vauxia lives here

I'm reticent to post here, since my half-baked musings are no longer private.  But if I don't put my work-in-progress thoughts *somewhere*, I'll lose them forever.

I've been trying to beat Drupal's ecommerce module into submission for a few days now.  I would say it's a great start and adds a necessary level of functionality to Drupal, so it's a "good thing".  But I have recommended it many times to local developers, and they ran screaming.  I suspect there are many others who do their running-and-screaming without talking to the Drupal community.  The biggest argument has been an inability to show subproducts, variations, attributes, etc.  There is work being done in this area, but I'm afraid that the fundamental architecture of the ecommerce module will hamper its ability to reach a stable, graceful solution.

For the first time today, I am taking an in-depth look at CiviCRM's API and data model.  I must say I'm excited about its direction and the enthusiasm of its supporters, but I'm rather disappointed in some of its underlying principles.  I hope I look back on this someday and write myself off as nothing but a grouchy naysayer.

The data model appears to have been copied directly out of the pages of  The Data Model Resource Book.  I recognized this immediately because I spent hours poring over that book during my '03 Operon coding binge.

We decided to try Molly Quinn's last night. 

Our server was too preoccupied with lotto scratch games to look up and she asked us to seat ourselves.  After shuffling over to take our order, she took her smoke break near our table and never even stopped by our table to see if everything was OK.

It wasn't OK.  We were short on time, so we just ordered nachos.  They had cooked the nachos in a MICROWAVE!  Most latch key kids have already experienced the horror of chewy, soggy chips crusted-together with burnt cheese and glued to a paper backing.  Now you can get have the same experience at a pricy establishment touting its "good bar food".

As a gift for my recent birthday, my mom got me egg salad sandwiches!

This ranks as one of the most eccentric -- and thoughtful -- gifts I've ever received.  At some point I must have mentioned how much I enjoy a good egg salad sandwich, but I rarely get to enjoy them because they're a pain to make.  After the boiling and the cooling and the slicing and the mixing and the toasting; one measley sandwich is a bit of a let-down.

So, wrapped up in tissue and a fancy gift bag, I received:

• 6 hard-boiled eggs
• 1 loaf of bread
• 1 jar of "lemonaisse"

The lemonaisse is a nice touch.  The perfect mix of lemon, mayo, mustard and "special spices", it's way better than anything I would have made.  So now I just peel and mash the eggs with some of the tasty concoction and it's insta-sandwich!

Way to recognize my laziness and my love for a well-made egg salad.  Thanks Mum, it's been days of enjoyment!

I'm one of those blog owners who never, ever tells anybody about my blog.  A visitor-less site is great when you're moving stuff around!

And that's what I'm doing, moving stuff around. After all my Drupal evangelism, I've decided to eat my own dog food and install Drupal on my own site and ditch the buggy s9y installation for good.

I thought it would be easy to migrate the old RSS feed, but apparently not.  I've got to upgrade the node_aggregator module to make it import my entries as nodes.  I was hoping to do this anyway for another site, so it all works out.

So I rented "Lost in La Mancha" last night, but I'm too afraid to watch it. It's the documentary of Terry Gilliam's ill-fated attempt to fim The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. After perservering through weather, cast illnesses and a myriad of technical factors, the project was untimately abandoned. I can't help but draw parallels to my own gig.

As a Gilliam fan and someone who has worked on a production crew, I've wanted to see it for awhile. But I can't imagine anything more painful than watching someone perservere through a colossal, ironic failure without the payoff of success.

So I don't always have the best track record for getting back to people, and this has caused an array of problems in my life. The occasional "where the hell have you been?" message from my friends and family often does the trick, but usually causes stabbing guilt over letting it go so long in the first place, and the instinct to flee.

Today, even my Nigerian scam emails are guilting me out - accusing me of letting some poor widow languish in neglect with her untouchable $30M US. I am not genetically equipped to have the viceral reactions intended by the "she's laughing at your pathetic manhood with her friends" line of spam. But I've received too many legitimate emails titled "I AM WAITING FOR YOUR RESPONSE" to ignore this one.

"Howya doin'?" I asked my colleague, flashing a chipper smile.

"Fine," he responded cautiously. "And how are you?"

"Hey, I can't complain!" I said, whipping out my corny trademark thumbs-up.

"You never can complain!"

Of course I can't.

Turns out that people are finding this page by searching for "Veitnamese Porn".

A hell of a disappointment, I'm sure!

Intelligent people solve their problems by understanding existing solutions to similar problems and selecting the most appropriate route. Gifted people work to fully understand existing solutions and elect to extend or replace them with well-considered alternatives. Geniuses traverse both paths: they leverage their comprehensive understanding of best practices and extend them clearly and harmoniously in a way that others can understand.

Everyone else approaches problems using a myriad tactics, often telling themselves that their difference in strategy signifies their own greatness. Here's a hint: If you don't understand the best practices approach 1/3 as well as you understand your new and improved one, you're probably not a genius. And if you believe you're doing something that nobody else has done you probably haven't looked far or deep enough.

You can be a hero without ever innovating anything. By seeking commonality between the problems around you and the problems others have solved, you have a roadmap to making a difference. Conversely, you can do damage by placing importance on innovation at the expense of learning from others. You are limited to the power of only one mind, one pair of eyes and one pair of hands. Your legacy will probably be little more than a series of confused "WTF?!"'s

This issue hits close to home for me because I have spent time on both sides of the fence. Inheriting code from other "geniuses", nursing servers that have been taken out of commission by resource-hogging "innovations" - and creating more different-is-better strategies than I care to admit to. It has been humbling to learn that I'm not the smartest person in the universe - especially when the strongest evidence of that fact is when I'm trying to look smart.

Now, whenever I find myself doing something off the beaten path I try to ask myself whether this excursion is necessary or if I'm just becoming a victim of my own ego. If I can't clearly explain my approach in a way that makes others want to use and expand upon it, it is most certainly the latter. Innovations are worth applying only if they are helpful to others and if the combined mindshare can help it continue to evolve.

Solving a challenging problem in a new and better way sometimes means doing things differently. But no solution has ever been better strictly because it is different.