Month: March 2010

Posted on

less painful than I expected

So I run two full versions of the site, and until I take the time to get Deploy etc working, I periodically have to reset the test version as it gets absurdly out of whack with the live version.

For reasons that are too boring to get into at the moment, I had to do that earlier this week. When I did, I completely spaced on the fact that a few weeks ago I was working on a major overhaul to some of the content types. (See my comments about rate tables in the conversion post from last September.) It took me quite a while to figure out the best way — or at least a better way — to get it set up. I hadn’t yet implemented it on the live site, because I was waiting on someone else’s schedule.

Today, the meeting chime came up saying that I was supposed to show the new setup to that someone.

Oh.

Crap.

Digression: some of you are aware of the ampersand disaster of 1996. (If not, see this post from 2001.) The sense of panic, sinking OMGWTFBBQ, punch-to-the-gut that I felt when I realized was almost exactly the same as when Sandra brought me that label addressed to “S&ra”.

I postponed the meeting and immediately (ok, after taking a little break for toast) set to work. At first, I thought the best call would be to find all the references in the database backup to the node type, nodes, and views and just copy in the SQL. Yes, making a backup is an established part of my reset routine!

But ugh. It wasn’t long at all before I determined that it was just too crazy-messy to even consider, which left me feeling pretty low. (And stupid, good grief the burning stupid.)

Then I realized I’d made custom theme files for the node types in question! That gave me the names of the content fields and some information about the node type settings and how I had used taxonomy. Then I discovered that my habit of letting Firefox remember things I type into fields had left a memory of the names I used, not just for the content fields, but for the multigroups they were bundled into. I did use the SQL backup to figure out what taxonomy vocabulary I’d used and what the terms were, plus the allowed values for a couple of fields. Dreamweaver is actually not too bad for searching ginormous SQL files.

Once I had the content types set, figuring out the Views I needed was fairly obvious. (To me, anyway.) I think I even improved them over my previous attempt. All that remained was copying in a bit of CSS from the backup version of the theme, and in less than 4 hours I had it all back together!

So yay for Drupal. (It’s been a week of “Drupal hates me” vs “Yay for Drupal” — at the moment I think “yay” is winning out.)

Posted on

Old School knows pizza pie

It’s the perfect Olympia place: delicious food in a funky/surly atmosphere. I can’t imagine any Olympians who have NOT been there, so for the out-of-towners:

A brick storefront between a vintage store & a beat-up parking lot; on the parking lot side, a mural of superheros (mostly). Inside, the walls are covered with posters & other random flat things from the late 70s and 80s, many with specific northwest significance; but it doesn’t have that “crazy crap on the walls” feel of a TGIFriday’s, because it’s genuinely shabby & time-worn, as are the vinyl booths & stools, the vintage video games, etc. Curiously, there’s an enormous aquarium in the front window. The queuing space is cramped and awkward, and sometimes splits off towards both of the two doors. Staff tends towards the usual Oly-style punks, so some tattoos, some oddball hair, a little short/surly but not excessively so.

The pizza itself is mostly of the thin enormous slice variety. (They added a “Sicilian style” pizza a while ago, but I don’t ever get it.) Great crust, a bit of a crunch but not too crispy. The basic varieties are rock solid, but I have a fondness for some of the oddball versions, particularly anything without sauce: the Greek (iirc), which includes spinach & feta — we usually add sausage if getting a whole pie, and the Al Green, just cheeses and broccoli. No, seriously, the broccoli is really good. Eating there, a single slice is enough to fill me up most of the time. When we get a pizza to go, I have to be careful not to scarf down WAY too much.

I just wish they delivered. (I did once bring home a pizza on the Xtracycle. In the rain. It was AWESOME.)

Posted on

Rex Libris Volume One: I, Librarian (Rex Libris)

Rex Libris Volume One: I, Librarian (Rex Libris)

author: James Turner
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2010/03/01
date added: 2010/03/10
shelves: graphic-novel, fiction, fantasy, read-again
review:
I can’t give this any stars one way or the other — it looked fascinating, but the font was too freaking small to read. Will need to see if I can find a larger copy.

Posted on

Rex Libris Volume One: I, Librarian (Rex Libris)

Rex Libris Volume One: I, Librarian (Rex Libris)

author: James Turner
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.48
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at: 2010/03/01
date added: 2010/03/10
shelves: fantasy, fiction, graphic-novel, read-again
review:
I can’t give this any stars one way or the other — it looked fascinating, but the font was too freaking small to read. Will need to see if I can find a larger copy.

Posted on

The Imperial Cruise: A True Story of Empire and War

The Imperial Cruise: A True Story of Empire and War

author: James Bradley
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.47
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/03/03
date added: 2010/03/10
shelves: history, non-fiction, politics
review:
Excellent book — uses the far east trip of (at the time Secretary of War) Taft and Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice as a structure to talk about American involvements in Asia in the late 19th & early 20th century. It’s not pretty. Amazing use of primary sources to show the specific elements of racism and imperialism at work.

The author got interested in the subject after writing a book about his father’s experiences in WWII, and so a large portion is devoted to the Americans’ encouragement (development?) of imperial ambitions in Japan, and when push came to shove and the Japanese fought the Russians, how the Americans were quick to go back on whatever they’d said to the Japanese. He also makes the explicit connection — as the Japanese did — between the Monroe Doctrine in the Americas and the Japanese’s view of their dominance in Asia.

A similarly large section covers the Americans’ colonization of the Philippines (and Hawaii as well) — the same combination of confidence & naiveté that you see again in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. You’d think we could learn from the disasters of the past, but apparently not.

Highly recommended.

Posted on

The Imperial Cruise: A True Story of Empire and War

The Imperial Cruise: A True Story of Empire and War

author: James Bradley
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2010/03/03
date added: 2010/03/10
shelves: history, non-fiction, politics
review:
Excellent book — uses the far east trip of (at the time Secretary of War) Taft and Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice as a structure to talk about American involvements in Asia in the late 19th & early 20th century. It’s not pretty. Amazing use of primary sources to show the specific elements of racism and imperialism at work.

The author got interested in the subject after writing a book about his father’s experiences in WWII, and so a large portion is devoted to the Americans’ encouragement (development?) of imperial ambitions in Japan, and when push came to shove and the Japanese fought the Russians, how the Americans were quick to go back on whatever they’d said to the Japanese. He also makes the explicit connection — as the Japanese did — between the Monroe Doctrine in the Americas and the Japanese’s view of their dominance in Asia.

A similarly large section covers the Americans’ colonization of the Philippines (and Hawaii as well) — the same combination of confidence & naiveté that you see again in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. You’d think we could learn from the disasters of the past, but apparently not.

Highly recommended.

Posted on

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

author: David A. Kessler
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/03/10
date added: 2010/03/10
shelves: health, non-fiction, politics, business, psychology, science, self-help
review:
Not to be totally corny, but if you only read one book this year, this would be a damn good choice. Former head of the FDA, a guy who’s also had his own struggles with food and weight, examines the psychology of eating in our current food landscape.

"Conditioned hypereating" is how he describes it, encompassing both overweight and not: the obsession with food, the difficulties in resisting hyperpalatable modern foods.

The science stuff is fascinating, the section on food company research is terrifying, and there’s some excellent concrete advice in the last section. I really needed to read this after putting back on some (not a lot) of the weight I lost a couple of years ago.

Posted on

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite

author: David A. Kessler
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2010/03/10
date added: 2010/03/10
shelves: business, health, non-fiction, politics, psychology, science, self-help
review:
Not to be totally corny, but if you only read one book this year, this would be a damn good choice. Former head of the FDA, a guy who’s also had his own struggles with food and weight, examines the psychology of eating in our current food landscape.

"Conditioned hypereating" is how he describes it, encompassing both overweight and not: the obsession with food, the difficulties in resisting hyperpalatable modern foods.

The science stuff is fascinating, the section on food company research is terrifying, and there’s some excellent concrete advice in the last section. I really needed to read this after putting back on some (not a lot) of the weight I lost a couple of years ago.

Posted on

An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President

An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President

author: Randall Robinson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2010/03/09
date added: 2010/03/10
shelves: autobiography, biography, history, non-fiction, politics
review:
This was not the book I was hoping for — I think I was looking for more of an overview of Haitian history, and this was almost exclusively about the 2006 coup against Aristide. And unfortunately, I couldn’t even get into that aspect. The narrative style is roundabout and discursive, cutting back and forth over time, which made it hard to get a good sense of what was happening when.

Additionally, there’s only so much "Americans are racist thugs" that I can handle being lectured about. Not that he was wrong in the particulars, of course, but the repetitiveness started to get on my nerves.

Between the lecturing and the confusing narrative, I couldn’t finish it. There are a few bits and pieces that were intriguing, but mostly that makes me want to seek out another book on Haitian history.

Posted on

An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President

An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President

author: Randall Robinson
name: Elaine
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2007
rating: 2
read at: 2010/03/09
date added: 2010/03/10
shelves: autobiography, biography, history, non-fiction, politics
review:
This was not the book I was hoping for — I think I was looking for more of an overview of Haitian history, and this was almost exclusively about the 2006 coup against Aristide. And unfortunately, I couldn’t even get into that aspect. The narrative style is roundabout and discursive, cutting back and forth over time, which made it hard to get a good sense of what was happening when.

Additionally, there’s only so much "Americans are racist thugs" that I can handle being lectured about. Not that he was wrong in the particulars, of course, but the repetitiveness started to get on my nerves.

Between the lecturing and the confusing narrative, I couldn’t finish it. There are a few bits and pieces that were intriguing, but mostly that makes me want to seek out another book on Haitian history.