Up to Something

I use Typo, and I have since the early 4.0 days. Each upgrade brings a slew of new messes to the table. I recently discovered that apparently there are only two people behind Typo development, and with it being a Ruby/Rail project that does offer some explanation as to the sucky edges. With newfound compassion, I will explain my work to the other peoples around.

I use PostgreSQL because it's awesome, MySQL sucks, and SQLite is dippy. In retrospect, I wish that my blog had used SQLite, but I didn't, and I have no idea how hard it would be to migrate to SQLite. So, I use PgSQL because it's rad. SQLite fits the bill, but didn't make the final cut.

When upgrading to from 5.0.x to 5.2, here's the rub:

• Backup your database first: pg_dump -U myuser -f pre-migration.db.sql mydb
• Save a copy of your typo directory
• Get the typo tarball, and untar it.
• Install RAILS locally (untar rails, copy all the stuff from vender/rails to your typo directory's vender.)
• Setup your database.yml
• Migrate your database by hand: "rake db:migrate"

Watch your postgresql output:

Missing Index

the db:migrate couldn't remove an index, because it didn't exist. So I killed it.

create index "index_contents_on_blog_id" on contents (id, blog_id);

Kill Sidebars

I grabbed my static content from my old blog, prior to upgrade, so when I had sidebar-related crashes, I just murdered them.

delete from sidebars;

_{note: people complained that 'misspelled Sidebards'. It was a failed joke.}

The Aristocrats

It may seem like a lot for dirty talk, but after that things are mostly complete. Next Week: Index Optimization for Typo.

It's Daylight Savings Time - Again. Time for a new round of FAIL from Microsoft.

Windows Mobile

A clients' Verizon Windows Mobile phone has changed all the appointments for the foreseeable future to an hour later than originally scheduled.

Entourage

Microsoft Entourage 2004, on my older PowerBook G4 is rendering dates, and /hour/ in the future. I caught it when an email I sent was CC'd to my Gmail account, and the account said, "11:16 AM (-57 minutes ago)". Special.

Windows Mobile

Another clients' BRAND NEW Windows Mobile Phone, running Palm, on DST-Day, experienced EPIC FAILURE and had to have the firmware reloaded. (???) If it wasn't THE day when they turned it on, I would not blame DST.... but.... Also, after speaking with them, I am really unclear on whom to blame. I haven't followed the latest Palm stuff, but is this actually Windows problem?

Windows Mobile: ceTwit

vkoser writes about a problem with date math in ceTwit - and, I am just going to blame Microsoft because of their consistent steaming piles on this one.

Zune

So far, I have heard of no new Zune problems, but the leap-second bug deserves a second mention. Well played Redmond. Nice quality control.

Wrap up

Well, that's about it for todays "Microsoft Sucks" rant. It's been a decade already, and they still have bi-annual issues with dates. Remember DST 2007? That was a FUBAR mess. Turned out that Exchange with OWA didn't put proper TZ info on some calendar entires, and and Mac/Entourage users were totally boned. You had to have an Outlook client, on Windows, to properly affect the fix. I know some admins who had to restore after the run. The tests went well, but the production run screwed everyone.

Last DST change I had three clients with messed up appointments. Not all appointments, about 5% of them. A secretary had to audit all of them. We finally back dated a PC, and it did work. We printed out and compared in order to locate the problems. EXCHANGE AND OUTLOOK SUCK!