Through the will of the gods, I somehow ended up as a client’s sysadmin for their Windows Server. Their site had an SSL certificate that I managed to get installed. However, there were a few folks that kept getting these pesky 403 errors when they tried to view any page with the SSL certificate in https. Specific systems, too – mostly on Windows behind some kinda firewall.

As, despite what I’m doing, I am no Windows sysadmin, I was at a loss for what the heck was going on, and ended up harassing Network Solutions about it. Turns out we needed an upgraded certificate, as some older systems would not recognize the discount (or “Xpress”, if grammatically incorrect branding is your thing) certificate. So we got a sweeter one, and installed it. Yet, the errors persisted.

The big problem for me was that I could not replicate the error. All seemed fine in Virginia’s Internet Land. Most of the issues were coming from Australians (which sent me down a brief and incorrect path of thinking it was a freaky cookie issue, something I dealt with before with timezones and a SSO about half a year back). Anyhow, “403″ is pretty generic. So, I went into the IIS manager dealio and set the 403 errors so that non-local browsers would get a detailed view. And, got someone who was actually getting the error to send me a screenshot. Turned out it was, in fact, a 403.13 error. Something about IIS trying to find a revoked certificae list and failing. And, apparently, if you’re looking at the site from behind a firewall with proxies, this’ll fling 403 errors all up on your junk and such.

Cause, I revoked that initial “Xpress” certificate when I added the new one. Anyhow, apparently the solution was to turn off the option in Windows 2008 that checks for a revoked certificate list (CertCheckMode). Course, there was no easy way to do it, I had to get all down and dirty in the Registry for that bastard. Boo! Anyhow, that fixed the situation, so all is good in the land of SSL certificates.

Or rather, I’ll complain about my specific apartment. It’s not a bad apartment, mind you. The location is really great – I walk to work, any pretty much anywhere I want to get to in downtown Denver is a short walk away (or a short walk to the free MallRide bus) and I’ve got close access to I-25 as well as the Cherry Creek bike trail. The apartment itself is nice as well – lots of closet space and a decent sized kitchen. My few complaints are that there’s no balcony, I don’t get any direct sunlight (and little breeze), and my cellphone only works sporadically. OK, that last one is kind of a big deal, but I’ve been dealing with it semi-ok.

When I first looked at the apartment, the price was a bit steep for me, but they were having a “first month free” special, which they could spread over the course of my lease. That made the rent $830/mo, which is ok considering the area and apartment. I was also told that, when I renewed, I’d get whatever special they were doing at the time, and it was pretty likely they’d still be doing the “first month free” special.

Fast-forward to a month ago. I get the renewal notice on my door. They’re asking $963/mo. I go ask the office if they’re still doing the “first month special.” Nope, no specials. I turn in my notice to vacate and let them know it’s because of the apartment getting too expensive. The office person let me know that they’re keeping pace with similar rent rises in the area, and she’d let me know if management decided to reinstate the discount. I would have been surprised if there wasn’t a rent increase, to be honest, but $130/mo was just a little too much for me. It’s not like I spend a huge amount of time at home anyhow, so I figured I could downgrade a bit so I’m not blowing all of my paycheck on housing.
Of course, then I start looking around at other apartments. I can get decent to better apartments at a comparable price. So, I’m pretty happy about that (am going to start viewing some soon). I was curious as to if my apartment was listed on my complex’s website yet, so I checked. And it was – listed for $863 or so (i.e. $100 less then they wanted me to pay to renew). I was half tempted to go talk to the office and see what was going on, since that was a price increase I’d be fine with, but I was kinda annoyed they didn’t even contact me before listing it, given the sharp increase was the reason I wanted to leave in the first place. That, and I pay my bills on time and never bug them – wouldn’t it be cheaper for them to just keep me rather than have to clean the place and find a new tenant anyhow? But, that whole “cellphone not working” thing held me back. And, I might actually get a balcony.

So, this weekend I got a notice on my door for “refer someone to us and get $300 if they get a place here!” Being curious, I went and checked out their website again. My apartment is now listed for $803. $30 less than what I’m currently paying. Not only that, but, counting current and upcoming vacancies, they have over 50 apartments listed as available. It’s an 18 story building, mind you, but that’s still a huge number of vacancies, especially considering that, when I first moved here, I think they have 10 at most listed.
I was briefly tempted again to stop by the office. $30 cheaper isn’t a bad deal, if I could convince them to dismiss my vacancy notice. But then I had to consider the fact that I’m pretty sure management was taken over by drunk howler monkeys. It’s like they want to go out of business. I see no logic in their ways! Which makes me feel a bit sketch about staying here, to be honest. That, and I kinda miss having a cell phone that actually works when I’m at home.

Still learning how to do as many things as possible from the command line here, am writing this down for future reference for myself. If I try to edit a file, and I’m all like “vi filename” and I do my edits and am all like “:w”, and it’s all like “no, you need to use a !” to save! And so then I’m all like “:w!” and it’s all like “E212: Can’t open file for editing.” That’s when I need to edit that sucker as root. Which means I shoulda typed in “sudo vi filename” and then my password, and then I can edit that file like no one’s business!

So I’m using Flexslider, which is a jQuery slideshow with some great touch capabilities. However, it only displays one slide at a time, so I hacked at it until I got it to display 3. Of course, only later did I realize that someone already forked it on Github like 2 months ago and did this before me, oops. Anyhow, Flexslider uses the clone() method to pad out slides at the end of the slideshow, and, with the modified script, these cloned slides get displayed.

So I’m using Lightbox (the Lightbox2 module for Drupal 6, to be specific) and it’s not liking those cloned slides. Nope, not at all. Doesn’t work. Have no clue why, and couldn’t really find anyone else with that problem on the internets. What I did figure out, though, is when you call clone, if you call it with the parameter of true: clone(true). And that seems to work, as my cloned slides now open in lightboxes. So, yay!

So I was waiting in the airport last week and decided to write up a list of all of the things I wanted to get done next year. And, here’s that list:

• Finish 2011 NaNo CYOA novel (or finish first draft of 2009 NaNo adventure/maybe sci-fi novel)


• Translate Quest into Spanish


• Somehow convince more people to buy Quest (Hey! I wrote a CYOA YA light fantasy, called Quest for the Fountain of Life! It’s only $1.99 for Kindle!)


• Continue food blogging at a minimum of once a week


• Get WordPress responsive design theme and customize it with the tastyniblets.com look/branding.


• Use probably the same theme for ptocheia.net (maybe trash current layout as it’s rather dismal, might just use a theme default)


• Pull data from blogs and news sites onto rapidsthuglife.com. Maybe an auto-filled scoreboard?


• Execute my fabulous idea for a MLP:FiM/Last Supper watercolor painting.


• Do something with my pointless Tumblr account. Wait, I’ve got an account under my handle. But I can’t figure out what the login is. I used all of my email addresses trying to do “lost password”, too. Hmm, when did Tumblr start? Maybe I registered an account under an email I don’t use anymore? Hmm. Or something else janked my handle. Time to beat someone, then.


• Do a work blog post at least once a month (I’ve seriously got like 20 topics in a .doc, I just don’t have the time to write anything.)


• Revamp varoper.com (hmm Drupal 7? Good chance to learn Rails?)


• Get a decent piano or keyboard (with alll the keys). Actually use it.


• Go to gym 2-3x a week.


• Go skiiing and snowboard this winter.


• Build a CYOA module for Drupal 7.


• Get more involved in local Drupal community.


• Finish my stupid pile of sewing projects.


• Grow some freaking tomatoes or something.


• Repot my aloe and kiwi cactus

Unrelated (well, completely related), I do have a New Year’s resolution: get more sleep.

Nanowrimo is in full swing, and I totally hit 35,000 today. It’s so much easier to write (for me, at least) choose your own adventure books than regular books. No more deciding which direction to take, I can just go in every direction! The story’s pretty meandering so far – I like trying to tie in details from each path with other paths, so that characters can still get pretty fleshed out. And, so, a decision you make will influence decisions other characters make as well. But, I’m afraid that’s for later. I’m kinda short on endings so far – my main character (named “Mary Sue”, haha) has been killed once, hospitalized once, and had a few romantic encounters, but that’s about it. When I first started this endeavor, I had all sorts of lofty ideas about doing literary tie-ins with non-main characters (mostly because Snow Crash is the Best Book Ever and so I wanna gonna slip in Hiro and YT somewhere, and then branch off in other fun ways) but so much for loftiness. I started off with characters that reminded me of pop culture references (an Anthony Michael Hall a la John Hughes kid, along with a Rickie from My So Called Life character). But then everything sort of started devolving when I started naming new love interests after Colorado Rapids team members. And somehow added in Jersey Shore people as well. Hah! It’ll get cleaned up later, I’m just trying to pump out the content. Writing is rather like making pottery. The first draft is really just piling a giant lump of clay on the wheel, the real work is in the editing.

Am headed to LA for Turkey week, that should be fun. I will be paying a big chunk of Stupid tax to the local Apple store during that time, where my Mac shall sit for that duration having it’s keyboard repaired. Though it means NaNoing on my teeny netbook, I’m looking forward to not having a laptop for awhile, as it will make it near impossible to do work for my job. Considering I haven’t had a sick day where I didn’t have to still work, and I was crouched in the corner at the HP theme park in FL last spring, supposedly on vacation, doing work, it’ll be nice to have absolutely no way to do work. I am struggling with some serious burnout issues, and am really hoping that this break (along with my upcoming week in Richmond) will help.

Speaking of that week in Richmond, I’m not going to insanely plan it like I have other trips. This is because I want to be lazy, and it’s not like I have a car to use (not really looking to rent a car for the week, and the trips mostly to see my parents, who I haven’t seen since last September, anyhow).

Not too much else going on. Now that I’m writing more, I find that I’m reading more. Which is a good thing. Am kinda cracked out on sleep, which sucks. I look at this laptop and my phone too close to bed, which messes me up. So I’m trying to shut them off earlier, and read before bed. But now I’m waking up an hour before I need to, and then dozing off again 10 minutes before my alarm. I just want a decent night of sleep, but that’s been proving challenging. It’s even more frustrating when my body doesn’t cooperate on the weekends as well, as I super depend on weekends to try catching up. Oh well.

I need more time. I want to learn Ruby, and then rails. Possibly Python as well. Every day I am reminded of how many things I don’t know, and it drives me maaaaaaad. I mean, I guess it’s good, if I knew everything what would be the point of getting up. I just feel like unless I’m actively learning new things and producing new things, I fall behind, which is super stressful.

I need to go skiing or snowboarding. I got pants to do so, and have yet to experience either. If needed, I’ll look for a Meetup group that’s doing the beginner’s version of one or the other, with hopefully a carpool involved. I’ve been rear-ended once up in those mountains, and my little car is mountain-shy still!

On a final note, I ate all of the chocolates and now have none. Dang!

I hate it when I do a google search and can’t find what I need, so I’m mostly posting this so the next time I get this error, I can do a google search and find the post I made about this error in order to fix it. Yay internet.

Should the error “could not instantiate mail function” pop up when using Joomla and doing something that requires using php mail(), and you happen to be using a Windows server (2008, running IIS 7.5 in my particular case), there’s a good chance you (or I, as the case may be) restarted IIS at some point and your SMTP server never bothered to restart itself. If you’re like me, you had to set up SMTP in IIS 6 for some bizarre reason, so open up the IIS 6 Manager, check if your SMTP Virtual Server is running, and if not, start it!

To test if it’s running without filling out a form or whatever, either put together a sweet little php file that spits out “yay” if email sends or “nay” if not, or just try “Forgot Password” in Joomla and see if you get an email.

Yay!

Joomla’s been driving me crazy lately, I’m sticking this code here for future reference so I can find it again, and in case someone else needs it for whatever reason. Use this to grab the K2 user group that a user is in with a Joomla install (works for 1.5, not sure about older/newer versions).

Enjoy!

$user =& JFactory::getUser();
//name of K2 user table
$k2usertable = 'nua_k2_users';
$userId = $user->get('id');
// get user Group
$db =& JFactory::getDBO();
$query = "
  SELECT ".$db->nameQuote('group')."
    FROM ".$db->nameQuote($k2usertable)."
    WHERE ".$db->nameQuote('userID')." = ".$db->quote($userId).";
  ";
$db->setQuery($query);
$userGroup = $db->loadResult();

//the user group's id
echo $userGroup;

I feel pretty awful for the jurors of the Casey Anthony case, and am looking forward to this whole thing dropping out of the spotlight sometime soon. For those that don’t know, I was on the jury for a murder trial a few years back. It was a fairly short trial, 3 1/2 days including deliberation. Both educational and difficult, and I hope I’m never on a murder trial ever again. My wooziness to blood/wounds made it very difficult to not get lightheaded and pass out during the part where photographic evidence was being detailed to us. Anyhow, we were pretty sure the accused was guilty. However, the defense was relying way too much on forensics and completely ignoring other things, and in the end we could not say beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty. So we went with the verdict of “not guilty.” And, it was so awful to leave that courtroom while seeing and hearing the victim’s family’s reaction to our verdict. But, it would have been so much worse if the accused actually was innocent, and we’d decided he was guilty. Being on a jury is tough, and I’m sure so much more so for a high profile case, so people really need to cut those jurors some slack.

So. I’m living in a motel right now. Some who read this know, some don’t. Drew and I broke up over a month ago. I’m moving into an apartment in Capitol Hill in about a week and a half, incidentally on the same day that Carolyn will be flying out to visit for the weekend. Things have been…weird. Sad. Strange. Am still dealing with it, and likely will be for awhile. People have been very supportive though, and I really appreciate that.

I miss having a kitchen. I got to use Jonathan and Jill’s kitchen a week back and have a sushi party with them, which was fun. Got some really good salmon, here’s a shot of some of the salmon rolls:

Work’s going OK, though I’ve been staying up late a few more nights than I’d like dealing with the persnicketiness of HTML emails. HTML emails are definitely one of the lesser appealing things that I do. One thing that I’ve been doing lately that I hope to do more of is developing for mobile websites. There’s a great Drupal module called Mobile Tools that will switch your theme based on mobile device detection, and with that plus playing with the JQuery Mobile theme, I’ve been working on the mobile version of my work’s website. There are of mobile design is so new, I think there’s lots of opportunities to do cool stuff. I’ve also been dying to actually contribute a Drupal module to the Drupal community, and am hoping I can find something good to contribute involving mobile.

Am hoping to do some packing today, I’m trying to get rid of stuff I just don’t use – I hate having lots of stuff, and moving it is a big pain, so I’m trying to better justify the things I own. Super fun times.

I cleaned today. Went through piles and piles of things. I’ve got scads of notebooks, and it’s bizarre to see what kind of random crap shows up in said notebooks from eons ago, things that I can’t even begin to interpret.

I found this list, which appears to be in Drew’s handwriting, and neither of us has a clue as to what the heck it could possibly mean.

Hung Kawk* – 52

Hastings – 50

Bai Bai Ho – 44

Hung Long – 42

Oxford – 44

Brighton – 48

Norwich – 57

Rik E Balls – 42

Invaes Place – 40

London – 42

Long Duck Dong – 52

No clue. No clue at all.