Out of the Woods

There are some incredibly powerful and beautiful photos that came from 2008’s world events over at Boston.com that I’ve really enjoyed viewing. Go check it out. (Also Part 2 and Part 3.)

Celebrity must really suck sometimes. Even before taking office, Barack Obama has said he regrets the loss of being able to just take a walk. The paparazzi essentially killed Princess Diana with their incessant hounding of her, right to the point of her driver making a fatal mistake while trying to avoid them.

Steve Jobs has been living with rumors for close to a year now that he is dying. It’s undeniable that he’s been losing weight. Some people have tried to say that his health is a private matter, while others argue if his health is deteriorating, he owes it to Apple stock holder to come clean. Well, he finally caved to pressure ahead of MacWorld and released a statement disclosing exactly what’s going on. Now perhaps those people will go out and get a life.

Damn, these computers can be finicky. Over the weekend, on a whim I decided to tell my server to update to the latest version of Apache in the Etch Debian distribution (which is what I’m running here). When it completed, I went on to other things. Round about Tuesday, I discover that the web server isn’t serving up my WordPress pages properly. It doesn’t seem to know what to do with PHP files.

At first I figured the Apache update modified a configuration file somewhere, but a quick check of all the relevant directories showed nothing had been modified since August. Hmm. Next, I tried polling the server using Steve Gibson’s wonderful ID Serve utility to see what it thought it was running. It turns out that Apache was fine, but it didn’t have any PHP extensions turned on. A quick check showed that everything was in place for PHP, but it just wasn’t loading.

OK. Drastic measures. I ended up uninstalling everything related to PHP5, then reinstalling it to reestablish all the proper connections. I have no idea what could have hosed my installation, since this Debian machine has been very reliable, but all is well again. Now, off to install WordPress 2.7 and see what else I can break.

When I first saw this photo, I immediately thought some turkey doctored McCain’s face to match his body stance. However, it’s a completely unretouched photo. The Reuters caption reads, "U.S. Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain (R-AZ) reacts to almost heading the wrong way off the stage after shaking hands with Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) at the conclusion of the final presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, October 15, 2008." Now, which candidate looks more "presidential" to you?

Given the last few posts, it should be clear that I’m a Barack Obama supporter in the upcoming election. I just took a test over at glassbooth.org and it turns out I should really be voting for Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party. Our views match with a 73% similarity. However, while I do support the idea of candidates running with party affiliations other than the big two, in this case, I think it would just be throwing my vote away to do so. The same quiz puts me at 71% similarity with Obama, so I think I’m safe continuing on my present course.

Here’s another great piece about the whole Bill Ayers controversy that appears to be the meat and potatoes of the GOP campaign these days. It’s written in a level-headed, even-handed style that is long on facts and short on hyperbole, which is the opposite of how Sarah Palin approaches the issue.

Now the Republicans are trying to downplay the implied association and are instead claiming that Obama lied when confronted with the accusation. Reading the above article and its treatment of the facts, we see that Obama really was telling the truth regarding his connection with Ayers, and, again, the Republicans are caught with their pants down.

I just wish every voter would read this type of treatise, since far too many "Joe Six-packs" are going to vote based on the 2-second sound bites the MSM is feeding them, courtesy of the Republican spin machine. Just look at that stupid woman who claimed directly to McCain that Obama is an Arab, or the guy in Florida who yelled out "kill him" (referring to Obama) in response to Palin’s hate-filled speech. It’s a shame that negative campaigning is so effective. It’s just not possible to run a winning campaign these days based on facts and issues, though Obama is doing his best to do so.

While Keith Olbermann takes Sarah Palin to task for her attacks on Barack Obama over his passing association with William Ayers, another columnist points out John McCain’s own questionable associations with one-time shady characters, whom he’s since seen fit to forgive and praise for the good they’ve gone on to do. (Should Palin Forgive Bill Ayers?) Did Palin not learn anything from the Bible that she so firmly holds onto and throws in people’s faces? Are the Republicans grasping for straws and running scared? You betcha!

This is one scathing commentary. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann takes on the latest Republican mud slinging by pointing out numerous truths about Sarah Palin’s own past associations and her complete lack of credentials to be a vice presidential candidate. I don’t know who’s running the Republican campaign, but it seems to be one public relations screw up after another. If McCain/Palin end up winning, it’s going to absolutely reek of voter fraud (the same way it did when GW won a second term). The segment is a little long, but listen to the end. It’s well worth it.

Congratulations to SpaceX for being the first private company to put a liquid-fueled rocket into Earth orbit. Three previous launches met with various degrees of success due to normal start-up issues, but the fourth launch was perfect. This company is on the fast track to being able to supply launch vehicles to put both payloads and astronauts into space. The Falcon 1 rocket that flew yesterday uses a single engine in its first stage and is suitable for small satellites. The Falcon 9, due for its maiden launch later this year, uses a cluster of nine engines to lift larger payloads and the Dragon module, which can be configured for space station resupply or up to seven astronauts.

I’ve been following the progress of SpaceX for several years now, and I’m looking forward to even more excitement in the coming years. Check out more details here and video highlights of the launch here.

I am bummed, though, that I didn’t get to see it on their live web feed. I knew the launch was going to happen this week, but they didn’t send an e-mail out until after it happened. They did blog about it, but I don’t check blogs often on the weekends. I couldn’t have watched it anyway, though, since we were at a Peter, Paul & Mary concert in Hartford, their first in a year and a half.

Why is it that every time I get this server humming, I muck around with it until it breaks? I’ve been running an old Debian Etch installation for years now, and I haven’t wanted to do a release upgrade for fear of completely breaking the whole system. However, yesterday I decided I wanted to at least upgrade all the packages to the latest in the Etch archives. So, I issued an "apt-get upgrade" and approved upgrading several hundred packages. All went well and it finished without any errors (which itself was a miracle). Then I discovered that my Squid proxy server wouldn’t start.

Fortunately, I had also recently cleaned up my system logging, and there were some helpful messages in the log. I did a quick Google search on the error, and in short order came up with this page. Someone else had this same problem over a year ago and was kind enough to write up a complete wiki page with step-by-step instructions for how he fixed it. Within minutes, Squid was back up and running. This Internet thingy is pretty cool!