Yesterday I decided to try something new for the website. I had been meaning to have my blog cross-post over to my MySpace as well as over to my LiveJournal for a while now. So, I finally decided to take a look for a MySpace cross-post plugin for WordPress. I managed to find Roderick Russell’s MySpace cross-post plugin, and went ahead and installed it. However, on my first try to get something crossed over, the plugin died with a error saying curl_init was not defined. I did some looking, and found that the plugin required curl support in PHP. So, I went ahead and recompiled PHP with curl support, and tried again.

The same thing happened.

Obviously I was a bit confused. I checked the configure logs, and the configure script DID find my server’s curl install. I tried recompiling again, and the same thing happened. I even deleted the source code from the server, reunpacked it, and recompiled with no effect. Nothing I found on Google helped me, either. I even asked twice on #php in Freenode, and was completely ignored.

Later in the evening, I was talking to ShoeUnited, and decided to take another look at it. I wrote a quickie phpinfo page so he and I could see the built-in support, when I noticed something. The PHP plugin Apache was using was compiled/installed in December. My install hadn’t been updating the plugin file. So, I moved the plugin filename, and reinstalled. No effect; the plugin wasn’t there. So, I manually copied the plugin from the source code directory to the Apache plugin directory. Still no go, as it came up with an error. I was stumped.

Finally, I looked through one of the logs, and I saw what the problem was. I double-checked against another log, and I suddenly felt like an idiot. I had two separate Apache builds on the server: one was an Apache 1.3 install that was in use, and the other was an Apache 2.2 install that had issues and never went into production. I was compiling the source code against the latter.

Once I recompiled the source code against the correct Apache build, the plugin started working properly. So, now whenever I make a post on here, a notification is posted on my MySpace blog. It’s not something I NEEDED to do, but it was a good exercise. :-)

Now I just need to sit down and figure out at some point why my Apache 2.2 install wasn’t working properly. It’s not a priority, of course, as I have a working Apache install (and the 1.3 branch is still getting security updates), but it would be nice to figure out where I went wrong… :-)

I hate how Microsoft can’t even be bothered to be consistent with how they treat their own program behaviors between different programs.

As some people know, I handle mail services for my parents and my father’s business. Of course, this means that whenever Mom or Dad have a problem regarding email, they come straight to me for help. (Of course, they do this for every computer issue, but never mind…) The other day, Dad came into my room with a puzzled expression, and asked if our email server strips out attachments. I looked at him, equally puzzled, and asked why. It turned out a customer of his had sent him an email message that was supposed to have an attachment, but there was none there. I told him that the mail server doesn’t strip out attachments; if the virus filter finds a message with malware on it, it quarantines the entire message and notifies me. Dad then said his customer had checked with someone and that said someone had claimed it was a problem with the virus/spam filter on the remote side. I offered to investigate for him, if only to confirm that just maybe his customer forgot to send the attachment (which I considered most likely).

The first thing I did was check the mail server logs, just to make sure. Sure enough, according to the logs, the message was large enough to have contained an attachment. So, I went over to Dad’s laptop and had him load up Outlook Express (don’t ask). The message showed no attachment. He also loaded Windows Live Mail, and the attachment wasn’t there either. I then had him forward the message to me as an attachment so I could see it in Thunderbird. I got the email, looked at it, and this time the attachment showed up.

It was a bloody winmail.dat file.

For those not familiar with it, Microsoft Outlook and Exchange Server do something a bit dodgy when it comes to email attachments in certain circumstances. Most email clients standardize on the most-commonly used MIME for encoding email attachments, or the ancient but possibly-still-used Uuencoding. However, Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, when set to use Rich Text formatting and Microsoft Word when composing emails, sends the email formatting and attachments in a TNEF-encoded file called winmail.dat. This problem, on the other hand, doesn’t occur if MS Word isn’t used as the editor, or if plain text or HTML is used as the formatting method. Fortunately, winmail.dat readers/decoders are plentiful.

The WTF of this situation was how Outlook Express and Live Mail, both Microsoft products, dealt with the attachment. Instead of showing the attachment as a generic winmail.dat file like Thunderbird, or decode and show the data in the file like Outlook, Outlook Express and Live Mail just hide the attachment and pretend like it’s not there. Can’t Microsoft even be internally consistent with how they treat their own standards, such as they are? I wonder how many times something similar has happened, except that the recipient didn’t have an admin with the time or clue to figure out what was going on. Especially when one considers that my father is hardly the only business person out there that uses Outlook Express or Live Mail for his email…

Ah, well. I’ve done all I can at this point, which pretty much consisted of telling Dad to tell his customer not to use MS Word for sending emails to my father. Still, one can only imagine how many people out there are seeing this happen and blaming the recipient’s system, when it’s really Microsoft’s non-standards to blame.

Well, as most people know, I work in IT for a medium-sized corporation. As a result of it, I get to play with some new and different technologies every so often. Well, a few months ago, I happened to come across something new while browsing the website of one of our standard equipment manufacturers. We use thin clients by Wyse extensively, as most work in our company is done on terminal servers. A couple of weeks ago, the decision was made to purchase one of these items, and it arrived a week or so ago.

(My apologies for using a stock photo. I meant to take a picture of ours using a camera but never got around to it.)

It’s a Wyse X90 laptop. In essence, it’s a thin client laptop. It lacks a hard drive and is fanless. On the other hand, the screen is sharp and clear, and comes with full 802.11g wireless networking support, plus an ethernet port, three USB ports, and an external VGA port. It’s also very light to carry.

But the question is, how well does it operate? To my surprise, it worked very well. It runs Windows XP Embedded, and boots into a limited user account by default. (Of course, I was able to log in as an Administrator.) I was able to put in our company’s standard connection configuration, plus with a bit of tweaking was able to install the Cisco VPN Client. It also comes with Internet Explorer, which is handy when you’re at a hotel or airport where you have to go through a portal page before being granted access to the internet.

Of course, you might be wondering how safe the machine might be from compromise when it’s running a form of XP. The answer is, “Very safe.” One of my favorite features of this laptop is the file write filter; once the machine is rebooted, all filesystem changes are reverted back and the system restored as it was at boot (or when the filter was enabled). That in and of itself makes me feel very comfortable with the machine.

Would I ever use this machine as my primary work machine? Of course not. Then again, I use several “local” tools in the course of my workday, which really wouldn’t work on the terminal servers. However, for our “average” users, one of these would make sense, especially if they just need a laptop so they can work on a business trip or when their usual laptop is being serviced or replaced. The only real annoyance we’re going through right now is the fact that I can’t get AT&T Communication Manager to load on the machine, so we can’t use our 3G cards with them… yet. However, there’s an upcoming model that has support for 3G cards. Hope isn’t lost yet. :-)

Ah, well… we’ll see how the laptop works out in the long run. For now, we’re awfully impressed with it and giving it a shot for our users.

Well, this sucks.

My DirecTV satellite receiver/TiVo has decided it’s going to die on me. The picture quality had been going out every so often over the past little while, but now it’s just refused to power up. If I unplug the power and plug it back in, it works, but only until I put it into standby mode. After it goes into standby mode, it refuses to switch back on. I think the fans are to blame; even after blowing out the receiver with compressed air the fan blades refused to move. Not only that the system is REALLY hot.

Right now I have two choices: I can either go to Best Buy or Fry’s and pick up a new DVR/receiver for $100, or have Bicycle Repairman (aka, my father) take a look at it and see if he can salvage it. I’m going to go with the first option, and if there’s nothing he can do I’ll just get myself another receiver. We’ll see. Still, it IS a tad annoying…

Despite my having said earlier that the game I’ve been playing most often recently has been Texas Hold Em for the Xbox 360, I’ve broken away from that for a while and have been playing the single-player campaign of Halo 3. I suppose I’ll go online and play (maybe as early as tonight), but with not being familiar with playing FPS games on consoles, I needed time to practice and get my skills up. I finally finished the campaign yesterday afternoon, and I must say I quite enjoyed it. Maybe now I’ll actually get around to finishing Halo for PC and get my hands on Halo 2. Ah, well… we’ll see.

I also plan on getting my hands on The Orange Box. I had been thinking about it, and probably will end up getting the Xbox 360 version. Truth be told, I prefer to do my gaming on my 360 these days. The main reason is because my 360 has a better screen and sound system. :-) Also, all in all, console gaming costs a lot less, hardware-wise, than a gaming-quality PC. I’m tired of paying through the nose for system upgrades. In fact, the only PC game I see myself getting anytime soon is Hellgate: London. Everything else I’m considering getting will be released for Xbox 360 as well.

Speaking of upcoming games, I went ahead and downloaded a pair of demos yesterday for Xbox 360. One was the demo for The Simpsons Game, and the other was the demo for Virtua Fighter 5. I have to admit, I’m tempted to get VF5 after playing the demo. The graphics are beautiful, and the controls are precise. I admittedly only played the original Virtua Fighter in arcades, but this is enough to convince me to give the series another try. On the other hand, The Simpsons Game is a definite “do not want”, to put it in net terms. The game looks pretty, but the controls are too sensitive and imprecise, and the camera is terrible. A shame, really. If the controls and camera had been better I might have been tempted.

Ah, well. For now, though, I think I’m going to go ahead and power up the 360, and put some more time in at Texas Hold Em. I still need the practice before my Vegas trip, after all.

I saw this on Slashdot a few minutes ago, and just had to share it. The funny thing is, I can fully agree with this version of Jessup’s famous speech…

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=291431&cid=20517087

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!

Son, we live in a world that has firewalls, and those firewalls have to be maintained by men with root access. Whose gonna do it? You? You, with your blogging buddies? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You whine about port blocking and you curse the administrators. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know: That blocking ports, while frustrating, probably saves bandwidth… And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves packets. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at LAN parties, you want me on that firewall, you need me on that firewall. We use words like source address, port 80, destination… We use these words as the backbone of an access control list. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain why I block access to YouTube to a man who points and clicks on the very network that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a whitepaper, and create your own web 2.0 app. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think you are entitled to.