Category: Blog

I host all my WordPress clients at DreamHost. This offers me a number of advantages. First, there are two platforms available to me: shared hosting and my own VPS. Shared hosting works fine for low-volume websites that are mostly static pages. If I front them with caching from CloudFlare (or something similar) then no-one can tell the difference. For those clients with eCommerce sites or high traffic, then I host them on my VPS which has plenty of headroom to spare.

Another advantage of DreamHost is that they periodically scan client sites for malware. This costs nothing more and is to their advantage. Sites hosting scams ruins reputations and often consume resources that could be better used to serve legitimate operations. And if things go really bad, I can restore a website via the admin panel from a old backup and/or purchase their website repair service at a reasonable rate.

One downside, though, is that occasionally you get a notification from DreamHost that they are going to be discontinuing support for something. Recently, it was for PHP 7. All websites on shared hosting must be upgraded to PHP 8. This made sense since support for PHP 7 had ended a while ago. But going through all my client websites and confirming that they would work with PHP 8 was an unexpected fire drill.

Fortunately their technical support people told me about a tool that I hadn’t heard about. It was the command line tool WP-CLI. Turns out that this tool will let me log into the root directory of each of my client WordPress websites and get a report on which plug-ins and themes are PHP 8 compatible and which are not.

It took me a week but I was able to go through all my client websites on shared hosting and identify all of the problem areas. Some were plug-ins that already disabled. So that was easy. Some were themes could be updated with newer releases. Some I had to fix myself: there were a lot of instances of array references with curly braces ({}) instead of square brackets ([]) that, once repaired, worked fine on PHP 8.

In the end, I was able to upgrade all the websites a day ahead of the deadline. Now all that’s left is a few of the troublesome sites on the VPS that have themes that aren’t so easily updated by hand. Luckily I haven’t been told that I need to update those yet. But you know it’s coming eventually. Such is the joy of providing managed hosting!

I’ve been faced with a difficult problem. Originally, I ran this simple blog site as well as my SacAutos business website. Then I decided to try and capture some WordPress business, so I created the SacWordPress website. Of course during the pandemic I was building the SacBusiness directory website. Then Steve decided to retire and I got a chance to pick up PageWeavers too.

After careful consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s better to have a hub of websites that link back and forth to each other organically then try to create a single mega-site. So today I’ve completed the transition into a hub. At the center is SacBusiness, which has everything about all the services as well as the customer contact form. SacAutos is still around for the auto-related business until I can turn it into a car directory. SacWordPress is still there for WordPress design and management. PageWeavers is for design. And this website is for programming background for consulting.

They all have links back and forth to each other in an organic way. The idea of creating a hub of sites is to improve overall page rank, a key SEO factor with Google. Another potential benefit is that I can list three or four website design companies in Sacramento with search engines, which should improve my overall conversion rate because I have multiple horses in each race.

Will it work? Time will tell. The clock is now ticking…

Those people who are closest to me know that I love music. At one time I must have owned a thousand record albums and still own around 700 CDs. (Though I have ripped them all to MP3 files now and manage them via iTunes.) Many publications and people have published their greatest albums list. Why not tackle my own list?

My criteria is whether I would listen to the entire thing completely (i.e. not skipping over songs) and whether I still listen to it today. The following list is in no particular order. I just wrote them down as they came to me:

• The Beatles – Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

  Not a surprise really. Critically acclaimed, subject to many documentaries. Some of the greatest songwriters and musicians ever assembled in a single band. The Beatles were sort of a Dream Team for pop music. Everything they did was great. This album is simply the best. 

• Steely Dan – Countdown To Ecstasy

  Fagen and Becker turned out one great album after another. I like this this effort from their earlier years before they became jazzier on efforts like Aja. Not that jazz is bad – I just enjoy the faster pace. 

• The Who – Quadrophenia

  The Who are the ultimate masculine rock group. They made some other spectacular albums as well, specifically Who’s Next. However, Quadrophenia was specifically intended to be what it is; and it is awesome. 

• Pete Townshend – Empty Glass

  Townshend, the genius behind The Who, was so good that I have to rank his solo work separately. I also really liked White City and Psychoderelict quite a bit but Empty Glass is just madly good. 

• Carole King – Tapestry

  This is the first recording I ever bought. There’s a good reason that it was the greatest selling album of all time for many years. 

• Willie Nelson – Red Headed Stranger

  I’m not a country music fan at all but I absolutely love this record. Willie’s stripped-down arrangements and emotional truth are haunting. 

• Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon

  This was one of those first records that I bought as a teen. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that they had recorded a bunch of albums before which were entirely different. Dark Side started something great that continued for a number of albums. 

• Cowboy Junkies – Lay It Down

  I absolutely love this band. The singing of Margo is amazing and the songs by Michael are true poetry. Their work from the late 80’s through the end of the 90’s is my favorite era. 

• R.E.M. – Fables of the Reconstruction

  Another band where I’ve loved just about everything they ever did. Since, by my rules for this blog, I have to pick a single album, this is it. Relatively early in their recording career, it represents the rich oddity of their wonderful music. 

• Fleetwod Mac – Rumours

  There’s this fantastic documentary series that was done by VH1 called Classic Albums. It’s available via NetFlix as well as other streaming platforms. I already loved this album. After watching the documentary, that love doubled. The incredible anguish that the band members experienced while making this record make it even more amazing. 

• Grateful Dead – American Beauty

  I’ve seen 30-40 Dead shows. (I don’t know the exact count – knowing that number just feels contrary to the point of the Grateful Dead experience.) The live show is entirely different from the studio recordings. This record is their best studio production and their most well-known for that reason. 

• David Bowie – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

  Bowie was an amazing artist. This record, besides Low, is the one I always wind up coming back to. Pure genius on display. 

• Joni Mitchell – Court and Spark

  Joni writes amazing songs but they aren’t always “accessible” to the average listener. This record has the most hits probably because she straddles folk, rock and jazz with effortless grace. There is a concert video called Shadows and Light which has some of the music from Court and Spark. I’ve watched that countless times as well. 

• Alan Parsons Project – I Robot

  The Alan Parsons Project is an interesting concept. Not really a band. Just a core group of producer/songwriter/musician Alan Parsons, songwriter/pianist Eric Woolfson and some studio musicians. Yet they created some really good records. I Robot was my favorite and I played that thing to death. 

• Simply Red – Picture Book

  Simply Red is mostly just Mick Hucknall singing the songs that he wrote with a backing band. But what great songs and what a voice! Picture Book was the debut release and is fantastic. 

• X – More Fun in the New World

  X does not get the due that they deserve. Second only the the Beatles, the Doors is my favorite band. Who produced the early X records? Ray Manzarek of the Doors. That should say something into itself. More Fun is an evolution of their early punk sound. Not entirely commercial. But totally great.

The other day I got a call from my old business partner at PageWeavers. He wanted to take me to lunch. So, over a sandwich, he told me that he was tired of being in the website business and wanted to retire. He offered me the chance to take over PageWeavers.

In case you haven’t read all of my blog entries, I split out from PageWeavers in the fall of 2011 to start my own consulting business. Having already owned SacAutos.com, that became the name of the new business. Well, effective today, PageWeavers is now part of SacAutos.

But that’s not the end of the news. Once the DBA is filed so I can open a checking account as SacBusiness, both operations will be folded into that single entity. Now all I need to do is generate some sales…

I had an epiphany the other day in the shower. I have this website. Why aren’t I using it more? So, after a year of no updates, the website has been dramatically expanded. And that’s not all. Look for more updates with this site as well as SacAutos and SacBusiness as we close out the year. Stay tuned…

Let me begin this rant with the declaration that I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. My official party affiliation on my voter registration is “Decline to State.” When I was affiliated with a party some twenty five years ago, it was with the Libertarians. As an outsider, don’t attempt to paint me as some sort of partisan agent. I have friends on both sides of the aisle and wish to keep it that way.

The title of this piece could easily be considered controversial. It’s inflammatory and confrontational. But I believe that I can lay out a case that asserts this call to action as an actually necessity. It sounds corny but there’s really no better way to put it: the future of our democracy is in peril.

The reason why the National Republican Party has to go is because of their ever-tighter embrace of a total disregard for the law. I’m going to begin by going back about fifty years to the Nixon administration. We all know what happened there. Many aides and members of his cabinet wound up going to prison for their roles in planning and then covering up the burglary at the Watergate Hotel. Nixon himself avoided jail by being pardoned by the next Republican President, Gerald Ford. While many have agreed that Ford did the right thing and spared the nation the continuation of an embarrassment. (I too agree.) However, it did set a bad precedent. The message to future Republicans was this: with enough consolidation of power and less bungling, you can break the law with impunity.

The next Republican President that I’d like to consider was Reagan. Americans – especially Republicans – are in love with him. However, he was by no means a peach. His administration also wound up sending a number of aides to jail for the Iran-Contra plot and cover-up. His administration’s innovation was the appointment of critics to head agencies so they may destroy them from within. Rather than debate the purpose and validity of an agency such as the Department of Education in Congress in front of the public where all can fairly hear and decide, the Reagan administration brought in an opponent to run the agency into the ground. This effort largely failed due to too much support of the agency by the appointees and Congress.

The rise of Republican Newt Gingrich was another low for American politics. Gingrich changed politics for the worse through childish tantrums of being unwilling to compromise with opponents. At all. He shut the government down – twice – and made toxic politics the norm. His blueprint of scorched earth is still alive and well today.

Unsatisfied with the power that they already had, Republicans in 2010 conspired to take control of state legislatures and Congress itself through gerrymandering of districts throughout the nation. The nation is still unwinding the damage done to fairness.

George W. Bush brought the country to yet another low. He took the practice of appointing departments heads to another level. Instead of installing competent opponents of agencies, he nominated unqualified people to leadership positions to destroy government either through malice, mismanagement or ineptitude. A good example of the result was the disastrous response to hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Then there’s the pair of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. History will judge these two harshly I can imagine.

Looking backward at what the Republican Party used to stand for, I don’t recognize it today. What do they stand for now? The answer seems to be little beyond what they can get for themselves. As I write this, we’re about three months from election day. The list of schemes, scams and corruption is already legion. What other tricks will be deployed before the election? God knows. This essay is but a small taste of the crap that Republicans have pulled on our country. One could easily write several books detailing everything that they’ve done. Is this upcoming election important? That seems to be the consensus. We’ll see what happens!

I’ve been an AT&T cable TV customer for about ten years. When we moved to our current community, we gladly dumped Comcast’s cable TV service that we had at the time. It’s been so long ago now that I don’t even remember the specific issues that we had. But we were pleased overall that U-verse was arguably the best cable service that we’ve had. (Though, as I wrote in 2013, I accurately predicted its end and its future.)

The merits of U-verse were many: it included a DVR that was easy to use. The channel line-up was easy to understand: all common channels like news or sports were all grouped together. The remote control was logically designed. Pausing, rewinding and skipping forward were obvious and useful in the amount of time that it went forward or back. (I remember having to “hack” the Comcast remote to enable a skip-forward function. What nonsense.)

However, U-verse did also have it’s issues. For example, the highest signal output that their cable box would produce was 720P. I have an Ultra HD SmartTV. Honestly, most of the time the U-verse picture looked crappy. I wasn’t very satisfied by that. Furthermore, the channel line-up seemed to become – over time – overrun with throw-away informercial channels. It seemed like there were a hundred to wade through. So my wife and I would sit down to watch TV, and despite there being hundreds of channels available, it felt like we had nothing to watch!

Then, in the last few months, we started to see U-verse become less reliable. Our shows would freeze or we’d lose the signal. I was starting to look at my options when I learned that AT&T was promoting a new service: AT&T TV. Basically, it’s a streaming service. If your SmartTV doesn’t have the AT&T TV app for it, you buy a small Android-based streaming box to connect to your TV via HDMI. The box itself comes with pre-installed apps for HBOmax, Netflix and YouTube. And to incentivize viewers, they sunsetted U-verse by declaring that they would no longer sell it.

So I read the writing on the wall and decided to take the plunge. By signing up, I would be saving over $100 per month over U-verse. That was one of my big complaints with U-verse. It had become ridiculously expensive. I could easily install the new networking gear myself, which was good, as I always hate the sloppy jobs the company installers do. And there’s COVID-19 to deal with too.

I called AT&T and placed my order. I had done a considerable amount of reading in advance so I knew what I wanted and how it would work. Apparently the service was so new they weren’t quite prepared for existing customers calling in to switch over. A sales representative had to call me back three hours later and go through the order. However, once they had me on the phone the process was easy. I was happy to receive the new customer perks without having to threaten or haggle.

The new equipment showed up the following Monday, late in the day. Wanting to have a quiet evening, I took a look inside the box but decided to wait until the next morning to do the install. The process was simple. Connect their streaming box to my TV and power it on. There was a minor hassle entering my network password and my account login info followed by waiting for a software update to load. But the process went smoothly and I had TV!

I’m writing this entry now about forty-eight hours after first turning it on. My experience so far has been both up and down. The positives? The picture quality is great! Finally content in true HD. The DVR is a “cloud” version, so they keep a copy of everything broadcast on some servers someplace for ninety days. So not only can I record as many shows as I like at once; but I can reach back in time to grab anything that I missed that was broadcast in the last ninety days. We’ve already taken advantage of that.

On the downside, the system is not set up for casual browsing. The guide isn’t particularly easy to read. The channels are tossed together in random sequence. Some things are grouped together, such as the premium movie channels. But sports, news and the like are tossed all over the place. AT&T TV also relies too much on the voice-activation gimmick. It’s helpful if I want to jump to a show that I know is on. But if I want to surf, it just gets in the way. There’s also some advanced features that are just missing, such as extending the recording time of a show. What basketball game has ever finished on time? The only work-around at this time is to record the following show. That’s minor league at best.

Another thing that has me pissed off is that some of my local channels are missing. I carefully reviewed the channel listing provided on the website. But there were no specifics regarding the local channels. Now I have to live without PBS or KQCA, which was available via U-verse. I’ve already complained but nobody knows when or if I’ll ever get them back. So while the service is cheaper, it’s clearly not quite as good as the old one, which is disappointing. If they fix the missing local channels, that would help quite a bit. I suppose we’ll get used to the rest of it. I just filled out a customer survey where I roasted them for the channel issue and usability. We’ll see if it makes a difference.

A boxer named Maxim Dadashev died today in Maryland. I’m not a fan of the sport but I’ve seen a lot of fights from my youth. It used to be that boxing was a big deal in America. There was a televised boxing card every Friday night. Men like Muhammad Ali were national figures. But as brutal as the sport is, it is rare for a boxer to die in the ring or of injuries from a fight.

So this news shook me up in a strange way. Yes, it’s sad for the dead boxer and his family. It shakes up the public. It must linger in the back of the minds of the boxers and their trainers.

But we’re forgetting an important actor in the drama. The boxer who won the match, Subriel Matias. What is to become of him? There’s really only one of two ways he can go. Back away from the death or head toward it. If he backs away that will increase the pressure that must already be on him to quit. People will surely reason that no sport is worth the ultimate price that a man can pay.

The other choice is that he embraces it. He can now positively assert that he is so savage a fighter that he beat an opponent to death. His matches will now draw special attention from the morbidly curious. Will this cause his opponents fear and dread? It should.

Death as a result of boxing is a risk that all boxers know and understand. Even though a man died, the death at the hands of the winner is not a chargeable offense. Those are the rules of the game.

So where will our winner Subriel Matias go from here? We’ll just have to see…

OMG! I just looked at this WordPress site because version five is now available. It’s been three years since I last posted something. Jeez! Not that the world has been beating down my door for nuggets of wisdom or anything. But wow, looks like I’ve been busy.

On the other hand, perhaps it’s been a good thing that I’ve kept my own counsel. Ever since the 2016 election, I’ve been on edge. Our President, Individual #1, has been trolling the nation relentlessly. I wish that the media would catch on to that and stop letting him whip them around so easily. They do, after all, give him the oxygen that he so drastically needs.

So I’ll leave it at that. I’ve got lots of thoughts and opinions. I’ll see if I can break loose some free time to clarify some of those thoughts into pieces worth reading. Hopefully not in another three years!

I have a customer that has a large auto dismantling business. They provide an online car part search function (that I created) on the site based on a third-party database. Periodically I reload the database with refreshed data. That data comes to me as a Microsoft SQL Server database backup. I crack that file open by purchasing a Windows Server VPS with the developer suite.

My VPS vendor of choice for this task has been myhosting.com. Historically, they can rent me a VPS for around $50 for a month, although all I need is a day or two to restore the database and export certain tables in a text format. In the past it’s been fairly easy: place the order and they spin up a VPS in three hours or so.

However, this time around it was nothing but a tale of annoyance and irritation. First thing Monday morning, I went to log into my old account. While I hadn’t been back since September, that shouldn’t have been a big deal. But I found I was locked out of my old account.

I contacted customer support and was told that I couldn’t have my old account unlocked. Instead I was to create a new one. That seemed kind of stupid but I did so and placed the order. Shortly thereafter I received a phone call asking if I had indeed ordered a VPS, which I said I had. Nothing unusual, that’s just their procedure from the past and I was expecting the call.

About eight hours later, having not received any emails about the VPS creation, I logged into the backend panel to check on the VPS status. I saw that there was a VPS in a “ready” state. However, I couldn’t log in. So I waited. The next morning – more than 24 hours later – I was still unable to log in to the VPS. So I contacted support again. They gave me some vague excuse that it was in a “long running” operation state. And to wait. So I did.

At the end of the business day, I received several emails. The first was that my VPS was ready. The next was that my order was on hold and I should contact customer support. So I called – again. The rep was clearly confused as to why the account was on hold. However, I still couldn’t log into the VPS. At this point I was getting pretty annoyed.

The next day – more than 48 hours after placing my order – I received yet another email telling me that my VPS was ready. But I STILL couldn’t log in. So I called customer support AGAIN. The rep opened another yet another support ticket. Several more hours were wasted in email exchanges with technical support. I had told the rep on the phone that I couldn’t log in because my password wouldn’t work. In creating the ticket, the rep implied in the message that I couldn’t access the VPS, so the responding rep replied back with a telnet log showing that the VPS was accessible. I had to reply back and beg for a password reset because I couldn’t log in.

Finally, some 52 hours after placing my order, I was finally able to log into the VPS.

What the hell guys? You’ve gone from an easy three-hour process to one that took more than two days. I wound up contacting their customer support team more than half a dozen times. During those days when I didn’t have the VPS I was scouring the Internet evaluating other possible vendors for the next time around. Nice job taking something that worked very well and screwing it all up…