Blurbomat 3.1
September 12th, 2004I’m a moron. I’m coming out of the moron closet. I did not follow the instructions in upgrading from Movable Type 2.x to 3.11. I’m in pain right now. It is geek pain, caused by running upgrade scripts in the wrong order. Oops. So much for best practices and doing things to a production server.
For some reason, my hosting provider, who shall not be named as of this writing, pulled the plug on blurbomat yesterday afternoon. I changed my .htaccess file and after that all hell broke loose. I was going to write something meaningful about 9/11 and couldn’t.
I tried to post and my server exploded. I had to call this morning and ask why my account at my host was suspended. They couldn’t answer me and eventually re-activated my account. After more weirdness, I called again and they were having some severe mySQL issues. After stepping away from the computer and sharing some wonderful Leta time while Heather napped (nap!!!), I decided that I’d scrap everything and just rebuild blurbomat. Just to be safe.
Turns out I didn’t need to do that. I did a backup of my database using phpadmin, and then cleared the data from the tables and reimported after reloading Movable Type. I could not have done this without the assistance of Brad Choate, superstar supreme and a score of a hire for Six Apart. I know the other Six Apart developers aren’t chopped liver, but Brad went the extra mile in helping fix the mess I had made. Thanks to Mr. Choate and a great set of plugins, this site is dynamically generated (but you should’t be able to tell the difference). Six Apart has done a great job in making the move to dynamic publishing easy. If I hadn’t cocked it up, I’m certain I wouldn’t have had the issues I did. Thank you Brad!
Yesterday, I flirted briefly with dynamic publishing on dooce.com, but after seeing the results of non-Movable Type 3.11 friendly plug-ins, hastily rebuilt dooce.com using static pages. Once the plug-ins are ported to php, we’ll make the move and decruft the URLs on dooce. Once I start playing on this site, I’ll have more of a toolkit to help Heather make dooce.com better.
People ask why I’m choosing to stay with Movable Type. In an email exchange I said that I felt the product had more polish than the other options. Not to say that WordPress and Textpattern aren’t awesome. They are. But for me, Movable Type combines everything in a balanced way. You get a lot of power along with a lot of flexibility. There are great people working on the other apps, and I think it’s good that there is competition in this space, but from what I’ve seen in the move to selectable/adjustable dynamic site generation, Movable Type is robust in ways that I’m just beginning to learn.
Finally, thanks to everybody for the great suggestions and please accept my apology if you tried to leave a comment in the last couple of days and couldn’t. Hopefully things are ironed out and working well. Unless you’re a spammer. If you are a spammer, I’m not sorry at all. And I’ve got tools to deal with you bitches.
In other news, tomorrow is Leta’s MRI. I’m extremely nervous. While I think we’ve caught the torticullis in time, I don’t know what else we might see. It’s this unknown that scares me more than anything else. I will try to be strong for Heather, as I know it’s going to be a stressful day. Thank you to everybody who has sent kind wishes and stories. There are so many people in this world who have it worse than we do. Bless the parents who struggle with harder things every day. We are so lucky. I’m certain we’ll both have something to say once the day is over. I’m certain that things will be okay. Leta, you are loved. o
September 12th, 2004 at 10:37 pm
Good luck to all of you tomorrow. You guys have been through so much in the last month, I hope that everything goes smoothly. I’ll be thinking of you guys.
September 12th, 2004 at 11:00 pm
Sending good wishes to your family! Leta will be fine, as will you and Heather. My son is 2 weeks older than Leta, so I totally understand how nervous you guys are. But she’ll be fine…I can feel it!
September 12th, 2004 at 11:07 pm
You, Leta and Heather will be in my thoughts tomorrow.
I go for my MRI on the 9/27th.
September 12th, 2004 at 11:15 pm
you are all in my thoughts. i wish you well.
September 12th, 2004 at 11:32 pm
my server exploded when i upgraded too! i have no idea what to do now. :o[
lots of positive vibes, thoughts and prayers are on their way to utah from san diego…
September 12th, 2004 at 11:50 pm
I’m sure there are others out there like me too - who never or rarely send you posts to let you know that we are thinking of you — so remember the love and support extends even broader and wider than what you can see.
You three are in my thoughts and prayers. Take care.
September 13th, 2004 at 1:33 am
thinking of leta and you and heather
hoping the MRI goes flawlessly and turns up nothing but good news
September 13th, 2004 at 1:42 am
sending a constant stream of good thoughts, positive vibes and love energy to you all.
September 13th, 2004 at 4:31 am
You, Heather and Leta are in my thoughts today. Wishing you all the best.
September 13th, 2004 at 5:33 am
I’ll be thinking about you all today. Good luck with the MRI and keep us all posted! Know that you’re loved
September 13th, 2004 at 5:36 am
i actually did try and comment yeasterday and i was so excited about being the first one - until i found out the reason there was no comment yet.. i’m such a dork *sighs*
but luckily i can tell you now about the positive german-vibes coming your way today!! and hugs *hugs*..
September 13th, 2004 at 7:06 am
1) Good vibes for the MRI. Once again, I’m saying a prayer for you guys even though you’re heathens.
2) I’m trying to teach myself (through books and online classes) some programming and Web design, and I look at all the geekiness on blurbomat and pine for the day when I’ll know what you mean. How did you get so smart?
3) Do you have any geeky guy friends who are as incredibly supportive and good-hearted as you in North or South Carolina?
Single friends, that is…
September 13th, 2004 at 7:12 am
Good luck to Leta today!
September 13th, 2004 at 7:12 am
I generally very much enjoy both dooce and blurbomat, but lately all this Movable Type, PHP, SQL business has left me experiencing the textual equivalent of Charlie Brown’s teacher’s voice…
” Mwah-mwaah-m-Wahh-mm–PHP!”
I hope it all gets sorted out soon. In the meantime, I’m going to go hug my Mac.
Dr. Dave (doctorsilence.blogspot.com)
September 13th, 2004 at 7:18 am
Oh, and speaking of geeky-goodness…. you’re probably an avid slashdotter so you may have seen this already, but when I saw the Nikon D70 mentioned I thought of you guys…
http://www.greghughes.net/rant/PermaLink,guid,e9bdfa3f-da94-4c6e-a2f9-5ff3260040f1.aspx
…that’s a lot of cute doggie and baby pictures!
September 13th, 2004 at 8:07 am
Good luck to Leta! Of course she’ll be fine though… she’s too awesome to have anything less. Seriously. She’s genetically inclined to be, as I might so delicately put it, “fucking awesome”
September 13th, 2004 at 8:56 am
Good luck today. I am sure all will be fine. You are such strong people. Give my love to all.
September 13th, 2004 at 9:21 am
I will pray that Leta is okay-being an epileptic Ive had my dose of MRIs and if they can be scary for a teen I can only imagine for little Leta!
*Hugs and good wishes!
September 13th, 2004 at 9:58 am
The Pooper (now 17months) had an MRI for the exact same head thing last month. They were concerned his head size was dropping off the bottom of the chart and the problem that poses is that if his brain keeps growing after his fontanelle closes, the brain will get squeezed and start to cause major damage to itself, in which case he’ll have to have his skull opened up and a plate put in to give his brain more room and alleviate the pressure.
He was a late bloomer with the crawling and walking, tho he never minded being on his feet. A jolly jumper can be a good tool to use to get Leta more comfortable having her feeet on the ground.
Don’t get too worried. I’m sure everything will be fine. The hardest part of the whole thing was watching Pooper fall asleep but we were exremely luckky that he’s the kind of baby who recovers very quickly and happily from sedation, unlike many of the infants I saw that day in the hospital.
Just be careful about letting Leta sit on her own. They gave Pooper Nembutal as a sedative and afterward he was extremely wobbly - I guess it has a very long half-life and kids can’t control their musclees very well for a half-day or so afterward.
We’re going for our MRI follow-up on Thursday morning. If you want to talk about anything or are curious about our follow-up, drop me a line.
September 13th, 2004 at 10:13 am
Holding Leta (and her folks) in my thoughts and heart today.
September 13th, 2004 at 11:49 am
Sending you big love today. I know everything will be fine.
September 13th, 2004 at 12:22 pm
Best wishes for today.. fingers and everything else crossed that she is FINE. She has the best parents in the world, and that will get her through anything, including an MRI. Let us know…
September 13th, 2004 at 12:37 pm
Good luck. Just wanted to let you know I’m thinking of you guys and Leta. And Sir Chuckles too, but more in the background.
September 13th, 2004 at 1:03 pm
A constant stream of positive vibes and calm to you all today. Everything will be fine.
September 13th, 2004 at 1:18 pm
The Moron Closet? Funny.