FreeBSDGirl.com

The FreeBSD Handbook let me down today. I wanted to set up SMTP Auth because I was getting tired of just changing my /etc/mail/relay-domains every time I sent mail from a new location. I found a single page on it, but it didn’t appear to have been updated in a while. Several people told me those directions didn’t work anymore, but hell, I’m unemployed. It’s not like I have anything better to do than poke at documentation and sendmail configs. (By the way, fuck sendmail.)

I came up with a cute How-To that was based on the Handbook entry, but my directions actually work. It’s a really basic configuration, but it does the job.

So I’ve been wondering, in Wordpress, is there a way to limit the number of posts per page on a per-request basis? I know it can be set in the site admin pages, but that’s global. This becomes a bit of a problem when doing a month view.

For example, April 2005 is only going to show the first 20 entries because that’s what I’ve got the default set to. Is there a way to add something like &count=40 to the end of it to make it show more posts?

Update:

I’ve kind of figured part of it out. It turns out there’s a variable called posts_per_archive_page that can be passed with the URL, but I’m trying to figure out other methods of automatically retrieving it. There’s a table in the WordPress database called ‘wp_options’ that stores various configuration settings. posts_per_page was present, however, posts_per_archive_page was not. Adding it seemed to make no difference. Back to code hacking.

Update:

Fixed! I’m not the only one that has had this problem. The easiest fix for all ya’ll wordpress users is to put the line $posts_per_archive_page = -1; in your index.php just before it calls wp-blog-header.php. Here’s a link to the page I found that had info on why you have to do this. There’s a bunch of drama going down because the authors of wordpress added this ‘functionality’ in release 1.5 without mentioning it or telling anyone how to turn it off. fun stuff.

Heaven help us, it’s the female version of Gizmodo.

I stumbled across misbehaving.net earlier today.

misbehaving.net is a weblog about women and technology. It’s a celebration of women’s contributions to computing; a place to spotlight women’s contributions as well point out new opportunities and challenges for women in the computing field.

Women have contributions to computing? Heh, just kidding.

Apparently, females have a hard time of things at work. I don’t often bitch about being a female in IT. I don’t act like I’ve got it harder because I’m the proud owner of two lovely XX chromosomes. That doesn’t mean I don’t notice situations in the workplace where it would be easier if I was a guy - far from it. One thing I’ve remarked on is the difference in perception of a new employee based on the gender. If a male walks into a new computer job, he’s assumed competent unless proven otherwise. With a female, it’s the other way around.

It’s not like I don’t disagree with the females running that site. I’ve got to wonder though, do they really help anything? My generation of 20-somethings has grown up being told that females are equal to men. We have special student loans, we get better car insurance rates, and we even live longer on average. I’m not blind nor an idealist; I know there’s still problems.

If you keep repeating a message over and over again, it starts to lose its meaning. The feminist movement used to mean something. People used to take it seriously. Females used to take it seriously. Now, we’ve even turned on ourselves. Either we sneer at feminism, saying it’s for hairy muff-licking bull-dykes, or we go entirely overboard with it and furiously berate any man that dares to open a door for us. The meaning behind the word feminist was lost in translation sometime between the 60’s and now.

I don’t have the answer, why are you looking at me? I just like stating the obvious.

Ever wonder what it’s like to skin a live dog? It’s not fun. I found out tonight. RJ-45’s fur is coming off in clumps, and her skin is falling off with it. The best thing right now is to remove all of her fur so it doesn’t get matted into the wounds as they dry, so I took it upon myself to give her a haircut. 10 minutes into it, I realized the easiest thing was just to tug on the hair just barely and it’d come out on its own. She laid with her head in my lap through all of it. It was heart breaking. At least now the wounds will heal up faster, unobstructed. She appears to be a little happier, although she’s still not moving around much.

If she doesn’t get better by next weekend, I’m going to put her to sleep. I start crying any time I think about it. I was talking about it on IRC today to a couple of Mike’s IRL friends, and one of them started making really rude comments, making light of the situation. I signed off and bawled my eyes out for an hour until I finally fell asleep. There’s a difference between being a troll and aiming to really hurt someone. I wasn’t expecting that from him. Why would he want to hurt me? I don’t know what to say.

I’m taking a temporary job working in my landlord’s water company for a while. It sounds like I’ll be getting paid to sit in the retail office and IRC. Rock on. I’m only taking this to have something to do with my time. I hate sitting at home all day. At least it’ll take care of paying this months rent for me, although not much else.

LOTD: Forget Me Not Panties.

:: Phone Conversation ::

FreeBSDGirl: Hi, one of my friends told me ya’ll might be looking for an admin. Is the position still open?
Manager at Company: Yes, what’s your name?
FreeBSDGirl: Randi Harper.
Manager at Company: Oh, FreeBSDGirl!

…

Bloody Hell.

I wrote a plugin for Wordpress. It’s cute and I love it. Check it out.

Blogs are the old meme. Let’s face it: just about everyone has had a blog at some point. Even hunchback, grumbling, retired toll booth officers feel the need to project the way they feel on the world. They’ve got something to say. Don’t we all?

It’s hard filtering out the crap blogs from the ones worth reading. What really makes a blog worth reading, anyways? I’ve heard lots of people say that blogs are boring. Who wants to hear about someone elses daily life? I suppose if you go boring places, have boring friends, and are a boring conversationalist, this is true. So how is it that there are so many popular blogs online? What sets them apart?

A lot of the more popular blogs aren’t really what I consider blogs, at all. By definition, Gizmodo is a blog - they even won a bloggie, an award given out to noteworthy blogs - but I view it more of a news site. I think of blogs as being more personal than that. They deal with a persons every day life.

In my mind, the phenomenon of blog opposes one of the basic truths I’ve always held about human behaviour. Next time you’re in a conversation with someone you’re reasonably close with, someone you can talk with quite a bit about personal things, count how many times you say the words “I” and “me”. Pay attention to how much you talk about yourself. When your conversational partner says something about himself or a situation someone else is in, you try to compare it to some part of yourself or your experiences, and you comment based on that. The average person is listening, but they aren’t just listening to the words being said, they are listening for a pause in the conversation. They’re just waiting for their turn to speak. The average conversation is a casual dual of monologues. It’s not that either person is more self centered than average, it’s not even that they don’t care what the other person is saying; it’s just human nature to be more interested in yourself than someone else.

So what’s up with the interest in blogs? The act of writing a blog, that I can understand. It soothes our inner ego. Despite how many people may or may not be reading, we feel like we’ve said something, and it’s out there. It’s our personal space. We can say what we want, and no one can do anything about it. It’s a place to vent without repercussion (not true, but that’s how many view it). It feeds our “look at me! look at me!” urges. It can give a misguided feeling of power. In a conversation, someone can interrupt you. On a blog, you just get it all out. You tell your friends, your family, even complete strangers your URL with a feeling of pride. The average Joe Blow blog has very few readers, usually just the author and maybe a few friends and family, but the number of readers doesn’t matter to the author. What matters is the feeling of being heard, whether it be by 3 or 300 readers. You’ve got their attention, you’re holding a conversation, but it’s all one sided so you don’t have to give them that pause so they can insert their two cents. Commenting functionality started appearing on blogs, because although authors liked having that moment of venting their internal monologues without the momentary respites, they still had the egotistical need of knowing that people took time to consider their words, even if the readers comment might be negative.

That explains the motivation of the author, but what of the readers? If it’s a natural compulsion to speak rather than listen, why does one person read another person’s thoughts? Newspapers, magazines - those are easily explained. It’s a different class of writing. When you pick up a newspaper, you expect to learn something, be it of world events or what that crazy Marmaduke does next. Why read about what books Chloe is reading, or how difficult Jacob’s mid-terms are? What makes a blog worth sacrificing your side of the conversation?

The question I’ve posed about blogs reminds me of a DVD I bought on the clearance rack at Target, Being John Malcovich. If you haven’t seen it, I’d recommend picking it up. It was never very popular in theatres, despite the fact that it’s got a few big names in it. If you hate it, you’ve only wasted $9.99. It poses an interesting outlook on human behaviour, though. The person that is satisfied with who they are is very rare indeed. People will always want to know what it’s like on the other side of the fence. What would it be like if I were <insert name here>? Is there life better than mine? What would it be like to switch lives with that person for a day? It doesn’t even just apply to celebrities. Have you ever felt that way about the popular kid at school, or how about your next door neighboor? There’s also the Jerry Springer complex. We all hate the show, but we’ve all watched it at some point. Maybe we even watched it more than once. We pointed and laughed at all of the freaks on the show, smug in our beliefs that it could never be us, we’re so much better than them with our SUV’s, 2.5 children, golden retriever, and our white picket fence. Sure, we have problems, but at least our children aren’t pre-op transvestite prostitutes with stuffed animal fetishes. Maybe we need the constant reassurance that someone else has more problems than we do - or maybe we just want to know that someone else faces the same challenges we do.

Sure, there’s the rare blog that can talk about something as mundane as baby vomit, but say it all in a way that makes even the most jaded of us laugh. That kind of writing talent from a personal blog is rare, indeed. There’s also the occassional blog that we read not only for humor, but because we feel like we might actually have something to learn from this person.

I’m not naive enough to think that people read my blog because I’m a good writer. I try, but I know I have a long way to go. There’s a few reasons my blog is as popular as it is. It doubtless has little to do with the fact that I’m a female in the technical industry. Fellas, it’s not as rare as you think. Most fat girls are smart. How else are we going to land husbands? Just kidding. But seriously, breasts with a brain (however abused) are definitely part of the appeal. I know a lot of it also has to do with the controversy that seems to follow me wherever I go. I used to invite it; drama was fun. It kept me from getting bored. If I didn’t have something to stress about, life just didn’t feel right. Now I’ve calmed down a lot, no doubt having something to do with Mike, but the talk continues, so I keep racking up hits. I’m not complaining. Being trolled gives me something to laugh about, and it keeps me on my toes. I also seem to be bringing in a lot of weird hits from search engines. “gloryhole movies”? None of that here, ya’ll, move along. I wonder though - do any of the people searching for such strange and obscene things see that this site isn’t quite what they were looking for, but continue reading? Who knows.

Regardless of hits, I’ll always blog. The way I look at it, $100/month for a server is cheaper than $100/hour therapy. Most people have at least one person they dump their shit on, be it a good friend or a therapist. I have a lot of friends now, but I’m not comfortable doing that kind of thing. I don’t even do that with people that I’m extremely close to, like Mike and Michelle. I vent a little occassionally, but for the most part, I keep personal things to myself - until I get a chance to put it in my blog. It’s good therapy. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

And if I happen to get a small fan club along the way, well, that’s not my fault, now is it?

Getting a house is a lot of work. I seriously don’t think people in apartments realize how easy they have it. I want an apartment, just so I don’t have to deal with this house and all of the money eating I’m sure it’s going to do. Ok, not really. Having a house is going to be awesome, but it’s still a lot of stuff to consider to where my brain is about to explode.

First, we have to get furniture. Mike is all about getting the cheapest furniture we can get just to get by just for now. I, on the other hand, believe that furniture is a statement of self. Not to the extent of which you see all these art snobs going “Oh my GOD, this table is so ME!” No, none of that. When people come to my house though, they see a place that is supposed to reflect me, at least in some way. No paisley prints here. No velour curtains. No Norman Rockwell paintings. Not here.

So the question du jour: what kind of furniture is my style? I’m so eclectic. I like modern, but not super-modern, to the point at which it’s all looks and no function. I like antique, but I don’t want a house that looks like it belongs to my AP English teacher from High School. (Jesus, that woman was a raging bitch. She’s the one that drilled it into my head that it’s either as in “i-ther” not “ee-ther”.) I like bright colors, but I’m scared of them and tend to go with dark blue for everything, although I’d like to be brave. I abhor the color red. I can’t have white, ecru, off-white, cream, eggshell, or any varient of those colors due to the dogs, the kid, and the boyfriend. Oh, and money is a factor, unless I want to buy it all one piece at a time.

I think I’m just going to buy 40 black pleather bean bag chairs and distribute them throughout the house. Problem solved.

Mike’s sister, Rachel, had her high school graduation party Saturday afternoon. There was a bit of confusion - I thought I had Nathan this weekend, Chad thought I didn’t. Chad was nice enough to bring Nathan up to the party, for which I am extremely greatful. I know it’s a long drive - nearly an hour from where he lives - and it means a lot to me that he’d go to all that effort. I felt a bit out of place around all of her families friends, but they are making an effort to make me a part of everything. Mike’s friends Mike and Rhiannon showed up, so I hung out with them and their baby most of the day. I forgot how much fun being around a baby can be. She took to me pretty well, and I spent most of the afternoon bouncing her on my knee, watching Nathan run around the yard with the rest of the kids. He was a player, as usual. He managed to get all of the high school girls following him around at some point. He started picking flowers and putting them in the front pocket of his Osh Kosh overalls so he could pull one out whenever a pretty girl looked his way. With his blue eyes and blonde hair, he’s destined to be a heart breaker. Everyone commented on how well behaved he was. He even helped clean the house after the party was over, much to Mike’s parents surprise. He didn’t get those habits from me, folks. We didn’t leave until nearly 10 PM, so he was entering his super-hyper phase, when he fights as much as he can to keep from falling asleep. He stayed in a remarkably good temper all night, and jumped into bed as soon as we got home. Mike’s snoring on the couch, and I’m spending a restless night in front of the TV playing Star Wars: KOTOR II again. There’s a TV show I’m addicted to now, Family Business.

The show uncovers the naked truth of a family whose business just happens to be adult entertainment. FAMILY BUSINESS centers around Adam, a proud single dad who runs the family business with his sometimes meddling, but well meaning mom, Lila, and cantankerous cousin, Stevie. The series follows Adam as he faces the same problems that many people encounter - running his own company, juggling a hectic schedule and looking for the love of his life.

What’s on your Tivo?