Working with technology can be frustrating. Sometimes it seems things do not work like they should. Cindy brought my attention to a blog entry by David Warlich in which he describes his frustration in dealing with such issues. Sounds like you she said.
Sure enough I ran into what sounds like a similar problem today. I run web applications on inexpensive machines (old Macs I can pick up around the university) using open source software (apache, php, mysql). Sometimes, things just stop working. A problem with a complex environment built from multiple components is that one little thing can be changed in one of the components (or within the operating system of the host computer) and suddenly nothing works. The folks working on these individual components work on their individual pet projects and it is easy to see why “one little thing” can go wrong. No one is responsible for making certain all the pieces will continue to work together.
In this case, I think it was Apple’s fault. I upgraded to the newest operating system (10.4) on two of my machines several months ago. One machine stopped working and no matter what I did I could not get the web resources I had developed to work again. I went back to system 10.3 and the software worked. Today, the other 10.4 machine stopped working.This time I did a little more Internet research before moving the machine back to an earlier operating system and came across a blog entry that reported a problem very similar to my own. I tried the solution someone provided and the problem was fixed within 5 minutes. The first failure probably cost my 10 hours of frustration. This time the same problem was fixed within minutes. This Internet search stuff is pretty amazing.
Dave – if you happen to read this post, check out the link that I include above. Apple – I hope you did not mess up the verion of PHP you provide to better support the AppleServer solution you sell. Such tactics would really disappoint me (even if done within the context of better security). I must just keep telling myself – problem solving is fun, problem solving is fun.
