Thoughts While Lowering a Crib

• I get why people with kids feel like they need a bigger house: I’m trying to adjust a crib in situ and it feels like parallel parking a parade float in Rome
• “No hon, I’ll do it during the week when the house …

wxPython on OSX Mavericks with or without Homebrew

Just a short note for anyone else who runs into this nonsense: I could not get the current version of wxPython to install in a useful way using homebrew. brew install wxmac --python --devel to install into my Homebrew-controlled Python install worked …

Django Profiling Bug

I’m doing some work profiling a large Django application and I was running into this weird error when I tried to aggregate the stats with gather_profile_stats.py which comes with Django. It kept throwing TypeError: zip argument #1 must support iteration if there were two profile …

It’s My Party (now)

I’m trying really hard to take parenting magazines seriously, but they seem to be written for a demographic that straddles dense and insecure. The latest unsolicited offering from Parents—

is apparently for people who don’t already know ice cream cake and enough room …

Résumé Rewrite Services

Helping people with a job application is not something I do. Unless you accidentally send it to me when asking your friends to review your cover letter before applying to be president of a bank. Especially if the email ends, “Constructive not your usual Tom. Thanks.” This …

Fundraising: A Play in One Act

INT - NIGHT - a fundraiser from University of Rochester calls TOM who has the phone on speaker while holding JOSIE. We join the call in progress …

• Caller: “Sir, no amount is too small.”
• Tom: “Well, I make like ten cents a day punching out plates …

Checking on memcache’s health

From time to time a client on WebFaction will experience a hiccup in their memcache process. It’s not obvious at first unless the site is under heavy load (New Relic is a huge help in diagnosing the problem); this post is just a central …

Lacey

“I’ve put relatives in the ground with fewer tears.” — my mom

Last Sunday night we had to say goodbye to the gentlest soul I will probably ever meet. I’ve tried to figure out how to write this since then but it all comes out as a jumble …

Installing New Relic Plugin Agent on Shared Hosting

New Relic’s basic agent (and the free 30 days of Pro we got up front) have been a huge help on one of my largest ongoing projects. Wanting more insight into our server after a mystery incident yesterday morning, I’ve …

Setting Up Server SSH Access

Because I always forget and because I am getting into the good habit of connecting via SSH for everything, here’s a note to myself on how to get SSH deployment keys running in my typical process:

• Use or generate a key
• Add the key …