The Time Sink

Okay... The big deal today will be dealing with whatever didn't get handled with the move. ...like what to do with any abandoned equipment or furniture, the projected need for another copier, and what the heck happened to all the wastebaskets that we couldn't find on Friday<g>!

...and yeah, I could have used one last Friday as I started to empty the "Save these 'til last" boxes. Man. ...and I need to deal with some key issues today, like the changeout of where the controlled stuff is stored. ...and recover the old keys. ...and bolt that one box down.

...and for those curious on the cleanup front: one load to storage, one in the trash, two small tool storage cabinets up (and stuff from the garage into them and out of the garage); and the ground broken (literally) on the new local storage shed. Now to see if I have any energy available in the evenings this week!

I was talking with a friend yesterday and she mentioned I may have to find an indoor exercise routine for this week: it's August in central California and it's been 106F or better since Friday. ...with 110F set for later this week. ...and with the air quality just slightly better than downwind of a muni bus. Swell...

...and I have to be out in it at work. ...or at least that's what it's looking like after Monday's brief expedition back to the old place to look for stuff that should have made the move but didn't. I need to find a few places to give us bids on furniture; and I'll need to replace a bunch of odds and ends that didn't quite make it. ...or at least cannot be found at this point. All in all though, we are up and running. The biggie was keeping the field crews rolling and that went off without a hitch. ...and since some of us were back up on Friday, some of Monday's problems were very solvable. Now to find everything!

Someday I will have to relate the work stories from Tuesday. ...but not this close in time. ...and not until at least one more thing is finished. Man, what a day...

Okay, that was a bit cruel... Short version: I was asked to pull off a real Mission Impossible for the corporate world in general and this town in particular. I ended up with a non-local resource, but made a friend and have a new contact in the old database. One more day and I'll be done with the old building. ...and no, I really don't know how I end up with some of these assignments!

Today, I'm really hoping to minimize my time on the carousel and start unpacking some of the boxes in my office. ...and if I over-ordered as well as I thought I did last week, I may actually have the time to do that!

<sigh>... Imagine you're in your first year of college. ...and it's your mom's birthday. ...and you haul the entire family up to the lake so she can kick back for the evening. ...and you kinda' like maybe leave the truck keys in your swim trunks. ...which was probably like really okay, until the triple-flip water ski event.

...and your uncle and one of your friends have to get the spare keys from your house and head on up to the lake well after sunset.

...and like the next time your buddy's dad gives him a really lousy piece of work to do, all he's going to say is, "Hang on a minute, Dad; I need to make a call..."

...and as for your uncle? Well, it was just about worth the drive to show up and shout:

Just some tech stuff this weekend. I'm needing the break in here since the outside work runs me into the ground and I need to recharge the physical batteries...

An overview of the Moveable Type "Remember Me" fixes that some of us dealt with last week: Building on prior art seemed like a good thing to do; but the complexity of the Surreally sub-domains added another element to the puzzle on Tina's site. Basically, the deal is to change the "var HOST " reference from = '<$MTBlogHost$>' to your hardcoded domain name in the comments template (and the Individual Archives Template). ...only it didn't work.

I started running every permutation I could think of through (and rebuilding the entire site each time!), but I was getting nowhere. ...and then I thought of just going minimalist with "var HOST = 'surreally.com';", no 'http://' no 'othercheek', nothing but the core... Bingo; instant satisfaction. Coolness...

So I passed it along to Kitty. ...and she found out she had the correct piece, but to the wrong puzzle: since she runs a skinned site, her "var HOST " reference is located in her javascript includes file! Okay, so she changed it there (to "bitchblog.com"). Bingo again.

So, if you're an MT user having trouble with your "Remember me" function in your comments, try changing out that reference to a minimal reference to your site host. As usual, YMMV, Objects in the mirror...

Arrgghh... Brightmail bites it big time! ...and Postini rocks on. WT??? Well, about a month ago Worldnet added automatic filtering from Brightmail into their email package and enabled it on all accounts. A little digging showed you could disable the automatic kill and look at the screened stuff. Cool... Forwarded stuff (like the autoforward I have to the work address) wouldn't be screened out.

So I decided to watch it for a bit to see how well it worked. ...and see how well the Postini system at the work site handled things in comparison.

Well, Brightmail just shined the first week or so, but then it started to slip. ...and on easy ones too! Postini misses one or two per day, but that's been their norm. ...and that stat didn't change. But about a week ago, Brightmail started to lose ground. Yeah, they were catching twenty or so every day, but the leakage was increasing. ...and Postini just kept chuggin' along.

...and the last two days? Brightmail has been failing repeatedly. The latest were three pairs of identical, easy-to-filter-from-the-topic spams about cell phone accessories. <sigh>