Category: Workin’ for the Man

Kitten Attack!

OMG Kittinz!

So I’m at work today and I need to prevent a directory of pdf files from being accessed outside of links on a specific page. Now to anyone who knows anything about Apache servers the solution is obvious, throw something together in an .htaccess file.

So I did. I used modRewrite to detect the referrer, and redirect any unauthorised requests. And because I wanted to make sure it was working (modRewrite is, after all, essentially electronic voodoo) I decided to redirect said bad requests to KittenWar. You know, like you do.

All well and good. I confirmed that the redirect was working, ranked some kittens, and then edited the .htaccess file to remove the redirect. Then I tested it again.

I got kittens.

I checked that I’d edited the right file. I had. I re-uploaded it, checking that I was uploading the correct file as I did so. I tested the link.

Kittens.

I deleted the .htaccess file off the server, checked the link to confirm it was broken,  re-uploaded and tested it again.

Kittens.

I telnetted in and examined the .htaccess file on the server. No mention of kittens anywhere. I got the other guys in the office to test the link on their machines. No kittens. I tested it on my machine again.

Kittens.

Realising that it had to be a browser issue I closed Firefox and restarted it. Twice. I checked the link again.

Kittens.

It was at this point that I discovered that ALL attempts to access ANY part of the website were redirecting to KittenWar, which would seriously complicate any attempts to get it finished for the important meeting tomorrow. With no other ideas I uninstalled Firefox, then reinstalled it.

Adorable kittens.

I rebooted, and reinstalled Firefox again.

More adorable kittens, mocking me with their adorable eyes and pink little noses.

Finally in sheer desperation I tracked down and installed an extension that would flush the DNS cache. I had no idea how an .htaccess file could poison my DNS cache with kittens, but I couldn’t think of anything else to try. I installed it, rebooted, ran it, and checked the link.

No kittens!! Finally!!

Then it was time for lunch.

Goddam kittens… ;D

WORD IS NOT A VALID HTML RENDERER!

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

I’ve just spent over two hours trying to get an HTML email to render properly in Outlook.

I have never been this close to sending a death threat to Steve Balmer in my entire life.

I’ma to stupid too think for maself!

Google is ruining everything!

I haven’t been posting much, or answering emails or anything lately because work has been hellish. It should calm down after today though. I hope.

On the subject of work we got a call this morning from a woman who’d placed an order on one of our affiliated florist websites. She was extremely upset as she’d placed the order for delivery on Sunday, but the confirmation email came back to her saying that it would be delivered on Monday (as the florist involved doesn’t deliver on Sundays).

After calming her down some we got the full story. She typed “perth florists that deliver on Sunday” (or something similar) into Google. Our site came up number one, so she put her order through – apparently missing the numerous large notices all over the bloody site saying that we don’t deliver on Sundays. The very notices that got the site ranked so high on Google for “deliver on Sundays”!

Apparently reading or even basic intelligence isn’t required for living any more – you just type your concerns into Google and throw money at the first site returned. Sheeze!!

I Shouldn’t Laugh…

Oh the irony!

A client complains to us that when his site is viewed in Internet Explorer 6 the text on his homepage looks like “it was done by a child”.

The email informing us of this is in bright blue comic sans 😛

(By the way, the text looks awful in every browser because he’s gone wild with the CMS and made it a dozen different sizes and colours with underlines, bolding and italics everywhere. It just looks particularly bad in IE6 because of its problems with automatic line heights…)

Skype Must Die!

Doing some good for the world

Actually, Skype is a pretty cool program, it’s just that bloody browser plugin that turns everything that even looks like a phone number into a puke-inducing, flag-bearing button that needs to be eliminated with prejudice as extreme as a very extreme thing having a particularly extreme day.

Until that noble goal is achieved, this might be useful. I’ve chopped the horrible beast that is the plugin apart and come up with the following code to undo some of the evil it perpetrates on innocent web pages. Simply drop this CSS code into your page, and (theoretically) Skype will crawl away, weeping, leaving your innocent number strings unmolested.

/* kill skype plugin */
html body  span.skype_pnh_container {display:none !important;}
html body  span.skype_pnh_print_container {display:inline !important;}

Please note that this is code that seems to work for me, and for the version of the plugin on my computer. It may not work for you, or with whatever version you’re plagued with. Also, I’m not a bloody tech support desk, so if you can’t get this code working, or aren’t sure where to put it – well, it’s tough biscuits for you sailor!

Back to work…

Damned Impertinence!

Hrumph!

This morning at work I got a call from a client wanting an update on his project. As might be expected on a Monday morning he asked if I’d had a good weekend. I answered in the non-committal affirmative. He then asked “Do anything interesting?”

Well. Call me a socially inept Aspie but to me that’s stepping over the line. We’re not friends, we’re business associates. As I see it, he has no right (social or otherwise) to request information about my personal life, and to do so was frankly impertinent.

What was I going to do? Fill him in on all the details of my weekend? Tell him how I went to an old friend’s wedding lunch at the Rose in Crown at Guildford? And how it wasn’t the actual wedding because the actual wedding was in Japan and Switzerland, and explain how that was actually possible? And say that I had the barramundi but wished I’d had the steak because although the barramundi was fantastic the steak the other people were having looked even better and came with chips? And that a good time was had by all and then on the way home I saw a house flying the state flag of Wyoming for some reason? That information is mine, not to be handed out over the phone to someone I barely know.

I mean I didn’t want to know what he’d done over the weekend. Why would I? He’s a client – one among many. As far as I’m concerned he could have spent his weekend morris dancing, pin collecting or hunting the most dangerous prey of all. It makes no difference. He could be the goddamn Batman as long as he gets information to me in a timely manner so I can get his work done.

My clients are not my friends. And’s that the way it should be.

Hrumph!

(Yes, I understand the irony of saying I don’t want a client knowing details about my weekend and then posting all about it on a publicly accessible blog, but if you’re reading this then you’re either a personal friend of mine, or a complete stranger I’ll probably never meet, so it’s not the same thing :P)

Trololololojan

Trololololololololololol

Spent the last two days battling to free my work computer from the grips of a number of really nasty viruses that managed to slip in via a compromised website I visited looking for the lyrics of Eduard Khil’s trolololo song. I think it’s all clean now, I’m running a final scan in the background to make sure.

Not fun. Mr Khil has a lot to answer for 😉

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