A less-than-auspicious start...

Woke up at around 3:20 am and haven't been able to sleep since. It's now time to go brew up the morning smoothie and some java. Galina has to be on the road Real Soon Now, and we'll all have to rendezvous at the store before Galina and Drew hit the road for real, for any last-minute notions and to-dos.

Time to abandon the rack for the day. Drat, I'm yawning.

Cheers...

Oooommmmm....

Not as in "alm."

Not as in "ohm."

More like in "boom"! Or "doom." Or something similar.

Galina and I got out of the house on time, which may be counted a minor miracle. She went to pick up Drew; I went to the store. The two of them show up at the store at 7:30. Drew finds he's forgotten his wallet, goes home, and comes back at around 7:45. They finally get on the road a few minutes later.

Dammitalltohell, I miss them already.

Cheers...

E-mail interaction with an ISP:

May 01 10:19 AlexPGP: I am trying to install TWiki (twiki.org). Among the installation instructions are the following:

1. Set the permission of all files and directories in twiki/data and below so they are writable by user 'apache'

2. Set the permission of the twiki/pub directory and all subdirectories so that the files are writable by user 'apache'

If I may suggest chowning these directories recursively so that the owner remains 'springsb' and the group is 'apache'? I'm not sure having the files world-writable is a good idea.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers...

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May 01 10:27 support13: Hello,

You should change the permissions of your pub folder to 777 and the content of your data folder to 777.

Due to the shared hosting environment we provide you have group permissions only for your user (and subftp accounts if created).

Best Regards,
Support

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May 01 10:45 AlexPGP: If I do that, then pretty much anyone who cares to can write to those directories, putting my data in jeopardy.

I am not asking for my permissions to be expanded in any way, only that the apache user be allowed to write to those directories and files.

Is there a security concern here, or is this just "the rules"? In an e-mail earlier today, prior to signing up, I was told that the admins would try to accommodate installation details like this.

Cheers...

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May 01 10:57 support13: There is nothing to worry about. This is the way our system is configured.
Most of the web based forum platforms and similar require the permissions of some directories to be set to 777.

Best Regards,
Support

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Uh-huh.

Cheers...

Heavens to Murgatroid, Batman!

It's been a difficult day, albeit not a lonely one.

Brady came to work today, to help me and Jody. I actually didn't do a heck of a lot until the end of the day, when the two of them were gone. Getting up at oh-dark-thirty is not the best way to start a day like this.

All day long, all I could think about was Galina and Drew. How were they doing? Were they safe? In short, I was a basket case for most of the day.

Around 5 pm Feht comes into the store, and tells me he'd just left his mother, who had just moved into Pagosa's one and only (I think) nursing home. His mother is as healthy as a horse, they say, so the facility was very happy to see her, says Feht.

We went out to dinner at the Shanghai, mostly to let Feht blow off steam. That, combined with my lunch at the same restaurant earlier today, has my eyes doing an MSG-induced fandango in my sockets. I've steadily spent all my time since coming home either feeding the dogs or focusing on an attempt to install TWiki on a public server.

Thank goodness for clients who feel obligated to pay far in advance of the "industry-standard" 30 days. (Yes, I know, in Italy, the "standard" interval for translators ranges from 90 to 120 days... but I don't live in Italy. Yet. But I digress...) The direct client from a couple of weeks ago has already paid, and my best client sent her latest check two days ago, and it arrived today.

The summary of work for April totals out at a few grand short of 100,000 words, which bodes well for the next month, and it's nice to have a couple of days off (especially since I'm in the store the rest of this week, pretty much), but hopefully, May and onward will soon start to be fruitful.

I am definitely babbling. Time to go to sleep.

Cheers...