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lies and satire
Thursday, September 30 2010
Today was another day of prolonged downpours and odd unseasonably-warm weather. A tropical air mass (a tropical storm actually) was coming up the coast, bringing in hours the amounts of rain that normally fall over the course of months.
I struggled today with trying to get SSL (that's the secure HTTP protocol used by e-commerce site and banks) working on a Windows server running Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Such a technology stack is called "WAMP" and is widely considered a craptastic compromise between Windows servers and the increasingly-respected LAMP technology stack. (LAMP standing for Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP.) While WAMP may work okay for development servers, stand-alone development workstations, and even prison computer lab data environments (I know something about those), it's a bit of a stretch to consider them suitable as a platform for an actual commercial website. This becomes increasingly clear as one asks WAMP to do more things. I was actually able to get WAMP server to do the basics of SSL webpage serving, but in the end I never managed to serve any SSL pages; they kept throwing 403 errors (and yes, I know how to set directory permissions in .conf files). So I told this particular client that it was time to move everything to a proper Linux host, where I won't have to wonder if some deeply-repressed tentacle of Windows IIS is interfering with everything.
This evening Gretchen went out with Nancy (of Ray and Nancy) to see a Phil Ochs documentary at the Woodstock Film Festival (it's that time of year again). She'd left me in charge of the tomato sauce and noodles for a lasagna we'd all be eating (with Ray) after the movie. The plan was for her to bake the lasagna when she returned, but shortly before that happened, the ongoing downpours (mixed with light winds) managed to do something catastrophic to the local power grid, plunging the house into darkness. I fired up a kerosene lamp and some candles.
When Gretchen and Nancy showed up, we soon decided to relocate our dinner to Ray and Nancy's house, where electricity was still operational. Gretchen finished assembling the lasagna by candlelight and then we drove down the hill to Old Hurley, where Ray was already preheating the oven.
Ray made a delicious salad of thinly-sliced carrots and what looked like watercress. And then came the lasagna, which Gretchen had sprinkled with vegan Deya-brand cheese. Dinner conversation mostly consisted of Gretchen interrogating Ray about why he likes to tell absurd little lies to people (for example, he'd told Jason the Chemist at New World that his wife Nancy is morbidly obese). Ray seemed to think it was all in keeping with his sense of humor in the same vein as Colbert or Borat, but Gretchen seemed to find it a little offensive. (Similarly, she finds it offensive when I'm super subtle with my satire and people can't tell whether or not I am being for real.)
Lacking a television, we watched Jeopardy with Ray and Nancy (though they'd actually seen this episode before and, oddly, not immediately deleted it). At some point we found ourselves watching an animated show called Samurai Jack which, though Ray seemed to love it, wasn't really my thing (and it was even less Gretchen's thing). Soon we'd returned to our dark house, where we sat around reading actual print media by candlelight.
I realized I didn't post any pictures this month. These are all from the Olympus camera Gretchen's father gave me, shot within the last week or two.
A Velvetleaf (a kind of Mallow) I left to grow in the lawn.
An insect eggmass on the Velvetleaf.
Eleanor from a distance, in front of the garage.
A tomato in the tomato patch.
The transformer for our house (and our across-the-road neighbors).
I'd put up this trellis for our peas, but they never did well, so I let wild Vine Buckwheat grow on it instead.
They were attacked mercilessly by Japanese Beetles. Yes, I remember Pearl Harbor.
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