Clint Hill

For posterity I wanted to list some of the words I’ve heard my daughters use. There are some keepers here. These are the few I could think of. There are more.

margarita: diarrhea

none young rings: onion rings

tex cuss: Texas

olive oil: aloe vera

lamb old laid: lemonade

ba da ba ba bah: McDonald’s

boo boo: blanket

Thinking about my work tonight I had a quick vision. I want to be considered an artist. At the same time I want to be considered seriously. And in my head those two things compete. I don’t know why.

When I write code, I have these little fits where I delete whole sections. Why? Because I didn’t like the way it read on the screen. It worked. It solved the problem. But I didn’t like the way it felt. The code didn’t read the way I wanted it too.

Strange right?

And I have these arguments with myself about getting something done for the sake of getting it done. I tell myself “people will take you seriously when you solve something.” But on the way to solving whatever it is, I find myself not satisfied with the work I’ve done for aesthetic artistic reasons.

Somehow I have to separate serious from art. Or make my art serious.

I’m working on a project for a partner that requires the app to be built in .NET land. Bad enough, but OK. I’m a developer and love code so I can dig it.

But then we (and when I say “we” I mean “they” and I didn’t fight too hard otherwise) decided to use GoDaddy. Oy vey. My first response was “don’t use GoDaddy”. But then I held my tongue. It’s my partners project and product. His call. The dude abides.

So we call up GoDaddy and we ask questions about their hosting plans. Sounds great. Grid computing for the web app front end and a virtual dedicated server for the SQL database. And – it’s pretty cheap. So we sign up for 2 years of VDS and 10 years of Grid computing. The accounts are setup and I start work on moving the app over to them.

The pause is me leaning back in my chair and running my hands over my receding hair line with a grimace on my face.

…

First of all that SQL Server we thought we were getting … eehh … not so much. It’s a legit Windows 2003 server, but it doesn’t have SQL on it. I email support and they say “oh yeah. Download SQL Server Express”. What? But we talked about the dedicated server as a SQL server the whole conversation on the phone. You would think the guy would have said “it doesn’t come with SQL Server licensed or installed.” OK, I can work with that. Download SQL Express and try to install. Fails. Over and over again it fails. As I discover 2 hours later, Windows Updates has been blocked on the server. Not blocked as in turned off. No I mean blocked deep in the bowels of Group Policy settings. Once I twiddle all of those stupid settings I get SQL installed.

Then with the little bit of patience I have left I install the web app on the grid computing account. Piece of pie. 5 minutes. I go to the URL to test and FAIL! Can’t connect to the SQL server. Yes – that SQL server I just spent hours trying to get up.

[2 more hours of throwing darts in the dark]

Turns out GoDaddy basically blocks any and all SQL connections to outbound servers (TCP/IP and Named Pipes). Even their own apparently.

You can’t have a GoDaddy website that connects to a SQL server database that is located anywhere other than the exact same machine the website is on. Not cool.

I’m sure the decision to make this kind of architecture for hosting was all well intentioned. I know people don’t sit around thinking of this kind of evil. But the stupidity still amazes me.

So now I have a call scheduled to discuss how we’re going to unwind this clock. Fun. Can’t wait.