Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

September 4, 2004

Done

Filed under: General Rants — Bunker @ 5:12 pm

I believe the proper curse is, “May you live in interesting times.” The last three days of site ownership have been interesting.

I have been getting some comment spam, so I tried to install Blacklist for my MT 3.01 installation. No dice. When 3.1 came out with a “plug-in pack” that included a version of Blacklist, I thought the time was right. As stated before, I’m no UNIX or network genius, and the MT manual is written for such people. I had some difficulty just at the time David linked to one of my posts. To anyone who came by to visit due to his link, I apologize. But especially to him for them embarrassment I may have caused because the link didn’t work.

The problem was that the individual archives were lost, even though they were where they should be. I had backed them all up, which took several tries, and that ate up a bunch of bandwidth. Once I got things working again, the comment spam hit. Of course, I hadn’t yet completely configured Blacklist, or the spam bypassed the filter. I don’t yet know.

Why? Well, PowerWeb, my hosting service, shut it all down and would not activate the site until I removed the offending file. Great. But I have no ftp access, either. Kinda hard to fix the problem without it. So, off and on for the last two days I’ve tried to explain that to virtually everyone at PowerWeb who works at Support.

This afternoon, I finally got someone to activate things once again.

So, the millions of readers (dozens?) out there who have been waiting patiently for the words of wisdom I have to bestow upon your anxious minds may now rest easier knowing Bunker Mulligan is back on line.

Actually, the most frustrating thing is that I haven’t been able to easily acces the sites I generally read each day. I have bookmarks for news sites like Drudge, InstaPundit, and PowerLine, where I generally get updates on what’s happening in the world. But those are simply my starting points, All the sites listed in my Favorites column haven’t been available to me. And that is unacceptable. How do I know what to think without my ties to the VRWC?

So, I have a lot of reading to catch up on this weekend.

September 2, 2004

Software

Filed under: Engineering — Bunker @ 7:37 pm

As an engineer, I’ve written just enough programs in different languages to be dangerous. I can’t say I’m arrogant about my skills in coding, but often too self-confident. I generally have little trouble with any commercial software.

Not so with MoveableType.

I know nothing of UNIX or servers, although we do have UNIX machines and it appears to be very similar to DOS. And I have absolutely no knowledge of Apache. Yet the MT User’s Manual seems to think I do. I run into problems of /www/b/u/something/something_else/ which bears little resemblance to what I think should be \www\b\u\something\something else\, and where do the b and u come from?

So, when I ran into problems, I did what every man does–sulk. Curse. Bang my head on a desk.

Then I contacted people with knowledge of such things: RAMMER. David. They, of course, responded.

Today I first backed up all my archives. That required four attempts. Then I tried to locate the portion of MT where I could change the templates to static rather than dynamic. That took some searching because I didn’t realize at first that I needed to change the templates and not the archives. Then I tried to rebuild just the individual archives, as these seemed to be the problem. Do dice. So then I rebuilt the categories. Worked. Tried individual again. Worked. Rebuild the entire site. Died in the middle.

Eventually, I got all the archives rebuilt. Then I checked the trackback link from rishon-rishon that first highlighted the problem. It still didn’t work. I found that, for some reason, that ONE individual archived post didn’t rebuild! I did an ftp of that one and rebuilt once again, and here it all is.

I spent most of the day today escorting some consultants around who will do some IT work for us. I spoke eloquently and often to them about how little I knew about hardware, and what I expected from them in the way of advice. Mercifully, I also asked them for advice on software to use, and assistance in building the necessary applications and integrating them with one another and the things we currently have running.

They think I’m smart.

Well, smart enough not to do it myself.

MT 3.1

Filed under: General Rants — Bunker @ 8:48 am

Yesterday I upgraded to MT 3.1 and now I’m having some difficulty with the archives. For some reason, it can’t find them!

Well, it actually can find the category archives, but not the individual ones. Very strange. So, if you are looking for a single entry, check the categories list, and it should get you there.

All this because I wanted to implement Blacklist to counter the increasing comment spam.

***UPDATE***
It took a while, but I managed to back up everything and rebuild. It took several tries, so there was something going on not so good.

September 1, 2004

Tony

Filed under: Military — Bunker @ 7:07 pm

I’ve had quite a few search referrals for General Merrill “Tony” McPeak, and felt I should add a little of my knowledge for those who are looking for information about him.

When he worked for Howard Dean, I wrote about him. When he began working for the Kerry campaign, I wrote once more. He’s looking for a job, I guess.

I don’t try to judge anyone who achieves flag rank without good reason. They got there due to intelligence and skill. Once you get a star, moving higher comes with a balance of military and political skills. Some lean one way, the rest another.

McPeak was the Air Force Chief of Staff when I finished out my career. That means he was in charge of the Air Force contingent at the Pentagon, and was not in the operational chain of command. He restructured the Air Force during his tenure, and made a lot of moves those of us in the field never really understood. I was in the 1st Special Operations Wing, a unit with significant history. When he changed everything, 1st SOW became 16th SOW. McPeak thought there should be only one “1st” and that was the 1st Fighter Wing. Other things made even less sense like wanting to base A-10s with C-130s so they could learn to work together better. They never do, work together that is.

Anyway, those were his decisions to make. McPeak worked for the Secretary of the Air Force, Donald Rice. Rice accompanied me on our deployment to Ethiopia in 1989. I was impressed. We had two congressmen along, and he did his level best to keep them out of our way. He was definitely a no-BS kind of guy.

A friend who was working in the Pentagon at the time called to tell me a story that was going around. The image of Rice fits the man I knew, so it seemed legitimate to me. During a meeting, McPeak said something Rice didn’t like. Rice turned to him and said, “General, shut up and worry about your new uniforms.”

Protestations

Filed under: Society-Culture — Bunker @ 6:33 am

Why, in New York City, would any sane person carry flag-draped coffins down the streets in protest? I know, I know… they want to highlight the deaths of 1000 American military men and women. But if they had a single brain cell more than those required for motor function, they would understand not only the crass nature of their ploy, but its absolute illogic.

In the last three years, some 1000 of our sons and daughters have died in the effort to eliminate those who threaten us all. These young people offered themselves as tools to make that a reality, but not one of them wanted to die. 300 per year, on average. More than that are murdered or killed in accidents each year in NYC alone.

Three years ago nineteen men from the enemy’s side gave themselves up to kill 3000 Americans. They, on the other hand, did want to die. And they killed more than 2000 not far from where these idiots marched. 3000 in one day.

These marchers are, in reality, protesting in honor of nineteen men who wanted to die while killing 3000 Americans, while using the deaths of 1000 Americans as their foil. Were I a family member of someone killed on 9/11, I’d be more than a little upset. I have to wonder how some of the cops herding these folks feel.

As Don King always says, Only in America.

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