It’s Tax-Day in the USA. The government just took their fat cut of my money. Ouch. This is my first year to really feel the pain.

After writing that check, I’m beginning to think of starting my own company. Individuals are taxed for everything that passes through their hands. Companies are only taxed for the stuff they keep in their pockets. Thing like your new G4 PowerMac are taxed when you by it, but not when your company buys it for you.

The whole tax thing must be approached as mearly a game, if you want to keep your sanity. Since the game is designed to take more money from stupid people and less from smart ones, so it pays very well to learn how to play it with skill. It’s time for me to learn.

I discovered ”Dynamically configured mass virtual hosting” today. It will save me quite a bit of grief - since I won’t have to edit a mysql database, and have my own shell scripts building configuation files and restarting apache. I just point the DNS at my server, and then create a directory with the name of the domain. It’s a good way to do things.

But it has a bug. The DOCUMENT_ROOT environment variable is not being set to the document root being used. This throw errors into PHP scripts and cgi programs that use DOCUMENT_ROOT. (Someone with the same problem)

The docs tantalizingly say, “The other thing to `fake’ is the document root”, but then spin around at the end of the paragraph to declare, “there isn’t any way to change DOCUMENT_ROOT dynamically”.

Maybe I’ll have to try to get a fix put into Apache. Anyone have any experience with doing that? :)

When I was young, everthing was beatiful with the programs I used. I took everything unquestioningly, and learned to conform to the software and hardware. If for some reason I could not do something, that was fine. If I had to take eight obscure steps to do something simple, it did not bother me. After all, was not it a priviledge to use a computer.

And then I grew up, and got a Mac. Now when software or hardware is missing a feature, or makes me go out of my way, it upsets me. And what makes it worse, I can’t fix it. Take PDA’s for example. Everyone on the market has big problems. I know what I want, but I can’t wave my hand and have it.

Now looking at myself, I’m obviously crazy for wanting everything my way. I guess it’s too much programing on my own sites that have worked me up to expecting to be able to make everything I “touch” just the way I want it.

I built a php “bookmark / history” script this morning, for no good reason really.

I needed to reboot my computer to install the latest version of Mac OS X, and I realized the ten open Camino window’s tabs contained the accumulation of useful webpages from a week’s web browsing. If I just closed the windows, I’d loose all of them, some of those pages I found while working on getting the new server setup were really hard to find.

So the upshot was that I decided to throw together a quick bookmark script. I punch the [^.] bookmark in my menubar and up pops a window allowing me to set the emotion the page gives me (Makes it easy to spot political news items from technical) . I hit save, and there we go.

If anyone wants the source for this kludge, send me an email.

So why did I not use just plain browser bookmarks? That’s the question I’m asking myself right now, actually. :)

I’ve spent the last two days bashing the new servers into shape. Things should not have to be this hard! Maybe Macs have spoiled me, but it should take only a few minutes to setup a virtual hosting computer, not a few days. If I had dollar for every time I put my hostname, or ip address into yet another config file.

Currently I’m off scouring the web for a better way.

Here is what I really want:

• Runs on any linux/BSD
• I only have to configure the software, and it builds and configures, the individual server software.
• Web based control panel
• Free

bq. Dear Domain Name Owner,

bq. As of today, the domain name registrations listed below will expire. These domains will no longer resolve in name servers. After today’s expiration date, we will still maintain the registrations in the Registry database for 15 days. During that time, you may still contact us to re-register the domain names. After the 15-day grace period, however, the domain name registrations will be released and you will no longer be the registered owner of the domain names.

bq. This is the list of domain names that expired today:

BRAINO.ORG

Noooo!!! I don’t have a Credit Card, so I’ll have to wait a few days to use a relative’s one… Braino may be down for a few days. :( Thank you Dotster for keeping them an additional 15 days, though.

PhotoPal - PHP powered web photo album. I wish I had had this when I went to Europe. Hydra - realtime multi person document editing, with Mac slickness.

(Sorry for neglecting the blog lately, I’ve been too sleepy to do much.)

“Wallace”, the new 1U server, has arrived. After swearing him in, I started to install Gentoo Linux on him. So far I’m getting a kernel panic, and thus must give up after five hours of going at it. Things should not be this painful!

And the other DSL modem they brought back has a blown power supply. They promise to be back after lunch with yet another DSL modem.

Two hours later, the score is DSL - 3, Telco guys - 0. “Anything having to do with the telco is not going to happen easily” should have been an old roman saying.

They are coming back with a new DSL modem, since this one can’t take the distance.