me talking out loud

Well we finally made it home. It only took 3 - 4 days (depending on how you count the International date line) to do it. We unfortunately got caught in the blizzard in Boston, Mass. So 3 cancelled flights later and a complete rerouting we made it home. Now we just have to wait for the luggage to catch up to us. The airlines says maybe today it will show up, but then they said that yesterday .

A couple of things I had noticed/learned during our trip.

1. ALWAYS have some extra money available for the trip back. Sleeping in an airport will not help you maintain perspective on the current situation. We ended up overnighting it in 2 different cities. Without the extra cash to cover the hotels (which I personally think the airlines should reimburse) we would have been stuck on the floor.
2. staying in a better hotel maybe more expensive but being able to call down to the front desk for toothbrush, toothpaste, deodarant, and shampoo for 3 people - as well as shaving cream and razor for my husband was nice (remember the luggage is lost). Oh and let us not forget the wonderful, free shuttles back to the airport 24 hours a day.
3. if your flight is cancelled - call the airlines. DO NOT wait in line to talk to a ticketting agent! Since I called the airline immediately after the flight was cancelled I was booked on to the next flight out (Granted that too was later cancelled) but at least I didn’t wait in line for 3 hours to have it cancelled. In the time it took other poeple to talk to the agent - I had already been rescheduled to later flights 3 times, booked a hotel room, and had dinner.
4. trying to track down your luggage is totally useless while you are in the middle of the whole mess. After the 3rd person (used multiple airlines) telling me that they can not do anything until I reach my final destination (even though my luggage is still at the same airport as I am) - was frustrating and a pain in the butt. Why do they tell you to call a number if they can’t do anything - and they know they can’t.

At least we are home now - so I can sleep in my own bed. All the rest of it will eventually take care of itself - with a little bit of humor and a lot of patience.

Well I got the translation file back from Tokyo for the index page. Uploaded the file… and everything died. - figures.

Anyway, here is the current scenario… opened the site in English and navigated through it with no problems. Made Japanese the prefered language (In Mozilla - Edit ->Preferences. In the Navigator list go to languages and add it or move it up to the top of the list.) and reloaded. Blank white page with the status bar saying Done.

Hmm. Time to find out where the problem is with a little debugging. Put in a few echos to see what is happening. Upload and reload. Blank white page. View page source -> Nothing. Not even a openning and closing html tag. Hmm. Check the error logs to see if it says anything… Nothing. Go to the access logs to see if any information is there about what is going on… Nothing. Not even an entry to say that someone has requested a japanese page. Now that is interesting.

Got to the PHPCommunity IRC channel and ask the guys there since I’m stumped. Explain to them what is going on and what I have done. It is suggested that there may be a problem with the interaction of the PHP and the Apache since the requests aren’t even making it to the access logs. I then recalled an email I got from the hosting service that they are upgrading the version of PHP and the Zend Optimizer. So maybe I am just catching it in the middle of the upgrade…

Someone else (cnb to be exact) suggests I try rolling back the translation file. Daah - I do need to verify it isn’t the new file. So I dig out the old file and reload it. And don’t ya know it works again! So it is the translation file that is the problem. Hours of work trying to figure out the problem and it is the stupid file. Grrr.

Have downloaded a clean new translation file and sent it back out to the translator. Made sure to tell them not to mess around with the format. Never did find out exactly what the problem was.

So now I will be going back to work on the next page. Almost there. Have the templates done and ~80% of the logic. Hopefully will have the logic done soon.

Well I have just finished the index page and it was much more complex then the login page. In English - it is working fine. I have just sent out the translation table to my co-worker in Toyko and will hopefully be getting it back soon. Will let ya know how it goes.

Well my sister is now offically married and a Registered Nurse (she still needs to take her certification though). Man was it a crazy couple of days there. I have a ton of pictures (some that are fine as is and some that need to be touched up) that I will be posting later.

Saw a couple of my cousins that I haven’t seen in 10 years. Man I missed them. We were pretty much raised as brothers and sisters so not seeing them was hard. Eddie and Paul are the eldest of the cousins and they made me laugh so hard my sides literally hurt. It was good being able to feel that close to them again. How do you tell someone that they are a part of you and that they always will be? Even/especially when you don’t see them often?

Anyway - we are now in Maine and freezing our butts off. I have started working on my project again and will talk about it later.

Well we finally made it home and have taken a few pictures. You can find them here