Technological Quicksand

It is amazing some days how a small fix can turn into a pit of technological quicksand. I was working on writing an update or two to our add-on to Movable Type on Friday and got things working on the development box only to encounter a MAJOR issue on the production server. Ironically, the problem isn’t related to the code I was writing at all but rather to the fact that the users and groups on that box (or at least the ability to edit such) is majorly messed up. I’m still new enough to Linux that when these things happen I typically think, I’ve done something stupid and wrong. However, after consulting with the Head of Computer and Network Systems I discovered that not I’m not an idiot and I was checking on things the correct way. There is just something wrong beyond the realm of my perview. Thank god OS issues are not my problem, I really don’t have the patience to deal with them. Hopefully, the Head of Computer and Network Systems will get things fixed soon but until then I’m in a holding pattern. The downside is that the person who wanted the update is going to have to be patient while the problem is resolved. On the bright side it meant I could continue with investigating and playing with the software that I was testing before I needed to do the minor code update.

The problem is that even that is going nowhere right now. I’ve been trying to find a multi-user, server-based news aggregator that I could install on our server to let our staff subscribe to and read various RSS/Atom feeds including those pesky protected feeds we have. Alas, have tried several pieces of software none of them will do the job. If you’re wondering why not just install a client newreader. Well, I’d prefer not to saddle the Computer Systems folks with that support burden. Alas, I may have no other choice. If only Gregarius (thanks to Dorothea for point this tool out to me) was adding multi-user functionality tomorrow. So it is Tuesday and I haven’t solved any of the BIG problems on my “to do list” this week. Sigh, as I’ve explained several times over the course my career something are out of my control.