erratic

Ceaseless curiosity and always taking 3 lefts to go right. Some things gleamed recently:

• USE ‘apachectl’ NOT ‘httpd’ to stop apache1.3 and release the port. THEN ’ sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl -f /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf -k start ’ to get apache2 running. Specifying the full paths is how you tell apache2 it’s their turn to bat.
• apache2’s http.conf default took two days of my life away. Comment out the unique ID module line and blues skies will you see.
• to use new config use the command above, but replace ‘start’ with ‘graceful’
• alias and directory settings are a bitch.

Just a few of the many things I’ve learned. This knowledge is basic, but I didn’t have it before. I was stuck. With enough ritalin and diet coke I was able to keep banging my head on the terminal until a curiously dull exclamation mark would appear above my head and I would make a simple and obvious change in my approach that is assumed knowledge everyone got two minutes after they were taught where the power button was on their machine but I never learned because I don’t play well with others or authority figures.

One interesting twist is that the big bad scary complex command line has been demystified. I kinda got it now. Now when something doesn’t work I have a 50% chance of knowing what question to ask and where to look to find out what I’m not doing correctly. Prior to this point in time I would’ve had a snowballs chance in hell of fixing something on the command line if I broke it. This is what an optimistic person would call progress.

I started as a graphic designer (layout monkey) and it’s been a long road of learning by necessity how to make stuff with html, css, php, mysql, javascript, and now ruby/rails. Still learning. Always have been. Always will be. It’s a bitch.