Kyle M. Perkins

I know this is a little late for yesterday, but I wanted to make sure I got it in. Yesterday, it seemed like nothing went right, except for one thing - I'll get into that later.

As for thing not going right, a client wants us to get an e-commerce system for their site. In my mind, I'm thinking "Ok, no problem." So I find out that I have to install cURL on the main server. I tried to add cURL via yum, but yum couldn't find any appropriate packages to install cURL. So, I tried to update yum, but yum was missing an important file called libcap.so.1, which was needed for proftp. So I go out searching for libcap.so.1, which only exists in far out-of-reach corners of the Internet. Afterwards, I'm sent on a wild goose chase to track down dependencies for out of date files, which are out of date themselves, so I had to find up to date dependencies which needed more dependencies......can you say "endless loop"? So I try to update some of the main core files in the RHEL system, but it turns out that RHEL 3AS, which is on the server, is no longer supported anywhere.

I contacted the main server hosting service asking if the OS could be upgraded. It turns out that the OS cannot be upgraded, but PHP and MySQL could be (they failed to mention a $75/hour fee, which I did not commit to). I could upgrade the VPS and get a new OS, which would handle the PHP and MySQL upgrade without the upgrading fee. However, the new VPS upgrade would only allow 10 domains to be hosted instead of "Unlimited" which I was promised when I first signed up for a VPS system with this company back in 2007. In addition, we can move the files of the client websites, but can't move anything else (like httpd.conf, email forwardings, specific server configuration files, etc).

Shortly after I unsucessfully tried to install cURL on the main server, I thought "Ok, why not try to install it on a local server" (little background: local server "Blueice" has Centos 5, not RHEL 3AS). I ssh'ed into it. ran a yum installiation for cURL, and 10 seconds later, I had cURL on Blueice. After I saw this, tested it, and confirmed it, I was furious. Why couldn't the main server be this easy?!?!

So basically, I spend 5-6 hours trying to get cURL installed only to find out that the system itself is outdated and I have to upgrade the whole system. I decided to tell clients "We've outgrown our server capacity and have to upgrade." In a sense, we have outgrown our current space and need to upgrade, but I was furious for the first few hours. I also think this could be the "kick in the butt" we needed to take more risks in the business. With the new VPS system we're looking at, we'll have more space, more bandwidth, up to 100 domains (which shouldn't be a problem; once we reach 100, we should be able to get another VPS or self-hosting), and up-to-date software. Not really my day.

After I gave up on the server upgrade for the time being, I tried to work on the Accelerator to make AJAX-ified fields appear. It works with 1 box template (a hidden box with pre-determined fields), and I thought I could merge a "field adder" (without removing the existing text), with the drag-n-drop system, similiar to Netflix's Queue manager. However, once I configured the system to have custom boxes (like "Title", "Instructions", "Text"...basic stuff), the system would run through it once and then wouldn't add any more on demand. It seemed like the event listener in the AJAX file wasn't working and wouldn't add the proper event listeners with the proper binding properties. In my mind, it works perfectly: Click "Add Title", type in. Click "Add Instructions", type in. Click "Add Text Box", type in. Move and re-arrange the text boxes for better organization. Submit structure and build database based on the input. And................it doesn't work. Great....

On the up-side, I stopped by Wendy's for lunch, and saw that they had the 5-piece Spicy Nuggets on the Everyday 99 cent menu! YAY! I was so afraid that they would take the 5-piece Spicy Nuggets away again.

After we got home (after Keat went to class), we watched Psych on Netflix and then went to bed.