My 5-minute, do-it-yourself haircut

Note that you must use professional haircutting scissors (very sharp) that you use for no other purpose. Otherwise it will look like a rat gnawed off your hair.

First I washed my hair, put conditioner in it, and left it on (to maximally straighten my curls during the cut). I combed my hair into a pony tail at the nape of my neck (as evenly as possible – side hair on side, back on back, top on top), and tied it with an elastic – not hard up against the nape of my neck, maybe an inch away. And then I cut off the pony tail. I tried to make a fairly even cut, but I didn’t spend a lot of time obsessing on it – total time, 1-2 minutes.

Next I took off the elastic, turned my head upside down, combed my hair up into a pony tail on the very top of my head as evenly as possible (side hair on the side, back hair on back, etc.) and tied that with an elastic. Then I combed the pony tail straight up from the top of my head and blunt-cut it straight across – just a little (about 2 inches) for long layers. Total time for this, maybe 2-3 minutes.

Then I jumped back in the shower to rinse out the conditioner. Done!

Now I have a perfect bob, a bit shorter in the back (as is the current style), and slightly layered so my curls curl. It’s my best haircut in years – in or out of a salon – and I can’t believe how quick and easy it was.

My big mistake in the past was to try to cut my own hair using the techniques that a salon stylist would use. You just can’t do a good job of that on your own head – there is always the problem of the back. There are tricks to cutting your own hair, and they are different from what you do if you’re cutting someone else’s hair!

As you can see, my hair is naturally curly. Judging from my internet research, this technique will work equally well on straight hair, but of course I don’t have straight hair to test it on. If you do, please post your results!

• Capitalism is not the great moral good that we’ve been taught it is since childhood. In fact, it’s an evil system with incentives that inevitably lead to a small number of people amassing vast wealth, while a large majority of workers can’t afford the basics of life. Ironically, although the pro-capitalist religious right has appropriated Christianity to itself, capitalism goes against all the precepts of Christianity and Jesus Christ. Moore backs up this assertion with numerous and persuasive expert interviews, and some shocking facts of which most people are unaware.
• Capitalism is actually not small-d democratic at all. The hierarchical structure of large corporations is fascist, not democratic. You have no say; you’re a cog in a machine owned and run by others. You do what you’re told or you’re fired. Capitalism was not part of our founders’ vision. There is no reference to capitalism in the Constitution, and in fact many of our founders – including Thomas Jefferson and John Adams – warned against it. Jefferson said, “Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”

Capitalism makes its main points well, but has some weaknesses:

• The film gets off to a unpersuasive start, showing families losing their homes to foreclosure, but without enough backstory. You certainly get that these people are sad and angry, but the film doesn’t connect the dots back to the greed and dishonesty of the financial sector. By omitting the backstory, the film leaves open the possibility that these famililies did something boneheaded to bring this on themselves.
• The portrayal of Obama is overly positive, not balanced. I like Obama, too, but come on – you can’t highlight the past bad acts of Larry Summers and low-life worm Timothy Geithner, and then somehow leave out that Obama appointed these two men to manage the US financial system. Or somehow leave out the fact that Obama himself voted for the $700 billion no-strings-attached bailout of the banking industry. The film does disclose that Goldman Sachs was the largest corporate contributor to Obama’s campaign, but then – on no evidence – suggests that Obama remains beyond its influence nonetheless. I’d like to think that’s true, but I haven’t yet seen the proof.
• The narrative is a bit disjointed. The film demonstrates the fact of wealth disparity, but doesn’t nail down why capitalism – even if regulated – will always lead to this result, as asserted. It’s also a little fuzzy on what to do about the problem, beyond a vague call to demonstrate and rebel (against what and for what?).

The great strength of Sicko was its clear call to action. Not only did it make the problem clear, it make the solution clear. But what is the solution to capitalistic exploitation in this country, and the stranglehold that monied interests exert on our so-called democratic process? At this very moment, 80% of the American people are in favor of a public option for health insurance, and yet – because of the pressure of the insurance industry – the chance of Congress approving a public option is well below 80%.

After seeing Sicko, I felt there was a solution I could help work towards. Capitalism, on the other hand, left me feeling helpless anger and despair. I don’t know how we get our country back from the greedy, amoral people who amass great wealth at the expense of others, and the greedy, amoral economic system that allows it. What is the solution?

Theoretically, this blog post will appear on my Facebook profile page, Can’t wait to see if it really does! The last one didn’t… But this one did! Cool!

Do you use the InDesign book feature? Have you ever saved the book and then discovered that it has vanished?

Both problems appear to occur only with CS4 running on Vista. Here are the workarounds.

When you encounter the Dreamweaver locked file bug, just save the file under another name and wait a half hour or so. You don’t have to reboot. The improperly locked file will disappear, and then you can rename the file back to what it was.

The main thing to remember about the InDesign book bug is to always look at the directory after saving the book file to make sure it’s still there. If it has vanished, then use Save As to resave it.

Important: If InDesign prompts you to save the book file on exit, don’t do it! It will prompt you to save it even if you have just saved it and there have been no changes. If you say yes to save on exit, InDesign will delete the file and then it will be truly gone.

I reported the InDesign book bug to Adobe. Somebody from Adobe did email me, but he found it too much trouble to set up a 64-bit Vista test system (my platform) so it wasn’t fixed.

I didn’t bother reporting the Dreamweaver bug because I saw in an internet search that others had and Adobe just ignored the reports.

The CS4 Design Pro Suite costs nearly $2000. Why don’t they fix such serious bugs?

If you go to normaleating.com and click on the Blog button, you will see that the look-and-feel of the blog and the rest of the site are identical. This site contains much more than a blog. There’s a forum with a chat, a newsletter, various content pages (sample chapters from my book), a testimonials page, etc.

How did I get the blog to look like the rest of the site? The Atahualpa theme. (I can never remember that name. What does it mean?) This theme gives you a menu-driven interface to just about every WordPress theme option so you can make your site look exactly like you want. I had no trouble at all duplicating the layout of the rest of my site, and it was a lot easier to do in Atahualpa than it would have been manually. It takes a little time to set up because there are so many options, but none of it is hard. All you need to know is a little basic CSS.

Now that I’ve found Atahualpa, I’ll never use any other theme. I was so enchanted with it I sent the author a donation.

Here’s the whole sad story, with the ultimate solution.

• I downloaded and installed trial versions of Adobe CS4 programs while waiting for my licensed copy to arrive in the mail. The Adobe site said that I could enter my serial number in the trial copies, so I didn’t mind the 2 gig download.

• When my licensed version arrived, I tried to enter my serial number into the trial software and it was rejected. I called Adobe tech support and was told this sometimes happens – I just have to uninstall the trial software and reinstall from DVD.

• I tried to uninstall the software in the usual way, and the uninstall failed – repeatedly. It took about 15 minutes to run, and then told me the program was not uninstalled, “see below for why.” But there was nothing written “below”. I call Adobe tech support again.

• After again making me spell out my mailing and email address, Adobe tech support told me to download the Adobe CS4 cleanup utility and uninstall it that way. I did this, and it appeared to remove all registry entries. The files were still on my disk and in my Start menu, so I deleted these manually.

• I loaded up my DVD and try to install my licensed copy – software that retails for $1799 (no decimal points there). But the trial version was not completely gone and the installation failed, repeatedly, with no details as to why.

• I called Adobe tech support for the third time, and again had to laboriously spell out my mailing and email address. The tech support guy told me to download a Flash removal utility and run that. I did as instructed. He then told me to download the Adobe CS3 cleanup utility. I told him I’d never had Adobe CS3 on my computer, but he said to download and run it anyway. His instructions had the quality of a magic spell: run it three times for Level 1, three times for Level 2, four times for Level 3, and four times for Level 4. This seemed pointless to me – especially since log messages made it clear that nothing further was removed after the first run – but I did as instructed.

  Then he told me to create a new admin account on my computer and install the program from there. That’s where I got off the bus. No way was I reconfiguring my computer and creating a new admin account I didn’t want or need just to install this software! He said that if I wouldn’t do as he said he couldn’t help me any further, and he hung up.

• Hoping that the additional cleanup had fully removed the trial software from my system, I again tried to install Adobe CS4 from the DVD I’d purchased at great expense, and again it failed. I cursed loudly, which my neighbors surely heard through the thin walls of my apartment building.

• I then did the only thing left to me: I wiped my hard disk, and restored my most recent backup – which luckily was from only 10 days ago. I also restored some some additional data I saved before the Big Wipe, then I did another mirror backup just in case.

• With great anxiety (since I was out of ideas if this failed), I again ran the installation program from DVD. Happily, this time things went a little better. But even with a clean system, one of the packages – InDesign 4 – failed to install. The error message gave no hint of why. I continued with the rest of the installation, and everything else installed properly.

• After the installation program finally completed – it took at least an hour (what takes so long?!) – I followed this advice from an Adobe KnowledgeBase article:

  • I ran msconfig, using the Start menu’s Run command.

  • On the Startup tab, I clicked Disable All.

  • On the Services tab, I selected Hide All Microsoft Services, clicked Disable All, then reselected the two FLEXnet Licensing Service items.

  • I applied the changes, clicked OK, rebooted, and ran the Adobe CS4 installation program again, selecting only InDesign 4 to reinstall. The installation finally completed without errors.

  • I went back into msconfig, selected Normal startup, and again rebooted. My $1799 software suite was finally installed – only took 12 hours, great distress, shouting loud enough for my neighbors to hear, and a full-blown migraine.

For the record, I am running 64-bit Vista on a Thinkpad T400, and I disabled my antivirus software and firewall before installing or uninstalling. I noticed that the trial software on the Adobe site is 32-bit rather than 64-bit (unlike what was available on DVD). This could have been part of the problem.

This software costs thousands of dollars – don’t you think Adobe should ensure the thing works before collecting that much money from people??

So be warned!! Do not even think of installing software from Adobe – especially trial or beta software – without first doing a complete system backup. If you need to do a clean install, the only way is to wipe your system.

People have been nagging me to update the module for Drupal 6.x. But, you know, I’m busy and trying to make a living. I like open source philosophically, but it takes a lot of time to do this work. Then someone took the highly persuasive tack of depositing some money into my PayPal account. That worked. phpFreeChat for Drupal 6.x has just been released.

If you use phpFreeChat with Drupal and have feature requests, consider the PayPal approach. I’m open to any reasonable offer.

The current version of FlashChat (5.0.10) contains a configuration file for Drupal integration (drupalCMS.php) that doesn’t work. So for starters, download the Drupal 5 & 6 Integration Kit.

That solves many problems, but not quite all.

Installation

The integration kit contains a mostly-working drupalCMS.php script, and a “Who’s in chat” block module for Drupal 5 and Drupal 6. It takes just a few small tweaks to make these operational.

The new drupalCMS.php needs no changes if your database host is something simple like “localhost”. But mine wasn’t – mine is “localhost:/tmp/mysql5.sock”, encoded in my Drupal settings.php file ($db_url variable) as “localhost%3a%2ftmp%2fmysql5.sock”. If your database host looks like mine, then you need to make one small change.

In drupalCMS.php, search for:

      $parts[host]

and replace this with:

      rawurldecode($parts[host])

Edit 29-Dec-08: Veronica just fixed the host parameter code in her Drupal Kit.

I encountered one more installation problem. This last problem is a bug in the general installation code, not the Drupal-specific code.

When I got to Step 7 and tried to install FlashChat bots, I got a 500 Server Error. This turned out to be because the install program was setting permissions of 777 to the flashchat temp directory and all subdirectories. My Web host is running SuExec, so allowing the world write permissions will always generate a 500 Server Error.

So when I got to Step 7 and the error, I used an FTP program to set the permission of temp and its subdirectories to 775 (no write permission for the world) and refreshed the page. That allowed it to load successfully and install the bots.

Displaying FlashChat within Drupal

When FlashChat is launched from within Drupal, it uses the Drupal users table and automatically logs in users who are logged into Drupal. So far, so good.

But by default, it opens into its own browser window. You lose all your Drupal theming, blocks, headers, and footers. I didn’t like that.

It’s very simple to make FlashChat display within a Drupal page. Just create a new page and enter this code:

      <?php

      echo '<iframe width="100%" height="450" src="flashchat/flashchat.php"></iframe>';

      ?>

Note that the source string shown here assumes that FlashChat is installed in a subdirectory under the Drupal root called “flashchat”. If you put it somewhere else, adjust the code.

Beware the Block Quirk

The FlashChat module for a “Who’s in chat” block works very nicely, but beware: You must go into the Admin area for the FlashChat module and save settings before enabling the block, or an error will prevent you from accessing your site. The FlashChat variables are not saved to the Drupal variables table until you go into the Admin area and save settings.

If you’re reading this after already encountering this error, just launch phpMyAdmin and delete the flashchat entry from the blocks table. That will get Drupal running again.

There are two things you should check when you are in the FlashChat Module Admin area:

• Make sure the name of the FlashChat directory is correct. The default is “chat”, but I called mine “flashchat”.
• You will want to remove the link to “Go to chat” if you want an embedded chat (or edit the code). The “Go to chat” link opens FlashChat in a separate window without the Drupal sidebars, header, and footer.

To change the link so it opens to your embedded chat, find this line in flashchat.module (the line is wrapping here, but it’s one line in the file):

      if($chatLinkText) $chatLink = '<a href="' . base_path() . $chat .
          'flashchat.php" target="_blank" title="' . $chatLinkTitle . '" alt="' .
          $chatLinkTitle . '">' . $chatLinkText . '</a><br>';

Replace it with this:

      if ($chatLinkText)
          $chatLink = '<a href="' . base_path() . 'fchat" title="' . $chatLinkTitle .
          '" alt="' . $chatLinkTitle . '">' . $chatLinkText . '</a;gt;<br>';

And then make sure that your Drupal page with the chat uses the url “fchat”. Don’t call it “flashchat” or it will launch FlashChat in a separate window (if your directory is called “flashchat”).

Configuring FlashChat

I find the default colors for FlashChat to be unreadable and headache-inducing, but happily this can be changed to match your Drupal theme. You can change many other aspects of the program from the adminstration area, as well:

http://yoursite.com/chatdir/admin/index.php

There’s a bug in the sounds feature in FlashChat 5.0.10 – settings are ignored. If you’re desperate to mute the sounds, you can delete the /flashchat/sounds/ folder.

There are some things that are not figurable in FlashChat that should be, and new chatters can’t see ongoing discussions from before they joined the chat. If these problems bother you, take a look at the phpFreeChat module for Drupal 5.x.

There’s a copy of the phpFreeChat module on my own Web site because I shared it from there while I figured out CVS, and don’t want to break the link. There’s also a phpFreeChat-compatible theme on my site that I haven’t uploaded to Drupal yet.

phpFreeChat is a great program (I added an “away” feature in the Drupal version), but has a limitation that may be a problem for some people: it conflicts with jquery if it’s on the same page. For most people this isn’t an issue, but if it is for you, you can use FlashChat – another feature-rich chat. I figured out how to integrate this with Drupal 5.x, and will post the configuration file and instructions shortly.

I googled this problem, and found some complicated advice about failed installations and the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility. But I find that this error occurs when a program installs just fine in every respect except that it leaves the Windows Installer Service running.

There’s a easy way to fix this.

Right-click on the Computer icon, wherever it exists on your system, and select Manage. (I’m using the Classic Start menu, so the Computer icon is on my desktop. If you’re using the new Start menu, the icon is in the Start menu.) This opens the Computer Management utility.

Select Services, right click on Windows Installer in the list and select Properties. If you’re having the problem, the Windows Installer service is started, and the Stop button is disabled. Simply rebooting doesn’t stop the service. Here’s how you stop it.

In the Properties dialog, change Startup type to “Disabled”, click OK, and reboot your computer. This stops the service. After your computer reboots, again open Computer Management (right-click on Computer and select Manage), open Windows Installer Properties, and change the Startup type back to Manual. Now you’re good to go and can start a new installation.