Coding Lady Marmalade

theAlphaJohn: (portal) shit and died today
Will: nice
theAlphaJohn: we cant get it up
theAlphaJohn: im working on it right now
the consultant blamed josh's skins for portal
Will: awesome
Will: how can a skin fuck with the system?
theAlphaJohn: the login page wont render
Will: i thought josh just replaced the image files or whatever
theAlphaJohn: basically
some css and xslt
it's mocha chocola-yay-yay-taht

Kid Nation 2: Kids Say the Darndest Things...In Space!

I finally got a chance to watch Kid Nation, and I think CBS might be on to something. While I'm not a huge fan of it's "Western Ghost Town" motif, I think they may have pushed the envelope enough here to look forward to KN2. I discussed this today with Will:

theAlphaJohn: Link
Will: hahaha
Will: awesome
theAlphaJohn: i blame small children
Will: always blame children
theAlphaJohn: indeed. they smell, they drool
theAlphaJohn: i watched kid nation last night. i would like KN2 to be set on a base on the moon
theAlphaJohn: and if the kids get homesick, we space them
Will: space them
Will: hahaha
Will: that's awesome

All I have to say is this: small child suffocating in the vacuum of space == ratings gold.



...

Oh snap...you thought that was mean?? Deal With It!

Will is responsible for this gross-osity

Fuck a whole bunch of Calculus

Wil: what are you majoring in?
theAlphaJohn: MIS - school of management
Will: right on
theAlphaJohn: i was a comp sci major the first decade i went to school, then i realized that the calculus parts of brain don't work
theAlphaJohn: like those cardboard tvs you see at furniture stores -- just for show / to take up space
Will: yeah
theAlphaJohn: so i switched over to mis when i came here
Will: i suck with complex numbers
Will: and formulas
theAlphaJohn: it's the analytical geometry shit that always gets me
Will: i rocked logic classes though
Will: and at mason, that's the same as math
Will: so it worked out
theAlphaJohn: basic derrivatives and integrals i get -- if you can turn a shirt inside out you can plug in numbers and turn a crank
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: but when you get into "what is the area of an inside-out rhombus that's high on meth" my brain leaks out my ears
Will: understandable
Will: i want a rum based drink right now
theAlphaJohn: haha rum based
Will: and a hammock
theAlphaJohn: i look at calculus as a recruiting tool for the NSA, and not something one can even use in real live
Will: yeah
theAlphaJohn: i had a friend who worked at NSA, his coworker could think and operate comfortable in five dimensions
theAlphaJohn: apparently they had to write software to keep up with him
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: i didn't even understand what that meant, and he tried to explain it to me and it still didnt make sense
theAlphaJohn: apparently in five dimensions, if you move like this (moves hand) then the opposite reaction is to move like this (moves hand)
Will: i have no idea what you are saying
theAlphaJohn: you may be thinking that this is a visual, but really it makes as much sense written out
theAlphaJohn: b/c you're like "you just moved your hand two different ways"
Will: exactly
theAlphaJohn: and that's why their parties are so fucking lame
Will: hahaha

Robot Insurance

Thanks to Will, though now I wish I had an attack robot... :/

Sun One + ColdFusion: GET /buttfucker/CFIDE/administrator/ HTTP/1.1" 302 0

Apologies to my non-nerd readers who don't get this, and can only see the anger rising off the screen.

I've been sucked back in this Content Management project, even though I did my part and ran the entire proof-of-concept to pick the software. The product we chose runs on Adobe ColdFusion. For the proof-of-concept, we used the webserver built into ColdFusion since we only had like 5 users hitting the thing. For a production system, however, you need to deploy ColdFusion inside of another webserver.

Barry and I have been playing circus seal to try and make that happen, and today we finally got Sun One to a point where we could install and deploy ColdFusion...but it doesn't work. We keep getting this error:

Error [service-j2ee-2] - The Graphing service is not available.This exception is usually caused by service startup failure. Please check your server configuration.

Now, we know what the problem is. There's a non-headless deployment and a headless deployment, and a bunch of bullshit related to X11 fonts blah blah blah...nobody fucking cares. Their knowledge base had nothing useful to fix this. We just paid a mint for an Enterprise CF license, but I can't get any fucking support from Adobe without selling my right nut because we got it under our volume license agreement. They're supposed to provide free install support, but their website makes submitting the question almost impossible. So I turned to the message boards on their website to find out what the web rats had to say.
There are three Java arguments in dispute:

• -Xbootclasspath/a:cf_root/WEB-INF/cfusion/lib/webchartsJava2D.jar
• -Djava.awt.headless=true
• -Djava.awt.graphicsenv=com.gp.java2d.ExHeadlessGraphicsEnvironment

Now, the webchartsJava2D.jar contains both the ExGraphicsEnvironment and ExHeadlessGraphicsEnvironment class files. So why are we getting an error that ExHeadlessGraphicsEnvironment can't be find?

Clearly, if I just delete and redeploy the EAR it will be fixed...

Will: so you hate the coldfusion?
theAlphaJohn: ><
theAlphaJohn: we're having a lot of trouble getting coldfusion to run inside another webserver
Will: and [redacted] is going to try and get a special server contract with ITU
theAlphaJohn: huh/what?
Will: yeah
Will: he is so angry because you guys don't call him back within five minutes of the requests that you cannot perform
Will: so he wants a contract
theAlphaJohn: lol
theAlphaJohn: what 3 person company did he work at before this?
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: we have 150 people in IT
theAlphaJohn: which would make us slow
theAlphaJohn: and then add the fact that we're a university
theAlphaJohn: which makes us slower
theAlphaJohn: and that we're a state agency
theAlphaJohn: which makes us useless
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: haha
Will: and [redacted] is driving me up a wall
Will: jesus h
Will: i am starting to loathe inefficient web 2.0
theAlphaJohn: i need some liquor 2.0
theAlphaJohn: i'm redeploying coldfusion to /buttfucker on zetes1
theAlphaJohn: we'll see if that works

It didn't...but the access logs make me cackle.

Why work when you can talk about genitals?

I've done a lot of work this week, but every non-work conversation this week was about suicide, glory holes, or genitals. So emotionally, I'm about half my age this week.

Will: so josh thinks the name of the flag football team should be the JC Jumpers
theAlphaJohn: !!!
theAlphaJohn: no one will allow that
Will: ya think?
theAlphaJohn: i fucking love it though
theAlphaJohn: i'd rathy be "thompson's glory holes"
Will: haha
theAlphaJohn: we went from softball to flag football?
Will: hahaha
Will: more people are down for football
theAlphaJohn: like i care. i suck equally dude
theAlphaJohn: i'll man up and do whatever
Will: when i played on the softball team a couple years back
Will: i used to smoke and play at the same time
theAlphaJohn: LOL
Will: so
Will: it's not exactly serious
theAlphaJohn: i'll bet you got mad trim for that
Will: shaking it off with a stick
theAlphaJohn: even your tee shirt that said "i have herpes and my religion forbids valtrex"
theAlphaJohn: still needed a bodyguard i'll bet
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: the ladies with smoking fetishes wanted your junk in their trunk
Will: well
Will: they don't call me STD for nothing
theAlphaJohn: VD
theAlphaJohn: it must be latin for "will"
Will: haha
Will: i am making the homepage button for the vaginia monologues
Will: i want it so when you scroll over you get
Will: "rockin'
theAlphaJohn: LOL
Will: "rockin' the va jay j Februrary 12th Harris Theater"
theAlphaJohn: how hot is that?
theAlphaJohn: the vagina monologues: rock out with your cock out
Will: i am scared of the vagina monologues
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: i am too
Will: rock out with your clam out
Will: hahahaha
theAlphaJohn: it scares me how evil i can be around you
Will: actually now that you mention
Will: i do this to lots of people
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: are you like the naughty muse?
Will: i must be
Will: with a heart of gold
theAlphaJohn: aww
theAlphaJohn: you're so adorable, all i can do is pinch your cheeks and wish a horrible death on muppets and children

Tom: Glory-osky! I loved the post about the posting on the glory hole in the men's bathroom.
theAlphaJohn: lol
theAlphaJohn: kirsten cracks me up
Tom: Yeah. She was shocked to hear about such things. I am not sure if was more shocked over that or that I knew what it was ;-)
theAlphaJohn: i know. it's like everyone was keeping a secret from her
theAlphaJohn: i told her that in sex ed, when they separate the boys and the girls, they warn us of such things ;)
Tom: lol. Well I will have to say that interesting things are surely afoot at GMU. People drilling holes in stalls and other events (sadly enough). GMU has all of a sudden become an interesting place to be, kind of.
theAlphaJohn: indeed

theAlphaJohn: why didnt [redacted] slice a lip off her labia and hire that?
Will: wow
Will: hahahaha
Will: i am sure she would of
theAlphaJohn: (1) exactly what she wants, (2) cheap hire, (3) equally useless
Will: if she didn't have a penis
theAlphaJohn: !!!
Will: yep
Will: haha
theAlphaJohn: ...we need to talk son
Will: hahahaha
theAlphaJohn: is it really a penis if it's made of silicone?
Will: word on the street
Will: it's real
Will: real real freaky
theAlphaJohn: something tells me if she stuck it through the thompson hall glory hole, it would go unsucked

::rim shot::

Mason student falls to his death

Yesterday at 3:14pm, after Carlos came by with the news, I im'ed Will to see if he knew anything (since he works on that side of campus):

theAlphaJohn: have you heard about the JC?
Will: yeah
Will: i was actually eating in the bistro when it happend
theAlphaJohn: wtf?
theAlphaJohn: what happened?
Will: dude or lady fell four stories
Will: and died i think
theAlphaJohn: no idea if they jumped or were pushed or it was an accident
Will: no idea
Will: actually the body fell right in front of danny
theAlphaJohn: omg no way
Will: yeah
Will: he went home and refused to talk to the media
theAlphaJohn: holy shit i would too
theAlphaJohn: is the media there?
Will: they were
Will: there have been a lot of calls to this office but so far none deal with me
Will: just press releases
Will: stuff like that
theAlphaJohn: what does the release say? something bad happened and it's being investigated?
Will: i would bet so
Will: but the fucked up thing is josh and i were eating in the bistro when the kid fell and when the cops were there
Will: and we had no idea what happened
Will: they cleaned it up hella quick

I was hoping the news would have more information, but not-so-much right now:

Student Falls to His Death at GMU
Jan 10th - 6:10am

FAIRFAX, Va. - George Mason University Police are investigating how a 27-year-old student fell three stories to his death at the university's student center.

The man was with a group of students when he fell from an open-air staircase to the tile floor below shortly after noon Tuesday, investigators say. He died at a hospital.

It is unclear whether the man was pushed or jumped.

Although school is not yet in session, the building was crowded with people preparing for the start of classes.

People saw the body falling and saw him land, but no one saw him go over the side, school spokesman Dan Walsh says.

Investigators are talking with the man's wife and the people who were with him.

iTunes University

LOL...I'm going to get fired:

theAlphaJohn: hey if you're wondering what to get me for my birthday
theAlphaJohn: gunston outtake pictures
Will: haha
theAlphaJohn: or even better: gunston jumping out of my cake in a thong
Will: now that is awesome
theAlphaJohn: even better is the likely hotness under the costume
Will: yeah
Will: i knew the gunston when i went here
Will: short blonde girl
Will: freaking ultra hot
theAlphaJohn: and the paradoxical possibility of thong on a muppet being worn by a human in a thong
Will: wow
theAlphaJohn: thong-on-thong paradoxes make my head hurt
theAlphaJohn: but good hurt, like icecream headache
Will: you should contact the center for quantum studies and tell them about it

Iota Kappa Awesome's Service Work

theAlphaJohn: a couple guys in my english class also want to start a frat
theAlphaJohn: did i tell you about this?
Will: no but it sounds awesome
Will: how many recruits do we have?
theAlphaJohn: two or three
theAlphaJohn: our "service" work won't be picking up trash or whatever, our members are going to try and "fix" all the obnoxious girls with low self esteem who don't date because they repel men
theAlphaJohn: I think I mentioned this girl in my english class, ShaRonda (Capital R) whose white and fat and thinks she's all that
Will: yeah
Will: she's not allowed in at all
theAlphaJohn: oh no
theAlphaJohn: but one of our members is going to date her long enough to fix her
Will: hahahaha
theAlphaJohn: it's a catch and release program to better society
theAlphaJohn: a pity throw and a few good date conversations
Will: you mean a pledge will
theAlphaJohn: well but somebody needs to show the pledges how it's done
theAlphaJohn: i'm certainly not, but someone will have to
Will: exactly
Will: not me either
theAlphaJohn: like "hey, mouthy, do you know how hot you look when you keep your opinion to yourself??"
theAlphaJohn: really she asks?
theAlphaJohn: then you give her the best 7 minutes of your life
Will: hahahaha
Will: as long as i don't have to do it
theAlphaJohn: in the end, the goal is to boost her self esteem but to kind of clean up their demeanor
Will: nice
theAlphaJohn: so it's not like pigging or meant to be degrading
Will: right
theAlphaJohn: but our service work is all psychological
Will: hahaha

Iota Kappa Awesome

Will likes to use the word awesome, and once told me he invented his own frat in college called "awesome". I decided that wasn't Greek enough and renamed it Iota Kappa Awesome.

Will IMed me to ask where Amy and Mary were:

Will: is amy and mary up at that convention this week?
theAlphaJohn: yeah
theAlphaJohn: back thursday i think
Will: nice
theAlphaJohn: lucky them
Will: yeah
Will: i was going to ask if i could go
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: i'm hoping this report will be done by the time they get back
theAlphaJohn: we should go to another conference will
Will: the awesome conference ?
Will: because i am already signed up for that one
theAlphaJohn: i think Electronic Awesome(TM) is in Amsterdam next weekend
Will: yes!!!
theAlphaJohn: let's go
theAlphaJohn: bring a spare liver
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: and the corporate card
Will: for real
theAlphaJohn: god i need a vacation from all this

Without giving too much away, we have a new hire in the food chain who (so far) has been very impressive:

theAlphaJohn: have you met [new hire]?
Will: i don't believe so
theAlphaJohn: i'm totally in love
Will: hottie?
theAlphaJohn: not because she's hot (she is attractive), but she's like the most professional person who works here
Will: oh nice
theAlphaJohn: the hottness is just a bonus
Will: that is unusual
theAlphaJohn: she was like "we need to tell each other when we're working on major projects so we don't duplicate effort"
theAlphaJohn: she used like 4 buzzwords in an hour, all correctly
theAlphaJohn: she's visionary and organized
Will: WOW
Will: i want to work for her
Will: duplicate effort
theAlphaJohn: and she looks good in a sleeveless tank
Will: and she was at that meeting?
theAlphaJohn: yes
Will: nice
theAlphaJohn: she's [redacted]'s peer
Will: k
theAlphaJohn: only she smells like peaches
Will: someone's got a crush ;)
theAlphaJohn: smart women get me every time dude
Will: yeah
theAlphaJohn: like not nerdy
theAlphaJohn: we had an oracle consultant who mentored me at Science when I was like 20
theAlphaJohn: she had her own business during the 90s and sold at the top of the dot.com lunacy and then just kept doing things on her own
theAlphaJohn: she was prob in her late 30s and just a knockout
Will: nice
theAlphaJohn: and she'd get rambling about transportable tablespaces and i just drifted off ... ...
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: usually you expect "hot" to disguise "dumb"
theAlphaJohn: when hot disguises brilliant, that's when i lose my cool
Will: nah
Will: smart is hot
Will: when the physical hotness matches smart hotness
Will: it's like
Will: what up? you come here often?
theAlphaJohn: LOL
theAlphaJohn: umm....sup....you uh...need a drink?
theAlphaJohn: when Will gets out his Iota Kappa Awesome frat tee
Will: hahaha
Will: what lady does not dig the Iota Kappa Awesome ?
theAlphaJohn: lesbians
Will: hahaha
theAlphaJohn: they are threatened by the awesomeness of IKA
theAlphaJohn: no keg stands, no usuall frat homo-ness
theAlphaJohn: just like...hours of awesome
Will: true that
Will: but they aren't "ladies"
theAlphaJohn: they're more like young gym teachers
Will: just because you rock a vag, doesn't mean your are a lady
theAlphaJohn: LOL
theAlphaJohn: we should put up fliers for Iota Kappa Awesome and see if anybody wants to pledge it
Will: hahaha
Will: sweet
theAlphaJohn: we'll make a logo and be like "our frat takes men, girlie boys, and lesbians, but no emo dorks"
Will: i am down
Will: no emo kids
theAlphaJohn: then make it like a pyramid scheme
theAlphaJohn: and get rich $$$
Will: hahahahaha

Army ROTC

theAlphaJohn: there is some sort of mating dance going on outside my office
theAlphaJohn: rotc jarhead meets skanky blonde
theAlphaJohn: i'm telling his DI that he's hugged and smooched his honey 18 times
theAlphaJohn: shameful
Will: 50 pushups
Will: now
theAlphaJohn: dude their workout is so sad
theAlphaJohn: remember the first 15 mins of every gym class? situps and pushups and something eise stupid?
theAlphaJohn: that is what rotc does every morning
theAlphaJohn: do you realize that we were 1 more year of gym class away from govt issued weapons?

The (Bill) Joy of Technology

As I previously mentioned, we're doing a proof-of-concept with two Content Management System. The idea behind this is to consolidate all of our websites into a single development environment to standardize navigation, look and feel, etc. There was a project to do this two years ago that imploded (I wasn't involved, but if you ask me the vendor sold us fantasyware) so this time around we decided to play with each system for a few weeks to really understand it before we chose one.



We're winding down our work on the first system, and yesterday we showed our work to a panel of department super users (including the Dean of the College of Science and the Assistant Dean of the College of Liberal Arts) to get their feedback. I couldn't have asked for a better reaction, they were very pleased with the due dilligance we had done (we had an answer for every one of their questions) and they loved what we showed them.



With that out of the way, I started working on the installation of the second system. We start the proof-of-concept on that September 18th. This application does templating using XML/XSLT and is build using Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) that run inside JBOSS. Having followed their install instructions, I was immediately greeted by 2MB of thread dumps (which is about 2 billions lines of "go fuck yourself".

09:48:28,581 ERROR [EntityContainer] Starting failed jboss.j2ee:jndiName=ejb/FolderContainedEntity,service=EJB
org.jboss.deployment.DeploymentException: Error while fixing table name; - nested throwable: (org.jboss.util.NestedSQLException: Could not create connection; - nested throwable: (java.sql.SQLException: Unable to connect to any hosts due to exception: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused); - nested throwable: (org.jboss.resource.JBossResourceException: Could not create connection; - nested throwable: (java.sql.SQLException: Unable to connect to any hosts due to exception: java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused)))
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.cmp.jdbc.SQLUtil.fixTableName(SQLUtil.java:196)
at org.jboss.ejb.plugins.cmp.jdbc.bridge.JDBCEntityBridge.init(JDBCEntityBridge.java:143)

Alright then. I made a few changes (clickity click) and fired it up again, basically the same mess. I dug through the errors a little deeper and found this:

ObjectName: jboss.j2ee:service=EJB,plugin=pool,jndiName=ejb/Page
state: CREATED
I Depend On:
Depends On Me:
ObjectName: jboss.j2ee:service=EJB,plugin=pool,jndiName=ejb/BaseEntity
state: CREATED
I Depend On:
Depends On Me:
ObjectName: jboss.j2ee:service=EJB,plugin=pool,jndiName=ejb/Mail
state: CREATED
I Depend On:
Depends On Me:

::scratches head::

I had a little chat with Will about it:

theAlphaJohn: i already hate [the second CMS system]
Will: uh oh
Will: did they steal your lunch money?
theAlphaJohn: if only
theAlphaJohn: it just shit out like 2MB of error messages (that's like 2 billion lines of text)
Will: yeah
theAlphaJohn: This is what would happen if Java wrote song lyrics:
theAlphaJohn: [sends error]
theAlphaJohn: I DEPEND ON (dot dot dot)
theAlphaJohn: (DOT DOT DOT) depends on me
theAlphaJohn: beep beep *blink* *blink*
Will: haha

This is one of the things I dislike about cutting/bleeding/clotting-edge technology. Make no mistake fuckers, I am a 1337-@ss mofo right up in here, but 2 billion lines of "java.net.io.doucebag exception error: fuckface thread dump unpacking ejb container go fuck yourself......" does not help me find the problem. It's not like I'm stepping through your code in a debugger or working through it in JUnit. And even if I could, why would I then pay you for it if I had to do that?

In the old days (circa 2003), we used to get an exception and the program would abend and leave us a tasty core dump and a stack trace to find our way back to the problem. Most people don't find that helpful, but you can work with it. Volumes of exploding Java methods are not going to lead me back to the missing configuration file the vendor didn't provide me with, now are they?

Video: Shakira - Hips Don't Lie

Will managed to one-up me by embedding this video into CMS this morning. Cracks me up, especially since I hate this song:

Putting CMS to Work

We're playing with the first of two Content Management Systems this week, and once Wil got the base template built I started the important work: