DREWspective

"I don’t think my boyfriend would approve."

"My fiancée thinks so too."

"I’ll have to see what my man is doing."

"My husband likes that as well."

Ever had this happen to you in a conversation?

You could be being as sincere as possible, engaging in a conversation on equal terms with someone else, having been single for years (and having people rub it in your face). Then, out of nowhere, they felt the urge to subtly brag about their relationship(s).

This happens anywhere you go, but it’s a growing trend online. After all, nobody has to look you in the eye when they do it, as they hide behind the safety of their computer screen. But I ask, why do people do it?

I actually talked about this once with an old work colleague during a lunch break. They said something deep and very profound back then:

People who brag about anything don’t feel they deserve it.

Till this day, I haven’t seen one example where that hasn’t been true, whether you’re talking about common people or those in the media.

We live in an artificially-generated culture, where - in the words of Dave Ramsey, author of Financial Peace - if we can’t get rich, we have to look rich. Somehow we got the idea that we have to look, act, speak, eat, do, wear, dance, drink, talk, see, shit, pee, breathe, walk, laugh, think, sleep, work, be like everyone else. Or at least, we’re driven to live up to some ideal someone created out of thin air. If you don’t, you’re labelled a freak.

This especially applies to relationships; there’s a lot of pressure to be in a relationship these days, with singles branded as lazy and unattractive, who don’t "get out there and meet people". And it pisses people like me off.

There are some people who claim to be "happy being single"; these are the kind of people who get into relationships like they’d buy groceries. So don’t listen to their bullshit.

It’s as if literally everybody is in a loving relationship these days, particularly if you’re not. And they all seem to be long-term, too. Yet, you often hear about people trading their so-called "forever lovers" for "better" models, people cheating on each other, and generally treating their partners like shit.

When you take a step back, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people in relationships just so they can say they’re in one, or to spite someone else.

Anyway, whether you’d want to continue any form of contact with someone who throws having a partner in your face, is up to you. What you make of it is up to you. But in my book, the same thing can be said of these kinds of people as thieves, cheats and liars.

In contrast to my unfinished rant about Propel, I just love Subversion.

It is, however, a bit of a bitch to get working how I wanted it. Actually, that’s not quite fair; the problem lay with TortoiseSVN, which I shall explain later.

For the uninitiated, Subversion is what’s called a version control program: it keeps track of the different versions of files you manage. Think of it as a kind of incremental backup system, or the Reviewing feature in Word. It’s mostly used for developing programs, and because of the nature of the app, it’s widely used for developing web sites and web applications.

I’m using it for building my project Foley, and so far I haven’t done much with it except try to set it up. It’s primarily a Unix resource, but there are (not very many) ways of setting it up on Windows, provided you have an NT-based operating system (Windows 2000 upwards).

Recently I set up a testing server on my laptop, and wanted to use my main computer as an SVN server. Having installed Subversion and TortoiseSVN on both computers, I thought it would be a straightforward process.

Not fucking so.

I won’t bore you with all the details, but basically the only way of connecting to the repository on the main computer that worked was using SVN from the command line; TortoiseSVN refused to do the work. I’m still not sure why.

The only thing to do now is move the repository to somewhere other than the testing server’s document root. Is this possible?

I’ve wasted the best part of three days, and valuable developmnt time, trying to get Propel to work on my local web server (read: installation of AppServ on a partition other than C:).

For those not in the know, Propel is supposed to be a "object relational mapping" framework, which basically means you can access databases using objects instead of typing SQL. My current workplace uses it in their e-commerce solution, managed by some Unix geeks.

I was particularly excited about using it in my own project: I’ve embarked on a mission to create a portfolio solution, codenamed Foley. I was also thrilled that I’d finally been able to install and use the mysterious PEAR, though there was next to no information about how to do it in AppServ. I wasn’t too happy, however, with the business of trying to find where things had been copied to and how to use them.

Along came Propel, with its shitty documentation, and the horror began. (The documentation wasn’t entirely shitty, but bad enough.)

First and foremost, they mention having to build a build.properties file for your project. Rather awkwardly, they don’t have any.documentation on other, equally bits of important information you could include in the file. Eventually, I found out that there were default definitions lurking in some other folder.

You have to enable a couple of DLLs in php.ini (pdo and xsl). Only after messing around with the configuration files and some frantic searching did I find out that you have to add another one to the list (php_pdo_mysql, if you use MySQL databases) as well. Finally, my schema was turned into classes.

Then came the final nail in the coffin; trying to use the damn thing,

Initially the example given on the Propel Quickstart page didn’t work for me: I had an error message saying that the Propel class wasn’t found. It turns out that giving the right paths to the scripts was so important, it required using set_include_path(). So I added the relevant path to the function (the path to Propel.php) and included it as required.
On the next try, it told me that ‘Clss Item not found)…

Couldn’t be bothered to finish this rant. I’m using something else now.

I’d spent this Easter under the grip of "man flu".

Maybe it was because I’ve been working too hard on too many different things, or that I didn’t pull through with the things I was supposed to give up for Lent, but eventually I was convinced I deserved it. Right now, I’m managing a nasty chesty cough.

Something happened on Good Friday that I’d never expected. The fraud department of my bank called me up about a series of suspicious payments made using my innocent debit card.

I’d noticed there was something awry, when I’d tried to buy some aquarium supplies from my trusty pet store. I knew I had money in the bank, but the payment wouldn’t go through. Luckily I have a backup card with another account, so I’m able to survive.

It turns out that someone had tried to gamble using my card details. I couldn’t think of a single person who could have gotten hold of them outside of home… except for the guy in the US who sold me the polystyrene shapes.

Anyway, because whoever it was had "gained authorisation", my debit card was "blocked" on the spot.

While I really appreciate them notifying me (and luckily nothing left my account), the think that irks me is that the bank called on a Good Friday, knowing that there was another Bank Holiday looming, and that I’d have to wait around five working days for a replacement card.

If I didn’t have a backup card, I’d be in very deep shit right about now.

Thanks to a video uploaded by YouTube user Chadwardenator, The Legendary Drew comes out of retirement.