Month: October 2007

Hey there Mr. Barnson,

Quick question, if you have the time. I’m managing a web site for my family’s church that runs on either Drupal or Civicspace. It’s completely member locked, so currently when someone goes there they see an Access Denied message in the body of the site before they log in.

I’m trying to change the “Access Denied” message to something more user friendly, and I’m guessing it has to be done at the file level, since I can’t seem to find anyway to change it using the ‘administer’ section of the site itself.

When I hit View Source on that main page, the code appears to be just an html page. It looks like the Drupal engine calls up some html code to display in the main page’s body. However, there are no html files in the directory on the server where this Drupal site is installed. Would the html code be in one of the .mysql files?

Thanks much, Arthur

We have an interesting little tradition in Utah. Periodically, the Utah Education Association has a conference of some sort, and the kids get a week off from school. There is no holiday associated with it… there’s just a six-day vacation, usually in October.

This year, we planned on going to Seattle for UEA weekend, but obviously had to change our plans due to shifting circumstances. The break from the usual routine really heightens tensions between children in the family. I vaguely remember such vacations as a child being long stretches of boredom after the first day of shouting “Freedom! Freedom!” with joy from the rooftop.

It’s funny how oftentimes getting the thing you want — a break from school, for instance — turns out to be the worst thing for you. I can think of other examples, too, but for some reason I can’t shut off that tiny little part of my brain which refuses to listen to logic when I tell it that I’ll never win the lottery.

Tonight was the viewing for family and close friends of my stepfather, Dennis Ker. Attendance was surprising, even with people milling in and out over the course of two hours.

It was, I felt, both surreal and slightly macabre: there lay Dennis’ corpse in the coffin in the place of honor, surrounded by flowers with a line of chairs containing family to his left. A video synopsis of his life was playing on the LCD screen at the back of the room, repeating the same several songs over and over again throughout the 3-hour event.

And here we were, talking and laughing with only a hint of the sadness we felt leaking through our conversations. Most of the stories shared were the funny ones of better times. It felt odd to be smiling and giggling over obscure inside jokes with a corpse in the room… yet at the same time, it felt like what he would have wanted.

Tomorrow is the funeral, and with it, probably resumption of my usual upbeat and interrogatory blogs. But for now, I’m reminded of the man who was alternately exasperating and entertaining, and the love of my mother’s life.

This symptom was talked about during our staff meeting this morning.

ADOSS = Attention Deficit Oooh something shiny!

One. Breath.

One. Breath.

Sitting in this room, watching my stepfather dying in front of me, feels very much like watching an accident unfold. In a few horrifying moments in 1993, I heard a crunch, turned my head, and watched a tiny car performing a 540-degree somersault before smashing down on its windshield on the pavement. The driver of the other vehicle, a light truck, jumped out of his vehicle with his forehead gushing blood, and ran as fast as he could from the scene of the accident.

Luckily, other than being shaken up, the passengers and driver in the small vehicle were wearing their seatbelts and mostly unhurt. We helped them out of their wrecked blue Ford subcompact and brought them little cups of water and first-aid kits to cover up the cuts while awaiting the arrival of the ambulance. I stuck around with my partner to help push the car over on its wheels for the towtruck.

I was powerless to do anything to prevent it. I could not have known what was going to happen. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist the sense of despair at being unable to do more.

One, two. Breath.

One, two. Breath.

“That smells good. Whatcha’ cookin’ there, Matt?” asks Dennis in his inimitable Idaho drawl.

“It’s some beef stew. Want some?”

“Well, I would. But you know I can’t right now.”

I snap out of my daydream. He hasn’t moved more than labored breathing for several hours. He never talked to me about the plate of beef stew. But I can hear his voice in my head, in distinctive tones. I remember the sound of him hollering support to my kids while they played ball in the backyard.

“All right, Elijah! Way to go little guy!”

“Well, nice job Zack!”

“You did a great job, Sara.”

“Wow, Josh, you sure are fast.”

If nothing else, he was always a very positive person. It felt affected much of the time, like he was really working at being over-the-top cheery, but you have to appreciate the kind of effort that goes into doing that day in and day out for fifty-eight years.

One, two, three. Breath.

A slight choke.

One, two, three. Breath. A deep rattle in his chest.

He’s quiet. The morphine provided by the hospice seems to be working. He’s not flailing around or groaning in pain like he did last night. There’s no way of knowing how near the end is, but about the only things still pumping away are his heart, brain, lungs, and kidneys. Some better than the others, of course.

Dennis had a mild heart attack just a few years back. It barely slowed him down. He went right back to working his insurance business, always finding a way to make a buck. “If you can sell,” he quipped, “you’ll never go hungry. You may not get rich, but you can always support your family.”

Funny, we had been leaning on him to drop some weight and get on the exercise program the doctor told him to follow. Good advice for all.

He told us he didn’t want to go back to the hospital again. He wanted to be home.

One, two, three, four. Breath.

The deep rattle is replaced by a wheeze.

One, two, three, four. Breath.

And the rattle is back. Rattle plus wheeze. His lungs, I think incongruously, sound a bit like my first car.

Shift swap. Krystal takes a turn on the vigil. I sit behind her. I’m really not part of the rotation for Dennis. I’m here for my mom, and we all know it. But ultimately, neither Krystal nor Shirley want to face the inevitable without someone else there.

It’s tribe mentality, I guess.

Heh, Tribes. I used to play that computer game — Starsiege Tribes — way too much. Dennis used to get frustrated that sometimes I’d be playing computer games when he and my mom came to visit.

“You know we’re sitting right here, and there you are playing a game with your back to us. Should we just go home?”

His voice in my head again.

“I’m layin’ here and really wish I could tell you to knock off that infernal typing.”

Guess I’ll go along with the daydream and yield to my conscience. Back to the vigil. That practice sleeping polyphasically will pay off in the next day or two, I suppose.

One, two, three, four, five. Breath.

I read an article on cnn.com regarding Reese Witherspoon’s upcoming movie, “Extraordinary Rendition“. This movie deals with the US government’s deportation of terrorism suspects to other countries in order to interrogate them in ways which are unlawful in the USA.

People are all over the map on the issue, of course. Some maintain that if torture saves American lives, we should maintain the policy. Others counter that violation of the anti-torture provisions in treaties to which we are a party weakens our hold on the moral high ground and increases the likelihood of torture being used on Americans abroad.

What impressed me about this otherwise hum-ho article pumping the upcoming release of a new movie, though, was the last three paragraphs. Witherspoon took an unusual position for someone with a high Hollywood profile:

While “Rendition” openly challenges U.S. policy in the war on terrorism, Witherspoon plays the diplomat when asked if she thinks unlawful detention and torture are ever justified.

Witherspoon said she prefers to keep her own counsel and not let her beliefs muddy up the debate.

“I have a real aversion to talking about my own personal politics just because I feel the influence sometimes, I see the influence of celebrity on our culture,” Witherspoon said. “And to think that my opinion is any more informed than anyone else’s or taken as thus is erroneous. I’m just like everybody else. I’m learning, reading, I’m trying to figure it out. …

“I can’t imagine being responsible for national security or global security. I can’t imagine having to be in that position and make those decisions. That’s why I’m not. That’s why I’m an actor,” Witherspoon said, laughing. “I’m allowed to question these things, question them and think about them and hopefully get other people talking about them. That’s the best you can hope for.”

I empathize with the desire to use one’s fame to advance worthwhile causes. Were I in the public eye, I probably would be quick to use my new-found exposure to advance positions I support. But Witherspoon now has an immense amount of respect from me for having the wherewithal to admit her lack of competence on a particular issue, and subsequent choice to avoid public advocacy of a position.

Good on ya, Reese.

I walked into the dark bedroom where he laid on the bed, his stomach bloated and discolored, his head free from most hair and sheared close with what remained. A scant few weeks ago, those locks had been a mixture of healthy brown and gray of one approaching his golden years; now they are all white, apparently a result of the failed efforts to put the cancer into remission with chemotherapy.

“Hey, bud, how’s it going?”

“I’m fine… well, no, not really, but you know. Fine.”

“Yeah. I kinda’ figured. Don’t worry about getting up. I just came in to say howdy and share a few good jokes.”

“Knowing you, they won’t be few and they won’t be good. They might not even be jokes.”

This is the heart of how our relationship works. We have some painful history from long ago, but we’ve gotten along for 18 years mostly by ignoring it, focusing on acerbic jokes and keeping our conversations light. I really don’t mind having shallow relationships. But over the course of the better part of two decades, I’ve come to like the guy, even though I know I’d never have met him or struck up a friendship were it not for the fact that my mother married him.

“So an Irishman walks into a bar and orders three beers. He retreats to a corner and slowly drinks all three one by one. After a few weeks, the barman asks him why he orders them all at once rather than one after the other. “‘Well, you see,’ says the Irishman, ‘my two mates back in Ireland and I decided that even though I was moving to the States, we’d still have a beer together every Friday. So I order one for me, and one each for my mates. The bartender agreed with this rationale, and didn’t think much of it until a year later when the Irishman only ordered two beers. The bartender went to his table and expressed condolences for the loss. “‘Oh, my mates are fine,’ said the Irishman. ‘I’m the one that quit drinking.'”

A slight chuckle escaped his lips. In a faint whisper, he said, “I’ve heard that one before, but it was a very long time ago. Do you have another one?” He rolled to his right side, in obvious pain.

“Do you know what the difference is between a pun and a fart?”

One eye creaked open. “No, what?”

“A pun is a shift of wit.”

“You told me that one not long ago. Still funny, though.”

I told him a few more jokes. He was fading in and out of consciousness. “Well, I’m pretty much out of good jokes.”

“Well, those were nothing like good jokes. Send your mother back in.”

I retreated to the kitchen where the family had gathered, receiving flowers from concerned friends and talking about better times. I cut a few flowers and arranged them in a vase, then kept my kids policed to the basement where with a dozen other grandchildren they were playing some kind of role-playing war-game using pieces from my mother’s extensive collection of sewing materials as markers. I replaced a few light-bulbs which had long since burned out, and promised to come see if I could fix the electrical problem which was preventing the porch lights from turning on. With all the guests they are getting, you know, having working porch lights is a necessity.

We retired back to our home late that night. My wife and I discussed the situation at some length, particularly focusing on how we want to handle the scheduled vacation to Seattle this week if he passes. Like many serious subjects, I handle it much better when I’m well-rested and clear-headed, so I asked Christy if we could talk more tomorrow. Funny thing, though… tomorrow is here, and I still don’t want to talk about it.

I wonder why that is.

I just installed Ubuntu 7.04 (soon to be 7.10), and it’s amazing how well things just work right out of the gate.

Chief among them: * 3D acceleration on my Dell Optiplex 745; no extra drivers needed. * XM Radio just required installing two packages: totem-xine and w32codecs. Due to licensing restrictions in the USA, I had to run an installer from an off-shore repository, but that’s been par for the course for Linux due to restrictive US patent law for years. * Blazingly fast. Comparing the speed of Windows Vista to this machine is just night and day, with Linux handily winning in the speed department. * Memory management. Wow. I have 2GB of RAM on this machine, and with all my usual applications running I only consume about 600MB. The longer the box runs, the faster it feels. * No crapware. The Windows laptop right next to this easily takes 10+ minutes to start up due to all the bloated software required both by my company and the hardware manufacturer. * Total control. Obviously I’m a UNIX nerd, so this doesn’t really apply to your average user, but man I love being able to tweak the crap out of any setting on my system… if I just figure out how 🙂 * Able to run Windows applications natively. Through the use of Crossover Office, I have all the Microsoft applications I need to use on a daily basis: Word, Excel, Outlook, Internet Explorer 6. * Seamless network browsing. I can browse to shares or type their names into my browser window, and they just pop right up. * Dynamic DNS works right out of the gate. No joining a domain, no tweaking DHCP settings… I just log on, and my workstation name is accessible by name rather than IP address.

Big progress in the 7.X Ubuntu Linux series. I think I’m in love.

So today, in my inbox, I received an offer from a discount electronics vendor from whom I’ve purchased stuff before. The vendor is reputable, the products they sell are usually name-brand items with full warranties, and I’ve had a good experience with them overall.

Anyway, so I get this offer for a Bluetooth headset. These usually go anywhere from $25 for a low-end model to around $300 for the really good ones. I check out the reviews on this particular headset, and it initially retailed at $79. The reviews are a mixed bag. A lot of people complain about the ear-loop breaking in heavy usage, occasional problems with disconnects, and in rare cases voice quality problems. Overall, very middle-of-the-road.

The price? $9.88 cents per headset.

So here’s the issue: it’s a large-name manufacturer. I had planned on spending around $40-$60 on a headset. I’m a little bit concerned about the earloop breaking… but at that price, I could just buy 5-6 of the things and have a lifetime supply of earloops. The complaints about sound quality and disconnects are fairly typical for most Bluetooth headsets in this range.

Would you pick up several of these guys at the steeply discounted price, or steer clear and go for one higher-priced item? I mean, it retailed for $80 only two years ago, and currently retails for around $50 from discount sellers.

Tough calls when I know I’m getting into an item with a history of a few problems here and there…

Read an interesting article today citing a study that refutes common stereotypes about feminists. Summary: Marriages containing a “feminist” partner (whether male or female) are more likely to have healthier and longer heterosexual relationships than non-feminist relationships. IMHO, the sample size is too small to come to really reliable conclusions, but I think the overall trend solidly refutes the bra-burning lesbian view of feminism.