just icing on the cake. And they only sell it as part of a set with a bunch of other stuff I don’t want.

I need a case with a rubberized finish and some kind of clear cover over the display, as well as a belt clip. One that comes off would be nice, as I only occasionally have a belt-like object to attach it to. If it’s hard plastic, I will drop it. If there’s no screen cover, it will get scratched or worse.

So first I tried a Speck thing, dubious but willing to give Woot a couple bucks for it. I like their laptop case, and how can you argue with something named after a cured pork product? But… no belt clip, hard plastic. I can see it might be nice when I know I’m going to be carrying it around in my purse, but not much else. It was mainly an emergency backup case solution.

So off to the Apple Store I went. They didn’t even have my original Marware case. I ended up spending way too much for a silicone sleeve with a removable belt clip and some cling film screen protectors because it was the only way to get the right combination of stuff.

Apparently I am weird (as if I didn’t know this) because I’m not interested in a phone purse, leather “Executive” case, or something with that damn monkey on it. While it is nice to see a larger range of styles, many very obviously not targeted to male geeks, it was still surprisingly difficult to find what I was looking for.

I figured I might as well get one before I can’t for my old and unfashionable original iPhone. Yes, I could have waited and likely gotten one on sale (and may yet) but I sorta needed a case now. The new one has a rotating belt clip which may end up being a very useful feature. One problem I’ve been having is actually hearing the phone ring, and if I can have it with the speaker up I might have half a chance.

At least this should survive better, as even if the silicone gets scraped up it is still functional. Hopefully it will last long enough until this phone gets retired into software QA and I have whatever spiffy new one comes along next.

I’ve been poking at WordPress plugins to see what I can do with one. (Hence the proliferation of sidebar gizmos.) I want to write something that will use the Splunk REST API to show interesting things about my server in a widget on the blog. The handy-dandy new PHP SDK will help a lot here. So that much is all good.

But in the process of checking out a bunch of different WP plugins, I have noticed an annoying habit of hiding the configuration pages all over the map. Sometimes there’s a link in the Plugin Management page. Or maybe it’s a tab on the Settings page. Some of the widgets are configured on the Widgets page, itself buried under the Design tab. Ok, I know they were written by different people, and for different versions of WordPress. Which radically changes the administration UI with each new major release. But boy is it a pain to go and hunt down where the settings went this time just to see if this thing I downloaded actually does something interesting.

Move along, nothing to see here.

One interesting development of losing weight (aside from the justification to buy fabric for the replacement wardrobe) is that I get a lot more unsolicited attention in public. I’m going to assume that this is fairly typical, although I haven’t had to deal with it in a long time. (I am back to my high school weight, for what that’s worth. Still not small.)

I came home the other night to the neighbors hanging around drinking, being the primary male recreational activity around here. I don’t talk to them much because I usually have something to do and I’m not into beer and cigarettes. Or loud Spanish covers of 70s Top-40. But I digress.

So one neighbor guy said hi as I walked up and clearly it had just hit him that I was, umm, “Hot” may be a word. Ok, I was wearing gym clothes that leave little to the imagination. He’s far too polite to say anything obvious (my being “somebody else’s woman” and all) but was clearly taken aback at the realization and stammered through a compliment on my new-found healthy lifestyle.

Now Dillo has long commented on the gloriousness that is my Oakland booty but aside from a few fat admirers (and, strangely, a gaggle of boys on Market Street one afternoon who clearly didn’t recognize I’m old enough to be their mother) I have mainly not thought much about it.

When I was younger, being overweight was still thought a horrendous curse and mostly I got the “maybe I’ll hit on the desperate fat chick” kind of crap. Now the way things have gone, I’m pretty small compared to a lot of American women. Fortunately I’m now dealing with middle-aged adults who have less awkward brain-addling hormones and a better command of the English language (umm, mostly.) At the risk of sounding like some airhead twit, I guess I should start getting used to it.

Finally the blog is up and running. I had it all working nicely last night and then somehow apache decided it liked “500 Internal Server Error” more than WordPress. The problem was that it wouldn’t allow access to either index.html or index.php, which I thought I had already taken care of with DirectoryIndex.

After mucking about with the conf files, I finally went back to Server Admin and did it from the GUI. Which, frankly, I still don’t really trust. Sure, the new Leopard version doesn’t totally eat my configuration any time it touches it, but it still does weird things I don’t understand. DirectoryIndex “index.php” “New”? Well, if it somehow decides to break later, I still have the backup copy of the configuration.

Spoke too soon. The damn thing changed AllowOverride for every single one of my sites, causing WordPress permalinks to break. I should file a bug, but I don’t feel like setting up a test server to reproduce and document.

I needed a new blog to talk about non-textile stuff. This would be it.