KevBurnsJr

We like to think that we are nobodies. We live our lives surrounded by nobodies, bombarded with images of somebodies. We like to think that there is some inherent quality in cover girls and governators that we ourselves do not possess.

If we’re lucky, we’ll have someone in our life to tell us otherwise. Someone to remind us that we can be whoever we want to be. That anything is possible.

But who am I? I am just another nobody.

If only I were him.

And that’s where it ends.

It’s a pattern that will repeat, over and over. Different icon, different day. Mark Andreesen, Brad Pitt, Jerry Rice, Steven Segal, Peter North, Donald Trump, if only I were him. Then I would be happy.

And that’s where it ends.

Few and far between are the nobodies who truly and honestly wouldn’t change their place in life for any other in the world. Shrugged off in conversation as a sappy non-answer, the pursuit to build meaning in one’s life is no longer considered by most to be a worthy pursuit.

Then someone reminds us that we are exactly who we are, and we can be whoever we want to be.

The paradox of course is that it’s only after one has relinquished his desire to become somebody else that he can he truly become himself. To walk one’s path without knowing where it leads is the daily struggle for greatness amongst those intent on changing the world. Happiness a worthy pursuit only in so much as it serves to fulfill one’s dreams.

Is there something in the world that you would like to change?

KFC. Pizza Hut. Radio Shack. Starbucks. Hooters. Ya. Hooters.

It is hot. And it is overcast. All the time. I don’t think the sun ever shines in Lima. This place feels like purgatory. Not quite where I’m going, but I’m not quite moving forward. Just waiting. In the heat. I thought I left the US. I thought I was going to escape the sprawl. It appears now I’ve swapped a nippy california winter for a strip mall in Georgia in the summer.

The art in Lima is ugly. I think there must be some sort of law that says if you’re going to make public art in Lima, it must be made of trash. Pilons suspended above the ground, trapped together with an old frayed anchor cable. Jagged splinters of rusty iron bundled together adhock, jutting up from an island at a major intersection. The art echoes the sqawlor of this urban mess. Many people. Much plastic. Mouths to feed. Mercedez benz pulled up at the fancy hotel. Casino down the block. Horns all night long. Shanty towns blight the outer edges.

This is MiraFlores. This is expensive. Shopping malls and supermarkets. Everything for sale is priced in soles and US dollars. I came for the simple life and instead I find myself in the Las Vegas of this Nevada. Looking forward to being in Cusco on Saturday. Cool things down a little. Buy a sweater.

I’ve never bought a sweater. Sweaters were always those things that were given as Christmas presents and worn only by off-duty college professors and L.L. Bean catalog models. Will the alpaca sweater gods woo me over with a song? I certainly hope so. Though I may escape with only some gloves.

Save progress. Shut down. Some much needed rest and hopefully a little dreamtime to ponder once again : What am I doing here?

Well, it turns out that WAMP was working perfectly. Turns out, I had an infinite loop condition that I was not aware of.

*blush*

Now I know how the Zune team feels.

So I’ve got my new laptop and I’m setting up my dev environment and everything’s going great.  I get Symfony installed for a side project and get things started off with a restful authentication plugin, going great.  Set up my project for work and things seem to be humming along.

Then it happens.

Try to load a page, and instead of a loaded page, I get an error.  

Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 240 seconds exceeded in [filename] on line 784

The line number is never the same.  Once I submit the request, I watch as httpd pegs the processor for 4 minutes, sucking up almost exactly 650kb/sec in memory (seen it accumulate 500mb and keep climbing).  Leads me to believe there’s some sort of memory leak going on, but not sure.

Did some preliminary searches and foud people who have similar problems, and people who have seen other people with similar problems.  Nobody seems to have the solution.  Not giving up.  Will keep poking around.  The answer is out there somewhere.

So I bought a ticket to Peru on Monday, and was expecting to receive an email with details about my flight.  Opened inbox today to find that no such email exists.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.  (thanks, Yahoo)

Looked in my checking account : payment went through for the ticket.

Whew.

Now to call the airline and get my confirmation code (rolls eyes).  Call TACA, explain situation, no problem.  Telephone operator asks me for :

Name
Departure Date
Origin
Desitination

Telephone Operators says, “Looks like you’ve got a flight from SFO to Lima on the 14th,” — (I had the date wrong) — “your reservation is confirmed.  What can I do for you?”

“May I have the Reservation Code?”

“Yes Q427R55″.

“Great.”

“Anything Else?”

“Nope, that’s it.”

“Okay, don’t forget to show up 3 hours early at 9:30 on Jan 13th and have a pleasant flight.  Thank you for choosing Taca.”

“Thanks”

I can’t remember the last time I felt this good after calling an 800 number.

Taca rocks.

So I just got this new “NetBook” and I go to install WAMP and everything goes great, until MySQL crashes hard for no reason.  An hour or so of searching found me a solution on the WAMP forums (which is probably the first place I should have looked…)

Posted by: HBK

Date: December 11, 2008 04:15AM

I found my solution for this. After trying all of the above it still would not work, but after going into services.msc (start–>run–>services.msc) I was able to get the mysql service working. 
Just click the “Log On” tab on the mysql service’s properties and check “Allow service to interact with the desktop.” I hope this helps others. :) 

This is probably the most obscure XAMP issue I’ve come across, and it’s nice to know that someone out there on the internet has come up with a solution.

3 cheers for helpful strangers.

Seems like it’s about once a year that I launch a new blog.  Usually on or around Jan 1st.  No promises this year.  Just a new space to rant.