(A continuation of this post)

So I decided to put in another shot at getting WordPress 2.3 working on my hosting, and here are some results.

The testbed is a test subdomain: test.rawiriblundell.com, I have a .htaccess file that reads like so:

php_value memory_limit 32M
php_value post_max_size 16M
php_flag display_errors on
php_flag suhosin.cookie.encrypt Off
php_value suhosin.request.max_vars 2048
php_value suhosin.post.max_vars 2048

What I am trying to achieve here is to get the suhosin patch to ease up on the reigns a bit, and to give php some more memory to play with. I have also enabled php errors so that any blatant problems will stick out like a sore thumb instead of failing gracefully in the background.

This was tested with both 644 (default) and 755 permissions with the same sorry results.

Initially the php errors came in handy, pointing out that a few files were missing. A fresh download of WordPress 2.3.1 later, this problem was solved and we were back to Internal Server Errors. A look at the error logs had the same old chestnut:

ALERT - canary mismatch on efree() - heap overflow detected (attacker '203.110.28.91', file '/hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/taxonomy.php', line 11)
[Wed Dec 26 18:32:27 2007] [error] [client 203.110.28.91] Premature end of script headers: /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/index.php

Looking at taxonomy.php and commenting out line 11 like so:

< ?php//
// Taxonomy Registration
//

/**
* @global array $wp_taxonomies Fill me out please
*/
$wp_taxonomies = array();
// $wp_taxonomies['category'] = (object) array('name' => 'category', 'object_type' => 'post', 'hierarchical' => true, 'update_count_callback' => '_update_post_term_count');
$wp_taxonomies['post_tag'] = (object) array('name' => 'post_tag', 'object_type' => 'post', 'hierarchical' => false, 'update_count_callback' => '_update_post_term_count');
$wp_taxonomies['link_category'] = (object) array('name' => 'link_category', 'object_type' => 'link', 'hierarchical' => false);Will allow the WordPress install to complete, like so:Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 190
Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #1 is not an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 192
Warning: array_keys() [function.array-keys]: The first argument should be an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 235
Warning: array_reduce() [function.array-reduce]: The first argument should be an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 235
Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 190
Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #1 is not an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 192
Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 190
Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #1 is not an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 192
Warning: array_keys() [function.array-keys]: The first argument should be an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 235
Warning: array_reduce() [function.array-reduce]: The first argument should be an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 235
Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #2 is not an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 190
Warning: array_merge() [function.array-merge]: Argument #1 is not an array in /hsphere/local/home/whetu/test.rawiriblundell.com/wp-includes/capabilities.php on line 192
Success!

Concord Dawn – Broken Eyes

I’m angry again. Yesterday I attended the funeral service for Alessandra Joy, the baby girl of my friends Brick and Pop, who had passed away after 13 days of fighting some complications. It was a beautiful service, and I’ll never be able to listen to Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s Over the Rainbow without thinking of that service.

Now, there are two reasons for my ire this time.

1) It’s unfair.

I am sick of seeing superficial hoe-bag women strutting about with prams, ignoring their children, latte in one hand and cellphone furiously txt’ing away in the other while wearing those super-goggle fake D&G sunglasses which have one advantage: It helps you to pick the morons out from the crowd. These ignored children, I sadly have to say, are increasingly often too old to be in a pram as well. I am not a parent, but I know that once a child can toddle, you get them toddling. Once a child can walk, you get them walking. Their bodies and personalities need to develop and they need to engage with the world around them ASAP to do so properly. If they don’t, they’re bound to grow up lazy and expecting everything to be on a silver platter. Regardless, I still feel sorry for these kids, as they are little more than fashion items used by wannabe idiots to prove they can breed.

Pop and Brick, on the other hand, have no such materialistic drive and genuinely deserve to be parents.

2) After the funeral we retired to the Upper Hutt Cosmopolitan Club, hoo-hoo, and we were beginning to warm up into some drunken debauchery with a couple of beer maids. My younger brother, Tamati, was getting a little rowdy and poured our drinks a little too fast without angling the glasses – resulting in, you guessed it, too much froth. Instead of leaving them to settle like he was told, he sucked the froth off.

Now, for those of you who don’t know what happens when you drink beer froth, it enters your stomach and bubbles and expands, leaving you feeling bloated and gassy. It’s also not a pleasant liquid to drink so you’ll feel sick too. Usually you can burp the gas away and you’re fine, sometimes though when you burp some bile and other stomach matter can follow through, probably due to a pressure change that I’m very sure would interest a physicist or biological scientist.

This is what happened to Tamati, even though we’d pointed out to him the close proximity of the Gentlemen’s room. And who was in the firing line of this otherwise impressive powerchuck? You guessed it.

Getting kicked out of the Upper Hutt Cosmopolitan Club at 5.30pm would usually be considered either a badge of honour or a badge of being an extreme loser. If it was any other day I wouldn’t care, because the Upper Hutt Cossie can go and get fucked, especially the bouncer who kicked me out for being thrown up on (after, of course, accusing me of being the vomitter.) However, this was a day where I was there to support my friends who had lost their baby girl. It was completely the wrong place and time to be biffing, and subsequently the rest of my night was ruined. By the time I had caught up with Brick and Pop in the early hours of this morning, I had polished off half a bottle of Jack Daniels but was still sobering up, I simply didn’t have it in me to drink the amount of alcohol required to catch up, so I jumped in a taxi and went home.

*sigh* Yet another reason to move to France.

Stabbing Westward – The Thing I Hate

Last night we went out to play touch, unfortunately our team was down by several people and where we need 7 people to play, only 4 showed up. One of them was Rob, who then parked his car across the street from my place to be picked up in the morning – allowing him to enjoy some after game drinks.

So we had after game drinks and proceeded down to the pub, Rob was picked up by his partner Sarah and everything was looking good. I made my way home and upon arriving I saw that something didn’t look right with Rob’s car. In fact, something was wrong, very wrong.

Some assclown had biffed a rock through the passenger door window. I checked Rob’s car for his effects, txt’d him to let him know and then sent him a picture. Rob had a stack of CD’s worth more than the car, and a bunch of cricket gear worth considerably more than the car, yet they remained untouched. The fact that the window was smashed for a cowardly laugh instead of for a purpose is what really grinds my gears the most about this.

I was spitting tacks. To the point where while I was ankle deep in glass shards trying to secure Rob’s stuff, and some g-unit homeboy swaggered up and asked me for some cigarettes, I was right on the verge of beating the crap out of him. I haven’t been that furious in some time.

Kora – The Delivery Man

Tamati’s girlfriend relayed a tale of woe to me last night about how she stood up for herself against an abusive and arrogant customer, and now has to write a letter of apology. As she recanted her story, I got increasingly wild at my core while maintaining my composure. I felt a burning desire to call up her company’s HQ today and give them a piece of my mind, but I knew it would be to no avail and if anything simply perpetuating the cycle. It has already been written elsewhere that “The customer is always right” is perhaps one of the most destructive mentalities to enter society.

So what needs to happen?

First, people need to learn to pull their heads out and see the bigger picture: Because their latte isn’t frothed to their satisfaction isn’t more important than the millions of starving. Why have we become so petty and frivolous? Chill the fuck out, see that your issue is insignificant on the grand scheme and roll with it. It’s not that hard to let minor things slide, and you’ll be a lot healthier and happier for it. Getting pissed because some fast food lacky at a mcjob was a human and made a mistake with your order is not appropriate, laugh it off and tell them “no worries”. Getting pissed because the used car salesman fucked you out of $1k is appropriate. Draw your own line but keep it realistic.

Second, we need to severely punish anyone who utters the phrase “The customer is always right”, because we need to change that attitude right now. This is because by the very nature of being human – the customer will often be wrong. I’d like to see “The customer is always right” replaced with “The customer is our friend”. What does this mean exactly?

• The customer can expect a level of friendliness, courtesy and service quality
• If the customer needs help, as they often do, they will be told straight up and with all honesty what the best course for them is
• If the customer is being an ass, the customer service rep, as a friend would, can tell the customer that they’re being an ass. Threats to go to another business will fall on deaf ears because they’ll spend some time going around town being told that they’re being an ass, eventually they’ll have to pull their head in.

All customer service should revolve around the following three tenents:

1. Be honest. If you don’t know the answer to the customer’s question: say so
2. Be accountable. Because you don’t know the answer to the customer’s question doesn’t mean you should fob them off. “I will go an find out for you from someone who does know and I’ll be back in 5 minutes”
3. Clients are customers who come back. Treat customers like friends so that they become clients

Thirdly, we need to educate the upcoming generations that we are all humans and have the right to be treated with a basic level of respect. A person at the end of a helldesk call is a human being simply making a wage to make ends meet, a clerk behind a counter is the same, all sorts of people in all sorts of jobs with the same struggles, and for people to go ape at them over the most insignificant things is a disgusting reflection on what we have become: Self-centred, self-absored, self-obsessed, shallow and judgemental materialistic consumer slaves who won’t give a fellow human the time of day.

This morning I was in the shower looking at my beard, which had to go as I am escorting a lovely young lady to my work’s Christmas function tonight. The follicles weren’t really long enough for me to use the DE, as my face and technique is still acclimatising to that, so I figured that I’d just use my Mach-3 and my old Imperial Leather goop. I threw on a brand new razor cartridge and went at it like I used to.

What.the.hell have I been doing to my face all these years?

The Mach-3 basically shredded my neck like Slash having a fit, and I needed to apply both my stypic pencil to the cuts to seal them off, followed by half an hour of bepanthen to soothe it and prevent it from sepsis and infection (hey, you never know .) Then I had to rinse very gently before putting on an aftershave balm and a moisturiser. I have never had so many chemicals mixing on my face before. Therefore, I declare that the Mach-3 and its subsequent cohorts are the cause of metrosexuality. My Mach-3 is now relegated to, oh I dunno, shaving my toes or something. It honestly felt like I would have been better off shaving with a potato peeler.

It’s not just that the skin on my face is adjusting to DE based wetshaving, it’s mostly because I am now much more aware of shaving so I noticed the damage I was doing this time. Fortunately my face has cleared up so far, let’s hope it stays that way…

When it comes to Christmas time, I am usually one of the first to start loathing people who blindly giggle with glee “oh yay, Christmas is coming!” while insisting that it’s ok to play Christmas carols in the workplace on repeat. Trust me, after even half an hour of Christmas carols, I feel the urge to jingle STAB, jingle STAB, jingle STAB your face. Yes, I’m dreaming of a quiet Christmas, and God himself cannot save you from my wrath should you put on Snoopy’s Christmas. Christmas is one of the few reasons for me to seek anger management, seriously.

I used to love Christmas when I was a kid. At the end of the year at school our entire class would clear out our desks, clean our desks and then stack them in the middle of the classroom. It gave you a sense of achievement, a sense of moving forward, it got you used to the idea of ‘change and progress is good’ and it was an indicator of 6 weeks of holidays! Going to the beach with friends and family, having bbq’s, and Christmas day where you’d get a supersoaker or to play on your uncle’s brand spanking new Sega Master System before having a swim along with an afternoon of Christmas lunch and L&P

Christmas back then started on December 1st. Mum or Dad would boost you into the rafters and you’d pass down the boxes that contained the Christmas decorations and the tree, and you’d help them put the tree up and decorate it. Maybe a week after Christmas you’d help bring it all down and then disappear, leaving Mum to vacuum up the mess of stray tinsel strands.

These days Christmas starts sort of mid-October here in NZ, perhaps earlier elsewhere. There is also rumblings among some less disciplined people of a mid-year Christmas, sometime in July. I mean seriously, when will it stop?

If Jesus is indeed real and watching, I bet he’d be in a state of despair. It’s bad enough that a large majority of supposed Christians don’t understand nor follow the underlying and most basic concepts of Christianity (a massive other rant altogether) but to see Christmas treated as it presently is just boggles the mind. Christmas is different things to different people, to some Jesus is the reason for the season, but either way being consumer slaves is not its intention.

Should we slave all year to buy the latest fad gadgets (fadgets?) and toys for our family? Did Jesus die for that? For us to be slaves to society and our bank accounts? In the bible Jesus cared for the sick and the poor, if Jesus truely is the reason for the season, then should we not be doing that while also enjoying the break from work and the company of loved ones without needing to bend over for the corporates and stress ourselves to the max by trying to attain some impossible commercial definition of a ‘perfect’ christmas?

You might like to consider browsing the following links, have a very Jesus Christmas.
http://freerice.com/index.php
http://www.oxfamunwrapped.org.nz/oxfam_unwrapped/shopping.asp
http://www.giftforlife.co.nz/
http://www.childfund.org.nz/catalogue/index.html