mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

coastline by moonlight

In this shadowed hour, I find myself contemplating the nuances of timing.

Something as simple as this: it is 8:30 p.m. on a Friday night, and I can’t help but wonder how many fools will be driving up from San Diego to Los Angeles trying to catch the night life. Given the fact that the average club closes around 2 a.m., what will the optimum time to try to drive up there without getting stuck in a buttload of traffic?

It sounds too much like an SAT question, frankly.

The other thing I worry about, not so much because I worry about it that much, personally, but because my mother who worries about everything in the whole wide world keeps reminding me about it, is that around 2 a.m. or so, all the drunks find their way onto the freeways, so I clearly do not want to be out too late lest I find myself roadkill.

(I find it bizarre and disturbing that drunks always seem to survive car crashes, even when the car they hit explodes and incinerates all five people inside. But I digress most macabrely.)

I don’t know if it’s just the fact that summer is clearly over (this despite the fact that I’m sweating like crazy right now because of the lack of air conditioning in my apartment), but I’m starting to feel a little blue. Then again, it could just be the whole turning 30 thing that is finally catching up to me.

I feel adrift and purposeless.

(No seriously, more so than usual.)

Mostly, I just want to sleep. Maybe it’s just the fact that I didn’t do much of that [sleeping] for the past four weeks. I suppose my body just wants to catch up.

But it is interesting what sort of low level misery the body will adapt to. I didn’t realize that I really couldn’t breathe through my nose until I got allergy skin tested yesterday. Then I discovered that, in addition to a bunch of trees, I am allergic to dust mites (not to mention cats and dogs.) So afterwards, I decided to take an antihistamine, and suddenly I feel better. My head feels lighter, and I didn’t have the usual number of headaches today. Ridiculous.

I realize that, despite the nominal fact that I am employed in the health care sector, I don’t take very good care of myself. For the longest time, I’ve been hoping that I’d drop dead young, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the messy ordeal of growing old. But as my lower back begins to ache and all sorts of weird twinges take hold of me, I realize that I may not have a choice. I might still drop dead relatively young, but not before my body grows old before its time. At least, if I continue in my self-destructive ways.

I suppose that might be enough to keep me going for now. Just taking care of my simple needs. Simple pleasures. That is, I guess, the lesson that I’ve learned from my oldest friend B (and from my dog A, who, despite my whopping wheal and flare reaction, I don’t really think I’m allergic to.)

This crippling feeling of isolation and abject loneliness will have to wait awhile before I seek some sort of resolution. I guess what I really should be working on is making sure I don’t have my first MI before I’m 40.

(And, no, aging has not improved my sense of pessimism and dark humor.)

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

fascism declared in america

So what has really twisted my mind is the fact that habeas corpus has been suspended and the Authorities can basically disappear people, just like in corrupt developing countries. I really didn’t think I would see the Republic of the United States of America fall within my lifetime, but I guess I was just in denial.

The Great Experiment is over. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, please forgive us.

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

installing typo 4 on dreamhost

I struggled with this for awhile, abandoning it midway through, but I finally got it to work. Most of the instructions for installing typo 4.0.1 on dreamhost by Aiden Bordner worked for me, except you need to edit db/migrate/051_fix_canonical_server_url.rb as described by Chris H.

To summarize:

  1. Download Typo using Subversion:
    svn checkout svn://typosphere.org/typo/trunk typo
  2. Setup a new host and set the directory to /home/username/typo/public and enable FastCGI support.
  3. Setup a mySQL server.
  4. Create config/database.yml:
    ` login: &login   adapter: mysql   host: mySQL server hostname   username: mySQL server username   password: mySQL server password

    development:   database: typo_db   «: *login

    test:   database: typo_db   «: *login

    production:   database: typo_db   «: *login `

  5. Edit config/environment.rb and uncomment the line that says ENV[‘RAILS_ENV’] = ‘production’
  6. Edit db/migrate/051_fix_canonical_server_url.rb and comment out or delete the line b.settings['canonical_server_url'] = b.settings['canonical_server_url'].gsub(%r{/$},'')
  7. Setup your database by running rake migrate RAILS_ENV=production. Note that this step will fail if you don’t edit db/migrate/051_fix_canonical_server_url.rb
  8. Edit public/dispatch.fcgi and insert the following code before the line that reads RailsFCGIHandler.process!
    ` class RailsFCGIHandler   private     def frao_handler(signal)       dispatcher_log :info, “asked to terminate immediately”       dispatcher_log :info, “frao handler working its magic!”       restart_handler(signal)     end     alias_method :exit_now_handler, :frao_handler end `
  9. Make sure that both public/dispatch.rb and public/dispatch.fcgi are executable.

Typo can sometimes be excruciatingly slow to load up, you may have to reload the page a couple of times.

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

disappointment (not unexpected)

It is funny how much a simple change in someone’s Friendster status can influence my day.

Not that I was actually pursuing Chr in a coherent fashion, so I don’t feel like I have the right to be disappointed about anything. It’s just been the way my life has been trending anyway.

I will grant that the thought of spending another 20-30 years all by myself is a little unnerving, but if that’s the way things are supposed to be, that’s the way they’re going to be, I guess.

[Redacted] did probably unwittingly give me a little smidgen of hope last week. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the right place at the right time. As usual.

Everything seems so far away these days. I don’t know why I even keep hoping.

Originally posted on Starlight and Gravity

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga